A month prior to us heading out to California and Arizona for nearly a month (almost all of April) we had a very busy week photographing many Family Portrait Sessions. Also during that week we captured something new for a University: An author-professor round-table discussion. We’ve often photographed our wonderful clients of over the past decade+ at The University of Notre Dame here in our city of South Bend, Indiana (a little over an hour from Chicago), but this event was far different than most of the events that we’ve photographed at Notre Dame. In the past 13.5 years we’ve mainly full-time photographed high profile weddings, corporate portraiture, Engagement Sessions, and Family Portrait Sessions of Notre Dame alumni. Most of these weddings and Professional Portrait Sessions we photograph both in different indoor spaces on campus that we’ve been hired to photograph at, but also largely photograph portions outside (most often during good weather months/ Spring, Summer, and Autumn). For weddings over the past decade+ at the university specifically we’ve captured our couples at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart with wedding reception also there on campus at the Smith Ballroom of the Morris Inn, so to say that this was a departure from our regular work at the University would be an understatement.
As we mentioned above, not only was this an author-professor round-table discussion, but this specific round-table discussion that we photographed professionally was for The University of Notre Dame’s Initiative on Race and Resilience which is a new-er initiative on campus. As you may have guessed from some recent blog posts here on our Professional Photography Website (based here in South Bend just 7 minutes from Notre Dame’s campus) this university/ academia at large, this specific Initiative, and especially this round-table discussion all really struck a cord with us (especially Jenny whose entire MFA thesis, body of fine art, and defense focused on topics such as this tackling race and gender via the fine arts). We are based a here in South Bend, so with our proximity (an hour) we often get to capture our clients in beautiful venues and environments for weddings within Chicago and in its beautiful suburbs (as well as across the United States from California to Boston as well as abroad), but as an MFA in Fine Art Photography and BFA in Commercial Photography degree-d couple of Professional Photographers, we deeply revere formal education and degrees.
This round-table discussion put on by Notre Dame’s Initiative on Race and Resilience (and sponsored by 5 of Notre Dame’s departments as well as Pauline) showcased 4 young, diverse powerhouse author-educators including 2 author-professors, the Notre Dame Artist in Residence/ Pulitzer Prize Winner/ Former 2 term Poet Laureate of the U.S.A., and an author-professor who directs the MFA program in Creative Writing, is an assistant professor, and is on the Board of Advisors for IRR. These four authors brought along their published books and in a formal discussion/ lecture setting were introduced by the chair of the Africana Studies Department (a fellow professor and director of The Initiative on Race and Resilience). The 4 panelists/ author-professors prompted by Dr. Sanders spoke one-after-the-other in a discussion style format about race and the arts- specifically drawing from their own racial experiences which helped shape their works. We won’t get into the genuinely riveting conversation/ discussion here, but if you have any interest in this topic or the authors themselves you can feel free to check out the Live Feed/ Notre Dame media department recorded video (which is now on YouTube). Without further adieu, enjoy this visual representation of this wonderful University of Notre Dame event that we captured recently-!
Thanks so much for checking out this special event that we were hired to capture at The University of Notre Dame! Shout outs to the wonderful folks who worked with/ hired us to capture this riveting event and to the fantastic author-professors that we had the honor of getting to capture recently! Events like this remind us of how thankful we are for our 5 formal degrees, our Professional Photography business, and how lucky we are to live and be located in a city with a whopping 5 universities/ colleges! We deeply believe in formal degrees/ education as well as the written word, larger conversations about race and the arts, and academia, so this event was really a culmination of our past 13.5 years in business and 18 years of partaking in and revering higher education (post-high school).
We hope you enjoyed our professional imagery that we worked hard to create (even if the vast majority of this particular event was verbal). We’ll catch you next Weekly Wednesday with yet another Corporate Office’s Portraiture, but until then we hope you’ve been enjoying this first week of May, 2023! May you not have as bad Pandemic-Election-Recession whiplash as we do today (post-voting yesterday)!