Day 5- Angles! Part 1 *UPDATED*

Todays female class went much, much better than any of the previous classes. Two people currently staying at the Taj, Jenn and Rachel, agreed to come to my female class today to help out and tell the bipolar man that they were going to be the teachers for the women, not me, a male (A little white lie never hurt no one...). So, as expected, we had no problems this time with him not wanting to let the girls come to class, and we even got upgraded. We went from an old room with no electricity and broken chairs, to a huge room, AC, electricity, tables, desks, and nice cozy cushioned chairs. We get to keep the room for the rest of the classes! We even got a complementary bottle of water disguised as Mountain Dew.

On top of that, we now have pictures from the girls! So for the beginning of the class, I collected everyones photos, and as a class reviewed the assignment. I let the girls critique one another's photos, and after they were done I gave in my input as to what they said right, what they said wrong, and things that they missed. This way they get to participate and actively learn what makes a good picture or a bad picture, as opposed to me just lecturing them the whole time.

The downside.... The girls took the assignment a little too literally, and for the most part took, literally, one single portrait photo of one single person... We discussed why this is no good, and went over the importance of why it's a good idea to take lots of photos of lots of different people. Inshallah next class will go much better. Another downside, a lot of the girls had their batteries die, and the battery chargers I gave them are for the wrong voltage for what they have in their dormitories, so after I find a converter hopefully there will be many more photos from many more girls, as opposed to a single one from a few girls. Pictures!!

Alia

Maliha

Rona

Hilla

Masooda

One of the girls whose batteries had died, upon her turn to come up and give me her memory card to upload her portrait, pulled a sneaky ninja quick attack photo and borrowed another girls batteries and whipped an unsuspecting photo of me for her portrait...

Zarlashe

As for the rest of class, we went over how much fun it is to take pictures at all sorts of strange angles! Eye level photos are boring as every single person every single day sees everything at eye level, so we want to think outside the box and take pictures of things people don't normally see. Jenn and Rachel really helped with this, completely by accident. As I was explaining this to the females, the two of them, out of curiosity started doing exactly as I was saying. They were getting into all sorts of weird positions and putting their cameras in strange angles and taking pictures of everything, making the girls laugh. This helped me explain this more to them, they have to be willing to make themselves look a little silly and get a little dirty to get really interesting photos.

As for the assignment, this was much more difficult. As it has been explained to me, it's not the safest thing for women to go around taking pictures out in public, because the men will think they are taking pictures of them, therefore the girls must like the men, giving the men permission to stalk and rape them. Leaving the only option for the girls to set themselves on fire out of shame. How I didn't realize this may cause a problem before hand is beyond me... I mean it makes perfect sense, the women are, after all, tempting the men to rape them by showing off their wrists while taking pictures, what else can a tempted man do?

So the original assignment, which was 4 different photos, was reduced to 2 photos. For the men it will remain 4. What I want, is a picture from a normal, eye level view, of an animal. Any sort of animal. Then another photo of the same animal from a low angle view. The other 2 photos are to be a regular view of any object of their choice, and then either a high angle or a low angle view of the same object. I told the girls that since they are the women, they would know much better than both Hameed and I what they are allowed to take pictures of, and where they can take these pictures. So if any of them have animals at home (apparently it's tradition to have a cow at home, Saidjalal was shocked when I explained that this was, in fact, not a tradition in the States) then they should try and do the full assignment, otherwise just the last half.

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