CoCo Walters grew up in a boring suburb of Washington, D.C. where an inch of snow delayed school and blocked traffic for hours, and Civil War reenactments were more common than school dances.

After cutting her teeth in hard hitting journalism as a member of the North Stafford High School Yearbook staff and photographing various shotgun weddings, she moved to New York to attend the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Though RIT is considered one of the nation’s top three photo schools, CoCo said she’s continually asked to explain why she went to a technical college full of engineers and molecular biologists to study photography.
Career doubters aside, CoCo worked her way through RIT, surviving what she called “that godforsaken tundra,” and has since worked at papers in Bakersfield, Calif., and Muskegon, Mich.

CoCo now finds herself working as a photo intern for the News-Press and said she’s growing more and more adept at documenting small-town picnics, fairs, turtle races, and the people that attend them.