Compelling Photos

I was having a hard time coming up with an idea for creating a compelling picture of something of meaning for me, especially not using friends or family.  (Although after taking the pictures I am glad I had concrete things to work with and can see how using objects that move would be much more difficult)  My husband is a high school varsity coach and my daughter is on the team as well.  This is their gym.  It is also the gym from the high school where my dad taught so I grew up going to games (including my husbands, although then I didn't know he was going to me my husband) in this gym.  It is also often the center of a very small community.  Game nights bring out most of the town to this place, and this community means a lot to me as well.  We spend a lot of time here and for all the aforementioned reasons this is a very special place to me.   

I couldn't get the second picture to post in the comments, so here is the less compelling picture

Artistically the first picture is more compelling.  First, the focus in the second picture is muddled.  There is no clear place for the eye to go and so it tries to focus all over.  The first picture focuses on the ball and then the flag and baskets and scoreboard are out of focus, creating a background for the ball.  The ball is off center.  My goal was to use the thirds rule.  I think it was relatively successful.   Color is important in the picture as well.  Luckily the school's colors are orange and black which is the same as the ball, so the scheme remains the same throughout the picture.  The framing of the second picture is better as well.  The stripes around the top of the gym walls and the lines on the court create a frame for the ball.  If you look at the same frame in the less compelling photo the eye goes to the middle of the floor, where there is nothing, thus making it a less effective picture.

A River Runs Through It

     Ok, so I can't find exactly what I am looking for, and maybe it is because there is no direct quote, maybe it is the way I have interpreted it from the story.  It has been a few years since I have read it, so it is highly possible that the story is about beauty, and so it is not the direct words that strike me as how beautiful should be defined but rather the way the definition comes together based on the whole novel.  Here though is as close to a summary as I can get...
          "As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty.   Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word 'beautiful'...since it is natural for man to try and attain power without recovering grace...My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe.  To him all good things- trout as well as eternal salvation- come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy." 
     I am spending time discussing this because beauty and art go hand in hand, but adding grace makes the word fuller somehow.  Again, this does not encompass the entire way the word is affected and exemplified throughout the novel, maybe is the point of the novel, but it has stuck with me and there are times in my life when only this definition will do. I think the point of compelling experiences is also to create something beautiful.

Photography as a metaphor

This week as I was teaching there were a couple ways that photography struck me.  The first was when I was happy and feeling successful as a teacher and the second was as I was frustrated and upset.  In both cases though what struck me was that teaching is a hundred moments at a time, and in them regardless of the subject or the emotion that is rendered, there is beauty to be found because it is human.  As we have looked at photography and different compelling pictures, whether they are happy (kissing soldier) or disturbing (war photos) there is something beautiful about them because they tell human stories.  For me even the most beautiful and compelling scenery pictures aren't as compelling or beautiful as the ones that tell human stories.  I suppose that I why I went into teaching, because children are beautiful.  I need to explain how I describe beauty.  In the book A River Runs Through It (NOT the movie although it was touched on in it) Reverend Maclain defines beauty in a non-superficial, and, with the risk of overusing this word, compelling...(I couldn't find the quote online, but will get the book when I get to my parents and post it when I get it)
     The other way I was thinking about photography and the features which make a photo more or less compelling are similar to what makes lessons compelling.  They need to be well framed, focused, elicit emotion and tell a story.

Photography and Design

So this week I was struggling with how to use photography and design in the education field that isn't surface...I am not sure I succeeded.  Here it goes anyway:
Teachers have to be expert graphic designers.  One of the hardest parts of being a teacher is keeping children engaged in a world where they are stimulated by graphics ALL THE TIME...and by people who have a lot more practice and formal training in gaining the children's attention.  From television to video games kids are exposed to thousands of sensory images a day, and teachers are expected to keep and use students attention to teach and guide.  This is done not only in core subjects but more often than not in what I feel is the number one key to education...classroom management- you can not teach if you are constantly keeping kids in line.  Anyway, we try to make everything as appealing as possible visually in an attempt to get the kids attention.  This can be posters we make to PowerPoint's we assemble.  All is in the hope that we can keep their attention and teach them something memorable and compelling giving them a desire to learn.
On a separate, but related idea photography could be used more in my classroom.  One way I was thinking about photography was in the story telling.  There were two facets in which I thought this would be helpful.  First, thanks to digital photography and websites, it would be easy now to help tell your classes story to the world (and more importantly parents) through your website and photos.  Story telling in photos could be used in all sorts of ways in curriculum.  One way would be to practice descriptions. Another way would be write stories based on pictures.  Other ways would be perpective.  There are hundreds of ways to use photography in your classroom.