The Annual Gathering of Yerds

Summer is workshop season for those in the journalism education world. And last week I hung out at the Yearbook Connection’s annual summer camp. It’s a three-day gathering of high school yearbook staffs from around Florida. They decide on a theme, plan coverage, learn some tricks of the trade and get to know each other as a staff. It’s a whirlwind of fun, hard work, long hours, late nights, candy, planning, teaching, learning, maybe some dancing, games, chants and lots of sillyness.

I’ve helped out at this camp the past few years. As the photo guy at the camp, I usually show some photos and talk about basic rules of photography. Tell them what makes a good photo, what kind of photos/stories to look for during the year. I usually get a few “how does my camera work?” type questions. Then we go around taking pictures. This year we did something a little different and gave the students a bunch of things to play with and take photos. (Great idea by Julie Mancini!) It helped the students learn about how the different exposures make for different photos. Set your camera correctly to stop the action of the falling cards or get the dice in focus but not the face or silhouette this person against the sky. Lots of fun and made for good images.

The camp also featured the YERD Olympics (YERD=Yearbook Nerd) The staffs competed in a variety of games that ended with an all-out water balloon fight.

Here’s a few photos from the three days. I wasn’t able to spend as much time there as I usually do because of a conflict at work. But this gives you a good idea of what goes on at these things.

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