Taylar Barrington’s photo arsenal has grown considerably since she wore out the digital camera her mother gave her in the seventh grade.

“It was a little six-megapixel Canon with a screen that was about an inch big,” she said . “I just snapped away until it finally stopped working.”

Now armed with a Canon 40D, the 21-year-old Atlanta native believes a camera is just as essential in reporting as a notepad.“I believe a story can be written in a thousand words, but a single photo can tell a thousand words,’’ she said. “Stories are great, but to associate that with an image is what helps. It takes your imagination places.”

A graduating senior at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University in Tallahassee, Barrington has already had professional experience with news, photo essays and fashion work in her portfolio. She has served as deputy photo editor and photo editor of The Famuan, the campus newspaper at Florida A&M, photo editor of Journey, the student magazine, and has worked for The Capital Outlook, Inspire, Ebony and Essence magazines. At Ebony and Essence, she was able to submit college-themed fashion photos that showcased the students and campus culture.

As a photography student, Barrington said her photography goes beyond pointing and clicking and that her pictures need raw emotion to be effective.

“I’m in a very vulnerable mode when I take my photos,” she said. “I kind of disconnect from the real world and I’m streamlined through my lens. Whatever it sees I see.”

Barrington said she felt this vulnerability keenly when she and three other journalism students were sent to Washington, D.C., to cover the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

“That was a time when looking through my camera actually got to me,” she said. “There would be times when I was so taken by what my camera was seeing that my finger actually forgot to push the button. It was just that breathtaking.”

– Sean A. Blackmon

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