Shoot Off Workshops – Not Just a Competition

Story by Johnny Bivera The 2024 season of the DC Stills and Video Shoot Off Workshop that transpired at the nation’s capital last year was a great success. Attendance numbers had come back to near normal for the post pandemic period.   Let’s go back to 2019 at the time of the Covid outbreak. As news that New York City was getting its first signs of Covid, we were just days away from kicking off the stills shoot off program, and the staff and I were in flummox as to what we were going to do. It’s not like things were getting shut down, but hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers were making its way through the scuttlebutt, […]

Story and Photos by Johnny Bivera Despite the many challenges of putting together a last minute training program post a pandemic, the DC video shoot off team made it happen. Following a successful still photography program last March, a determined and resolute group of volunteers and talented visual media professionals rallied and brought back to life, after a three year hiatus the DC Video Shoot Off Workshop in Arlington, Virginia. My personal thanks to Maureen Stewart who spearheaded the meetings and staff logistics and Sam Morse for introducing a higher level webcam experience with his team to achieve an even wider global audience. And to Ray Flores for his years of being a management leader we finally were able recognize […]

Story and Photos by Johnny Bivera It was two years ago on the month of March we held the last shoot off program for still photography. We finished our program the day before the whole region shut down for Covid-19. It was on a Monday and the week prior was the most stressed out I had been since 911. An unknown future was coming and phone calls between myself, the staff, the sponsors and venue management was hourly. The spread was coming fast and the seriousness of how to react was muddled. Two days out from the workshop a decision was made between myself and program director Bob Houlihan to keep our senior citizen faculty members away and home safe. […]