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I recently spent four days in New York’s Catskill mountains with an amazing group of photographers and a 14-year-old barrel racer named Josh. Each year the Eddie Adams Workshop brings emerging photographers to an old barn on a hill for an intense weekend with some of the leading photographers and editors in the industry. Started by photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1987, the tuition-free workshop is a perfect mix of lectures, panel discussions, shoots, portfolio reviews and networking. Compared to other workshops, it benefits from its lineage, close proximity to NY, and emphasis on building community rather than just producing a finished project. I was on the Orange Team (below) led by Clay Patrick McBride a versatile and charismatic music and portrait shooter from Manhattan. Joining him as photo editor was Phil Bicker, creative director at the Fader, and photographer Chat Batka as producer.

Our team assignment was “under 21” and Chad compiled an impressive collection of stories that were assigned to the ten students. I was to follow 14-year-old barrel racer Josh Wilbur. He and his family own Running W Farms with some 22 horses on a beautiful forested high hill. I had about eight hours to shoot the story over two days, and followed him to a farrier job, riding practice and a Sunday barrel race. A big thanks to Skye, Jim and Josh for welcoming me into their lives and making my job easy!

My work with Josh was chosen as the multimedia story for the Orange team. So I worked with multimedia producer Jenn Ackerman to produce the short piece “Thrill Riding.” I shot and recorded most of it the first afternoon, she edited it overnight and we fixed a few holes the next morning. Jenn (who’s currently working on an awesome project called “Trapped ” exploring mental illness in America’s prisons) was part of the Barnstorm multimedia team, led by Brian Storm of MediaStorm, that produced eight multimedia pieces over the weekend.

When we weren’t in the field shooting we were at the barn for an amazing line up of talks. Platon, Howard Schatz, Al Bello, Stacey Pearsall, Tom Kennedy, Brian Storm, Jonathan Torgovnik, Nick Nichols, Tom Kennedy — it was inspiring to say the least. The portfolio reviews began at 11 p.m. and went to about 2 a.m. I got to sit down with great folks from Aurora, Geo, The New York Times, National Geographic, and The Wall Street Journal. Not bad for a weekend.

On the final night, each of the eight teams shared a slideshow of the weekend’s work. I volunteered to record short interviews with each of my fellow Orange Team photographers and build a short video of our work for the final presentation. It’s more of a “chance dance” than multimedia, as the audio is simply sandwiched on top of Phil’s beautifully edited sequences (it was all about speed), but I do think it was nice to bring in the photographers voices. You can view the final presentation on Vimeo.

Overall, it was an honor to be invited to a truly amazing weekend that opened my eyes in a number of directions, particularly to the strength of the NY photo community. I also was honored to receive one of the assignment awards, in my case for Fader magazine. Thanks to everyone who helped bring Barnstorm XXII to life!