Missouri Photo Workshop Coming to Sedalia in Late September

On Monday, the Sedalia Rotary Club heard about a photojournalism workshop coming to Sedalia in late September.

Brian Kratzer, associate professor at MU, and director of photography at the Columbia Missourian, gave the club lots of details about the upcoming Missouri Photo Workshop, scheduled for the last week of September, during a meeting of Rotary at Best Western, 3120 South Limit.

Kratzer is the co-director of the workshop, which will bring 40 photojournalists to the State Fair City Sept. 23 - 30, along with 10 faculty members, 10 support staff and 18 Mizzou students.

The 40 photojournalists, who were chosen from about 140 photographers who applied for the workshop, will descend on Sedalia and Pettis County and document 40 stories that week.

The results of all that work will be on display from 10 a.m., to 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 at the Heckart Community Center, 1800 E. 3rd. The public is invited to attend, Kratzer said.

Expect to see well over 400 professional photos of Sedalians who were photographed that week going about their daily lives.

Each photo story idea must be first approved by faculty, Kratzer noted. The photojournalists, most of whom are accustomed to shooting rapid-fire style while doing their day jobs, will be limited to a mere 400 frames the week of the workshop, translating to “the slowest journalism possible,” he said. That means each workshop participant can only submit 10 or 11 photos maximum for display.

Many of the workshop participants will be doing research on Sedalia to figure out what exactly they want to cover when they arrive so they can hit the ground running to produce their photo stories.

Kratzer called the MPW a “mirror to the community” featuring interesting people behind the scenes who may be hidden figures to a lot of people living in Sedalia.

He also described the photo workshop as “a semeter of education in a week” for the 18 students taking part in the 2023 MPW.

This is not the first time the MPW has visited Sedalia. The workshop was here in 1980 (MPW #32), documenting the life of Sedalians with black and white film.

Things have changed since then, of course, and this year's workshop, the 75th annual, will featuring all color digital photos.

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Kratzer credited the behind the scenes work of Kevin Lujin and Ebby Norman for helping guide the MPW to Sedalia.

The photographers range from graduate students at MU to early career photojournalists to a staff photographer from the New York Times. Seven countries will be represented, including New Zealand. “It's a good mix” of photojournalists, Kratzer noted.

The MPW switched from black & white to color in 1995, when Boonville was featured, and in 2005 or 2006 was when the workshop went all digital, Kratzer recalled, adding that Mountain Grove was probably the smallest city the MPW has visited.

In the photo: Brian Kratzer, associate professor at MU, and director of photography at the Columbian Missourian, presented to the Sedalia Rotary Club details about the 2023 Missouri Photo Workshop, scheduled for the last week of September, during a meeting of Rotary at Best Western, 3120 South Limit.