Teaching Photography Humorous Remarks

cliveh · Feb 22, 2023

Moderators please move if in wrong thread.

I know there are a few people on this site who have taught photography or worked with fellow students. My question is what humorous photography remarks from students have you heard?

I was once demonstrating a pinhole camera to a group of A-level students and one guy said – “That will never work Clive, its got no batteries.”

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 22, 2023

The only humorous remark I can think of on the fly, is that there is almost always one kid in the class who asks how to preview images on the K1000. To which I show them a contact sheet...

rcphoto · Feb 22, 2023

My favorite was during an intro to b&w class. “How do I print these in color?”

cliveh · Feb 22, 2023

Or here is another one I remember - "Clive can you come and look at my enlarger, the image has gone all dim and I think the bulb maybe going."

Maris · Feb 22, 2023

Years ago I taught darkroom at a photo school in Brisbane. Having eight students in a small darkroom learning how to get their precious 35mm film onto a Paterson reel and the reel into the tank while in pitch blackness was always a tense time. When everyone reported successful loading I announced "Lights on in 15 seconds. Remember to adjust your clothing if necessary."
Never failed to get a laugh.

gordrob · Feb 23, 2023

Maris said:
Years ago I taught darkroom at a photo school in Brisbane. Having eight students in a small darkroom learning how to get their precious 35mm film onto a Paterson reel and the reel into the tank while in pitch blackness was always a tense time. When everyone reported successful loading I announced "Lights on in 15 seconds. Remember to adjust your clothing if necessary."
Never failed to get a laugh.

It got a laugh out of me. Thank you

BMbikerider · Feb 23, 2023

Many years ago (around 1963/4) when I was working for my local police force and was learning the job and was attached to the what is now known as the crime scene department. I had gone out with the senior photographer to take photographs of a horrendous animal cruelty situation in a pig rearing shed. After getting up to our ears in you know what, he set up his camera - we were using 5x4 MMP's at the time with an enormous flash bulb, I think it was designated a PF50 and the light was terrific

Anyway we finished cleaned ourselves up and drove back to our lab. I developed the film (Kodak TriX) in a universal developer. The negatives every one of them was overexposed by several stops and my remarks to him were "These negs are a bit heavy with no contrast" His reply was without emotion "Well pigs are not very contrasty animals".

They did eventually print very well, but even a 10x8 print had heavy visible grain.
The heat given off at the close distance we used the flash (about 6 feet) could almost have cooked them into tasty pork!

RalphLambrecht · Feb 23, 2023

rcphoto said:
My favorite was during an intro to b&w class. “How do I print these in color?”

That's not so dumb of a question! BY THE WAY,: the answer is NO! Color inks make for better black and white prints.

VinceInMT · Feb 23, 2023

Not what was said but what happened. When I was taking a photo class just a few years ago, the film loading closet had room for two people. Two early-20-somethings were in there. One got the film on the reel right away while the other struggled a bit. While the first one waited, she did what all all young people do when the have to wait for anything, pulled out her phone. Yep, lit up the room pretty well.

Back in the 80s I was working on my undergrad degree and when I took Photo 1 I asked the instructor if it was OK if I just used my own darkroom instead of the ones at school. She said I could but asked if I would be a tech in the lab and help fellow students. I was assigned to a non-photo-major who was on a sports scholarship. During our first printing session, I stood back to let him set up the enlarger and he just stood there. I asked what he was waiting for and he replied that he was waiting for me to do it for him. I told him that he didn’t understand what my role here was. He said that I didn’t understand how things works for star players on the team. I asked the instructor for a different assignment.

Tel · Feb 23, 2023

A good few years back, I was at LabLink on 45th street in NY picking up a develop & print order for my intro motion pic class. There was a student there from a notable art school holding five 100-foot rolls of 5222 who had just been told that all the rolls were blank. The lab tech asked him if he'd taken the cap off the lens (he said he'd been shooting on a Bolex H16), and he said, "What's that?" Long pause and he says, "So how do I erase this?"

runswithsizzers · Feb 23, 2023

Not photography, but I was training a new employee to be a bicycle mechanic when I overheard him say. "Hey, I fixed it and it still works!" Could apply to prints as well.

faberryman · Feb 23, 2023

Anybody care to share any humorous remarks they made when they were first learning about digital cameras?

BMbikerider · Feb 23, 2023

faberryman said:
Anybody care to share any humorous remarks they made when they were first learning about digital cameras?

Not really, I have stopped swearing!

MattKing · Feb 23, 2023

faberryman said:
Anybody care to share any humorous remarks they made when they were first learning about digital cameras?

"This set of menus was clearly designed by a committee!"

faberryman · Feb 23, 2023

MattKing said:
"This set of menus was clearly designed by a committee!"

I am not familiar with the menu structures of those late film cameras. Were they designed by committee too?

AnselMortensen · Feb 23, 2023

When I was in college, one class had a group studio shoot.
All the students took photos of the same still-life setup, using studio strobes, after a lighting/metering demo by the instructor.
Later, at the end of lab, one student's 35mm B/W negs turned out horribly underexposed.
Trying to be helpful, I asked the student about their workflow...
"What aperture were you using? Flash exposure is determined by aperture setting."
Response: "I don't know...It's the school's camera, it should have been set right!"

cliveh · Feb 23, 2023

What I noticed with the advent of digital was that any criticism I made about lighting, exposure, composition, was met with don't worry I will sort that out in Photoshop.

foc · Feb 23, 2023

cliveh said:
don't worry I will sort that out in Photoshop.

I met a wedding photographer who said the same when I suggested that it's better to take it correctly in the first place.

bdial · Feb 23, 2023

Not something that was said, in so many words, but several years ago, I took a photography class at the local junior college. One of our projects was food photography featuring pizza, with everyone’s results projected on a theater sized screen.
It’s a wonder that any of us ever ate pizza again.
Good food photography is really hard.

Sirius Glass · Feb 23, 2023

foc said:
I met a wedding photographer who said the same when I suggested that it's better to take it correctly in the first place.

Some would rather use Photoshop to make photographs of things that never happened or did not exist. They do not need a camera.

Tel · Feb 23, 2023

bdial said:
It’s a wonder that any of us ever ate pizza again.
Good food photography is really hard.

I once took a workshop/class in food photography. Rule number one was "never eat the food".

Teaching Photography Humorous Remarks

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