Magic Village Video

09.06.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - For my last trick, I will be submitting the Magic Village video (no pun intended). It is in a beautiful spot in the Sierra de Grazalema at the bottom of a little town called Benaocaz. Campers learn English through media by playing the Wii and watching the Simpsons and speak only English most of the day. It works as a feeder camp for Little Village.

There I followed Lyan, who was great and spoke excellent English. Highlights were watching (didn't have my camera, long story) the dragon on the zip line, Mr. Muscle cross dressing and seeing them win Intercamp.

Let me know what you think.

-Will

Here it is:

Winning Intercamp.
Mr. Muscle. Rory, SMH man, SMH.

Get to know your monitor.

Star Camp Video

09.05.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - This is the video for Star Camp, where TECS runs a "Guided Independence" program for older (13-18 year old) campers. It's famous for for being in a four star hotel in Sotogrande and offers campers off-site activities taught in English. I hung out with Javi from Madrid who learned padel his first week of camp.

It was one of the more difficult videos simply because the kids have a lot of free time and independence outside of the class. "Independence" is a difficult concept to visualize. However, difficult the filming, the hotel room and buffet made up for it. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the breakfast spread. . . .

Let me know what you think.

-Will

Here it is:

Javi in class.
Padel practice.

An evening fashion show.

Little Village Video

09.04.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Little Village is TECS's Total English camp where the campers come and only speak English for two weeks. The camp sits on a pretty site just on top of the white-washed town of Grazalema in the mountains of Cadiz. TECS converts the campsite into it's own slice of the UK (or America) where everything is done in English. Campers work a lot on conversation and speaking English as their native speaking monitors and teachers do.

Here I profiled Amalia (yes the same name as the girl from Go Camp) who in addition to having excellent English, participated in the camp exchanges, worked as a monitor for a day, was on the debate team for intercamp and generally worked at being awesome. Kudos to Amalia.

For anyone who has ever taught English abroad, and especially in Spain, I can tell you that it actually works and is an amazing camp environment.

Let me know what you think.

-Will

Here's the video:

Amalia.
Nacho, who sadly didn't get to make a cameo in the video (Sorry Nacho). He definitely provided some laughs over the two weeks, especially with his routine as the Australian painter who was raised with an Italian accent so he could be more artistic.
Yoga. That's right. They do yoga at Little Village. And it's awesome.

Amalia, as part of the monitor for a day exchange.

Go Camp Video

09.03.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Go Camp is TECS's camp for first time campers. They focus a great deal on the welfare of the campers and exposing them to adventure activities for the first time. It's in a very typical Andalusian farm in central Cadiz and it comes complete with donkeys and other various forms of livestock. I profiled Amalia here, who at eight years old, is the youngest camper I worked with.

-Will

Here's the video:

We had a beach day out and I took some great photos that I wound up not using for this. I thought this one summed it up though.
Adam during Cluedo (Clue for Americans). He recorded several of the songs for these videos. If I had to choose, this would be his first album solo cover

Didn't get to use this but it remains one of my favorites from the summer. Very Go Camp.

Family Camp Gredos Video

09.02.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - This is the Family Camp Gredos video I produced for TECS. The camp runs a similar program to Family Camp in El Puerto, but in the center of the country, specifically the Sierra de Gredos about an hour and a half west of Madrid. It's a beautiful area and I focused on projecting that and the wide range of activities the campers can do in that environment. If you ever get a chance to get over that way, I recommend it. It is truly spectacular.

Let me know what you think.

-Will

Luis and Ali sharing a laugh.
Golf.

By far one of my favorite images from the summer. Just says it all.

Family Camp Video

09.01.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - This is the Family Camp video which was the most extensive of the seven projects. I profiled four campers: Valentina, Pablo, Luis and Salma. I tried to focus on the Big Brother mentoring program and tried to give the sense of campers being in the largest TECS camp in downtown El Puerto.

Let me know what you think.

-Will

Here's the video:

Luis.
Valentina and Salma in the Big Brother program.
It's a Knockout, an Evening Entertainment

TECS Summer Recap

08.27.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - I finished my TECS Summer Redux project and over the next few posts I'll post the videos and a few snapshots from each camp. To start, I thought it best to go with the general trailer/short/advert for TECS. It covers the best of all the camps and is a good intro for the whole project.

I want to say thanks again to everyone involved from the subjects and their families to TECS who put it all together to the drivers who got me from A to B. It was truly an awesome summer.

FYI, this one is the Spanish version, but I doubt you'll notice given that there is only one 3 second quote in Spanish. The rest of the videos will be the English version.

Let me know what you think.

Cheers,

Will

TECS Redux

07.17.11 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Don't worry, your RSS feed isn't broken. I haven't been updating the blog recently because I started another summer working for TECS Summer Camps. This year, I'm producing a video project documenting their 6 summer camps. It keeps me busy enough (and far enough from wifi), that keeping this blog going is proving more difficult than merely overcoming my procrastination. Fear not dear readers! I will hopefully have some good updates in August on how the project is going. I know you're all waiting with baited breath.

Until then,

Will

Update: The Missing Photographer

01.30.11 - San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain - I feel a need to post something here because I've been MIA these past few months. I actually didn't realize September was my last post, so it's worse than I expected. Apologizes. My computer went on the fritz in late November and I've been waiting on a CD to fix it. So this blog, my photo career and more and more my sanity is dependent on the Spanish postal service to deliver that CD and if you know anything about the post here, you'll know that's not a good thing.

Alas, to quell your baited breath for new posts, I'll direct you to a new publication of my TECS photos from last summer (most you probably haven't seen) online at: www.brightsparkspanish.com. TECS is starting a learn Spanish in Spain program and I provided promo shots of El Puerto and TECS for the web.

Until the benevolent mailman from above delivers to me so I can fix my evils,

Will

Summer Camp Vol 4-8

09.02.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - As you may or may not have noticed, my plan to post weekly photos of TECS Summer Camp on my blog failed in spectacular fashion somewhere between weeks three and four. It was probably a bit ambitious anyway. At any given moment I was juggling requests in all types of media, from downloading music for performance night, shooting daily photos, updating the website and trying desparately to keep everything organized.

Suffice to say, being a camp IT Specialist is not an easy job and doesn't lend itself well to updating personal blogs. Anyway, below is my Photoshelter gallery of the summer. I tried to keep a tight edit of 20 photos and give a little idea of the chronology (using "story" there would be a bit ambitious for what I accomplished). Flip through it when the inspiration strikes you.

-Will

Summer Camp Vol 3

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Volume 3 brings us week 1 of camp 2, sort of like a real life sequel, same gang back together again. The week was full of peaks and valleys and included a trip to four of the other camps.

-Will

Arrivals games
Class time
Kite surfing at Sports Camp
Working at the board in Star Camp
Magic Villagers debate possible UK superstitions during class
Wouldn't be camp without a bit of archery, now would it?
Learning articles
Junior performance night, Ghostbusters riff
Mr. Muscle competition for the seniors
Senior Disco Night

Summer Camp Vol 2.

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - Week 2 of the first camp brought some new excitement. We had Intercamp competition (between the 6 camps of TECS), English Day (a day when kids are divided into countries and learn about their cultures, chant funny things like Lovely Jubbly and Howdy Partner), the Colour War victory dinner, casino night and departures. It was a lot and good times.

-Will

Heading home
Intercamp chanting competition
English Day, the Aussie team chants "Tie Your Kangaroo Down"; notice the face paint
Each camp one staff member is "gunked" during Casino Night (the last night of camp) and after being covered in a purplish slimy substance, runs around the park and tries to grab as many campers (all 206 of them) as possible. This time it was Pelayo and he managed to horrify several of the sophomores (aged 5-8).
Henry, the welfare coordinator and victor in sumo wrestling during Casino Night
Intercamp water polo
Class time
Sophomores in line for the haunted house

Summer Camp Vol. 1

07.25.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - I've finally had a chance to catch my breath here in El Puerto since arriving five weeks ago. As I've mentioned to nearly everyone I know, I'm working as an IT Specialist at TECS Summer Camps until the end of August. My main job is camp photographer, a task I try not to take lightly. As a result I spend at least a couple hours a day shooting the kids in their various camp activities.

Days follow a similar path: breakfast, classes (it's an English camp, so school is part of it), lunch, sports, dinner and evening entertainments. I look for a variety of the goings on each week and things have turned out pretty well. As best as I can for the next five weeks I'm going to post a small selection of photos from each week of camp.

Thanks for following,

Will

Volleyball
Jump rope in the basketball courts
Rounders
Arrivals Day
Colour war dance competition. Colour war is a camp wide, 24/7 competition between the kids and the teams are divided into blue and white. After three weeks of having campers here I've found that nearly anything can be turned into a game, even handing out workbooks.

Spain wins!

07.11.10 - El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain - At long last the Spanish national team won the World Cup last night with a 1-0 victory over Holland. I'm a bit swamped with summer camp work at the moment but we did watch the game with the kids and afterwards, I shot some photos just outside the gate (we had to stay on site with work beginning, win or lose, at 8:30am Monday).

Enjoy,

Will

Yo soy español, español. . .
Guille doing his best torero impression.

The kids attack Dutch fan Lacklan.

David and the kids celebrate Spain hoisting the trophy.