2008 Woodie Awards
Pulitzer Prize winner speaks to students
Brad Loper got his start with photography at AC
Jessi Shores
Issue date: 3/29/07 Section: Front Page
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Pulitzer Prize winner Brad Loper described his accidental start in photography to Amarillo College students when he paid a visit to his old stomping grounds Tuesday.
Loper was in town after being inducted into the Tascosa High School Hall of Fame.
While at AC, he showed slideshows of his award-winning photographs, gave students tips and advice on how to capture good quality photos and discussed his current photography job as well as his unintended entrance into the photography field.
Loper was a senior at Tascosa, and he was one class short of a full schedule.
"I wasn't the student that was going to take elective calculus or physics or anything like that," he said.
He decided he would give photography a try. Even though there was another prerequisite class for photography that Loper hadn't taken, he told his adviser he knew how to process film and slid by with a small fib.
Loper's mother, who had taken classes under Amarillo College Professor and Chairman of the Visual Arts Department Ken Pirtle, had to show Loper the ropes so he could "fake" his way through the first few weeks of photography class at Tascosa.
From then on, everything pretty much fell into place.
"I fell in love with photography," he said.
Loper attended AC in 1989 and was a photography student under Pirtle, who remembers Loper coming into class "a little cocky."
"Even though he was confident, he was enthusiastic and eager to learn," Pirtle said. "What I admired most is that he loved taking pictures."
After AC, Loper headed to the University of Texas at Arlington, where he was a photographer for the student newspaper, The Shorthorn. Loper has worked for various newspapers since he received a bachelor of arts degree in communication from UTA.
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