Photo Assignment - Red

Last Friday was probably my favorite day as a WV employee, I had such a fun day! Why so fun? I was asked by my old boss, the great Jon W, to help with a photo assignment training for 8 new communicators- six from Africa, two from Latin America. How could I not? They had all spent the last week inside the office- they were ready for the field. Where? Downtown Seattle. It was primarily to become comfortable using their still camera's and video cameras- five WVUS staff came along to offer pointers and suggestions. A dream for me!
Before we ventured to Seattle from FW, the international comms staff made a special lunch request - KFC. I think I've only been there once in my life, and I wouldn't mind if that was the last. The staff were from Kenya, El Salvador, DR, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia- they were awesome! Their grasp of English was humbling as I can barely get by in Spanish, let alone speak another language fluently! Enough to be able to make jokes and tease them, which made for a very fun time.
Also on this adventure were two of my work heroes- Kari and Jon. They write and photograph for the WV magazine, respectively. They are two of the funniest, intelligent, compassionate people you could work with! I don't know how many times I started cracking up that day!
We spent the next 2 hours marching around Pike Place with our photo assignments - portray 'red' or 'read', or portray 'new' or 'gnu' or 'knew'. Not only was it interesting seeing what sparked their interest, but we also got a lot of time to chat about life back home, their families, their countries etc etc. I have several offers to be hosted in various countries, and I just might take them up on it!
After our photo shoot, we headed back to FW to Kari's house to learn how to download images from the cameras and various other technical things, and review the photos. It was so great! I loved being able to tell them what worked, or 'think about this next time', or 'did you know that if you change your camera to such and such you would've gotten that photo?' It was awesome! It was fun to encourage them and see how they saw the city. We finished the evening with a delicious African meal of peanut chicken and polenta. I was SO thankful to be invited to participate in this as it's not a normal part of my job, but I sure hope it will be someday.

My photo of the 5th Ave Theatre at night...

Warren's photo of the 5th Ave Theatre at night... honestly!