Teacher for a Day

Yesterday I had the opportunity to be a guest instructor for my daughter’s middle school Media class. They are learning about all things photo-related this semester so I was invited to present about architecture photography and demonstrate a bit of my workflow. What made it really fun was, since this is an elective class, all the students really want to be there. They were attentive and engaged during our time together and asked really great questions!

I introduced them to my equipment and some of the special considerations that interior and architecture photography requires (straight verticals!) as well as the concepts of taking multiple images with bracketing & lighting work, then layering and masking them together to create a final composite image. Of course, we only scratched the surface in one class period. Photoshop and Lightroom are robust tools so offering them some tips to experiment with and incorporate into their own work was the goal.

My favorite part of our time together was showing them some before & after photo of images I made around their beautiful school building. Over the holiday break last week I was granted permission to photograph inside the school when it was largely empty of people - and it was a stunningly gorgeous blue sky day to boot! In class the students enjoyed seeing these images of familiar places and learning some of the tricks & techniques I used to take the photographs from snapshots to polished final images.

This school has an Environmental STEM focus and the walls of the main stairwell feature the structural engineers' load calcs on the supports for this very part of the building. It's educationally inspiring, visually interesting, and provides a ready answer to every math teacher's favorite question: "When am I ever going to use this?"

The class went very well and I’ve even been invited back soon when they work on studio lighting a still life project. And there’s more to come… in the spring when they begin studying video I’ll bring the drone in for a lesson on aerial imaging!

Jennifer ClarkNovember 28, 20181 Comment