For a school assignment, flop-haired Logan Lockhart went out to photograph the soul of his community.

Lori Calhoun Student photographer Lori Calhoun described her photograph of the children in her family this way: " I ... chose this picture because it captures children's happiness of exploring Chuck E Cheese in such an artistic light. I call it The Caged Animals because that is precisely how I see it . ... The first girl, [left] is my niece Geana, the second girl is my niece Shon, and the little boy is my godbrother Louis." Lori's photographs will be part of a student display in Downtown Pittsburgh tomorrow. Click photo for larger image.

A lifelong resident of Pittsburgh's Sheraden neighborhood, Logan, 17, has seen the good and the bad, the hope and the despair.

He did not know quite what he'd capture as he strolled through it all with his digital camera.

He soon discovered that, as a young, white teen with a camera, he was chased away from some parts of his community. On some streets, he became a stranger in his own neighborhood.

He thought of photographing two young black girls playing hopscotch. Forget it. "Their big brothers told me to get away from there or I might lose a hand," he said, recounting the experience while showing his images to fellow students.

He thought about capturing a game of pickup basketball at Sheraden Park. That was before he was chased away.

Sheraden, he learned, still has boundaries to cross. Some are racial, some are cultural, some are economic.

Uncovering the mysteries of these communities and others is exactly what Carol Moye, a photographer and teacher at City Charter High School, wanted for her students. Sure, she's interested in building technical know-how but, equally important, she wanted the students to develop the ability to look at the world and to think of it as a story.

Her model: Charles "Teenie" Harris, the legendary Pittsburgh Courier photojournalist who, for four decades, captured the soul and vibrancy of Pittsburgh's black community.

Mrs. Moye told her student-photographers to focus their lenses on where they live.

For lessons in technique, they had two Saturday sessions with professional and freelance photographers. Then they were told to go find their stories.

The images they brought back reveal volumes about where they live. But the story isn't just in the image but in how and why it was captured.

The students' photographs go on display at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Future Tenant Gallery, 801 Liberty Ave., Downtown. The exhibit runs through July 28. Hours are noon to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

There's nothing fancy here. No tricky techno-wizardry, just plain, simple life: kids on the corner, a child on a bike, or a mother and daughter at a bus stop.

All are a reflection on the spirit that sweeps through any of the students' neighborhoods on any given day.

"I think I ran into a race-color thing," Logan said. "There are so many suspicions that all white men with a camera are cops. And then people are so suspicious of pedophiles. It was tough."

When forced to take a closer look, Korey White, also of Sheraden, found a different place, too.

"When you're younger," he said, "all you see is one big playground. But the neighborhood has gotten darker. More drug addicts have come in."

It's starting to get better. A house where prostitutes worked and a drug house close to where he lives have been shut down.

"There's still beauty in my neighborhood," he said, "you just have to look for it." He found it in the contrasting colors of trees.

Korey, who hopes to be an electrical engineer, has been interested in photography since eighth grade. This project, he said, has made him see that every community has more than one side.

In Highland Park on the other side of town, the project became a mission for Macy Lucas and Janique Davis to show that life blossoms and community flourishes in the East End.

Macy, a junior at City High, seemed to cross racial barriers with ease.

She wanted to catch the spirit of life anonymously on Roxanna Way, a small alley she called the center of her neighborhood.

No such doing. Her bright personality and streaked blond mane made her highly conspicuous. As soon as kids spied the camera, they struck a pose.

Her images of young people at Sandy's store on Mellon Street show smiles and bravado, and reveal the not-so-hidden challenges of advertising that bombards the inner city with appeals to use alcohol and cigarettes.

There's so much going in my community, Macy wrote in an essay to be accepted in the photo project, "that there was never anything I wouldn't want to remember."

JeVon Hatcher, 16, of Summer Hill, a North Side community sandwiched between Observatory Hill and Northview Heights, said that participating in the project has given him pride.

"This activity would help me to achieve my goal," he wrote in his acceptance essay, "of breaking each stereotype branded onto the African-American man."

He rose early one Saturday and, camera in hand, went into the community before it awoke.

"I saw with new eyes," he said.

In the quiet of the morning, JeVon saw a community clean and tidy. For the first time, he said, he noticed the people who take time to plant flowers or to sweep walks -- the hidden folks who work to make a community better.

"I learned it's not about me," he said. "It's about community."

Janique, 17, a junior who hopes to be a pediatric therapist, always looks for the sunny side of life.

Though she lives in Highland Park, she's forever aiming her lenses at neighborhoods nearby: Larimer, Lincoln, Garfield.

Homewood, she said, has a new YMCA, peewee football and cheerleaders. There is good in the adolescent cotillion, where young black boys and girls dress in tuxedoes and gowns at Holy Rosary school.

"That's what I shoot," she said. "It's all there, mixed in with the monuments to people who have been killed, the balloons and flowers on every other corner."

Introduced to the work of Mr. Harris about a year ago, Janique was immediately impressed with the history of the Hill District, how much people seemed to be having fun. It was a world she never knew.

"When I went into the communities, I would get the same feeling of people living together and helping each other out. Not everybody from Homewood is crazy."

At times, the photography project offered windows into the souls of the children. It has pulled them deeper into themselves, helping them realize that, at the end of this experience, the photograph might go on the wall, but the real work of art is probably behind the lenses.