RIT hosts international field of professionals for visual storytelling workshop

Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Art and Design was recently filled with professional photographers, photo editors, journalists, marketers and designers from around the world.  

From June 24-30, RIT hosted The Kalish, an annual intensive workshop that focuses on sharpening editing and visual storytelling skills, in one of the College of Art and Design’s computer labs. Among the attendees and workshop instructors were alumni and faculty of the college’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS).

The Kalish, held since 1989, is designed to lead journalism into the future through its training. RIT has been the home of the workshop since 2015 — and the university is quite the appropriate setting for it, according to Danny Gawlowski, director of The Kalish and assistant managing editor of The Seattle Times.

“RIT is a great place for The Kalish,” Gawlowski said. “There’s so much great synergy between what we’re trying to do in changing the world of journalism in connection with all of the great visual journalism that RIT teaches.

“In the same way that RIT is trying to create students that will become the photo editors at publications across the country, Kalish is partnering with professional picture editors and trying to get them even better at their jobs.”

Gawlowski said participants came from Singapore, China and Brazil in addition to areas across the U.S.

According to Jenn Poggi, assistant professor in SPAS and a faculty member for The Kalish, the diverse backgrounds of The Kalish attendees set the workshop apart from others of its kind. 

In all, the weeklong hands-on, collaborative learning experience saw over 12 Kalish faculty members educate 33 attendees. The workshop featured in-depth discussions and exercises on best practices in editing, producing multimedia and interactive stories, organizing images in multiplatform layouts and lessons in leadership and solving ethical dilemmas.

“(Attendees) learn as much from each other and from their experiences as they do from the faculty,” Poggi said. “It’s learning about the breadth and depth of what’s out there, experientially and the types of jobs and kinds of things that people are up against. It’s a fellowship of people who are likeminded in many ways who are visually driven, who are interested in storytelling and yet come from very unique perspectives and places.”

The workshop attracted five College of Art and Design alumni (as instructors and attendees) back to RIT, including Ken Geiger, who studied photojournalism at RIT. 

Geiger, now a freelance photographer, taught at this year’s Kalish after being a student in the workshop 26 years ago. 

“The industry at large is coming here and focusing its knowledge base resources in one spot and for RIT to be part of that, I think it’s a really good thing,” Geiger said.

Geiger has had a remarkable career, which includes Pulitzer Prize-winning work. He and RIT photojournalism chair William Snyder earned the distinguished honor for their dramatic images of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona for The Dallas Morning News. Before beginning freelance work, Geiger had stints as the director of photography at the Dallas newspaper and later the deputy director of photography for National Geographic. 

Geiger said his RIT education allowed him to develop a wide skillset that extended beyond shooting photographs — which substantially influenced his work and shaped his career.

“RIT gave me the tools in a broad area of things and whether it was meant to happen, I got to use all of those tools,” Geiger said. “… A lot of photojournalism schools don’t teach photography as an art, so that broad education actually afforded me more opportunities than a lot of the photographers on staff.”

Video by Chris Zuppa and Willie Allen, Jr.

In addition to Geiger, Chloe Coleman ’13 (photojournalism) also returned to RIT to teach part of the workshop. Coleman, a photo editor at The Washington Post, has been a workshop regular since 2014.

“Learning the language for discussing visuals with non-visual people in newsrooms and being able to get my thoughts across about why photography is important and adds to the conversation of the story and doesn’t just illustrate it, I think that’s huge,” Coleman said.

Coleman also served as one of three alumni judges for the 2018 “What We Do” photography competition, held annually by RIT’s student chapter of the National Press Photographers Association. The winner of the Picture Editing Research category, JuliAnna Patino ’18 (photojournalism), received a scholarship to attend The Kalish this year. 

“I think it definitely opens a lot of doors in a lot of different ways,” Patino said of her experience. “There’s a clear path for students to attend. The scholarship is one clear path, but it also gives our professors, Jenn (Poggi) and William (Snyder), an opportunity to meet the people here and bring them in for mentorship opportunities or even to come speak with classes so that we can build those relationships.”