velonoir
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- 463
- Name
- Dougie
- Edit My Images
- Yes
Hi all, I'm afraid I have to admit I'm a bit of a lurker on here... When I even have time to look... But I have always found the community very helpful so I am after a little advice.
I have been teaching in a high school for a good few years now and recently managed to convince the management to invest in a pretty good (by school standards) setup for running a photography course. We have 16 d5100 and 4 d200 bodies along with 18-55 kit lenses. By way of lenses we have a sigma 10-20, a few sigma 70-300mm, nikon 50 and 35mm primes and a nikon 40mm f2.8 micro. Lighting consists of a number of nissin flash guns, reflectors, wireless triggers and a pair of Paterson fluorescent lights with soft boxes. We also have a large heavy duty backdrop stand with some rolls and a lastolite pop up background (which is useless as it will not pop out flat...). Usual things like tripods and bags as well of course. Software wise we have 20 workstations with photoshop elements 11 installed. Over time we will build on this but I feel it's fairly comprehensive as a starting point.
So far it has been an elective course for third years for which demand has been really high and we are in the process of applying to run the Higher (about equivalent to A level) photography course. The course has two mandatory units - basic camera skills/techniques and a research project along with three optionals from which one must be chosen - creative image making, digital imaging or reportage.
The course essentially covers all the things you would expect an entry level to intermediate photography course to cover and is well within my knowledge base as an amateur photographer of a fair number of years. While I have done a fair bit of reading on photography most of my books are quite old or are more about bodies of work than learning.
I am basically looking for your recommendations of really good and fairly accessible resources for both the photography aspect (camera settings/techniques, lighting, influencial photographers etc.) and for using elements 11 (I'm coming from ps cs5 so finding it fairly straightforward but no doubt I could learn better ways to teach it).
By resources I would primarily be looking at books, but DVDs, ebooks, e-learning courses etc. would all be suitable. Free is great but I would expect to pay for most resources. The focus is on clarity of explanation and ideally fairly bite size/concise in nature presentation. I would like to put together a good library of resources for my pupils to use which might also provide me with some good ideas for exercises and projects they will enjoy and learn lots from. I would also like to settle on a particular course book I could recommend pupils purchase which we could use as a centre point to work around.
If you have any recommendations I would very much appreciate them and will purchase some samples to narrow the search down. If you happen to teach high school level photography (or even college) I would particularly enjoy hearing from you about what exercises you have found pupils really engage with - I already have a fair outline of what I want to do with them but am always looking for new ideas. Or maybe you have studied photography and found particular exercises very beneficial or interesting? Even just interesting project ideas you have read about... It will all go into the great course development mind map in my middle drawer.
I look forward to your helpful responses and advice.
Many thanks, Dougie.
I have been teaching in a high school for a good few years now and recently managed to convince the management to invest in a pretty good (by school standards) setup for running a photography course. We have 16 d5100 and 4 d200 bodies along with 18-55 kit lenses. By way of lenses we have a sigma 10-20, a few sigma 70-300mm, nikon 50 and 35mm primes and a nikon 40mm f2.8 micro. Lighting consists of a number of nissin flash guns, reflectors, wireless triggers and a pair of Paterson fluorescent lights with soft boxes. We also have a large heavy duty backdrop stand with some rolls and a lastolite pop up background (which is useless as it will not pop out flat...). Usual things like tripods and bags as well of course. Software wise we have 20 workstations with photoshop elements 11 installed. Over time we will build on this but I feel it's fairly comprehensive as a starting point.
So far it has been an elective course for third years for which demand has been really high and we are in the process of applying to run the Higher (about equivalent to A level) photography course. The course has two mandatory units - basic camera skills/techniques and a research project along with three optionals from which one must be chosen - creative image making, digital imaging or reportage.
The course essentially covers all the things you would expect an entry level to intermediate photography course to cover and is well within my knowledge base as an amateur photographer of a fair number of years. While I have done a fair bit of reading on photography most of my books are quite old or are more about bodies of work than learning.
I am basically looking for your recommendations of really good and fairly accessible resources for both the photography aspect (camera settings/techniques, lighting, influencial photographers etc.) and for using elements 11 (I'm coming from ps cs5 so finding it fairly straightforward but no doubt I could learn better ways to teach it).
By resources I would primarily be looking at books, but DVDs, ebooks, e-learning courses etc. would all be suitable. Free is great but I would expect to pay for most resources. The focus is on clarity of explanation and ideally fairly bite size/concise in nature presentation. I would like to put together a good library of resources for my pupils to use which might also provide me with some good ideas for exercises and projects they will enjoy and learn lots from. I would also like to settle on a particular course book I could recommend pupils purchase which we could use as a centre point to work around.
If you have any recommendations I would very much appreciate them and will purchase some samples to narrow the search down. If you happen to teach high school level photography (or even college) I would particularly enjoy hearing from you about what exercises you have found pupils really engage with - I already have a fair outline of what I want to do with them but am always looking for new ideas. Or maybe you have studied photography and found particular exercises very beneficial or interesting? Even just interesting project ideas you have read about... It will all go into the great course development mind map in my middle drawer.
I look forward to your helpful responses and advice.
Many thanks, Dougie.
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