By BILL MARDIS
Editor Emeritus

The Mountain Workshops will be in Pulaski County October 18-22 and during its five-day stay information and still photographs will be compiled for a book about this county and its people.

David Adam-Smith, writing director, and Jim Bye, workshop coordinator, announced the project during the September membership meeting of the Somerset-Pulaski County Chamber of Commerce. Chamber members are currently being asked to suggest interesting people and stories throughout the community.

The photojournalism workshop focuses on still photography. While here, coaches and participants will explore individual character, the give and take of relationships, the deeply felt sense of belonging to a place and the pride of participating in a shared heritage.

Names, descriptions and contact information for story subjects are put in a hat and each participant randomly draws an assignment at the opening of the workshop. The participant will discuss the story with his or her coach and then contact the subject.

Adam-Smith said a participant will spend as much time as possible with the subject of the story during the workshop. There will be as many as 70 participants, each limited to 600 photographs. All photographs will be judged by nationally known coaches who will select material for the book about Pulaski County.

Photo coaches for the Pulaski County project include Mark Osler, a Denver-based Pulitzer Prize winner; Carolyn Cole, veteran reporter for The Los Angeles Times; Greg Kahn, visual journalist with the Naples, (Florida) Daily News; and Bill Luster of the Louisville Courier Journal.

Multimedia coaches include Eric Maierson, two-time Emmy Award winner who has done projects for National Geographic; Chad Stevens, an award-winning documentary producer/editor who is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina; Colin Mulvany, a multimedia producer at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington; Bob Sacha, an award-winning freelance multimedia producer based in New York City; and John Poole, a video producer for National Public Radio.

It will take about a year to complete the photojournalism project. Adam-Smith said about 400 of the books will be given to a local organization, probably the chamber of commerce. “They (chamber) can give the books away or sell the books as a money-making project,” he said. Copies of The Mountain Workshops’ latest project, “A Place Apart,” featuring Murray and Calloway County in Western Kentucky, were exhibited
at the chamber meeting. It’s 98 pages of black-and-white photography and short stories are spellbinding.

The Mountain Workshops are sponsored by such nationally known companies and groups such as Apple Inc., Canon USA Inc. MediaSpan Group Inc., Nikon Professional Services and Western Kentucky University, among others.