Annamaria Luecht: Photography is an art form. It's how everyone sees the world. And I think that's the beautiful part about photos. You can have a wonderful article, but if you don't have the best photo with it, it kind of doesn't have the same impact.
Diya Khetan: Welcome back to The Bruno Brief. My name is Diya Khetan and I’m a podcast host at The Herald. This week, we’ll be speaking with members of The Herald’s photo team to learn about their process as photojournalists and some recent projects they’ve been working on, like a photo essay documenting Brown’s first snow day of the Spring 2026 semester.
Here’s one of our photo chiefs, Annamaria.
Annamaria: I’m Annamaria Luecht. My pronouns are she/her and I am the photo chief for the Herald.
Diya: Recently, Annamaria, along with other members of the photo team, ventured out into freezing temperatures and about two feet of snow to produce their “The first snow at Brown” photo essay. To Annamaria, producing a photo essay is a lot like making a film.
Annamaria: You want to get establishing shots, detail shots, for example, sweaters in the snow, individual portraits and stuff like that. And I think from there, it's just up to finding cool patterns outside.
Diya: And the direction of the specific shots is often determined by each individual photographer.
Annamaria: We're not like, you have to get a photo of this person at this time. It's what you see every day in your life.
Diya: Even though they all were capturing the same day, the individual photographers on The Herald’s photo team came at the essay from extremely different angles. Here are three of our photographers.
Bomi Okimoto: My name is Bomi Okimoto, I use she/her pronouns and I’m a photographer for The Herald.
Jake Parker: Jake Parker, he/him. I’m a photographer for The Herald and I'm also on the multimedia team. I'm a multimedia editor.
Selina Kao: Hi, my name is Selena. I use she/her pronouns, and I am a photographer and multimedia editor at The Herald.
Diya: Bomi, how did you approach the snow day photo essay?
Bomi: I usually try and center it around the people because the people are definitely the most interesting part. When we take photos, if there's a person in it, and it ends up being a more compelling story that way.
Diya: Selina took a similar approach to Bomi with her photos, aiming to showcase the human experience.
Selina: I think the human aspect is what I like to see the most in this snow day story, because it affected the people on campus more than it affe cted the campus itself.
Diya: Selina also focused on capturing the evolution of conditions over the course of the day.
Selina: In the beginning it's really bright and kind of grayish, but the sun's still out but behind the clouds, so it's still bright and you can see everything. But while it transitions to the night, you can see a lot more, like the smaller snowflakes around the lamppost, for example. I think just being able to get daytime, nighttime, and see how campus is throughout the snow day and how people are playing in the snow, how they're spending time with their friends, that's a cohesive story.
Diya: Jake, on the other hand, decided to look at the snow day through a different light.
Jake: I did a lot of very environmental shots to … to feel that emptiness that came from the snow. It shuts everything down. And that really rang true when I was outside, because I could take many photos, and you don't see anyone in them. I also gravitated towards that solitude, that more clear restfulness that comes with the snow.
Diya: One of Annamaria’s favorite photos from the essay captured the joy and excitement of the snow day.
Annamaria: There were these two people who were cross country skiing up the side of Thayer. They were just so happy. And I'm like, it's miserable outside, but everyone was just so happy and just exploring.
Diya: Supplementing these human-centered and environmental shots, Annamaria also aimed to capture the little details.
Annamaria: I also look for lines and patterns. If there’s footprints in the snow, I want to get down low so that the footprints are curving.
Diya: While working to capture comprehensive shots, the team found that taking photos while it was actively snowing presented challenges.
Annamaria: There is no waterproof camera and you also have to make sure your lenses are waterproof as well. So it's kind of scary, because you're just out there and snow is water. My camera actually started to freeze, so I had to let it thaw out.
Selina: When your hands get cold, they swell, so it's hard to press down the shutter. So sometimes that's also an issue. It's usually just staying warm, making sure you don't get too wet, and making sure that your battery is at full charge.
Diya: Another challenge our photographers encountered when developing the photo essay was figuring out how to tell a story solely through images.
Jake: Photos are notoriously bad with context, and that is something that I see quite often. They don't tell the full story pretty much all of the time, which is why they accompany the writing. I feel like with something like the snow day, it's very difficult to just put photos out, because you get a very one sided approach to it. While I enjoy doing photo essays, I also feel like interacting with the people that you take photos of allows you to tell a bigger story. Caption work especially.
Diya: But Annamaria explained some ways you Herald photographers combat bias with photo essays.
Annamaria: You want to be mindful of what's actually happening. You can take a really artistic shot, and it can look wonderful, right? But it can also be putting your own bias on it. So you want to try and take photos that are more true to what's happening. You don't want to take a photo that makes someone look angry and upset, but really, it's not, it's a still. There's 1000s of seconds like that. You can take a photo and you don't want to pick one that doesn't represent what's happening.
Diya: Annamaria, Jake and Selina all said they were drawn to photojournalism because of how it can uniquely capture stories.
Annamaria: I knew I always wanted to tell stories like with photography, not even just in a fine art sort of way. I was adopted from Russia when I was very young, and the understanding that a lot of people don't understand a situation like that, until they see it. So I think photojournalism is a way to continue that.
Annamaria: It's an adventure every day.
Diya: Being in The Herald’s newsroom also offers a creative outlet and a means to collaborate with other storytellers.
Jake: I think there's a certain level of creative freedom with certain projects in the herald that I can't get elsewhere. I really like The Herald because it's a certain outlet for things that I want to do.
Diya: Annamaria, Bomi, Jake and Selina, thank you all for joining us today and sharing more about The Herald’s photo team and your snow day photo essay.
Next week, join us to hear how Herald reporters, videographers and photographers worked together to cover a recent anti-ICE protest that drew a crowd of over 1,000 participants.
Thanks again for tuning in to the Bruno Brief. Today’s episode was produced, edited and scripted by Diya Khetan, Talia LeVine, Ciara Meyer and Raghav Ramogopal. If you like what you hear, subscribe to the Bruno Brief wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week.
