The Student Teacher and the Paper Crane

Being a student teacher is overwhelming, I remember. I had a student teacher the first half of last year who showed great courage, innovation and was open to all I had to share.  He had a lot of enthusiasm, energy, a positive attitude, and, well...youth.  He has an MFA in painting, but of course, he had to come up with digital lessons for me.  With very little experience with photography, he came up with a lesson that was very successful.  [Note: Our dedicated classroom server crashed last year and the images are now lost in the great ether of memory. Some students were actually listening to me and backing up their work, but until I track them down or do this again, there is no example at this time.]

One of the challenges of teaching is how to add enough surprises and variety to keep the students motivated and excited, while at the same time not creating anxiety with too much to think about, and my student teacher pondered all those.

He came up with the idea of taking the students away from the computers for a little bit to make large white origami paper cranes out of the large 80# drawing paper. Origami paper cranes, the little exercise that seems to have a meaningful connection to humans, the subjects of great children's books and legends, still a subject of contemporary art.  The students got to practice their listening skills, because if you don't pay attention, the crane doesn't turn out right. And they laughed and got to know each other a lot more than just sitting at their computers.  

These paper cranes were now the subjects of their next black and white photo assignment that was simple and elegant: The paper crane must be in one of the rule of thirds power points or grid lines. You must have conscious and interesting lighting effects and shadows, with one being strong sunlight, one being soft, diffused sunlight,  and one being artificial lighting .  (Large white paper cranes make good subjects for demonstrating lighting.) And you must use interesting angles of view. 

I think giving them all a predetermined subject that was portable and cooperative created great innovation and enthusiasm and every student was successful.  This lesson idea is a keeper. 

More Painting with Light

You may want your students to take part in The Carrot Revolution's collaborative project of images created with open shutters and some flashlights. The deadline for entries is March 1st and you should register your class ahead of time. Visit their website for more info. You may also want to follow the Carrot Revolution blog, as well as read this NPR article about the project with student examples.  I plan on taking part and will post my students' examples soon. For some more info on light painting, check out this earlier DAE blog post

Contemporary Photographers

If you need a source for showing examples of contemporary fine art photographers, who are truly pushing the envelope, go to the Photography Now website (slogan: "a way to connect your creative vision with the world at large...the internet's premiere site dedicated to people seriously interested in contemporary and classical photography.")

My favorite page is the "More Contemporary Artists" page. Check out MaLiang who combines theater, and aged photo effects, and Julia Fullerton-Batten who directs and creates elaborate images that play with scale or movement, or repetition. John Manno has some new ideas for shooting still lifes and objects, and Keven Erickson has found beauty in motion blur.

Inspiration for Photography Teachers

The Center for Fine Art Photography is a site to visit for inspiration for themes and images for photography projects (maybe skipping over some of the nudes for K-12 students...). For example, the current exhibit is "Idea of Self". Past exhibitions were "Negative Space", "Our Environment: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly", another is "Interactions", "On the Edge", "After Dark". I'm drawn to this site because here photography is art, not commercial, and creativity is welcome. If you live near Ft. Collins, Colorado, then you are lucky to be able to attend their workshops.

Photography Scholarship to NANPA Summmit

The North American Nature Photography Association gives student scholarships to their conference every year. It includes workshops in the classroom and in the field as well as critiques. It does not cover airfare, or food and supplies ($300). The applications are due October 6, 2008 for the February Summitt in Albuquerque.

Ansel Adams

Adams is an inspiration not just because of his photographs, but also his zest for life with no boundaries. You understand what I mean if you've read his autobiography. Don't miss this NY Times web article with sound byte interviews about him. This is another website with sound from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. PBS has a movie about him as well.

Really, next time you need some inspiration to do anything, read his autobiography. When you finally put it down you will feel like you can accomplish anything. You probably won't want to put it down until you reach the end, but it is not very thick, so it makes a great weekend retreat.

Can't Get Enough?

Check out Cameraporn's 60 Photography Links You Can't Live Without

Flower Photography Tips

The above photos were all done by my students. These are the techniques I require them to try:

1. Flower photography is very much like portrait photography. Be aware of the effect of lighting and shadows. You can use the spot healing tool the same way you would for a portrait, if you are looking for perfection.

2. Try holding a stiff black background (like black presentation board, or black foam core board) behind the flower, even with natural lighting.

3. Drops of rain or dew are magical on a flower, but a spray bottle of water can be used if you don't feel like getting up in time for the dew.

4. Get to know your macro...but don't always use it. Understand depth of field and use both shallow and deep.

5. The most convenient angle is also probably the most boring.

Essential Photography Books

When I was first given the opportunity to teach digital photography, I had to head to the bookstore. My last college photography class had been 1979. I had taken 3 levels of photography and had worked as a photojournalist in my mid-20s, but remembering how I was taught the essentials was packed away somewhere in the attic section of my brain.

My digital photography curriculum is a combination of photography essentials (composition, lighting, point-of-view, expression, topics) and Photoshop. During the warm weather months we focus on those photography topics (which would apply to film as well) and then, obviously, during the months with nasty weather, we focus on Photoshop and studio photography. And, as you probably have discovered, there are no books that I have run across that cover both topics well, which is understandable. And for that reason, I do not use a text book.

The majority of the photography part of the curriculum came from two fantastic books, John Hedgecoe: The New Manual of Photography: A Definitive Guide to Photography in Every Format, and his more basic one, John Hedgecoe's Photography Basics. I recommend both, because you can use a lot of the chapters from his Basics directly in the classroom. The Definitive Guide takes more careful thought about what is too advanced or non-essential for your students. I remembered him from college. I loved his book on filmmaking. He writes so beautifully and from the perspective of an artist, not a tech geek. And, they are visually exciting books, as well.

Here are just a partial list of sub topics in his chapter called, "The Art of Good Photography Composition" (Definitive Guide): The selective eye; placing the subject in the frame; using diagonals; circles; frames within frames; selecting a viewpoint; linear perspective; using shadows; texture, pattern, and quite a few more. He has another complete chapter devoted solely to color.

So, if, like me, it's been a long time since you took that photography class, consider these two books. There are many others that cover more specific or advanced photography topics, but these are the best essentials for the art of photography.

Photo Contests

Outdoor Photographer magazine's Winter Photo Contest is for anyone 18 and older and is free (unless I missed something in small print...) The deadline is February 20th.

Their Magical Adventures contest deadline is January 4th.

Eliot Porter and Robert Ketchum

If you haven't opened up your January 2008 issue of Art Education yet, you'll be happy to see that the instructional resource center pullout is: Eliot Porter and Robert Glenn Ketchum: A Conversation on Color, Composition, and Environmental Conservation. Although recommended for grades 5-7, it is certainly a great idea for higher grades.

In addition, there is a nice interactive site designed for student learning from the Amon Carter Museum (in Fort Worth, Texas) : http://www.cartermuseum.org/edu_guides/porter/

A discussion of the two photographers on outdoorphotography.com http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/content/2006/dec/form_function.shtml

Robert Glenn Ketchum's website: http://www.robertglennketchum.com

And the book: Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter

Short and Sweet Photography Tips

This idigitalphoto blog page has a wonderful list of tips to share with your students. It's called "Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time" (referring to how long it takes to read each category).

Layers Magazine

Layers Magazine is a nicely designed magazine for Adobe Creative Suite products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Flash, Dreamweaver as well as digital photography.) What I like about it is that the purpose of the magazine content is education, not enticing you to buy more stuff. They also provide many tutorials online.

Chris Jordan's Photography Art

You may have seen Chris on television recently explaining his "activist" images. Upon closer look at his art and replicas of famous art, you see that they are made of small images that represent the protagonists in our culture. For example, his version of Seurat's ...La Grande Jatte is made up of 106,000 photos of aluminum cans, which equals 30 minutes of U.S. can consumption.

http://www.chrisjordan.com/ (Choose the Running with Numbers gallery to see the Seurat image)

I see his work as an exemplar for a project using art for activism.

Website to Visit

Have you discovered John Paul Caponigro's photography site? http://johnpaulcaponigro.com/

In addition to his gallery of surreal composite photos (good examples for a surrealism project), he has some informative interviews with professional photographers and artists in his "Artists on Art" section. I plan on having my students read and comment on one of those interviews every month or so.

He is a workshop photography educator and he has included some helpful writings and mini lessons available in his Download section. If you subscribe to Insights you get access to more than if you don't.

More Forgotten Information

Boy, I seem to be thinking of a lot to say, this first day of the blog...

One thing I did not include in your CD were handouts for a couple studio projects that we did to get the students away from the computers, and to introduce them to other art forms in case this is the first art class they've taken in a long time. This only works if you have a lot of available space away from the computers, like an empty room.

These are the two we did last year: Handmade photo album, using mixed media and the japanese method of binding. Arylic painting based on one of their photos using the grid method to enlarge onto their paper. I can see using a black and white photo to learn to value tone drawing.

Other teachers wove photos together, for example. Here's a David Hockney inspried montage lesson: http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/high/cubismphoto.htm Please share any ideas you have.