Sdrastvuyte, and welcome to day two of our Osh workshop. By the way, there will be a Russian language test at the end of the week so stay up on your studies. Spasseeba for reading.
Day two began as usual…the class came in and we ran a critique of everybody’s work from yesterday. Typical of a first critique we looked at a LOT of pictures of flowers, water, and a stray dog. If it was on school grounds, our students got a picture of it! Today’s lesson was meant to be Manual mode, but since we got so far ahead yesterday, we kept moving forward to talk about basic rules of composition: the rule of thirds, leading lines, layers and geometry. Basically anything to not have to look at another picture with a flower in the middle of the frame! We practiced these rules by going outside to take photos of one another or to look around and see what else we might find, and these guys found a LOT! They made some really interesting portraits of one another, some great architectural shots of the school, and even some more pictures of plants, most of which were significantly more sophisticated than yesterday’s flowers. With a pretty successful morning behind us, we had lunch and headed into the park.
For the afternoon’s exercises we headed to a vast wooded park only a few blocks from the school. Upon descending the stairs into Toktogul park we immediately spotted the beautiful, multicolored swing ride; the kind with the tilting parasol from which hang a few dozen swings on chains. As the ride spun round and round, our students photographed the two riders swinging by overhead. When their turn was finished, how could we NOT give it a go? The students piled on and went for a turn photographing as they flew. Thankfully, no one was terribly sick when they returned to solid ground but those of us waiting below could hear the enthusiasm drain out as they spun round and round. We soon realized that the park was dotted throughout with old amusement rides: the variety and construction of which most of us instructors would recognize from our childhoods. The rides were colorful and varied, but possibly of questionable maintenance.
After a few hours photographing rides and riders, jumping students and bicycle riders, we headed back to the classroom for our download and critique. Most of our students had blasted through their memory cards and we had a lot to look through, but we found a lot of great images in there and the students showed that they are beginning to understand the process!
Now tomorrow…off to our first assignment!
Russian WotD (Word of the Day): Spasseeba = Thank you!