Communicating Design

I had the pleasure to revisit some of my old lessons from last year on the topic of photography, and have decided to add a tinge of spice and variety in my lessons this  year. Honestly I did that with a little apprehension, knowing how sometimes even with the best of plans, things might not turn out as what you would have wanted or imagined. But to my surprise, my young charges definitely superseded my expectations, and some of them even went beyond what I was asking for.

Basically the premise of my lesson was to see how photography, as a skill that combines art and technical knowhow, can be used more effectively, beyond just the mere capturing of a single, or a set of photos. I was looking at how photos can be used to communicate! (Enduring Understanding). My advice to these noobs in photography is the revelation that taking good photos is not necessarily the exclusive domain of professionals with big-sized cameras or DSLR's. What I was more interested in getting them to understand were the concepts of good photography, and then applying them. Moving on from there, my challenge for them was to get them to create a storyboard of photos, that tells a story of their own choosing, using a toy, or a set of toys.

Well, barring the fact that some of these toy stories are very boyish in nature, I do find their stories to be well-thought of, and in fact, very well executed. What surprised me even more was the amount of effort that these students have put in into their works. And mind you, the lessons were only about 9 hours long (spread across 3 weeks). I do like to showcase here some of their works here. The ones shown below were done by Jian En and Wei Qin from class of S1-07 (2011):

Storyboard 1 of 2

Storyboard 2 of 2

More of their works can be seen from their Facebook pages. For more information, do add or gmail me at irfandarian. I'd be more than happy to show them to you.