As the children gathered around, a man with a camera offered advice that ranged from how to use natural light to make the best photographs to something a little more basic.
"One thing you might not want to do is hold your finger across the lens when you take a picture," he said, "because then you end up with a picture of your finger."
Simple, sure. But sometimes it just needs to be said.
Members of the Camera Club of Richmond offer all sorts of photographical guidance to kids at the William Byrd Community House in Oregon Hill as part of the new Shutter Buddies program, a way for club members to share their love of photography with a younger generation.
"The camera club's primary focus is to educate," said Peter Kapasakis, president of the club that holds regular meetings, workshops and photo shoots for adults. "We thought, 'We're educating, but what about the kids?' We don't have an opportunity for kids to come to camera club meetings, so we decided we would try to set up a kids' camera club."
It's a true community effort: Canon provided the 17 point-and-shoot digital cameras. Richmond Camera is donating its printing services. Club members are donating their time. And the seed money for the project came from an auction held to sell a collection of old cameras a local family had given the club.
On Friday afternoons for 12 weeks, club members will be teaching the kids about photographic exposure and composition and all sorts of other camera-related things. At the first meeting this month in the library of the William Byrd Community House, the kids listened to the instruction and then engaged in their first assignment: photographing each other. By the end of the program, they will have photos of other people and other things. Those images will be put on display in a gallerylike show for their families.
This isn't intended as some hollow, hit-and-run effort. The club plans to keep the club going next year, and the overall mission, Kapasakis said, is to help the kids — some of whom had never used a camera — develop a lifelong understanding and appreciation of photography. He hopes it will "enrich their lives."
The club has come a long way from its beginnings as an outfit founded by one man who was interested in microscopes and another who was fascinated by telescopes. They combined their interests and turned their attention to photography.
Kapasakis believes it is one of the longest-running camera clubs in the country, and it is growing. Membership has doubled in recent years, evidence that digital cameras have made photography far more accessible to far more people.
Like Marquis Collins, age 10, one of the exuberant young photographers at the William Byrd Community House.
At the end of the first class, I asked him what his favorite subject that he had photographed. He smiled.
"Everyone in here," he said.
wlohmann@timesdispatch.com
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