The Visual Student

The School of Visual Communication at Ohio University held the 14th annual Dawn2Dusk photo project on Friday, November 6, 2009.  Students spent the day, from 6:09am to 6:15pm, photographing Fall in Athens, Ohio.  See the project online here.  A print version of Dawn2Dusk was inserted as a special section to The Athens NEWS on Thursday, November 12, 2009.

Night falls on Taylor Ridge Christian Church outside of Buchtel, Ohio. (Victor J. Blue)
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The 64th Annual College Photographer of the Year winners are posted on the CPOY site. The College Photographer of the Year is Ryan C. Henriksen.  The runner up is Maisie Crow.  To view the full list, go here. To see the winning images, go here.

Right to left: Zanyle, Jeremiah and Chandra’s boyfriend race each other up the hill to their house after getting told to come back home from the park downtown on Monday, May 18, 2009. Part of a story called Inseparable Ties. (Ryan C. Henriksen)

Britney McIntosh was a participant in the Mountain Workshops, held in Murray Kentucky by the Western Kentucky University photojournalism program. McIntosh is a junior at the University of Kentucky, majoring in Journalism and Middle Eastern Studies. She began shooting pictures for the Kentucky Kernel, UK’s student paper, her senior year in high school, and hasn’t had a social life since. She loves coffee, god-light, and 5d Mark II HD video, and aspires to make a difference with her pictures.

I wasn’t excited. I had loaded my car to the brim with everything I could think of, like usual; sleeping bag, two cases of ale 8, clothes for any circumstance imaginable, an unending supply of food you can eat while driving. I double- checked my gear, triple- checked my wallet, and still something was missing. I just wasn’t giddy with excitement like I had been the previous two years when I waved goodbye to my responsibilities and headed down the Bluegrass Parkway to the Mountain Workshops.

Convicted felons in the work program at Calloway County Jail in Murray, Ky. listen as Donna Herndon gives them instructions for assisting a woman from Donna’s church move out of her apartment. Donna uses the prisoner work group a lot because she believes it helps them, and they are great workers. (Britney McIntosh)
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Bethany Mollenkof was a multimedia participant at the 2009 Mountain Workshops, held in Murray, Ky., by the Western Kentucky University photojournalism program. Mollenkof is in her second year at Western Kentucky after transferring from Covenant College in Georgia. Last summer Mollenkof was a multimedia intern at The Palm Beach Post.

My story was about Missy Jenkins-Smith, survivor of the 1997 high school shooting in Paducah Ky. Missy was hit with a bullet in the chest and was placed in a wheel chair for the rest of her life. After the violence, Missy chose to forgive the shooter. She also chose to take her life back. In the next decade, she graduated from college, became a counselor for troubled youth, got married, began having children and even confronted her aggressor face to face about his actions that tragic day. When I got my story assignment I knew it was going to be interesting and challenging to portray her situation as most of the events happened in the past, but I was ready for the challenge.

Missy Jenkins-Smith, survivor of the 1997 high school shooting in Paducah Ky. Click here to view Mollenkof’s multimedia story on Jenkins-Smith, called Freedom to Forgive.
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The 64th College Photographer of the Year judging is underway at The University of Missouri. Go here for screencasts of categories that are complete.

The 2009 judges are Nicole Fruge, Seth Gitner, Barry Locher, Lara Solt and Zach Wise.  To view their bios go here.

To view the CPOY blog, go here.

John Schreiber, front, and William Lounsbury test the projector and screencast before the start of CPOY judging. Schrieber and Katie Wood, not pictured, are Co-Coordinators and operating the images shown to the judges and the recording of “ins” and “outs,” respectfully. (Kevin A. Roberts)

Krishnan Vasudevan is a multimedia intern at The New York Times. Vasudevan, a third semester graduate journalism student at New York University, will graduate in May 2010.

VS: How was your internship structured?

Vasudevan: “Before I came to the NYTimes Multimedia unit I had interned with the NYTimes video unit for 6 months. Our team has flash, audio, design, and video specialists. Initially a lot of my work was getting acquainted with the procedures, updating the multimedia wikipage, and assisting the team on pre and post production of shoots. However, within a couple weeks, the Iran election conflict and the passing of Michael Jackson happened, and I was quickly thrown in to the mix. On any given day, I was shooting video, editing audio, writing for the City Room blog, and/or assisting people on other teams with their multimedia teams. So in short, there was no day-to-day structure, but there was always a backlog things to do for the team, as well as a number of opportunities to be in the field.”

1969 - The New York Times (Produced by Krishnan Vasudevan, Julie Bloom, Jeremy Egner, Mary Hardiman, Jon Huang, Tom Jackson, Andrew Kuneman, Mekado Murphy/The New York Times)
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David Y. Lee is the Creative Director for The Waiting List, an online multimedia storytelling project introducing the stories of people waiting for an organ transplant. Lee covered the 2004 Presidential campaign for Time and Newsweek.  In October 2007, the U.S. Department of State contracted Lee as Secretary Condoleezza Rice’s official photographer to document her international legacy during her final fifteen months in office.

http://www.thewaitinglist.org/

VS: Where did the idea for The Waiting List come from? 

Lee: The Waiting List was inspired by the March 22, 2008 Washington Post article by staff writer Rob Stein, ‘A Third of Patients on the Transplant List are not Eligible.’ The reason: because of a shortage of organs, a third of patients on the transplant list are not eligible for an organ if one becomes available because the patient is too sick, not sick enough, or for some other circumstance.

Upon doing some research online, I primarily only found stories about organ donors and recipients. Where were the stories about the over 100,000 people who are currently waiting for an organ transplant, where were the stories about the people who needed our help right now.

When I discovered that only 35% of licensed drivers and ID card holders in America are registered as organ donors, I recognized a tremendous opportunity to use storytelling as a conduit for social change. I realized that if I could make people care by sharing the real stories of real people really waiting for the gift of life, I could inspire individuals to become registered as an organ donor. I could help end this wait, and ultimately save lives.

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Melissa Farlow is a documentary freelance photographer who regularly contributes to National Geographic magazine. Before magazine freelance, Farlow worked as a staff photographer for The Pittsburgh Press, and The Courier-Journal and Louisville Times. While in Louisville, she was an integral part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for photographic coverage of school desegregation. Farlow received journalism degrees from Indiana University and the University of Missouri where she also taught photojournalism. She lives in Sewickley, Pa. and Portland, Ore. with her husband, photographer Randy Olson.  Their website can be viewed here.

Every photographer who enters a contest hopes his or her images are recognized. I can relate.  Over the years, my photographs have won and lost in contests.

I have helped edit my husband, Randy Olson’s portfolio when he won magazine Photographer of the Year and another year for newspapers.  On the other side of the fence, last year I judged both Pictures of the Year International as well as the College Photographer of the Year contests. With this year’s judging coming up soon, I wanted to give a bit of insight into the process.

A wildflower blooms in the Black Rock Desert as California costume designer Jeanne Lauren braves a sandstorm at Burning Man, the annual weeklong festival in northwestern Nevada’s National Conservation area. Beyond, Uncle Sam wheels along the vast playa (salt flat or dry lake bed), one of Earth’s flattest spots. Over 25,000 people create an instant city that celebrates art in a unique counter-culture experience. (Melissa Farlow, National Geographic)
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NPPA members can go here to vote for the NPPA Board of Directors.

http://nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2009/11/election.html

Emily Sunblade was the 2009 intern at Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna, Alaska. Sunblade will graduate in December from Southern Illinois University with degrees in photojournalism and history.  Sunblade previously interned at Fort Union Trading Post National Historic Site in Williston, North Dakota.

VS: How was your internship structured?

Sunblade: “I worked a 40 hour week, 5 days at 8 hours a day. The tasks of an intern at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge included staffing the visitor center, which included greeting and teaching refuge visitors, and being involved with visitor programming and events. More importantly, my supervisor understood my interest in photography and assigned me some special side projects - specifically the creation of a library of topical photos of different places within the refuge. I also photographed events held by the refuge and wrote an article for a local Alaskan newspaper, the Peninsula Clarion.”

Ice flows near Ailak Glacier, Kenai Fjords National Park. (Emily Sunblade)
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Justin Edmonds was a participant in the 2009 Eddie Adams Workshop. Edmonds graduated from the University of Denver in the spring of 2008 with a degree in marketing. Edmonds interned at The Gazette in Colorado Springs and The Northwest Herald in suburban Chicago. Edmonds is currently a freelance photographer in Denver. 

VS: What were your expectations coming in to the workshop?

Edmonds: “I really tried not to have any expectations coming in. I’ve been to a few workshops before where I put too much pressure on myself to perform and have come to realize how detrimental that can be to the experience. Sure, everyone wants to get noticed, including myself, but I knew going into Barnstorm that every photographer there was talented. My focus was to network with other professionals and learn from their work.”

Kelsang Lhadron relaxes in a moment of silence during a prayer session in the temple in Glen Spey, N.Y., Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009. As a resident of the center, Lhadron spends several hours a day in meditation and prayer. (Justin Edmonds)

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Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez was awarded the $10,000 Nikon Achievement Scholarship for Best Student Work at the Eddie Adams Workshop earlier this month. Gonzalez, born to Mexican parents, is a native of Los Angeles. Gonzalez is currently finishing his photojournalism Associates Degree from Los Angeles Pierce College and hopes to enroll at San Francisco State University and study journalism.  Gonzalez freelances for Agencia EFE.

I had heard about Barnstorm being a life changing experience. It would kick your butt and leave your head spinning. A kind of boot camp where the drill sergeants are the big heavy photographers and they would push you away from your comfort zone and lead you to find a much more deeper meaning to photography. So technically, I was expecting an in-your-face, demanding and tough-loving workshop, where at the end the lessons learned were invaluable and nowhere else to be found. 

The Romero family at home in their trailer at the Hudson Valley Foie Gras property in Ferndale, New York, Saturday, October 10, 2009. The wife and the in-laws prepare dinner as the children pass the time coloring books and watching television while the husband works his shifts. There is not much to do on the small property, so most of the time the family finds ways of bonding and entertaining with their kids and in-laws. (Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez)

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Julie Elman is an assistant professor at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University (Athens), where she teaches design and picture editing. She received an MFA in photography from OU in 1987 and has 15 years of newspaper experience as a photojournalist, picture editor and page designer (most recently at The Virginian-Pilot as an A1 designer). Elman designed the New York Times best-selling photography book “The Rise of Barack Obama” by Pete Souza, who is now chief White House photographer.

{This is the final installment of a four-part series on creating an effective resume for the visual journalist.  For part 1, please go here.  For part 2, go here.  For Part 3, go here.}

Here’s a really cool resume-building strategy I heard the other day from Sam Girton, a colleague of mine: “It’s subtractive resume building, instead of additive resume building.” Girton advises his students to compile a “master resume document” (could be 30 pages, for example) that lists EVERYTHING one has achieved, accomplished, done in one’s professional and personal life. Every time you send out a resume, he says, pull out that list and delete what you don’t need for the particular job you’re going after. 

“If I apply for a job as a photographer for the Pittsburgh Penguins (hockey team),” Girton says, “for sure I’ll mention my high school job as a Zamboni (ice resurfacer) driver.”
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Julia Robinson graduated from The University of Texas with a degree in psychology and studied photojournalism at San Francisco State University.  Robinson interned at the Oakland Tribune, the Daily Herald and was a fellow at the Poynter Institute before becoming a staff photographer at the Columbia Daily Tribune.  After being laid off earlier this year, Robinson is a freelance photographer and multimedia producer in central Texas.

The Missouri Photo Workshop has always seemed to me to be the holy grail of photo workshops.  As a staff photographer at a mid-sized daily newspaper, it was everything you could ever want - the opportunity to spend a solid week (we never got that amount of time at the paper) on your own story (not a ‘photo request’ from the reporters) and get edited by the best and brightest in the industry (doesn’t everyone wish NatGeo would just give them a chance?).

Pediatric nurses search for a vein, left, as Kade Bauman’s mother Annette, right, comforts him in the emergency room of Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Festus, Missouri.  After his early morning appointment with Dr. Nagireddi, Kade went into respiratory distress. At three months, Kade Bauman couldn’t hold his head up on his own. The doctors said to wait.  He just might need a little more time. Then the seizures started.  At one and a half years, Kade has been hospitalized six times in the last year.  Diagnosed with epilepsy, cortical vision impairment, and hypotonia, Kade’s parents and grandparents, therapists and friends work together to give him the care he needs. (Julia Robinson)
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Philip Scott Andrews interned for The Associated Press in Los Angeles during the summer of 2009.  Andrews previously interned at Roll Call Newspaper in Washington D.C. and at the Free-Lance Star, in Fredericksburg, Va. Andrews will graduate from Western Kentucky University in 2010.

Andrews: “The Associated Press offers a 12 week summer internship.  It is a little odd because even after I accepted the job, I had no idea where I would be spending my summer, it wasn’t until a couple of week’s after that I found out I would be headed to Los Angeles.  When I did get out to the west coast I found the structure of the internship pretty well organized.  The AP requires a much more specialized workflow than the newspapers I have worked for, and has different codes for just about every section of the iptc field. Because of this, I had training for the first week.  After that I was pretty much on my own.  My editors worked with me to ensure I had a wide range of assignments and I was treated like any other member of the staff.  One of the perks of the internship is a week-long training program at the headquarters in New York.  The trip, designed to fall mid-internship, was a nice break from daily assignments and afforded a chance to see the news organization from the inside out.”

Elephants from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus are marched through downtown Los Angeles to the Staples Center, Tuesday, July 7, 2009.  In every city where Ringling Bros. appears, the elephants and other animals must walk from the circus train to the arena.  (Philip Scott Andrews, 2009 Associated Press Intern)

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Julie Elman is an assistant professor at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University (Athens), where she teaches design and picture editing. She received an MFA in photography from OU in 1987 and has 15 years of newspaper experience as a photojournalist, picture editor and page designer (most recently at The Virginian-Pilot as an A1 designer). Elman designed the New York Times best-selling photography book “The Rise of Barack Obama” by Pete Souza, who is now chief White House photographer.

{This is Part 3 of a weekly series on creating an effective resume for the visual journalist.  For part 1, please go here.  For part 2, go here.}

CONTRAST. I’m convinced that this is the secret to creating a readable, accessible, attractive resume, whether on or offline. I’m sure I’m not the first person to come to this groundbreaking conclusion. But I do know that try as I might to get the word out to students, creating contrast doesn’t happen often enough, probably because students aren’t yet aware of all the choices they have in their visual toolboxes. Read on.

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Ross Mantle is a freelance photographer based in Pittsburgh, Pa. Mantle was a coach at the 2009 Picture Kentucky Workshop.

(This is the second of two columns on Picture Kentucky.  View the first column here.)

I was honored that David Stephenson asked me to come to Hindman, Ky. for the University of Kentucky Picture Kentucky workshop. As a young photographer, less than a year out of undergrad, I was happy to be included in the ranks of the other coaches, Greg Cooper, Matt Detrich and Dave LaBelle. They’re all seasoned professionals and have great reputations in the industry. I’m a young freelancer with experiences that I hoped would bring diversity in ideas to the workshop.

Pittsburg freelancer and Picture Kentucky coach Ross Mantle talks about audio with participant and freelancer Suzanne Feliciano in Hindman, Kentucky, on September 16, 2009. (Jonathan Palmer)
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(From project website)

During the last two decades, mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia has destroyed or severely damaged more than a million acres of forest and buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams. Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining, a video report produced by Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm, focuses on the environmental and social impacts of this practice and examines the long-term effects on the region’s forests and waterways.

At a time when the Obama administration is reviewing mining permit applications throughout West Virginia and three other states, this video offers a first-hand look at mountaintop removal and what is at stake for Appalachia’s environment and its people.

View the project here.

Or at:http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2198

(From Press Release)

UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication announces the release of http://LivingGalapagos.org, a collection of student-produced multimedia stories about life in the Galapagos Islands.

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Allie Garza is a senior journalism major at the University of Kentucky. Garza has been a participant in The Picture Kentucky Workshop four times.

(This is the first of two columns on Picture Kentucky)

Every year since my freshman year at the University of Kentucky I’ve looked forward to one week: The Picture Kentucky Workshop.

Held each year in small towns located throughout Eastern Kentucky, the workshop holds a near and dear place in my heart. Since I first picked up a camera three years ago to this year - my last year attending the workshop as a student - the week-long getaway always helps me get perspective of where I want to be and who I want to be as a photojournalist.

Kenny Williams, a 30-year resident of Red Fox, Ky., sits in his living room recalling stories about when he first moved to the small town. Williams’ mother was an avid activist against coal mining when she was alive and collected many black history memorabilia, which Williams now displays on the wall of his home.  (Allie Garza)
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Mike Fender is the Director of Photography at The Indianapolis Star. Fender, who has been at Indianapolis for 22 years, has also been the Chief Photographer Assistant Director of Photography.

VS: What are the expectations of your interns?

Fender: ”We expect interns to come in and take very little training to get up to speed. We only hire interns who have had at least one, hopefully two internships behind them. We treat our interns like staffers when it comes to assignments, so we expect them to be somewhat polished by the time they get here.”

Michael Phelps warms up before swimming in the 200 meter freestyle competition during the USA Swimming Conoco Phillips National Championship / World Championship Trials at the IUPUI Natatorium on Tuesday, July 8, 2009.  (Jacob Kriese, The Indianapolis Star 2009 Intern)
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Julie Elman is an assistant professor at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University (Athens), where she teaches design and picture editing. She received an MFA in photography from OU in 1987 and has 15 years of newspaper experience as a photojournalist, picture editor and page designer (most recently at The Virginian-Pilot as an A1 designer). Elman designed the New York Times best-selling photography book “The Rise of Barack Obama” by Pete Souza, who is now chief White House photographer.

{This is Part 2 of a weekly series on creating an effective resume for the visual journalist.  For part 1, please go here. For Part 3, go here.  For Part 4, go here.}

I often find myself saying “It depends” in response to students’ questions about resumes. Their unique experiences will drive their choices on this document. Some approaches to setting up a resume, though, tend to remain fairly consistent. Keep your needs in mind when deciding whether the following applies to yours:

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The 2009 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar website launched today.  Check out this can’t-miss opportunity. http://www.photojournalism.org/

Chris Mackler interned at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa during the spring and summer of 2009.  Mackler graduated in November 2008 from Ohio University, majoring in Photojournalism.  Mackler previously interned at The Elkhart Truth and was Senior Staff Photographer for The Post, the student newspaper at Ohio University.

VS:  How was your internship structured?

Mackler: “I was treated just like any other staff photographer. I worked five days a week, but those days varied greatly depending on the photo staff’s assignments. My hours varied according to the assignments that day; I found out the hours I worked the night before via email from my boss. I had an average of three to four assignments a day. Over the course of four months, the only hours I did not work were from 4-5 in the morning.”

Congressman Dave Loebsack, left, Colonel Scott Ayres and General Tim Orr speak on the future site of the new National Guard Armory in Cedar Rapids on Monday, July 6, 2009. Construction on the new site, which is located off of Wright Brothers Boulevard, is expected to begin in the fall. (Chris Mackler/The Gazette 2009 Intern)
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A New York Times article has the story of two scientists who won the Nobel Prize in physics for creating the CCD, charge-coupled device, the sensor used in digital cameras which transforms light in to pixels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/science/07nobel.html?ref=science

Melissa Lyttle is a staff photographer at the St. Petersburg Times.  Lyttle was a student at The Eddie Adams Workshop in 2001.  Since then, Lyttle has been a member of the Black Team, a workshop photographer, team producer and team leader.  This year, Lyttle is producing stories for the Rust Team.

It’s true what you hear.  You will not sleep.  You may miss meals while on assignment.  Be prepared for both. Bring some granola bars or other snacks to keep in your camera bag. Get some sleep before you get there so you don’t come in already spent.  I hate seeing students sleep through some great presentations because they stayed up all week before the workshop reworking their portfolios, and they’ve stayed up each night at the workshop drinking crappy beer and chatting with friends.  But when those lights go out in the barn, eyes close, heads go down… and a lot of powerful pictures and inspiration are missed.

The Eddie Adams Workshop group photo, 2005.
(Melissa Lyttle, St. Petersburg Times)
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Julie Elman is an assistant professor at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University (Athens), where she teaches design and picture editing. She received an MFA in photography from OU in 1987 and has 15 years of newspaper experience as a photojournalist, picture editor and page designer (most recently at The Virginian-Pilot as an A1 designer). Elman designed the New York Times best-selling photography book “The Rise of Barack Obama” by Pete Souza, who is now chief White House photographer.

{This is Part 1 of a weekly series on creating an effective resume for the visual journalist. For Part 2, please go here. For Part 3, here. For Part 4, go here.}

Ask 15 people what they’d like to see in a resume, and you’ll get 15 different answers.

Not exactly what students want to hear. When given the assignment to piece together a resume, they often want to latch onto concise rules of how this all works. “Should I include an objective or not?” “Do I need references on the page?” “Are two pages OK or not OK?”

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Randall Greenwell is the Director of Photography at The Virginian-Pilot. Greenwell has been Director of Photography for almost two years.

VS:  What are the expectations of your interns?  Have those expectations changed over the years?

Greenwell: “I think of the Pilot as a next-level internship. I want the candidates to already have some experience and direction when they come here. Usually, that means you have one or two internships under your belt but I’m not against a first-timer. Potential is important too.”

Bodybuilder Kasha Winston in East Coast Gym in Virginia Beach Friday, August 14, 2009.  Kasha was going through her stage routine. (Ryan C. Henriksen/The Virginian-Pilot 2009 Intern)
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Mitchell Franz is a photography major at Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

A little over three years ago, I joined a Photo a Day, APAD, after meeting Melissa Lyttle at Women In Photojournalism in Austin (because men are welcome too).

So I joined the APAD listserv and the inspiration has come in everyday to my inbox since, but once a year there has been a gathering of APAD members and photographers called Geekfest. Geekfest is all about inspiration.

Geekfest 2009 group photo.  (Lisa Krantz/San Antonio Express-News)
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