Venice Arts- Residency- Issa Sharpe- 4 Hours
This was a big week for our class! We started the day off by reviewing camera functions. Some students are still struggling with the basic settings: aperture and shutter speed. I took the liberty of explaining the camera obscura. Photography made a lot more sense to me when it was simplified to a hole reflecting light, so that's what I tried to explain to the class. As I was explaining it, we displayed photographs of Abe Morell. Abe Morell turns bedrooms into a camera obscura by covering all the windows and light entrances in the room and then creates a tiny hole that reflects the outdoor view onto the walls. A camera essentially does the same thing, but onto film or a digital sensor. Aperture controls the width of the hole, and shutter speed controls the amount of time that the hole is open. It's a lot to process, especially for ten to thirteen-year-olds. However, they already have experience cameras. The Abe Morell photos caught their interests. We then showed examples of high and low shutter speeds and opened and closed apertures. You can tell some students were still confused, but in a few, you could see the lightbulb go off. This inspired the idea for my lesson plan, which I will return to later.
After the camera review, students finalized their ideas for their zine. As a reminder, each student is creating a spread for a zine that is predictions of the year 2050. We broke off students into groups based on common interests. Technology, nature, and fashion were the general topics that each student fell into. Each student filled out a worksheet that will direct their photographs. The worksheet directed their ideas by letting them write out their topic and also gave space to sketch potential photographs.
As mentioned in a previous journal, for my lesson plan, I will be taking the class on a field trip. With their interests in the camera obscura and also the need to develop those essential skills, I decided that I will be taking them to Santa Monica, where they have a public camera obscura! After viewing the facility, I will give them a guided scavenger-hunt type list of photos to make. The variety of photos will demonstrate a variety of apertures and shutter speeds, to help further understand the functions.