About
;
I am Bethany.
And I tell peoples stories for a living.
I’m a visual journalist – creating still photographs as well as short and longform videos. Currently, I’m a full-time multimedia journalist at The Salt Lake Tribune.
But my life behind the camera started at a young age. My father would often hand me a cheap camera and a bag of boxed film. When I spent my high school summers visiting my older brother in Northern Arizona, this hobby turned into something more. He wrote for the local newspaper and travel magazine in the Four Corners region of the Southwest. At that time, he could barely operate a camera, let alone frame an image. So, parked outside the visitor center at Zion National Park, he offered the camera to me in the passenger seat of his gold Stratus.
“You want to take the pictures,” he asked before heading out to his feature assignment.
“Sure,” I replied casually.
And I’ve been working behind a camera ever since. I graduated from Indiana State University two years following the Great Recession in 2008. After three grueling years photographing for the campus newspaper, I questioned a full-time career in photojournalism anyway. Instead, I found my first job in academia, as a marketing photographer at a university in Idaho.
After that much-needed break, the photojournalism itch returned. I finally landed my first news job at The World, a small newspaper along the Oregon Coast. I then transferred to Montana to work for The Billings Gazette. There, I joined three other journalists on an investigating team focused on the issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls.
When I first heard the word COVID-19, I was working at The Coloradoan in Fort Collins, Colorado. I had only moved to the Front Range just six months prior. Just as the community was beginning to live in a pandemic, the largest wildfire at the time in Colorado state history broke out on our doorstep. For several months, I covered the Cameron Peak wildfire and her sister blaze, the East Troublesome fire. I watched through my viewfinder as they devastated so much of Northern Colorado.
When my partner accepted a fellowship from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, I joined him in Cambridge. Surprisingly, the fellowship benefits extended to me as his significant other. For nine months, I focused on courses for my Master’s Degree in Journalism and two certificates in environmental policy and digital storytelling.
Even beyond the camera and notepad, I’m also passionate about the great outdoors. My happy place usually involves a raft, kayak or tent with my adorable pups.