Team Photo Story?

Today I saw the work of seven teams assigned themes and had to find a story on the Big Island of Hawaii to do as a team. I have never seen this done before. Usually, in photo schools, they give each person a story and work on it alone.

This class’s purpose is to give young people a Discipleship Training School, where they spend a month preparing to go to another country to work on a project. These projects include orphanages, sex trafficking, and other social justice issues.

To help teach everyone how to engage with people cross-culturally, they are using the camera to help guide this skill. However, most of these Discipleship Training Schools do not use photography.

Paul & Suzi Childers [Fuji X-E2, 18-55mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4, 1/160]

Paul and Suzi Childers had this vision of using photography for a DTS. Suzie is a professional portrait photographer by trade and saw this would work to help teach cross-cultural skills and help the students make connections.

I taught this week how to get permission in cross-cultural settings to take photos and how using photojournalism techniques would help them get to know people.

Fuji X-E2, 18-55mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4, 1/250

Working as a team, they could potentially shoot different angles and let one person concentrate on doing most of the talking. Then, another person could take notes and gather content using a recorder or video on their camera.

One group let the subject tell their own story, and they used photos that they set up to help illustrate some of the concepts.

One group used an illustrative/conceptual photography approach and combined this with reading the story to the group.

A few groups wrote captions, put those up on the screen, and then put the photos in a more photojournalistic sequence.

Fuji X-E2, 18-55mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/3.6, 1/220

After each group presented, their peers then gave feedback. Finally, the leader asked them to provide some positive comments and things they could improve. Please don’t say you don’t like the photo; tell them what they could have done to improve it.

Earlier in the week, I put up coverage of mine, which I didn’t tell them until we were quite a ways into the critique. I asked each person to look at a photo and tell me what they saw as something wrong with the picture. Each person commented that the others had not done earl8er.

Manny, one of the students, said one of my photos looked amateurish. Well, the point of the critique session was to teach them how to give constructive criticism. So I didn’t let him off without him taking the time to tell everyone why it was amateurish and what he thought would make it better.

Some of the students at first thought we were arguing. They all learned that sometimes you must ask someone to clarify their comments. Even when they are saying your photo is crap. Why is it crap?

Fuji X-E2, 18-55mm, ISO 5000, ƒ/3.2, 1/500

I would offer to them if they paid my expenses and make up for all the income for the next two months to join them and critique every day, but that isn’t practical. What made much more sense was to help them understand how to look at photos and discuss why a photo worked or didn’t work.

What they were learning was how to listen to feedback in life. Hopefully, this process will teach them how to build community and grow in maturity as they know how to serve one another.

I can’t wait to see their work from around the world. The group splits up to go to Panama, Turkey, Germany, Thailand, and China.