Telling Stories Through Photos | A Student Experience

By Stena Lieb, January 21, 2025

Lanesboro High School students learning to use their cell phone cameras in new ways. (Submitted photo)

LANESBORO — The journalism class at Lanesboro High School has typically focused on creating the high school and elementary yearbooks while also contributing pictures to the newspaper once a month. To create a better yearbook, it has become more important for students to explore new ways to utilize the cell phone camera they carry in their pocket every day.

Cell phone cameras have become more and more advanced over time. To take advantage of this, students have been tasked with learning about photojournalism, telling a picture story and creating art-style photos without photo-editing software, and studying art photographers.

Students are challenged to use filters for black and white photography and simple settings to create art. They learn about photography basics and terminology and how to apply these in real world settings.

The class has broken free from just taking pictures for the yearbook, to seeing things through a lens in a more artistic way. This has allowed them to experience not only photojournalism but also art photography.

The stories the students are telling through pictures are about how they see their world.

Student photographers (as pictured in the class photo at top of article): Back row — Jack Taylor, Kayleigh Wangen, Abby LaDoux, Dakota Guenther, Ashland Vagts, Hailey Erickson, Maria Strimpel, Lauren Olson, Soraya Hershburger, and Stena Lieb (instructor). Front row — Annika Nelson, Ava Rein, and Chloe Miller. Not pictured: Morgan Hanson.

Root River Current’s coverage of the arts is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts & cultural heritage fund.