“Pegasus” learns how to capture a completely virtual semester at WC

By Megan Loock

Elm Staff Writer

The shift to virtual operations was a hard change for most clubs. The transfer to Zoom has proven an isolating state of endless video-calls. Nevertheless, the photographers of Washington College’s student yearbook, “Pegasus,” are still able to band together to tough out a semester of Zoom call surfing, cementing a historical year in the WC archives. 

According to the Washington College website, “Since 1927, [“Pegasus,”has] been recording and archiving notable events, including sports games, theatre performances, Birthday Ball, literary house readings, and more.”

Normally, “Pegasus” would have a photo spread of snapshots from an event with a write up providing a synopsis of the event. 

Now that WC has shifted entirely online, this format will remain the same, except the photographs will all be screenshots of Zoom conferences. 

“Zoom fatigue is very real and certainly something all of us are struggling with. That being said, it’s refreshing, at least for me, to be able to attend an event via Zoom without academic pressure attached to the experience,” senior and Editor-in-Chief “Pegasus” Liane Beckley said.

For the past ten years, WC was in charge of the “Pegasus’s” website, so the College was also in charge of how the photographs were formatted. 

However, last year, that creative authority was granted to “Pegasus” staff as they shifted to utilizing Adobe InDesign for publication.

According to the Adobe website, “Adobe InDesign is the industry-leading layout and page design software for print and digital media. InDesign has everything you need to create and publish books, digital magazines, eBooks, posters, interactive PDFs, and more.”

Former Editor in Chief Nick Blake ’20 decided to use Adobe InDesign to break away from The Pegasus’ reliance on the school. 

Washington College underwent a complete remodel of their official school website over the summer, causing the past ten years of Pegasuseditions to vanish from the website. 

According to Beckley in addition to this year’s issue of the yearbook, they will also be publishing the ten issues that got deleted from the College’s website. 

“They didn’t get entirely erased, and I am not sure about the nitty-gritty details, I guess they had to choose which pages to keep active,” she said. “Since us students were available to archive that, they let us take charge.”

Despite the artistic constraints of the online format “Pegasus” will receive, Beckley is very optimistic with the vision for this academic year’s edition.  

“I think we all miss being on campus very much, and a large appeal of campus life is being able to attend events like those we cover for “Pegasus,” and so we’re happy to get as much of the campus experience that’s possible in a remote setting,” Beckley said. 

Despite this optimistic attitude, others feel the opposite. 

 “As a result of the Zoom fatigue we are all experiencing, event turnout is thin so I’m not just a person behind the camera anymore,” junior Pegasus Intern and Copy editor Isabelle Anderson said.

This year’s edition will be implementing a more Gallery-view presentation that will resemble a blog post. The Pegasus will include screenshots of the Zoom conferences, along with the events promotional material: posters, social media posts, etc.

When they click on the events, users will be able to see the descriptions of the events.

“Having recordings of many of the virtual events happening through WC this semester is something unique [compared] to what “Pegasus” has been able to put forward in the past. So, with this year’s issue, people will be able to not only look at images and descriptions of events, but actually experience them over again,” Beckley said.

“This will be the most accessible yearbook yet,” she said.

To access last year’s edition of “Pegasus,” Volume.94 visit their page on the WC website. 

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