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Q and A
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.
Project Colombia instructor Charlotte Kesl – www.
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.
Here at liveBooks, we love providing creative professionals with the tools they need to express themselves, their brand, and their work. We are starting up a new weekly series where we will feature a different liveBooks website each week with details from the site’s owner about what went into its creation. We look forward to seeing the amazing things each of our clients can do with their liveBooks site!
This week we are featuring Mike Adrian, a destination wedding photographer who travels throughout Hawaii, California, Mexico, and Canada.
Q: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?
MA: Clean, Elegant, Romantic.
Q: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?
MA: Photos need to represent a powerful moment of connection between the couple. I want potential clients to be able to place themselves in the photo – let them feel that this can be their moment too.
Q: How often do you update your website?
MA: Photos are generally updated every three months. Galleries are added or removed based on location, venue, or event style.
Q: What is your favorite feature that liveBooks offers?
MA: The customer support is the best. I can have ideas for the website and the technical team is there to make the ideas become a reality. The ability to update the look and feel of my site based on my business needs is amazing.
Check out more of Mike’s site here: www.mikeadrianweddings.com
Interested in having your website featured? Email us at social@livebooks.com.
Photographer Michael Soluri talks about his exciting new book Infinite Worlds
Posted by Blair StauntonTell us about your book Infinite Worlds: the People and Places of Space Exploration?
Published by Simon & Schuster, Infinite Worlds: the People and Places of Space Exploration, is a coffee-table designed photography book of an historic era in the human and robotic exploration of space involving the Hubble Space Telescope.
Cover of Infinite Worlds Photo by ©michael soluri/Infinite Worlds
In the annals of these kinds of books and American spaceflight, no photographer has ever been extended the degree of quality access into three NASA flight centers for nearly three years to reveal a portrayal of the astronaut crew that essentially saved the Hubble Space Telescope.
In addition to a Foreword by former Senator and legendary astronaut John Glenn, 18 unscripted self-written essays from the Hubble labor force and crew weave a narrative where I seek the humanity in both the human and robotic exploration of space.
How did you come to work in the field of space exploration photography?
I am a fine art documentary and portrait photographer whose interest is the human and robotic exploration of space.
I studied to be a planetary geologist but discovered that I was more interested in the visual qualities of the field rather than impersonal chemistry labs and calculus classes! Once I earned my MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in photography I became an editorial fashion and documentary travel photographer. I worked in Brazil, Italy and New York. Over the years I collected, edited and studied decades of space-themed images for my own interest and for various publications, and that led me to more substantive portrait and documentary work on American space exploration.
©michael soluri/Infinite Worlds
In 2004 I photo-edited and co-authored What’s Out There – a visually themed index on astronomical phenomena – and I even got Stephen Hawking to write the Foreword. While working on documenting the people and places of NASA’s New Horizons mission to the Pluto system in 2005, I discovered that the servicing mission to the Hubble would be reinstated.
Ultimately, Infinite Worlds evolved out of these chance occurrences. History was unfolding and I wanted to discover the meaning and art in human and robotic spaceflight.
How and why did you begin documenting the effort of those prepping for the last Hubble servicing mission?
I didn’t begin this project with a book in mind. It began as an editorial story for Discover magazine that started with an unprecedented three-hour portrait session of the STS125 shuttle crew. From that I earned the trust of the crew as well as the NASA engineers and scientists who were creating, training and managing this multi-year mission to save the Hubble.
As a photographer what inspires you?
I would point to Kubrick’s “2001, a Space Odyssey” as a transcendent life experience. My inspiration for Infinite Worlds was a product of many interests (films, short stories, music, history of art and photography, science) and a personality driven to always want to be behind the scenes.
As a photographer, my early influences continue to be my inspiration: the works of Cartier-Bresson, August Sander, Aaron Siskind, Walker Evans and Irving Penn.
©michael soluri/Infinite Worlds
What did you find to be most challenging about putting together a book of this nature?
The time, patience and discipline to know why I wanted to tell this story, as well as being able to edit 3 years worth of work into a visually coherent narrative.
How did you compile the essays? Why did you decide to include them?
The notion for stories written by various individuals in the shuttle and Hubble labor force was influenced by Working, a remarkable book written in 1972 by the Chicago based broadcaster Studs Terkel. He wrote about people talking about their work and how they felt about doing it, an approach that felt like verbal snapshots. As I got to know the people behind the STS125 mission better I would often find myself in a discussion with one of the crew and support staff. I loved hearing them speak about their work in an unscripted way.
During the subsequent months when I was beginning the daunting task of editing years of photographs, the notion of individuals from the labor force writing their own story became a significant element in planning Infinite World’s narrative. The 18 story-tellers recalled many common memories and had many individual stores, but the common thread was the need to make a contribution to an end result larger than themselves.
Photo by ©michael soluri/Infinite Worlds
Based on your experience please describe what goes into getting a book published?
Tenacity is crucial. Although I had a project based on exclusive access, I needed to know my story and that took about two years to develop. I also needed a marketing plan – to identify my audience and what my plan would be for exhibitions and magazine articles. A New York-based literary agent was critical to having the contacts at the various publishing houses. My initial proposals were ultimately shot down.
This caused me to look at myself and think about how I could tell this story in a more compelling way. Seeing Hertzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” — a documentary film about the oldest human-painted images in the Chauvet Cave of France, as well as my documentation of the space shuttle’s flame trench beneath its launch pad, helped to reveal the narrative sub-text: time, distance and light.
About a year and a half later Simon & Schuster made an offer. Creating the book took two years. It involved collaborating with the production department to achieve the quality we ultimately experience in Infinite Worlds. It also involved an enormous amount of work with my editor, the art department, copy editor and the marketing and promotion folks.
Realizing the mutual marketing benefits, photo industry support was critical. As a result, I am grateful for Canon, Moab Paper, Eizo, Chimera Lighting and liveBooks.
How has your website helped your business? How has it helped this project?
I chose liveBooks because I could have a custom designed site and a web hosting relationship responsive to my evolving communication needs. I couldn’t be happier with the collaboration and the responses I receive from the print and electronic media, aerospace industry and art community. Currently Infinite Worlds is my most visible project, so design flexibility to respond to the marketing of my book was essential and liveBooks provides that flexibility.
What other events are you doing in conjunction with the book release?
There are many events that will provide varying degrees of visibility. The holiday season and the run up to and through the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope in April 2015 will provide many public and exhibition venues.
My ten-year project portraying the people and places of NASA’s New Horizon’s Pluto mission will come to it’s crescendo beginning in spring 2015 when the probe passes within thousands of miles of Pluto and its moons. I’ll be there photographing the project scientists and flight controllers.
In addition I will be speaking at the IMAX theater at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science on January 21st, the National Air & Space Museum on February 13th and the Smithsonian Institute on April 11th. Exhibitions of my work are currently at the Kennedy Space Center’s Atlantis pavilion, in Hubble @25 at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, and in Outside the Spaceship: 50 years of Extra-Vehicular Activity.
Additional information on media and events may be found on my (liveBooks) custom designed website www.michaelsoluri.com.
Photographer Claire Rosen shares her most memorable moment from 2013 and her main goal for 2014
Posted by liveBooksWhat was your most memorable moment this past year?
Taking an overnight train from Budapest to Bucharest…
What is your main goal for 2014?
To find gallery representation in NYC.
What is it that keeps you picking up your camera everyday?
Admittedly it’s not “everyday” but the adventures that my camera allow me to have keeps me picking it up as often as possible!
Series: Pre-Raphaelite, 2013
Locality: Bucharest, Romania
Fashion Story
Credits: Model – Marta mraModels, Styling – Raluca Racasan, Hair – Claudiu Alex Sarghe, Makeup – Irina Selesi, Location – Institutul de Arheologie
Connect with Claire and view more of her work on her photography website.
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