Tara Gossum: Snapping Pictures Since… 2013
By Melissa Patrick 5-21-14
Admit it, half of the time you spend surfing the Charger Chant website you’re admiring the creative pictures (if you aren’t, why do you even bother to use the internet?). And, if you’ve ever had your picture taken for the newspaper, you know that the photographer always chooses the ugliest pictures of you to publish.
Those pictures are taken weekly by our photographer, Tara Gossum, aka Tara Too Turnt.
At first, Gossum began the year writing spoof articles, humor articles, and news articles (none of which can be found on the website). Although she likes writing, she said that it got tiring writing week after week.
She began taking pictures for the website when Mr. Billings, after seeing the lame pictures being taken off of the internet and posted on the articles, asked, “Who has a camera?” Tara’s fate was officially set when she replied with, “ME!”
From then on, Gossum has been snapping shots of you and your friends for the newspaper. She also plans to be the photographer throughout all of her high school year.
According to Tara, seeing all of the fake photos from google next to the articles was annoying.
“What is the sense of writing an original article, but then putting an unoriginal picture next to it?” She remarked.
If you’ve ever seen Gossum during 7th period, you’ve seen her gigantic camera, the Canon Rebel T3.
“I got it for my birthday two years ago, it’s obviously not the newest model but it takes good pictures,” she told me.
According to Tara, taking pictures is a really great way to express your creativeness and artistic values.
“I get a single theme for what the picture should be about and then I run with it. I mean, there’s a picture of someone doing their make-up in one of the pictures, you can’t tell me that isn’t genius,” Tara said.
Tara began taking pictures when she was in 5th grade.
“I just liked taking pictures of random things, I wasn’t trying to ‘capture the moment’ or anything,” she told me.
Although Tara was eager to become the photographer, it was likely to happen.
According to Mr. Billings, he didn’t really think twice about giving Gossum the task.
"I only chose her because she was the only one that said she had a camera. I do like her photography skills, though," he admitted.
If you ever run into to Tara in the halls on A - days, you can always give her an article idea, and a picture idea.
"I'm down for suggestions," she said after asking her opinion on idea for the paper.
Make sure to say hi whenever you see her, and if you want someone to take a picture of you and your friends, she's your gal.
