#greatspeakers

IToday was literally the most emotional day of the conference. The speakers contributing to the emotion were Carol Guzy, Amy Tankayama-Perez, and Steve Klein. These amazing people all talked about completely different topics, but they all had one thing in common. They all dug into me. Not in a painful or damaging way, but they made my soul think.

Carol Guzy 

This woman is a four-time Pulitzer Price winning photographer. But before I go into her photographs, allow me to set the scene for you. I’m getting ready to go into the theater where Carol will be presenting. And then my contact starts burning like someone poured acid on my cornea. I didn’t have any contact cleaner with me, so I had no choice but to take out both of my contacts. So for the award-winning photography presentation, I couldn’t even see the presenter’s face. But all the photos were displayed on a movie screen, so I could kind of see what they were.

I think the presentation was much better without me being able to clearly see it. For one thing, I was able to focus on Carol’s words. And so beautiful they were. She told us what it means to be a photographer, but also what it means to be a human. There were so many striking this that she said, so I’ll list them out for you. 

"We all have to define our lines of sacrifice for the story and for your family."

"If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. But being close doesn’t mean being in the flames."

"Empathy is a blessing and a curse. It gives you better pictures, but your heart breaks 10,000 times."

While we can be truthful and fair, we still have feelings. You’re human first and a photographer second."

"You can change the technology, but you can never change the eye and the heart of the photographer."

And my I add that Carol told us all this while biting back tears, and occasionally letting them flow. She later told us that she has recently been dealing with lots of personal loss like her mother and sister. She said that when you see so much tough stuff and never deal with that, it’ll all come rushing out eventually. 

After her speech, Carol proceeded to show us a slide show of some of her pictures. If you weren’t crying by the time that screen turned on, then you were now. Her pictures were about the war in Sierra Leone, the lost pets in Hurricane Katrina, the remembered firefighters killed on 9/11. Now let me remind you that I was half-blind through that slideshow. And I cried as hard, if not harder, than everyone else in the room.

I think that speaks so much to the power of Carol’s photos and photography in general. I could really see the photo, but I could definitely feel it. 

There was also a moment during the question section of the presentation when a girl who was asking a question lost it. She just started bawling into the mic. Us in the audience didn’t know what to do, but Carol did. She got down on the stage and pulled the girl into her arms until she regained her composer. And that made me lose mine.

Amy Tankayama-Perez

She presented on the topic of admission into college. I still have a few years before I’ll move away, but even with the time, I’m really scared and nervous for it. My whole family is extremely close. Even just being away from my brothers for a week breaks my heart because I know that's time that I'll never get back. When I leave for college, my brothers will just be leaving elementary school. That's a lot  of time to miss.

Amy made me feel that it was okay to stay close to home, okay to push from my mind the big schools everyone else talks about. She was so sensitive when talking about college, and I'm excited again to start looking on my own.

Steve Klein

He talked about how journalism helps people who aren't journalist because it teaches them the power of voice. It also teaches people to use their true voice and use it clearly.

Today was my first day at the Washington Journalism and Media Conference. And what an amazing day it was! Our speaker tonight was Kevin Loker, the Program Coordinator at the new American Press Institute and a George Mason alum. 

Loker was less than ten years older than us students in the dining hall. And this lead to a great, inspiring, and totally relatable speech. 

One of the biggest things that stood out to me was the fact that Loker didn't believe that social media and technology was killing journalism. As he said, "technology will change but journalism will not." That one little statement meant so much to me because you never hear that today. Today everyone thinks journalism will be dead tomorrow; murdered by the Google Chrome button and the little blue Twitter bird. Also, all of the people saying this are older, so they'll be out of the picture by the time I'll step on the scene. But Loker is dealing with the same thing I am, and he thinks that "it's a great time to be a journalist."

Loker also spoke about making opportunities for yourself, such as going to journalism conventions and speaking to people who can help you advance. This message hit home with me because I'm not really the kind of person to go out of the way to get the things I want. If there are onions on my burger when I asked for none, I'll eat them. If I want extra bar-b-que sauce at Wendy's, a friend will go with me to get it. And that kind of thing WON'T fly in the journalism world.

But Loker made that issue simple: you have to grab a hold of your opportunities. Instead of holding a baited line into the water, you just have to jump in and swim after the fish. He did that, and it got him to a really good place in his life. I now feel inspired to do the same thing.