DURHAM, NC (May 4, 2009) – Some top-notch photojournalists who just recently won several of the industry's most prestigious awards will now be speakers at the National Press Photographers Association's Visual Journalism Workshops this summer during NPPA's Convergence '09 in Las Vegas, NV.
Patrick Farrell of the Miami Herald, winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his coverage of Haiti's devastation by hurricane and tropical storms, will join NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism top winners Darren Durlach of WBFF-TV in Baltimore, MD, and James Gregg of the Arizona Daily Star in leading sessions at the Visual Journalism Workshops.
Durlach is this year's winner of the Ernie Crisp Television News Photographer of the Year title in NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism competition, the top honor a television photojournalist can win from the organization, and Gregg is NPPA's Photojournalist of the Year (Small Markets) in the same competition.
Also scheduled to appear are Dave Delozier, the first place winner in NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism's television category for Solo Video Journalist; Meredith Birkett, a senior multimedia producer for MSNBC.com; Shawn Montano, the 2008 NPPA Video Editor of the Year; Will Sullivan, the interactive director for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Seth Gitner, a multimedia editor for the Roanoke Times and Roanoke.com; Mickey H. Osterreicher, NPPA's general counsel; and Ira Gostin, MBA, a photographer and senior marketing strategist.
In addition to announcing the Visual Journalism Workshops' line-up of speakers, NPPA has also announced the event's schedule (noting that sessions and times are subject to change). The three-day schedule is available on one page or on individual pages for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
"This line-up was designed to make people more marketable, more skilled, and more indispensable, whether it be at their newspaper or television station or in the freelance market. It is also designed to present longer form sessions that really let people get deep into the material and leave plenty of time for extended Q&A with the experts," NPPA Visual Journalism Workshops chairperson Joe Mahoney said.
"We beefed up the business sessions this year knowing that we were going to have a lot of former staffers who are looking to expand their freelance business knowledge. Ira [Gostin] has some great sessions planned for these folks. And the skill sessions are being taught by the best in the business. If you look at the line-up of speakers and their resumes, it's amazing. We got really lucky that this many experts were all available at one time," Mahoney said.
"We didn't forget the 'inspiration' part though," Mahoney added. "That's what Darren, James, and Patrick will do when they show their work and talk about their award-winning portfolios. Then we're going to top off the weekend with an expert panel discussion about the state of the industry and the economy. This topic needed its own spotlight, in view of what's happened in the last 12 months."
Shawn Montano, Edit Foundry chairperson, announced that Avid will be providing their hardware for workshops on Thursday, and for the hands-on portion of The Edit Foundry on Friday and Saturday.
The Visual Journalism Workshops will begin on Thursday morning, June 11, with 90-minute sessions about the Foundations of Storytelling, an Introduction to Multimedia, Using Social Media, Editing Theory, and Shooting Panoramas. Mid-morning sessions will include Advanced Storytelling, Selling Multimedia, Long-Form Video, an Introduction to Avid, and Photoblogging. The schedule will repeat after lunch to give participants a chance to attend sessions they may have missed in the morning. Thursday evening's schedule includes gear demonstrations and portfolio reviews.
There are a few variations in Friday and Saturday's schedule, June 12 and 13, but they essentially repeat each other so that participants can catch as many of the sessions as possible while also taking advantage of The Edit Foundry, a whole-day session dedicated to the advanced art of non-linear editing and sponsored by Avid. The Edit Foundry will run both Friday and Saturday.
Additional Friday and Saturday sessions include Freelancing 101, Legal Issues of Visual Journalism, Intro and Advanced Solo Video Journalism, The Business Of Wedding Photography, Writing To Video, Audio Gathering, Saving An Assignment, Working With The Web, Coaching Multimedia, Re-Entering Academia, and Freelance Marketing To Success.
Friday and Saturday will also include sessions led by Durlach, Gregg, and Farrell, and there will be a shoot-out photography contest held all weekend. On Saturday there's a reception that takes place before Saturday evening's annual Awards Banquet.
NPPA has added one day to its Visual Journalism Workshops without significantly raising the price from 2008, and gone from a lecture format to a series of long-form workshops and equipment/software training. The goal of this year's Workshops is to add practical tools and skills to the participants' resumes that will help them succeed in the very challenging and competitive industry of visual journalism.
Registration for this event can be combined with NPPA's Women in Photojournalism Conference, which is happening the same week. The Multimedia Immersion, also being held at Convergence '09, is sold out.
For more information on the Workshops and to register please visit www.nppa.org/workshops/convergence.
