Teen Photo Camp : Phil Mansfield

A couple of weeks ago I was given the opportunity to intern for CPW’s Teen Camp. This was a program that my boss, Liz, instituted that focuses on teaching the medium to middle and high school students. This year, by complete coincidence, we had 7 students that happened to all be girls. Having worked with teens before, I was a little apprehensive that with all girls there could be some cliques…but they immediately and continually proved me wrong. I was really pleasantly surprised with all of their levels of maturity and friendliness towards one another.

We began our 4-day program by learning basics…shutter speed, ISO, aperture, and other functions of their SLR cameras. Their teacher was Phil Mansfield, a CPW Staff member who manages our digital lab. I haven’t had much time to work with Phil, but seeing him around, I knew I was going to have a very fun, entertaining week. After only a 2 hour morning of instruction, I was floored by how great of a teacher Phil is! I was really impressed at how well he explained all techniques and how he managed to keep every student entertained…his extraordinary instruction was illustrated in our students photos. I can’t count the number of times I told fellow CPW staff/interns how impressed I was at their ability to grasp all of the technical information along with maintaining impressively creative compositions and ideas. I’ll try to post some of their images soon…

For the first day we hung around the center to shoot. I had the unexpected honor of being their model for the majority of the week…the girls made me feel very comfortable, but it was definitely the side of the lens I’m not used to being on.




Our first field trip was to Opus 40 in Saugerties, NY. I would try to explain it myself, but I think I would ramble on for far too long…luckily their website does a great job of concisely describing what it was:

“The work is an immense composition of finely fitted stone,
rising in ramps and swirling terraces around pools and trees
and fountains out of the rockbed of an abandoned bluestone
quarry. It spreads out over more than six acres.

It is the product of more than thirty-seven years of a man's life.
His name was Harvey Fite. He worked alone, using his hands and
traditional quarryman's tools, to build his masterpiece: Opus 40.”

Luckily the rain held out long enough for us. Here are a few images I shot there for myself…








and some of the girls (and Phil) in action…





The next day we went to the Byrdcliffe Colony. It was raining, so it worked out great to have access to an indoor space. The girls learned about window lighting, silhouetting, and got a chance to wander a bit and shoot the interior how they wanted. I unfortunately didn’t get any good images from that field trip – I was too busy practicing my modeling…you know, preparing for my new career path…

After gathering all of their images, Phil gave more great instruction about how to work in Photoshop. While I’m not a huge fan of altered images, I definitely use Photoshop to clean up scanned negatives, color balance, etc. One of the things that Phil said that really stuck with me was in regard to Photoshop versus the traditional darkroom. To summarize, he said that it shouldn’t matter the way you get to a final product as long as you’re proud of it. Instead of debating whether film or digital is better, we should think about if it is expressing your creativity to the fullest.

At the end of the camp we had a few hours where family and friends stopped by the center to see the work the girls had made throughout the week. We were able to print out some large format images for them along with put together a slideshow of their work. The girls got a chance to speak about what they learned and the images they produced throughout the week.


I can’t say enough great things about how the week went…I couldn’t have asked for a better group for girls or a better instructor to work with. It makes me think that working with teens might be in my future…