By Patrick Obia, Emmanuel Eni And Isioma Amifor
Media Practitioners Association of Nigeria, Cross River State, marks this year’s World Photography Day in grand style, announce establishment of photography foundation.
This year’s event with the theme, “Sustaining The Earth Treasure Through Our Lens,” entered into partnership with Canon.
Flagging off the annual event, the Commissioner for Sports and Cinematography, Ofu Aya, enjoin photographers in the State to be in one accord and continue keeping memories alive.
“Our message is that you should continue your job and do it well. Anything you find yourself doing, do it well because you are projecting the image of the State, the image of humanity; you are keeping records for tomorrow. As am talking to you I never knew my grandfather not until I had to go to family album and those are the kind of image we have to keep.
“This event is another veritable source for us to unite because when we come together and then recall how photography started, some people spent their time, resources, their brains at different stages to come out with cameras today.
“You not uniting as photographers is a disturbing factor and as a Ministry, our concern now is to see how all of us will come together, move as team, move as a family in that way we would be able to achieve all that is meant for us to achieve within the sector.”
On his part, the Commissioner for Tourism and Culture, Eric Anderson lauded the image makers for their development adding that, gone are those days, the State Government usually hire photographers and cinematographers from other States but that has changed due to laudable level of photography in the State.
He said, “You guys are making us proud. Gone are the days when we use to bring in cinematographer from Lagos, Abuja to handle our events, now we have not only the numbers but we have professionals in the field so we pray that God will continually keep us alive to do what we are happy doing and of course make money from it.”
Speaking with journalists at the kick off of the event at millennium park, Calabar, the President of the association, Nsa Ekpenyong said there is need to give back to the society through the art of creativity.
“This is to see how we can give back to our society because we are the image makers, we create images to also tell our stories. As we celebrate this year’s World Photography Day, I want to tell the public that, anywhere you are, keep memories because memories takes our mind back to old events.
“Canon happens to be a big partner with the association and it will be a long lasting one that in future, Canon will be coming to Calabar to spice up the work of photography.
“After this celebration, we are going to open a foundation where we are going to engage the youth into the craft of photography; we are going to train people to become professional photographers with the partnership we just signed with Canon.”
The representative of Canon, Toju Pratt said the collaboration with Media Practitioners Association, Cross River State, is as a result of the zeal of photographers in the State to create impact, led to the partnership adding that it is a partnership that will stand the test of time.
“The reasons we decided to collaborate with the Media Practitioners professionals in Cross River State is because we have seen the potentials. Photography industry in Cross River is striving and we want to make sure we are able to support and help to grow photography and the media industry as a whole.
“We are constantly engaging with the photo community and of course it is not going to be one off thing, we will collaborate with our partners as frequent as possible and who knows we are open to collaborations,” he assured.
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