Thursday, February 18, 2010

Preparing for the Puppet Show

Today was a lot of fun and I got to teach what I love teaching about most: photography! Today and tomorrow, kids and volunteers from several different schools and organizations are preparing giant puppets for the annual puppet show. In a few different locations, they set up areas where they mounted these puppets with straw and tape as bodies and tomorrow they will apply the outer layers, which are made of papier maché. Next Sunday will be the big show.

The advanced kids at the Anjali House are responsible for taking photographs of the process and then we're going to make a slideshow with music to present after the puppet show. So, today I gave a few lessons on photography to the kids. Initially while going through their images, they didn't have many good shots. They all seemed to be taken without much care or artistic sense. They were usually just pretty general shots of what was going on, a lot of back of heads, uninteresting scenes... So, I really enjoyed talking to the class about how to take an overall better picture: how to get in people's faces, get them to smile and laugh, composition, finding subjects, etc etc. It was really amazing to see that after just giving them a 30 minute introduction, their shots INSTANTLY got better. I was super proud of them and I'm excited to see how they do tomorrow. Next week I'll do some more in-depth classes and have them work on a different project with more freedom.

Canon donated about 10 G10's to the Anjali House so they have a great start with learning about digital photography. A few months ago, they had a big photography project where a few international photographers came to teach the kids about photography. One kid has an exhibit up at a hotel nearby. I'm looking forward to eventually go to see the show, I heard it's really good.

Tonight 15 of us went to get some yummy Indian dinner and then I stopped by "Quiz Night" at the Funky Monkey bar where Thursday nights they do pop quizzes, drink and raise money for the different projects.

























Random shot - this is what a more local gas station looks like!

3 comments:

  1. David just sent me the link and i have avidly gone through since the first day to catch up -- a great way to spend a chilly Miami morning. This is great stuff. Think David will need to get another apartment for all the photos though.

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  2. You're the queen of portraits! Love the color more than the black and white...since the environment deserves the color. In gray Paree it's ok, but in such a lush place...give me all you got! You're the best.

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  3. Erica
    Wonderful! Every day I look forward to your blogs. Since I can’t be there it the next best thing. The pictures and blogs are so descriptive and delightful that it fills the longing to be there void. I hope that it is all that you hoped it would be and more! Keep up the good work! XOXO Lyndi

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