A contribution from Sarah Ann Loreth
With The Wild Ones all settled back at home and abroad we wanted to take the time to recap this summer’s adventures. Together we traveled more than 13,000 miles, thirty three states, fifteen major cities, and twelve national parks. We met more than a hundred new faces and friends. Altogether we hosted eight workshops in six cities and two at Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta.
With the generous help of Flickr and Coca-Cola we were able to keep these workshops affordable. When planning the workshops we knew we didn’t want to make money off of this adventure. We wanted to be able to host affordable classes to share our love for storytelling and passion for helping. This trip was not for profit and we go home with nothing but our memories and the joy of meeting so many people along the way. The money we received via workshop fees, sponsorships, and donations was used only to get us from place to place and spread as much joy as we could along the way. Our goal was to share happiness, passion, and give back to the community that has given us so much. We hoped we accomplished this whether it was donations to hungry strangers, giant tips at restaurants, free entry to our workshops, or even big things like surprising two deserving young photographers from Illinois with an all expense paid trip to spend four days in Dallas learning from us.
Our workshops were such a joy. We focused our teaching, on building stories and creating conceptual photos giving each participant homework to create throughout the day. We feel an overwhelming sense of pride and fulfillment in the community we have built and the stories we have shared. We hoped to leave a little bit of ourselves with every person we met. And in that, hope that they shared that happiness with someone else. We were not here to make money, chase fame, or make names for ourselves. All we want is to give. And to teach that with a lot of hard work and a little bit of faith you can do whatever you set out to achieve.
We hope you enjoyed following our workshop tour as much as we enjoyed living it. You can see the posted photos from our workshop attendees in our Wild Ones 2013 Flickr Group and we invite you to participate along with us in our monthly themes!
We wanted to take the time to thank both Flickr and Coca-Cola for their support. We want to thank every person that wrote to us, opened their homes to us, or took the time to attend our workshops. And we want to thank all of you for following along in this journey with us!
Photos from J.W. Hendricks, Hurtienne-Photography, xBellanottephotography, Leah Coppotelli, justinkuder, Lyss Nichole, and fortunes_folly from last month’s theme of “broken”.
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