Happy new year from Georg

Devamitta said about everything I wanted to say.
I`m very happy to be here and I have lots of fun with the „Photo Kids“!
Ariyadhamma is a very interested and helpful assistant and Devamitta a generous and very helpful host. He is like a father for this project.
The days go by very quickly and we only have two weeks left. But with the intensity and passion the boys work and enjoy photography I`m sure we will get a good base for some of them.

Many of you supported us already and made all this possible. We were able to get seven cameras and more than 1000 Euros. That is incredibly motivating and impressing for me. Especially because I know under what circumstances some of you enabled that support.
About ten of the boys (we are still hoping that some girls will join) come regularly to the meetings and one can see them to any given time with their cameras ready to “shoot”. Unfortunatelly not all of them got a camera yet. So I hope soon all of them will have the possibility to have one handy at any time. I would appreciate if all of you could continue to look out for cameras and financial support so we can make that possible for them.
The project is supposed to change from a four-week-crash-course to a long term project. I hope we will be able to make that happen with your support.

The following picture I put together out of pictures the young photographers took especially for you. In particular for the ones who supported us with cameras and financially.

Lots of thanks also from me!!

I wish you all a wonderful year 2009!

Georg





Dear friends,

Happy new year from Devamitta

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Telwatta Photo Kids.

Hereby I wish to thank you all for your support of the project which is run here by Mr. Georg Höfer for the benefit of our kids.
The boys here are so enthusiastic and happy with the “Photo Kids” program and they are learning so much during this period.
Personally I not only enjoy seeing them having so much fun together, which is not happening so much in their daily live, I also see that the program is having the result I hoped for: they start to look different at each other and their surroundings, they see pictures and beauty everywhere! This will make a big difference for their future; they are looking different at their lifes.

The aim we had: to stimulate their artistic characteristics, to stimulate their creativity and to make them work together will be surely reached!
I must say that a great part of this is thanks to the inspiring teaching of Georg and his handling of the group! He is doing this in such a way that I think that if he worked with my pupil the Rev. Ariyadhamma before that he might have become a photographer instead of a monk! He surely “infected” him with the “photography virus”, especially the passion of Georg for night photography has been transferred to the
Rev. Ariyadhamma! And because of Georg’s passion for photography and his way of working and teaching the boys here my admiration for him has grown every day!

Dear friends (if I may call you all so?), I want to thank you all for your support for this project. It makes the end of this year so valuable for the boys and me personally! It gives me good prospects and hope for the coming year. Normally we are so busy to try and help those who suffer that it is a wonderful way to end this, and start the next year with such a creative, educational and “fun” program!
Thank you very much! Thank you Georg!

I hope you will continue to support this program and I end this letter with the wish that;
You all May be Healthy, Happy and Safe in this New Year!

Yours sincerely:

Holland Sri Devamitta Maha Thera
Metta Ashrama
Telwatta – Sri Lanka.

Listen and learn..!

The following photos were taken by one photographer, Nipuna. He took the challenge I gave them two days ago very seriously: I wanted them to take at least ten photographs of each person from different points of view and distances.
There are festivities in the local temple at the moment and some of the boys are active there so only one of them did what I expected.
Before the boys only took one or at the most two pictures per person. Here you can see that the photographer told his model what to do and how to act. That way a snap shot becomes a photograph in which the photographer becomes the director.

Two days later

I told the kids what to be aware of for the next time they take photos. But I wasn`t sure they really understood. But I knew they did after I saw that:





































I think this is pretty impressive. We have been working together for less than one week. And they are picking the important things up very quickly! I hope you are as impressed as I am. Always keep in mind that photography is new to most of them!


It would be nice for all of us if you could comment our work. I see it more as a project of all of us, not just the people here in Sri Lanka. Many of you have been very supportive. Please do that again by telling us what you think. And not only good things. We also appreciate if you tell us what you would improve!

After the first lesson

Every other day the kids come to our house to present us the pictures they have taken the day before. We all sit in the living room and go through a selection of the photos on the projector. I explain to them what is good in the pictures and tell them what they have to be careful about the next time they „shoot“. Ariyadhamma functions as my translator. I`m very surprised how concentrated the kids are listening and what kind of discussions they have. When I ask them what the think is good about a certain photograph or what could be done better some of them always know the rigth answer after thinking about it very hard for a few seconds. Then they are very, very proud and happy.
We also laugh a lot together. They about my not existing singhala language skills and their photos and me about the happy kids and their jokes.
But they take the project very seriously as well. Sometimes when I go through Telwatta at 7 o`clock in the morning I can see some of them already taking pictures somewhere.

I give the boys a new exercise for the next few days every time we meet. Rigth now I want them to learn about portrait photography. Here you can see what happens if you tell some boys with cameras: „find some nice people and take nice pictures of them!“.
First I wanted to see what the photos look like if they take them without knowledge about composition and other artistic ideas.

The first photos

Finally I uploaded the first results of the work of our "Photo Kids". These photos were taken when the boys first got their cameras. They "shot" everything they could find. But for me it was pretty surprising to see what they came up with and some of the results are quite impressive. Keeping in mind that most of them never used a camera before. I think it is a very good base. Have a look for yourself.

The kids from Galle

Below you can see our photographers from Galle. It is about 25 km south from Telwatta.