Alan Hill
Associate Lecturer
Alan Hill is a photographer and lecturer at the Queensland College of Art with particular interest in photojournalism and digital imaging/publishing. He is a former editor of the Australian PhotoJournalist magazine and one of the co-founders of the Centre for Documentary Practice at Griffith University. His goals are to innovate and advance the cause of documentary storytelling through his own practice, his role as an educator and by continuing to develop the Centre for Documentary Practice as a location for discussion and debate of issues affecting the discipline.
Alan participated in the January 2011 MediaStorm Methodology Workshop. He had the following to say about his experience:
That MediaStorm offer a methodology workshop speaks volumes about their thoughtful, intelligent approach to storytelling, and having completed it, it's now easy to see why they are the undisputed leaders in this field. Their passion for the stories they tell comes from the heart, but their relentless pursuit of the best way to bring each story to life is driven by an intellectual process of reflection and refinement that is all to rare in the media today.
To know and understand your methodology so well that you are able to successfully teach it to others means you have broken down every aspect of the process you are engaged with and have interrogated it to the fullest extent. Nothing is left to chance and it's got nothing to do with cameras, equipment or software packages. Which is not to say the workshop is not practical, it is. Precisely because MediaStorm are themselves so methodical (and incredibly generous) the workshop is full of practical advice, distilled down from their years of experience, that allows you to quickly and easily understand and see ways you can apply and/or modify it to your own context.
That is why I will be able to directly apply so much of what I learned at the Methodology Workshop in my own work, but also in my university teaching. Brian and the whole MediaStorm team are passionate, methodical and generous, so the opportunity to spend a week learning from them was a unique and inspiring experience I would highly recommend.