As the shutter releases in his camera and the flash illuminates the scene, Nathan Morgan captures another piece of UTM, creating a digital piece of history for generations of future Skyhawks to appreciate.
Morgan, the assistant director of University Relations, with camera in tote, can be spotted at any UTM event preserving each moment in time to tell UTM’s story.
“I’m passionate about the work that I do,” Morgan said. “I’m proud to be here at UT Martin.”
His passion for photography was inspired at an early age by his grandfather, who was a hobbyist photographer. His influence provided Morgan with a lifetime of desire to capture every moment in hopes it would mean something special to someone.
“I always saw my grandfather taking pictures. Sometimes he would let me use his camera and take some photos, and that’s really how I started developing a love for photography,” Morgan said. “Whenever we would go to a balloon festival in our town, he would let me use his camera, a Canon AE-1, which is a film camera, to take pictures of the balloons.”
“Whenever we would get the prints back, it was just like Christmas. I would open up the pictures and look at the photos I had made and it was just so exciting because it wasn’t like digital photography like it is now: instant.”
“We would get the pictures back and you wouldn’t know what you had taken, so that was always exciting to me.”
Although Morgan has since upgraded to his preferred camera, a Canon 5D Mark IV, he still uses his grandfather’s AE-1 and lenses to take pictures of his family on slide film. Morgan has even begun teaching his oldest son, Milo, how to shoot on film and hopes to get him his own camera one day.
With his experience as a photographer/photo editor for the yearbook and having pictures printed in his hometown newspaper in high school, Morgan began preparing for a career in photojournalism.
“I was getting compliments on my photography so I felt like I was doing something right,” Morgan said. “I didn’t see another way forward really. This is what I do and I couldn’t get away from it I guess, and I didn’t want to.”
Morgan, while studying photojournalism at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, earned the opportunity to intern for not only his hometown newspaper, The Dominion Post in Morgantown, West Virginia, but also The Commercial Appeal in Memphis.
Both internships provided insight as to what a life as a photojournalist looked like, giving Morgan an advantage in his classes at WKU.
“By the end of that internship and [when] I went back to school, I felt like I had a real knowledge,” Morgan said. “My classes became easier because I knew how to do this; I’d been doing it all summer long. I felt like I could go in and tackle the photo assignments from school really easily.”
After graduating from WKU in 2011, he began working as a photojournalist at Midland Daily News in Michigan, following in the footsteps of many of his former classmates.
“The Midland Daily News was fantastic! That was kind of like a dream paper for me to work at, because I had seen some other Western Kentucky graduates who were working there at the time I was in school,” Morgan said.
He recounted a memory when a WKU alum came back to visit from Midland Daily News and showed the students what they were producing in the visuals department. Through creative layouts and intriguing photo stories, the Midland Daily became Morgan’s aspiration.
During his first year at Midland Daily, Morgan won Michigan Press Photographer of the Year as well as a Nikon D810, which he left in the package for a couple of months due to disbelief and shock.
“I was kind of like ‘wow this is pretty cool’. I also didn’t believe it for a while,” Morgan said. “I felt like I had just started here, I didn’t deserve this. What did I do to deserve this? It was kind of a weird thing. I was happy that I won, but I was just in disbelief.”
Morgan submitted a portfolio for the competition including a photo series that he regards as his most rewarding experience as a photographer: the defining moment of his career. While covering a family who had adopted and were fostering 13 children at the time, Morgan felt like he actually became a part of the family. From covering their morning routine to even going grocery shopping with the family, Morgan participated in every event.
“It just helped me …” Morgan said. “They were very generous; they let me come in and live with them basically for a week as a newspaper photographer.”
During that time the family won an award for fostering. Morgan was then able to travel with them to Washington D.C. to capture the moment as they received the award.
“It was just a very rewarding opportunity and they allowed me to be a part of their lives,” Morgan said.
During his second year at Midland Daily, Morgan became the photo editor and along with the photographers he hired, he won several photo editing awards. Morgan also placed second in the nation in the National Press Photographers Association photo editing competition.
After Morgan and his family moved back to Bowling Green, he worked for the Bowling Green Daily before receiving a job as the photographer at UTM.
He says the shift from newspaper to university photography was a decision based off of his family and the desire for a more stable career from the ever-changing, lucrative newspaper business.
“My interest in doing photography or photojournalism in general was just because I wanted to help document history, so that’s where I feel like I can do that same thing with the university,” Morgan said. “It’s the same part of keeping historical photo record of the institution, so I was really excited about getting to do that here.”
As Assistant Director, Morgan is the editor for the alumni magazine Campus Scene, responsible for overseeing the photographer and staff writer and acts as the liaison between UTM and the advertising company Salvage.
Even though Morgan knew little about UTM when applying, he immediately felt at home when he arrived.
“When I first came here, I felt needed. I just instantly became a Skyhawk,” Morgan said. “The university made me feel like part of the family so I guess I’ve become a part of the family.”
“In the time that I’ve been here, it’s really grown on me and I really enjoy being a part of UT Martin.”
Getting to participate in just about every event on campus has given him the chance to stay involved, but Homecoming Week has always been his favorite.
“I prefer candid moments and those events are very rich with candid photography,” Morgan said.
Even though being a university photographer involves crazy hours, late nights and working weekends, it has been an adventure that Morgan doesn’t regret. He believes he works just as hard, if not more, as a university photographer than he did as a photojournalist but has still been afforded the opportunity to spend more time with his family.
Morgan recognizes the importance of his job as the university photographer and continues to learn from photographers before him to perfect his work.
“I have a lot of respect for the previous photographer before me and even the photographers before him,” Morgan said. “There are a lot of times that I have to reference back to their photos. There are some real gems in some of the work they did.”
As a photojournalist, Morgan hopes to leave a lasting mark on the world through his work, whether his name is remembered or not.
“I want my work to be lasting; I don’t necessarily have to have my name tied to it. I just want it to live on,” Morgan said. “I just want generations down the road to be able to look back at my photography and learn something from it.”
“That’s my hope. That’s my inspiration.”
(Nathan Morgan and his son Milo often continue tradition by playing with cameras together as Nathan’s grandfather did with him. | Photo Credit / Dr. Jeremy Entner)
