Curtain falls after 9 sessions on Electronic Photo Workshop

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In many ways the ninth Electronic Photojournalism Workshop ended the way the first workshop began eight years ago on Martha's Vineyard, with a large group of curious journalists exploring the latest technology.

The ninth workshop, held here Sept. 10-17, was the last. The National Press Photographers Association and the Poynter Institute for Media Studies recently announced that next year's workshop will be a hybrid, combining the annual NPPA Digital conference and EPW, to be held Aug. 30-Sept. 4, 1998, in Poynter's home town, St. Petersburg, Fla.

The new conference, the Visual Edge '98, will incorporate the best of EPW, Digital and Poynter.

"When NPPA came on the digital scene, newspapers and magazines were struggling with the new technology," said NPPA President David Lutman, a free-lance photographer from Louisville, Ky. "Now the learning curve has run its course. Both Digital and EPW needed a renaissance.

"At the same time, Poynter was looking to direct a course on new technology. It's really a natural thing for all three groups to come together into one major event. EPW has served to educate the photographer, Digital has served to educate photo managers and Poynter has brought to the table editors, publishers, reporters -- those who have a direct effect on photojournalism without necessarily being photojournalists.

"The potential synergy could be fantastic. Instead of each group focused exclusively on their area of expertise, they will be able to see challenges and solutions across the newsroom," Lutman said.

The new multimedia workshop and convention will be sponsored by the Visual Edge Group and the National Press Photographers Association. A six-person board will govern the newly formed workshop. Board members are: Kenny Irby of Poynter, Steve Rice of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis, Karl Kuntz of the Columbus Dispatch, John Davidson of the Dallas Morning News, Mike Jenner of the Bakersfield Californian and Ellen LoCurto, executive director of the NPPA.

Going, going, gone digital
This year's workshop, hosted by the Columbus Dispatch, was the first one where all assignments were shot on digital cameras.

The filmless photographs were included in one or more of the workshop's publications: the 32-page Electronic Times, the newspaper printed at the end of the workshop; the NPPA web site, http://www.sunsite.unc.edu/NPPA/epw/, and a CD-ROM.

At EPW5, some forward-thinking staff members made Adobe PDF files of the newspaper pages and posted them on the Web. Similar PDF files are available at this year's site.

Leaving film behind "was an easy thing to do," said Mick Cochran, workshop design coach and editor for technology and development at the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin.

"It wasn't hard to go to digital this year -- we have the ability to view contact sheets on the computer, which has been a weakness in the past," Cochran said. "This year the users had a good way to keep their images after the workshop was over."

The workshop was organized in 1989 to help photographers and editors explore the new technology of electronic imaging. That first workshop had many more challenges than did EPW9 because the technology has advanced so rapidly.

Cindi Christie, a co-chair of EPW9 who attended that first workshop on Martha's Vineyard, remarked on the evolution of the workshop over eight years.

"The tone of the newsroom was remarkably calm this year," said Christie, photo editor at the Contra Costa Times in Contra Costa, Calif. "Kind of a laid-back crowd.

"The first (workshop) was new to many of the faculty and the participants. We kind of made it up as we went along. There were software programmers at the workshop sitting on the floor writing PostScript code. And it took two hours to RIP a page.

"Here, although we have a more well-planned workflow, there still have been plenty of learning opportunities as we continue to use pre-release software. Because I just feel like everything here is too normal. Everything works too well. We need to push it more. I was really happy that the suppliers believed in our goal of creating an all-digital newspaper and supported it with their equipment."

The strength of the workshop is that journalists can use the latest technology in a hands-on environment. This year's workshop drew more than 100 journalists from the United States and several foreign countries. On the first day, a ballroom in the Adam's Mark Hotel was converted into a makeshift newsroom with the help of about a dozen suppliers.

It's the suppliers' hardware and software that makes up the technology of the workshop. This year more than a dozen digital cameras were provided by the suppliers which allowed the workshop to be shot filmless.

Servings on the Web
For the fourth year in a row, the workshop incorporated an on-line component which included photographers and web designers creating stories that appeared on the Web and not in the Electronic Times.

Classes were provided in basic HTML before the teams were named and assignments given. A web photographer was paired with a web designer and given an assignment.

Once the story was shot and edited, the designer and photographer worked with a web design coach to create a story board. The designer, with the photographer's help, then executed the design.

The most comprehensive project on the web site is a series of stories completed on High Street in Columbus. Spanning the city from one end to the other, High Street cuts across several neighborhoods. Three photographers and three web designers were assigned to tell the story of High Street with photos and audio. The result was an elegant cross-section of Columbus, Ohio's state capital.

The intent of the workshop's on-line component was to give working print journalists an opportunity to get hands-on experience working with photo stories on the Web.

"I got the knowledge I need to deliver the news as fast as we can do it, both on the print and the web side," said Chris Clark, a workshop web photographer from the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press. "I'm a print photographer and that was my emphasis coming in, but I've also been exposed to the on-line newspaper world.

"Not being a frequent browser of the Web, I'm a little hesitant to say that I want all my photos published like that. But at the same time it's a very efficient and clean way to produce our product."

"I thought it would be a good opportunity to combine the print, video and web side, which is what I do at work. I want to take the information back and improve what we are doing," said EPW web designer John Williams, a multimedia producer for Philadelphia Online, the web site of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

"I like the fact that everyone is really working together for a common goal. There are real products that come out of it, unlike other workshops. I would definitely come back because this is a medium that changes every year."

"I came to the workshop to learn and find the new technology for print. I found that and more. It's incredible what goes on in this place in a week," said Herbert Mabuza. assistant news editor for pictures at the Sunday Times in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"I came here to find out about digital technology and imaging. I don't know that there's a better place to find everything under one roof. The sessions that you have with people are very useful and helpful. The thing about this place is that it's not theory, it's practical. I think that people don't realize what you can get out of Photoshop. It has a lot of potential."

Every year the workshop exceeds the previous year in accomplishments because the level of understanding of the users and the technology itself improves. Although EPW was not designed to end after nine sessions, perhaps it is not a coincidence that in its last year, all work was shot with digital cameras.

Next year's hybrid workshop at Poynter will continue to push the technology envelope while perpetuating an evolutionary event that brings journalists and technology together.

-- Jeff Adams

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved.