Photographers displayed in the countless galleries and museums of Laguna Beach are now on notice: you've not only got stiff competition, but that competition is getting younger.
The photo above by Ellie Scharf is one of two taken by 13-year-olds from the Boys N Girls Club of Laguna Beach that won the Image Makers 2009 National Photography competition. The shots will now tour to various venues and events, including the Boys N Girls Club of America's national conference.
The other photo singled out by the Image Makers, which was made by Savannah Coinon, follows after the jump . . .
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Scharf and Coinon competed against 500 other young photographers across America.
The Laguna Beach youth organization offers members ages 6-18 Image
Makers as a year-round photo club through its Fine Art program. There
they learn and
practice black-and-white, color, digital and alternative process
photography. The club then submitted participants' photography to the
national competition, which also requires an essay from the shooters.
“To capture the world in
the lens of a camera is not a skill, it is an art form,” Scharf's essay began. “It is the art
of reflecting ones self in their own image, to show that you understand
your art and it understands you.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.