During our November Bear Essential Young Reporter meeting with Linda Solomon, I learned that there is more to taking a photo than just pointing a camera and snapping the picture. Solomon is a photojournalist in Detroit and she specializes in photos of people. She has taken pictures of Beyoncé, Halle Berry, Jennifer Hudson, and Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden. Her photos have neutral backgrounds, natural lighting, and have the person as the subject. When talking about her photo of Vice President Harris, she said, “I didn’t really ask her to pose for me, I just wanted to capture her in the most candid way.”

When Solomon was a child, she loved to take pictures and took her camera everywhere. In her 20s, she took a newspaper-worthy photo and was able to get it into the Detroit newspaper. She then started to work professionally for a community paper. “It was just that one photograph that changed everything for me,” she says.

Solomon is also the founder of Pictures of Hope, where she and other volunteers teach photography to children. At the end of the lessons, the children are surprised with their own cameras and a card showcasing their pictures and hopes. For more information about the program,

visit www.picturesofhope.org.