Photos, fish ponds, and Fang: Old friends, new friends

We will be giving the MY STORY photo workshop at the Upland Holistic Development Project, 18 kms outside Fang, in the valley of the Ping River. It's green, it's cool, and it's flat! UHDP is an agricultural and social resource center for local farmers and villagers. They run agricultural seminars and workshops and host outside trainings like ours. There are plant nurseries, forested plots, pigs, cows, fish pond, wi-fi near the office, a big meeting pavilion and kitchen, dorm rooms, and a couple of houses for visitors. UHDP also hosts ECHO, an international seed bank based in Florida. Our home for the next 10 days is a luxurious one, a house with a full kitchen including an oven, a comfy sofa and chairs, desk, table, and chairs to work on, ceiling fans for the day and blankets for the cold nights.

Our friends from the Karen Baptist Convention in Pathein, Burma, with whom we worked last year are sending 8 students, plus MSppa graduates Law Thaw and Ruby to UHDP for 7 1/2 days of photo training. They are not only taking the workshop, they are also providing and cooking all the food!

photo: Saw Ruby

Our house at UHDP

Comfy!

A stove/oven!

photo: Naw Eh He Paw

Food

Early morning light

Law Thaw and Ruby soon introduced us to the 8 workshop participants while we carefully wrote down names. Practicing pronunciation with them brought on gales of laughter. They paired up in twos, one camera to each pair and we gave them their first assignment: Take 3 pictures of your partner from 3 different points of view.

Here are some of the portraits they made of each other during the course of the workshop.