Associated Students Photographer Wins UPAA Student Photographer of the Year

Student Photographer of the Year Dash Ferrero blends creativity and technical finesse to provide award-winning photographs that seize the group and campus at Chico State.

When Dash Ferrero rose to the sound of a 4 a.m. alarm, all they noticed had been the celebs within the sky. 

“I walked out, looked up, and it was pitch black—just the silhouette of the trees against a sky full of stars,” Ferrero mentioned. 

Ferrero was surrounded by thousand-year-old big sequoias nestled deep in Whitaker Forest close to Kings Canyon National Park. 

 As a photographer on a tree-climbing tour with Adventure Outings (AO), that they had initially deliberate to spend the evening sleeping alongside giants, suspended in a hammock greater than 200 ft above the bottom. When the specter of lightning compelled the group again to stable floor for the evening, an alternate plan emerged. 

“As a consolation prize, if you get up at 4 in the morning, we can go climb the tree and watch the sunrise,” Ferrero recalled the journey chief and former AO program director Nate Farrington saying to them. 

Ferrero jumped on the alternative, utilizing a long-exposure and a flashlight to light up an enormous sequoia as Kat Lohbeck (Anthropology, ’26; Art, ’24) was suspended under a sea of stars. 

The awe-inspiring picture received first place within the University Photographers’ Association of America’s annual photograph competitors this yr. 

This wasn’t the one impactful picture from the journey. Ferrero’s tree-climbing digital camera roll swept UPAA’s October pupil competitors, incomes first- by fourth-place. 

Over the course of the 2025–26 tutorial yr, Ferrero continued to position within the month-to-month competitions, in an effort to ship on a promise they made to University Photographer Jason Halley (Communication Design, ’05) at first of the yr. 

Ferrero made a deal. If they may ship photographs worthy of incomes Student Photographer of the Year, Halley would ensure that they had funding to get them to the symposium. 

The problem carried additional weight for Ferrero, who was returning to Chico State after taking the earlier semester away from college. 

“I was going to try to get a haircut before the semester started, try to get two A’s and two B’s, and I was going to try to place twice in the monthly competition,” Ferrero mentioned referencing their objectives for his or her first semester again. 

They would do all that and extra. With a contemporary haircut, they went on to earn straight A’s that semester and a spot on the dean’s List. 

When Ferrero attended UPAA’s annual awards banquet this summer season, they had been named Student Photographer of the Year, a nationwide honor recognizing the energy and consistency of their images all through. 

They took residence three awards that evening, incomes first place within the annual photograph competitors and tied seconds with one other picture from the Adventure Outings tree-climbing journey and one from the Associated Students’ Multicultural Showcase. 

The different second-place picture was a results of Ferrero’s intuition to mount a digital camera within the rafters excessive above and program it to take a photograph each two seconds. 

“It took 4,000 photos over the course of two hours, and I looked through all of them,” mentioned Ferrero. 

From these 1000’s of frames, they chose and edited a single overhead picture of the efficiency. 

As a pc science main, Ferrero is at all times in search of methods to harness their technical skillset into their ardour for images. When the photo-management software program utilized by the AS lacked a instrument that might make captioning and organizing photographs quicker, Ferrero built one. 

“I spent two months of my own time writing a script for Adobe Bridge, which is the photo tagging software we use to implement that feature,” defined Ferrero. 

The code they constructed and later shared by GitHub helps photographers transfer by massive batches of photographs extra effectively, liberating up extra time to deal with the images itself. 

Ferrero’s rising portfolio and technical contributions have additionally helped them make a reputation for themself inside the broader college images group. 

“It was wild going to the [UPAA] symposium. There were a lot of people that knew of me and were looking forward to meeting me,” mentioned Ferrero. “I had people tell me, ‘You were on my list of people to talk to.’” 

For Ferrero, it’s one other reminder of simply how far that they had come since making use of for the scholar photographer place with Associated Students in 2021. 

Nearly 5 years after beginning with little expertise, Ferrero has photographed every thing from live shows to pupil occasions and outings, their digital camera rolls turning into a group of the on a regular basis moments that make our campus distinctive. 

“The last year I’ve been pushing myself really, really hard to create a bunch of cool photos,” they mentioned. 

Chico State has given Ferrero loads of alternatives to just do that. Their assignments have introduced them new adventures, from browsing and snowboarding with AO to climbing a whole lot of ft into the cover of an enormous sequoia. 

“There’s always good photos to be found,” they mentioned. “And then the other half is just creativity, trying to find interesting ways to approach whatever the assignment is.” 

Kat Clark (Journalism ’18) first found her ardour for storytelling whereas incomes her undergraduate diploma at Chico State.

As a Content Producer with the University Communications staff, Kat highlights the distinctive contributions of scholars, school, and employees, whereas showcasing the dynamic and vibrant campus group.