Cliff Edom with his wife Vi. © Rich Clarkson / Rich Clarkson & Assoc.

I never attended the University of Missouri, but Cliff began the Missouri Workshops as an adjunct to his teaching in those years. And for some reason, he invited me as one of the instructors when I was in very early career at the Topeka Capital-Journal. He became a great friend and inadvertent mentor, for he was one of the most important leaders in the emergence of serious photojournalism in this country.

But the Missouri Workshops were the cornerstone of his teaching, for they brought together some ten of the top photojournalists and picture editors and major magazine editors in the country for a week of intense boot strap teaching for some 50 “students:” who had to produce a picture story in some new small Missouri town every year. The faculty members were Cliff’s assemblage of people he thought had something to offer and they ranged from the editor-in-chief of the National Geographic to the fledgling director of photography of the Topeka Capital-Journal (that was me) and a variety of LIFE magazine photographers and winners in Pictures of the Year. (He also founded the contest!)

It was there I experienced the value of team-teaching which features a variety of tastes, specialties and job descriptions that brought together one of the most effective teaching experiences possible.

Which these days at our workshops, is exactly the philosophy. Team-teaching with instructors with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. It is key in why our workshops are unique. And as everyone who attends tells us, separates our workshops from all others.

Thanks to Cliff Edom.

• News Photographer Magazine featured a select group of faculty members from last fall’s Photography at the Summit workshop in the March issue.  Extensive interview Q&A stories were featured with the extensive words of William Albert Allard, Jodi Cobb, Tom Mangelsen, Jay Maisel, and Rich Clarkson. They are accompanied by full page portraits by photographer and Sports Workshop faculty, Joey Terrill.
• Brad Smith, senior sports photo editor for The New York Times, came away as an unprecedented winner of first, second and third prizes in the sports picture editing category of  NPPA’s Best of Journalism competition announced April 24.  Never have all three awards gone to a single person.  Brad is a key faculty member at the Sports Photography Workshop — where he candidly announces each year that he is there looking for new talent.  In addition to being one of the best instructors.
• Jodi Cobb, longtime National Geographic photographer and Summit Workshop regular, is the recipient of the 2012 Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism.  The medal is the highest honor at the School or Journalism (which Jodi attended). Previous elite recipients included Tom Brokaw, Winston Churchill, Walter Cronkite and Christiane Amanpour.
• Summit Workshop faculty, MaryAnne Golon, was named the Director of Photography at the Washington Post. She is renowned for her many years of astounding work as both Deputy and Director of Photography at Time magazine. Prior to that, she was director of photography of U.S. News & World Report.
• Thomas Mangelsen, a regular and local of the Jackson Hole Summit Workshop, won Conservation Photographer of the Year for his ‘Polar Bear and Cubs’ photograph from Manitoba, Canada that is featured above.

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In the photograph Thomas Hoepker took on 11 September 2001, a group of New Yorkers sit chatting in the sun in a park in Brooklyn.

Behind them, across brilliant blue water, in an azure sky, a terrible cloud of smoke and dust rises above lower Manhattan from the place where two towers were struck by hijacked airliners this same morning and have collapsed, killing, by fire, smoke, falling or jumping or crushing and tearing and fragmentation in the buildings’ final fall, nearly 3,000 people.

Ten years on, this is becoming one of the iconic photographs of 9/11, yet its history is strange and tortuous. Hoepker, a senior figure in the renowned Magnum photographers’ co-operative, chose not to publish it in 2001 and to exclude it from a book of Magnum pictures of that horribly unequalled day.

Only in 2006, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, did it appear in a book, and then it caused instant controversy. The critic and columnist Frank Rich wrote about it in the New York Times. He saw in this undeniably troubling picture an allegory of America’s failure to learn any deep lessons from that tragic day, to change or reform as a nation: “The young people in Mr Hoepker’s photo aren’t necessarily callous. They’re just American.”

In other words, a country that believes in moving on they have already moved on, enjoying the sun in spite of the scene of mass carnage that scars the fine day.

Indeed, I can’t help thinking the five apparently unmoved New Yorkers resemble the characters in the famous 1990s television comedy Seinfeld, who in the show’s final episode are convicted under a Good Samaritan law of failing to care about others.

To read more, visit their website here.

© 2012 Copyright Thomas Hoepker/Magnum

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Like Kent Kobersteen, I have spent much of my professional life moving on from an early role as staff photographer to a director of photography. My time spanned two successful newspapers and eventually, the National Geographic Society.

It included working as a contract photographer for a news weekly and the nation’s premier sports magazine, as well as the editor of a number of books and photographic projects. So from both sides of the fence, my career has been about the business of getting good pictures and then using them well.

So what did I learn in these various stages? And what should all photographers know?

This is about what directors of photography do, and how to use them well.

First, a director of photography is your friend — and your spokesman, your salesman and often, your mentor. But he is a middleman. His job lies between you, and the users of your work, along with a picture editor and various other layers of editors whose job it is to combine the visuals with words. It is a very competitive environment.

Some managing editors are brilliant manipulators of all the elements to tell a story most effectively, but often they can use help. Dealing with various magazine editors over the years, often a scene of negotiations and compromises.

To read the rest of the article, go to The Photo Society.

The Photo Society is a collaboration blog of National Geographic photographers, their work, and their opinions.

With that, Charlie Rose and CBS News This Morning gave him some airtime this year on the Monday morning of the Championship game.

Take a look below on the insider’s look into the mind of the ‘Legendary Final Four photog’ Rich Clarkson.

The Kansas City star newspaper also profiled Rich in their story on Kansas’ Final Four win. Take a look here.

Hill had learned his lesson 25 years earlier, when he had last was on a safari as a student.

Back then, he was armed with a basic camera and a couple of lenses. The result was lots of images with plenty of big game — all of which looked very far away.

Those photos are now in a box somewhere…

Hill has learned his lesson that photographing  a safari takes more than just creative composition. It takes a combination of logistics, equipment, luck, and more.

Hill who has been part of our Summit faculty was featured in a full-page story in the New York Times where he gave hints on how to make a three-day trip to Kenya produce memorable pictures.

2012 Copyright James Hill for The New York Times

With nearly 11,000 entries from all 50 states and foreign countries, a prestigious judging panel of over 500 accomplished industry professionals uphold the historical standard of excellence that Telly represents.

Our 2011 Sports Photography Workshop promotional video won a Silver Telly, the highest honor, as well as a Bronze Telly for Editing.

Less than 10% of entries are chosen as Winners of a Silver Telly.

Take a look at our Sports Workshop promo below:

 

]]> http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=784 0 http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=776 http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=776#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:03:19 +0000 Rich Clarkson http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=776 For the many years I’ve been employing photographers and picture editors, I have always used internships to “discover” developing talent — in addition to providing some valuable training for early-career would-be professionals. In our Denver-based company, we have used a series of interns, most of which have gone on into good professional careers.

Over the years, college students or recent graduates that I have hired include Carl Davaz (now associate editor of the Eugene Register-Guard), Jim Richardson (now a regular National Geographic photographer), Dave Peterson (winner of two Pulitzer Prizes later at the Des Moines Register), Damian Strohmeyer (now a Sports Illustrated lead photographer),  Jim Ryun (winner of world records in the mile, half mile, 1500, and 800 meters — and an Olympian), Susan Ford (then the daughter of President Gerald Ford who was accompanied by six Secret Service agents) and Chris Johns (now editor-in-chief of the National Geographic magazine).

Most went on to fulltime positions on the staff I directed at the time. Three of our current Denver staff began as interns — Steve Nowland, Chris Steppig, and Matt Sewick — all key employees of our group now. Just a little hint at what kind of aspiring individuals that come to take an internship.

]]> http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=776 0 http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=773 http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=773#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:33:54 +0000 Matt Sewick http://www.photographyatthesummit.com/blog/?p=773 In a notable career shooting primarily for Life and Sports Illustrated, Bill Eppridge has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career–the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles.

His photography has won numerous awards and has appeared in traveling exhibits throughout the world. He has taught photojournalism at Yale University, the Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, Barnstorm: The Eddie Adams Workshop, Rich Clarkson’s Photography at the Summit, and Sportsshooter Workshop.

When his family lived in Richmond, Virginia at the end of WWII, a man with a pony came to the Eppridge household one day and offered his photographic services.

Bill Eppridge, who was about 10 at the time, got out his Brownie Starflash 620 camera and posed with it. “I started thinking, ‘this guy doesn’t have a bad job.

He gets to travel, meets some interesting people and he’s even got a pony.’” As a young boy, he waited for the mailman to deliver Life magazine every week, and always enjoyed the photographs by David Douglas Duncan, Robert Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. “I was fascinated by this work and I felt that it affected the people who looked at these pictures.”

He was also moved by Joe Rosenthal’s image of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima. “Over the years, I thought there was some power with this medium. If you can do a couple of good things for people in your life, then you’ve lived a good life,” he remarks.

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To read more about Eppridge, continue the article at PhotoWorkshop.com.

Photo copyright 1964 TIME. All rights reserved.

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