Residency- Issa Sharpe- 4 Hours
This week we had our second official meeting as a class. This was a very fun day, for it was our first day working with the cameras and taking the class on a shoot. For this to happen, I came in a little bit earlier than usual to go through the process of checking-out DSLRs to students. One of the lead teaching artists, Jasmine, showed me how to record and manage the circulation, and also how to properly circulate charged batteries and formatted SD cards.
Before we passed out cameras and got to the streets to photograph, we had a guest speaker: Lorenzo (I don't think I ever got his last name). Lorenzo is multi-media artist who has created his own brand by the name of Simple Things. Simple Things started off as illustrated zines promoting the idea of living simply and not overcomplicating things. Lorenzo is determined to live a more simple and happy life. By also having a background in product design, Lorenzo evolved Simple Things into a marketplace for shirts, hoodies, skateboards, and miscellaneous home decor. He shared his process and ideology behind making the zines. The students were able to ask Lorenzo about his art career, his successes and failures, and also decipher the things that attracted them to his zines.
After Lorenzo's presentation and discussion, we facilitated cameras to the class and took a walk around the block taking photos. The aim of the shoot was portraiture, primarily of Lorenzo, but students often asked us teaching artists and mentors to model as well. There's a nice ratio of students to faculty: about 3:1. That makes field trips and class shoots a lot less overwhelming, for we can focus on helping and watching over 3 students rather than 12. For this week, we shot at an aperture-priority setting and manually focused. In the near future, we will be switching over to completely manual. First, we must find some time to review the camera settings as a class. Overall, I was really impressed with the students knowledge of the cameras. They were making really great exposures.
Following the class, I was taught how to properly store all students work on to a hard drive and then format the cards for the next users. They have a really tight an organized system, which helps the whole operation run smoother. I also talked with the teaching artists about the class I will be leading closer to mid-terms, and they told me it would be best to run a field trip. Now I'm looking into where to take them, which is really exciting.