Daniel R. Lewis

I wouldn't be a journalist if I hadn't learned how to draw. I fell in love with comic books at the tender age of 13, but it wasn't until I was about to leave college that I decided to try my hand at drawing them. I spent the next few years teaching myself how to draw, how to paint with watercolors, how to turn a blank page into a story.

Learning to draw meant going out into the world and training my eyes and ears just as much as I was training my hands. I found spots to camp out around Brooklyn and Boston, watching people pass by and sketching for hours. To draw someone is to attempt to gain insight into their life and capture their being in a few simple lines. I learned how to glean stories from the way a stranger dressed, or whether they stood up straight or hunched, or by imagining what their tone of voice on the phone meant.

On my first day at journalism school, a professor said that to be a journalist is to be professionally curious. For me, journalism is the natural evolution from my comics work. I refuse to passively wonder what a person's story is anymore, and I will do whatever I can to go and find out. Currently I write for The Nabe, a hyperlocal blog covering Clinton Hill and Fort Greene in Brooklyn. Lately I've branched out into photography in order capturing those moments too fleeting for my pen to grab.

In the end, whether it's a comic or a photo essay, it all boils down to stories. The sanitation worker hanging from the back of a garbage truck as it trundles down Broadway. The banker rushing to the train trying not to spill coffee on her suit. The tourist trying to decide which tour bus to get on.

They all have value.

They all have stories.