THE MOUNTAIN WORKSHOPS

Finally a post about my experiences at the The Mountain Workshops! Well last month from the 16th-23rd I was in Danville, Kentucky participating in the wonderful Mountain Workshops put on by Western Kentucky University. It was a lot different from my only other workshop experience thus far, SportsShooter Academy. We picked photo story ideas out of a hat on the first day and had the remaining days to shoot (600 frames max) a full story from beginning to end. My photo coach was Rick Loomis from the LA Times. I actually was hoping I would get to work with him since he actually interned at The Gazette several years ago and is now a Pulitzer-prize winning photographer and doing big things. We had writing coaches and had to complete a written story and captions as well as shoot the photos. I had a great time. There was an awesome faculty and staff and an incredible amount of resources available at our disposal. Danville was a wonderful place to be and we topped it off with a great party the Sunday night after we closed that didn’t end till about 7am Monday morning. I made lots of contacts and a few good friends out of it. I’ll admit my story wasn’t really a loaded situation and proved to be a bit difficult, but I did my best and learned a ton. On Friday, halfway through our stay in Danville, Loomis came up to me and said, “Hey, you’re gonna go up in a plane?” They arranged for someone to go up in an airplane and shoot some aerial shots of the area and I was who they chose. I was excited to say the least. I quickly went back to the hotel and put in my contacts and headed to the tiny airstrip in town. A young pilot introduced me to the tiny two-seater Cessna that we would be flying in, a prop job with high wings and no wiggle room. Paired with one of the windiest days of the year, it would prove to be quite a ride. Within about 5 minutes of shooting my right contact flew out of my eye and I was forced to shoot with my left eye. It was definitely an experience I’ll never forget. I’m looking forward to having the opportunity to conquer more of these workshops soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 7:11 PM. It is filed under Personal Work and tagged with adventure, aerials, airplane, Carbone's, Danville, documentary, education, Kentucky, pets, Sports, stories, The Mountain Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.