Jump!

A visual success story – The Fall 2021 Ohio Wesleyan Alumni Magazine.

When you raise more than $200 million dollars how do you visually tell the world about it?

How about jumping for joy!

While it borrows a bit from Philippe Halsman, the true inspiration was Madison Miller, OWU class of ’22. In her words:

“The jumping for joy idea came from the raw emotion of seeing the IRS determination in the mail about my organization, The Veteran Narrative, A non-profit organization that cultivates an empowering environment for our U.S. military veterans to share their testimonies from which educational resources are curated for the classroom.
I had worked for two years to create the nonprofit organization that met the IRS, state, and local standards to be a 501c3. I had hiked through mountains of paperwork, research, and case studies to ensure that I had everything in order to be a successful organization – a daunting task.
I remember looking online to check and saw the approval online first and the happy tears flowed. The Delaware Entrepreneurial Center at OWU had taken me under their wing as an intern, and I was given an office to further flourish. Seeing a letter under my door with my name; The Veteran Narrative, and a return address to the IRS made my heart sped up with anticipation. While opening it I saw the “Congratulations” and couldn’t help but express my emotions.
On my social media’s documenting my journey in the Miss America Organization, I am known for sharing vulnerable emotions. Joy can be expressed in multiple ways, but I did the most “Madison” thing possible and caught the emotion while jumping. It perfectly encapsulates the high of achieving something you’ve worked so hard for while also expressing the physical need to just jump with joy and excitement.
I am honored that OWU saw that and wanted to celebrate other students as well.
I like to say that joy and passion for what we care about can be contagious, and the OWU magazine proves that.”

Taking it from her que, OWU Alumni Magazine Editor Will Kopp reached out to me with this idea to capture a number of current OWU students celebrating the successful fund raising effort to raise $200,000,000 (they had actually raised more than $238 million!) by jumping for joy.
Working over several days (thankfully the November weather co-operated) we captured a dozen students jumping for joy inside or in front of several of the venues that had benefited from make-overs from the fund raising efforts. Combined with aerial views taken from my drone, expert narrative from Will and an awesome layout from William Walker, the final result conveys the excitement that the whole campus feels from the fund raising effort.

Kudos to the subjects who I nearly exhausted at times trying to get just the right angle, lighting, expression and jump height. 🙂