Great Artists: The Process by MHS

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” 
- Ansel Adams

        When you look at our photographs, you see an image that will hopefully make you feel something. We put effort into the picture, but you might not see our process.

       Stage 1: The Beginning. First, we had to learn about Ansel Adams and what inspired him. We watched a documentary called “Great American; Ansel Adams”. Then Bret C.came in and taught us about the grey scale, which is a scale invented by Adams that goes from light to dark and has all the shades of grey. To practice this technique, we drew simple things like a box and shaded it. Then we applied it to an Ansel Adams Photograph. We took our new found skills and transferred it to our photographs.

        Stage 2: Experimenting. After we collected background information we started to go out into nature and take photographs. At first, we started simply taking pictures around the school. We experimented with our own cameras and occasionally we got the opportunity to use a Sony a57. We tried taking pictures of different things to find our vision just like Ansel Adams did in nature. We wanted to take pictures that made us feel passion. After we had some experience we, decided we were ready for a bigger challenge.

        Stage 3: Dedication. We wanted to experience the dedication that Ansel Adams had for his photographs. Our first thought was it would be a great experience to camp out somewhere. The S***** graciously volunteered their lawn. With a lot of planning and cooperation we all packed into cars and off we went to KS's house. When we got there we set up camp (literally CAMP!) Then we went on a hike to a waterfall. “ When I was hiking to the waterfall I felt like Ansel Adams because I had to lug all of my stuff up hills.” says sixth-grader SW. We ate dinner and then went outside and slept. In the morning we woke up at 6:30 a.m to take early morning photographs. We ate breakfast and left our campsite. We still wanted more opportunities to take photographs.


       Stage 4: Field Trip! On March 20, we went on a field trip to Torrey Pines State Reserve. We had to hike up a hill which gave us a lot of good photo-taking opportunities. The we went on a short 3/4 of a mile beach loop. On the way we bonded and took lots of amazing pictures with the help of Carwai (our advisor) and Laure (our film and photography teacher.) After we had hiked down to the beach we walked back along the beach. Which gave us amazing scenery to snap photographs of. After we were happy with our photographs we had to make some decisions.

      Stage 5: Decisions. One of the best parts of Great Artist in NMY is the opportunity to choose. We knew that we wanted to print our photographs in order to display them. So Carwai did some research. We had to take a lot of things in consideration for example we only had a budget of $16.50 per person. Carwai found two good places to print but we ended up printing at Cove.  We got our prints back and we were all happy with the result. Then we had to decide what to do about our banner. We decided to have a committee come up with the idea and our entire class to work on it. Then all we had to do were the finishing touches.

    Stage 6: Panic Mode. I say panic mode because this is where we had loos ends to tie up. First, Amy C. came in to share her expertise in matting with us. We had to complete our banner and set up the room to for it to look like the beautiful exhibit that we envisioned.

I would like to close the same way I began, with a quote. This time, one said by a sixth grader, “If a photograph does not capture an emotion it does not achieve a photograph’s purpose”.