Kara, Miguel, Marixa and I drove 12 hours to Zona Reyna this weekend to help our friend Emma teach a class about telling stories with multimedia slideshows to a group of Mayan teens who live in Zona Reyna. Zona Reyna is a poor, rural and isolated area located in the mountains of Quiché. Our class was part of Project Einstein Guatemala, which you can read more about here.
After Miguel gave a presentation on the principles of composition and other photographic fundamentals, we split up into four teams and went out to shoot. My team, made up of Mario, Edger, Rosalia, Fulvia, Thomas and Rolando took me out to a part of the Rio Cuatro Chorros called Las Tortugas. I taught them simple stuff like how to handle shadows made by intense sunlight, how to get up in people’s faces to take portraits, and also my best secret photo technique: always take a humongous ton of pics.
After the shoots I gave a presentation on retouching, specifically how we dramatically alter images in the advertising industry. This may have wrankled some of the journalist feathers in the room but hey that’s how I roll. The teams then made their selects, performed simple image manipulation, choose audio and created their slideshows using Soundslides – a popular tool in modern newsrooms.
Our training was a real success. The kids were super-enthusiastic and fast, intuitive learners. They’re so drawn to technology you wish they all had their own computers, digital cameras and USB modems. Above is the story my guys produced, entitled, El Rio.
Beautiful slide show. The dragonfly at the end is perfect.
Thanks! I was blown away by some of the shots they captured – the dragonfly for sure.
This is so lovely! I enjoyed it greatly, and what a wonderful project. It must have meant so much to the kids.
Thanks Trudy! I wish we could have ’em all come down here to Antigua (or Guatemala) and have a week-long thing. That would basically blow their minds I think (in a good way).
Nice Brad, congratulation to the kids that take this wonderful picture, and to you that help to get this beutiful slideshow. We loved that weekend with you and we are so honred to be part of this project.