Personal photography
Week four combines analysis with continued practice. My niece has been making photographs for three weeks, and she’s developed intuitions about what works and what doesn’t. Now we’ll make those intuitions conscious by looking at strong work and breaking down how it functions.
My niece will spend weeks two and three developing her eye through structured assignments, all while keeping the camera on automatic. She’s comfortable with the tool by now but not thinking about it technically. The focus is on what she’s seeing and choosing to capture.
The first session with my niece will establish what photography is actually for, but not through abstract discussion. She’ll have her camera in hand from the first minute, set to full automatic, and we’ll be taking photographs while talking about why we’re taking them.
My niece is twelve. She loves taking photos with whatever’s in her pocket, but the 550D I gave her sits mostly untouched in a drawer. Too much camera. Too serious. Too intimidating. That fact made me think carefully about how in my opinion photography should be taught and what order things should happen in.
I’ll make this another Sunday mini-series.
