The Associated Recreation Council RecTech Community Technology Centers received grant funding this summer to provide an intensive seven-week internship to ten West Seattle teens at the Delridge Community Center computer lab. The teens were selected through a screening and interview process. The program provides teens with hands-on job training as photojournalists while they learn both the basics of digital photography and how to tell a story with words and photos. Teen interns are learning the digital imaging process and its application in the worlds of both art and photojournalism. We will learn digital photography basics and survey Photoshop applications as we explore the digital darkroom and learn tools for image manipulation that have artistic as well as commercial digital media applications. Interns will learn how to collaborate as they work on team projects that will be published in the West Seattle Blog and our group website.

Each intern will exhibit a few of his or her best photos at a final gallery show at the Photographic Center NW on Thursday, August 20th, the last day of the program. Participants who successfully complete the program will earn a grant-funded $599 stipend.

Digital Darkroom interns are excited to be posting a story every week on the highly respected West Seattle Blog. Our students are new to blogging, so have started individual blogs as well where they are posting some of their photography and thoughts about what they are learning.

Our interns will be out and about in West Seattle covering stories in the community over the next six weeks. Today we went to the Photographic Center NW to tour the facility and use their projector to look at images from the history of photography on the big screen. Previously we covered the West Seattle Summer Festival and the SeaFair Pirate landing and the community playground building effort here at Delridge CC. If you know of any great West Seattle photo ops for our teens, please let us know!

Like all programs of this nature, we have a very small operating budget. We are asking for small donations from the community to cover the cost of web hosting so we can build a group web site to post our work and stories more extensively. We are also looking for a donation that we can use towards paying the Photographic Center NW $150 so we can print photos in their darkroom, and a case of Talking Rain to get us through the hot summer on assignment! If anyone would like to help us out, ARC is a not-for-profit and all donations are tax deductible. You can email us at LeslieDCC@gmail.com for more donation information.