PHILOSOPHY

A Unique Photographic Experience

Imagine a different kind of workshop.
Where you feel no performance pressure because you shoot no pictures.
Where there's no competition because you're the only student.
Where a beautiful, pastoral landscape helps restore your sense of perspective.
Where you get something solid and useful to take back to your job.
The White Cloud program starts with a thoughtful, unstinting critique
of your day-to-day work, as represented by a full month's contact sheets
and your own statement of your goals and needs as a photographer.
The curriculum is custom-designed to help you attain your goals.
We'll talk about style, content, emotion and the magic
that lured you into photojournalism in the first place.
We won't get bogged down in talk about f-stops or digital imaging.
We'll do a lot of something you seldom have much time for -- thinking.
We'll cover the practical:
  • How to take pleasure in shooting what you normally shoot.
  • How to make better pictures than the assignment asks for.
  • How to be a problem-solver in the newsroom.
  • How to deal with office dynamics.
  • How to shoot a cohesive picture story.
And the philosophical:
  • What makes a picture special.
  • The cultivation of instinct.
  • Privacy and who deserves it.
  • What's possible and what's ethical.
The workshop AFTER the workshop:
When you leave White Cloud, you'll take a host of practical solutions and a reawakened sense of wonder with you.Then during the next six months we'll monitor your new work and the progress you've made toward the goals you set for yourself at the outset.
Your photographic guides:
Mary Jo and Bryan Moss met in 1964 in the darkroom at the Indiana Daily Student on the campus of Indiana University. A year later, they were married.

Since then, in 20 different homes in 15 cities in eight states, they have spent about 10,000 evenings together brainstorming about photojournalism in general, and about their jobs -- as photographers, picture editors, managers, copy editors, layout editors, writers and mentors.

They have worked for 16 different newspapers, from New York to California.

In 1976, in Louisville, Ky., Bryan was on the photo staff that won a Pulitzer prize for the Courier Journal with its coverage of forced busing.

In 1990, in San Jose, Ca., he and Mary Jo worked together at the Mercury News when it earned a Pulitzer for its coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Their combined half-century of experience has persuaded them that what photographers really need (but seldom have) is a quiet place where they can get insightful critique, practical advice and relief from competitive pressures.

They created the White Cloud Workshop to address that need.
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