APhotoADay is community.
Since 2001, we’ve watched photographers develop and find their voice on the APAD listserv. Some have grown from young college photographers into the industry’s brightest stars. Having that support system is empowering, especially for freelancers and staffers at small publications where leadership and guidance are in short supply. We are each other’s sounding boards, editors, mentors and friends.
APAD is an instant photo family. Now it’s growing into something more.
Every year, APAD organizes an annual workshop lovingly called GeekFest, where we uphold the organization’s collaborative philosophy. We bring in speakers and encourage them to participate in the weekend’s activities. Not only do folks get to meet the speakers, but the speakers get to know and befriend those in the audience.
It was an awesome sight to scan the shuffleboard court a few years back in St. Pete during a night of fun and see National Geographic photographer Sam Abell and Pulitzer-winner Damon Winter playing a game with a college kid named Mitchell Franz and Chad Pilster, a photographer at a small paper. They were talking like old friends, getting to know each other without the pretense of a job title.
After more than a decade of supporting photographers as best we knew how, APAD has become a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, allowing us to give back in a bigger way. All of the money from GeekFest's annual print auctions go directly to grants for working photographers, enabling them to tell visual stories that would otherwise go untold. It’s just one more way to continue our mission of supporting our photo community.
“The best way to grow as a photographer is to come together and learn from one another, and that’s what we do every year at Geekfest, while having a damn good time. APAD and Geekfest showed me how lucky we are to have a professional community like the one we do with photojournalism.”
What We've Achieved
- Funded two photographers via the Back Yard Storytelling Grant
- Organized a yearly gathering of visual storytellers with GeekFest thought the U.S.
- Fostered mentorships through the APAD listserv
- Created three smaller photo events on college campuses in the U.S.