It has been hard work, but I am thrilled that the Shutha Digital Campus is now open for registration. The Shutha Digital Campus is aimed at media professionals. It is for photographers, designers, picture editors, picture researchers and anyone working with images professionally.
It aims to give an in-depth understanding of digital imaging and how to work with and deliver images at a professional standard. It also aims to give you the tools to build a digital archive that is accessible and will last beyond your lifetime. Finally, for photographers, it aims at enabling you to understand markets for your work so you can create multiple income streams and be sustained as a professional.
‘Shuthu’ is slang in Zulu for “take a photo”. In 2011, when we were creating the Shutha.org resource for photographers in the Majority World in collaboration with World Press Photo as part of the Twenty Ten project, we settled on the word. It has something of the local and the global to it! Like the online resource, the Shutha Digital Campus also has something of the local and the global.
It is such a privilege to have a team of the calibre we have managed to gather to teach on this digital Campus who are most definitely local and global. US-based photographer Peter Krogh is the author of what many consider to be the Bible of digital asset management and digital workflow for photographers. South African Cedric Nunn has a profound body of work that is making ways in the fine art market. UK-based Sarah Saunders sits on the committee of the World body that decides what and how metadata is embedded in image files. Eric Miller is one of South Africa’s most experienced photojournalists carrying assignments out in 26 countries around the continent.
Graeme Cookson has both a background in photography and prepress and is uniquely placed to assist media professionals to work with images at World class standards. Roger De La Harpe has published over 20 books on wildlife and travel. Sharron Lovellis a multimedia journalist based in China who is both a lecturer in an MA Journalism programme and a working journalists being published in National Geographic books, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Independent, Le Monde and many others.
And so the list goes on. Each trainer is a practicing expert applying what they will teach you in their daily work. They are good at what they do and they are good at communicating it to others.
I am not only excited about the team, but also about the mix of who is going to be there. We’re running the Shutha Digital Campus alongside the Heritage Digital Campus this year – media and heritage, the creators of collections and the custodians of collections together for two weeks. It can only do our documentary tradition in South Africa good to have that interaction.
And the two campus’ are bracketed by two documentary festivals, DocuFest Africa which is a photo documentary festival and Encounters which is a documentary film festival. These festivals will also reflects the local and global with speakers and films coming from other parts of Africa as well as from Mzanzi. And all this in a genuine Campus atmosphere of Michaelhouse in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. I do believe it is going to be a wonderful festival of learning being removed as it is from the hussle and bustle of daily life. I look forward to seeing you there.
The Digital Campus will be run for two weeks from 2-14 April 2013 at the historic Michaelhouse school in the KwaZulu- Natal Midlands.
David Larsen is managing director of Africa Media Online.
