The photography teachers are planning their annual winter field trip to Little Tokyo to do portraiture and street photography. Visual Arts Teacher Alexandra Pachecho-Garcia said the event is significant not only because students get to photograph a new place, but also because of the bonding experience that the trip provides.

“I take the students during the day, and we’ll do street portraiture and street photography,” Pachecho-Garcia said. “Afterwards, we’ll go to an exhibition and eat ramen. So, it’ll be part photographing, part museum trip, part hangout [and] part community bonding.”

Earlier in the school year, the Visual Arts Department hosted a different photography trip to Frasier Park to take long-exposure photos and paint with light. Photography student Grace Choen ’28 said that the experience was both unique and enjoyable, qualities she hopes to see on the Little Tokyo trip as well.

“The Frasier Park trip was very fun, so I’m hoping to replicate the experience I had there on the Little Tokyo trip as well,” Choen said. “The trip offered an experience that I don’t think you can easily get anywhere else except for within this class.”

Last school year, the department took students on a trip to Puerto Rico over spring break. Hunter Madden ’26 said that the trip taught him not only about artistic techniques but also about Puerto Rican culture.

“It was both a photography [trip with] island landscape, and a cultural [trip about the] effect that America has had on [Puerto Rico],” Madden said. “It was a cultural trip as well as an artistic one.”