Les Rencontres (“Encounters”) is one of the most important photo festivals in the world. It’s organized in Arles in the south of France for 41 years. This year’s edition is made of 60 exhibitions that provide – as the Financial Times’ critic noted — interest for almost every photographic allegiance.

Kinga Kenig and Piotr Wojcik, two photo editors of Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza, went to Arles and shot eight very interesting video interviews with the ehxbitions’ curators and photographers.

Time magazine and iPad

Kira Pollack, photo editors of Time, talks about her experiences with photo essays on the iPad app for the magazine.

“You [have to] look [at iPad] as a new, unique product rather than >>this is our content going on the iPad<<. That’s not going to work. I think it’s really how to make it dynamic, how to make it exciting and really different than the web and different than the print,” says Kira.

Watch an interview (it’s in English with Polish subtitles):

Portraits of consumption

Martin Parr, a documentary photographer famous for his critical look at modern society, shared some secrets of his latest project: “The world is consuming despite the recession… I am going to China this summer to photograph people and beaches there — I have never done that — [and to photograph] the aspirations of people having the fridges, the cars.”

All the faces of Mick Jagger

Francois Hebel, curator of an exhibition of portraits of the Rolling Stones star, explains what’s really difficult in taking pictures of Jagger, a rare celebrity that has such a long relationship with the best photographers in the world.

You can watch all interviews on Gazeta Wyborcza’s photo site called Duzy Kadr (Big Frame).

How were these fotocasts made?

We talk with Kinga Kenig, a photo editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, and a devoted photography blogger.

forum4editors: Kinga, tell me about your visit to Arles. Why did you do these fotocasts?

Kinga Kenig: I’ve been doing interviews with photographers for a few months. I was getting very good feedback not only from people interested in photography. It turns out that people prefer to watch a photographer talking rather than read an interview.

Did you plan to shoot these interviews from start?

Yes, Piotr and I went to Arles with an intention to do short video interviews with photographers and curators during the opening fortnight in July. We spent there 5 days. It was the first time that we were doing such an assignment so we also wanted to check if it would be possible to do interviews, edit them, translate them and publish quickly afterwards. Unfortunately, this turned out to be too ambitious. I think we could have made it if we’d been a team of three.

So what exactly were you doing to achieve this?

During the first 2 days we tried to see all the exhibitions and decide who would be most interesting to interview. There are 60 exhibitions that are spread all around the town. Then we tried to arrange interviews. We also attended symposiums and book signings and night screenings. Altogether, we managed to do nine interviews.

Which interview was the most interesting, intriguing to you?

I really loved the interview with Christian Caujolle who curated the exhibition of a photography collection of Marin Karmitz, a French movie producer. It was one of the best exhibitions of the festival. It was beautifully presented in a church. It was very cinematic and mysterious. We wanted to keep this aesthetics in our video.

Tell me all the bloody details how these fotocasts are really made?

When we were working in Arles, Piotr was responsible for filming and photographing and I was arranging interviews and asking questions. We used two cameras: a camcorder and a camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Most of the video footage that was used comes from Canon. It turned out to be much more beautiful than the one from the camcorder, which I consider too flat.
After we came back I was responsible for editing. It took me around a week to have all videos put together, but I was editing them after work and in my free time, between my regular duties.
We also had to do subtitles and it took a few days. I worked on Final Cut Pro. It is the most popular professional film editing software.

Readers of Gazeta Wyborcza find such photo casts much more often than before. What has changed?

Multimedia work has been present on Gazeta’s website for quite some time, but it is only recently that we’ve had multimedia stories produced by picture editors cooperating with photographers.
Last year Piotr Wójcik, director of photography in Gazeta introduced big changes in picture department. It affected the work of picture editors. He shifted our duties from picture editing, which is now done mostly by editors themselves, to multimedia. We started learning how to use Final Cut Pro and very quickly produced our first multimedia projects. Altogether Gazeta’s website publishes around three such multimedia stories every month.

Which one is your favourite?

The one about the Central Railway Station in Warsaw.

This video interview was shot at the photo festival Les Rencontres d’Arles by two Gazeta Wyborcza’s photo editors Kinga Kenig and Piotr Wojcik (it’s in English with Polish subtitles).

More interviews by Kinga Kenig and Piotr Wojcik with the world’s best photoreporters can be found on Gazeta Wyborcza’s photo site Duzy Kadr (Big Frame).

Eight weeks ago we have launched the School of Photography Masters at Gazeta. All the readers have become its students and the best photo reporters have been telling them how to take better photos, sharing their tips and tricks.

Readers have got eight different tasks and have been submitting photos to Gazeta’s website. Gazeta’s photo editors have been reviewing their works and making comments on the school’s internet blog.

Readers’ engagement has been tremendous. We have collected in total 141,665 photos. They have been submitted by 25 thousand individuals. Most of the school’s students are aged 15-30.

The best photos are published on Monday, Sept. 22nd, 2008, in a printed edition of Gazeta’s feature supplement “Duzy Format” (Large Format). The best citizen reporters are awarded with professional Nikon D60 photo cameras (the main sponsor for this school is Nikon).

Here are some pages featuring the best photos submitted by readers (the front page of the supplement and the first two-page spread of the results):

Introduction to the photo school

Piotr Wojcik, a photo desk editor at Gazeta, officially opened the school on July 18th:

“During the next eight weeks eight great photo reporters will tell you how to take photos, how to look through camera’s lens to see more. We invite you to this unique school of watching and discovering the world that surrounds us.

Our masters of photography covered main political and sports events. Portrayed actors, writers, philosophers, wars and the beauty of nature. They got many prestigious awards. Today every reader and photo amateur can use their experience.

In the next eight weeks we will learn a story behind their best photos. We will learn how to embolden people to make them show in front of the camera their most interesting sides. We will learn how to make light show and not hide what we want. How to make an unique photo on the beach, in the garden, during lazy holidays and even at boring aunt’s birthday.”

Gazeta’s eight masters of photography were Krzysztof Miller, Kuba Atys, Adam Kozak, Adam Wajrak, Piotr Wojcik himself, Anna Bedynska, Jerzy Gumowski and Michal Mutor.

On the school’s first day they told stories behind the photos they are most proud of:

Lessons with masters

Articles related to the school were published on Fridays and Mondays in the printed edition of Gazeta. They were edited by Lukasz Ramlau, an editor working at Gazeta’s “Duzy Format” supplement.

Each lesson at this in-paper school consisted of three elements:

1. An interview with a master about his practice and tips he can share with readers.

Examples: how to learn about a person to make a good portrait? How to be parient enough to take a good photo of wild animals? How to avoid typical photos from holidays and how to show nudity without porn-style shots?

All the interviews were conducted by Magdalena Grzebalkowska, one of Gazeta’s best feature writers.

Her interviews were accompanied by showcases of masters’ works and stories behind their photos.

2. A story about a master of Gazeta’s masters. We were publishing works of the best photographers in the world that inspired Gazeta’s photo reporters and editors.

These galleries became main photo features of our Monday supplement “Duzy Format”.

3. Practical advice how to take better photos.

Examples: how to make a good portrait? How to take photos of kids? How to look at a landscape?

These practical tips were often presented in a simple Does-and-Don’ts way:

Tips and tricks section quickly started to use readers’ photos as examples:

Home works for readers

This unique guide to photography was accompanied by a contest for readers. We asked them to take and submit photos on eight topics:

• Love. Readers had to illustrate a poem written by K.J. Galczynski.
• Poland in color. The most colorful places, people and things around us.
• Scarecrows. What place in your city would not you show to any tourist?
• Disappearing world. House with a grass-made roof, wooden bridge, wild landscape…
• Meetings. People you met in your journey.
• Moves. Holiday sports activities: football, chess, swimming, bike riding.
• The strong man. In your family, in your city, in your building… Somebody whom you respect and admire.
• Paradise. Places and moments that you have been happy at.

To submit photos and enter the contest readers simply had to log in to our web portal or to the photo sharing site PhotoBlog.pl that cooperates with Gazeta:

Below is an example of the photo submitted by a reader. Other readers could make comments and often did. So the school’s students cooperated like in a real school.

Gazeta’s photo editors were browsing all the submitted photos and making comments on some of them on their official blog.

In-paper promotion

Gazeta used many formats of in-paper ads to invite readers to start learning at our school. Here are some examples:

What’s next?

We were thinking about this photo school as about an interactive feature for holiday season. But as readers liked it very much and we got over 140,000 thousand photos, we changed our plans and decided to extend the lessons and provide new services online and in print.

On Monday, Sept. 21st, we also launch a video school in association with TVN, a commercial Polish TV channel, and Lipton, a tea brand of Unilever.

Our video master is Slawomir Idziak, one of the best Polish cinematographers working in Hollywood, who was nominated for an Oscar award for “Black Hawk Down” (2001) and directed a photography also for “Proof of life” (2000), “King Arthur” (2004) and “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix” (2007).

Mr. Idziak will teach readers how to shoot videos with a mobile phone!

The lessons by Mr. Idziak will be accompanied by a competition. The winners will get 3,000 euros and watch their movies presented on a big screen at the OffCamera independent movie festival in Cracow in early October.

Griffin is responsible for the overall photographic direction of the National Geographic magazine, working with a staff of photo editors and photographers from around the globe.

Previously he was the Creative Director of U.S.News & World Report, Design Director of National Geographic Books, Associate Director of Layout & Design at National Geographic magazine. Before magazines he honed his journalistic skills at a number of newspapers: The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hartford Courant, The Everett (Wa.) Herald, and The Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune.

David Griffin has been honored by the National Press Photographer Assoc., University of Missouri’s Pictures of the Year competition, Assoc. of Magazine Publishers, Ohio Newspaper Photographer Assoc., the Hearst Collegiate Photojournalism Awards, the Washington Art Directors Club, the Society of Newspaper Design, Print, and Communications Art.

He offers an intriguing look into his magazine’s creative process on his blog: Editor’s Pick.

He spoke at the TED conference in February 2008 in Monterey, California.

Video presented by “TED. Ideas worth spreading“

“Welcome to Europe” is a new weekly feature section to Gazeta introduced in July. It is inspired by a successful daily section “Welcome to Poland” focused on home issues and debates.

The new section features only original and exclusive narrative stories and interviews accompanied by the photos taken mainly by Gazeta’s staff photo reporters.

What’s also unusual: articles to this section are not submitted only by Gazeta’s foreign correspondent or foreign news desk journalists. Editors launched an internal competition and everybody, including local reporters from the smallest bureaus in the homeland, can enter with a story idea and get a budget to make it. This is both a way to promote talents in the newsroom and train people.

“Welcome to Europe” opened with a story about the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center operated by the US Army in Germany, probably the largest military hospital in the world. It serves as the nearest treatment center for wounded soldiers coming from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gazeta’s correspondent Bartosz Wielinski was the first Polish journalist who entered the LRMC and told the story about what he had seen there and what the US Army tried to hide.

The photo above shows the command center at the Landstuhl hospital. Miguel Cubano who coordinates the transport of wounded soldiers stands at the board with flight schedules. On this day there were 8 new patients expected from Aghanistan and 10 from Iraq.

And here is the full two-page spread:

Mission

Gazeta’s foreign news desk editor Bartosz Weglarczyk wrote in his column:

“Europe does not end on the Union, its Parliament and Commision. We send our reporters to Germany, Sweden, Italy, Spain and other countries to discover the world not-covered by other Polish media…

We send our reporters to Europe because we want to check how it really is different from Poland. And how it is similar. What is better there than here? What is worse? What do we like in this Europe and what would we like to bring back home? And what do we see as unacceptable? Today, or maybe never? …

We send our reporters to Europe because we want to let this Europe to astonish us and to understand it.”

Stories

Just to give a taste of this new section, here is a glimpse on recent stories that have been published in print and online:

• Landstuhl. Hospital on the periphery: Finally, a chaplain reaches the ambulance. He stands by the head of a wounded soldier, on the left side – as the procedure demands. He whispers directly to the soldier’s ear: “Welcome to Germany. You are in good hands.” The soldier does not answer, he is unconscious. Sometimes there is so many wounded soldiers on the board of American transporter air craft C 17, that Landstuhl runs out of beds. (Written by Bartosz T. Wielinski)
• To smell Naples and die: Piles of dusts at the Garibaldi monument in the very heart of old Naples smell like rotten fish. Nearby, at the Pasquale Mancini street one feels putrid tomatos. Behind the corner, at the Umberto I Avenue, a passerby is hit by a fetor of rotten meat. Holding our noses we are walking around one of the most beautiful cities of Italy and Europe. (Written by Tomasz Bielecki)
• They took away our kids for a smack: The social worker said that for the children’s protection she would not disclose where the children were. And added that Polish migrants should find a good lawyer. “It must have been a mistake,” thought Eve. “Maybe again I got something wrongly in Swedish”. (Written by Agnieszka Czajkowska)
• Barcelona. A fight with tongues: Spanish nationalists are on a war with Catalonian ones. If one would leave them alone on a battlefield, they would certainly kill each other. (Written by Maciej Stasinski)

Invitation for readers’ tips and stories

Gazeta’s editors invited readers to discover Europe together. The paper asked simply:

“Are you traveling around European countries? Are your friends working or studying there? Tell us about Europe that makes you astonished. What irritates you? What excites? What makes you proud?”

There is a good reason for this approach. Since 2004 when Poland joined the European Union, up to two million Poles migrated to the Western countries to find better jobs. Gazeta has a good relationship with them – it runs several websites for its readers abroad and publishes foreign supplements in cooperation with the Daily Telegraph in UK and the Irish Independent.