Tuesday was an all-day bus ride from Guatemala City to La Ceiba, Honduras. Fourteen hours, with a bus change and layover of 2 hours in San Pedro, Honduras. Met our cab driver in La Ceiba and took the 45-minute ride up the dirt road to Las Mangas.

After disembarking in San Pedro my iphone was “disappeared” – slipped out of my pocket in the seat, and I was off the bus before I realized it. A “search” by the bus service personnel turned up nothing. Mysteriously I was not allowed back on to look for myself.

So much for keeping in touch by email – all of my contacts were on the phone, not yet in this new computer. Hopefully I’ll be able to restore everything from the backup when I return and get a replacement.

The next two days were spent teaching photo classes to the students at Guaruma, the school project here. Originally started as a photography school for the children in Las Mangas, the project now has expanded to include environmental awareness studies and English, and has a second location about 5 kilometers farther up the mountain in El Pital.

The project we created for the kids was a simulated magazine cover, to teach the students awareness of shooting pictures for a specific format and subject, and then laying out the cover with their photos in Photoshop.

Wednesday we met up with Guaruma’s assistant director, Chris Poliquin and the school’s English teacher, Erin Coutts. That day we worked with the students in Las Mangas, and the theme of their assignment was “form and color in nature”. We took a walk along the nature trails that Guaruma maintains up the road and across the river just outside town.

The kids here are very much into macro photography, and their sensitivity and awareness of their environment is great to see. A few leaves on the jungle floor become a carefully composed still life, often displaying the subtle interplay of muted greens and browns, other times exploding in the vibrant colors of jungle flowers.

And insects – Oui! They have a critical eye for the smallest creature resting on a leaf or poised on the end of a branch, and work their subjects like a fashion photographer working with their model. Incredible shots of what others might think of as mundane and perhaps something to be dismissed and avoided.

After shooting their photos, we returned to the school where they loaded them onto the computers and learned how to combine the images in Photoshop into a template Eric created as the cover layout.

Then they played with changing type colors and fonts, moving type around the page, and learned how working with layers simplifies so many things. The students were excited to discover what they could do in the program and quickly realized how these techniques could be used with other projects.

Thursday we went up the road to El Pital and worked with the students up there. Neither of these “towns” are even wide spots in the road, but El Pital is a bit more “rustic”. There’s no nature trail there and the focus of their shoot was portraiture of the townspeople.

After some pointers on the do’s – and don’ts – of taking people pictures along with an explanation of how to shoot for a specific format, we unleashed this gaggle of paparazzi on the town.

While a few held back and preferred the comfort of using each other as subjects, most were quick to engage people they met (of course in this town, everyone knows each other) and ask to take their picture. Most were willing subjects and enjoyed working with the kids.

After corralling everyone and herding them back to the classroom, the kids went through the same process of putting their photos into the “cover” template. This group was a bit less computer-savvy than the Las Mangas kids, but nonetheless picked up the concepts and techniques pretty quickly.

This project gives the students an opportunity to learn practice skills that they’ll be able to apply to all of their photography as they move forward in developing their skills.

All of the members of the Jakaramba studio will be participating in the workshop. Up to now their clients have been primarily local and regional non-profit organizations, and they’ve worked on smaller projects. We hope they’ll come away from the workshop with a clear direction for the studio and a solid marketing plan, ready to take their business to the next level.

The client for this workshop will be FotoKids itself, and the project a self-published book to be used for promotion and fund-raising. Plans for the he book are to include an overview of the Fotokids project, feature photographs by FotoKids students, and to touch on the beauty and challenges of Guatemala.

Additional customizable chapters will include bios on individual students, coverage of the Design4Kids project and a look at Jakaramba.

Instructors for this workshop will be Design4Kids director Jeff Speigner, teaching graphic design, Cathy Shea teaching marketing, and Eric Lollkema and myself teaching photography. I’ll also be working with Cathy to interject the small business, target marketing approach with her big business marketing skills and experience.

Eric and I will be arriving a week early and making a side trip to Honduras, where we’ll be teaching photo classes for several days at Guaruma, the Honduras branch of Fotokids.

An interesting side note I’ve recently learned is that while it is currently the rainy season in Guatemala, with moderate temperatures and daily storms, Honduras, right next door but on the Caribbean coast, is in their dry season, with hot sunny days and temps near 100! Quite a climate variance in a area the size of the Carolinas!

Check in regularly – I’ll be providing periodic updates during the trip – internet connections permitting.

Last Saturday started it off with the Kids & Parents Photo Class. The introductory class was geared toward the kids – 11 to 15 year olds – and the parents came along to share the experience and learn alongside each other. Of course, with today’s tech-savvy kids, it’s likely that they were explaining it again to the parents that evening!

We went over the basics of using their cameras – point & shoots – and a little on light and composition. Next we all went outside and practiced what they learned. Then we came back in the classroom and looked at some photo editing techniques, using software like Google’s Picasa.

The parents told me that the kids went home and took photos all afternoon!

That was followed up during the week with the first of two Home Photography Clinics, this one held in Potomac, Maryland, aimed at professionals in the real estate industry who take their own photos for their listings.

While I still make my living as an architectural photographer, it’s obvious that every photo of every home on the market doesn’t justify a budget of hiring a professional like myself. Many clients over the years have asked about how to take better photos themselves, so I’ve put together a two-day workshop to teach some tips and techniques for improving their photos, without all the expensive and complex equipment that I use.

We started with camera basics – many people at this level are using their cameras on the totally automatic settings, and just taking the camera off “the green” and learning how to control it yourself goes a long way towards improving your results.

We talked a bit about equipment – at least an entry-level SLR is really best – plus adding a wide angle lens and a hot shoe flash to allow bouncing and diffusing light.

And of course using a tripod! I’m a big proponent of using a tripod for just about any photo situation you can. It makes it much easier to get sharp pictures in any condition, and frees you up from worrying about too-slow shutter speeds and too-high and noisy ISO’s.

Then we talked about the qualities and colors of light, and how they all play a key role in the success of a photo. Light should always be the first consideration, not an afterthought.

We followed that up with a look at some basics of composition and design elements, like the Rule of Thirds and using lines – especially the power of diagonal lines – to move the eye through the picture and capture the viewer’s attention.

The first day finished up with some considerations and techniques especially useful for architectural-type shooting. We talked about perspective distortion and parallel lines. And about how to tame the typical ultra-high contrast lighting situations found when photographing interiors.

The second day began with the participants practicing the techniques learned on day one. I hold the workshops in a house to give the students an opportunity to try these techniques right away and ask questions.

Finally we went over some very useful post processing methods that make life in the digital age so much easier.

Shooting in RAW is the first thing to consider to make the process of adjusting images on the computer easier and more efficient. This is another reason for choosing an SLR – even most of the entry level models have RAW capture, while only some advanced digital and few point & shoots allow this.

White balancing an interior space illuminated by mixed light sources can be a time-consuming and complicated task with film and even when shooting JPEGS in camera. With Raw processing it becomes a one-click process, with maybe a little slider adjustment to fine tune things. True, some RAW processing software like Adobe Camera Raw allows white balance adjustments on JPEGS, but this feature is often not found on the more economical entry-level programs.

While critical perspective control is still best done with specialty PC lenses (or a view camera), the ability to quickly adjust for keystoning in programs like Photoshop will instantly take photos of both exteriors and interiors up to a level far above the average real estate listing snapshots.

And the ability to bracket exposures and combine them in post-processing is a tremendously useful means of overcoming too-contrasty lighting conditions. With a bit of practice it soon becomes a quick and simple method of taming extreme highlights and shadows, without the greater learning curve and specialty software required for true HDR images.

Everyone who participated was truly excited to start using their new-found skills, and this week we’ll repeat the workshop with another group in Northern Virginia. Those students are already calling with eager questions and requests!

After the client presentation just about everyone relaxed at a party along the lakefront. Unfortunately, it was about that time that some evil bug got hold of me. I won’t go into details on the chills and my other experiences of the afternoon and evening – let’s just say the bug had me confined to quarters for the duration, and I missed the party and the final dinner that evening.

What a great group though – after the dinner everyone came up to my room to check on me and say goodbye. We really come together like a family at these workshops, and the last day is an emotional mix of elation over the success of the week and the sadness that it’s over.

After a long day of travel on Sunday I arrived back home in Maryland, and picked right up on Monday where I had left off on shooting an annual report for one of my clients. Then, just to really make the point that I wasn’t in Guatemala anymore. The now famous “Blizzard of 2009” embraced us this weekend here in the Mid-Atlantic.

What a dichotomy – one Saturday walking through Santiago as Christmas festivities were in full swing, complete with a palm-leaf tree in the town square. The next, just a week later, buried in 20” of snow!

It makes the prospect of the next Design4Kids workshop in June that much more inviting. We’re considering a “Master Class” for the more advanced, experienced Fotokids. Keep tuned here and at www.Design4Kids for more to come on this workshop. And if you have the talents and experience to share – in photography, graphic design, marketing, entrepreneurship –  seriously consider in joining us as a volunteer mentor. There’s no way I can fully describe the incredible fulfillment and richness of emotion that comes from working with these kids.

Feel free to contact me for more info.

After a short in-class presentation and a few examples, we went outside and practiced the techniques – definitely the best way to really learn and understand how to do it. Everyone loves the opportunity to play and experiment with the camera.

Then back inside for the next lesson – fill flash. We did double photo sessions with the same group today while the other group was doing screen printing on the graphic design side, and will do the same tomorrow with the boys working with us on photography.

It was a natural segue from aperture to understanding the use of fill flash both indoors and outside. It’s natural for beginners to simply use flash as the primary light source and blast away. Once you see the subtle natural results from balancing flash with available light, you really begin to get excited about the possibilities for creative control.

The kids really got into shooting photos of each other with the flash – they played like paparazzi and stars! This group is an amazingly talented bunch of kids, and they devour every new concept we present them.

The afternoon was project work. The concepts are set and the posters are really coming along. Only a day and a half before they present the final designs to the client.

Tomorrow we’ll see how the boys do with depth of field and fill flash. The girls have set the bar!

One on Pana’a attributes is that all three of Atitlan’s volcanos – Vuncans Atitlan, San Pedro and Toliman are all visible from the town’s harbor. Heading up into town and all streets are predictably lined with shops offering local clothing, jewelry and all manner of souvenirs. It’s a colorful gauntlet, and if the shops don’t entice you the street vendors are always there with their offerings.

But we weren’t there to shop. Bree Hankinson, who runs the Fotokids program in Santiago, created The Amazing Photo Race for the kids (and the mentors). We teamed up in teams of three and went out into the town to solve a cryptic list of photo assignments. It made for some very creative thinking and rewarding inter-cultural teamwork between the kids and mentors. Not to mention some interesting interpretations and translations of the photo list!

Tomorrow its back to class and work on the project.

We had them shoot a bracket from -2 to +2 and then showed them how to import their images into Lightroom and make adjustments to their photos, recovering much of their under- and over-exposed frames.

It’s exciting to see the lights come on when the concepts sink in and they “get it”. Ana, one of the girls from “the city” (as Guatemala City is know down here) observed that the shot she liked best wasn’t the “correct” metered exposure – recognizing that having the skills to control the exposure allows you to interpret your image the way you visualize the final result.

Next we repeated the two classes with the more experienced members of the group. While most of them claimed to understand the use of aperture and shutter, it was clear that they all had only a little experience in applying the concepts of manual exposure control in their photos. Once they realized what they really can do by making the camera do what they want, they got totally into the process as well.

Tomorrow is an “excursion day” – no structured classes, but rather a creative play day, with activities that allow the kids to apply and practice the concepts and techniques they’re learning this week. Can’t wait to see what they come up with!

After the travel day on Saturday, staying overnight in Antigua, and the half-day drive to Santiago de Atitlan on Sunday followed by the opening introductions, today saw the first full day of the workshop.

The group traveled to the Hospitalito Atitlan, the clients for this workshop, to meet the doctor and staff and discuss the design project. The workshop will focus on designing a poster or series of posters to create awareness of diabetes and it’s consequences among the local population.

Not only does Guatemala have the dubious distinction of having the highest number of amputations from diabetes complications in the world, but the disease, its causes and methods of prevention are not widely understood by much of the population

The rest of the day was spent creating a pan for the project and assigning teams who will work on several potential options for the client.

Tomorrow the classes begin, with workshop director Jeff Speigner teaching graphic design, and Eric Lolkema and I teaching photo techniques and post production. Everyone is excited and ready to get to work, and this promises to be another fantastic week.

The kids come away from the week with much more than new technical skills. They learn how to work with a client and create a project from conception to delivery. They develop abilities that will help them grow in every area of their lives. The creative processes that they learn and develop through photography and graphic design give them insight into creative problem-solving thinking that they’ll use in everything they do.While it’s certainly a good thing to give people something they’re without and will use up right away – food, medicine, and the like – it’s a tremendous feeling to give them knowledge that they will use to become self-sufficient and productive for life. It’s truly “teaching them how to fish” rather than just giving them a fish to feed them for a day.

The more I teach, the more excited I am about teaching becoming a greater part of my life. Both at the workshops, and also in the classes I conduct back here at home, it’s a fantastic feeling to see how much enjoyment and value people receive from what I have to give. I’ve added a parent & kid class in January so that young (11-15 year old) people & a parent can learn some photography basics together. It’s already filling – really popular!

I do intend to post more frequent updates from Guatemala this trip. Keep checking in, and spread the word!

In case you haven’t seen my earlier posts on the workshop, Design4Kids is a group of volunteers from the photography, graphic design and marketing world who volunteer and get together to teach creative, business and life skills to groups of young people in Guatemala.

We’re affiliated with Fotokids, a non-profit organization teaching photography in several programs within Guatemala and now Honduras. Every six months a select group of these talented young people are selected to come with us to Santiago de Atitlan for a week-long workshop, where they actually work with a client to produce a marketing or promotional piece.The goal of the workshops is to help the kids develop the skills and knowledge to operate their own design studio. That is now a reality, in the form of Jarakamba – a studio with offices in Santiago and Guatemala City.

We’re less than a month away from the next workshop, scheduled for December 5^th thru the 13^th. We’ve all been working tirelessly to prepare a program to help the students succeed, and the excitement is building. Check in for new updates as the day arrives!

For more information:

www.design4kids.org

www.fotokids.org