LOS ANGELES, CA (July 24, 2007) – Los Angeles Times photojournalist Rick Loomis is both the subject and narrator of a new multimedia project launched on KCET-TV's Web site, "IRAQ: News In Transition" (click on "View Multimedia").
In this detailed an wrenching multimedia package, Loomis goes back over many of the key and memorable images that he's shot during more than four years of covering the war, during four tours in Iraq and three tours in Afghanistan, as he's covered the conflict for the Times since the war's first hours.
Using the new tools of online storytelling along with traditional still photography photojournalism, Loomis shares a behind-the-scenes look on how he reported, and survived, stories like "The Siege of Fallouja," and the three-part series he did with the Times' David Zucchino, "The Lifeline."
Loomis tells his stories in seven online chapters, which were produced by Juan Devis. The Loomis segment is part of a larger KCET package titled "The Laptop War," which includes a blog "Alive In Baghdad," a selection of military blogs, and the PBS documentary "Operation Homecoming."
Loomis, along with reporters Kenneth R. Weiss and Usha Lee McFarling, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for their five-part series "Altered Oceans," which examined the conditions of the world's seas. He was NPPA's Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2003, and the California Press Photographers Association's Photographer of the Year in 2003 and 2004.
The photojournalist has been with the Times since 1994 when he graduated with a photojournalism degree from Western Kentucky University. During college he interned at The Fort Wayne (Indiana) News Sentinel, the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Seattle Times, and Syracuse newspapers. During high school he was a lab technician and photographer for The Palm Beach Post in his Florida hometown.
Loomis started with the Times in their Orange County edition, and after 9/11 moved into the paper's national and international coverage. He's been a photography coach at The Mountain Photographic Workshops in Kentucky four times, and he's been an NPPA member since 1989.
