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Sunday 29 January 2012

Photography

I had the opportunity to teach over at Mike Mountain Horse Elementary here in Lethbridge the other day. Two of my classmates and I got to teach portraiture through scratch art, and I must say it produced some very interesting results! Some of the students struggled with getting proportions right, and were just about to give up. We gave them a few pointers, and I chimed in with 'if you want your drawing to look so good that it looks like a photo, why not just take a photo?', to which one girl replied, 'because photography isn't creative'. That was a reaction that I wasn't quite ready for. I wish I had more time to talk to the student, but they had to leave.

While I don't consider myself a photographer by 'trade' if you will, I do use cameras often. Not only do I document my own work, but also events, and many pieces from my art practice are the result of photography. I've had people tell me I should have been a Photography major, and its gone as far as a parent of a friend coming up to me and saying, 'you're the guy that takes the nice photo's, right'? I didn't even know who this person was at first. More and more I find myself being labeled as a photographer, even though I just consider it to be a tool, just like a pencil or a hammer. It's something to get the job done, and sometimes more than that, if the tool fits the job. You make it as creative as you want it to be.


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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 January 2012 at 13:45

    Agreed. I wouldn't exactly say I am a photographer, or an animator, or a filmmaker, but they definitely have a place in my practice. Again, it is really just a tool to get the job done, whatever the job may be. In my own work, I can create the illusion of life more effectively in some media than others. For example, by using a "filter" of film and animation, I can create a sense of movement much more realistically than using the Morphoids in person.

    I would also like to mention that I have found that teaching often shakes up my own view of things. While I have not had the opportunity to teach art to children, I have taught art to special needs people, and the way that they see and approach it is often surprisingly different than the way I would assume they would approach things.

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  2. Jeff Chan29 January 2012 at 16:56

    Thanks for the comment, Jen! I am glad I am not the only one that feels this way about different forms of media. I've never taught special needs myself unfortunately, however there was one student who I had encountered, who apparently, when no one is watching will look at machinery, say an elevator, and start drawing the mechanisms that make it move. It's always interesting talking/observing others when it comes to this kind of stuff.

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    Replies
    1. Jeff Chan29 January 2012 at 17:07

      And I have to say, video/photography really, really, work for your Morphoids.

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