BELA SZANDELSZKY – VIDEO JOURNALIST & PHOTOGRAPHER

CAREER SUMMARY

I’ve started my professional career as a photojournalist and I spent most of my time working for The Associated Press. Before starting working for AP in Budapest, Hungary, I lived in Kosovo where I spent a year and a half documenting the armed conflict. I also used to be a contributing photographer of the Hungarian edition of the National Geographic Magazine.

Since 2002 I worked for AP as its only photographer in Hungary. Since 2010, I have worked almost exclusively as a video journalist for APTN and have been an integral part of the cross-format initiative in Central Europe.

Beside my daily work in Hungary, I have fulfilled various international assignments, covering news and sport events in numerous locations. For AP I was working on news and features from Ukraine to the Balkans, in the conflict zones of Afghanistan, Georgia, Lebanon, and I also covered the historical moments of the Arab Spring in Egypt, in Libya and in Syria where I was the member of several cross-format teams telling the stories of the advancing rebels, bomb-makers or the suffering of the refugees.

In 2013 and 2014, I have worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as video journalist based in Amman, Jordan. I was the member of the organization’s Video Unit working on the video coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis. In this regional position my main duty was producing television news and feature stories for the global audience about the extraordinary Syrian refugee crises in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Iraq and in Jordan.

In 2015, I worked again for the Associated Press Television News as video journalist based in Budapest, Hungary.

Beside my daily jobs at AP and UNHCR I took every opportunity to teach photography and video journalism in hope of passing knowledge and experience to the jounger generation.

EDUCATION

• Videojournalism Course of the Center for Independent Journalism in cooperation with the Miami University, 2010
• Videojournalism Course of the Hungarian State Television, 2009
• Centurion’s Hostile Environments course (AP), 2004 and 2009
• Danish School of Journalism Training of Trainers Program in Photojournalism, 2002-2003
• CIJ. (Center for Independent Journalism) Postgraduate Photography Course, 1997
• Népszabadság (Hungary’s largest daily) Internship 1992-1996
• Hungarian School of Photography 1992-1994

BOOK

• Kosovo 1000 Days Later – A Forgotten Story, Budapest Week Publishing, 2002

FILM

• Mirage (2010.) Documentary film about refugees and asylum-seekers in Central-Eastern Europe

AWARDS

• Photographer of the Year – Hungarian Press Photo Contest 2009
• Best Photo of the Year – BETA 2008
• Best Feature Story of the Year Hungarian Press Photo Contest 2008
• Best News Photo of the Year – Hungarian Press Photo Contest 2006
• Hungarian Joseph Pulitzer Award 2005

LANGUAGE SKILLS

• English – fluent
• Russian – intermediate
• Hungarian – native speaker

COMPUTER SKILLS

• Adobe Premier Pro
• Final Cut Pro
• Photoshop
• Lightroom
• Photo Mechanic