A Fair Day at the Fair

For the last nine years I’ve lead some sort of a workshop every semester for my advanced photojournalism students. This past weekend, we tackled something new – a 16 hour day at the Georgia National Fair and the Macon Telegraph posted a massive gallery of 265 images in addition to a section front (seen at left).

There are really two big challenges to putting on these workshops – how to fund it and who to bring in. The fiscal problem was solved by my colleague Diane Murray who first found a grant from the University of Georgia’s Office of Service-Learning and then put us up on the university’s crowd funding site. (I could write many, many things about the crowd funding aspect – looking at the donors and seeing how many are alums from the program really made me feel good.)

The second issue hasn’t been much of an issue, either – the willingness of regional professionals to donate their time to my kids never ceases to amaze me. The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer’s Mike Haskey, Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Grant Blankenship and independent photojournalists and educators Sara Corce, Minla Shields and Billy Weeks all donated their time.

Special thanks goes to the Telegraph’s Woody Marshall, though. I sent him one email late on a Thursday last month and by noon the next day, we had a workshop. He’ll shy away from taking the credit, that he just made a few phone calls, but because of the relationships he has built over the years this event took place. I cannot thank him enough for his help.

Very proud of the work ethic, attitude and images my kids produced. More than a fair day in the end.

Now, on to the next one, which will be our (ahem) Tenth Annual UGA Photojournalism Weekend Workshop in the spring.