By Aaron Montoya

It was Sunday in Denver. Sundays are usually pretty slow because the bosses aren’t there to ride people, the office is fairly empty and Monday’s paper is pretty well set.

My assignment for the day was meant to produce a feature photo for the city section. There was a Jewish celebration going on near where I was shacked up for the summer, and there was potential for some nice art.

When I arrived, I was told children would be stomping grapes, as young men and women did after harvest time. There also were to be some intimate moments during marriage-vow renewals.

I wandered around the scene, scoping out the photographic possibilities, noticing the light and shooting a few initial frames.

As I walked into a room full of older men and women gathered in a circle ready to perform a traditional Jewish dance, the music from the performers struck me. It was beautiful, clear and quite upbeat.

I knew I had as much time as I wanted at this assignment, so I decided on a whim to pull out my audio recorder and start collecting for a potential audio slide show.

Until then, I hadn’t done any multimedia gathering for the Post and it felt good to be experimenting on such a slow day — I didn’t feel much pressure. It was nice that my editor wasn’t expecting me to bring back audio, so when I did it was an added bonus.

Back in the newsroom, I immediately set to work, cranking out the production, which took a few hours.

My editor that day, Eric Lutzens, is a really laid-back, helpful guy. He’s got a bit of background in video production and multimedia presentations, and I’m glad he was there to help.

He encouraged me the whole way through and applauded my initiative, saying “any time you want to do something cool like that, just go for it. We’re always looking for that.”

For some reason all summer I had a hard time getting it through my thick skull that what my editors were looking for was initiative and hard work. I kept falling into the trap of waiting to be told what to do.

This day, though, I felt accomplished. I felt as though I had really done something right. I just wish I had done that more often.

The most important lesson I learned from my internship at The Denver Post is exemplified by this assignment. Don’t be scared — ever. Bust your butt constantly and ask questions. Your editors are there to guide you and tell you when you’re not doing something right, and you have to trust in that.

You can’t do wrong as long as you’re putting forth your best effort.

Related:
To see Aaron Montoya’s audio slide show, click on
http://photos.denverpost.com/photogalleries/audioslideshow/#num=1179308&id=album-59609. Then click on “More Galleries” at the bottom left of the viewing pane and look for the entry called “Tu B’Av Jewish Festival of Love.

Aaron Montoya was a Summer 2009 Chips Quinn Scholar at The Denver Post. He is a senior at Colorado State University, majoring in art with a focus on graphic design and photography, and was editor in chief of The Rocky Mountain Collegian for the 2008-2009 school year. He earlier was a staff photographer with the paper and then became visual editor. Before working as an intern at the Post, he had completed several free-lance assignments for the paper. In January 2008 he attended The New York Times Student Journalism Institute in Tucson, Ariz.