A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to go on a Journalism Adventure off-Island. Tiffany Smalley, a Vineyarder and a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Aquinnah, was receiving her degree from Harvard; she’s the first Wampanoag to graduate from Harvard in 346 years. So the Gazette wanted a photographer there to capture her receiving the degree.

This assignment was without question one of the most stressful I’ve ever had in terms of pre-event coordination—it’s one thing to photograph a graduation and a whole other beast to document just one person (out of the thousands of people at Harvard)—but once I actually found Tiffany (who was fantastically chill about everyone making a huge fuss about her accomplishment), it was way easier. It just took a while to get to that point, since she was busy doing all kinds of pre-graduation things; there was a bit of phone tag for a while.

I think I did an okay job with this assignment, but I wasn’t as creative as I would have liked to be, and I wish I had more photos of Tiffany with her family. I am, however, extremely glad that I rented a 70-200mm f/2.8 to use instead of my f/4.

I also stuck around for the afternoon ceremonies, where Tiffany received a posthumous degree on behalf of Joel Iacoombes, who would have been the second Wampanoag to graduate from Harvard if he hadn’t died just before his commencement in 1655. Ellen Sirleaf Johnson, the President of Liberia, was the featured speaker for those proceedings, which was amazing (her speech was also great).

Spotted during the afternoon ceremony: Arne Duncan, Class Marshall. Harvard is the ultimate in the “Go big or go home” mentality.

Tiffany and Wampanoag tribe chair Cheryl Andrews-Maltais receiving the long-overdue degree.

Not Tiffany (she’s still on stage), but I like this photo anyway.

Podium picture. Couldn’t be helped.