I woke up with a lot of zeal early in the morning. It was my first shoot as an official photographer. I was so pumped up and I still feel excited as I am writing this post. My eyes are twinkling with joy. It was at one of the NGO I am working with for more than a year. I love working with this NGO( A Little Dream) as they identify some remote slums and orphanages and conduct art camps, magic shows and dance at the events. This event was called Paint your Dream.
I left to the event with my sister and we were there much earlier than the schedule. We missed to read about the new schedule in our group. Some goof up, but I did not feel upset about it. We ate breakfast at one of the famous breakfast place nearby and came back to the ashram. It was a beautiful place with lots of space around and lots of trees. There was a guava tree, gooseberry tree, chikku tree and many trees of mango. It immediately reminded me of my childhood home. I also got some time to play around with the camera. I was planning to shoot in semi automatic A mode as M was gonna be tough as I am still a newbie. I was getting darker pictures and increasing ISO was not helping it. I had read about Exposure Compensation but I did not know what buttons to use for it. I was looking for it and came across it in the i option list. I was so happy when I got better pictures with an increased composition.
People started joining in one by one and we spoke about a lot of things. A friend of mine had come too and he spoke about the play he attended called as Vali Moksha. Its a story of two strong brothers who go through a misunderstanding situation and become enemies which ultimately gets resolved with intervention of Lord Ram. I am not getting into details here. We were then joined by our NGO head.
We started decorating the venue with balloons and posters. It was a simple deck. All the kids assembled and we started with our introduction. We then made the kids introduce themselves in a unique style by telling their name and a dialogue of their favourite. I was enjoying shooting so much. A friend suggesting taking pics in Programmed Auto mode as the lighting wasn’t that great.
After the round of introduction, they were given a drawing sheet where they had to paint their dream. Each of them were assigned a volunteer for guidance. A lot of them wanted to become a police and they drew pictures of police station, jail, theifs, laati. Some of them wanted to be environmentalists and they drew pictures of afforestation and deforestation. An interesting kid wanted to become a chef. Then there were some engineers too. I went in circles taking the pictures of each of them. It was followed by a demo of their painting on stage. It felt nice to hear them speak about their dreams. We were satisfied with the seed of a dream being planted in their young minds.
It was followed by lunch sponsored by one of our volunteers. We sat with the kids and ate. Then there was dance session by another volunteer. Kids enjoyed learning new steps from him. Kids dance, volunteers dance, I clicked. My legs and hands were paining with holding the heavy camera and squatting to take pictures.
It was then followed by cup cakes distribution and friendship bands distribution to the kids. Kids posed with the cupcakes. The bands were beautiful which was made by two small girls. We put a smiley badge too which brought a smile on their faces.
There was also a canvas kept with a dream wall. We put out finger imprints over there and did small drawings. It looked absolutely beautiful.
We then took a final group picture with kids and the volunteers and bid a heavy goodbye to them all. A little one also ended up giving a chocolate to my sister. Kids gets attached to us so quickly and so are we. They are the best gifts to this world. ❤
Thanks for reading!