The Big Picture: Capturing Campus Life

After 26 years of traversing UC Davis to shoot photos, Debbie Aldridge rarely needed to consult a campus map. She’s intimately familiar with every campus nook and cranny and has visited UC Davis’ far-flung labs, centers, field stations, farms and wildlife refuges from Tahoe to Bodega Bay. Her work presented the face of the campus in a wide array of UC Davis print and Web publications.

Aldridge said she loved the variety. “No day was ever the same.”

Aldridge started taking photos with her grandfather’s old Exakta camera when she was in high school. When she enrolled at California State University, Long Beach, she wavered between plans to become a concert cellist or a forest ranger. Her mother encouraged her to instead pursue her passion for photography, so Aldridge transferred to Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara.

After graduating in 1979, she did a two-week internship at UC Davis and soon after was hired to process film. Within a short time she was shooting the pictures, first at the campus Illustration Services, which later became MediaWorks, and for the last two years in University Relations.

When she looks back over her career, Aldridge says she remembers the people most. “I’ll miss being able to walk across campus and say hi to lots of people,” she said. “It’s just become such a part of me. It’s like growing up with a family.”

Aldridge said her job exposed her to the broadest possible view of the workings of UC Davis. “It’s opened doors to see a whole cross-section of campus that I don’t think most people have the opportunity to see. Because of that, I’ve gotten this incredible picture of the campus. It’s an amazing place.”

— Kathleen Holder