Northern Short Course

This past weekend several AOL photo editors went to the National Press Photographers Association's Northern Short Course in Photojournalism in Warwick, R.I. I've been to many of these over the years, and this three-day seminar was one of the best I've ever attended.

 

The work that other photojournalists are doing in the field truly is inspirational. Multimedia news gathering was a primary topic of discussion during the conference, and I wanted to share one of the presenter's Web site with you: www.willyurman.com. Appropriately enough for March Madness, he showed his "hoops" slideshow, and it was one of my favorites (click on the "work" link at the top of his site, then click on "stories" and you'll see the "hoops" link). 

 

 

Will Yurman works at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. Check out the documentary work he's compiling on the victims of homicide in Rochester in 2007 called "Not Forgotten." You can get to it by going to the newspaper's multimedia area and scrolling down until you see the link to it. Very powerful.

 

Will spent the day Thursday presenting multimedia news gathering techniques and the packaging of the audio and photography using a software program called Soundslides. Friday, a group of people went on a "multimedia shootout" to put into practice what Will went over in the seminar the day before. One of my colleagues participated in the shootout, and she'll be describing her experience in that in an upcoming post.

 

Saturday we spent time listening to a lineup of great presenters who described the work they have been doing and that they're currently engaged in. Beginning with David Leeson, of the Dallas Morning News, a Pulitzer Prize winner who truly is operating on different plane of existence, we listened to a half-dozen inspiring presenters who showed us incredible images and presented terrific story-telling experiences, including Brian Storm, who is president of MediaStorm, Thea Breite of the Boston Globe, and Sam Abell, who has worked for National Geographic since 1970.

 

There were lots of other seminars, and although we couldn't make it to them all we'll post a few entries about the ones we did sit in on (so please stay tuned to this blog). In the meantime, check out some of the links above and experience the great visual reportage being done out there across the Web.

 

- Gary