Amazed by Children's Response - An Update on Bolyartsi Project

Greetings, fellow talent appreciators!

We had a surprise for us yesterday by something we triggered and let run.

As we already reported a few updates ago, we set up a Fb page and invited local children of Bolyartsi village to contribute to it with photos of their own. As reward a selection of those will be shown in our opening exhibition which will conclude Stage One of our project and launch Stage Two. The latter is meant to provide education, guidance, mentorship... call it whatever you like... So that local talents have our support and start on their own path in photography and respectively in art.

How do we know there will be talent there?

Well, we'll let you decide now by giving you a simple example.

Here's what Epiphany day looked like in Sofia last year as captured on a Canon EOS 40D camera with a 70-200 4L lens by me, @manoldonchev, a professional photographer with experience. I don't always fight for the best spot and it shows this time, what looks like a lens flare on the image being the defocused stems of reed growing in front of me.

Anyway. This custom is hard to photograph because of the dynamics, the spot problem, the cold, the crowds, the conditions, etc. Sometimes you come out with cool results and sometimes not so cool results as in this case below:

Photo by @manoldonchev

About Epiphany in Bulgaria

Well, it is opportunity for photographers to take shots of people in quite unusual situations. There is the tradition of people jumping in cold waters to take out a wooden cross, thrown there by a priest. And some places in Bulgaria are famous for that event. Here's an example of mine from Kalofer, the town that we usually associate with that tradition:

Photo by @manoldonchev

People there take it to another level, dancing in the freezing waters of the river.

Fresh from Bolyartsi and almost 100 % unexpected...

We were hoping but not relying on children taking advantage of the tradition being celebrated in their own village, too. Since journalistic photography is not everybody's hobby. And we may have hinted on the opportunity but not so much.

And here's what young Georgi Hristev did with a smartphone:

Photo by Georgi Hristev, a child from Bolyartsi. Editing by @manoldonchev. And it was a very slight editing.

source

I don't know about you but this is something I would happily include in a local exhibition as a standalone.

Yours,

Manol Donchev from PhotoAnthill