FOTO-Campers Garner Their Own Exhibit at the Photographic Center Through November 15 September 15, 2008

While most teenagers spend their days attached to cell phones, 16-year-old Marlee Brannock keeps a different digital gadget close at hand.

“I take my camera everywhere, and whenever I see something cool I take a picture,” she said. “It’s basically what I am known for.”

The Wellington High School sophomore is also known for her skill and passion for photography, which helped earn Brannock a first-place award as part of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre’s FOTOcamp 2008. Brannock’s winning images and other photographs taken during the camp will be on display as an exhibit at The Photographic Centre through November 15, running concurrently with “Packaging the Music,” images of celebrity musicians taken by Centre Board Member Harrison Funk.

It was Brannock’s second summer at FOTOcamp, which offers two-week sessions for students interested in learning everything from the basics of picture-taking to advanced skills, such as image adjustment and other computer-related techniques.

Campers ages 10 through 17 are grouped by their level of experience and issued a Canon digital SLR camera, which they use to hone their skills shooting pictures on field trips and learning to download and manipulate images in the computer lab.

“I had an amazing time,” said 17-year-old Alexandra Lao, who initially was concerned that she would feel awkward as one of the oldest students at FOTOcamp. “It didn’t really matter because we all meshed together.”

In fact, Lao’s portfolio, which won second place, included a shot featuring multiple images of a 10-year-old camper taken during a field trip to a salvage yard. A senior at Seminole Ridge High School in Loxahatchee, Lao is on the yearbook staff and hopes to study photojournalism at the University of Florida or Florida Atlantic University.

“I really want to do magazine work,” said Lao, who added that her mother, Wilhelmina Lao, urged her to attend the camp to get some hands-on experience in her chosen field. “I want to be able to take my own pictures, edit them and work with media.”

FOTOcamp’s third-place winner, 11-year old Jacob Wells of Boynton Beach, said he likes to photograph cars and orchids and prefers to take a different approach.

“I like taking pictures of things in a different way so people don’t know what it is at first,” said Wells, a sixth-grader at the Arthur I. Meyer Jewish Academy in West Palm Beach.

His winning photos included a colorful shot of watermelons at a roadside market. “It’s a really interesting picture because there was one cut up in the foreground and the others were whole,” he said.

Wells saved his own money to buy a point-and-shoot digital camera before starting camp, said his mother, Jennifer Wells. But now the budding photographer is gunning for a digital SLR camera like the one he used at camp.

“He’s very creative in general – he loves anything related to the arts,” said Jennifer Wells, whose father is a member of the Photographic Centre and picked up a brochure on the camp for his grandson.

FOTOcamp consists of three two-week sessions, after which campers’ images are displayed at the Centre’s Community Exhibition Gallery. Fees include the used of a SLR digital camera, lenses, some photo paper and field-trip transportation and admission. First-place winner Brannock brought a friend to camp this year and said she hopes to return for a third year of FOTOcamp next summer. Her winning group of photos featured a dramatically lit shot of a girl sitting in a corner with her head in her hands.

“The light was shining in a really cool way, and it caught my eye,” Brannock said. “I told her to put her hands on her face – I wanted it to be more mysterious.”

That doesn’t surprise Brannock’s mother, Margaret Brannock, who says her daughter has always been drawn to music, drama and the arts. She photographs local bands and birthday parties and is creating a work of art on her bedroom wall made up of Polaroid shots she takes of everyone who visits their Wellington home.

“She lives for photography,” she said. For information on FOTOcamp, visit www.workshop.org/fotocamp.html or call (561) 276-9797. The Palm Beach Photographic Centre is at 55 N.E. 2nd Ave. in Delray Beach.

Exhibition Hours: Mon - Sat, 9am to 6pm: Members: Free Non-members: $3

Official Website: http://www.workshop.org/museum.html