News
Final: Early to Rise
emmalee reed
Sep 23, 2020
Leiker has worked for the past year at Harold’s doughnuts as a customer service worker and barista. She goes into the shop at 4 a.m. five days a week to prep doughnuts for the early risers ready for their fixing of sweets. Of course, Leiker rises even earlier than they do.
Recently, Leiker’s close friend Christina Long started working at Harold’s. The pair work the same shift on Sundays and appear joined at the hip for most of the time.
When they are not decorating doughnuts, Leiker and Long make short TikTok videos for the shop’s social media.
“I do the TikToks because it was kind of my idea for us to get a TikTok and I was really pushing for it,” Leiker said. “And our owner knows I’m a journalism student.”
On Sept. 13, Leiker made a Lion King themed short. In her few weeks as self-appointed TikTok Manager, she has made six videos, often adapting trends to fit the shop’s brand: doughnuts.
After her shift, Leiker returns to her apartment, makes breakfast and gets ready for the rest of her day, which is filled with visits with friends and homework on Sundays. Other days bring full-time classwork and sports reporting. With her busy schedule, working an early morning job is easier.
Reflection
My story focused on Emily Leiker, who works as a customer service specialist, barista and TikToker at Harold’s Doughnuts. It was a little bit of a scramble to find this story because my original story idea fell through. Once I found Emily, though, I was able to get to work at 3 a.m. the next day and make pictures of her at work.
I actually only photographed Emily once, as I felt I had made enough pictures during her early morning shift to make a story. Originally, I was planning on taking pictures of her life outside of work, too, as she is a full-time student and sports reporter. I decided that adding photos of these activities would complicate the story and it would possibly lose its focus. Looking back at my process and story I made, I wish I would have photographed Emily in those situations as well just to see if they would have worked within the story.
I had trouble editing this story, partially because I didn’t get enough visual variety when I was making pictures. I really could have used some wider images and tighter portraits of Emily. One thing I think I did well, though, was get expression despite the everyone wearing masks. The photo of Emily and Christina laughing is one of my favorites out of the bunch and I think it adds a lot of personality and impact to an otherwise flat, straightforward story.
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