Pasadena Boys & Girls Club Members Enter National Photography Contest

Six members of the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena will vie for national honors in photography through the Club’s ImageMakers program. Their winning photographs, chosen during the Club’s fourth annual ImageMakers Exhibit and Contest, will compete against entries from other Boys & Girls clubs in the nine-state Pacific Region this spring. And winners from that event will then move on to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America national ImageMakers competition in Atlanta.

The year-round program encourages members, ages 6 to 18, to learn and practice black-and-white, color, digital and alternative process photography. With the guidance of BCGP technology directors Daniel Gamboa and Leana Courtney, members shot photos in and around the Club and on field trips to the beach, Pasadena City Hall, the Los Angeles County Arboretum, the Huntington Library, Olvera Street, and Chinatown. The photos they took were categorized under either Culture & Tradition, Nature & Surroundings, or Portraits and by age group (6-9, 10-12, and teens).

The winning entries in the 6-9 age group were: Makenna Walker (Nature & Surroundings and Portrait), and Milan Walker (Culture & Tradition). The winning entries in the 10-12 age group were: Michelle Ortiz (Nature & Surroundings and Culture & Tradition), and Milan Perry (Portrait). The winners in the teen group were: Isabel Aguirre (Nature & Surroundings and Portrait) and Michael Patton (Culture & Tradition).

Photographs selected at the contest’s national level will be exhibited at BGCA’s National Conference and other events. Each winning artist’s work is also featured in a virtual gallery on the ImageMakers website: www.imagemakersbgca.org.

About the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena

The Boys & Girls Club operates two sites in Pasadena—the Slavik Branch at 3230 East Del Mar Blvd. and the Mackenzie-Scott Branch at 2020 North Fair Oaks Ave.—and serves more than 3,500 community youth year-round from Pasadena and the nearby communities of South Pasadena, Alhambra, San Marino, Arcadia, Sierra Madre, La Canada, La Crescenta, Montrose, and Glendale. Since 1937, the mission of the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena has been to enable all young people, especially those who need it most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens. The Club promotes the health, education, social, vocational, and character development of boys and girls, ages 6 to 18, and helps improve the lives of these children by helping them build self-assurance and develop leadership skills while reinforcing positive values.