DURHAM, NC (April 6, 2009) – The National Press Photographers Association has added one day to its Visual Journalism Workshops - without significantly raising the price from 2008 - and changed from a "lecture" format to a series of long-form workshops and equipment and software training, NPPA executive director Jim Straight said when announcing that registration for the event is now open.
The Workshops will be held June 11-13, 2009, in Las Vegas, NV, in conjunction with Convergence '09, the annual NPPA conference. The goal of this year's Workshops is to add practical tools and skills to attendees' resumes that will help them succeed in the very challenging and competitive industry of visual journalism, Straight said.
Registration for this event can be combined with NPPA's Multimedia Immersion or Women in Photojournalism Conference, which are taking place in Las Vegas the same week.
The Visual Journalism Workshops will feature training sessions that range from 135 minutes to 45 minutes and some will be presented in advanced and beginner modules. The sessions will also repeat during the course of the three days, allowing attendees to plan a comprehensive and diverse course of study that represents what the name of the week suggests, Convergence.
“In the past, the NPPA annual conference has been formatted to different tracks of television, still, and multimedia education, often limiting attendees to choosing one over the others," Straight said. "It has also been prone to hour long lectures or presentations that left some attendees looking for more This year we changed that. We went with longer and more practical sessions and added a day to accommodate all of this new material. People will find these sessions address their technical, technique and business needs, and they will do so with a hands-on or intensive approach.”
“We of course will be inviting some award-winning visual journalists to inspire and invigorate the people in the audience in the mornings and afternoons, but that will probably be about it as far as the old 'lecture' format presentations go ... the rest of the time people will be learning classroom style, and they will be pushed a lot harder then they have been in the past. These workshops were designed to improve peoples' own business, or the business of their employers,” Straight said.
The Chair of the Visual Journalism Workshops, Joe Mahoney, has put together a line-up of topics that address the business needs of journalists today as well as their technical and storytelling needs.
“I want our people to engage in sessions that address a cross-section of tools, techniques and theories critical to achieving success in creating visual journalism pieces for their publications, outlet or their own business,” Mahoney said. “They also need to learn how to sustain their business model and make money in this changing environment and that is why we beefed up the business sessions in 2009.”
Sessions at the 2009 Workshops will cover, among other topics, storytelling, interviewing, The Edit Foundry, multimedia editingtheory, Final Cut and Avid Training, Adobe CS4, multiple freelance business practice sessions, wedding photography business practices, panoramas, photoblogging, an introduction to multimedia, multimedia coaching, re-entering academia, sound and audio landscapes, and several video and still equipment demonstrations.
For more information on the Workshops and to register please visit www.nppa.org/workshops/convergence. Speakers will be announced shortly.
Convergence '09 is the NPPA's annual conference and this year it includes the Multimedia Immersion, Women in Photojournalism, The Edit Foundry, The Visual Journalism Workshops and the Annual Awards Banquet. It will be held in Las Vegas, NV June 6 – 13, 2009.
NPPA's Multimedia Immersion Workshop is sponsored by Canon, Apple's Aperture, Nikon, ThinkTankPhoto, and the National Press Photographers Association.
