Before last week’s one-day build of the new Delridge Community Center playground, we brought you photos and information courtesy of the ARC Digital Darkroom Teen Interns from DCC. We didn’t get a chance to fully explain the program or introduce them. But before tonight’s grand opening of the playground (coming up at 6:30 pm), we wanted to share their reflections, with photos, from construction day last Friday, and share the introductory information. Go here to read what the program’s about, how it’s funded, and how a few community donations are needed. Above, you see a photo we took of the team when they stopped by to say hi at West Seattle Summer Fest, followed by their self-intro, and their latest work:

We are ten individual teens (working) at the Delridge Community Center for a seven weeks photography and Digital Darkroom internship. When we complete this program, we will receive a stipend of $599.00 and 15 hours of community service hours. We started out with a job interview at the Delridge Community Center RecTech Computer Lab with Leslie, our Program Director. One of the questions we were asked at the interview was “why do you want to be part of this internship?” and “What do you want to get out of this internship?” After the interview, we all waited with anticipation for a week. We finally got a call and were told we could start at 1:30 on July 6. We were glad to be selected out of the 25 to 30 applicants who applied. We found out that we work from 1:30 to 5:30 Monday through Thursday and in addition, we may occasionally work a few hours on a weekend if there is an event we’d like to cover.

We were all nervous on the first day with so many new faces, but we started off right away taking photos and that helped us begin to relax. Our first photo warm-up was shooting a moving object, and our subject was one of our instructor’s dogs, a little poodle named Luke. We tried to get a good photo of him while he was both running and sitting out in the field. After our photography warm-up, we were introduced to Photoshop and figure out ways to make one of the photos we took look better or add effects. We all created individual blogs and posted our favorite photos. We then wrote and told a story about our photograph.
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As all of us are new to photojournalism … we are all excited that the West Seattle community will be watching our progress as we learn to become better photographers and journalists.
Alexander Phaiboon
Mariah Whitman
Rachel Jimenez

They got more practice at West Seattle Summer Fest. And now, here are their reflections on the playground project – read on:

Reflections on the Delridge Playground Project
By the ARC Digital Darkroom Teen Interns at Delridge Community Center

(photo by Hai Truong)
Last Friday, I was amazed that our Mayor came to participate in this event along with great organizations like KaBoom! and Bank Of America. We shot a lot of photos and the only comment I want to add is that I wish the playground could been completely done – I wanted to play on it!
– Hai Troung

(photo by Kevin Truong)
Last Friday at the end of the day volunteers and community members celebrated Delridge Community Center’s new playground. This photo shows the happy faces of the community volunteers who accomplished the task of building the playground. I think that the more playgrounds there are, the more it benefits the neighborhood kids because they now have a fun and healthy place to be active in their spare time.
– Kevin Truong

(photo by Eunyque Patu)
I thought that there as a lot of great energy with the whole thing. Me and Keousha interviewed a man who was wearing an “I LOVE DELRIDGE” shirt that his wife made! We also got a portrait of him. I think the volunteers did a great job and the new playground is off to a really good start.
– Eunyque Patu

(photo by Alex Phaiboon)
What I was most amazed about was that there were so many volunteers! I personally expected that less than a hundred people would be able to participate in this effort. I also loved that even kids volunteered and painted little graffiti pictures on the graffiti wall for decoration.
-Alex Phaiboon

(photo by Kiahnu Dorsey)
This is Jim. He is the team captain of the pioneers.
-Kiahnu Dorsey (who also took this photo of a playground element we didn’t see close-up that day)

Other observations:

I was impressed that the community got the playground built in an amazingly short time and with a great deal of organization and dedication.
– Nick Wolf

The event on Friday was really fun. I enjoyed seeing all of the volunteers from KaBoom! and the people from Bank of America. My favorite part of the event was the break dancing guy (: I think that he’s awesome ! Also, when all the little kids broke the chain together; that was the cutest part ever.
– Kristina Rattanavong

Being at the Delridge CC and watching the project unfold right up to the closing ceremony for the day was very interesting. We were amazed to see that a huge group of dedicated individuals could build and finish a park in one day. It wasn’t just a business that came together to build this playground, it was also a whole lot of volunteers. The collaboration with a big business like The Bank of America, a volunteer organization like Kaboom!, and the community at large, achieved a great outcome.
-Rachel Jimenez

More to come from the Digital Darkroom team!