Eight years ago, when Sedona Red Rock High School student Kiernan Hale was 10 years old, he got his first camera.

“My mom used to be a photographer, and when she had children, she had to sell all her photography gear,” he said. “It really sucked for her, but she told me all the stories about how she loved doing it.”

Being inspired by her stories, he took his camera with him to take photos in nature — his favorite thing to capture.

Now a senior, Hale recently placed 15th out of 34 at the SkillsUSA Arizona state photography competition.

To get to that competition, Hale placed fifth at the regional competition in January — the region represents nearly all of Yavapai county, parts of Coconino and Gila counties and the southern half of Mohave County.

“We got the list by the end of the week, but we didn’t know where the cutoff was,” SRRHS photography teacher Cindy Wilmer said.

When Hale found out he qualified, he was excited.

“This time around in the competition, we were given the task of picturing the cover of a magazine with the name ‘Green,’” he wrote after the competition. “The point is to take a picture that makes that name stand out. For the competition, we took pictures in downtown Phoenix with a group of [34] students. I took pictures of the framing of the buildings, strange, unique architecture and green color schemes.”

SkillsUSA Competition

Four other of Hale’s classmates also competed at the regional competition. Two seniors came in the top half of competitors: Charles Bush, who came sixth, and Logan Jankowski, who placed eighth. The two SRRHS juniors were Jessica Montes De Oca and Vanessa Martinez. There were 15 competitors overall.

“When we got there, we were given a test on our technical knowledge of photography and evaluating photos about what the dominant compositional principle used was,” Jankowski said. “Which was — I really struggled with that.”

The other assignments were to presubmit photos and bring large prints to hang up with descriptions on the back. Each photo had some sort of prompt or theme to go along with it, like “this is me without showing my face,” “color vs. mood” and “negative space.”

Hale submitted a photo he took of a SpaceX launch from California that he could see from Arizona.

“It was from my front porch,” he said. “I had a perfect view of it.”

One of Jankowski’s favorites was one he took of the shadows of a water tower contrasting against the bright sky.

“That was the easiest one to edit, as well,” he said. “Just turn it black and white. Just turn down the exposure.”

Hale said the state competition was strange, because it was in such a large city compared to the small town he’s used to, but people were in general more relaxed and open to conversations.

Photography Class

Hale said one of his favorite assignments in his photos class was light painting.

“Light painting is using a long exposure to capture a glimpse of light in a dark room, to create a certain pattern,” he said.

He showed an example of one he took in class with Jankowski swinginga strand of Christmas lights around another classmate sitting in a chair. The end result had white streaks surrounding the seated subject.

“One of the first major artists to participate in light painting was actually Pablo Picasso,” Wilmer said. “If you look at the history of light painting, he was being interviewed by someone and the guy started talking to him about light painting, and the next thing you know, he was doing it.”

Bush is taking Photo 3 while Jankowski and Hale are in Photo 2.

The three seniors all got involved in photography in different ways. Halehad his mom for inspiration. Jankowski first took it because he needed another CTE credit.

“My stepdad, at the time [Jordan Reece], used to work for the [Sedona] Red Rock News,” Bush said. Reece was the NEWS photojournalist from 2013 to 2017. “I was his apprentice … I just had that photography blood in me until I had the opportunity to take Photo 1 my freshman year.”

Beginning next year, Wilmer will offer Photo 4 for seniors. The school hasn’t offered it in a while, she said, because there hasn’t been a large demand. Part of the reason she wants to make it an option to participate in the SkillsUSA competition — students have to be enrolled in a photography class to participate.

She said she wants as much as possible for her students and has had photographers come in from the city of Sedona’s Artist in the Classroom program. The Photo 4 class will allow students who have that passion for photography grow as much as they can, she said.