“It’s a picture of my mom and my dad looking at each other, and I just remember wanting to take in that moment and remember it forever,” Gmerek said. “It’s just times like those that you realize how beautiful photography can be and how honest it can be.”

Gmerek said she thinks photography is the best platform to capture moments that can be life altering.

During her junior year of high school, she was given the opportunity to visit Africa for the first time. While there, she said she connected with one of the little girls at the orphanage she taught at.

“I just remember always wanting to just photograph her eyes and her presence, not in a way to exploit or extort her, but to remember how she made me feel and how she impacted that experience, and I just remember how powerful those photographs became for me,” Gmerek said.

Gmerek said she uses her camera to express what she’s feeling day-by-day and to highlight the beauty in others.

“I love bringing people into my life that impact me in some way, and sometimes it’s so amazing to be able to show them how beautiful they really are, but from the inside,” Gmerek said. “I’m really big on not a lot of brushing up and not a lot of over-editing and all of that post-production nonsense. I really love just capturing a moment really beautiful and raw, but also colorful and vibrant.”

Gmerek often photographs her sister, Elise Gmerek.

“I love shooting with my sister because it’s so effortless,” Elise Gmerek said. “She has such a good eye for photography that I trust her and just follow her lead.”

Having taken no photography classes, every moment Gmerek has captured thus far has been driven by instinct

“It’s kind of funny how with photography it’s been just following that instinct and that passion to capture raw human emotion while trying to say something that can not only tell a story about what I’m going through, but can also counterpart what someone else might be going through as well,” Gmerek said.

Gmerek followed these instincts, which lead her to submit some of her work into multiple photography contests.

Her work was so well received that MSU’s Center for Language Teaching Advancement, or CeLTA, offered her a media internship.

Luca Giupponi, an education technology specialist at CeLTA, has become Kristen’s mentor.

He spoke highly of Gmerek’s skills and drive.

“I really like that I don’t have to push her to get better because she’s actually a lot more motivated and driven than a lot of people I know,” Giupponi said. “I love that I can always trust her to deliver really high-quality content.

Gmerek’s work at her internship drove her to submit her work in another contest.

Being one of roughly 14,000 submissions, Gmerek said she expected very little when she entered her photo “Unspoken Fear” in the magazine Photographer’s Forum’s best of college and high school photography contest.

Two weeks later she received the news that her work had been chosen to move on to the next round. Her and roughly 1/8 of the applications would also be moving on would be published in the magazine.

The magazine is distributed to college libraries and photography teachers all over the country.

Gmerek’s photograph was one of 100 to go on and win an honorable mention in the college student category.

“Knowing that I got here with inspiration from the outside world, but most importantly listening to myself and going with my gut, it’s really rewarding to feel that recognition,” Gmerek said.

Gmerek said the role photography will play in her life is still unknown.

She has enjoyed making photography her own and doing what she chooses with it, but fears that the idea of making it a job might swallow up the fun and passion in it.

“At this point, right now, all I know is that I’m just a college girl with a camera that has a lot to say and feels a lot and wants the world to see that and I want to show them through the lens of a camera,” Gmerek said. “For now, I’m OK with that.”