Picture This: Kim Komenich

Kim Komenich, a current professor at San Jose University, has been practicing his love of “interactive story telling” for many years, and his Pulitzer can prove it. Komenich was a staff photographer for the San Francisco Examiner from 1982 to 2000 and the San Francisco Chronicle from 2000 to 2009. While he was employed by the Examiner and the Chrinicle, Komenich photographed his daily assignments as well as others that showed long term conflict in countries such as El Salvador and the Philippines. On Thursday the 7th, Komenich shared some photos from a few of his special assignments overseas.

He spoke of his interest in capturing the emotions on the faces of his subjects and making those emotions the main focus for his photos. Komenich recalled how some of his subjects would be so preoccupied with his equipment that their naturalistic behavior would be lost in their curiosity with what he was doing. His job was then to “make it like it was before he got there,” sometimes this would require him to take a knee and pretend to fix the camera, pop up quickly, take a burst of photos and then down again to repeat the process.

“Would it be more effective if I wrote this or showed this?” This question was one that Komenich posed when he was talking about how some stories can be shared with more ease in photos than if you were to write them out. In addition to a few documentaries, and numerous awards, Komenich has received his Master's in Journalism from the University of Missouri, is a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University, and a Dart Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, at Columbia University. Such achievements can only help to prove Komenich’s true love of visual storytelling, in everything that he captures.

"Words on Pictures: Kim Komenich." Words on Pictures: Kim Komenich. NPPA: The Voices ofVisual Journalists, n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.