The book and teaching

Well, mmm....Im teaching a photography course for 8:th grades at St. Olofsskolan in Turku. A swedish school with, mmm, lot's of students. I do 3x 70min. sets with every class, theory, practice and post processing. Okay, it's been a good experience on teaching and what it is for kids in this age. The theory class is heavy for them, I try to start up light, presenting myself, show my pictures, speak about why I got into photography and how I've andvanced. Then going briefly into photo history about 10-15min. The essential changes from Camera Obscura to Niepce to negatives to digital cameras etc. The last bit is heavy, understanding the elements of exposing a picture, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance. It's hard to keep them interested with the technique, I show them the actual image of shutters and apertures, the change in depth of field through aperture and motion through shutter, what the ISO setting means and so forth.

But you really need to try this to understand it. But it might spark an idea or get them to go further with photograhy so it's nice to know.

In every class there is about 3-5 SLR owners (out of 20-30 kids) so it's quite common to have a system camera. Most of them still sit on the KIT lens though and that's the biggest limitation of a SLR - a system that can deliver with the right user and accessories. I've tried to address this limitation to avoid future salesmen from dealing with what I've been through durin my customer service years ;)

I've made some minor changes on my reportage books, some finishing touches and I'll probably send it for print soon.