Crater Lake, Philmont Scout Ranch

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Randy Smith came to the 2012 Visual Storytelling Workshop held at Philmont Scout Ranch, near Cimarron, New Mexico. The focus of the workshop was to enhance photographic skills and learn how to gather natural sound, create a sound track and synchronize pictures with the sound to tell a story. After some classroom work and brief exercises, all the students went to the field at various locations at Philmont. Randy went to Crater Lake, a thematic camp in the mountains. The theme of this camp was logging. Scouts come through various themed camps on their wilderness treks and learn about what happened decades ago on the grounds of the ranch. Randy selected several scouts to cover and ultimately focused on one in his story. It was the first time Randy had produced something like this and it is really a good example of what this medium can do.

In the Scout’s climbing of the spar, we see challenge, self-doubt, erasing of doubt, and mastery of the challenge. That is a wonderful story line.