I love Baltimore | Maryland photographer

I’ve been working with this amazing non-profit called Vision Workshops for about 6 years. Vision workshops runs workshops and camps locally (Crossing Borders) and internationally (Photo Camps). I have been lucky to work with several of the local workshops, working with kids at Bates Middle School in Annapolis that have immigrated from El Salvador and Mexico, working with teens in the Drug Court program and now working with Refugee teens in the City of Baltimore.

My good friend and leader of this camp, Piper Watson put together an amazing weekend of shooting and learning for these refugee kids from Iraq, Bhutan, Nepal, and Eritrea who now attend Paterson High School.
We met the kids at Paterson HS last Thursday where we passed out the cameras and went over the weeks agenda. That first day meeting them brought some excitement to this workshop…these kids were eager and ready to shoot.

We started the shooting portion of the workshop this past Saturday. Meeting at Walters Art Museum (they were a big supporter in this workshop as well at The Refugee Youth Project), we spent some time talking about technique and story telling as it related to this weekend’s focus-Baltimore.

Many of these kids have never been downtown to experience Baltimore, so Piper arranged to show them some very interesting and fun sides of this very cool city. We started at the Cross Street Market in Federal Hill. The kids got to have some lunch and then we let them loose to begin the photojournalistic process of telling the story of Baltimore today. It was amazing to me how recpetive this group was to what we were teaching them…shooting at different angles, holding the camera a certain way to keep it stable in low light and talking to the people you are photographing to find out more about their individual stories. I became giddy as I watched them approach complete strangers and ask them if they could take their portrait…not one kid held back and almost everyone they asked said yes. Because of their confidence and wonderful personalies, they ended up starting converstations with many of the stall owners at the market. The coolest moment was when they met a husband and wife who ran the bakery…they asked where the students were from (this particular group was from Ethiopia) and a connection was made. They too were from Africa, but were Indian born and they started an exchange with the students that I could never have imagined. They even sent a box of cookies with the students…so nice! Plus the students made some amazing portraits of the couple at their bakery stall.

We then took the water taxi from Federal Hill across the harbor to Fells Point where a Christmas festival was going on in the square. Live music, food and craft stands, a balloon artist and lots of neighborhood people all had come together on a very cold day. The kids got right to shooting as they ran around capturing the spirit of this neigbohood, snapping shots of little kids dancing in front of the stage, people selling their wares, and locals in conversation with eachother. They didn’t hold back one bit. It was thriling to watch. Again, they struck up conversations with locals and met some awesome people.

As the sun started to set, I grabbed my group of five students and took them over to the docks where we could have a little lesson on self portraits. I taught them about using the golden light at that hour to make a beautiful photograph and how to show who they were to the rest of the world in a portrait. They did a fantastic job and produced some absolutely beautiful images of themselves….I was bit jealous!

After a very long Saturday, Sunday arrived a bit too fast, but we met the kids at 8:30 to begin the next day of shooting in Baltimore. We started again at The Walters, went over some of the work from the day before and talked about how to make certain photos even better. After the lecture, we were taken into the museum to see the Walter Wick exhibit that is one display until the end of the year. It is such a great exhibit to see…Walter is a model maker, photographer and children’s book author. He created the “I Spy” series of children’s books where kids can pick out objects out of photographs that he creates. The photographs are taken from very intricate models that he makes…it’s quite an intricate process and very cool to see.

After the exhibit, we chowed down on some pizza and then loaded up the bus to head to Hamden for the annual Mayor’s Christmas parade. Now, I don’t know if any of you remember just how cold it was on Sunday…but IT WAS COLD! The group braved the cold though and we took them to the parking lot were the floats, cars, dance troupes, and bands were lining up and getting ready to march down the street.
The students scrambled around taking shots of bands warming up, little girls bouncing up and down in their dance costumes to stay warm, men wearing sequined costumes & animals of all shapes and sizes. Many of the students didn’t understand what the heck a parade was all about or even who the heck Santa was, so it was fun to try to explain our culture to them.

We have two more classroom days with these students to go through images and work on the final presentation, which will be exhibited at The Walters. As I sit here and think of the weekend and these awesome students I am realizing that I learned alot this weekend.

1. We need to approach life the way that these students do….by jumping right in to new experiences. They have overcome so much already in their young lives, yet have an enthusiam unlike many American students who take for granted all of the awesome culture around us and the opportunities that they have in their own backyards.

2. Baltimore is truely a melting pot of people with interesting stories to tell. The city gets such negative press all the time that we forget that it is a great city full of crazy traditions and caring individuals who want to keep the city’s spirit alive.

3. Talk to strangers! We all walk around minding our own business way too much. There needs to be more interaction in this world. We have so much to learn from eachother.

4. Finally…stop complaining 🙂 We pushed the students alot this weekend. They photographed for two pretty long days in the freezing cold. Rarely did they complain. I have alot of colleagues that would have started complaining as soon as they became chilly…and yes, I have been guilty of this. We photographers need to realize just how lucky we are to do what we do and that sometimes, the situations that we are put in are uncomfortable, but we are there at that moment documenting a slice of life and that’s pretty special if you ask me.

Our fearless leader, Piper.