About Miriam

Miriam is a photojournalism student at the University of Texas in Austin. She was born in Houston, but has lived in several different places due to her father being in the Army. She has lived in Houston, Virginia, Killeen and now resides in Austin. Before coming to Austin, Miriam was a student at Ellison High School in Killeen, Texas. She was apart of Ellison’s Leadership Academy program, which lead her to working on a project involving local Autistic children during her senior year.

Miriam has strong interests in art and music, but is passionate about photography and writing. Her interest in photography began while she was a sophomore in high school, but became stronger when she got her first DSLR camera the following year. Because of this passion for photography, Miriam looked for creative outlets among school and friends. Several of her friends were also photographers, but her high school did not have any kind of photography class or program. The summer before her senior year, she began planning a possible club for her school. That fall, the Ellison Film & Photography Club had been created and participated in different kinds of projects. After graduation, Miriam continued on with her interest in photography. After seeing a post on Facebook from the reggae/hip-hop star, Matisyahu, Miriam sent in a brief portfolio of her work to the Matisyahu team and was selected to photograph the musician at his 2011 summer show in Houston. The opportunity completely surprised Miriam since her photography had only been a self-taught hobby before that moment. The following fall, Miriam began her first semester at UT, where she took her first photography class with professor, Dennis Darling. The class aided Miriam’s raw photography skills with new technical aspects of the art that not only improved her photography work, but also allowed Miriam to realize her possible future as a photojournalist, not just a photographer.

Aside from photography, Miriam has dabbled in film/audio work. The club she created in high school did incorporate some filming. In addition, Miriam’s older brother graduated from UT with Film & Rhetoric Writing degrees, so she often assisted with his personal and school related projects. During the fall of 2011, Miriam helped her brother by filming a portion of a small town event in Mart, Texas for the Mart Community Project.