I had the tremendous opportunity to attend the second New York Times Lens Blog Portfolio Review last weekend at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. It was a whirlwind trip, and, especially, a whirlwind day at the portfolio review. I'll post a longer wrap-up post on dvafoto in the coming days, but wanted to express a heartfelt thanks to Jim Estrin and the rest of the Lens Blog crew for setting up the event.

And a big thank you goes out to my reviewers: Natalie at Time, Neil at Fortune, Genevieve at the New Yorker, Jose at the New York Times, Cornelius (sitting in for Maura) at the New York Times, and Sarah at Paris Match. Each of my reviewers gave a thoughtful and engaged look at my work, offering constructive advice on the stories I presented and good ideas for where to take them.

In addition to meeting with editors, I hadn't expected how valuable the opportunity would be to meet with other photographers at a similar stage in their careers. The reviewees were split between photojournalists and fine art photographers. It was great to put faces to names among the photojournalists attending the event, and also to see what they were working on. Meeting the fine art photographers was like pulling back the curtain on a completely separate world of photography. The work they brought was phenomenal, and so much of it was completely unknown to me.