Their First Snapshots

By Jack and Barbara Clarke, CCF Donors and Rick Falco, President and Creative Director of Vision Project

First three photos credited to Rick Falco/Vision Project

Yesterday morning Jack and I went for a very long walk to Stowe and back, which took about 1 and a half hours. The road follows the Atlantic coast and it is lovely.

That afternoon was the day the kids got their cameras. It was almost like a graduation as we called their names and they came up to receive their prized camera; they were so excited!

We gave them an assignment to go home and photograph their families. There was a lot of discussion about how they would do this. We discussed taking photos of their families doing what is important to them, photos that tell something about the person.

The children are very soft spoken and their accents have a Caribbean/British lilt that is challenging to understand at times!

Georgette brought us a new projector today, but we are still having trouble. All of the prompts are in Chinese characters and so they are trying to get us a manual.

This morning we picked up the cameras at the school, download the children's first photos onto the computer and reviewed them to pick their best shots. Thankfully all the software works, but it is slow going.

Rick recommends we use CS3 (Photoshop Professional), which we do not have on this computer. We have created files for each child and all their pictures, then there are sub files of their best shots to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Fourteen out of fifteen cameras were returned to us, but we’ll have to find out what happened to the missing one…

This afternoon we went on a field trip, walking with the children into the town of Grand Bay to photograph village life. We want to show them the value of photographs taken of people “doing” their life, rather than posed shots.

It’s very challenging to keep track of all the children, keep them "focused", and taking "real photos" instead of just snapshots.

Some of the villagers like to be photographed and some do not. We have a lot of explaining to do almost every time they go to take a photo, but most villagers are OK once they learn we are with the school and teaching the kids.

We are missing two girls today, one went home sick and the other had to baby-sit her brother

The kids have taken so many photos; so many we’ll get to download and review! This will take most of the evening to do, but we finished and after one quick game of Liverpool Rummy and we are off to bed!

Tomorrow is an early day – we’re going to Roseau with Gelina to have Rick teach the CCF staff some basic photo taking skills.