Center for Photographic Art wins $2,500 MC Gives! Ingenuity Award.

It’s easier than ever to snap a photo. But what about the imagination it takes to make a photo meaningful?

That’s a concept the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel will tackle in its upcoming conference program “Photography. Imagination. Experience.”

CPA Board President Jerry Takigawa believes the program content reflects a shift from traditional, technical photography to a more informal, personalized approach.

“It becomes a matter of what you want to photograph,” he says. “The focus is on looking in more than looking out.”

That thinking is part of the reason why the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel won the $2,500 Ingenuity Award from the 2013 Monterey County Gives! campaign, a collaboration between the Weekly and The Community Foundation for Monterey County that raised more than $1 million in reader and partner donations. The Ingenuity Award is funded by the Community Foundation.

“MC Gives! inspires big ideas from the nonprofit community, for the overall community,” Weekly CEO Bradley Zeve says. “The ingenuity award [honors] one of the most original ideas we believe will have a positive, measurable impact.”