WASHINGTON, DC, 14 November 2016 — This is what you save at the the Backpack Video Workshop on December 8-11. That’s right. You get a $200 discount.
At a time when global storytelling is accessible to anyone with a cell phone and access to the Internet, the ability to speak the visual storytelling language is more important, and more useful, than ever. And I make it affordable!
We’ve come such a long way in terms of global communication. I started out using faxes to send dispatches and telephone lines to send black and white photographs. I began in 1977 as reporter for the Mexico City News and correspondent for United Press International (UPI) based in Mexico City. I covered the 1979 Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. I spent two years as editor on UPI’s Foreign Desk in New York, then moved to Nicaragua and became Newsweek Magazine’s Contract Photographer for Latin America and the Caribbean. I published a book of photographs, titled “Nicaragua.” I covered the U.S.-backed Contra War in Nicaragua and the Salvadoran Civil War in the 1980s; the U.S. invasion of Panama; the 1994 invasion of Haiti, the ongoing conflict with Cuba, the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also worked in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Chad, Angola, Rwanda and Burundi.
By the late 1980s and early 90s I saw the profession of still photojournalism contracting and the profession of video journalism expanding. In 1995 I went to work for Video News International (VNI), precursor of The New York Times Television Company. I’ve completed assignments for The Learning Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Television, ABC’s Nightline With Ted Koppel, NOW With Bill Moyers, NOW hosted by David Brancaccio, Court TV and Lion TV.
It is this kind of experience that I bring to my Backpack Video Journalism Workshops, not just in Washington, DC, but also in countries all over the world. I have conducted video workshops and presentations in the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Uruguay, Venezuela, Suriname, Thailand, Ghana, Cuba and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, for the U.S. Department of State, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Thai Broadcast Journalist Association (TBJA), the International Center For Journalists (ICFJ), American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS), and others.
Learn to speak the visual storytelling language that connects us all to even the most remote corners of the world. Join us on December 8-11 — that’s next month — for my four-day Backpack Video Journalism Workshop. Click HERE for details.
Seating is limited so register today and get that $200 back in your wallet.
— Bill Gentile