WIP: Wrap Up

The Women in Photojournalism conference was awesome. Amazing work by some amazing people. The NPPA already has a story up on the weekend, and my wrap up is below:

Rock star Preston Gannaway set the mood for the weekend, by opening with some really solid community journalism that she does for the Concord Monitor. What I got out of her talk was her commitment to telling the stories of her community and the importance of being respectful of it. She showed her work from a staff photo column called Teen Life as well as her incredibly intimate and touching story on Carolynne St. Pierre, a wife and mother with terminal liver cancer.

San Jose Mercury news photographer Pauline Lubens is a bad ass. I liked her immediately when she started her talk by saying that she's never made it easy for editors. Her passion is the Iraq war, covering it twice -- each time turning her focus to the impact of the war on Iraqi civilians. Even when she's home in California, she's still looking for ways to cover it. There wasn't a dry eye in the house after she showed her long-term project on Sgt. Frank Sandoval, who returned from serving in Iraq with a serious head injury from an IED. At the same time, she was working on a parallel story about Abdul Hakim, an Iraqi boy who traveled to Pittsburgh for surgery after being injured by a U.S.-fired mortar shell.

Philadelphia Inquirer photographer April Saul has been documenting the rise of violence in her city with a photo column, designed to put a face on the statistics. It was awarded a first place in POYi last year. And I recently came across a piece about why Saul decided to tell these stories. "I didn't choose to do this column; it chose me." She also had a great breakout session on long-term stories, and shared 3 that she'd worked on over the course of several decades and several generations of family members.

Washington Post web guru Tom Kennedy enlightened us some of his philosophies on life and journalism (specifically how we differ from TV). He shared some of the work of his staff, most notably, Travis Fox's piece on the Crisis in Darfur - the video footage is gorgeous and the testimonials are a powerful reminder in letting the subjects voices carry the story.

And then there was me. I tried to instill my belief that personal vision has a place in a newspaper, and as I was sharing pictures, offered a brain dump to show how my mind works in approaching things. This led to a half a dozen picture stories, and how lessons learned along the way built on each other. And it all culminated with the creation of APhotoADay, an online community of photojournalists who refuse to settle for the status quo -- where I shared the work of a dozen or so members of APAD, and read some awesome comments they sent me on what APAD means to them. Below is a video my friend Jen Friedberg shot of Krantzy Pants introducing me. And I'm not sure it really conveys just how fucking nervous I was. But the most important thing is that I survived (read: last month's WIP? WTF?! post for background!). The talk seemed to be pretty well received, at least among the students and young professionals there. Although I'm sure I pissed off an editor or two.



*** Other highlights included: Knowing that the future of photojournalism will be bright with students like Joe Buglewicz and Alison Shuman. Getting to see my good friend Nicole Fruge's amazing images from Iraq during a workshop, and hear her talk in-depth about the experience. And getting to hang out with some incredibly talented people that I don't see nearly enough (like Lisa Krantz, Ross Taylor and Jason Arthurs -- as well as the previously mentioned Frooge, Friedberg and PGan). And of course, an incredibly outrageous night spent dancing with the gay cowboys at the Rainbow Cattle Company in Austin still brings a smile to my face.

Good times...