final day of workshop

Here's a final grouping of pictures I made this week in Harlem during the Visual Storytelling Workshop.

workshop: day four

My project in Harlem continues. Tomorrow the work will be edited into a tight group of selects and will be shown at the closing reception for the workshop. Jim Estrin has been a really good teacher, and I've enjoyed my classmates. The project I've worked on has pushed me in many ways, most of which I haven't even begun to mentally process. It's been a great week.

Here are some photos I made today.

workshop: day three

Still pluggin' away. I did get called a whore today for the first time in my life. The young man, whose head happened to be in the back of a couple of pictures I shot, wheeled around and absolutely exploded right in my face.

workshop: day two

My pedometer says I walked about seven miles in Harlem this afternoon. My last hope for a "story" evaporated, and I am committed to simply doing street work there. Here are some favorites so far.

day one of cuny workshop

Today was a day for getting to know each other's work, discussing our projects for the week and listening to Jim Estrin talk about the important elements of effective visual story-telling.

None of my leads for various photo-essay ideas have panned out. There's something in Harlem that may come through tomorrow, so I spent the afternoon shooting on the streets there (to establish context). If that falls through, I'm not sure what I'll do.

It was really great hanging out in Harlem.

first workshop in years

Monday morning I will be a student once again. It's been a long time.

At 9:00 AM I'll be reporting to a classroom in the graduate school of of Journalism at CUNY. I'll be a student of James Estrin, senior staff photographer and Lens Blog co-editor for the New York Times.

I met Jim Estrin in Santa Fe several years ago. I sat across from his portfolio review table, nervously  sharing my Uganda work with him. He said something like, "I shouldn't like this work, but I do," referring to the fact that he reviews/gets bored with a lot of work shot by non-Africans in Africa. After we talked about why he did like the stuff, I realized we had 10 minutes left, so I said, "I did bring along a second body of work, if you'd like to see it." It was my Estate Sale project, and he loved it. He published it a few weeks later on Lens Blog.

He probably won't remember me on Monday morning, but I remember him. He was an honest, straight-shooter of a reviewer. He was down to earth, personable and kind and willing to answer the many questions I had about the photojournalism industry.

I recently read that he was teaching a class called "Visual Storytelling" in New York. I applied, and when I was accepted I started researching stories I could tell (in five days in a city I do not inhabit) as a participant in this exciting workshop. Finally, today, I think I made a breakthrough with someone at a NY non-profit who (I hope!) is going to help set me up with a story. It's taken many days, many emails and phone calls, but I think I might be honing in on something. Stay tuned for more info about the photo essay I'll be making.

Here's a snap I took with my iPhone of James Estrin using his iPhone when he and I were standing next to each other at a reception during the Santa Fe Portfolio Reviews some years ago.