Lesson Plans

         I teach a photography class and in that class I teach the students to use Photoshop to manipulate images in various ways.  Basically I was going for a couple things. I wanted the images, like the doors, to tell a human story of some sort.  The story shouldn't be too clear and It should be able to be interpreted in different ways. I like how the splatters on the doors serve almost as windows into something else. I wanted students to use parts of their pictures this way by replacing sections of the image with different images or even merging them in some meaningful way that could tell some sort of story. 

         For example I took one looking out the car window.  It was just a picture I snapped one day when I saw an interesting tree covered in ice out my window.  It wasn't a great picture by itself but I thought it could be interesting to work with so I erased the rearview mirror and put an image of a crash in there. Because I had no way to get an image of a crash I did have to get that one off the Internet. I think if students are limited by their environment they could use something like that as long as it is not the dominating part of the picture and it is manipulated enough to make it original work.  I was thinking about the juxtaposition of the serene landscape with the violent crash- showing how life can be turned around in an instant.          

          I also did one with a pair of glasses.  I actually took this picture of eye-glasses that wasn't intended to be anything artistic.  I had just found these glasses at school  and sent a picture to staff to see if anyone had lost them.  I got the idea to a erase out the lenses in the eyeglasses but not completely (about 50%) so you could still get  the tones and details before I put the other images in.  Basically I told my students their photo has to tell a story or at least be suggestive and open to interpretation (not too simple or clear cut.)

        Students also had to write an artists statement and come up with a title.  The title "Don't look back" popped into my mind for my car one.  I could think of many ways to merge pictures to do this assignment and I would like to see a good deal of experimentation from the students.  Students could even do a series of photos.