Soon, little black-and-white pieces of loveland will travel around the world. photo postcards created by area middle school students will end up in locations as diverse as Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and England.
The miniature works of art are part of a photography and writing project called "Spreading the Word: The People and Places of the Three Rivers Region."
"We wanted teh students to tell the world about the loveland area in photos and words," said artist in residence Bob Campagna, who headed the project. <br />
Forty-two students in the gifted and talented programs at all five Thompson School District middle schools participated.
Groups from the individual schools each spent a day exploring the area from the North St. Vrain Canyon to the Poudre Canyon, capturing the essence of the area in black and white.
"One of our goals is to teach people how to see their everyday world through the yes of an artist," Campagna said. "It helps them take ownership and find beauty under their noses."
He and the gifted and talented program teachers from each school took students to locations along or near the Poudre, Big Thompson and St. Vrain rivers, including downtown Lyons, Fort Collins and Glen Haven, and Rocky Mountain National park, the Big Thompson Canyon, Fort Collins' Swetsville Zoo and Rock Ridge Ranch west of Loveland.
The Students then chose at least six images to turn into postcards. They will write descriptions of those images on the cards and mail them to people as varied as Bill Gates and Paul McCartney early this month.
At last count, Campagna said, the group had created over 400 postcards. This is the first time the project has included such a large writing component, out of the five years Campagna has hosted the workshop in Loveland.
As in previous years, the students also will choose other photos to show during a six-day exhibit.
This year, the exhibit opens with a public reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Dec. 6 at Sage Moon Originals, 116 E. Fourth St. The photos will be on display through Dec. 11.

EXCURSIONARY LEARNING
Campagna has been a freelance teacher since 1982, working with an estimated 9,000 students over the years.
He spent his first year as a language arts teacher for noncollege-bound students in a Mississippi River town in Iowa. Campagna wanted to find a way to connect reading and writing to the real world for the small group of students he felt had been "written off" by the school.
"I was of the opinion that if the kids weren't going to college, I wanted to make them savvy in street skills," he explained, "so we created a raft and floated down the Mississippi to St. Louis for a week."
From that experience, Campagna learned the value of what he calls "excursionary learning," or making the world the classroom. He said he hasn't had a "real" teaching job since.
Today, he teaches workshops all over the country.

A POPULAR PROGRAM
More than 50 students at Lucile Erwin Middle School, 4700 Lucerne Ave., applied for the project, which had an average of less than 10 slots per school.
Teacher Sue Teumer explained that each applicant had to write an essay telling why he or she should be chosen. "It's so competitive at Erwin," she explained. "We have way more kids than slots."
"I worked real hard on mine, because it shows what you want to do," said seventh-grader Ashlyn Wong, one of the 10 Erwin students involved in the project.
because the project is considered an extracurricular activity, the students must make up all work they miss on the three or four days they are out of the classroom, Teumer said.
But it's worth it, said the students, as they worked competently in a tiny darkroom at Bill Reed Middle School, 370 W. Fourth St.
"When Bob told us to look for certain things, I saw the river from a totally different viewpoint," said eighth-grader Ellen Misloski.
"I used a flash to take my reflection in the water,"said sixth-grader Ben LeTourneau, showing off a slightly eerie print featuring LeTourneau's shadow with orb-like reflections for eyes.
All the students had stories for their favorite prints, telling about their experiences in vivid descriptions as well as photographic terms.
That's what Campagna was hoping they'd do. With 35 mm cameras, a photographer must pay more attention to each photo he or she takes, he said, rather than simply shooting dozens of digital images and hoping one will turn out.
"It's not digital, you don't push delete. You have to have a bit of faith that you're going to take a good picture," Campagna explained. "every time you stop to photograph something, you're paying honor to it. It's a way of connecting to the world around you."