"But I can't see their effin face???"

Ok, now with the magic of the Internet you can. Here are the faces of our killer crew of speakers. Drum roll, please...

Alan Berner, The Seattle Times




What’s in a name? Little Raphie Lipschitz’s career, and clothing line, didn’t take off til he became Ralph Lauren.

Alan Berner, hoping for a career bump after three decades, is considering changing to Alain-Cartier Bernier (BEHR-nay).

Or Robert Frank.

He has degrees in philosophy and photojournalism from the University of Missouri having gone there almost eight years.

And while schmoozing up the new Washington State Univ. president who’d just left Missouri, the president asked: “All as an undergraduate?”

Alan has worked for five newspapers. Been Region-11 POY five times. He received a Nikon/NPPA Sabbatical Grant in 1995 to pursue an essay on the new American West.

He has five dozen rolls of 35mm b&w Tri-X to develop.

He’s a staff photographer at The Seattle Times.



Plus he's a groovy guy who loves dogs maybe more than Finch, which I thought impossible. Check out Alain's gallery online!!

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Karen Ducey, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Thanks, Karen, for providing a bio. Here it is:

When Karen Ducey graduated from the University of Wisconsin she could not find a job as a photojournalist, so she went commercial fishing in Alaska. With the money she made salmon fishing and the help of student loans she attended the MFA program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. There she worked for Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson for 3 years and as a part time staffer at PBS WNET Thirteen and fished in the summers. When she got out of school she still could not find work as a photographer and so she continued fishing, photographing life on the boats, ruining many a camera and becoming very salty. Aaaarrr.

She freelanced her pictures out to magazines, newspapers, and museums around the world including picture stories in Alaska magazine, GEO, The Seattle Times and NationalGeographic.com, but still could not find full-time employment as a photojournalist. Ironically, one day a week, the Seattles Times hired her to do the weekly front for the Sunday Job market section which she did for over two years. No experience required. Aaaarrr.

Finally, at age 36, after 12 years, she put away her fishing boots for good and took her first fulltime job as a photojournalist at The Indianapolis Star. America’s Heartland, where they’re landlubbers. Four years later she was hired by The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and returned back to her beloved Pacific Ocean, salty friends, dirty dogs, and rainy weather. Aaaahhh.



That's Karen with her boyfriend Dean Rutz, a kick ass sports shooter and all-around good guy from the Seattle Times. Apparently, Seattle people LOVE their K9s! And to show off my journalistic professionalism, dogs: (l-r) Dillon, Tucker and Sandy (all cq). Perhaps my lack of ethics becomes more obvious when I mention I stole this from SportsShooter.com. Oops...

Side note: One thing that's pretty cool about this GF gathering is for even us in the Pacific NW to get to meet and know better our colleagues from nearby papers. We're all busy running in circles like headless chickens. Sometimes those circles overlap, other times not. It's cool to have an excuse to overlap, y'know?

Visit Karen's 2006 gallery @ the P-I's web site. She also has a weekly photo column online for your viewing pleasure.

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Jamie Francis, The Oregonian

Jamie is a fellow silver fox photog at The O. He's so cool, I don't even mind sharing that distinction. Here's a pic of him with one of his adorable kiddies @ Motoya and Beth Nakamura's Korean BBQ this past spring.

Jamie is a hack, finishing a lowly 2nd overall at POYi/60:

Old bio stolen from the Internet:

Jamie Francis has been a photojournalist at the St. Petersburg Times for five years (WE GOT HIM NOW, SUCKERS!!). Born in June 1962 in North Carolina, he graduated in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Francis is married to a former Times photographer, Pamela Royal; their second child was born in January of 2004. Prior to joining the St. Petersburg Times in July 1998, Francis worked at The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C., the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and the Durham-Herald in Durham, N.C. Since he's been with the Times, Francis has covered daily assignments in St. Petersburg and around the world. Most of the foreign assignments have teamed Francis with Times senior correspondent Susan Taylor Martin. They provided reports from Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bosnia during the 1999 NATO war against Yugoslavia. A year later, they produced an award-winning series looking at Iraq a decade after its invasion of Kuwait. They reported from Pakistan at the start of the U.S. military campaign against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. They have also reported from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Morocco, Syria, Turkey, and many times from the heart of the Middle East to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Beth Nakamura, The Oregonian


This is who Beth is in her own words. Ok, Beth. Take it away:

At 17 she was handed a book, Monograph, by Diane Arbus.

At 19 she moved to NYC and joined a small theatre company, but honestly that was so long ago she feels like an imposter just telling you about it. It was at that time, on those streets, that the impulse to photograph took root.

She did not go to journalism school but is grateful to all those graduate programs for steadily supplying her with so many wonderful friends.

In 1993 while on staff at The Virginian-Pilot, she met Motoya Nakamura, a Japanese foreign national living in the United States. The whole stranger-in-a-strange-land theme was eerily familiar to her, and somehow comforting. Plus he had a great sense of humor. So she married him, and then did something radical: she left journalism to--gasp--become a mother. Two children later she maintains some connection to the field through working a bit at The Oregonian. But she is in the process of reconnecting with the medium in a different way; back, perhaps, to that mislaid young girl, whose whole world opened up by looking a book.

Hopefully she can find the words to talk about all that.

She has always wanted to meet Alain Cartier-Bernier.



Lucky thing for Beth (cq), center, is that at Geekfest 2007, she will finally get that chance!

Sadly, for those wanting to meeting Mr. Mike Davis, the mad hatter at right in this photo, I believe he's away on our weekend. Bummer. Same for Finch. I know, WTF?

Anyway, here's a gallery of Beth's work @ The Oregonian. She's super good and super cool!

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Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian


Torsten is Sweden's pride and joy - as well as The O's. While our gathering is in June, I fully expect Torsten to be sporting this flannel and cross-country skis.

Here's another stolen bio on our boy:

Torsten Kjellstrand is a staff photojournalist at The Oregonian (Hurray!!). He previously worked as a staff photojournalist at The Herald in Jasper, Indiana and at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. In 1995, he was named POY Newspaper Photographer of the Year. He was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 2003-4. Torsten graduated from Carleton College with an English degree, after which he spent a year at Uppsala University studying literature as a Fulbright Scholar. He earned a masters in journalism and from the University of Missouri – Columbia. As a boy, Torsten came to this country from Sweden. He has two children, Bjorn and Maria; two dogs, Solo and Laces; three canoes; four bicycles; eight pairs of Nordic skis; and one wife, Jean.

Torsten won Newspaper POY/53 before Al Gore invented the Internet. So sadly, there's no link to his winning portfolio from the folks in Missouri...

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Bruce Ely, The Oregonian


No, Teddy K is NOT speaking. But one of the famous Unabomber Boys, Bruce Ely, is! Yep, Bruce, age 13, takes pics of one of the most surreal perp walks EVER.

And because this is NOT an editorial web site, I don't have to worry about equal coverage for each candidate. Check this out!!





Yep, behind every mad scientist is Bruce Ely. Imagine the look on people's face when Bruce's mom bragged to folks her kid was on the cover of Newsweek!!

Willard Bruce Ely IV, a proud Montana grad (Go Grizz!), is living a charmed life in Portland with his wife, Kristi. The latest of his many accomplishments for The O was winning 2nd place for Best Sports Portfolio at POYi/63 last year. Not bad for being such a young punk. Who knew he could shoot sports so well??? Not I... and we're friends!


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Robbie Mc Claran, Freelance Photographer


Bio "borrowed" from his web site:

For the past 25 years, Robbie has been documenting the American people and landscape. His work has appeared in virtually every magazine you can think of and quite a few you've never heard of.

The entire body of prints from Robbie's critically acclaimed 1997 book, "Angry White Men," is in the permanent collection at the University of Oregon.

His recent collaborative project with his 9-year-old daughter in pinhole photography won 3rd prize at the Glencoe Elementary School Science Fair.

Robbie was born and raised in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and still speaks with a hillbilly accent but is actually much smarter than he sounds. And no, he never met Bill Clinton, but he did take his picture once.

Robbie's work can sometimes be seen in The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Inc., Runner's World, Business Week, Forbes, Reader's Digest, Mother Jones and People.

Robbie lives in Portland with his wife, Lydia Hess, an illustrator and designer, and their two daughters.

Kids, do yourself a favor and check out his work online.

And here's a photo of him that's just a wee bit more recent...





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And lest we forget The Dynamic Duo: me and Boyd, sandwiched around TBrown, whose copyright I infringed upon with that photo of Torsten. You want retribution girl? You know where to find me...