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Pulitzer Center Update January 22, 2015

Everyday D.C. Workshop 3: A Video Chat About Photography

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The Pulitzer Center is proud to partner with the Everyday Africa initiative and its founders, and...

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The novelty of having Peter DiCampo's head projected at many times its normal size on a classroom wall at The Inspired Teaching Demonstration Public Charter School in northeast D.C. added a fun element to students' latest Everyday Africa-Everyday D.C. photography workshop there.

Everyday Africa is a photo-sharing initiative in which professional photographers living and working on the continent capture images of everyday life in an effort to challenge Western stereotypes of Africa.

Peter said that as part of the project he wanted to "photograph things in a basic and normal way but also a way that's beautiful, to get people to look at them."

The fifth and sixth-graders at The Inspired Teaching School have spent the fall taking photos of their own communities, telling their "everyday" stories. Chatting with the classes via Skype from his home in Seattle, Peter, a photographer and co-founder of Everyday Africa, asked the students what they've learned so far.

"Angles could make the picture look different," one student noted. During the discussion that followed, the classes considered use of lines, color, framing, symmetry and what makes a good action shot.

"I learned that sometimes a photograph can tell a story," another said.

Peter shared them some of his own work; then the class examined a number of their own photos, taken here in D.C., while they discussed what made them particularly good "everyday" examples.

"You got much more comfortable taking pictures of people" between the first and second workshops, Peter said. "That's great because when we take pictures of daily life…you're trying to connect with whoever's looking at the pictures on the other end."