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01-31-2015, 07:22 AM   #16
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I would also try a technique developed by a friend of mine. He taught photography at an institution for wayward boys. He called it his ball and chain theory of photography. We would place the students in various areas and give them a camera with a roll of film.

They were not allowed to move 15 feet from where they were. They had to shoot the entire 24 exposure roll of film without leaving that spot. He told them that no matter where you are, there is a good photograph waiting to be taken. You just have to find it.

01-31-2015, 07:37 AM   #17
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Exposure/ Depth of Field, - you can't have one discussion without the other.

composition, focal plane, - understanding how what you see with your eye differs from what you capture with your camera

lighting and characteristics of light - single point, 3 light set, 5 light set, diffused light and diffusers, direct sun, shade

That's enough to keep you busy for a lifetime. And I'd probably want to devote a least 12 sessions to them.
01-31-2015, 09:03 AM   #18
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I think one of your biggest problems is that your students will arrive with different experience and different expectations. eg DSLR vs P'n'S or "just bought it today" vs "had it a year and still can't take decent pictures". It will probably be that you will have to tailor your teaching to the group you've got rather than the group you thought you'd got, or indeed the group you wanted. Simple questionnaire and/or sample pictures could get you started.
01-31-2015, 09:07 AM   #19
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QuoteOriginally posted by roberrl Quote
I think one of your biggest problems is that your students will arrive with different experience and different expectations. eg DSLR vs P'n'S or "just bought it today" vs "had it a year and still can't take decent pictures". It will probably be that you will have to tailor your teaching to the group you've got rather than the group you thought you'd got, or indeed the group you wanted. Simple questionnaire and/or sample pictures could get you started.
No question about it. One option would be to divide the class into groups with relevant levels of experience and expectations. Some material needs to be presented to everyone, but other materials could be tailored to different groups. We would have two instructors, after all.

01-31-2015, 09:51 AM   #20
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I would love to have showgirls in the lessons, would enable most beginners to learn very quickly.
01-31-2015, 09:59 AM   #21
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The first topic I would teach beginners would be "what makes good photos and why?" If people can't tell the difference between a bad photo from good ones, there is no point (worthwhile for them) to be in the class.
01-31-2015, 10:37 AM   #22
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Now that's an idea ... let's first agree on what's a "good" picture and start from there. Sports vs portait vs landscape all require different technique and to some extent different equipment. But seriously there's no point in teaching sports techniques if the crowd mainly want to shoot landscape. Just another aspect of understanding your audience, and another way of splitting the group.
I write this because I still have some scars from presentations where I didn't meet the audience's expectations or correctly judge their prior knowledge.

01-31-2015, 12:13 PM   #23
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When I was starting out in photography, learning how to get a proper exposure was Rule #1. If you couldn't control your exposure, you were screwed. If you got things wrong, you just had to throw that roll of film away. These days...when even our smart-phones can give us reasonably decent pics...I think I'd start with teaching basic composition first. I'd teach rule of thirds, leading lines, not centering your subject, light vs dark areas, color composition, etc... From that, I'd teach how to control exposure and post processing to place emphasis upon what part of the composition the photographer wants their viewer to see.
01-31-2015, 12:27 PM   #24
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QuoteOriginally posted by aleonx3 Quote
The first topic I would teach beginners would be "what makes good photos and why?" If people can't tell the difference between a bad photo from good ones, there is no point (worthwhile for them) to be in the class.
Someone please explain that to my cousin Angela, she consistently takes a sd card full of pics and downloads the whole thing to facebook unedited. Oh my, happy I don't live anywhere near her camera. First topic, "what makes a good photo” second topic, 'how to delete and edit'. Lol
01-31-2015, 04:25 PM   #25
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So, I'll let this thread go a bit longer, to get more good suggestions, and then I'll post a tentative list of topics that I'll bring to my meeting with this local pro.
02-01-2015, 12:59 AM   #26
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There's something that could maybe fit into a beginners class, given that the basis of exposure and composition can be covered beforehand: how to work with people.

It may sounds silly (and maybe it is), but learning how to direct a model (especially an occasional, non-professional model), how to balance respecting someone's space with including your needs as a photographer into a scene, how to be directive without being rude, when to ask, when to smile, when to bolt - I think that makes a difference, and can be taught. Especially for people who have taken photophone pictures before and have some idea of what a good picture is, but need to understand that pictures are more than just snapshots.

Again, this comes after understanding how to turn light into pleasant, understandable pictures.
02-01-2015, 04:24 AM   #27
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What would you want in a beginning photography class?

Assuming they are really beginners and they all have serious adjustable cameras (rather than PS) then ....

...get them to understand and master the interaction between ISO, Shutter and Aperture - without this they are dead in the water if they want to go beyond the capabilities of a simple PS.

Last edited by wildman; 02-01-2015 at 04:38 AM.
02-01-2015, 06:45 AM - 1 Like   #28
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Having been in the position... and taught this class, my response was not "what is a good photograph"... that's completely subjective, there are good reasons why the students should never see the teacher or anyone else as some kind of arbitrator who decides what is a good photograph. Our solution in my department, was go to the Masters of Photography website or some place similar, find some one who's work resonates with you personally and do a short essay on that photographer with examples of their work, and why it's deemed to be important. You want to encourage students to think about excellence, without you defining what they like. And if you studied great photographers at all, you know they didn't always like each other's work. In fact in some cases they were intellectually opposed to even the concept of what some of their famous peers were doing. Teaching students that there is value in having a group of people decide "what is a good photograph." Well, intellectually I'm opposed. What is the value of going through the debates between the ƒ64 club and Stieglitz's narrow DOF advocates. Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz are both acknowledged as great photographers. Do we really need to explore the minute of what they thought of each other's work?

The 92 Pop Photography article on Composition is as far as I'm willing to go. And it clearly lays out, for every rule, there is an acclaimed photograph that breaks that rule. There simply is no other definition for "what is a good photograph" besides, that it arouses interest among those who view it. All Composition and Technical guidelines can be shown to be irrelevant in at least one award winning photo. People who think they can decide such things such as "what is a good photo" are essentially frauds. Large groups of people make those decisions. Individuals have no say beyond their little corner of the universe. It's like deciding who is the best candidate in an election. Everyone has an opinion about who will win, in the end, up to 49% of them are wrong. And in one county the loser may win the majority of votes. Just as in one classroom discussion a totally useless concept of what a good photo is could be adopted. Where's the value in that? The question becomes, do you want to be a commentator or a player? Commentators can have all kinds of ridiculous notions they believe to be worthy of discussion. Photographers need to have a different set of working values, based on the technical abilities of cameras and what they personally see as worthy of accomplishing. Find someone who did what you want to do and figure out how they did it. Or come up with your own unique style that hasn't in the past been recognized as "good". You shouldn't be putting barriers, such as artificial concepts of what is a "good photograph" in people's way.
02-01-2015, 10:04 AM   #29
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Normhead, on the one hand I agree (strongly) that we do not want to define a "good photograph" in terms of rules, nor do we instructors want to set ourselves up as the Aesthetic Gods who get to decide what is good and bad, and that we want the students to learn to develop their own aesthetic judgment.

But with all that said, "good" and "bad", even in the art world, are not subjective, at least not purely subjective. Look, why would students even want to take a course to make their photos better, if they did not already have some judgment about their photos not being good? And why would they agree to study with an experienced instructor with some expertise in the area if they did not at least acknowledge tacitly that the instructor was likely to have better judgment than the students, not just about factual matters of equipment use but also about aesthetic judgments about what makes a good and bad image? This is not significantly different than someone's decision to take a car to an auto mechanic or to take their body to a medical doctor, because they judge that the expert in that field is likely to reach a better decision about the subject than they can.

Of course, we want to help the students hone their own aesthetic judgments, not blindly adopt ours. And of course we want there to be room for aesthetic disagreements to surface and be explored and sometimes to be left hanging. And of course we want students to see the works of established masters (of visual arts that go beyond photography, too, sometimes).

But we don't hang my daughter's paintings in the National Gallery, and we do hang Monet's--and there are good aesthetic reasons for that. It does, I agree, have to do with the sustained and summary judgments (value judgments) that arise from our aesthetic feelings. We must feel that something is good or bad.

But, of course, sometimes we also have to learn how to feel in an area. Our feelings themselves are subject to refinement, education, learning, honing. I once felt that tomatoes tasted bad; now I have learned to taste them as good. I once felt that absurdist theater was bad; now I have learned to feel it to be good. Our moral feelings also are capable of such development, fortunately, or we would never develop into the mature moral beings most of us are, considering where we started as children.

So, I am still inclined to help students early on face the issue of what makes a good image, but with all the caveats mentioned earlier....
02-01-2015, 02:36 PM   #30
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One article from Pop Photography 1992, it's everything they need to know.

Cover....

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Help them... yes I give them the article and I encourage them to do further research.

Last edited by normhead; 02-03-2015 at 07:00 AM.
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