This means subject and composition. At the bare minimum, there needs to be something interesting in the picture. In this case, the word "interesting" takes on expanded meaning. While it might be more obvious that a beautiful landscape would make for a good photo, engaging imagery can sometimes be hidden in our everyday surroundings. It doesn't matter if you're an expert on shutter speed, aperture and ISO; learning how to frame a shot and develop a mind for composition is something all photographers of any skill level need. The Rule of Thirds is a great place to start.
So when I say to start with the basics, I really do mean the basics. When we finally started using cameras on the first day of class, I made a rookie mistake. I assumed my students knew how to activate their cameras' autofocus. Even more, I thought they knew how to activate the shutter. Since it's second nature to me, I didn't even think about it. But soon enough, the questions came. "Mr. Aromin...why is it so blurry? How do I take a picture?" We promptly went over this after.
I had a group of students who were about to enter the fourth and fifth grades. I wasn't sure if shooting in manual would work with this group, but it was worth a try. I introduced the concepts of shutter speed, aperture and ISO, and explained how all three work together to change how a picture looks. Through examples of actual photos, I showed how changing one setting affects the other two and how to adjust to compensate for those changes. My students immediately gravitated toward bokeh — or the blur in photos seen around a single in-focus subject. This was a good practical scenario to show how the relationship between the shutter speed, aperture and ISO achieves this look.
While perfection can never truly be achieved, practice certainly does make for improvement. For the first four days of class, I dedicated a good chunk of class time for students to take photos. (Students spent the fifth day of class putting together photo books online.) We shot in different areas of the school including indoor locations such as classrooms and hallways to outdoor areas like our school's garden and pond. The differences in locations provided students challenges in changing the settings on their cameras to adjust to various lighting scenarios.
Conclusion
Practice also helps improve the ability to teach. While I've worked with students before, this was a completely new challenge. Our class sessions spanned five days and were each two hours and forty-five minutes long. Much like adjusting a camera's settings for different environments, I had to adjust my teaching and agenda based on how I read the class. If that meant changing the order of activities I had or eliminating something completely, so be it.
That said, what I've listed in this post shouldn't be taken as rules of thumb but as suggestions that can be altered to meet the needs of you and your students. Each photographer has their own style and every teacher does, too.
