Presentations

Over the last few days I've gotten the opportunity to hear two great photojournalists give presentations - Lauren Greenfield and Brian Storm.

What I took away from both is the amount of time spent on the most successful projects. Storm talked about how photojournalists had worked for 5 to 10 and even up to 16 years on one project. Greenfield also spent significant amounts of time working on her documentary projects.

Greenfield talked about how she got the inspiration for her projects partly from her own teenage years. This made me think about where I get my inspiration from. I had a hard time figuring out the answer to this question, which I think is a problem. I feel like I get most of my story ideas from friends -  I listen to issues they feel strongly about or think are important and I then take on an interest. I think this is good in a sense that I'm learning from other people and using others to brainstorm ideas with me, but I need to find my own passion and what I want to cover. I think the reason it's hard for me to imagine spending so much time on a project is because I've never experienced a passion to do so.

I'm not quite sure how to remedy this. A reading we did in capstone last week was very interesting and I think it will greatly help me in the search for stories. It was about coming up with ideas, and since this is the hardest part of photojournalism for me, I found it very interesting and informative. I hope I am able to start using these tips to help advance my photojournalism.