What most of the guys did, was give their camera to someone else and then run and pose, in the most ridiculous of ways. A common Afghan thing that a lot of you may have already noticed, and will surely notice in the guys photos, is that when Afghans get their picture taken, instead of smiling for the camera, they try and get the most blank, absent, emotionless face they can possibly muster, and just stare right at you. I've asked many times in the past and continue to ask now, never with a reliable answer as to why this is...
General problems with the guys: The girls pictures were very simple to collect, as with 10 girls in the class (an improvement from the original 6, inshallah ever growing) and 10 cameras for the girls, they each currently have their own. The guys, with 20 students, and 10 cameras, are splitting their camera with a partner. This brought out all sorts of results:
"Oh, I thought we were supposed to take turn doing assignments and trade the camera off at every class, not every day,"
"Oh... I.... didn't know my brother was supposed to share his camera with me, I thought I was just taking the course without ever having to take a picture,"
Or, the worst yet, "Oh, we just took turns taking pictures, so... these 5 here are mine, these 3 are his, these next 2 are mine, those 4 over there are his...."
During the picture collection phase I think I may have opened a wound on my forehead from banging it against the table too hard too many times.
To solve all these problems, they each are now fully aware that each camera has two memory cards provided with it, and that they should share the same camera, and not the same memory card. To make it easier, as they have 2 days between classes, the first day one person should use the camera, the next day the other person does, so even if they forget to swap memory cards, we can just go something along the lines of, the first 20 are mine, the next 23 are his, done.
Final problem with the guys: I had maybe one or two people specifically do the assignment. Everyone else just took so many pictures of themselves or their friends they could pass it off as a portrait photo, but only maybe 2 or 3 people had portrait assignment pictures that they took with the assignment in mind to give to me. Everyone else thought it was optional I guess...
Props go out to Said Bilal who took the most photos, most portrait photos, and least amount of photos of himself. Pay attention to my students roses and poses, some of them even got dressed up, aka out of their Shalwar Khamese (Afghan Man Jammies) for the photo.
Said Bilal
Said Bilal
Safi Ullah
Omid
Kihan
Maiwand
This one here is my absolute favorite, the two people in the picture are two of my students, partners sharing the camera the picture was taken with, the younger one being the uncle of the older one.
"So........ who took the picture....?"
"Oh, Maiwand did"
"And he is...?"
"The one on the left"
............
Maiwand...
After stressing to my students that having a dirty wall in the background does not make the entire photo a bad picture, and that having pretty roses in the picture does not make the entire photo a good picture, we moved on to the fun stuff, angles! Can't wait to see how this one will turn out. They have 4 photos, regular view of an animal, low angle view of an animal, regular view of random thing, low angle view of same random thing. I went over many times that th
ey should not take just 4 photos, but take lots, and choose what they think are their best 4 for the assignment (of course I take all their photos anyway, but I have a special folder for the photo that they want to represent them in the assignment).
Adult class- yet again, many problems with the cameras. I was so excited for this class too, as so far it's been so easy to teach because most of them speak fairly good English and are all older and better behaved and smarter and have more of a will to learn. But, the Pashtun side has crept in, in their refusal to admit to me that they failed to effectively partner up the first time around. Instead of letting me know, oh, hey, guess what, I can't take pictures, I have no access to any of the cameras because my 3 partners live somewhere else. Why do people have more than 1 partner, it's beyond me. So lots of debating and talking and head banging later, we, inshallah, have fixed this problem.
Similar problems with the other guys class, as in lots of pictures of themselves, lots of people with no pictures, but not nearly to the extent of the other class. The people who did have a camera and took pictures, specifically did the portrait assignment, and just had a lot of pictures of themselves otherwise, which I said isn't a huge big deal, but the whole point of the class is to learn to be the one with the camera, not in front of the lens. So without further ado, the last set of portrait pictures:
Faiz Ullah
Hameed
Sayad
Sayad
Sayad
Zarif
Zarif
Props go out to both Zarif and Sayad for taking many portrait pictures of many different people. Special props go out to Zarif, who was one of very few to attempt, and the one with the most successful personality portrait, a portrait showcasing an aspect of the persons personality, in this case a cricket player (an optional/additional assignment of the day for my photography loving over achievers).
Considering all of the things that could've gone wrong, I would say that the results of the first assignment are highly positive. The women came back with the response I expected of the men, very few photos and literally one portrait. The men came back with the response I expected from the women, tons of photos of themselves and their friends posing in shnazzy clothes around pretty flowers. Despite this and the fact that we didn't have 100% participation, things are looking quite positive. I have many many photos, lots of good portrait photos, as well as lots of bad ones.
I was able to show the kids exactly what not to do, so we can avoid this in the future, and at the same time, show them exactly what to do with some of the better photos or photo taking habits. As Amy and I were mainly worried about getting a few students who could successfully take non blurry photos by the end of the course, I'd say we are well on our way to having lots of great pictures and new found photographers, can't wait for the next days assignments!
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Logan, the pics you selected are great and you're right, I started out worried that we'd have difficulty getting non-blurry photos and it's looking really good.
ReplyDeleteA few thoughts - one common problem is this habit of randomly coming to class (or not coming) and bringing friends and new students unannounced. In the first few days this might be acceptable but as the ratio of cameras to students goes beyond 2:1, you're going to have to turn people away and tell them to sign up for future classes. We'll have another intro class in the fall. I know it's difficult to say no but as long as it is "not now, next class" it should be less difficult. I'm sure you realize by now that a student won't be able to get enough time on a camera and really not be able to learn things. This class is all about learning by doing not learning how to use a camera by watching someone else do it.
Having a camera to take home and use at any time is pretty exciting so don't worry about a million photos of themselves or family and friends. Right now they don't know how to separate the photos by themselves, ie, specifically say "these photos are my assignment, the rest were for fun". Letting their brothers and friends use the camera is actually really great because in the end our goal is to equip people with access to technology so they learn how to use it. So make sure just to drill in that they HAVE to do the assignment as a MINIMUM and the rest is encouraged. The candid shots may lead to discovering things, anyway. But do make sure that everyone understands that for this class, everyone in their class will see all the photos they take. This should help make sure that all the selected content stays culturally acceptable.
(After graduating they can borrow the cameras from the library or use their own and will have learned how to download the pictures and erase off the memory cards themselves. If someone is savy enough to realize they can buy their own memory card and use it for "personal" pics that's fine but don't announce that as an option because I'm afraid it will get too confusing for what you want to teach now.)
Note that Hameed's picture has a time stamp of 4/3/2009. Either help him learn to turn off the time stamp or fix the date.
Yes, the dates were a problem, nobody could figure out how to set it, and it was taking forever so I told them it wasn't the most important thing in the world it was just so you would know when the pictures were taken, I'll show them how to turn off the time stamp but if you think the correct dates are important I'll show them that too.
ReplyDeleteI told them that they could take pictures of themselves and let their brothers and stuff use the cameras, what I said was that their friends and brothers shouldn't be the ones taking the portrait assignment, with them posing. There were just tons of random pics and when I asked them about the assignment they just said, uh... that one looks like a person, do that one..... so they literally were just taking random pics of themselves the whole time, with the assignment not even in mind.
None of my classes have reached over a 2:1 ratio, that's what I went over in all of my first classes, making sure I didn't have extra students, they girls are just over a 1:1 ratio now, the first guys class is exactly 2:1, and the second one is TBD, somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1. Bringing friends and new students unannounced has only happened with the girls class so far because I keep encouraging them to do so because we want more girls.
Thanks for your feedback, I'll make sure to re correct myself and let them know that the particular assignments should be taken by them, and that they should practice taking pictures, but they can also let friends and family use the camera as well, I'm not going to go into getting a personal memory card though until the end of the lessons, this could potentially cause all sorts of unknown problems that you could never imagine until it's happening...