Photos Framed

Photos Framed: A Fresh Look at the World's Most Memorable Photographs
by Ruth Thomson
Candlewick Press, 2014
review copy provided by the publisher

"When photography began, it was an elaborate, expensive, time-consuming, elite activity, using heavy, cumbersome equipment. Today, taking photographs can be instant, cheap, and accessible to anyone. Despite the enormous changes in photographic equipment and technology since the nineteenth century, the purposes of photography have remained essentially the same, whether immortalizing, exploring, documenting, revealing, or showing us what we can't see with the naked eye." -- from the introduction of Photos Framed

It's amazing, isn't it, that in less than 200 years, photography has become a universal art form? Children can take photographs before they have learned to hold a crayon. I think I can confidently say that every student in my class has taken a photograph. And because of that, I can't wait to share this book with them and dig into the history of photography and the art of photography.

Photos Framed is divided into four sections: Portrait photography, Nature photography, Photography as art, and Documentary photography. Each of the sections features examples from the 18th through the 21st Centuries. And each of the photographs is explored in the same ways: there is a section of text describing and discussing the photograph, a section that tells about the photographer, three questions ("Photo thoughts") for the reader/viewer to consider, a sidebar ("Blow Up") that features one tiny bit of the photo and a question to consider, and another sidebar ("Zoom In") that helps the viewer to consider the photo as a whole. Finally, there is a quote from the photographer that accompanies the photo.

I'm thrilled to see that there are multiple copies of this book available in our metro library system. I am imagining a whole-class study of this book in the first weeks of school which would lay the groundwork for students to build a photographic/visual portfolio alongside their digital portfolio/notebook (folder in their Google drive) and their pencil/paper writer's note/sketchbook.

Writing that last convoluted sentence made me realize that there just about isn't such a thing as a plain and simple Writer's Notebook anymore. All of these digital and non-digital spaces need to be developed to provide students with opportunities to capture and hold creations of all kinds at all stages of the process.  Maybe it really is time to stop calling it Writers' Workshop and call it Composing Workshop.

Hmm...the wheels are turning...

Composing Workshop

Franki's post, "How Did They Make That," has gotten several interesting comments. In the post, she tells about her students deconstructing the Scholastic Book Fair video, not in terms of content, as she expected, but in terms of how it might possibly have been made.

One responder declared the video a marketing failure because the students looked beyond the content. Others agreed with Franki's positive take on her students' point of view.

But the comment I want to respond to today, in light of the hour I just spent working in iMovie and GarageBand making a video I could upload to YouTube so that I can share some huggable puppies with my friends, is from takini8:

"I think this generation are creators and producers. They are moving beyond the viewing that I did as a child. I watched videos and enjoyed them, they view critically and with an eye to creating. I think that's because they can create and publish so easily. I think its a really exciting perspective and look forward to what they do in the future. My problem is what to call writing today. I originally started calling writing workshop, author workshop, because I was focusing on authoring but now... what do you call it when they are blogging, creating photo essays and music videos? It's so much more than authoring."

What do I call Writing Workshop now? I call it Composing Workshop.

It's that time in the day when we use a creative design process to make things we want to share with an audience for some purpose.

We get an idea, try it out, tweak it until we get it just right, look at it through as many lenses as we can, then share it out with an audience.

It might be paper and pencil, word processing, a music composition, a comic, a movie with narration or a sound track, a photo essay, or (insert project here).

Yes, there are times when my students attend to the genres of paper-pencil composing required by our district and the State Standards. But once my students have a firm traditional grasp on the standards as defined by the state, they are encouraged to work with the standards/genres in the media of their choice.

Another message I hope to be communicating with my "composing workshop" is that the processes and skills that my students are learning are not to be used solely within the walls of school. My students, too, can have a personal composing workshop on a rainy Sunday morning sitting at their very own kitchen table during which they put aside all their other work/chores to make a video and compose the music for its soundtrack.

And now, because I know you're dying to see it, here is the puppy video I made this morning: