Video: Farewell to the newsroom

Today I’m going to tell you a small story. It involves my photography career to this point. And spoiler alert, it ends with me leaving my job.

I was only 22 years old when I walked into The Denver Post newsroom on my first day of work. I was there as the newest editorial assistant. What did I do in that capacity? Answered thousands of phone calls, directed emails, made a lot of coffee and fought many a battle against the aging copy machine. It triumphed in general, but I won the war. Sometimes I took dictation over the phone from reporters in the field. On election night in 2012, I helped produce a live broadcast that we streamed on our website for hours and hours as results came in.

Shortly after that and with the turn of the new year into 2013, I was engaged to be married to a fellow I met in our shared newsroom, and had accepted a job as a photographer for the local section of the Post. In my tenure as a staff photographer, I documented the stories of neighborhoods and the sometimes unnoticed communities. I photographed assignments while strapped into a helicopter; with a headset perched upon my head in the back of a fire engine; opposite a table full of sweet elderly ladies quilting blankets for the needy. There were muddy farm fields; artist studios covered in paint or clay or shards of colored glass meant for sculpture. I visited dozens of small businesses and even had a sunrise rendezvous with a hot air balloon club.

I enjoyed several years of climbing the learning curve that was full-time newspaper photography, and as I was growing, so was our photo business, A&D Photography. Over the past year it became increasingly evident that A&D needed full-time attention, so at the end of October, I left my job. Told ya this is how this particular tiny tale ends.

Except that, as with most stories in our lives, there are endings, but that rarely means we are anywhere near finished. From here on out I will be running the day-to-day operations of A&D, shooting more, creating more, collaborating with other creatives, and with any luck, fostering more growth as an entrepreneur and small business boss. I’m excited and a little nervous. It seems those are the right ingredients when approaching our life learning curves.

On my last few days of work at the Post, I took a few videos on my fancy phone and put together this very short little film. Let’s call it a video vignette, something short and sweet to say farewell to this place that has meant the world to me and changed my life immeasurably.