Patty Reksten
Director of Photography, The Oregonian
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Patty Reksten is director of photography at The Oregonian. She came to the newspaper in January 1998 after 14 years as a professor at the University of Montana School of Journalism.
In 1997 Reksten received the Robin F. Garland Educator Award from The National Press Photographers Association. The award was in recognition of her role in building the photojournalism program at the University of Montana and for encouraging her students to tackle issues of importance to Native Americans. Before that she worked as a reporter, photographer, designer and editor.
The Oregonian picture editing and photography staff has won numerous awards in the past several
years. Rob Finch was the 2002 Newspaper Photographer of the Year. That same year the picture editing staff won six POYI awards including first, second and third in the picture story category and third place in the picture editing portfolio competition. For 2003, the picture editing staff won second place in the Best Picture Use for newspapers with more than 100,000 subscribers. The LA Times was first, The New York Times, third. The photo and picture editing staff has also won numerous SND awards and national Headliners and ASNE and SPJ awards. In 2004 and 2005 the photography staff won an award of excellence for its portfolio. In the 2005 sports portfolio category of POYI, two Oregonian photographers placed second and third in the sports portfolio category besting all other newspaper photographers in the world.
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Reksten is a faculty member for the Stan Kalish Picture Editing Workshops and has judged Pictures of the Year and numerous other state and regional contests. She has also taught at the Missouri Photo Workshop and the Western Kentucky Mountain Peoples Workshop.