Giovanna M. Cucciniello
Day One, time approx. 45 minutes
Subject:
History of Photography
1. Brainstorming
Ask how many students have a family album of photographs. Ask: Why do we take and keep photographs? What information can you gather from photographs? How can historians use photographs? What information can historians gather from photographs? Discuss the issues of the photographer’s point of view in taking pictures. Visible web of information on board or large paper. Highlight key terms and vocabulary.
2. Photograph Analysis
Print out a copy of Hine’s photographs
Climbing into the Land of Promise
,
Ellis Island, 1905
and reproduce it on a transparency. Use this photograph to demonstrate to the students techniques in photo analysis. Give students a few minutes to look at the photograph. Turn off the projector, and ask them to write down everything they saw in the photograph. After a few minutes, ask students to share their findings. They will probably have some conflicting views; some students will see things that others have not seen or, in some cases, claim to have seen things not present in the photograph. Cut an 8 1/2” x 11” piece of paper into four parts. Place these four parts over the picture so that you can reveal one section of the photograph at a time, keeping the rest of the picture covered. Ask students to look closely at the area that is revealed and describe what they see in the photograph. This will draw their attention to the details of the photograph. After students have had an opportunity to view each section, uncover the whole photograph and ask them how what they now see in the photograph has changed.
3. Introducing Photography Techniques
There’s obviously much more to photography than the few aspects described here, but introducing the basics will teach the kids a fundamental understanding of how to think before taking a picture. This introduction will also give you a platform to move further into the aesthetics with older kids.Students must first be introduced to the importance of looking, seeing the big picture and making conscious decisions. Now the teacher is ready to get into the core decision factors: angle, pan, distance, level, focus and framing. It’s important to use common photographic vocabulary rather than apparent synonyms that have emotional connotations. Focus should be described as soft or sharp, for example, not “strong” or “hazy.” Because those kinds of words more closely describe the emotional effect of the finished photo, not the conscious decision-making process that went into creating the effect. You should explain this concept to the kids and get them comfortable with using new vocabulary and terms of art so that everyone has a common vocabulary. Emphasize that before taking pictures, one must make conscious decisions.
Many students are tactile learners, ESL students all the more, therefore, demonstrating concepts with the camera--stand on a chair to point the camera down at someone, then kneel or lie down to take an up angle shot, allows students to be active participants as they learn.
Day Two- 45 minutes
Subject:
Student Photographers and photographing their world
Step 1:
Have the kids make paper frames like those made when introducing the camera’s basic features and use them to examine objects in the room from different angles.
Review the previous concepts. Now introduce the idea of panning, a video term that refers to moving the camera from one side to the other to follow a scene. Here we use it to refer to the side from which one is taking the picture: forward, left or right.
Step3:
Introduce the idea of distance: close, middle or far.
Step4:
Introduce the idea of level: eye level, high or low. This idea refers to the height at which the viewer appears to be seeing the subject and is different from “angle,” which involves tilting the camera. The camera may or may not be at an angle and may still be from a high, eye-level or low perspective. Make sure that kids understand this distinction.
Step5:
Introduce the idea of focus: sharp or soft. All of the techniques discussed here, including focus, actually fall along a continuum, of course, and consist of more than just two or three options just simplify the topic here. Because focus is even more of a continuum than the others, you may want to make it clear that you are really talking about more or less sharp, more or less soft, and how focus changes relative to other factors, such as distance and angle.
Step 6:
Focus on the idea of framing. Until now, the paper frames help kids slowly understand and think about seeing, really discuss ideas like subject and composition in more depth. For example, how does distance affect what’s framed in a picture? How does one capture action in a frame? What happens when you leave things out of a frame?
Step 7:
For Step 7 and beyond, review the previous concepts and provide some more time to work on various techniques in combination.
Step 8:
Provide students with disposable cameras to take home and use keeping in mind key concepts explored throughout the unit.Final Project: Students respond to photographs they have taken using the same questions and format used for Hines photographs.
Day Three- 45-50 minutes
Subject:
Images Of Immigrant Life
1. Class Discussion Activity:
Project or distribute the photograph
Children on Street
,
Lower East Side, N.Y.C.
Allow several minutes for students to look at it.
Ask students about what they see in the photographs. Ask them about the mood of the photograph, how the children are positioned, where they are located; looking for clues about the experience of immigration, social and economic influences. Makes notes about their observations on the chalkboard or on a chart. Ask them to support their observations and solicit prior knowledge.
2. Distribute the photograph
Project or distribute the photograph,
Looking for Lost Baggage, Ellis Island
allow several minutes for students to look at it. Repeat questions from previous photo.
Day Four-45 minutes
Subject:
Small Group Discussion and Writing Activity
1. Students will be put into groups and asked to examine one of the photographs and write their impressions of the image.
2. Working individually, students can choose either of these two approaches to do the writing part of this assignment:
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- Describe the photograph. What kinds of details do you see? How are the people arranged? Where do you think the photographer was positioned to get this image? What do you think the photographer was trying to show about immigrants? Write an essay from the point of view of the photographer.
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- Examine the pictures carefully and write a story based on one of them. Think about what’s happening in the photos, who the characters are, and what kind of “voice” will best capture the feelings evoked by the photograph.
Day Five-45 minutes
Subject:
Developing Visual Literacy 1. Depending on the size of your group you can divide them into groups of 3-4. Distribute different photograph to each sub group. Give each sub-group as many copies of their assigned photograph that you have available.
2. Based on the sub-groups observations and students free-writing, the sub-group should choose five words it would use to describe the character of the people in the photograph. The sub-group should arrive at the five words by a process of give and take leading to consensus.
3. Whole class discussion: Students from each sub-group share their assigned photograph and the five words they chose. Emphasis should be placed on new vocabulary words.
Assessment
The whole group should discuss the photographs and what they learned from the activity. The group should consider the following questions in their discussion:
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- Given what you’ve done and what you know, what can you say about the
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- photographers and their social goals?
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- How might these photos have shaped public perceptions of immigrant life?
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- Given the nature of photography, how do photographic images shape our perceptions today?
