They came armed with biting words and hard-hitting advice.
As the slide projector diligently popped up pictures, the six professional photographers relentlessly picked apart the elements of one photograph after another.
His face illuminated by the screen’s blue-white glow, Todd Buchanan didn’t like what he saw. “Most of the photography of the past two days has been idiotic,” he said.
It was Friday—day three of the 1989 Western Kentucky University Mountain Peoples Workshop in Albany, Kentucky. Since arriving Wednesday, 22 photographers—some students, some professionals—delved into the hills and drove the twisting ribbons of road shooting their assigned photo stories from dawn to dusk.
The next day, their mission would end. During the second night of critique, the professionals – the workshop faculty—tried to “fire up” everyone for a glorious finish.
“You’re not really expressing what you should be expressing as journalists,” said Buchanan, former photojournalist for the Louisville Courier Journal, now the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Bruce Baumann assistant managing editor/graphics of the Pittsburgh Press, said a good photo story requires dedication. But from what he’d seen so far, he said some people might want to consider selling aluminum siding for a living.
Then it was Judy Griesedeick’s turn. “I’m getting really tired of seeing people eating breakfast at 10 (a.m.),” said Griesedeick, a freelance photographer in Minneapolis, Minn. “Dedication means rising with the sun.”
Each faculty member served as an advisor to an assigned group of photographers throughout the four-day shoot. Griesedeick, who was then a photojournalist for The San Jose Mercury News in California, had this advice for all. “I don’t want to hear about it. I want to see it on film,” she said, sitting up front in a large room at Grider Hill Docl, a lodge hugging the edge of Lake Cumberland where the entourage made its headquarters.
Only the projector’s humming whir and the scuffle of shifting feet could be heard. The photographers stared ahead, some thoughtful, others frustrated, some with elbows propped on their legs and chins in hands, eyes downcast.
“If you’re going to be photojournalists,” Mike Morse, photojournalism department head at Western, said authoritatively, “you have to have passion.”
After the exhausting session, Dave LaBelle, photojournalist-in-residence at Western, stood up. “I hope this offends you – makes you mad enough to get up at day break and get better pictures.”
Don’t turn tail and run and say ‘I quit’,” LaBelle said. “Tomorrow is a big day to fill in the gaps missing from stories.”
Stories ranged from a local mailman and a veterinarian to a down-home café on the town square and a woman who lives for religion and taking care of her cousin.
Thursday through Saturday afternoon photographers traipsed in with rolls of film and out with cameras reloaded, ears ringing with the faculty’s advice. They kept the labbies – a group of professional and student photographers – scurrying to develop film.
A tiny bathroom, only big enough for one person, served as a darkroom. A bathtub stood crammed with chemicals. Sleep became a treasured prize as the labbies worked well into the night.
During the day, the faculty monitored incoming film by digging out contact sheets from brown envelopes, one for each photographer, taped to an outside window ledge. Scrawled with a photographer’s name, each envelope was kept filed by the labbies, who hastily delivered contact sheets as fast as photographers brought in film.
On Saturday, the final day, frazzled photographers busily beat the streets pushing themselves to their limits to get in that last perfect shot, with yet another element to battle – the weather. Drizzling rain pelted down relentlessly, dampening equipment and tired spirits. But by the final critique later on, the soggy photographers with their missions strenuously accomplished, breathed a little easier.
That night, praise came in larger doses.
According to Baumann the workshop is an opportunity to show others what “they should be doing.”
“When you leave here, you see people accomplish a goal … Its where you transform that person from being a photographer to being a photojournalist,” Baumann said.
For Christine Rucker, a photojournalist for the Thomasville Times in North Carolina, the workshop “completely turned me around,” she said.
“It was a refresher thing for me,” said Jim Young, a photojournalist for the Indianapolis News who has been in the business for 30 years. “Anytime you do anything for a long time, it’s good for you to get away from it and get out in a new environment and see a different point of view of what you have been doing.”
The faculty also left enriched. “When I get through with the educating part, I feel I end up learning more,” Baumann said. The workshop “recharges my batteries – gets me excited about what I do.”
After watching the photographers put in their skills to a grueling test, Gary Haynes knew everyone had grown.
“It was gratifying to have been here,” said Haynes, assisting managing editor of graphics for the Philadelphia Inquirer, to the enlightened group. “I hope you all stay with it and keep it up.”
