This week Guaruma’s students had the pleasure of receiving photography classes from two professional photographers and friends of Guaruma’s founder, Nancy McGirr. Stu Estler, an architectural photographer from the United States, and Eric Lolkema, a photographer from the Netherlands, taught a five hour workshop in Las Mangas and El Pital with the advanced students from each community.
In Las Mangas, the students started class on the Guaruma trail with instructions to shoot a nature magazine cover focusing on shape and color. The kids were challenged to think about how to adjust their compositions to make space for text and fit their subjects into a vertical magazine format. Adolfo López and Erika Sevilla gravitated towards shooting representational images of leaves and insects, while Julio Medina focused on light and shadow. Julio Dominguez took a third route, using the camera’s super-macro mode to create abstract patterns from vines. After shooting, the kids moved into the computer lab where they edited their images and turned them into a magazine cover using Photoshop CS4.
In El Pital, where Guaruma does not have a nature trail, the kids focused their lenses on the community and local residents. Stu and Eric talked with the students about portrait composition and gave them advice as they photographed people in their community and fellow Guaruma students.
We would like to thank Eric and Stu for the generosity they showed us by teaching during their vacation. Having the chance to learn from professional photographers is inspiring for the students, and the magazine assignment serves as an example of how Guaruma connects the outdoors and exploration of nature with technology and the development of employable skills.
Check out the magazine cover designs below and see a gallery of images from the workshop.
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English
Felicitaciones a los Footgrafos de Guaruma y los mentores Stu y Eric! son muy buenas las Portadas!