Introduction to Photography: Awakening your Visual Awareness

This is a class for beginners in which i teach how to improve the so called visual awareness. In this sense, it's common that an introduction to photography highlights principles like time exposure, iris and ISO. That's important, but i'll keep it for a second class. In this first class, i highlight the importance of the photographer's glance.

This is one of the three fundamentals of photography, and the other two are: light and the equipment. Actually, there's no photography without light, that's the first thing to understand. But, there's also no photography without a particular, subjective glance. This class aims at encouraging the students to be aware of the subtleness of light, its shades and variations. Why? Because in photography a tiny, very little change can make a huge difference, either in terms of composition or exposure.



That's why, before teaching about iris and stuff, i'll ask the students to become aware of the varations of sunlight during the day. And the project is about taking pictures of a single object or a set of objects, let's say every two or three hours. The students don't need a fantastic garden, but instead, they can do their "homework" in the office where they work or at home. All they need is a window, an object to photograph (or a few objects), and a cell phone or a consumer camera (compact or any other kind of equipment). The students will be asked to take 5 to 10 pictures of the object (let's say an apple or a flower, a plant or something else) during the day, without moving it. The next step will be sharing the pictures with the fellow students, so that they can leave a comment, always in a kind, gentle way and improve their basic photographic knowledge by teaching to each others.