Photography students flex their talents for Penn State women's gymnastics team

All thanks to a walk in a dog park, Penn State photography students were able to collaborate with the women's gymnastics team to create content for social media. Tess Dubler, internship coordinator and digital assets manager for the College of Arts and Architecture, sparked a casual conversation with a stranger at a dog park last summer. That stranger ended up being the assistant coach for women's gymnastics, Rachel Inniss, and after Dubler mentioned she has worked with 360-degree video technology, the two exchanged contact info. “In October [2022], she reached out to see if I could help them with a project,” Dubler said. “They wanted to do leotard reveals, and I told her we have a lot of creative people here that could probably come up with something.” With fourth-year student Chris Lee and graduate student Natasha Kravchenko working alongside Dubler, Tess said she was confident in what they could accomplish. “We have a spinning podium that we put a black tarp over to make it look clean, then we put two blue lights behind our frame and put normal lights in front to kind of show the person,” Lee said. “We got a smoke machine, and we just tested it out to see what we could do.” After some trial and error, in December it was time to have the gymnastics team visit the studio for the real thing. While Lee snapped the photos, Kravchenko operated the smoke machine, and the gymnasts struck their poses. The videos for each reveal are a collection of photos put together and exported as a gif, Dubler explained, and can be viewed on the Penn State Women's Gymnastics Instagram. The team was so happy with the results that they invited Dubler, Lee and Kravchenko to one of their meets to shoot more photos and videos. Having never photographed sports, it was an experience Dubler said she will never forget. “I think my favorite part of this whole project was it showed how just having a conversation with someone can become something greater,” Dubler said. “I have always been a shy person, but when you just say hi to a stranger, it can lead to a fun collaboration.”