Second-year journalism student Patrick Fulgencio is the winner of the World Curling Federation (WCF) Sports Media Trainee Programme for the 2015 World Junior Curling Championships.
Patrick will join the WCF Media and Communications Team in Tallinn, Estonia from February 25 to March 9, working with professional photographer Richard Gray as a trainee photographer. Patrick’s work will be featured on the WCF event website and social media.
This was an international contest, to which many other student photographers and journalists applied. Only one was selected for the position of trainee photojournalist. Fulgencio was among the King’s students who responded to an email from the university announcing the opportunity. He submitted a portfolio of 10 photographs from a live sporting event. “I wanted to display passion and movement”, says Fulgencio.
Patrick diligently photographed the Dalhousie Tigers hockey team over the month of January. “I had never done sports photography prior to applying for this competition”, says Patrick. “It has only been just under a year since I took up photography as a serious hobby. When applying for the contest, I used a very old Nikon D5000 and my girlfriend’s Nikon D3300.” He didn’t see that as a hindrance though. “I’m humbled, because that lets me know that it was more so my skill that got me into that opportunity rather than the equipment that I had”.
Patrick has taken photojournalism at King’s as part of his studies, and the fast pace of live sporting events presents a new challenge. “One moment you have a frame right in front of you, and if your camera doesn’t listen… it is gone.” Patrick will now give himself a crash course in curling photography shooting matches at the Mayflower Curling Club in Halifax over the next couple of weeks. After that he’ll fly to Tallinn, Estonia to photograph the tournament for 13 days.
When asked whether this has piqued his interest toward becoming a sports photographer, Patrick says he’s keeping his options open. “But this has definitely opened a door for me” says Fulgencio. “I feel like I want to shoot every sport possible because that’s just another aspect of photography that I can approach and improve upon”.
