Celeste Drake will receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in photography with a minor in marketing during the spring of 2019 from the University of La Verne.
Celeste is trained in darkroom lab settings, documentary, landscape, and portrait photography. She has a passion for studio photography, where she is qualified in various types of lighting and set design techniques.
She enjoys journalistic photography; she has served three terms on the Campus Times and La Verne Magazine staff.
She is the Photography Editor for both the La Verne location of Her Campus, and the La Verne Magazine. She is also curator of the Ground Floor Gallery at the University of La Verne.
She plans on pursuing a master’s degree in photography after her undergraduate career.
Celeste has a passion for issues around the world. Key issues for her are feminism and homelessness. She is aware of the injustices women face in the United States, and other countries, and moves towards the resolution of these situations.
Currently, Celeste is working on a profile for La Verne Magazine that sheds light on the issue of homeless students at the University of La Verne. The La Verne Magazine will be published in the spring of 2018.
She is also collaborating with another student at the University of La Verne to establish the first collegiate club for the global organization HashtagLunchbags. This organization produces and delivers food to homeless people. She is arranged to be serving as Vice President for this club.
Celeste traveled to Haiti in the summer of 2018 where she worked with the impoverished communities, volunteered at orphanages, interacted with children at the “home for sick and dying” (orphaned children) and volunteered in Cité Soleil, the poorest and most dangerous city in the western hemisphere. To enter this densely populated city you must have special permission and take extreme cautions beforehand. These people live in streets filled with sewage, infected gashes in their skin, no food, limited amounts of water, etc. Cité Soleil is where Celeste realized she had an obligation to return to Haiti. Due to her experience in Haiti, she plans to travel back repeatedly and aid the communities, specifically using photography.