Together Again (For The First Time)

 

By Heather Graulich

NORFOLK, VA (August 28, 2009) – With all the doom and gloom surrounding newspapers these days, it’s refreshing to hear of talented photographers landing new jobs, but two of the most recent hires at The Virginian-Pilot make for an especially cheerful story.

Preston Gannaway, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, and her stepbrother, Ross Taylor, 2007's NPPA Region 1 Photographer of the Year, will be working together at the Pilot. Gannaway has been there since March; Taylor joins her next month.

“What are the odds?” Taylor asks, “It’s unique, that’s for sure.”

The odds are pretty long, particularly at a time when many papers are cutting newsroom staff. Taylor comes to the Pilot from The Hartford Courant, affected for several years by deep layoffs, though he himself had been spared. After winning the Pulitzer, Gannaway took a job with The Rocky Mountain News, only to see it fold less than a year later.

Gannaway, 31, told Taylor, 37, about the opening at the Pilot, and she’s thrilled he got the job, not just to have such a supportive friend on staff but because of the personality Taylor will bring to the department.

“I am totally excited to have him here,” she said. “I think that Ross is just a phenomenal storyteller and he’s also really kind of perfected his approach to working with subjects and within a newsroom. And that’s a skill that I’m definitely looking to watch. He’s at a point in his career where he’s spent so much time thinking about his approach on so many levels.”

Taylor is equally excited about the chance to work with his stepsister, who he met at their parents’ wedding in 1997. He had already been working in the business a few years; she had just started pursuing a degree in fine art photography. They have bounced story ideas and picture edits off each other for years via computers and cell phones, but this will be the first time they can do it at work, face-to-face.

“Preston shoots differently, and I look forward to seeing how she processes situations and how she (handles) her workflow,” he said. “I mean, who has this kind of opportunity?”

As for the issue of sibling rivalry, Taylor jokes with a big laugh that Gannaway “has already won the Pulitzer, so we know who’s the bigger name in the room.”

Gannaway, in turn, dismisses the notion of being the more famous sibling and laughs off the idea that she has to worry about a big brother looking over her shoulder all the time.

“Ross and I are step-siblings, so it’s family in that it’s something we really built,” she explains. “We were both adults, essentially, when our parents married. So you don’t have the same dynamics as with a sibling you grew up with. It’s like a really close friendship with this other element to it.”

Taylor agrees.

“We didn’t have to like each other or have this friendship,” he said. “It was chosen.”

Taylor joined NPPA in 1998, and Gannaway in 2001.

 

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