* Photos taken by Nat Nyuan-Bayjay at a feeding center outside Monrovia where malnourished childen are fed and catered to by a local NGO.

The United Nations International Children’s Funds (UNICEF) over the weekend conducted a three-day intensive workshop on photography. Photographic training was conducted by Glenna Gordon, an American photo-journalist who runs the website Scarlett Lion and taught several key lessons on how to be a good photographer. Four participants were selected out of 20 applicants, including Ceasefire Liberia’s Nat Bayjay, Michael Kpayili of an online Liberian news magazine, Jerry of Liberia’s ‘Tour & Life”, a monthly magazine on Liberia’s tourism, and Bill Diggs of the Liberian Daily Observer, one of the most read local dailies in Monrovia.

To add more flavor to the workshop, which was conducted at a local restaurant in Central Monrovia, there were both indoor and outdoor photographic activities. Day One of the workshop provided the participants the chance to get some major tips on photography. For instance, they learned how to form a tripod (with your bodies) when taking an accurate photo that is in motion by bringing their arms together. The participants also learned about how to push the shutter button half-way in order to focus on a particular image, how to change his or her position in order to capture a story properly and how to work without a flash as much as possible. The participants then went on the field to take photos for at least an hour. This was very exciting, especially taking photos on Broad Street, Monrovia’s busiest street.

Day Two was spent entirely outdoors where the team visited a UNICEF-sponsored feeding in Virginia outside Monrovia. This was perhaps the most exciting and probably the most challenging of the activities. Children between the ages of two months old to five years and are malnourished live at the feeding center where they are fed eight times daily with therapeutic milk. The center, which has about 126 children is run by a local non-governmental organization (NGO) named Aid for the Needy Development Program (ANDP). The day ended with another outdoor exercise of photographing where each participant photographed a child who sells in the dangerous streets of Monrovia. An hour was spent with each of the children. Then Day Three was held indoors with the last lessons on photography and a review of all the photos taken throughout the day.