Craig Daily Press

Craig — This year, Courtney Teeter, Moffat County High School junior, began seeing life through a lens.

As a first-year journalism student at the high school, Teeter took photographs of school events for the high school’s student newspaper, The Post Script.

Newspaper clippings with photos she’s taken line the walls in Teeter’s journalism class at the high school.

She stands on tiptoe and stretches to point out one clipping, then another — images that earned second- and third-place awards at the Mesa Media Day in Grand Junction.

“I was proud of myself,” Teeter said. “I thought I may win one” photography award.

Instead, she won four: second place in feature photography, third place in sport photography and second and third places in overall news photography.

Teeter traveled to Grand Junction on Monday to attend the annual awards ceremony with five other students in the high school’s journalism and nonfiction writing class. Eight students are enrolled in the course and are on the newspaper’s staff.

There, students saw how their newspaper, The Post Script, stacked up against five other 4A and 5A Western Slope schools.

MCHS students brought home 19 awards and secured second place among the schools that participated.

Schools could enter up to three entries in each of the 12 categories, including layout and design and news writing, said Katy Gray, MCHS journalism teacher.

Post Script entries placed either first, second or third place in each category it entered, she added.

The students’ performance is consistent with the placings they’ve made in past competitions.

But, there’s room for improvement.

“I think we did as well as we did last year,” she said. “We have hopes of doing a great deal better” next year.

A new layout and design program the school received this year may help the class reach that end, she said.

Still, as Teeter looks at the clippings hanging on the wall above her, her mind isn’t on titles or awards.

She’s thinking about her future as a photographer.

Teeter plans on taking on photography as a career, she said, starting out as a newspaper photographer before eventually setting up her own studio.

“I think it helps a lot because you can compare your photos to everyone else’s” at the awards ceremony, she said.