Citizen Journalists’ day in the field

By Samuel Gitonga Makanya

Memorable, exciting and thrilling are some of the adjectives used by a group of citizen journalism trainees at Mutomo Maarifa Centre to describe a photo shooting session they had. When their facilitator Dennis Kipkirui informed them of a photo shooting field session, the trainees could not hide their joy at the prospect of putting what they had learnt into practice.

Mr.James Wambua Mwendo, a trainee
 busy during the learning session 

Each of the trainees had been given a topic on which they would write on. As such, they were assigned a field work exercise for a photo shooting session to capture photos to accompany their stories. With the help of facilitators from the Maarifa Centre, the trainees embarked on a photo shooting fieldwork to capture relevant photos to accompany their articles which were to be posted on the Citizen Journalism blog.

One of the trainees Mr. John Kasimu had this to say, “This is such an exciting opportunity, I cannot wait to see my photo online,” said the jovial 20 year old former student of Mutomo Mixed Secondary school.

During the field exercise, the trainees learnt on how to frame a photo, how to focus on the subject, factors to consider when shooting a photo and zooming options. They also had an opportunity to prepare subjects for photo shooting as well as instilling confidence in subjects.

Earlier on, each of the trainees had an opportunity to practically learn on how to hold a still camera as well as techniques used in capturing great photos.