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 Gabe’s
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 didn’t 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 won’t. 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.