Working in the Field is a two-day hands-on intensive workshop designed to give photographers the practical skills needed to work confidently and professionally – from the moment you pick up a camera to the moment you hit send to an editor, client, or publication. Looking to pitch your project, submit to competitions, and open calls? This workshop will help you prepare. Working with photography for your organisation? Whether photographer or editor – in the media, with an NGO, charity, foundation or independent organisation, this workshop focuses on building the skills and best practices that help get the work done, delivered, and published.
Organised by Parallax Photo Journal and Obscura Festival, and led by working photographers and editors, this workshop is built around the realities of professional practice in the field.
Dates, Structure, Fees
Public talk
In this informal conversation you’ll hear about professional practice and life in the field. A chance to meet the instructors, connect with other participants, and get oriented before the weekend begins.
Date: Friday, 17 April 2026
Time: 7.30 – 9.30 pm
Venue: Sentul, Kuala Lumpur (Map)
Workshop
Saturday and Sunday combine structured sessions with hands-on individual work, peer critique, and one-to-one feedback. Participants work on both their own existing projects and the shared mock assignment, leaving with a completed, captioned image set and a workflow they can put into practice immediately.
Date: Saturday 18 April – Sunday, 19 April 2026
Time: morning – evening
Venue: Sentul, 51000 Kuala Lumpur (Map)
Fees: RM 500 per student.
Apply by: 3 April 2026
Please note: this workshop is subject to a minimum enrolment requirement to run. Successful applicants will be notified by email.
Who is it for?
☑️ Aspiring and early-career photojournalists
☑️ Working documentary photographers and visual storytellers
☑️ Photographers interested in pitching, submitting to competitions, and open calls.
☑️ Anyone working with media outlets, NGOs, charities, foundations, or independent clients
There is no strict barrier to entry. Whether you are just starting out or already working professionally, this workshop focuses on the practical realities of getting images from camera to publication. This workshop is also about community building; creating shared standards, mutual support, and professional respect within a regional network of photographers.
Faciliators
The workshop is led by working practitioners with deep roots in Southeast Asian photography and international editorial and curatorial experience.
☑️ Tom White, Lead instructor. Tom is a photographer and Editor-in-Chief here at Parallax Photo Journal. Tom will be teaching the course and guiding participants throughout the workshop.
☑️ Sanjit Das, Guest Reviewer. Photographer, contributing Photo Editor at The New York Times, and co-founder at Alt Studio. Former photo editor at Bloomberg. Sanjit will join Tom in reviewing participant work.
☑️ Vignes Balasingam, Guest Reviewer. Founder and director of Obscura Photo Festival. Vignes will join Tom in reviewing participant work.
What will you learn?
Professional photography isn’t just about making strong images – it’s about everything that happens around them. This workshop gives you hands-on experience of best professional practices:
✅ In the field: You’ll work to a real-world brief on a guided mock assignment, practising how to gather the information you need while shooting such as accurate caption details, contextual notes, source verification, and observational discipline. These are habits that separate reliable professionals from the rest.
✅ Develop your ongoing projects: Have a project you’re working on, at any stage from planning to editing? Bring it to the workshop and spend time developing it further – need a better edit? Captions and Context? Figuring out any narrative gaps? The workshop will give you the tools to identify and address all these and more.
✅ Editing and selection: Learn how to approach the editing process as a professional – making clear, defensible selections that serve a story and meet editorial standards, rather than simply choosing your personal favourites. We’ll cover the logic of picture editing, working with sequences, and communicating your choices to editors and clients.
✅ Captions, metadata, and keywords: Captions are not an afterthought. We’ll cover what editors actually need, how to structure caption information correctly, how to write with accuracy and economy, and why metadata and keywords matter for distribution, searchability, and archiving. Getting this right is one of the most consistently overlooked professional skills.
✅ Basic file organisation and digital asset management (DAM): A reliable, consistent file organisation system is the foundation of a sustainable professional practice. We’ll walk through practical workflows for ingesting, naming, and organising, introducing options for both free and paid tools – so that you can get started right away. The emphasis is on best practices, not specific brands or tools.
✅ Preparing files for submission: Whether you’re submitting to an editor, a client, an NGO, a photo library, or a competition, there are standards and expectations that matter. We’ll cover best practices for file formats, sizing, embedding metadata, and the professional etiquette of delivery.
✅ Ethics and representation: Working responsibly is not optional. We’ll look at the ethical frameworks that underpin photojournalism and documentary practice: informed consent, representation, accountability, and the particular responsibilities that come with working in Southeast Asian contexts. This isn’t abstract theory; it’s practical guidance for decisions you’ll face in the field.
✅ Pitching and professional communication: Knowing how to present your work is as important as the work itself. We’ll cover how to approach editors and organisations and how to communicate professionally with clarity, confidence, and appropriate concision.
What you’ll leave with
✅ A completed, captioned, submission-ready image set
✅ A professional workflow
✅ Stronger caption writing and metadata skills
✅ Practical experience of working to a brief and receiving critique
✅ Clearer ethical grounding for field practice
✅ Confidence in pitching and professional communication
✅ Connections with photographers working to the same standards
Places are limited. Apply now.
