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Twice this decade, our program has won the national championship in the William Randolph Hearst photojournalism competition. In addition to the two consecutive championships based on total awards points, Mike Tercha and Rob Witzel were each named individual national champs. UF has placed first or second in the Hearst competition four out of the past five years.
Our shooters have also been placed in the College Photographer of the Year awards, Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar and other top competitions.
A Community of Photojournalism
Winning awards is a great way for students to build name recognition, but we strive to help teach the skills that will lead to something far more important, a productive and rewarding career. Our academic environment is challenging, to be sure, but also supportive. Gainesville has for many years been known as an engaging environment for photojournalism and our students are part of a dedicated community of photographers. All of our students have the chance to hone their skills and excel at their craft.
At any given time, our journalism program has about 50 undergraduate students pursuing an emphasis in photojournalism and a handful doing graduate study in visual communications. We offer beginning, intermediate and advanced classes in photojournalism along with related classes in publication design.
For undergraduates, photojournalism is an integral part of the journalism department's new converged curriculum; there are more than 400 journalism majors in the College. The entire College of Journalism and Communications enrolls more than 3,000 undergraduates in its four departments: journalism, telecommunications, advertising, and public relations. The University of Florida has about 50,000 students at present and is the fourth largest university in the U.S. Even though we have the resources of a big university, we like to think that our visual communications program is just the right size and still able to provide a personal touch. Professors John Freeman and John Kaplan make themselves available for feedback, constructive portfolio critiques and career advice.
At the graduate level, at any given time we have a handful of students emphasizing photojournalism or design as part of a Master of Arts degree in Mass Communications. Submitting a suitable journalism-oriented portfolio is a necessary part of the admissions process for photojournalists and designers. For graduate students, our College MAMC program generally takes two years to complete and provides a flexible range of options. Some of our master's students wish to continue, or even begin, a career in photojournalism while others seek to gain the skills to enter the world of picture editing or teaching upon graduation. To further our grad students standing and credibility in the world of journalism, students most often complete their thesis / professional project requirement in the form of an in-depth photojournalistic essay, often with an international theme. While we admit only a handful of graduate students who seek to emphsize photojournalism or design, within the College of Journalism and Communications more than 150 are enrolled in pursuit of a M.A. degree while another 40-50 are enrolled in the Ph.D program.
Experienced Professors
Associate Professor John Freeman teaches beginning and intermediate photojournalism classes, coordinates the photojournalism practicum program, and supervises adjunct photo instructors and the equipment checkout process. He has been with the university since 1991 and has been a staff photographer at the Wichita Eagle and spent summers at the Palm Beach Post and Los Angeles Times, among others. In 2002, Professor Freeman was awarded a American Society of Newspaper Editors Fellowship at the Bergen County Record in New Jersey and also completed a summer faculty fellowship at National Geographic in 1996. In 2004, he was a finalist in the Gordon Parks Photography Competition. He has twice been named teacher of the year in the college. His articles have appeared in News Photographer Magazine. Before coming to UF, he was an assistant professor at Wichita State University.
Professor John Kaplan teaches advanced photojournalism, publication design and international journalism. He oversees graduate applications for photojournalists and designers, along with the graduate journalism coordinator. Kaplan was a winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, the 2003 Overseas Press Club Award and is also a former National Newspaper Photographer of the Year in Pictures of the Year (POY) competition. He has twice been honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation for photojournalism. Kaplan has also been named teacher of the year by the college, and has been named a University of Florida Research Foundation Professor. He has worked for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, San Jose Mercury News and Palm Beach Post, and has freelanced for Life, Fortune and other magazines. Kaplan's documentary photography projects are exhibited worldwide and he often teaches summer workshops in several nations including the Maine Photographic Workshops in the U.S.
Facilities and Equipment
As the world of photojournalism has fully embraced all-digital technology, we strive to provide students with up-to-date skills. To help photographers stay on top of digital photojournalism we recommend that students come to school with either Canon or Nikon digital cameras and a variety of lenses. In addition, we have some professional pool lenses available for checkout. Beginning students may use pool digital cameras for their introductory course, JOU 3601. Photo and design students do the majority of their work in three labs that feature computers with LCD monitors, and HP Color Laserjet or Epson inkjet printers. Most of our lab computers are Windows-oriented and fully equipped with software such as Adobe Photoshop and Quark XPress; we hope to aquire additional Apple Macintosh machines in the future, too. Incoming students are advised to come to school with, preferably, a Macintosh laptop as the vast majority of the visual communications professionals use Apple computers. A photographic studio is available as well and our advanced and graduate students have access to a dedicated lab that is available nearly round the clock.
Real-World Experience and Opportunities
We stress the importance of internships and real-world practicums and strive to help our students land the best internship and job opportunities available. In addition, our international "Florida FlyIns" photojournalism course for advanced students, taught by Professor Kaplan, is the only program of its kind which we know of, bringing photographers and writers together to work in teams to do in-depth, project-oriented reporting. Each autumn, our students team with writers to visit a new country in Latin America to do special projects and produce an online magazine and exhibition of their work. More information about the program is available at our online magazine at http://www.internationaljournalism.com. In 2005, Professor Freeman taught a summer program for intermediate photojournalists in Berlin. It is hoped that the program will continue in coming summers. More information is available at http://www.jou.ufl.edu/peoplefaculty/jfreeman/freeman.htm.
Some of our students string for the Gainesville Sun or work at the Independent Florida Alligator. An internship is a requirement for undergraduate photojournalists and designers; our students have interned at newspapers such as the St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald, Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Chicago Tribune, Eugene Register-Guard, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Orlando Sentinel, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Arizona Republic, Nashville Tennessean, and Detroit Free-Press.
A Graduate Network of Strong Professionals
We have active local National Press Photographers Association and Society of News Design chapters and leading professionals in the field sometimes visit campus as guest lecturers. One of our best-known graduates is Tom Kennedy, former director of photography at National Geographic magazine and now photo and graphics director at Washingtonpost.com/Newsweek Interactive. Among our best-known graduates, Corbis photographer Stephanie Sinclair won the top award, the Visa D'Or, at the 2004 Visa Pour L'Image festival in Perpignan, France. Fellow graduate Essdras Suarez of the Boston Globe was part of a Pulitzer Prize winning-team in 2000 at the Rocky Mountain News and was also named winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Award for international photojournalism.