This school year I was very fortunate to find Ms.Zabaneh’s advanced dance students met on the same days as my advanced Photo 2 students.
That meant a wonderful opportunity: my students had new faces to photograph.
They can’t whine about having to make pictures of the same old faces, their classmates.
What they did get was the needed real-world experience which portrait photographers can’t learn out of a book or from a lecture from me.
My students learned how to take charge, cajole, coax and speak to strangers very much like what is expected of any professional portrait photographer.
Far too often beginning photographers are too timid. They don’t take charge and take control. They just accept the situation and conditions they are presented with.
While it is true, there are some aspects photographers don’t get to control like what their subjects wear, student photographers often find working with other students they don’t know very intimidating.
It is my hope that my continued collaborations with other teachers like Art, Dance, Theater Arts, Vocals and other teachers will give my students a good taste of what a portrait photographer has to master.