I’ve arrived in Portland where I met up with my dear friend, Brooke Shaden, co-founder (along with Blossomy Project) of The Light Space. This is the program I have been traveling and teaching with since 2015 in India and Thailand. Brooke has just returned from Greece where a new branch of The Light Space has launched for youths in a refugee camp and a new round of photography training has also launched in Thailand, geared towards those who work for anti-trafficking organizations. It’s exciting to know our former student, Sorn, has taken over as the new instructor in a cycle that filled Brooke and Laura’s vision of having the program become localized and sustainable with former students taking over to grow the program.
I’ve been sending Sorn links and notes and lesson plans for a smooth transition, and was delighted to come across this image I took of him in the streets of Chiang Rai last summer. It made for a perfect demonstration of mixed lighting and color balance.
Below is a slideshow with some of his work, along with other students from the three month course taking place in Thailand, sponsored locally by The Freedom Story. Animoto was kind enough to provide The Light Space with a subscription so we could feature work in this multimedia format.
And, while I’m at it, I also have to give a shout out to an emerging photographer in Kolkata who I spent much time with during my most recent trip. At the time she began as a student, she had never used a camera before (aside from a cell phone). Now she operates a DSLR in manual mode and does her own image editing. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone work harder than she did towards committing to an educational goal. Here is a portfolio of her work with non-portrait images available for purchase:
Overall, there is so much to unwrap, express and share about the experiences I collected during my time with The Light Space. Sometimes I feel it changed me far more than those the program sought to serve. A simple blog post will never suffice and I find myself frustrated at my inability to properly put it all into words when I’m asked what the experience was like: this was an entire chapter of my life, difficult and beautiful and incredibly complex.
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