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Here’s trouble….. Photography has a lot to do with
understanding life. Rule #1: Know your subject. Anything that enlightens you will
enlighten your students and may even improve your images. Anything that shuts you down in any way or
prevents you from seeing will be inherently bad for your creativity Are we educators or WHAT? Anything that upsets you can be an
opportunity for visual exploration. It’s a helluva world out there and
not much of it is nice. There are no photographs or education worth
anything in …..nice, nice, nice, nice, nice… f:stops…nice
500th…. Nice ISO…Nikon….Canon…Hasselblad….blah
blah. Consumerism…Epson lighting diagram…ink…layers… The
fast-food end of image making… All the pretty family portraits and
beautifully lit automobile photographs are simply the Wendy’s of our
profession or is it a calling or maybe an art. God knows I made a good
living doing this stuff and I’m not knocking it, but, as educators we
have some responsibility to be bigger than that. To ensure our students have an
empathy with the “Other side” of our field. It isn’t about seeing only what you
like or hearing only what you want to hear. Nor is it about seeing what somebody else
deems appropriate for your level of understanding or tolerance. One of our great missions is that of
revelation. Making visible the invisible. Herschel |
