We are the only photo program in Bosnia and Herzegovina opened to all community members regardless of age, sex, color, ethnicity, gender. We are located in the city of Zenica, where for the past four years, we have been learning how to best present our communities. We started with 17 participants, one laptop to present work, to skype with other photojournalists, two cameras and lots of will to learn! Currently we have 50 regular members, and four different classes.
The need for this program grew rapidly and it continues. The community strives learning how to express themselves creatively. We once ran out of chairs and one of our members used to bring his own chair to class! But in order to continue the program, we now need a bit of your help. We’ve had a year of break like many people around the world, but we’re up again and ready to continue! We now have four different classes available but not every student has a camera needed to do their assignments and achieve best goals. In fact, most of them shoot with their phones, and out of 50 members, we only have 7 DSLR cameras for the new classes that are available:
Intro to Photojournalism (for journalism students)
Photography for Women and Girls (class for women in business)
Phototherapy – a class for those who want to use photography as a way to express their emotions, to relief stress and to use it while coping with a mental difficulty such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder..
Phototherapy for the persons with impaired hearing
Individual Online classes – for anyone living outside of the city
And you may ask, why are cameras needed if we have phones?
In phototherapy camera is a must. It’s not so much about the technical aspect of the photography, as much as it’s about making us feel like a photographers and not being labeled by our difficulties. But we DO NEED cameras to learn how to become photographers, to prepare our members for real field work in the community and around the world, to be able to produce best quality pictures, and for that, cameras are needed to master their technical parts.
What all do we need to continue the program? At least 20 cameras, 10 Apple desktops, 20 CF and SD cards, 20 card readers, 20 USB sticks, and many other tools that allow our students to do their assignments and grow creatively and professionally throughout this program. These cameras will be available for rent not just for our current students and members, but for the future students as well.
But your help will also allow us to organize gallery shows which are necessary for our students to shine, to see their own value in the works they create. And of course, to show the community the talents that we have.
Our shows are so great that even cats come to check them out! So, we thank you graciously for helping us! And remember, every photo and every video taken by our members, will be because you have helped us!