Submitted by students, these are internship experiences told first-hand.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Gabe Dinsmoor, Journalist


My name is Dave Angilella and I am a senior photography major with a concentration in film + video and minor in culture and politics. During the Spring of 2015, I was lucky enough to intern as a journalist, second camera, editor and co- producer with Baltimore native, Gabe Dinsmoor. Gabe is a free lance journalist who contributes frequent video pieces to both City Paper and the Baltimore Sun, among other media outlets. I have been curious whether or not journalism is a direction I am interested in taking my work in terms of my career. I began at MICA as a documentary-minded photographer, and at the end of my four years here I am at a crossroads between documentary work and more personal, artistic (but still socially based work.

I was lucky enough to find Gabes work online and reached out to him for a meeting.  This initial meeting was just to make contact and to see how we got along in a casual setting. I didnt want to mention my search for an internship or interest in working with him, but instead cultivate a genuine relationship beforehand. Two weeks later, I reached out to Gabe and asked if he was interested in working together. I told him how I had respected his work and the social ties and implications it had, and would love to be a part of his team. I explained my background and how I thought we could mutually benefit from each other’s visions. So began my internship.'


My internship has been quite the learning experience. I have broken new boundaries in terms of my self-confidence in my own capabilities as a photographer and leader, as well as newfound abilities. I also now have new work in my portfolio that displays real-world experience in a tangible field. During my time with Gabe, I have taken on various jobs, such as second-camera, interviewer, editor, co-producer, story-researcher, and much more. Until this job, I had not had the experience of working as a freelance journalist, nor did I understand what it was like to drive that kind of career. I was not familiar with the process of discovering and forming stories in a journalistic format. I can now confidently say that I have that experience and am capable of doing so. I am still unsure if this is a career path I would like to ultimately pursue, because as I have found during this experience, the work is often detached by nature. It can be intimate and sensitive, but at the end of the day it is only a quick story in an ever-moving news cycle. It is not the same as doing sustained documentary work or my more artistic, yet socially mindful work. Maybe I will come to find a way to tie the two together, or perhaps I wont. Regardless of this, my internship has been a base from which I can now move forward. I have begun the process and am coming closer to discovering where my abilities and philosophical/social mindset will be most useful and rewarding.