Using an immersive Times series as inspiration, we invite teenagers to document the local communities that interest them. Contest dates: Feb. 14 to March 20. Source: The New York Times.
The Challenge
Using The Times’s Where We Are series as a guide, create a photo essay that documents an interesting local, offline community. Whether your grandmother’s Mah Jong club, the preteens who hang out at a nearby basketball court, or the intergenerational volunteers who walk the dogs for your neighborhood animal shelter, this community can feature people of any age, as long as it gathers in person.
We encourage you to choose a community you are not a part of for reasons we explain below, in the F.A.Q.
Whichever community you choose, however, it’ll be your job to interview and photograph them. Then, you’ll pull everything together in a visual essay, which will tell the group’s story via a short introduction and a series of captioned photographs.
Your photo essay MUST include:
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Between six and eight images, uploaded in the order in which you’d like us to view them.
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A short caption of no more than 50 words for each image helps explain what it shows and why it is important to the story.
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A short introduction of up to 300 words that offers important background or context that complements and adds to the information in the photos and captions. You might consider the introduction the beginning of your essay, which the photos and captions will then continue. Together they will answer questions like who this community is, how it came to be, and why it matters. (Our How-To guide offers more detail about this.)
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At least one quote — embedded in either the introduction or one of the captions — from a member of the community about what makes it meaningful.
Use these resources to help you create your photo essay:
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A related Student Opinion question to help you brainstorm ideas before you begin taking photos.
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A step-by-step guide that uses examples from the Where We Are series to walk students through creating their own.
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Free links to the “Where We Are” Collection: