Taya Etzell remembers her first major win at a photography competition like it was yesterday.
“I saw my name up on the screen and everything around me felt like it just kind of went silent and blank,” Etzell recalls. “It was so surreal, and I just (felt) a huge rush of emotions. I was crying up on stage.”
As Etzell walked through the cheering crowd and tearfully stepped onto the stage last June to accept her gold medal, she became the newest member of a small group of Las Vegas-based students to win first place in the photography division of the SkillsUSA Championships. This annual competition in Atlanta gives high school students around the country a chance to compete in more than 100 technical categories corresponding to real-world jobs.
Yet Etzell’s victory was also the culmination of years of tireless training and near-wins. Just two years earlier, in 2021, she didn’t know how to use a digital camera and professed only a vague interest in photography. “I remember looking at the list of electives I could take at my high school, and I said, ‘Oh, photography, that sounds interesting!’ I just kind of saw it as a fun class.”
That notion was dispelled when she met James Counts, Shadow Ridge High School’s multimedia communications teacher. “Once I had Mr. Counts,” Etzell says, “I really just saw the potential and how photography influences our world as an art form, and how expressive you can be with it.”
Counts, who had been teaching photography and visual arts for the Clark County School District since 2015, could spot talent when he saw it. And he saw it in Etzell. Before long, Counts says, Etzell had jumped into training for SkillsUSA with both feet. “Taya made it her thing,” he says. “She became one of those (students who says), ‘I’m doing this. This is my new career focus.’”
Within six months, Etzell had learned how to use a camera well enough to place second at the SkillsUSA state competition in the spring of 2022. Though her score wasn’t high enough to advance to the championships, Etzell says it provided the motivation she needed to train harder for the following year’s competition. “It made me see (that) I really do have some potential in this and that my hard work is paying off — how much work I put into this determines my result and where I can go with it.”
Reinvigorated, Etzell and Counts spent hours each week studying the judges’ notes for her, drilling editing techniques, and taking hundreds of photos around Las Vegas. Through it all, Counts ensured each misstep was a learning experience. “You’ve got that old saying, ‘Failure is not an option.’ I mean, yeah, it kind of is, because you’re going to fall on your face — that’s the learning process. School is a safe place to fail. And (you) get back up and keep doing and keep doing.”
By the time April 2023 rolled around, Etzell had won the state competition and was on track to compete in the championships in June. She laughs as she remembers her jitters before the competition. “I still was just as nervous as the first time!”
Now, a year after her win, Etzell’s a freshman at Oregon State University studying Digital Communication Arts and Photography. When Counts considers both her work at OSU’s school newspaper and her plans to pursue professional photography after she graduates, he sees the real-life fulfillment of his mission as an arts teacher in Etzell. “My goal is for them to have a skill that makes them long-term employable,” he says. “I want to keep them so that they can survive downturns, because goodness knows we’ve had a chunk of those.”
And for those students who just see photography as “a fun class,” like Etzell initially did, Counts says it can still lead to personal growth. “If for nothing else, it’s a confidence booster. It allows them to do and see real-world consequences of what they accomplish.”
