I shot these youngsters playing on a hill overlooking the football field before Friday night's Washington Township Minutemen game against the visiting Pennsauken Indians. I've always marveled how at every sporting event I cover, there are younger siblings on the sidelines or behind the stands, playing whatever sport they were brought to watch. No doubt they'll soon be filling those same team jerseys.
Two recent experiences with young people left me similarly excited about the future of photojournalism - a lunch with high school yearbook and newspaper staff members at William Penn Charter and the younger Free Library patrons who participated in the summer's Philadelphia Partnership for Peace project.
The Philadelphia Partnership for Peace is a partnership between the Free Library of Philadelphia, WXPN FM's Kids Corner radio show, The House of Umoja, and the Atwater Kent Museum of Philadelphia trying to addressing the complex issue of youth violence through a variety of mediums. Photography was the medium I encountered this summer with Suzanna Urminska at the main branch of the Free Library. She handed out disposable cameras to kids, and after talking with them about peace and how they think about it visually, they set out photograph the things that say "Peace" to them.
Click here or on one of their photos above for a slide show of more photos taken by some of the Peace kid photographers in their neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
At Penn Charter, after a slide show presentation - with a lot of the road trips on the rail over on the right - I had lunch with the student journalists. And since everyone has a laptop these days, I also got a chance, along with their classmates and teachers, to see some of the students' photos.
Katie Moran, a junior who shoots for the school newspaper, admitted she has no trouble getting close to people with her camera:
Senior Billy Wagner shoots for the yearbook and prefers to work on composition as he leans toward travel scenics and environmental photos:
Like the future footballers, both students work at their game. Katie likes to shoot film and print herself. Billy shot the lightning while down at the shore, grabbing his camera while everyone else was grabbing cover.
And like the younger kids at the libraries, they all have good ideas and good eyes for capturing their world.
