Do1Thing Blog

Erika Larsen is a photographer currently based in New York City and represented by Redux Pictures. Her work appears in magazines both in the US and internationally covering a range of topics including family life, religion and spirituality and rural America. Her most notable work to date is her immersion into the world of hunting which began in 2003 and in 2005 she became a contributing photographer to Field & Stream Magazine. This work has been recognized by World Press Photo, American Society of Magazine
Editors, American Photography, Society of Photographers, New Jersey State Council of the Arts and others. She is currently working on a project in the Scandinavian Arctic.

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James K. Colton is currently the photography editor for Sports Illustrated. He began his career in 1972 as the color picture editor for the Associated Press. Five years later he joined Newsweek as a senior photo editor for international news. In 1988, he became executive vice-president and general manager of Sipa Press in New York, before returning to Newsweek in 1992 as the director of photography.

He is on the Board of Directors of the Eddie Adams Workshop, and is a mentor for J Camp, a national program that recruits talented high school students of color, sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association. He was presented with the “Golden Career Award” at FotoFusion 2004 by the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, received an International Photography Awards “Lucie” for Picture Editor of the Year in 2007, was named Magazine Picture Editor of the Year in 2008 by the National Press Photographers Association, and has been acknowledged as one of the 100 most important people in photography by American Photo.

Daniel Sheehan is a Pulitzer prize winning Seattle editorial photographer who specializes in portraits and photojournalism. Sought after by advertising, editorial, and corporate clients, Daniel has a unique ability to put people at ease in front of his camera.

He creates photographs in both the digital and film mediums for editorial photography and corporate photography and is comfortable shooting in a studio, on location, or if necessary setting up an impromptu studio at a location. His photography often uses the narrative or story-telling approach. He produces compelling narrative photographs with a distinctive artistic edge. Often available for editorial and corporate assignments at the last minute, Daniel is able to produce digital images and turn them around in the same day under extremely urgent delivery requirements.

For more than 20 years Daniel has worked as an editorial photographer for national and international publications, design companies and advertising agencies.

Some of the editorial magazines his work has been published by include the National Geographic, US News, Time, Education Week, Newsweek, Business Week, Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, People Magazine, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Some of the corporations he has worked for include Amazon.com, Alliance Capital, The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation, Encompass, Getty Images, Intracorp, Microsoft, Safeco Insurance, Starbucks, TIAA-CREF and Unisys Corporation, and Waggoner Edstrom.

As an editorial photographer for NY Newsday, Daniel Sheehan has covered such stories as the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the breakup of the Soviet Union and a famine in Ethiopia. He also covered the fashion collections in Milan, London & Paris and a number of Super Bowls. His work has been recognized with awards from the Society of the Silurians, the Florida and New York State Associated Press Associations and the National Press Photographers Association.

For ten years until 1995, Sheehan worked at New York Newsday. In 1989, he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of war in Afghanistan and a devastating earthquake in Armenia. He and several colleagues were honored when they won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for local news for their coverage of the fatal crash of a New York City subway.

Music has been one of Sheehan’s longtime favorite subjects and he regularly photographs some of the most interesting jazz musicians on the Seattle scene every month for Earshot Jazz magazine.

Since 2007, Daniel has served on the Board of Trustee of the Photographic Center Northwest (PCNW) offering guidance from the perspective of a working photojournalist. PCNW has a 20 year history of serving as the Northwest center for education, outreach, and exhibitions in the photographic arts.

Daniel is married and lives with his wife Jana and daughters Ema and Claire in a Craftsman style bungalow in Seattle, Washington.

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Kristen Ashburn’s photographs and stories from the Middle East, Europe, and Africa have appeared in many publications worldwide. Her accolades include a 2007 Emmy Award nomination, two World Press Photo prizes, a Getty Grant in 2006, Canon’s Female Photojournalist Award in 2004, and other honors. She began photographing the impact of AIDS in southern Africa in 2001, and since then has also produced stories on the war in Iraq, Jewish settlers, suicide bombers in Israel’s occupied territories, the aftermath of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

In addition to her social documentary photography, Ashburn is one of the directors of Through the Eyes of Children: The Rwanda Project, a charity that teaches photography to Rwandan orphans of the 1994 genocide and supports them through the sale of their images. Ashburn lives in New York City
and is represented by Contact Press Images.

Her book, I Am Because We Are, that focuses on the AIDS crisis in southern Africa, will be released by PowerHouse Books in January 2009.

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Noah Addis graduated Magna Cum Laude from Drexel University in Philadelphia with a degree in Photography in 1997. Since then, he has worked as a staff photographer for the Star-Ledger newspaper in Newark, NJ.

He has covered such stories as the growth of Christianity in Africa and the war in Iraq. Noah has won numerous regional and national awards including the New Jersey Photographer of the Year award three times. In 2001 he was the runner-up in the portfolio category of the National Press Photographer’s Association Best of Photojournalism contest and he has won General News and Feature awards in the Pictures of the Year International contest. His work has been shown in galleries in New York and Philadelphia. He will be leaving the newspaper to pursue a freelance career in December 2008.

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Lori Grinker began her photographic career in 1981 while a student at Parsons School of Design when Inside Sports published her photo-essay about a young boxer as its cover story. During that time she met another young boxer, 13 year-old Mike Tyson, who she documented for the following decade. Since then, in addition to her reportage of events such as the destruction of the World Trade Center, she has delved into several long-term projects, and published two books: The Invisible Thread: A Portrait of Jewish American Women (Jewish Publication Society, 1989, 6 editions), and Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict (de.MO, 2004).

Published in major magazines, her work has earned international recognition, garnering a World Press Photo Foundation Prize, an Open Society Institute Distribution grant, a W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund fellowship, the Ernst Hass Grant, The Santa Fe Center for Photography Project Grant, and a Hasselblad Foundation Grant, among others. Her photographs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world and are in many private and museum collections including: The International Center of Photography (ICP), The Jewish Museum in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Between editorial assignments, commercial jobs (represented by MEO Represents), and personal projects, Grinker lectures, teaches workshops, and is on the faculty of the ICP in New York City. She is represented by the Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York and has been a member of Contact Press Images since 1988.

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Scott Strazzante, 44, was born and raised in the shadows of the steel mills on the far southeast corner of Chicago. The son of a tire dealer, Strazzante first became interested in photography when he started taking his dad’s Canon AE-1 to Chicago White Sox games.
Strazzante continued his self-taught photographic education by shooting random sporting events and late night frat parties while working on a business major at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin.
After graduation, Strazzante went to work at his father Angelo’s tire shop until one fateful day in November 1987 when the local newspaper, The Daily Calumet, called to see if he would be interested in a part-time photo position.
Leaving the retreads and radials behind, Strazzante began what has now become a 22-year long career at Chicago-area newspapers.

After The Daily Calumet, Strazzante moved on to the Daily Southtown where he spent the next 10 years. In 1998, Strazzante arrived at the Joliet Herald-News where in 2000, he was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association and the Missouri School of Journalism. In 2001, Strazzante started work at the Chicago Tribune where he spends his time as a general assignment photographer. In 2008, Northern Illinois University named Strazzante the Illinois Journalist of the Year, only the second time in its 40 year history that the award has been given to a photojournalist.Since 2004, Strazzante, a 6-time Illinois POY, has covered the Super Bowl, the World Series and the last three Olympic Games but he is more proud of his photo columns- Heart and Soul and The Season- which chronicled the everyday triumphs and struggles of the high school athlete.
In 2008, MediaStorm published Common Ground, a multimedia piece on Strazzante’s personal project on the transformation of a piece of land in suburban Chicago from rural to suburban. The 14-year-long project has also been published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones and National Geographic.
Strazzante lives in Yorkville, Illinois with his wife Anna and their 4 children.

Photojournalist Erich Schlegel just left The Dallas Morning News where he was Senior Staff Photographer since 1988. Based in Austin, Texas, Erich is now pursuing a successful freelance career. Erich has also worked at The Brownsville Herald and The Corpus Christi-Caller Times.

Born in Monterrey, Mexico, he lived throughout Latin America before moving to Texas in 1973. He is a graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas with a degree in business with an emphasis in international business. While at The News , Erich has covered nine Olympic Games, three Super Bowls, conflicts in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Albania, Zaire, and Sri Lanka. However, he favors assignments in Latin America where he has covered stories in Cuba, Mexico, and Central America. Erich has won awards in World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year, Society of Newspaper Design, APME, and other national and regional competitions.

Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. A sensitive eye and an intimate relationship to his subjects are the signatures of his work.Kashi’s complex imagery has been recognized for its compelling rendering of the human condition.
“I take on issues that stir my passions about the state of humanity and our world, and I deeply believe in the power of still images to change people’s minds. I’m driven by this fact; that the work of photojournalists and documentary photographers can have a positive impact on the world. The access people give to their lives is precious as well as imperative for this important work to get done.  Their openness brings with it a tremendous sense of responsibility to tell the truth but to also honor their stories.”

Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His innovative approach to photography and filmmaking produced the Iraqi Kurdistan Flipbook. Using stills in a moving image format, this creative and thought-provoking form of visual storytelling has been shown in many film festivals and as part of a series of exhibitions on the Iraq War at The George Eastman House. Also, an eight-year personal project completed in 2003, Aging in America: The Years Ahead, created a traveling exhibition, an award-winning documentary film, a website and a book which was named one of the best photo books of 2003 by American Photo.

Along with numerous awards, including honors from Pictures of the Year International, World Press Foundation, Communication Arts and American Photography, Kashi’s editorial assignments and personal projects have generated four books. In 2008, his latest books will be published; Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta and Three.

In 2002, Kashi and his wife, writer / filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous short films and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues.The first project resulted in a book and traveling exhibition on uninsured Americans called, Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured. A one-hour documentary film pertaining to this crucial health care challenge is currently in production for release in mid-2008.

“Ed Kashi is intelligent, brave and compassionate. He fearlessly goes where few would venture. And he sympathetically captures the soul of each situation. Ed is one of the best of a new breed of photojournalistic artists.” David Griffin, Director of Photography, National Geographic

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Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Leeson has been on staff at the Dallas Morning News since 1984. He has also worked for the Abilene Reporter News and the Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

His assignments have taken him to more than 60 countries and numerous world conflicts.

He was a finalist for the Pulitzer three times prior to winning the award in 2004 along with colleague Cheryl Diaz Meyer for photographs made in March and April 2003 while on the front lines with the US Army 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq. He has also won two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards and numerous regional, state and national awards.

In the fall of 2000, he began shooting video for the Dallas Morning News making him the first staff photographer in the nation shooting video full-time for a newspaper. Since then he has completed more than seven documentary films.

Two of his documentaries from the war also won honors. War Stories (2003) won a National Headliners award, a national Edward R. Murrow Award and a regional Emmy Award for best television documentary.  Dust to Dust (2004) was named a finalist for best short film at the USA Film Festival. He won a second Emmy in 2007 as producer/editor of combat footage from Afghanistan.

In 2006, Leeson was named Innovator of the Year in Photojournalism by American Photo magazine for his work using frame grabs for newspaper daily still assignments. The results of his efforts have culminated in the growing trend by newspapers to use existing photo staff, transitioned to high definition video cameras, to obtain both video and stills (frame grabs) from a single assignment.

Leeson is a graduate of Abilene Christian University, is married and has five children.

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