By Danielle Lutz

I packed up my car and started to drive to the rally.  I thought to myself that this is just like any other shoot I’ve done; this one is just for the news. I personally am not a journalist. I am a creative writer, I don’t write news articles. I have nothing against journalism it is just not personally for me.

Photo Gallery: Bernie Sanders event at U.B. Photos by Danielle Lutz.

I get into the rally and I start taking photos. One after another, snap, snap, snap. Taking photos of the crowd. Taking photos of the speakers. Just another shoot for me. Then as I was reviewing the photos during the break it hit me: I am documenting history with MY camera.  I took this with my camera:

I am documenting history through a camera lens. Most people see photojournalists as only doing half of the work. They think that photojournalists do not have the story but I find that to be the exact opposite. I feel that photojournalists capture the story that regular journalists cannot: the unspoken story.

This is a story that cannot be told with word no matter how hard we try. These are stories that can only be told through pictures. You know when you start to tell someone a funny story and then you realize that it was only funny if you were there? Pictures tell those stories. Photojournalism is extremely important because without it we are missing half of the stories that can be told in history. People say “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” I feel that it’s even more than that. I believe a picture is worth a thousand stories.

I also realized while I was at this rally that the story does not just start and end at Bernie Sanders. Every single person at that rally has a story. There were about 8,500 people that were at that rally. Another 3,000 people gathered outside could not get in. Every single one of those people has a story that got them to that moment in life and that is one of the most eye opening revelations to have for me personally. So you will notice that most of the pictures added to this article are not of the speakers but are of the other people there. Every person has a story and a photojournalist’s job helps capture the stories of the people that attend. A photojournalist’s job is unique in it’s own way. They tell the story in ways in words cannot. They tell the stories of the people whose stories usually are not told. This is what makes the job of a photojournalist tough but also very rewarding at the end of it all.