A Thousand Words - teaching photography

I had a problem when I was trying to decide what skill I could teach someone.

See, most of my skills aren't too easy to perform or teach; at least, they're difficult to teach without a significant span of time and planning. For example, I can write well, but that isn't very easy for me to teach, since it's a whole lot of intuition for me. So my challenge was finding something where a short amount of time could make a big difference for someone's knowledge of an area.

Eventually, the thought came to mind - photography.

One of my favorites from the pictures I've taken

So I packed up my tiny purple digital camera and went off to meet one of my friends by the Wilkinson Center and teach her some of what I termed "Artistic photography basics."

At first glance, this topic seemed just as hard to teach as writing, but I remembered my photography class from middle school. There was only one basic thing I remember actually learning there: the rule of thirds. In essence, the focal points of a photo should be in the locations where these lines intersect:

Pretty simple, actually. My teacher in 9th grade emphasized this one rule so much that I honestly don't recall much else from the class. This is what stuck with me. When the main points are at these locations, the eye is naturally drawn to them, and they are more aesthetically pleasing there as well. Like any rule in an artistic medium though, there are times when you don't necessarily follow it. To quote a certain movie which shall remain nameless, it's more like a guideline than an actual rule.

But knowing it sure makes taking nice pictures a much more consistent outcome.

I told my friend that I could only think of two real things that she needed to learn:

1) The rule of thirds

2) Almost anything can be a good picture.

Perspective is everything when you're taking pictures.

It literally only took her ten or so seconds to catch on to those two ideas once I'd explained them. My favorite part of teaching someone is that moment of comprehension when it 'clicks' in their mind. It's a great feeling to have explained something well enough that they get it and can apply it themselves. My friend, having figured out exactly what I meant, quickly took some very nice pictures (in my opinion). I'll put some below:

...and my favorite of the bunch.

(For that last picture I added another small piece of advice: I suggested using the tree branches to 'frame' the building, another technique that is commonly used.)

This was a very interesting experience to me. There are some skills that people think are just innate, like you either have them or you don't, and you can't improve them without natural talent. Photography can be one of those. Sometimes you'll look at a picture and say "Wow, there's no way I could ever take anything like that!"

Once it's reduced to a few simple points, however, it's not too hard to take artistic shots. Practice is key, like with most any skill, but it is certainly not a simple matter of natural talent versus no talent at all.

It also brought to mind the question: how did concepts like the 'rule of thirds' come to be passed down through generations of photographers? And what about other rules? Who first came up with them? I imagine that, whoever it was, they must have taught the rules to others, their friends who had a similar job or hobby with photography, and then passed it down over time just through simple, verbal teaching, just like I did in this instance. It's weird to think that although the technology for capturing the images has advanced so far, the basic concepts still remain pretty much the same.

I've never learned anything useful from a photography book (granted: I haven't read too many, and those I have read I didn't read too carefully), but in one half-year class I learned enough to improve my own skills, and to be able to teach someone else as well. That's the power that comes with demonstrated teaching.

"Mister, I'll Make a Man Out of You!"

"Boy who followed the Spartan code: He captured a live fox and intended to eat it. Although boys were encouraged to scrounge for food, they were punished if caught. The boy noticed some Spartan soldiers coming, and hid the fox beneath his shirt. When the soldiers confronted him, he allowed the fox to chew into his stomach rather than confess, and showed no sign of pain in his body or face. This was the Spartan way." - History Whiz

Reveille!! Wake Up!! It's Bugle Time.

When James Williams, a fellow classmate, posted about his love for the trumpet and announced his offer to teach bugling to anyone who wanted, a little dream of mine that had been hiding away somewhere inside me jumped out from within me and shouted for joy. I would do whatever it took to find my way to his apartment and learn what I have always wanted to learn, how to wake people up in the morning (and also lull them to sleep at night...) with the beautiful sound of a bugle. It was difficult and confusing at first, but I had a good teacher and we were able to make beautiful (maybe I'm exaggerating a little) music by the end of the night, while managing to also wake up the neighbors and then lull them back to sleep.

Frist attempt at Bugling!!:

Sticking With It

I will apologize in advance everyone for not having a good picture to accompany my post. You will see why in a moment! I decided to have my friend Christ teach me how to drive a manual car. The so called "stick shift" approach to driving, as I have heard from some, is supposed to be much more exciting than the automatic approach. I did NOT find that to be the case.

This skill requires a lot of coordination and good timing. I quickly learned that I take for granted what my automatic car, named Scarlet, does for me. So, as you begin driving, you have to press down the clutch and the brake pedal in order to start the car. I became good at this very quickly because of all the times I had to start the car up again. As you begin to accelerate, you must slowly release the clutch pedal. If you don't do it with quite the right touch, the car will stall and the embarrassment sets in. Overall, I stalled a grand total of 5 times in about 25 minutes.

Have you heard the saying "go big or go home"? I really tried hard to implement that into this assignment. Don't worry, I wasn't speeding around campus or throwing water balloons at couples passing by. I simply decided to get the police involved! The first time I stalled I saw some red an blue flashing lights pull up beside us. How much more embarrassed could I be! We were in a parking lot for heaven's sake. Apparently, my buddy's car had expired plates. I was very, very tempted to ask fora picture with the officer, but he seemed to be having one of those nights, so I controlled myself. In terms of stepping outside my comfort zone, I think stalling right in front of an officer who was pulling me over has to count for something.

Folk knowledge is a lot more dangerous than I thought! I didn't know that the police would show up when I tried to deepen my appreciation for folk knowledge. Although we grow up and naturally learn some types of folk knowledge, many of them must be practiced, and practiced, and practiced some more. The best way to claim knowledge as your own seems to be to practice it and then to teach it.

Springy Paper

Paper springs! If you have never made them, I highly recommend learning this mostly useless but very fun craft skill in the near future.

Read on to find out which unsuspecting individuals on campus learned how to make these fun springs today!

Dancing Queen?

One thing that I am not very comfortable with is dancing. This was actually the folk knowledge that I was trying to avoid learning about. I was going to learn to knit, but after riding my bike around town and getting hopelessly lost on the way to look for some yarn, a completely failed attempt, I decided that I had to switch. I have always enjoyed watching people that know how to dance and do well at it, but my excuse has typically been, "I'm white, I can't dance!" For me, that applies to both freestyle dancing and partner dancing. Although I have learned how to do the minimum required dance required for church and school dances-you know, the ones where the partners basically step back and forth-I always want to go the wrong way and lead or to put my feet in the wrong place and do a little hop to avoid stepping on toes.

Rosalind teaching me her dancing skills!!!

Unexpected Learning - Handball

Handball players

I didn't learn what I thought I was going to yesterday.

A few days before, I had told my roommate, Tim, about our assignment to learn something new from an 'expert,' and I said that I wasn't sure yet who I could ask to learn from, or what it could be. Seemingly out of nowhere, he came up with the idea that he could teach me racquetball. It was a game I've never tried before, though I'd seen it being played from a distance once or twice without actually knowing what it involved.

On our way to the Richards Building and the raquetball courts, he already taught me something else new: a very convenient shortcut that didn't involve hiking up the hill that leads from Helaman Halls to the rest of the campus.

Once we got there, we tried to rent the racquetball equipment. However, we failed to notice at first a paper sign that read

"We are no longer renting out racquetball racquets."

Something about people breaking them too often, I think.

Anyway, I thought the plan to learn this new sport was completely ruined, since it's impossible to play racquetball without the racquets... that's why they're in the name of the sport. But then Tim said "Maybe I could teach you handball instead."

That I'd never even heard of before. Not quite sure what it was, I nevertheless agreed that that would be a good alternative. So we rented a small blue ball, smaller and softer than a tennis ball, and went to the racquetball courts.

Handball, I came to learn, can be played with only two people. Standing in the center rectangle, as shown above, the server serves the ball. This is done by dropping it and then hitting it with your hand after the bounce. The rule is that the ball must hit the far wall before it hits the floor. After it hits the floor, the second player must hit it into the wall before the second bounce, and so on back and forth until someone misses or hits it into the floor before the wall.

Seems simple, right?

(Here's a website with a more in depth/technical explanation, for anyone interested: http://www.falloutsheltersports.com/?p=2030)

And just to show you what the game itself can look like, I found a video of some guys who are actually good at it (as opposed to me). I'd suggest watching the volleys that start at 0:48 and 2:31: Click here

Even though the basic rules that I learned weren't too hard to figure out, there is a lot of coordination and knowledge that goes into this game that you wouldn't expect. For instance, I learned that if your opponent hit the ball way over to one side, it was much harder to get to it in time. This seems like a common-sense idea, but I wasn't able to fully comprehend it until we were physically playing the game. I also learned a basic technical term that describes an action in the game: ace. An ace is when the ball hits the wall and floor right where they meet and then bounces so low that the other player can't return it before it hits again. Like before, it took me a while to 'master' this skill (I did it successfully once).

This really drove home to me the fact that, although you can explain almost anything to some degree or another, there are certain types of knowledge that you simply cannot learn by reading, listening, or even observation. You have to actually do them in order to understand what is involved. Even when you can learn something from reading about it, like I hope you learned from this post, you still would have to actually try it out in order to say you truly knew how to do it.