Photography Classes - Hopefully Not Just About Photography

During the vacation classes I really started teaching photography to the kids, which was really-really fun! Alright, I started the program with the kids in class 5 and up, which means that the youngest ones were about 10 years old, while the oldest children were about 15 years old. I decided to use an analogue camera with them, for which I had lots of reasons. One is of course that it`s not so sensitive as a digital one – considering that it would go through several kids` hands. But at least this important was also the reason, that I do believe that if you really want to learn something about photography, you really have to start with learning about the analogue camera. Besides, I think that analogue photography can also teach you a lot – not just about photography, but kind of about life, too. In our modern world we are too much used to getting what we want right away, and that`s what we expect, too. That if we have a wish, it will be fulfilled right away. Like we just take a medicine and we expect all our problems to disappear in instance. And in fact, digital photography serves this need, too: you just set your camera to AUTO setting, press a button, and in the next second your picture is right in front of you – without any planning, any hard work, and maybe also without any real appreciation to your picture (while of course obviously there`s a good side of all these, too). Well, it`s this process, that`s a bit different when you are using an analogue camera: you learn to plan, you learn to work a lot for a good picture, after which you still have to wait to actually hold your picture in your hands. I think it`s this process that we have kind of forgotten about in our modern world: to work hard for a certain goal and to be patient until the result of our work is actually `touchable`.

Anyway, getting back to the photography classes: I had a workshop for all the classes and then I also went to the individual classes separately during which we talked about why we actually take pictures at all, we learnt a bit about focusing and also about controlling the aperture and the shutter speed. After all this we put the children into three groups, who all had the same assignment: each group had ten pictures to take while they were told that there would be a competition between the groups, so they should take all their pictures so that it could be a winning picture. We had so much fun, during taking the pictures and I was also impressed by their creativity: we had some pictures of the kitchen staff, some teachers, the school building and many more. On the last day of the vacation period we also had a photo exhibition, where every group presented a poster of their pictures, and five teachers had to give scores to them according to different aspects, like the beauty, the influence and the quality of the pictures.

It was really a lot of fun, and this time I really felt that I had actually something to give to these children, something that I was actually good at, so I`m really looking forward to continue with the classes when we reopen in September.