Year in pictures: Charlie Leight
ASU Now photographer shares some of his favorite shots from 2016
How do you tell a story about a race car that started out as a bunch of 1-inch by 20-foot-long tubes? Packing up the old law school? And move-in day? Presidential candidates and their family members campaigning to be the leader of the free world?
These are a few of the events that defined 2016 for ASU. In the process of covering these and so many more stories, I shot a few hundred thousand pictures, working toward the ones that would show you the unique people and their accomplishments that made this a remarkable year.
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Hannah Kiermayr chats with her friend Laura Woodland as she relaxes in front of Old Main, as temperatures hover close to the mid-80s. Kiermayr’s usual hammock spot is close to the Virginia Piper Writers House, but today, this was the better place to hang out. Kiermayr is a junior studying both global studies and global health. Woodland is a junior in biochemistry.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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ASU alumnus Loren Aragon trims some muslin cotton fabric that will become the back cover of the prototype pattern for a wedding dress, in his home studio in Maricopa. Aragon, who is from the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, along with his wife, Valentina, a Navajo, formed ACONAV to showcase his "cultural designs embodied in timeless elegance."
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Izabella Williams, 10, helps pack boxes for her mother's co-worker, Kate Rosier, as professors and staff members pack their offices in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law building on the Tempe campus. Rosier directs the Indian Legal Program. Boxes were being moved downtown to their new digs in the Beus Center for Law and Society.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Freshman Danielle Ixco holds the door for the movers and eight members of her family at Taylor Place dorm in downtown Phoenix. Ixco, of Los Angeles, left home around 3:30 a.m. and moved in her new dorm room about eight hours later. She came to ASU to study kinesiology.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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ASU's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and Regents' Professor Gary Marchant works among his scientific legal research papers in his office in Armstrong Hall on the Tempe campus. A month after spring graduation, Marchant and the rest of the law school moved to their new offices in downtown Phoenix.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Jude Bayasi, 8, writes down the thoughts he had while standing on top of the University Drive bridge, at the Young Adult Writing Program. The two-week morning summer program included more than 60 students in grades 3-12. The activity was designed to get their creativity flowing.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Luis Lopez (left) and Shuo Zhang look closely at a schematic to figure out the wiring on the circuit board as they begin constructing their Engineering 102 design project, an illumaphone — a light-activating xylophone.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Engineers Ian Kubik (left) and Rob Woodward connect the OTES — the OSIRIS-REx thermal emission spectrometer — to the thermal vacuum test chamber platform as Bill O'Donnell (right) supports it. OSIRIS-REx launched in September as part of a NASA mission to travel to and study the asteroid Bennu.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Actor Amanda Pintore, as Caterpillar, allows 3-year-old Joel Gramp to touch her head during the dress rehearsal of the Kerfuffle production of "The Caterpillar's Footprint" at the i.d.e.a. Museum in Mesa. ASU theater for youth MFA student Ashley Laverty started the company, is its artistic director and created "Caterpillar" for her thesis project.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Peter Haist (from left), Mike Conard, Alex Edson (partially hidden) and Carter Olson start to install a gasket to the intake manifold on the Formula SAE race car. The engineering students spent the year building a car from scratch to compete against other teams in June.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Will Craig ponders the location and attachment of the oil catch can part of the oil filtration on the race car. The team had two days of reserved track time at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler to test the vehicle and make adjustments before leaving for the competition.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Wes Kudela takes a corner on the track at the Bondurant track in Chandler. He wears a mounted video camera to record how the Formula SAE car's front suspension, steering, gear shifter and displays perform.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Nick Johnston slips out of the grasp of Taylor Ayers during practice as the rugby club from ASU's Thunderbird School of Global Management celebrates its 40th year. The team of graduate students played a game against some alumni as part of the school's 70th-anniversary celebration.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Fans take pictures of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton as she addresses more than 10,000 fans packed in the field outside Sun Devil Fitness Center less than a week before the election. Clinton’s Early Vote Rally showed her campaign’s belief that Arizona was still in play for her.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Marchers offer pitchfork salutes to the fans on the University Drive footbridge during the ASU Homecoming Parade. The parade, one of ASU's biggest and longest-running traditions, attracts more than a thousand people to watch floats, the ASU Marching Band, community organizations and local celebrities all taking part in the celebration.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Graduate Deron Ash talks with his sons, Ben (left), 12, and twins Aiden and Andrew, 8, after the convocation of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society on May 9 in the Lyceum Theater. Ash earned a Master of Science and Technology Policy degree and is the program manager at the school's Center for Nanotechnology in Society.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
Before the fall semester began, I wanted to take pictures of a play from first casting call through final curtain call. We hooked up with third-year grad student Ricky Araiza as he was planning to direct "Feathers and Teeth" by Charise Castro Smith. The student production began at the end of August and finished with a Sunday matinee in the beginning of November. Araiza, the four actors and a score of artistic and technical wizards put on seven shows of the horror-comedy show in the Nelson Fine Arts Center before around 400 people.
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Theater senior Tess Galbiati plays the ukulele during the "other talents" part of her audition for the horror-comedy play "Feathers and Teeth" by Charise Castro Smith, at Nelson Fine Arts Center.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Director Ricky Araiza (center), his stage manager, Ben Vining, and assistant professor Kristin Hunt listen to actors' auditions during the casting call. Actors performed both contemporary and Shakespearian monologues as part of their auditions.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Director Ricky Araiza shows some reference pictures of what the ghoulish promotional poster should resemble at the start of the first read-through of the "Feathers and Teeth" play in the rehearsal studio.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Tess Galbiati, who plays Carol in the play, listens as the climax unfolds during first read-through. She is a senior in theater acting.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Director Ricky Araiza makes a point as he talks with production leads after a rehearsal.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Director Ricky Araiza listens to ideas during a production meeting after a rehearsal. The play went live three weeks later.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Set construction lead Anthony Lee uses a power drill to connect supports in one of the three 8-foot-tall walls for the staging in Nelson Fine Arts Center studio shop. Lee is a sophomore in sound and lighting design.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Director Ricky Araiza (left) checks in with the actors as they get their makeup done for the technical rehearsal two days before the first live performance.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Fargo Tbakhi (who plays Hugo) gets a touch-up from makeup artist Macaley Fields, as Evan Carson (Arthur) checks his phone before the technical rehearsal.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Actors Maria Harris (as Chris) and Evan Carson (playing her father, Arthur) are reflected in the back of media operator Maya Christian's monitor during the technical rehearsal.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Tess Galbiati, in character as Carol, cleans the floor at the beginning of the play, as members of the audience come in to take their seats.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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During the play, Chris (played by Maria Harris) and her neighbor friend Hugo (Fargo Tbakhi) look into the foul-smelling pot containing the dead animal and her carnivorous offspring that drive much of the play's action.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Arthur (played by Evan Carson) tries to console his fiancee, Carol (Tess Galiati), as he keeps the lid on tight on a pot holding the animal he thinks he just killed. The pot-turned-coffin once was Carol's mother's favorite pot.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now
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Concluding the final performance of Charise Castro Smith's "Feathers and Teeth," (from left) Evan Carson, Tess Galbiati, Maria Harris and Fargo Tbakhi take their bows in response to applause from the audience.
Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now