Momenta Workshops offers a variety of workshops from one-day business skills seminars, to personalized multimedia training, to their popular Project Series: Working with Nonprofits workshops in collaboration with Leica Camera. By helping storytellers expand their skills, Momenta explores how to harness that passion into social change. The workshops seek to train attendees to witness the world in a new way and use their camera as a force of change.

Jamie Rose is Founding Partner and Director of Workshops for Momenta, which specializes in photography, video, and multimedia workshops around the globe. Prior to the founding of Momenta, Jamie worked as an international photojournalist on five continents, won awards and grants for her documentary photography, and was contracted with some of the world’s largest media and nonprofit organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Global Fund, and Doctors Without Borders, among others.

JR: The Momenta Workshops staff has wrapped up our 2014 year with our final workshop on business skills during the FotoDC festival, and our lineup for 2015 is going to be outstanding! If you are interested in nonprofit photography, we have two domestic workshops in 2015: Project New Orleans in April and Project San Francisco in September. Over the course of these five-day workshops, we assign each student to a different local nonprofit to create a photo or a multimedia piece about the organization’s mission. Project New Orleans fills up to capacity every year and is held in the most rollicking city in the US. This is the first year for our San Francisco workshop, and interest is very high for working with the city by the Bay. Additionally, if you want to get out of the country and work with international nonprofits next year, our two very special workshops overseas are Project Colombia and Project Sierra Leone. Each student will work with a deserving nonprofit and use their photography as a force of social change. Throughout the two-week workshop, students will have life-changing experiences, make powerful visual stories, and create connections with their subjects in foreign countries that will last for years to come. If you just want a quick boost of business skills, we recommend The Business of Nonprofit Photography one-day workshop series, where we explore the ins-and-outs of making money working for nonprofits. These workshops will take place at Leica stores in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2015. Finally, Leica sponsors all of our nonprofit workshops, one of the best perks of our Project Workshop Series. Students may check out a Leica camera to work on their nonprofit photo story. And truly, nothing beats the Leica M system for documentary coverage. Our students create beautiful photo stories with Leicas every year during these workshops.

 

Q: Are your workshops geared more toward being creative or improving one’s technical skills? Or both?

JR: I’d say both, plus one extra. Yes, we focus on storytelling and the creative process. However, many of our students are looking for a deeper learning experience with Momenta than just shooting tips. Many established professionals come on our workshops strictly for the one-on-one feedback during their daily, one-hour editing sessions with an instructor. They seek an environment where they can network with like-minded peers and dive into concepts with editors to help them find a fresh outlook on their work.

However, Momenta’s model doesn’t just stop at the creative and technical. We also have a series of lectures on building business skills necessary to work with nonprofits and be sustainable in today’s competitive marketplace. We want students to learn to be successful in both their craft and their business.



 

JR: We keep our workshops small with a personal touch and limit our workshops to less than 10 a year. We don’t have a desire to be a huge company with tons of products. We focus on quality documentary training in real-world situations with an outstanding team of instructors. By keeping our workshops limited to 15 or fewer attendees and as many as five instructors on our longer workshops, we maintain an intimate learning experience. We focus on each student’s individual goals during daily 1-on-1 editing sessions, instead of herding everyone into group edits. We balance this with nightly sessions that include discussions, slideshows, and presentations that help to bolster inspiration in a group atmosphere. At orientation, we tell our students, “It is your workshop.” And we mean it. Students and staff work together to craft each person’s experience for the best outcome for their goals. Our alumni will back up that statement. We have a very tight group of past students (many of whom return for multiple workshops) and they have coined themselves the Momenta Family. That network extends far beyond the last day of the workshop, and many have remained friends, shooting buddies, and even have reunions around the world. We pride ourselves in fostering community.



JR: In my personal work with Momenta Creative and as a journalist, I realized the visual needs of nonprofits are not effectively met in many communities. Likewise, we found visual storytellers were hungry to learn about how to shoot for a nonprofit. When we founded Momenta, we chose to focus the majority of our lineup on nonprofit photography training workshops and the public response has proven to be inspiring.

 Nonprofits can communicate their mission and entice donors more easily with custom photographs and video. Furthermore, these organizations have budgets, and many are willing to pay for beautifully-crafted visuals. This is not a market often explored by photographers. Our goal with these workshops is to open the nonprofit world to photographers who may not have realized it existed before, teach them the business skills necessary to work with these organizations and empower them to make thoughtful work that sparks dialogue. We also work with our nonprofit partners to help them realize and value the power of strong visuals.



 Project India student Dana Pugh – www.danapugh.com

 

Q: What are some of the unexpected benefits one might get from attending these workshops?


JR: Three things: Inspirational instructors who are excellent mentors and coaches, extended lectures on developing business skills and a supportive alumni network after the workshop ends. I could add that we have a gang load lot of fun too, but that’s a given!


 

Project India student Chuck Cecil – www.cecilimages.com

Q: What are the most important things for the attendees to realize when they participate in a workshop, to help them get the most out of the experience?


JR: Whether it’s a Momenta workshop or another company’s workshop, an open mind and good attitude is the key to a great experience. We encourage every student to get ready to put in long hours and have a willing approach for creative exploration. One of our founders, Seth Butler, encourages students to “embrace mindfulness” while on the workshop and when shooting in the field. That mindfulness can create great leaps with their work. A Momenta workshop is going to be an intense, exciting experience because students are packing a hefty amount of learning into a short amount of time. However, the payoffs are incredibly rewarding. We remind students to stop, breathe and take a moment to truly soak in the experience and allow themselves to be enlightened by it.



Project India student Robert Dodge – www.robertdodge.com

Q: Was attending workshops instrumental to help you become the photographer that you are now? If so, how did they do that?
JR: 

I still attend workshops! I wouldn’t be where I am today without a commitment to my education, and that isn’t just defined by college. When I was starting out, I took weekend workshops, attended the Northern Short Course every year, and went to specific skills building seminars. The workshops I have attended in the past helped me to grow my knowledge base, network with other photographers, and learn new skills to further my career. Whether you attend a Momenta Workshop or any other learning experience out there, I would encourage photographers to make continuing education a priority every year. It’s a big world, and there are great learning experiences to be had.  We’d welcome any of your readers to join us on one of ours!

Project India student Frank Rohrig – www.frankrohrig.com

To learn more about Momenta’s workshops line up, please visit www.momentaworkshops.com.