This gallery features photos taken by campers throughout the 2025 HFH Summer Camps season, giving them the chance to capture camp through their own lens. For the second summer in a row, volunteer Daniel Friedland led the project, continuing both the tradition he started with campers last year and his family’s tradition of volunteering at HFH Summer Camps, following in the footsteps of his older siblings.
Take a scroll through the Camper Camera Roll and see camp from their perspective!
Summer camp has always been a place where I return to myself. At home in New York City, life moves quickly—full of voices, alarms, overlapping schedules, and the constant hum of everything happening at once. But at camp, where phones are put away and time stretches differently, I’ve found moments of stillness that stay with me long after summer ends.
One evening last year, I climbed down to the river after dinner and stood before a massive waterfall. For a moment, everything in me quieted. I remembered something I had forgotten in the rush of the school year: that beauty isn’t something you chase, it’s something you notice. You simply have to be still long enough for the world to reveal itself.
That experience changed the way I think about memory. Creating something lasting—whether a poem, a photograph, or a moment of connection—begins with presence. You have to linger. Look again. Stay in the moment. A camera shutter is just a fraction of a second, but it captures the truth of an instant we might have otherwise rushed past.
HFH Summer Camps gives children experiencing homelessness a place where they, too, can breathe, explore, and feel fully themselves. This year, I hoped to help them preserve those moments in a way that honored their experiences. Each camper at Camp Lanowa received a disposable camera with 27 exposures and a notebook—tools to slow down, notice, and reflect. To see the world not just as it is, but as it feels to them.
The photographs in this gallery—also included in the memory books each camper received alongside additional photos taken by staff—are more than images; they are small acts of paying attention. They capture the laughter around a campfire, the pride in trying something new, the warmth of friendship, the glow of a summer evening. They are reminders that every child’s perspective matters, and that their memories deserve a place they can return to.
I am deeply privileged to have been part of this project for a second year. My hope is that these memory books become tiny waterfalls in their own way—places where the campers can pause, feel the world soften, and remember the beauty they created simply by being present with one another.
Daniel Friedland, age 17
HFH Summer Camps Volunteer
