Many students around school are working on interesting projects that many, including myself, believe are not getting the attention they deserve. Check out some of them here!

Noah Kravitz 

Noah Kravitz is a senior here at IHS. He hosts a tri-weekly show on his instagram story titled: “That’s The Tea Sis.” 

He opens the show with a warm welcome. Typically he says, “I hope you’re doing well, if not I welcome you with open arms.” He then shares the type of tea that he is drinking. Next, he says, “Today’s fact of the tea is,” sips the tea, takes a short pause and shares a motivational quote.

Students around school have taken notice of his positive style, finding his messages uplifting in tough times. He says that the gist of the show is to “tell motivational quotes for mental health, success, positivity, being yourself, standing up etc.”

Noah is passionate about mindfulness. Noah says that mindfulness is important because “It is so easy for our heads to just go go go and not give yourself a break and take the time to be proud of yourself even the smallest accomplishments.” Noah wants to go to college to become a therapist. 

Noah credits his family for always being there for him. “My mom and dad are like my best friends…I love them and my brother and his girlfriend with all my heart forever and always.”  He also credits a good friend of his, Chi, an acupuncturist at Internal Arts Acupuncture, for his ability to stay calm and comfortable in trying situations. 

Something that you may not know about Noah is that he was born in Bass Lake, California. His favorite movies growing up were Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. He hopes to one day travel the world and possibly return to California. 

You can check out Noah’s Instagram page @Baronthewolf23.

Tomo Meneghini 

Tomo Meneghini is also a senior at Ipswich High School. She has been working on a project which she titles “Tomoslilmodels” on Instagram. She photographs her friends from school and in the area. 

“I would say I am really into the way a photographer can capture an aesthetic to make it so impactful to the viewer.”

Tomo loves to push norms with fashion and clothes in her shoots. “Taking a picture of unordinary styles honestly feels like the only way people accept one another and see it as art instead of weird or not normal.” 

She loves the work of Sara Meital Benjamin, a moderate photographer, as well as Herb Ritts, a more old fashioned style photographer.

She says that “Ever since I was little I liked to hold my fingers up and pretend to take a frame of a photo.” Despite this, she has only begun taking pictures this school year. 

Regardless of her relatively inexperienced status, noting that she knows little about the camera controls, she has been able to capture some high quality shoots with intense moods. She credits an eye for photography and a keen ability to visualize an image for her skills. 

When starting a shoot, she first plans out an aesthetic and a fitting location for the style and tells her friends to dress accordingly. She usually shoots around evening or nighttime. During a shoot, she tries to take as many pictures as possible with many angles, lightings and body positions. Lastly, she heads home to upload her photos to her computer. In a good shoot, she will have around 800 photos. She then chooses the best photos and edits them before posting. 

Her favorite shoot so far has been with Ava Doran and Zoie Connelly, this October. She really enjoyed it because she was prepared with ideas and the models were very comfortable with the requested poses. “We took pictures at a flower garden, a massive field with a sunset, some vintage soda machine and we found these plane jets sitting around which were pretty neat.”

She tells others hoping to follow their dreams to “just to do what you love…be willing to learn more and don’t act like you know everything because there is always room for improvement.” 

Lastly, she recommends people to follow her on instagram @tomoslilmodels to check out her shoots!

Ben Darke

Ben Darke is a senior at IHS. He is known around school for his skill as a pianist in the school band. Something people may not know about Ben is that he writes and produces original songs in his free time. 

Beginning Piano at the age of 9, he says that he “did not care for it at first, but as I got better, I enjoyed it more.” Once he reached high school, he began to take his lessons very seriously, this is also when he started composing small songs. 

He typically begins by “fooling around on the piano.” After a bit of experimenting, he lands on a sound that he feels has potential. He then tries to “develop the idea into a song while still playing it on the piano.”

Next, he connects his keyboard to his computer. The keyboard sounds can be directly cut into his production software. Once the base is established, he searches through his sound library and adds instruments to the song. Lastly, he plays all parts of the song separately and mixes them together. 

He has been producing music for a while now, but he really took off during quarantine. He says, “This past March when we were forced into lockdown I decided I needed to find something to do.” At one point he says that “I figured out how to get my ideas onto my computer where I could use software to make them real songs.” 

He credits his favorite artist as The Beatles. He says so because “they didn’t stick to one genre or style of music.”

His favorite personal work is a piece called “Untitled Mix of Sounds.” He likes this because he had the most fun making it. He used “wacky samples of a chinese drum kit and many other instruments that don’t usually go together.” 

He recommends that people listen to his piece “Feeling Breezy” because many people would enjoy it. 

Ben wants to go on to Berklee College of Music and study film scoring. His dream is to score music for a blockbuster movie. He wants to work with Hans Zimmer, an extremely famous soundtrack composer. 

Lastly, Ben says, “Check my soundcloud page. I post most of my music on here.  https://soundcloud.com/user-849278484.” Check it out!