In hopes to take a snapshot of a beautiful sunset together, the Life in Focus photography club had their first meet up in Rancho San Antonio on Oct. 17. The social event was an opportunity for the club officers and members met to take pictures and get to know each other better, secretary and treasurer Shubhanshi Sharma, a junior, said. 

Design lead, sophomore Ananya Chandran said the goal of the club is to share the passion of taking photography and the officer team accomplishes this by meeting up outside of school to take pictures together and share photography tips in their biweekly meetings. Chandran said this social was a great opportunity for officers and members to get started with bonding as a club and learning about each other while simultaneously being able to immerse themselves in the world of photography. 

“It was definitely a really fun event [especially] since it was the first one we had as a new club so we were all really excited,” Sharma said. “We overall just talked a lot and really got to know each other and our members that came with us. Connecting with our members helped us include their opinions and things they would like to see in our club, and with these conversations, we had the ability to really implement it as well.”

Members such as junior Coline Gingembre agreed and thought the social turned out great as well. She said she was glad for the opportunity to practice the photography she picked up during quarantine.

“I got to meet a lot of new great people,” Gingembre said. “And they give me tips on how to be better in photography and different styles [of photography], such as taking pictures of abandoned cars and birds, which helped me a lot. [During the meetings], the teacher has been giving lessons on different photography types.”

The hope for the club is to continue more meetups in the future and get more opportunities to learn about photography with hands-on experience, Chandran said. 

“We’re hoping to have an event in San Francisco which is a lot bigger than anything done before,” Chandran said. “We’re thinking it will be fun to do some street photography and some landscape photography.” 

In addition, the Life in Focus officer team hopes to increase the number of members and the opportunities for them to share their photos, including the monthly photo contests. 

“I hope that there are more social events at different places so that we can get to see different landscapes,” Gingembre said. “And maybe more people will show up. We were only a few but it was still a fun time [at the sunset social.]