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8 PHOTOGRAPHY
Chapter purposes
 To intorest you and your students in participating in photographic activities for both
learning and enjoyment.
 To encourage imaginative applications of photography in the school curriculum.
 To highlight the importance of the language of pictures and show ways photography
may improve the visual literacy of your students.
 To present fundamental procedures that you and your students may follow to plan and
produce simple still photo and motion picture subjects.
 To suggest ways in which specialized fechniques, such as copying and close up
photography, contribute to teaching and learning.

Teachers who have experimented with photography, in their classes often talk
enthusiastically about their experiences. Students like photography; it leads to numerous
creative activities. Still and motion picture cameras which are both easy to operate and
inexpensive have put photography within reach of nearly everyone at almost any school level.
Many motion picture activities in schools and colleges are done with video tape. Numerous
photographic techniques are applicable in either film or video production, and therefore much
information in this chapter will not be repeated in Chapter 12, Television. Those who have
used photography in ways described in this chapter do so for several reasons.

They find that :


 Taking good pictures is an activity that is stimulating to teachers and students alike. But
covering an event with either a still or a motion picture camera for the purpose of
creating a picture story is even more exciting and inevitably improves visual literacy.
 Photography provides a good basis for achieving other important long range
instructional objectives. The thinking that must be done to soive problems related to
photographic projects, for example, is especially valuable.
 Providing students with opportunities to express themselves through photographic
activities permits them to develop many new skilis and to indulge creative interests in
constructive ways.
 The subjects students choose to photograph and the comments they make about them
often reveal their attitudes and interests.
 Finally, student ahd teacher photographic activities sometimes result in the production
of instructional materials that have value for school use, such as single concept films
on local subjects, slide sets for orientation of new students, and photographic notebooks
to guide independent study activities.

getting acquainted with photography


Before actually taking pictures, you and your students can do many things to get acquainted
with photography. Some teachers have organized unit studies about visual communication to
help stu- dents learn how to talk with a camera and to build proficiencies of visual literacy
generally. Such activities as the following have been recommended.

 Devote some time in class to díscussing the subject of visual communication to see how
much your students already know about it. Identify aspects in which they display
greatest interest. Use this information in planning a series of visual communication
activities, such as those that follow.
 Optain and use some of the visual literacy materials in filmstrip and film form
distributed through the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.
 Provide opportunities for students to add meaning to or increase the instructional
usefulness of pictorial materials by writing picture captions or developing interpretive
or creative statements about them. in carrying out this exercise, project 2 by 2 inch
slides, or hand around a number of black and white photoprints, thai relate to a single
subject or theme, and perhaps limit the time to be spent in writing comments for each.
After the exercise is to soive completed, compare the statements and analyze what they
seem to reveal about comprehension interpretation, and the interest generated by the
pictures.
 Ask several student teams to select topics for a project and to design and produce
pictorial charts, photographic collages, or similar products that represent meaningful
visual stories. Pictures can come from magazines and newspapers, old books old
postcard collections, calendars, or any convenient source.
 Obtain and use copies of basic publications produced by various commercial
organizations, such as Eastman Kodak Company. See especially such titles as
Producing Slides and Filmstrips, Planning and Producing Visual aids , Movies with a
purpose improve Your Environment Fight Pollution with Pictures, and How to Make
Good Home Movies.
 To teach fundamental visual literacy skill, obtain and use some of the highly effective
"PhotoStory Discovery Sets," each of which contains thirty or so small pictures to be
arranged in various story sequences.

 Invite local photography club members to your class. Ask them to demonstrate simple
photographic equipment of types you and your students may expect to use and also to
demonstrate the fundamentals of taking good pictures.

 Ask students to bring to class some of tneir own photoprints; arrange them as a builetin
board display attaching to each a number for purposes of identification. As a learning
exercise, ask students to vote for the ten best pictures in the display, applying criteria
previously discussed.

 Develop and use cardboard viewfinders as a preiliminary to asking students to use real
cameras Cut a rectangle about 1 ½ by 2 inches , or a square about 1 ½ inches in each
dimension. Invite students to practice holding viewfinders at different distances from
one eye, and through this process to discover some of the basic elements of composition
framing, balance, center of interest, inclusion, exclusion, relative size, foreground, and
background.

 Accomplish similar goals by inviting students to cut rectangular holes (4 by 5 inches or


8 by 10 inches are good dimensions) in cardboard sheets and use them to frame
magazine pictures for best visual effects, taking into consideration balance, interest and
similar qualities.

 Give students the precamera experience of drawing stick tigures or other shapes on
etched plastic film (similar to 16mm film leader). Principles of animation may be
learned this way. Show students how to repeat basic figure shapes in saveral 16 mm
frames, varying leg or arm positions in each to suggest walking or dancing. When
projected, the effect of motion is created. Other visual experiences of a nonmotion
nature can be obtained by drawing and projecting filmstrips or 2 by 2 inch slides. (See
further information on this process in Chapter 9, Still Pictures.)

Still other activities witi real cameras are recom- mended as useful preliminaries to
serious photog raphy. For example :
 Compare results of taking pictures especially movies when holding the camera in the
hand rather than placing it on a tripod or monopod; experiment with results obtained at
varied shutter speeds.

 Try overexposing and underexposing pictures. or opening up the lens iris while
simultaneously increasing the speeds of exposures.

 When taking pictures of moving subjects, compare result of exposure made from
oncoming and diagonal views with those made at right angles.

Even before you have developed skill, however you may find ways to use photography
to ad- vantage. With access to a simple still camera perhaps a Polaroid you may use pictures
to identify :

 The Citizen of the Week" for a bulletin - board display.

 Students responsible tor various weekly roorm chores.

 Facial appearances and names of each member of the class.

Informal photography
After the very elementary activities just mentioned the second level of photographic activity in
which you and your students are likely to engage may be characterized as informal , or
extemporaneous. With informal photography, you shoot without specific preparation, seeking
to capture useful, interesting, or beautiful pictures with minimum advance preparation. This
kind of photography permits you to select what you shoot and to think as you go with only
general purposes in mind. It permits you to photograph events or situations as you encounter
them without the restrictions of a formal script or shooting plan. In this way you have
opportunities to shape picture taking to the emerging character of your production: a
geographically organized travelogue, highlights of a day at the beach; a chronological field trip
record; unanticipated effects of a sudden windstorm; the beauties, landmarks, and people
encountered on a walking trip; or a selective documentation of events during an afternoon at
the ball game.

Students provided with still or motion picture cameras and film may have photographic
experiences like the following if they are given the assignment to shoot only what interests
them:
 A teacher used a field trip as the basis of an interesting informal photography
experience. One Polaroid camera was distributed to each of the five groups in the class.
Members of each group were to share one camera. The assignment was to stioot ar
experience record of people, animals, things, or activities of interest. Later the five sets
of pictures were arranged as segments of a large bulletin board display. One person
from each group described the content of their pictures and explained the reasons why
they were taken. The class then discussed the quality and style of the pictures displayed.
 A somewhat more sophisticated application of icformal photography was made by
several members of a high school biology class who were called into service to aid
waterfowl trapped in oil escaping from a oundering tanker. There was no time for
planning what to shoot, and no script was available. Therefore, the photo crew simply
capitalized upon opportunities by selectively shooting action as iit occurred. They took
many close ups of oil soaked birds, including some that had already suffocated. They
showed facial ciose - ups of students animatedly discussing the tragedies they were
witnessing. As they proceeded, there was conversation about how the film might be
edited to portray a logical sequence of events. Back at school, they shot several card
titles and portions of a map to plot the place where the action had occurred. Then they
showed the completed film in their own and other classes and also used it as part of a
program at a local luncheon club. Eventually, they placed in the film in the school media
center for possible use in other biology classes. It was obvious that although the
production was developed informally that is, with only a very little prior planning the
finished film was useful, and the experience of producing it a valuable one for the
students.

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