{"id":6293,"date":"2026-04-26T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/?p=6293"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:53:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:53:03","slug":"teaching-photography-6-ongoing-assignments-that-build-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/2026\/04\/26\/teaching-photography-6-ongoing-assignments-that-build-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Photography #6: Ongoing: Assignments That Build Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After the first six weeks, my niece will have foundation: purpose, seeing, basic technical control. Now the teaching moves from building fundamentals to developing her particular vision through structured assignments. Each one has clear communicative goals, and success is measured by whether she achieved what she intended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These assignments will continue for months, probably years, each building specific capabilities. Here are several examples of how the teaching continues beyond the initial weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pick a location you know well. Photograph it at three different times: early morning, midday, late afternoon or evening. Try to make me feel what each time of day feels like in that place through the image alone, with no explanation, no captions. This reinforces what she learned about light while adding complexity. She has to find a subject, return to it multiple times, capture how light changes mood throughout the day. When we review these, we’ll look at whether each communicates its time of day clearly. Morning should feel different from evening, midday should feel distinct from both. If they all look similar, the light wasn’t differentiated enough, or the subject didn’t respond to light changes interestingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next assignment is about weight, not literally heavy objects. Make an image that feels heavy emotionally or visually. Show me the weight of exhaustion, responsibility, sadness, physical mass, whatever weight means to you. This requires thinking about what creates the feeling of heaviness visually: dark tones, dense compositions with lots of elements packed together, people with slumped posture, objects that look like they’re pressing down, low angles looking up at something massive. She’ll probably try several approaches before finding one that works. That experimentation is valuable; she’s learning which visual choices create which feelings, building vocabulary of techniques that produce specific effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then movement, but not about freezing action perfectly. The goal is conveying the feeling of movement through whatever means work. Motion blur that shows something travelling through space. Multiple images in sequence showing progression. Someone caught mid-gesture when movement is implied even though the image is still. Traces of movement: tracks, wake, displaced objects. She’s making the viewer feel movement happened or is happening, using whatever approach her equipment allows. Limitations force creativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For indirection: photograph a location but don’t show the obvious subject. If it’s a playground, don’t show the equipment. Show what suggests the playground; show scattered toys, worn patches in grass, shadows of swings. Make the viewer understand the place through evidence rather than direct depiction. Sometimes showing something directly is less powerful than showing what surrounds it or remains after it’s gone. Absence can communicate as strongly as presence. This is advanced thinking, but she’s ready for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then estrangement: photograph something you see every day but make it look unfamiliar. Extreme close-up that abstracts it. An unusual angle that changes its relationship to surroundings. Light that transforms it. Any approach that makes ordinary things feel strange. This develops creative seeing. Most photography is looking at mundane things, and the challenge is finding what’s interesting about them. Interesting isn’t in the subject. It’s in the seeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the series assignment: not a narrative with beginning, middle, end necessarily, just three images that work together to communicate something more than any single image could. Three different views of the same subject. Three related subjects. Three moments showing change or progression. This introduces sequence as a mode of thinking. Single images have limitations, and sometimes you need multiple images to fully communicate an idea. When we review these, we’ll discuss whether the three images work together; do they feel related? Does each one add something? Is there redundancy where one could be cut?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For abstraction: pick an emotion: anxiety, peace, excitement, melancholy, joy, boredom. Don’t photograph people or obvious situations. Photograph abstract patterns, textures, colours, shapes that create that emotional feeling. Very difficult. It requires understanding how pure visual elements create emotion independent of subject matter. Jagged lines might create anxiety. Soft gradients might create peace. She’ll experiment a lot before succeeding, and that’s the whole point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout all of this, the review method stays the same: I ask three things. What were you trying to communicate? What choices did you make to achieve it? And did it land? If she achieved what she intended, the work succeeded regardless of technical imperfection. If she didn’t, we discuss why: choices that didn’t support the intention, wrong light for the mood she wanted, framing too loose so the subject got diluted, moment not quite right so the feeling wasn’t captured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don’t discuss what I think the image means. We discuss what she intended and whether she achieved it. This keeps assessment focused on her vision and her execution rather than imposing mine. Sometimes an image accidentally communicates something she didn’t intend. That’s interesting too. We discuss what created that unintended meaning and whether it’s worth pursuing deliberately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every assignment maintains the same principle: photography is communication. Success means you made someone see, feel, or understand what you intended. There is no guarantee this plan will work; it’s hypothetical, and I’ve never taught photography to anyone. But after over twenty years of thinking about it, this is the way I would have wanted to be taught, rather than falling into the gear trap early and spending years digging out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#Photography #IMayBeWrong #Opinion #Teaching #TeachingPhotography<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the first six weeks, my niece will have foundation: purpose, seeing, basic technical control. Now the teaching moves from building fundamentals to developing her particular vision through structured assignments. Each one has clear communicative goals, and success is measured by whether she achieved what she intended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,18,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-teaching","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6293"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6954,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6293\/revisions\/6954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}