Miranda moved feet, bent her knees
to get Munfordville Civil War photos

All good photographers develop special techniques to get a good shot. For Miranda Pederson, it’s a matter of moving her feet and bending her knees.

“This enables me to create new angles, clean up the background from distracting elements, and keeps my brain active in thinking of new shots,” The Bowling Green Daily News photo editor emphasizes.

“I think capturing moments is key to my job, and it’s done in part by being a keen observer and by being prepared during an assignment,” the award-winning photographer continued.

The Texas native has received numerous honors from the Kentucky Press Association, The Kentucky News Photographers Association and the Associated Press. Although she hasn’t had many opportunities to shoot Civil War functions, she scored well in early September at Hart County Civil War Days in Munfordville. Close-ups of a young Union rifleman, an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and a weary Confederate skirmisher were particularly outstanding. Those images gave viewers an understanding of what the 1862 Battle for the Bridge must have been like.

Miranda has a passion for photography that began when she was in high school and confesses she “loves being a community journalist.” She joined the Daily News while a student at Western Kentucky University and soon advanced to photo editor for the newspaper, one of the few family-owned papers in the country. And, she thrives on her variety of assignments.

“Through my job, I meet and talk to people from the streets, then, head to an event where a United States senator is speaking,” she noted.

“When I was in high school, I had been working for a couple of years at an office in Texas where I grew up. When I left that job, the owner bought me my first camera. That Pentax K1000 inspired me to spend many hours shooting and developing my own film and printing in a darkroom in my bathroom. As I learned more about photography, I worked at a one-hour photo lab and then moved on to a custom black-and-white printing lab where we printed professional photos. I was deciding what school to attend when I saw an ad for Western Kentucky University’s Photojournalism program. I graduated from the program in 2001.”

Currently, Miranda shoots with a Nikon D3 and these lenses: a 70-200mm f2.8, a 17-35mm f2.8 and a 50mm f1.4.  She’s well equipped to add Civil War photos to her award-winning collection.