One of the things I most associate with National Geographic is great photography. Flip through any of its magazines and that’s the thing that draws you in.
So I was intrigued when I heard National Geographic was holding a photo camp for students this summer in Spokane. One of the instructors was Kiliii Yuyan.
Kiliii Yuyan: Photo camp is essentially a way that the National Geographic Society uses explorers to teach storytelling and photography to students of generally somewhere between middle school age to college age. There's a bit of a wide range and it tends to be students that are from marginalized communities, people that don't normally get these kinds of opportunities. It's quite an amazing thing because there's a lot of really world class photographers and storytellers. Many of us have done many cover stories for National Geographic magazine, etc. So it's a really nice learning space for everybody.
DN: The Spokane photo camp was one of 10 held in Washington.
KY: Photo camps happen year round. They happen all over the place. They happen globally. We've had them from anywhere from New Zealand to Bhutan. And, of course, we have plenty in the United States as well.
The process for going through it is actually primarily done by the local community liaisons. So we work with the local community, decide what that organization or group will be and then they do a lot of the filtering because, of course, we don't know who's there on the ground and who would be appropriate for it.
But we also try to keep it very open. So sometimes we get people that will hear about it from a friend and sign up at the last minute. At the last camp, for example, we had one woman that signed up an hour before camp started. She got really excited because she heard about it from a friend. And we love that. We really want that kind of thing to happen as long as there's space.
DN: Fourteen students participated in Spokane, including Meredith Lewandowski, a third-year student at Gonzaga University.
Meredith Lewandowski: I have my own business in photography. I started in my hometown, which is California, and I started in middle school taking photography lessons.
DN: The teachers handed Lewandowski and her peers Canon cameras, gave them some instruction and sent them out for three days of picture taking.
ML: We got to explore downtown Spokane and visit during Hoopfest and practice taking photos. And then we also went on a nature trail. We also went to Mount Spokane, too.
KY: I think one of the big differences for us is that we are very much focused on storytelling. If you talk to anyone at National Geographic, we're very focused on this notion of being able to impart more than just a beautiful picture, that there's a story involved, that there's emotion and feeling and how it is that we do those things in order to be able to engage with an audience that is looking at the work that we're doing.
But I think with Photo Camp, what's wonderful and a little bit different, too, is that, of course, we're doing storytelling. But it's also really a coming of age. It's an opportunity for all the students who are involved to do journaling, to really create a safe space for them to share with each other, to be vulnerable, and to think about things that they haven't thought about before, because the storytelling is in their own community.
It's sometimes hard to work on these projects because it's so close to home. Things are so familiar. And what I think is often great for students is they start to see things like their own family or their own community as places that are worth taking a photograph, worth telling a story of, and I think that's pretty fabulous.
DN: National Geographic sent a team of photographers and editors from around the world to work with the students and go out in the field with them.
KY: We're there to answer questions and kind of watch what everyone's doing and maybe drop in to give some advice or help out. But I think to a large degree, we try to let the students figure it out themselves, find ways of working.
ML: We had a lesson of portraits during the photo camp. So sometimes we would go up to people and be like, hey, we're in a photo camp. And I was wondering if it would be OK just to practice taking a portrait and, you know, just trying to get more experience. And then there was also like a bunch of, like, the clock, the Spokane Clock Tower you could get in the background. I went to the river and took a few photos of that and then the animals in the river, too, and the plants nearby.
It made me really like take photos at a new perspective. I used to work at the newspaper for my school and I only took photos of like sports. You know, I never really thought about like taking photos to tell a story.
DN: At the end of the three days, the editors collected the photos and picked their favorites.
KY: They don't end up in the magazine. They do end up on the National Geographic Instagram for photo camp. And the other thing that happens is that the photos all get collected up and edited by our editor, who in this case was Gab Mejia, and he then put everything together into one edit that we play.
There's about 120 images or so for all of the students together and there's what we call a final show. So family, community members get invited out. You have anywhere around, it's probably around 50 people or so that show up at this event and we project it onto a big screen and it's a big party.
Everyone gets to see the work that they've done. Family members get to see it and be proud of their about their students. But we get a lot of community members that are really interested in what's happening who may have run into one of the students who may have had their portrait taken and just decide to show off and and watch it and it's really cool to see.
And then, of course, we end up archiving it. National Geographic ends up archiving the work so that because sometimes we continue to use it and often the students in photo camp do things to pass along the pictures and their ideas and their wisdom to the next camp.
So they actually, for example, write a letter to the students of the next camp. Their pictures end up becoming printed out and handed to the next photo camp where they learn to edit using the previous camp's pictures as an example about how to put a story together. So it's really wonderful to see that kind of relationship from one camp to the next.
KY: As a coming of age, this is just a moment for them to think about these bigger questions about going out into the world and interacting with the world and how to understand it and following their curiosity and all of those things.
I think the setup for every camp is specific to the student body that will be there. So, for example, with this camp being mostly the children of refugees and immigrants, they brought someone like me, who is the son of immigrants, Gab, who is from the Philippines, so he's not an immigrant, but, you know, he spends a lot of time in the United States.
The next camp I did was also with indigenous students and I am of indigenous ancestry. So, they really work hard to make sure that we fit their criteria.
I think a lot of what I'm able to share with the students and is more impactful for them is to understand that someone like me, who they are looking up to as a National Geographic photographer, it's kind of the Mount Everest of photography. But it's not something that I ever dreamed of. It's not something that it was even possible to dream of as an immigrant child. But someone in my 30s, someone gave me that dream. And that was a huge gift.
That was just it, just the dream itself. And so being able to impart that dream and pass it on to students is, I think, one of the greatest gifts that I ever got and hopefully it will be the same for them.
