Photography Class 3

Yizong's brilliant idea of having a photography class has been abortive at best. The first class had three people in it. The second, which was a rehash of the first, had a lot more. This class, though, had a grand total of two people. Neither of the two kids that showed up had been at the first two classes, but Yizong wanted this to be a practical session.

It was to be practical to the point of the Lynn, the senior minister, making general requests of subjects to use for our outing. Yizong and I didn't have any problem with Lynn's request. He wanted some more metaphysically thought photos. His subject was living water, and he wanted pictures of community. Before we even left the church, I was taking some candids of our two kids just in case we didn't get any later. That turned out to be a good decision.

Yizong decided to go to downtown Fort Worth to get some pictures. So we loaded up the two kids and ourselves in the church van and took off. We decided to go to the old public market building. There were absolutely no people as the building is abandoned, but it is a pretty building, and we got some good pictures there, one or two of which I thought might fill Lynn's bill. After that the two kids decided they wanted to go to the train yards and get pictures there.

Almost immediately after we entered the train yards, I fell and cut my hand on a railroad rail. My experience up to this point has been that rails are smooth on top. Not so here. I cut open my thumb pretty good and had a nice cut over my palm just below my fingers. Ah well, I've suffered worse. I made jokes the entire time about real photographers having to bleed on their lenses before they could consider themselves real photographers.

We got some awesome shots in the yard. I grabbed a few of one of the kids walking on the rail with different points of focus. Some weren't all that good, but that's the way of things. We pretty much called it quits after that, not finding any good places with people. Some of the kids' photos were ok, but it all turned out to be moot. Last Sunday Lynn didn't use any of them. He expressed his dissatisfaction by saying that he like the pictures, especially stylistically, but that very few would fit his subject. Ah well, no matter.

I think this photography class is on the rocks. We've had three classes now. We never have the same kids show up to the classes. We had three the first time, a whole room-full the second, and only two the third. The kids claim that they want a photography class, but they really don't want to be there for that. They just want a place to be that's not home or school where they can be with their friends. I'm not sure carrying the class further would do anything for anybody except frustrate Yizong and me. We've covered the basics of composition, the rule of thirds, leading lines, and perspective. Lighting would be next, then exposure and focal length. That's where these kids would rapidly loose interest, especially as none of them have a camera that's anywhere good enough to change any settings to drive really drive the camera. Yizong has cancelled class for the next two or three Sundays, and I think it's a tossup whether or not we'll continue. My knee-jerk reaction is to kill it and cut our losses, but one never knows.