It’s a typically atypical day for Aaron Hall as he glides around the Cornell College campus.
He’s visiting his work-study boss to talk about a long-term photography project and dropping off a CD of pictures he was assigned. Later, he’ll meet up with his art professor for a small construction project before finishing up the day slinging stories and lattes at the local coffee place.
Tomorrow he’ll wake up and, hopefully, do almost nothing the same again.
There’s an easy air about the Granger native in nearly everything he does. He speaks readily on anything from photography to boat building with just about anyone. And they listen, intrigued by Hall’s latest interest.
“I’m interested in things I don’t know,” said Hall. “A large portion of the things I do are because I don’t know how to do them. I get bored quickly.”
Aaron Hall probably hasn’t had a boring day since his time as a fresh-faced Granger teen with only a passing interest in photography.
These days his interest in photography is far more than passing. Almost any time a camera’s documenting a Cornell event, Aaron Hall is standing, sitting, or crouching behind it. Sporting a beard these days, the no longer fresh faced Hall is making a name for himself around Cornell College as the unofficial college photographer and something of a renaissance man.
Not that he didn’t fit the bill of the everywhere man in high school. While at Woodward-Granger High School, Hall played golf, baseball, basketball, and ran track and was a member of the state championship jazzband. Not to mention his run as student body vice president.
“I’m not sure I’m exceptional at anything,” said Hall. “But I’m mediocre at lots of things.”
The truth is, Hall seems to succeed almost everywhere he puts forth the effort. And ever since his parents gave him a Nikon D50 for his 18th birthday, Hall has put a great deal of effort into capturing the world through a lens.
“There are a lot of things that happen, and to get them caught on film creatively was sort of my draw,” said Hall. “There are photos everywhere.”
It was Hall’s eye for finding these photos that landed him his first photography job shooting weddings for Tim Vorland Photography in West Des Moines only months after he received the Nikon.
“Aaron has an eye to find the important details at a wedding,” said Dirk Von Stein, another photographer at the Vorland studio, and a man Hall considers a mentor. “He hit the ground running and did a great job telling the story of the day from the first wedding he worked at.”
Hall was a little more self effacing about his first wedding.
“I didn’t know what to look for,” he said. “And one of the hardest parts was that I was doing it at age 18. Weddings are such an important event, and they don’t expect some 18-year-old to shoot it. I had to settle down and breathe and relax.”
Eventually he did, and went on to shoot weddings for the studio for two wedding seasons and three summers before moving on to another studio. He was, of course, looking to try something new.
“I was looking for a bit of a different style. Working with one group of people limits you as an apprentice.”
When not behind the camera, Hall fills his time with a kaleidoscope of activities that pour out of him almost as quickly as he thinks them up.
“I really enjoy doing small house construction. I picked up tennis in a year, and now I play with the tennis coach. I’m interested in building a boat. My most recent interest is weaving, because I don’t’ know how to do it. I’ve looked at culinary school,” he said. “I like to do things.”
Creative things, typically. Hall is a studio art major who has developed a strong working relationship with an art department recently ranked as one of the best in the nation by the Fiske Guide to Colleges. This past summer he lived in Mount Vernon and worked with Cornell art professor Tony Plaut on a number of collaborative projects.
“Aaron’s not afraid to engage new ideas and materials in innovative, non-traditional ways,” said Plaut. “He is a thoughtful and determined artist who ponders the big questions and responds creatively.”
As he enters his senior year at Cornell, the big question for Hall is what comes next.
“I’m not a plan maker, and everything’s turned out well,” he said. “I really like where I am right now. I think I’ve made a lot of good friendships with students and professors as well.”
Aaron Hall’s story is part of an ongoing series of profiles on students who are doing extraordinary things while at Cornell College. This article was previously published in the Dallas County News.