Working alongside Voice of OC staff, photojournalism students can access mentorship and photo publishing opportunities while gaining reporting skills such as interviewing and research.
Led by the newsroom’s Director of Photography Julie Leopo, students and early career photojournalists have produced hundreds of news images and videos documenting Orange County.
“Whether or not they’re going to be a career photojournalist, students can take visual critical thinking and visual narrative pieces to the other industries that they decide on,” Leopo said. “Students need to know how to communicate, and mentorship isn’t just about taking pretty photos. It’s also about talking about your images, and why they’re important, and talking about the people that you interview.”
“It allows us to learn more about the world and put it into context.”
Leopo has taught photojournalism at Chapman University since spring 2022, coaching students within the Collegiate News Service.
She started her career with the newsroom in 2015 after pitching photo essays as a community photographer, then became director of photography in 2019 under the mentorship of Norberto Santana, Jr. and was later named one of California’s Most Influential Latina Journalists in 2021.
Students have the opportunity to receive guidance from the newsroom over time — allowing them to hone their skills while exploring various reporting beats photographing city council meetings, community events, or quality of life photo essays.
“Starting in the class and then going into like an internship and then into like a more long-term internship has been super valuable because I’ve kind of been able to dip my toes in and then as I grow in my reporting and my connections,” said Fashion Castillo, 22, a senior studying public relations and visual journalism at Chapman University.
Castillo — who started as a student in Leopo’s photojournalism classes before joining as a Scott Marshutz intern in August 2024 — emphasized that mentorship over time has helped strengthen essential reporting skills like communication, sourcing and meeting deadlines.
[Read Fashion’s stories here.]
“It’s been super super cool having my name published in different stories and just getting to work on a lot of different things. There’s never a time where I’m limited to a beat. If I ever feel like there’s a story that needs to be told, everyone is super receptive of pitches.”
Learning By Publishing
“Having mentors like Julie is awesome,” said Kade McKenna, 23, a senior film production major at Chapman University that was published for the first time this year in a news environment, writing and photographing a feature story.
“Being published through the advanced photojournalism class, I feel like I’ve found a profession that I might want to pursue for the future. Regardless of what happens in the future, it’s been an incredible experience, and something that I will take with me regardless of where I go, career-wise.”
“Especially in today’s day and age, it’s really important to have hard, physical evidence of just the truth around us, and photojournalism is a great way of doing that.”
[Read: OC’s Youngest Minds Explore Local Wildlife]
It also allows students to experience a new field for the first time.
“Opportunities like this are important because not only are you networking with people so that you have more advantages in the future, you tend to learn something about yourself over the time that you work with them, and you can explore something new, like photojournalism,” said Yenny Medina, 17, a junior at Círculos Advanced Learning Academy High School.
Alongside her project based learning teacher Timothy Brodsky, Medina collaborated with Leopo and four high school students to capture images – some on their iPhone –and report on their experiences at the Fiestas Patrias celebration in Santa Ana.
[Read: Keeping Latino Traditions Alive at Fiestas Patrias]
“And I think that’s the importance of having students be able to experience that first hand, because it brings that fulfillment and joy of knowing what you want to do.”
“I think society at large tends to minimize the voice of youth and it’s dismissive of youth in general and it delays participation in things until society deems them mature enough or educated enough,” said Brodsky, a former teacher at Círculos Advanced Learning Academy High School.
“So I think that providing that opportunity really gives them that voice that gives them the agency to participate in shaping their own future.”
“For any student, working with a newsroom could be a way to test out whether or not you like the field and receive mentorship from other photographers here,” said Maximo Santana, 16, a student at Capistrano Valley High School.
“It’s helpful to try and get as many clips or opportunities as you can, because you really learn a lot from every experience, even if you don’t come away with a certain thing, even if you make mistakes, you learn from them.”
Mentoring Early Career Photographers.
“They really helped me learn how to do proper writing and interviewing as a journalist because I wasn’t used to that,” said José Hernandez, who worked alongside the newsroom during the COVID-19 pandemic — covering its local impacts and George Floyd protests during the same period.
Hernandez also became an award-winning videographer, placing first in the OC Press Club for his video coverage of the 2020 George Floyd protests, and placing second in the state for best video journalism through a piece on the high tides in San Onofre.
Watch here: May 30, 2020, Orange County Protests,” Voice of OC
Watch Here: Annual High Tide Spurs Concerns About Future Safety of San Onofre Nuclear Waste Stock Near South OC
“I was grabbing video, and Norberto and Julie showed me how to grab the viewer’s attention,” Hernandez said. “Thanks to Voice and the opportunity that Julie gave me, a lot of people see me as more legit.”
“Voice taught me to be relentless and not be afraid of whatever tasks that you have in hand,” said Omar Sanchez, who worked with the newsroom after his graduation from California State University, Fullerton. “Opportunities like this are very imperative.”
Sanchez also received awards for his photographs through the OC Press Club.
“Freelance opportunities, or just any sort of jobs that are opportunities of that caliber, it’s your shot, your chance to prove yourself,” he said. “Out of school, you kind of have a basic understanding of how the job works. But as far as kind of molding yourself into a reporter or the photographer or a storyteller, in a sense, you have to have those experiences.”
Preparing Students to Freelance With Confidence
“It gave me another great opportunity to get out into a new community, see their workflow and get into a whole new environment, which is also great in building a portfolio,” said Devon James, of his time freelancing for the Long Beach Post.
James said his work with the Post and in Leopo’s class provided him experience in shooting in uncontrolled environments — unique compared to more commercial photo opportunities.
“I learned a lot from him in having to be a professional in those intense environments and still trying to produce creative and artful work that captures the moment in an honest and authentic way, but then at the same time dealing with all of those human experiences and human emotions that come with the job,” he said.
James was connected with the opportunity while taking Leopo’s advanced photojournalism class, after Thomas Cordova, Visual Editor with the Long Beach Post, spoke to the class regarding photojournalism techniques.
“There is a generation gap in our industry right now between my generation and younger generations,” said Cordova, who is now the President of the Press Photographers Association of Greater LA.
“When it comes to mentorship, it’s important that we mentor young journalists to bring them up to speed, teach them of how we do things, and then actually, they could bring things to the board with us older journalists, because technology has taken off,” he said.
“So it’s, it’s not just a one way street. It’s kind of a two way street where we kind of learn from each other.”
“One of the things that have been rewarding about working with students and getting them published is learning from their perspectives on how they see Orange County and how they see city council meetings and anything that we cover at Voice of OC because it’s also taught me how to be a better communicator and how to better cover Orange County,” Leopo said.
“When I get more perspectives from the students, especially during a photo critique when I’m having conversations, I think as much as I’m teaching them, they’re teaching me a lot as well.”