The 2024 Picture Kentucky Photojournalism Workshop, held in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, featured two new coaches, alumni and University of Kentucky students.
UK School of Journalism and Media Associate Professor David Stephenson has directed the Picture Kentucky Workshop (PKY) since 2009.
The program was founded by then-advisor of the Kentucky Kernel, Chris Poore, and the paper’s photojournalism advisor, Dave LaBelle in 2004, according to Stephenson.
“I’ve been involved from the beginning because I was at that time a photojournalist at the Herald-Leader and so they tacked me to come and help in those first years,” Stephenson said.
From Oct. 23-26, five photojournalists from a variety of local newspapers and institutions including The Tennessean, The Indianapolis Star, Mirror Indy, Tuscaloosa News and the Indiana University Health Hospital, became the professional guides of UK students in the work of visual documentary storytelling.
Students who could obtain credit for a UK journalism class by going to the workshop did not have to pay for it, only for housing and food, but the tuition fee is usually $250, according to the PKY website.
Coach Grace Hollars, a visual journalist from The Indianapolis Star, and Jenna Watson, art director at Mirror Indy and PKY 2013 alumna, were new faces in the workshop.
As a junior at Kent State University, Watson said she did not feel she had achieved a comprehensive practice of photo storytelling and Picture Kentucky came as a way to “push her off the edge.”
“My coach at the time…was Matt Detrich, who is still a coach, and so he helped me make the right career move, I ended up at (Indy) Star too,” Watson said. “It’s kinda how my career launched…and it’s pretty crazy to look back.”
As a tradition, on day one students drew story ideas out of a skull bucket containing the names of their photo story subjects, a short description of who the person is and does, a phone number and an address, according to Stephenson.
From then on, participants worked directly with their respective coaches before going into the field and crafted their stories for the next four days, Stephenson said.
According to Stephenson, critique sessions were usually held at night when students gathered enough work to present and edit their photos alongside their coaches.
Coached by Tennessean photographer Nicole Hester, Ava Bumgarner, a senior journalism major, said her story was about a group of friends originally from Oregon and Washington who created the Vertigo Bungee, a bungee jumping company and club at Young’s High Bridge in Lawrenceburg.
Bumgarner said she was lowered down off the bridge to get close-ups of the group jumping, focusing mainly on their facial expressions right at the most adrenaline-pumping moment.
“I’m thinking about what is going through their minds,” Bumgarner said. “I get to photograph people bungee jumping…how lucky am I to have this camera in my hand and to be shooting these people and telling their story.”
Others participated as volunteers in the behind-the-scenes by shooting photos and videos while following students along for Picture Kentucky’s social media.
Natalia Garcia, a senior broadcast journalism major, said she was part of the social media team this year as part of her internship.
Garcia said she joined Picture Kentucky in 2023 in Frankfort, Kentucky where she worked on a story about a local woodworker and his role as a father.
Now, working as an intern for Stephenson, Garcia said she has developed new visual storytelling skills.
“I do have a bit of ‘FOMO’ this year not having a story, but it has been really cool to get to talk to all of the coaches and get to know the staff more and learn more the technical side,” Garcia said. “This end has kind of helped me on the back-end of picture taking and posting on Instagram and just learning website work.”
Some coaches said the new group of students in the workshop showed them how to teach photojournalism as a sociology task.
After spending the summer of 2024 covering the Paris Olympics, Hollars said she came at the right time to train students on how to talk to new people from different backgrounds.
“I think after this workshop, these kids are not gonna be scared of anybody. They’re gonna meet Brad Pitt on the street and they will just going to be ‘what’s up,’ they’re going to be buddies. They’re going to talk to the governor like it’s their best friend,” Hollars said.
For some regulars, like Cosby Jr., the director of photography at Tuscaloosa News in Alabama, in his fifth year coaching at Picture Kentucky, teaching a photojournalism mindset is reminding students that this work is not a matter of art.
“Photojournalism is documentation. It has artistic elements to it…but when we say ‘art’ it’s a euphemism. It’s not literal, we’re not going out and making stuff up,” Cosby Jr. said.
According to the PKY website, companies such as Sony, Canon, Tamron and ThinkTank funded most of the program’s equipment alongside internal support from UK Journalism and Media School, the College of Communication and Information and the Kentucky State University Land Grant Program.
Picture Kentucky is the space where students can feel the action in picturing community journalism, according to Stephenson.
“It means to take a deeper look, a longer look, take a documentary approach to it and look for emotional pictures, intimate pictures and just take your time with it,” Stephenson said.
