Day 3- Rule of Thirds Part 1

Second day of female classes, Hameed and I show up at the school, and go talk to the man who offered us 16 classes. He's excited to actually see us coming back, and takes us out to show us a class that we can use. After some sitting around and talking with various people, we arrive at the girls dormitory, where he decides before he gives us a room he needs to verify with the girls that they don't mind having a man teach them how to use pictures.

Thankfully, they respond, "Of course we don't care, every single one of our teachers here at the university is a male, it's not a problem." Satisfied, he takes us to a room we can use. Pashto Pashto Pashto, and Hameed turns to me and says, "He doesn't want a man teaching the women, we're not allowed to teach anymore." ........ Angry English Angry English, Pashto Pashto Pashto, phone calls phone calls, Pashto Pashto, random people coming in and out of the room, Pashto Pashto, everyone leaves and I'm in the room by myself, tears tears, women. Hurray! Everything was settled, the women came, and he told us he wouldn't be giving us any more problems, just this one time, all while smiling as if he was just doing it for fun to see if we'd just leave or insist on teaching.

So for this class, I went over the most basic rule/theory in photography, the rule of thirds. This rule is, in simple terms, don't center the subject of your picture, it should be off center, either horizontally or vertically. I showed them how to turn on the grid on the camera so that they could get a visual of where the Rule of Thirds comes from. After this, I went over different types of photography with the girls. Wildlife, underwater, artistic, still life, documentary, photojournalistic, advertisement, aerial, etc.

To end this, we covered evocative photography, pictures that evoke any sort of emotion in people. I used this to give them the first assignment of the day, a single picture that tells a big story and evokes a lot of emotion in people, to be turned in at the end of the course. On top of having an assignment every class, they now have a general assignment that they should always be working on. Taking these sorts of pictures isn't exactly easy, like go outside and take a picture of a tree, you can't go outside and take a picture of something emotional... So as not to confuse the girls, I showed them 10 different examples of single photographs that can either tell a huge story or bring out a lot of emotion in people, preferably both.

The following picture, which I got from the web, was the picture that brought out the biggest reaction in the girls. The story behind this picture being that these Muslim women, for whatever the reason, were allowed for the first time to go on this roller coaster type ride, and you can see in their expressions how much fun they're having and how they're enjoying it. As Hameed was explaining the picture to them, you could see all of the girls smiling or laughing. So with this picture I was able to show them exactly what I meant by bringing out emotions in people, in that, with just this one picture I had the entire class smiling and laughing.

As for this days assignment to be turned in the next class, they were assigned the task of taking a portrait photograph. We went over some techniques to taking better portrait photos, positions of people, angles, backgrounds, etc. I gave them some examples of what a good portrait photo looks like, and they were off, can't wait to see what they come up with!