Coming to the Mountain: Educating the next generation of storytellers

• Posted By: Jeremiah Bogert
• Posted On: 4:15 p.m. | November 1, 2012

by Rick Loomis, Los Angeles Times

Kentucky calls me home every year.  The funny thing is that I’m not from there.  But every year for the last 10 years, I still go. In theory I go there to teach, but in reality I go there to recharge.  The Mountain Workshop is the place and my role is that of a photo coach.

I go because as a young photojournalism student at Western Kentucky University I attended the same workshop not once, but twice.  My profound experiences during those times opened my eyes way beyond just improved photographic techniques.  I learned about drive. I learned about work ethic. I learned about heart.  This year I returned once again to try to pass this on as it had once been passed on to me.

The workshop is a unique learning environment for photography students as well as experienced pros.  For 37 years, the Mountain Workshop has been held in a different, small Kentucky town.  This year it was in Henderson, Ky., a scenic town along a bend in the Ohio River that was exploding with full fall colors.

Fifty-three students — some shooting video and some shooting still images — descended on the town for an intense week of honing their craft. A dedicated team of professional educators, writers, editors and photographers — all unpaid and doing it for the right reasons – came from all over the country to make certain the students got what they came for.

The week begins with the famed hat draw where each student makes a mad dash to draw a pre-researched story idea from a hat.  This piece of paper, with merely a sentence or two on it, will be their focus for the entire week.

Students are divided among the coaches and I am assigned six of them. My goal is to prepare these future storytellers, encouraging them to sharpen their skills, to be ethical and to pursue the important stories with a tenacious zeal.  I urge them to be curious, to shoot with their minds and their hearts.  I push them to push themselves – to get out of their own comfort zones.

They worked hard. Typically, we were the last group there each night intently discussing tactics, techniques and strategies until 2 or 3 in the morning as we poured through the days take of images.  And each morning, they all dutifully got out of bed after just a few hours of sleep to make use of the first light, that golden hour, to photograph their story subjects.

Meanwhile, my wife, Liz O. Baylen, also a photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times (yes, it runs in the family) was in a separate wing of the operation working with multimedia students.  Some days she would make my 2 a.m. departure from “work” look insignificant as she spent the entire night up working with students to make certain that their projects would come to fruition.

“It’s an extremely intense week.  We start off going over the art of video storytelling in a classroom environment, then we expect them to go out in the field and put these practices into effect,” Baylen said.  “It’s a lot to absorb in a short amount of time, and it’s exhilarating to see what they are able to accomplish and how much they grow from Day One to Day Five.”

At times it’s frustrating, trying to drill home basic skills that should be part of the muscle memory of a young photojournalist.  But sometimes you can see the magic happen right in front of you.  The light bulb switches on, and they just come alive, get past the gear, and get to the story.

“The character or subject and the story they tell is always our first priority,” says Tim Broekema, a professor at Western Kentucky University who has played a major role in 28 workshops.  “With so much new technology, video, audio, fancy cameras – the heart of the story has always remained our primary objective.”

In the end, all of the effort by the staff and the students proves worthwhile on the final night.  It’s time for the work of Broekema to shine, for he’s been hard-charging all week to put on one final presentation that showcases the work that was generated during the week.

Broekema chose student Benjamin Brayfield’s video piece about an elderly couple that just got married to close the evening.  Brayfield, an up and coming photojournalist had just started a new job at the Rapid City Journal in South Dakota before coming to the workshop.

“I came hoping to gain clarity when identifying a narrative and intent while reporting the story,” said Brayfield after the week was over and he was back to work. He added that the workshop “refined my vision to work efficiently and push to find the deeper, emotional layer to a story. Future projects will be fueled with purpose, subtly reassuring viewers that they aren’t wasting their time pressing play.”

The week, when it closes, is always as sad for me as it is energizing. And the work generated is never anything short of amazing. The final show is just part of what is produced during the week.  There is also a 50-image gallery that returns to the town and hangs somewhere for its residents to see.  Then there is the website, www.mountainworkshops.org , a living, breathing historic record of small-town Kentucky. There is the book, with stories and images designed onto pages and ready to be sent to the printer before the workshop closes.  It’s a beautiful document, one that is often used to help persuade the next small town we want to visit to welcome us with open arms, ready to have their stories told.

As for me, I’ll be back next year, ready to drink from the well once again. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eye on those new faces I met as some of them end up being our interns here at the Los Angeles Times. And I get to see my wife again, unless one or the other of us is busy practicing what we preach.

Samples of the students’ work are in the above gallery as well as Benjamin Brayfield’s video piece.  More work from this and past workshops can be found at www.mountainworkshops.org

Photos: (Top) The madness begins! Students randomly draw their stories from a hat. In one hat are still-photography stories and in the other are multimedia stories. This year, 37 shooting and 16 multimedia participants signed up for the workshops. (Bottom) Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist William Snyder, a native of Henderson, and writing coach Tom Eblen, far right, go over key pointers on the first day.  Eblen is a columnist at the Lexington Herald-Leader and long-time workshop staffer, and Snyder is chair of the photojournalism program at Rochester Institute of Technology. Credit: Nina Greipel