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A picture is worth a thousand words

In January the Nuevas Esperanzas team welcomed a new volunteer with a special, and very useful talent.  Jon Tan, a professional wedding photographer from New Jersey, spent four weeks photographing our projects and teaching the team how to improve their own photos.  With the wedding ‘season’ essentially in hibernation for the winter, he decided to take the opportunity to travel to Latin America, spend a bit of time with a couple of NGOs, and offer his personal expertise.

As Jon arrived in the middle of a working day, in the middle of a working week, he was somewhat thrown in at the deep end.  Unperturbed, he relished the opportunity to get stuck in straight away.  The very next morning he was up in El Ojochal, getting used to the heat, the hikes, and the hives as he donned a bee suit to get some great snaps of the second honey harvest.  It wasn’t long before the some of the guys involved discovered Jon’s profession.  Nelson, complete with the smoker, set about joining two of the other young guys in holy matrimony.  It collapsed into raucous laughter when the congregation started calling for a kiss.

The day turned into something of a baptism of fire for our new photographer friend when Erika explained that bees don’t like the colour black.  With everyone in yellow overalls, Jon’s camera stood out as an obvious target.  But he weathered the storm and escaped unscathed. Ironically, he was later stung twice in Agua Fría whilst Erika conducted another lesson which he wasn’t even attending!

As well as getting involved in the field, and taking some great photos of our work, Jon spent his time preparing for a photo workshop which he gave the team one Friday morning.  Although he is still learning the language, he insisted on conducting it in Spanish.  Negotiating quite a lot of technical vocabulary he explained all about how to get the most out of the different camera settings, as well as how to best compose an image. Members of the team were then sent out into the streets of León to put into practice what they had learnt.  However, the real test will be in the coming weeks and years.

Photography plays a key role in the work we do here.  It is a skill which the team uses daily both to monitor progress on projects and to record our work to share with those who cannot see it in person.  In recent months it has been used to keep track of progress on rainwater harvesting tanks and organic gardens, to monitor tree growth as part of our reforestation work and to record the state of beehives, not to mention to keep our donors informed of what we have been doing.   It has been great to learn how best to communicate our messages from a real expert. Watch this space for our improved camera skills and some of Jon’s own photos too!

04/02/11