“Instant gratification” came to Jacqueline Koch after she ran the first photojournalism workshop to be held in Aceh Province, Indonesia.

Serambi Indonesia, Aceh’s dominant daily newspaper, published the stark photo above the fold on June 20. It showed rainwater flooding tents in one of the refugee camps set up to house survivors of the Dec. 26 tsunami.

“A beautiful and telling image,” declared Koch (pronounced like “cook”). For her, it evoked the images of National Geographic, one of the world’s best known publishers of top-quality color photos.

Serambi photographer Bedu Saini captured the scene the previous afternoon, on a field trip organized by Koch as the culmination of a two-day workshop on photojournalism. Koch and Acehnese photographer Tarmizy Harva led the workshop June 18 and 19. Their workshop was part of a tsunami relief program administered in Aceh by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) on a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Most Acehnese photographers have little or no professional training, Koch noted. So in her workshop, she focused on teaching both technical issues—how to store, organize and edit digital photos—and how to make better pictures and display them in publications. Discussions also turned to photojournalism ethics, editor expectations and working conditions.

Koch, who first visited Aceh in 2000 as a Pew International Press Fellow, has returned to Indonesia repeatedly ever since. She has learned to speak Bahasa Indonesia (the lingua Franca of Indonesia) and has been touched by the turbulent history of strife-torn and battered Aceh.

Aceh is the scene of a 30-year-old separatist movement that has battled intermittently with the Indonesian military. The recent tsunami killed about 125,000 people in the province and leveled half of its largest town, Banda Aceh. The disaster pulled Koch back to Aceh again to write and photograph as a freelancer. After local photographers asked for training, ICFJ recruited Koch to lead a workshop.

Murizal Hamsah, a freelance journalist, expressed her gratitude after the June, 2005 workshop. “I and other journalists in banda Aceh (are) very happy,” she wrote. “It’s a first time I get training. Good for journalists in Aceh.”

Koch plans to hold a second photojournalism workshop in Aceh. “I’m passionate about both the field and the region,” she said, “and this workshop gave me the opportunity to give back in a meaningful way to the Acehnese who have given so much to me.”