Angie and I were invited last week to teach a few High School classes as guest speakers. It was a ton of fun for angie, who as I have shared before, is a few classes short on her second bachelors degree of being a teacher. It’s nice for her to be able to combine two of her loves (photography+teaching). I was a bit jealous of their fabulous teacher who has a fine art photography degree and the facility they get to use. They have 12 enlargers, a large darkroom, and a ton of room (3 rooms all together) with everything you could think of. I would have to say this room may be better than what many college students learn in. Pretty cool for these students to have an opportunity like that. I really hope the Colorado community continues to support classes like this. I have seen a move over the years for schools to only care about the basics, math and english. I believe they are important but I also think music, art, photography have a huge part to play in helping sculpt the future of these students. Of course I do, right I am a photographer? I have a B.S from Colorado State for computer information systems and it was unfortunate I didn’t have opportunities like this or didn’t take advantage of them until later in life.
We talked about the Collodion Wet Plate Process and then about portraits to help them with an upcoming assignment. It was so great to see their eyes light up when they looked through the large format camera and see the image on the ground glass of the camera. Most had never seen a camera like this.
Interesting note: Not one male photography student in the entire program? Not sure the reasons, but it’s interesting. Thinking to myself whats wrong with these guys? Two of my favorite things in highschool would have been photography and girls and they seem to both be in this class. Sign me up, should the response.
