It was early August, and I was in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans with the rest of the National Geographic Your Shot team. We were projecting the best images taken by participants of our two-day photo workshop. Our hope was to give the community the tools to tell their own stories.

Standing in the darkened room, watching photos flicker across the white-washed wall, I started to feel pride. The room was full of it–the participants, their friends and family, the workshop team, the neighborhood folks who wandered in–everyone was proud of themselves, and each other. They had captured a little slice of the Ninth Ward as it stands today. And they were excited to document this moment in time