Last week with my students...what would you include?

[Kimberly Anderson]

I've been teaching a beginning photography class this summer, and this upcoming week is my last.

I want to make sure that I'm giving them a broad experience, so we've talked about all kinds of photography, different genres, technology, art history, photo history, photographers, trends, etc...

They are eager to explore just about everything I send them, and we are doing a lot of the teaching and correspondance via e-mail and links I'm sending them to visit and read.

It is in addition to the lectures and darkroom work that I'm having them do, and they enjoy having the links to visit on thier own time.

I'm curious, now that it's down to the end of the semester, what fellow APUG-ers would have them go see.

So, post up some links that you think a beginning photo student ought to see and I'll send them one final barrage of things to read about.

Oh, and thanks!

 

[blansky]

On thing all photographers are probably guilty of is the eternal search for the great shot. We drive 50 miles to get the great whatever and everything we do and think is "external". It's somewhere else.

Freeman Patterson, in one of his books, challenged photographers to shoot a roll of film before they got out of bed. To see textures and interesting shapes and play of light in every part of their existence.

He stressed that we didn't have to "go out and shoot" to find great subjects. They were all around us but we weren't seeing them.

He stressed learning to see.


Michael

 

[Kimberly Anderson]

On thing all photographers are probably guilty of is the eternal search for the great shot. We drive 50 miles to get the great whatever and everything we do and think is "external". It's somewhere else.

Freeman Patterson, in one of his books, challenged photographers to shoot a roll of film before they got out of bed. To see textures and interesting shapes and play of light in every part of their existence.

He stressed that we didn't have to "go out and shoot" to find great subjects. They were all around us but we weren't seeing them.

He stressed learning to see.


Michael

They have had that hammered into their head from day one. Seeing, for me, is the first step towards making good photographs.

Thanks for the reference Blansky.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I agree with that as well. Look at Weston. He just photographed stuff around the house and what was nearby. There is really nothing magical about Point Lobos compared to various other spots of coastline.

 

[MattKing]

You probably have already done this in some form or other, and it may be that your "blog" fills this sort of role, but have you considered something like a "day in the (photographic) life of Michael Slade".

Something that shows them what you do when you have a challenge to meet, and that stiches together in a very practical way a number of the lessons you have already taught.

Your students are fortunate.

Matt

 

[Bill Hahn]

...I just returned from a vacation, where I read Freeman Patterson's "Photographing The World Around You" - a very helpful book....particularly for a leftbrainer like myself.

Don't know if you would find it helpful to point them to something like www.photoquotes.com, to find quotes like the one in my signature file.... Also, there are transcripts of oral history interviews at the Smithsonian website. (One example: http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/cunnin75.htm. I like how Imogen, when asked about a contemporary, would say: "I'm gonna be dead by the time they read this, right?")

Finally, you may suggest to them if they don't "get" somebody's photography, it may (and I stress *may*) be worth a second, harder look. There are several photographers whose work I initially dismissed, and later have come to like very much.

You are welcome to ignore all this advice if you wish.....

-Bill

 

[Christopher Walrath]

Don't forget APUG.org and links to members' sites and galleries.

 

[SuzanneR]

And make sure they all have a brick of FILM for the summer!!!!!!!!!!!