The South Asian Journalists Association will convene at Columbia University from June 17 through June 20 for its annual convention. If you haven't signed up and registered for it, you will be missing a real treat. Lots of wonderful speakers and panelists. If you are out to network you couldn't ask for a more congenial atmosphere. While the focus is journalism and South Asia, those who are interested in one or the other but not necessarily both should still choose to attend. Convention information here. Registration information here.
I manage the PHOTOFORUM, the photojournalism activities during the convention. If you haven't responded to the Call For Entries for the annual digital photo exhibit, tick-tock, the count-down to the May 31 deadline looms ahead. Consider submitting your photography. After all when was the last time you showed off your work to 600 journalists?
The Photoforum workshops this year is an attempt to provide some “hands-on” photography training to participants at the convention. David H. Wells, an internationally known photojournalist and a highly regarded teacher will lead two workshops. Click the link below to find out more about the workshops and about David. Plan to attend both!
Please bookmark this link to come back and check for updates. All events and activities are subject to change.
Workshop: A Day In Jackson Heights, June 17, 2004 (Thursday) 9.00 a.m to 4.00 p.m.
Jackson Heights in the New York City borough of Queens is a vibrant community housing immigrants from Latin America and South Asia. Our workshop – A Day in Jackson Heights – will attempt to document the lives of South Asians from different walks of life.
Please come prepared with a digital camera, 2 memory cards, extra batteries, good walking shoes, your photo ID , a cell phone and IDEAS! If your camera is capable of taking more than one lens, bring along those as well. Digital images you have produced will be eventually burned to a CD and mailed to you.
If you are using a film-based camera, please bring 10 rolls of film (4-200 ISO, 4-400 ISO and 2-800 ISO) and extra batteries as well. Please be aware that if you shoot with film you will be responsible for the cost of processing and scanning your images onto a CD.
Please be advised that this is not a workshop about how to use your particular type of camera. We will expect you to know how to properly handle your camera/lenses. This workshop is meant to give you an idea of how photojournalists work; the approach and choices that are pursued and the qualitative results that can be shared at an exhibit. For an example of the kind of work we hope you can produce, click here:
Our Schedule:
9.00 a.m. – Meet as a group at the front of the Journalism school on the Columbia University campus
9.15 a.m. – (SHARP) After a brief introduction, the group departs for Jackson Heights on the subway
10.15 a.m. – Arrive in Jackson Heights. Group splits into different directions to shoot
1.00 p.m. – Meet at Jackson Diner for lunch (on your own)
2.00 p.m. – Back to our subjects or more street shooting
5.00 p.m. – Gather at the subway station, drop off memory cards/film, fill out workshop evaluations and head back to Columbia University
Between 8.00 a.m and 5 p.m. participants can approach David H. Wells for instruction, advice or suggestions on how to approach your subject and document their life.
As your memory cards fill up, you will be expected to drop it off with the workshop manager. His name is Seshu Badrinath and his cell phone number is: 617-821-7993. David's cell phone number is: 401 261 4528. Your digital images will be placed in folders that have your names on them. The images will be edited for content and quality. On Saturday (June 19th), during the SAJA convention's gala dinner, the selected images will be shared with other conventioneers as part of the annual SAJA PHOTOFORUM exhibit and eventually published to the SAJA PHOTOFORUM web site (www.sajaphotoforum.org).
Useful Links to Jackson Heights:
Jackson Heights history
Jackson Heights history
Getting There
Lunch @ Jackson Diner
Should you need to contact the Police in Jackson Heights for any reason –
Police
92-15 Northern Blvd.
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
Tel. (718) 533-2002
Workshop: Visualizing Globalization, June 18, 2004 (Friday) 3.45 pm. to 5.15 p.m.
Spend an afternoon with David H. Wells, a freelance photojournalist and Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow who recently finished an extended photo-essay exploring globalization in India. Wells will first show his work, starting off with two earlier photo-essays, one on the pesticide poisoning of farm workers in California and the other exploring complexities of Palestinian-Israeli interaction. In each of these projects, as in the project on globalization, identifying the issue was relatively easy while pre-visualizing, locating, accessing and actually photographing visually interesting aspects of the story was much harder. These are the special skills that Wells brings to all of his projects and it is the skills he will share with you.
Bring a list of potential story ideas to the workshop. Wells will talk about a selected few. He will discuss how he would separate out the non-visual from the visual as well as discussing how to turn the less than visually stimulating ideas into highly visual very interesting story ideas.
David H. Wells' book project in development is tentatively titled “Globalization in India: Winners and Losers.” To see the full book dummy go here. Wells is seeking a writer to collaborate with in order to expand and complete the book as well as a publisher to produce and disseminate the book. You can reach him directly at: david@davidhwells.com
About Our Instructor:
David H. Wells is a photojournalist with over twenty five years' experiences in photography. Between 1980 and 1985 he worked for a series of small, medium and large newspapers (San Francisco Examiner, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Los Angeles Times among them) trying to find a place in the world of newspaper photojournalism. Since 1986 he has focused on in-depth photo-essays for publication and exhibition. His photo-essays have been published in Saudi Aramco World, the Chicago
Tribune, Geo Magazine, Life Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, National Geographic Publications, Newsweek Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, Time Magazine, U.S. News & World Report and the Washington Post Magazine, among other
publications.
Wells has extensive work experience in India, working on assignment for Saudi Aramco World and the Ford Foundation, among others, during numerous trips to India between 1995 and 1999. Wells spent five months in India in 1999-2000 on a Fulbright fellowship. He made 8 trips to India over 18 months in 2000 to 2002 on a fellowship from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, which enabled him to complete his extended photo essay on globalization in India.
Wells‚ photographs have been shown in over forty exhibitions across America and overseas. His work has been featured in one-person exhibits at the University of Rhode Island, London‚s Gallery Ezra, the Centro Colombo-Americano of Medellin, Colombia, Brown University, University of California at Berkeley and Harvard University. His work has been included in group exhibits at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College, the Rapprochement Center of Bet Sahur, Visa pour l'Image Photojournalism Festival, Perpignan, France, and the Museo Bardini of Florence, Italy.
His work has been published AS in portfolios in American Photographer, American Photography Four, Camera and Darkroom, Camera Arts, Communication Arts Photography Annual, Graphis: The Human Condition, Nikon World, Photo District News, Photo Magazine (France), Photographers International (Taiwan), Photo Techniques, Zoom (Italy).
His work is in collections including the Jewish Museum of New York City, Light Work Photography Center of Syracuse, NY, McGraw-Hill Collection of New York City, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York City, the National Center for Photography as an Art Form of Bombay, India, the Price-Waterhouse Collection of New York City and the Santa Barbara, California, Museum of Art.
Wells was born in Albany, New York in 1956 and has a Bachelor of Arts in the Liberal Arts with a concentration in the history of photography from Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA, 1979.