Time for photography.

This is one of the 5th grade students favorite project.  It is a great way to teach framing and composition.

photography

One project that I really enjoy doing with my 5th grade students is PHOTOGRAPHY. It is one of their favorite lessons as well. We focus on photography as an art form and how important FRAMING is to the compositon. This is a real mind bender to my students because they rarely think of photography as anything but a memory maker. To actually have to THINK about the details in a shot or the position of the camera to create more interest is challenging. Here are a few examples. I will add more so definitly come back and visit!

Awesome 5th grade Photographers

Our 5th grade students never cease to amaze me with their photographic "eye." We talk about the difference between taking photographs to create memories and to create an artistic composition. The classes have had assignments such as TEXTURE, STILL LIFE, "HANDS", and EMPHASIS. In all, the focus has been on how to compose the image to best communicate an idea. Students have learned about simple manipulation of the images with color and cropping. This project seemes to rank right up there at the top of the favorite 5th grade art assignments!

5th grade photography

I had the wonderful opportunity to work with three 5th grade classes doing a photography lesson. The kids were all very excited about the project.

For the lesson we focused on framing and using the camera as an artist. Students were to think about what they wanted to say about their subject. We also discussed the how the effects of lighting, shadows, and perspective can influence the visual message. We also discussed some of the features on the camera that can effect the visual message, such as shooting or printing the photos in black and white, antique, or sepia.

With one class I introduced the students to the artist Andy Goldsworthy, this class was to take photos inspired by his work by altering some sort of environment.

The other two classes we worked on doing portraits.

I pulled some images from the cameras done by the students focusing on Goldsworthy, as much as I would like to share the portraits, I think its best not to post photos of students onto the blog. I did however stumble upon many other interesting pictures on the memory cards the students took that may not have anything to do with the required assignment, however I think they qualify as interesting photography. I loved looking through all the pictures to see what students were interested in taking pictures of and to see what sort of artistic decisions they were making.

Doing the photography lesson was one of my goals for the internship, I think its really great that Mrs. Snead has brought these wonderful resources into the art classroom through the use of grants, not all schools are so lucky to have a class set of cameras and printers. Im glad I got to take advantage of this and that Mrs. Snead was willing to let me work with them.

Still lilfe Photography

My 5th graders are going to town with photography this year. In thisclass, we talked about photographing interesting still lifes.

We talked about changing angles, closeups, and

just creative set ups that might be different from the normal still life pictures that we see. After looking at several photographs with the still life genre, we discuss different ways we could interpret and set up objects that were placed around the room. Students got all kinds of stuff out of my storerooms, my shelves, my closets and cabinets. Just about any thing they could find to use.

Believe me when I say, they got creative. With only two classes of 50

minutes each, they had to find their stuff, make their plan, set up their items, photograph them and then print them. You can't even imagine what my room looked like at the end of those two classes. I had still lifes EVERYWHERE! But I can't argue with the results. They really had to make alot of quick, quality decisions to get their final results. For the most part, everyone did great!

If you have any other really great ideas for subject matter for digital photograpy, please, please, please....let me know.