Beech Tree News Network

I recently began a two-week lecture series at  Butler County Middle School in hopes of educating STLP students more in-depth on specific multimedia and share some of my experience in journalism with them.

Before I go any further, let me brag on Ms. Bratcher who does a fantastic job teaching these students; please note that I volunteered to come tutor photography/video and she was nice enough to let me, so needless to say I was nervous and thrilled. All of the images in this article were taken by students. Any images that I captured will be marked so in the caption.

I first developed a course outline that helped me organize topics for daily teaching. I then took a week to assemble a series of presentations with relevant imagery and vocabulary. The first three days of photography education were set to end with short, 4-question quizzes. The second week is all video production. The course began Monday, August 11.

On the first day, the class studied the basic behaviors of light as it pertains to photography, as well as how the human eye perceives color. The students learned about the three variations of light reflection and how diffused light softens shadows. I taught them that light refraction is responsible for edge distortion in wide angle photographs and gave them some recommendations on how to consider light when dealing with photography.

The second day was the most technical and intense as we studied the manual settings on a camera. The class was given a very brief history on photography, then the students were presented with a DSLR camera diagram, with me teaching each major component in a modern digital camera. Following this, we covered ISO, shutter speed, and f-stop. The students were quizzed before being dismissed.

The third day was the last day of lecture/exam. The students were taught about the Gestalt design principals, editing terminology, color temperatures, and the capability that comes with choosing to shoot in a RAW image format.

Most of the fun for the students came on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday, Ms. Bratcher and I led the students outside with 11 cameras to work primarily on image composition and balance. The images were already becoming impressive.

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Friday was the final exercise in photography. The class was split into groups of two before I handed my 7D over to the students. Each student was to use the professional camera to snag a proper exposure of their partner in any pose or angle that they decided. The images were quite remarkable; who would have known that 3 days of intense lecture, notes, and example could lead these students to become more efficient photographers that can now operate a DSLR camera. I'm very eager to see what this group of bright students will produce with this new material. Below are some of the images captured by the students. Wow!

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Another thing that impressed me was the level of respect that the students gave me this week. No behavioral problems whatsoever. The students politely raised their hands to ask questions and remained attentive and interested in the material.

Education is the very core and essence of our society; it separates us from everything else in the animal kingdom and is something I hold very personally. If, through education, a student finds a passion or inspiration then there isn't a single thing more that I could ask for. The people we become do stem from the home environment and from personal decisions, but it also comes from the classroom. In an environment where questions become encouraged, we find true answers.