Today the group took a break from the teaching and project work and went for a day trip across the lake to Panajachel. The largest town on Lago Atitlan, Pana, as its often known, is the tourist and ex-pat mecca of the Atitlan area. This makes for a busy and photo-op rich environment.
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 began the day with the less experienced kids in the group, and introduced them to the basics of exposure control – aperture, shutter and ISO, and the relationships between them. These kids have worked with digital point & shoot cameras and have a respectable grounding in composition, and this shows them how to get consistent, predictable results in their photos.
The third Design4Kids workshop began in earnest today in Santiago de Atitlan, Guatemala.
I’m making the final preparations for the third Design4Kids workshop in Santiago de Atitlan, Guatemala. Leaving in just a week! Eric, Jeff and I have become the core group of instructors there, and we’re really coming together as a team. Naturally it helps that all of us have the same passion – teaching the skills we have to give these kids an opportunity to develop a career path and success for themselves.
Finally! After four months, I’ve uploaded the photos from the June Design4Kids workshop to my website. Much of that time was waiting for the site to be up and running. Take a look at 
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.
