One of the most powerful talks that I attended during the LOOK3 festival in Charlottesville this year was given by Ashley Gilbertson. Gilbertson presented his latest project titled, “Bedrooms of the Fallen.” The project consists of a series of pictures of the dormant bedrooms left by soldiers who died at war. Gilbertson explained that he had become frustrated by the public’s lack of response to his photographs coming out of Iraq that depicted the violence surrounding him and the soldiers assigned to protect him. It was moving to hear him talk about the soldiers in his pictures, and in many cases, explain how they were killed. His wife suggested that he photograph their bedrooms as a way for people to relate to their lives. Since then, Gilbertson has photographed dozens of bedrooms across the US and Europe. In many cases, the rooms are arranged in the exact same way as the day…

I'd like to welcome Matthew McAllister to the blog. Matthew is a project management intern this summer and we're excited to have him on board! -Jessica The MediaStorm crew got back from the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph a little over a week ago and we’re still processing the amazing experience we had! LOOK3 is hosted in Charlottesville, Virginia and gathers photographers from across the country and around the world. As a new intern with MediaStorm, it was quite a way to start the summer! Speakers included Antonin Kratochvil, Massimo Vitali, Sally Mann and Nan Goldin. Additional talks covered a wide range of topics from a discussion with Steve McCurry on how he got the now infamous National Geographic cover photo of Sharbat Gula, to the showing of a video piece about high school Proms by Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark. Everyone walked away from each and every session inspired and…

We are excited to have Shameel Arafin joining MediaStorm as a Developer. Shameel is a web-application architect, back-end developer, database wrangler, and system administrator. He studied engineering and literature at Caltech and Harvard. Following college, he worked in investment banking during the (first) dotcom boom, at Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse First Boston. After five years on Wall Street, he returned to his engineering roots and joined the team at Massify as a developer and project manager, where he helped launch a social network and crowd-sourcing web application for the film and TV industry. In 2008 he co-founded SignalFive, where where he developed projects that varied from the Repower America Wall (for Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection), to PopStay, a social tool for vacation rentals and home swapping.

If you've been thinking of spending your summer learning some new multimedia skills, we have several opportunities coming up for you. We will be holding an Advanced Multimedia Workshop from July 23-29 at our office in Brooklyn, NY. Application deadline is May 27 (one week from today). If you're interested in a hands-on workshop where you'll work with a team to conceive, plan, report and produce a multimedia story in one week, you should consider applying for this workshop. More information about the workshops is here. Applications are accepted online. If you're more interested in the organization and thinking behind creating successful multimedia departments and curricula, check out our Methodology Workshop, to be held August 8-12, 2011. This five-day workshop is also held in Brooklyn, NY, and delves deep into the methodology and business of multimedia storytelling approaches and models. The application deadline for the Methodology Workshop is June 1, 2011. You…