First thing this morning, we shut off all the lights and looked at the photographs from yesterday afternoon. It’s always incredible to see the images our students create, and we had to remind ourselves that these photos were from our very first day of shooting.
After the morning critique, Thomas showed us photographs he took in Nepal during the earthquake and subsequent recovery in 2015. His powerful documentary images really sparked a lot of conversation. Our students, including some who were there during the earthquake, were able to share and ask questions of the experience living and working in Nepal, as well as the ethics of covering a crisis as a photojournalist.
After Thomas’ show, we headed outside for a staff favorite exercise, where we explore the use of shutter speed in creative photography. Using a fast or slow shutter speed, a crafty photographer can allow blur into an image when the subject is moving, or can freeze a fast-moving subject in midair. Today, our fast-moving subjects were Sarah’s two young children. The youngsters gamely took turns running in front of our 26 budding photographers, allowing us to practice techniques like slow or fast shutter speed, motion blur and panning. Panning can be a very difficult technique, where you pan your camera along in time with the moving subject and end up with a photo that features a subject in sharp focus with a blurred background.
In the afternoon, we began talking about different ways of shooting light, such as backlighting a subject, using different qualities of light and making silhouettes. As you can see from the images below, are students are well on their way to mastering these difficult techniques!