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.

The kids from Tellwatta

Today the kids came back to visit us to show us what they have been taking pictures of the day before. You will soon find a selection of those pictures here on the blog. But we don`t have pictures of all the kids yet because only half of them can take photos at a time.
In the meantime we want to introduce the kids from Tellwatta to you. The ones from Galle will follow soon.

The first day

Today we started our „Photo Kids project“.

Early afternoon three boys from Galle, about 20 km south of here, with a teacher and seven boys from Tellwatta came to see us. We rent a house where we can meet. There are also other projects going on in that house.

We explained to the kids again what they had to expect and what we expect and then gave them the cameras. I started to show them how to use them but some of them didn’t even wait for that and started to take pictures of their friends, flowers, us, the dog and everything they could find. The older ones took care of the younger ones. That was very nice to watch even though I didn’t have much time to do so because they came back and showed me proudly what they have done. And some of the pictures really impressed me. And they only had the cameras for 15 minutes.

The lemonade and the biscuits we gave them didn’t last long and the kids took off to start their carreers as professional photographers.

Now always two of them share a camera and will take pictures of their parents, their siblings and their friends. Tomorrow they will come back and we will have a look at the first results.