Alexia Competition

As photojournalism students at UK many of you are in the fortunate position of having a diverse pool of talents to pull from, which means that many of you can write very well. Because of that ability I wanted to introduce you to the Alexia Foundation for World Peace. The Alexia Foundation is “dedicated to helping professional and student photographers produce photographs that promote world peace and cultural understanding.” All you young photographers who want to go out into the world and create change through your photographs or are committed to documenting the human condition, this is your chance. To make things better, Alexia will give you both the money to produce your project and an outlet, as they often exhibit the winner’s work at the UN and have just produced a book featuring winner’s from past years. Alexia is essentially a grant competition – you have a project that is burning in your heart, you write a grant proposal saying why this project is important and what you’ll do and how you do it. Past winners have produced projects on Chechnya, the Israeli Security Wall, refugees in Sudan and Sierra Leone. These are students, people your age, who are traveling into the world and making historic images of events and people that are an important and sometimes tragic part of our world’s history. As young people it is very important for you to realize that it is possible for YOU to be doing this kind of work. Now. All you have to do is put forth the effort and have passion for your craft of photojournalism.

The winning student photographer receives $10,000 and gets to spend a semester studying photojournalism in London through the PJ program at Syracuse University. From their website: “The Alexia Foundation offers helps to provide the financial ability for students to improve their knowledge and skills of photojournalism and to increase their own knowledge and understanding of other cultures by providing scholarships to study photojournalism at Syracuse University in London, England. The foundation also provides cash grants to enable student photographers to have the financial ability to produce a picture story that furthers the foundation’s goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding”

Alexia begins accepting the 750 word grant applications beginning December 1 of this year and closes the application process at 5 p.m. on February 1. I would really, really like to see some of you enter this competition, and begin the process now. December/February seems like a long way off, especially to put together a 750 word grant proposal but you would be suprised how fast that dealine will sneak up on you. Feel free to stop by my office (Dave’s office) and go over ideas and your actual proposal once you begin writing.

Baraka Movie Night – Next Thursday at 9:00 p.m.

Next Thursday at 9:00 p.m. we will be showing the film Baraka in the Dirty Dozen metting room (aka Dave’s office, aka the blue couch room). Chris is volunteering to brink a big tub of popcorn for everyone, just in case the chance to see this absolutely amazing film isn’t enough motivation for you. If you have ever seen the Planet Earth series by the Discovery Channel, the best way to describe Baraka is that it is similar in form to Planet Earth. I really encourage you all to try to make it to all, or part, of the movie as it visually, mentally, and photographically a really amazing body of work. To shoot Baraka the photographers journeyed through 24 countries and six continents over a period of 14 months.

Here are some excerpts from a couple of film reviews, to give you an idea of what you’re in for:

The film Baraka is a brilliant and exemplary model of the effective use of poetic mode in documentary film making. The lack of linear time or established location, the lack of explicated voice-over narrative, and the inclusion of manipulated sound and performance, work to make this film a work of art that documents truth in a unique and original form from a unique and original perspective that could be no one’s but film maker’s own. By examining these technical elements, we will see how director Ron Fricke used poetic mode to create his meaning.

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Baraka is an ancient Sufi word, which can be translated as “a blessing, or as the breath, or essence of life from which the evolutionary process unfolds.” For many people Baraka is the definitive film in this style. Breathtaking shots from around the world show the beauty and destruction of nature and humans. Coupled with an incredible soundtrack including on site recordings of The Monks Of The Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery. Baraka is evidence of a huge global project fueled by a personal passion for the world and visual art. One of the very last films shot in the expensive TODD-AO 70mm format, Ron Fricke developed a computer controlled camera for the incredible time-lapse shots, including New York’s Park Avenue rush hour traffic and the crowded Tokyo subway platforms. The Baraka DVD also includes behind the scenes footage, including scenes of the grueling shoot at Ayer’s Rock in Australia, when a plague of flies of Biblical proportions made it impossible to film until they rigged up a vacuum to suck the bugs away from the lens.

Junkie XL = Solid

In order to throw a little non-photo related creative juices you way I would like to introduce you guys to the dynamo that is Junkie XL. Music producer, editor, and all around creative genius Junkie XL has produced (in addition to his own albums) music for the Matrix, the Oscars, the Superbowl and a whole host of others. Through a combination of dense creativity and an amazing work ethic (he works up to 18 hours a day, but caps it there to have a social life) he has produced an amazing body of work. Junkie XL was profiled last year by Apple, a story you can read and benefit from by clicking HERE.

On the odd chance that you don’t follow through and check out the article, below is a snippet from one of my favorite parts. I cannot possibly hammer home hard enough how much I want you guys to push the envelope creatively. As you guys go through the year, whether you are working on a class assignment or something for the Kernel do whatever it takes to push your thought process, and yourself personally as a photographer, a little bit farther, a little bit harder. This applies to your individual images, but also the assignments that you generate for the Kernel. DO NOT sit around a wait for great assignments to be given to you, or you’ll spend the next four years shooting lame pictures for lame stories and you’ll be perpetually unfulfilled. We’ve talked about some really exciting ideas for both larger projects and some smaller assignments this semester, and to emphasize what I said earlier, I cannot encourage you enough to take charge of that creative process and run with it.

““I was always pretty cutting edge with whatever I made,” says Holkenborg. “I was never conservative.” But that musical experimentation didn’t always fly. “That’s how I got kicked out of music university,” he says. “Instead of studying my skills, I took a cassette and recorded 90 guitar notes — with distortion and without, with reverb and without, you name it. I cut the tape in 160 pieces, smashed it up, and put it back together randomly. It sounded really Philip Glass, really repetitive. It felt like a pulse.” The young student played the tape for his professor. “He didn’t dig it at all.””

Dan Winters

I’ve talked with a couple of you over the last few days about getting better at portraits, lighting, etc. First and foremost, one of the best things you can do for yourself is check in with the Strobist blog on a regular basis. Second, you can check out this absolutely phenominal portrait and illustration photographer out of Los Angles, Dan Winters. Winters is a true craftsman, and beyond simply elegant light, his sparse portraits touch on a part of the subject’s soul in a way that the image is almost instantly iconic.

Annie Leibovitz & Strobist

This post is a bit of a two-parter, the first part introducing you to one of my favorite blogs, Strobist. Strobist was started by Baltimore Sun photographer David Hobby and in a nutshell it’s dedicated to helping budding photographers to ramp up their ability through the use better lighting. Visit Strobist and you’ll find more than 600 articles and posts about small systems lighting, including an On Assignment section where Hobby shows his actual assignments from the Baltimore Sun, including set up pictures showing how he set up the lights, the finished product itself, and his thoughts on how you can achieve the same end result in your own real world situation. The On Assignment section has in the ballpark of 60 assignments for you to learn from, and this section, and Strobist as a whole, is an extremely valuable resource for you budding young photojournalists. I can’t encourage you enough to visit this website from time to time.

Part 2:

The second part, of this two parter, is a behind the scenes look at part of the process behind Annie Leibovitz work for Vanity Fair’s July issue, which features Bono as a guest editor. The July issue focused on the RED campaign, which works to raise funds from various RED theme products to benefit Africa related causes.

To put this issue together Leivovitz traversed the globe to shoot a slew of global leaders and icons with the idea of illustrating the chain of events that stems from someone such as Bono raising awareness about an issue, such as AIDS in Africa, and finally ends with someone finally funding and creating change around that issue. One of many reasons I like this issue was that Leivobitz was able to illustrate a very complex issue and unify, visually, a very diverse group of people using a very simple setup comprised of one or two lights, a chair, and some red background paper.

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

The internet, inparticular the idea of “new media” has become an integral part of the lives of journalists, with a wide range of results. New media and its impact on journalists and media outlets as a whole has more than enough content to devote three blogs to entirely, so that is a subject that this blog won’t quite jump into with both feet just yet. We will, however, head in that direction by posting this video by professor Michael Wesch of Kansas State University through which he tries to visualize the ideas and concepts of Web 2.0.

The video itself is cool enough, but what I really like is the way Dr. Wesch took a very intangible subject and by thinking outside of the box was able to use the web to make the idea of Web 2.0 tangible to a viewer.

Intro and Favorites

Before this blog gets too involved I wanted to introduce myself, my name is Jim Winn and I have the large task of taking over the position of Photo Adviser to the Kentucky Kernel following Dave LaBelle’s stay at UK.

With that out of the way, I wanted to get things started by posting a video made by one of my favorite photographers at the moment, Chase Jarvis. Chase Jarvis and his team out of Seattle, Wa., have made a name for themselves as a group that goes the extra mile to make a really lasting image, somethings we will be striving for each day at the University of Kentucky. Keeping with that theme, Jarvis’s latest video shows his technique for using remote cameras to make really innovative, recognizable images. For more Jarvis videos and his thoughts on commercial photography check out his blog by clicking Here.

To learn more about the gear he uses to make this happen, and still picks showing how to set it up, click Here.

Welcome!

Welcome to the informal home of UK Photojournalism on the web. This blog will evolve and grow over the next year as the real heart of UK PJ, the students, continue to emerge as strong, young photojournalists.

To help fuel that growth this blog will feature all manner of things that inspire, feed and push visual creativity. Through the year it will also serve to both showcase the work these students create and open it to critique from the outside world. UK is very fortunate to have Kentucky’s only daily student paper, and to see our students work on a daily basis please stop by the Kentucky Kernel.