The official hoodie from the 1999 Platypus Workshop
In 1999, Dirck Halstead and PF Bentley hosted the first Playtpus Workshop, a program designed to train still photographers in the techniques of video production. It was primarily a group of experienced photojournalists, including several Pulitzer winners. I was very lucky to be a student in that class and later a teaching assistant in 2008.
The workshops have been popular and the latest will be in Las Vegas April 2-11. Dirck is very generous to credit me with naming the workshops years ago. In fact, the credit should probably reside more with Dirck than me since it was his vision that created the workshops.
The gem of the platypus came from a message board discussion in 1997, in the days of AOL and dial-up modems. I posted a note about the platypus and how when it was discovered, the scientific community thought it was a hoax because it didn’t fit their definitions of how animals were classified.
