Capturing the Walla Walla Valley

Hello, my name is Yahir Tzec. I’m a senior film and media studies major, and this fall I was a media production intern at Visit Walla Walla located in Walla Walla, WA.

Visit Walla Walla is a destination marketing organization that aims to attract tourists to the Walla Walla Valley by promoting local businesses and events. My role was to capture photos and videos of events such as Adam West Day and Wheelin’ Walla Walla for the organization to use for promotional materials such as social media posts, blog posts, and its annual Visit Walla Walla Valley Visitor Guide magazine.

After a shoot, I first go back to the office and back up the photos on my designated computer. I then filter through all the videos and images and choose the best ones to edit. Regarding editing software, I learned how to edit photos on Adobe Lightroom and videos on Final Cut Pro. Afterward, I upload the edited media to the visual database CrowdRiff to ensure long-term storage for future use. From here, I share my work with the event organizers, which is the most rewarding part of the process.

Sharing my work feels especially rewarding when there is little coverage of an event or business. This is why the event I’m most proud of documenting was the Festival de Cultura Viva festival in November. Before the event, I went through CrowdRiff and noticed we only had a few photos of the festival from previous years, so I was excited to attend and capture more. At the start of the event, Nelly Pilares, one of the organizers, approached me to let me know that their photographer couldn’t make it, so she was happy to see me there. It was at that moment I realized how important my work was in helping bring visibility to events such as the Festival de Cultura Viva, which was organized by Pilares and Victoria Lidzbarski. The festival turned out to be one of the biggest and most challenging events I had captured. It was a six-hour shoot (luckily I packed extra batteries and SD cards), starting with a mural inauguration in the morning and then a parade along Main Street to the Gesa Power House Theatre, where there was a variety of food, activities, and dance performances that ran through the afternoon. What made it extra challenging was that I was taking both pictures and videos, when I normally focus on one or the other. But I did it because I wanted viewers to see the amazing and hard work of everyone involved in the festival.

Overall, I gained a lot of experience capturing different businesses and events in the local community, and I hope that my photos and videos can help bring more people out to these businesses and events in the future.