RIT Photo MAKES Big Contributions to the 2019 NYS Special Winter Olympics
For the second consecutive year, more than 70 students from the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences photographed the New York State Special Olympics Winter Games in and around Rochester on February 22-23, 2019. Photojournalism professors Josh Metlzer and Jenn Poggi coordinated the various components of the events and shared this blog post.
Beginning with the opening ceremonies on Friday night, nearly 1000 athletes from across the state welcomed the arrival of the Special Olympic torch before athletic competition on Saturday in 6 events.
Led by second-year student Jackie Diller and fourth-year student Boris Shirman, RIT Photo students worked in teams around the region at Swain Resort covering snowshoeing, alpine skiing and snowboarding, at the Genesee River Park photographing figure skating, at Bristol Mountain covering cross country skiing and at the Riverside Convention Center covering floor hockey. The Convention Center, which also was the location of the opening and closing ceremonies, served as the operating center for the photographic coverage where Museum Studies majors Brie Johnson-Morris and Alana Bourgeois worked with SPAS faculty to curate content for the website http://www.specialolympics-ny.photos.
Each sport’s coverage included a team of photographers and photo editors working closely with faculty and visiting alumni mentors who assisted the photographers in their shooting as well as in photo editing. Each team transmitted images with multiple deadlines throughout the event for social media, web and print production.
Using an independent study course with professors Josh Meltzer and Jenn Poggi, Diller and Shirman planned the production workflow and led meetings throughout the early Spring Semester and communicated regularly with partners at New York Special Olympics. In addition to the documentary coverage of the sports and ceremonies, several Advertising Photography students, led by Ashley Crichton and Mustafa Hussain, worked with faculty Clay Patrick McBride and David Turner making portraits of athletes on location at the figure skating and downhill venues and in a studio set up at the closing ceremonies.
Unlike many assignments, which take days or weeks to see completion, students published work immediately through the website and by taking over the New York Special Olympics’ social media channels. Sam Kang led the social media team pushing images throughout the day through Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
In addition, throughout the day photo science students, led by lecturer Dan Hughes, printed and hung over 160 16”x20” photographs in the closing ceremonies venue. Athletes, coaches and their families were able to take the prints home with them at the end of the Games.
Additional participating faculty mentors included William Snyder, Meredith Davenport, Bob Rose and Don Cochran. Photojournalism alumni Mike Bradley, Tom Brenner, Colleen Cambier, Brett Carlsen, Karen Cetinkaya, and Seth Gitner joined by professional videojournalist Tom Dooley mentored the students throughout the two-day event.
In 2020 the New York Special Olympics will celebrate its 50th anniversary and will hold the Winter Games in Rochester once more before moving to another New York community. The photojournalism sequence plans to offer the independent study again and cover the games that year.
