RANDY COX JOSH BACHMAN ABOVE CODY LOHSE What is your strategy to win graduate coordinator graduate coordinator the Hunger Games? What is your favorite photo app? AVERAGE “Load up on Tootsie Roll Pops “Hipstamatic.” HANNAH STURTECKY What is your spirit animal? in advance, preferably grape.” concierge THE “A grizzly bear.” What is your strategy to win the Hunger ZACH BAKER What is your favorite photo app? CREW “Photoshop Express.” SARAH BELL JOHN HAPPEL nikon assistant What is your spirit animal? What is your favorite photo app? “A spider monkey.” “I just learned Instagram.”

HANNAH BALDWIN printer What is your spirit animal? SHANE EPPING “Honey badger.” multimedia What is your strategy to win the Hunger Games? “Start shooting. (People or pictures)” LOREN ELLIOTT photographer What is your spirit animal? HANY HAWASLY “An emotionally distant multimedia Mother Goose.” What is your spirit animal? “Chameleon because I show no mercy to my prey.”

SARAH ROTHBERG multimedia What is your strategy to win the BEATRIZ COSTA-LIMA Hunger Games? “Get a chainsaw and a samurai What is your strategy to win the Hunger sword and join a group of bad Games? asses.” “I would get a Nikon D4 because I could JUSTIN STEWART take really awesome photos and hit vortex people with it.” DEREK POORE What is your strategy to win the multimedia LAUREN KASTNER Hunger Games? ABBY CONNOLLY LEAH BEANE concierge “To kill the other people so I win. What is your favorite photo app? printer What is your spirit animal? “Dolphin, Thats how you win.” tactical sgt. & printer “VSCO Cam app.” What is your favorite photo app? What is your strategy to because Hannah Baldwin said so.” “Cat Paint.” win the Hunger Games? “I would hide in the trees the whole time.” THE PHOTO WORKSHOP HYPOTHESIS THROUGH THE AGES RESEARCH ENHANCES A modern By Duane Dailey, Co-Director Emeritus the story can be. !at is a hypothesis. It will be con#rmed, or disproven, by the photos you make. !e stories arrived! Wait, just photos are here. We see Huck Finn. !oughtful research improves your chances. You want to scenes from inside Platte City situations that might become MPW 9, stories. go to the right place and time with the right people. !en Hannibal 1957 We see tests of workshoppers’ ideas of stories. No one has enter with open mind, eyes and ears. Your photos must tell a story, only subjects and situations. Now comes the testing, us something true. Bill Ray said he was the critical heart of this workshop. Some will look at your photo and see wheat, others see looking for a “modern” MPW aims to show “Truth with a camera.” Cli" Edom weeds. So each photo needs words to clarify, explain or Huck Finn when he brought us a crazy idea. Before photography begins, let’s do a$rm. found this young subject research by looking and asking questions with feet on the As you work, gather words to write a story and a caption at MPW 9 in Hannibal ground. for each #nal select. Take names and people’s metadata. in 1957. From that you get an idea to test as a possible story. It is what Bill Kuykendall and I brought to the process. Let’s be Friday night, you’ll need those notes. If you do a good job In an email exchange scienti#c and form a hypothesis about what happens here. of gathering words and hypothesizing your photo story will with MPW Co-Director In workshop terms, give a story summary. Randy Olson improve. Jim Curley about that showed what a well-prepared student can do. A single !is system worked in the past. I hypothesize it will work workshop Ray wrote: declarative sentence will amaze your faculty. Let them see a in Platte City. story in your words. As Scott Sines says, a rambling “wah, If lucky, your hypothesis will be proven true. An apple wah, wah” won’t do. “The Photo Workshop will fall on your head. You’ll be a genius. in Hannibal in 1957 To go with the photos seen last night, I didn’t hear any changed my life hypothesis. and gave my brief We are story tellers, not picture snappers. !is Hot tips to improve your work: career as a newspaper workshop sorts out the di"erence. 1. Really see. Really hear. Take notes. Take photos. photographer a Every subject has a story. Only a few will amaze, 2. Check your photos to con#rm your hypothesis. springboard into top shock, soothe or educate. Research can sort out 3. A 400-image limit should force thinking before the boring. !at improves your potential. It’s so level of magazine snapping. Follow the rules, don’t delete. simple, why make it so hard? . On When I started the mule project, all mules 4. If you take three photos, one will always be the basis of my work in looked alike to me. An old-timer assured me, better than the others. (Recall the band director.) Hannibal I was offered “No two mules look alike.” !e same applies to 5. In dynamic situations snap away; don’t do that and accepted a staff stories. No two look alike. If I do a farm story, I photographer job at when bored. want the most interesting farm. . 6. People interacting make a story. Driving down a gravel road and pulling into the I drove to Washington 6. Action makes still pictures move. #rst drive will not assure that I will have the best 8. Once you have a photo, wait patiently for the farm story in the county. !at applies to families, Dept of Defense, was garages, barbershops, clinics and care centers. next scene. Structure your story in sub-groups. given a key to the men’s Local folks can help you #nd the best starting List the keepers. Name the chapters. washroom and told to places. 9. Start writing your story now. Don’t wait in in the world and the place I had wanted to work sinice always wear a jacket in When starting, #rst #nd the narrative, the was 12 years old. They offered me freelance work if line, work in line. the hallways. Then I was escorted to meet Melville Bell compelling words. I moved to NY, so I checked into a hotel, called Geo 10. Drop cards early, not just once. Update your Grosvenor. I did not have to report to work for a couple From what you’ve seen and heard, so far, you and quit. Young Huck Finn needs no caption except to faculty, but don’t hang, Go back to work. Or write. of weeks so I hopped in my MG and drove to New should write a simple declarative sentence of what York where I had a “come up and see some time” from say that when I saw him I didn’t walk but ran to get his LIFE magazine, partly on the basis of the workshop. picture. Hope he is alive and well and getting ready to LIFE was the biggest, best & most famous magazine retire.” By Beatriz Costa-Lima, Range!nder Editor

Kansas City Star sta" photographer and MPW PLATTE CITY alumnus Keith Myers was born and raised in Platte City, Mo. FROM THE INSIDE He has vivid memories of hitting small bullets with hammer on the sidewalk by Platte City native Keith Myers talks about his his house with his friends, and accidentally nicking hometown, how it’s changed over the years one of his compatriots in the butt when one of the bullets #red with “not too much power,” Myers said. He remembers hiking past the cemetery and Kansas City Star staff photographer and MPW alumnus Keith Myers plays around exploring the creek to hunt with his many cameras Wednesday Sept. 24, 2014 on Main Street. Myers is a Platte for crawdads. City native. (Photo by Loren Elliott) He remembers when the town was too small to have developments, such as chain businesses and suburban its own police force so it had only a night watchman communities to Platte City. instead. !e quiet town was safe enough for kids Living in Platte City is more a"ordable than living to play in the streets during the day and ride bikes in Kansas City, so many people live in town and around at night. commute to the city for work, Meyer said. Myers and his friends skate boarded to Water Just like any town that grows in size, Platte City lost Tower Hill and went sledding when the snow came. a some of the tight-knit quality of the community, “It was like any other typical small town,” Myers Myers said. said. “Everybody knew everybody’s business because “!at connectedness that you had hack then is everyone saw each other on the street or at church.” being lost,” Myers said. His graduating class had roughly 70 students in it !e Platte City native became interested in and he went to junior high in what is now the Platte photography in high school. His brother bought City Civic Center and also MPW headquarters (he back a few cameras from his time with the navy remembers his shop class being a little to the le% of in Vietnam and Myers shot for his high school the room with all the trophies now.) yearbook. A%er studying business in undergrad On election days, the town would host an ice cream in business, and work with the Social Security social in order to inform all the residents of the Administration, Myers decided to take a career shi%. results. “I didn’t like actually working for a living, but “!at’s how you got the word out about who won,” I thought, ‘well, I like to shoot pictures,’” Myers Myers said. “Back then, there was no radio in town remarked with a laugh. and the newspaper would only come out the next Myers went to MU for graduate school and shot for day.” UPI while staying in Platte County before completing But, times change and Platte City has changed too. his thesis. During his childhood in town, the population was “I enjoy the making of images, the creative roughly 1,100 to 1,200 people. Today, Platte City has challenge it is to telll a story visually.” Myers a population of 5,000 people. Kids have Facebook and commented on the profession of photojournalism. video games instead of the creeks and crawdads. “I enjoy that entré into peoples lives. !ey let you in !e highway to and from Kansas City brought new because they trust that you will be truthful.”