2013 ONPA education seminar speakers
Liz O. Baylen joined the Los Angeles Times as a staff photographer in 2007. Most of Baylen’s projects are homegrown, covering important issues affecting the community in which she lives. Although typically focused on domestic subjects, her assignments have taken her abroad to places including Lebanon, West Africa, the Caucasus, Haiti and Cuba.
Baylen, a native of Ohio, graduated from Ohio University’s School of Visual Communications in 2001 and began her career at the Washington Times. In 2005, she left Washington to pursue a freelance career in New York.
The National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International and the White House News Photographers Association have honored Baylen’s still photography and multimedia works. She was part of the team that was honored with a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for their coverage of the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake.
Baylen was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for her contribution to the Los Angeles Times-ProPublica series “When Caregivers Harm,” a story exposing gaps in California’s oversight of dangerous and incompetent nurses, which blended investigative scrutiny and multimedia storytelling. In 2003 she was a Pulitzer finalist for her contribution to the Washington Times’ staff coverage of the D.C. sniper case.
John Sale is a 1980 Ohio University graduate who managed to find a job. He worked at the Pittsburgh Press, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., and is currently the visuals editor at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. In 26 years as a picture editor, he has learned a lot from remarkable photojournalists and has had the good fortune to support their work in publications that value documentary photography and community journalism.
Scott Strazzante has been a staff photographer for The Chicago Tribune since 2001. A 9-time Illinois Photographer of the Year, Strazzante has covered the Super Bowl, the World Series and three Olympic games, but he is more proud of his work that uncovers small but universal moments in daily life.
In 2001, while working at The Herald News in Joliet, Illinois, Strazzante was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year for a portfolio of work from 2000.
In 2007, Strazzante was part of the Chicago Tribune team that won a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series about faulty government regulation of dangerously defective toys, cribs and car seats.
In 2008, MediaStorm published Common Ground, a multimedia piece on Strazzante’s personal project on the transformation of a piece of land in suburban Chicago from rural to suburban. The 19-year-long project, which still continues, has also been published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones and National Geographic. The project has also been honored with POYi's Community Awareness Award and 1st place in Feature Video in the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism contest. That same year, Strazzante was named POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year runner-up.
Strazzante lives in Yorkville, Illinois with his wife Anna and their four children.
Darren Durlach is passionate about the craft of visual storytelling, because he believes there is no more effective way to communicate the human experience than to tell a story. Over the past decade he’s told a lot of stories spanning the nation and beyond, from a Super Bowl in Indianapolis to the devastation in Haiti to the first inauguration of President Obama.
Durlach was named the best television news photographer in the nation three years running by the National Press Photographers Association in 2009, 2010, and 2011 while working for WBFF-TV in Baltimore.
Now at The Boston Globe, Durlach was recently awarded the prestigious George Polk award from Long Island University with a team of investigative journalists for his contribution of a short documentary on the leniency Massachusetts’s judges show toward accused drunk drivers, as well as four national Edward R. Murrow awards.
In 2010, after working with some of the best journalists in the nation at Fox 45, Darren left television news to join the exciting new frontier of multimedia with The Boston Globe. With the expanse of the ever-growing internet, he thought it might be prudent to gain some online skills and a fresh perspective. Joining the nationally recognized staff at the Globe has proven to be a hugely positive experience, and a stimulating challenge.
The best part of receiving recognition is the chance to teach at various events and universities across the nation. Darren has had the opportunity to teach video storytelling in 16 states for various journalistic organizations and looks forward to meeting passionate people with the shared goal of raising our industry's standards for the betterment of our society.
