As a photographer, I already know a little bit about how I can tell stories through photographs. However, the documentary side of this project is new to me since while I have watched documentaries before I have never made one myself. Aside from looking at the medium, the story that I am trying to tell with my work is one that has become increasingly familiar to me throughout my high school years since I have watched my uncle start and run his cattle ranching business. While there is of course still a lot that I don’t know going into this project because I have never stayed and watched his day-to-day operations I am familiar with his lifestyle and the business that he runs. Similarly, the experiences that I am bringing with me to this project are all of the past experiences that I have had with him on his ranch. Altogether this has helped me inform my research process and prework/brainstorming phase of my project because I am already familiar with the aspects of life that I want to portray and some of the stories that I want to tell. My past experiences at the ranch have helped to inform what I want my documentary to focus on and the interview questions that I am going to ask him for my documentary. 

While there are some aspects of my essential question and my documentary that I do know there is also a lot that is still new/unknown to me. I think that it is fair to say that I am familiar with the story that I want to tell on a surface level however, my experience at the ranch has been limited so there is definitely a lot left for me to learn. Similarly, I am also new to documentary filmmaking which is the area in which I have the most to learn. With a degree of familiarity yet so much left to learn I thought that this project and the essential question would be perfect for me to further explore because not only can I teach my fellow classmates about a lifestyle so different from our own, but I too can still learn from the experience. I also thought the emerging overall theme/idea for my documentary about telling a story that is not often heard and dispelling myths about a topic was appropriate since our class did not get to go on the junior trip and that had a similar philosophy. Lastly, an unknown that I am still thinking about is how do I effectively address myths/preconceived notions in my documentary and dispel them? Even more challenging, how do I do this through photography?