Long before Ben Severance became an Emmy award-winning commercial director, his staff on the Herald grappled with multimedia as it captivated newsrooms in the late 2000s. 

Severance set his sights on WKU’s photojournalism department after seeing countless College Photographer of the Year (CPOY) Awards attributed to the university. He left home in New Hampshire and began his pursuit of a photojournalism degree as a freshman in 2008, and joined the Herald for photo and video his second semester.

“There’s nothing I wanted more than to be good at photojournalism,” Severance said. 

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During Severance’s first semester on the Hill, Canon released the first DSLR with the ability to capture full HD video. 

“That was just a game changer for me, for everyone,” Severance said. “The quality of video that came out of it was just out of this world.”

The same camera still sits on a shelf in Severance’s office. 

The introduction of the Canon Mark ll coincided with the advent of multimedia, according to Severance. 

“Everybody was trying to figure it out, so we just banded together and screwed up a lot and tried our best,” Severance said, “And it was a ton of fun.”

Part of working in a newsroom decorated with CPOY awards and Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) Pacemakers was the competition, Severance said. 

“As I moved up and moved within, it was still scary,” Severance said. “You were always competing with everybody else.”

He eventually became multimedia editor for the Herald, and had an ACP multimedia award and a Society for Professional Journalists breaking news photography award by the end of his junior year.

Severance said he earned the photography award for a photo he took while covering WKU’s homecoming parade for the Herald, finding himself in front of a float that burst into flames.

Severance said his editor called him and said, “There was a fire, get there as soon as possible.”

He responded, “I got it, I was right next to it.”

Severance attributes his early roots of success to the opportunities from the Herald.

“The Herald provided this gift of an on-ramp when there was seemingly no way to get on the highway,” Severance said. 

Severance reflected on his time on the Herald and the role it played in his development as a storyteller.

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“From the start, it was always intimidating,” Severance said. “And by the end of four years, it had become a second home.”

The Herald also offered Severance’s company, Timber + Frame, its first major project, “Bob Adams: Leaving a Legacy.”

“We did a ton of research,” Severance said. “We had to digitize a lot of old, amazing archival photos and articles. We traveled to West Virginia… we traveled to Tennessee to interview guys who worked on the staff.”

After the project for the Herald, Timber + Frame started working exclusively with nonprofits during the first years of its existence in the early 2010s after Severance graduated. One of the company’s first projects was a short documentary for the Alzheimer’s Association in Ohio. 

And as the company gained traction, Severance decided to expand outside the nonprofit world.

“We’ve had a foot in the nonprofit world where we make cause-based work to help a wide variety of causes we care about,” Severance said, “And then we have a foot in the corporate commercial world, where we make the money to fund the nonprofit work.”

Since then, he’s directed and edited commercials for GE, Amazon, New Balance and National Geographic. 

“Directing is just a lot of figuring out how to make the client’s idea translate into video, and then figuring out how to execute it,” Severance said. “That’s the majority of what I try to do; try to translate those ideas into story that makes people want to watch. And foundations of story all come from my time at Western.

Severance said he still keeps his hobby of shooting photos, even on his Pentax K1000 film camera, occasionally.

“I still shoot a good amount of photo personally just to feel fulfilled,” Severance said. “It still feels like home.”