Educator’s Guide: Photography I
This guide will show you how to incorporate Photography: A 21st Century Practice’s innovative content into your introductory photography classroom, from the university level, to high school, and even in community education settings.
You can also learn more about the book’s features and content strategy here.
Guide to using P21 in your digital introductory course:
Chapter 1: Devices:
Open the semester with this chapter. Help students in their equipment purchases. Introduce their dSLR or mirrorless cameras (1 week).
Show Me 1.3 on page 24 provides a checklist for the must-know camera settings.
Chapter 3: Exposure:
Show your students how to use ISO, aperture, and shutter speed settings and why they should be set in one way over the others (2 weeks).
Chapter 2: Optics:
Use this chapter for the math and science behind photographic imaging (overlap with the 2 weeks for exposure or throughout the semester)
Artists and Their Work:
Select from P21’s 250+ featured artists, contemporary and historical. Introduce students to their work and assign them as research topics. Help students form their own list of favorite photography artists. Starting this process early in the introductory course sets students on a path of curiosity and awareness of photographic history as they grow as artists.
Chapter 4: Composition: Shifting gear from basic camera operations and exposures, reorient students’ focus to shapes and colors. Use this chapter’s breakdowns of composition and attempt to provide visual arts beginners the moment of epiphany about what makes an image stunning (2 weeks).
Chapter 6: Post-Production I:
Use this chapter to introduce Lightroom as a tool to organize and edit images, overlapping with the discussions of exposure and composition so students may start working on their captured images and turn them in as homework (2 weeks or longer).
Chapter 8: Prints:
If making prints is required in your introductory course, use this chapter to guide students in their explorations of bringing physical existence to digital media.
Chapter 9: Content and Concept and Chapter 9.5 Craft, Composition, Content and Concept – The DNA of Photographic Art:
Following the discussion of basic craft and composition, guide students towards an awareness of artistic content and concept with the help of these chapters. A student report on the work of a photographic artist may be assigned using the text’s analysis of photographic art as an example. If your course includes a final project based on students’ own proposals, use these chapters as a catalyst for the formation of their ideas (3 weeks or longer).
Chapter 10: Development and Presentation:
Use this chapter to help students to develop their final project and as an introduction on how to work on larger, prolonged, and more refined series.
Chapter 14: Words:
If writing an artist statement is required in your course, use this chapter as a primer on how artists use words to illuminate their visuals.
Modifications for chemical-based intro courses:
In this era of digital technology, it is highly recommended that even chemical-based introductory courses remain focused on the comparison between the two systems, chemical and digital. Many of the above guidelines for digital courses will still apply to chemical courses, with the following updates:
Chapter 1: Devices: Emphasize the film/digital camera comparison and cover digital details at your discretion.
Chapter 6: Post-Production I: Using this chapter is discretionary, depending on the depth to which your course goes on digital subjects.
Chapter 8: Prints: Using this chapter is discretionary, depending on whether making digital print is part of your course’s lab tasks. Note that it can be illuminating to compare enlarger-based printing and inkjet printing, as the two share much common ground.
Chapter 11: Tradition: Use this chapter as a hands-on demonstration to black-and-white darkroom processes. This chapter’s discussion of photographic technology’s evolution and the vogue for historical processes will be useful to help your students understand the continued role of chemical-based processes in today’s world. The concept of workflow, the comparison between the digital and chemical versions of it, and the crossover between the two types of workflows may be taught at your discretion.
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