Project

For this digital media project I decided to provide some examples of my skills as a budding photographer, such as choosing a subject, composing the shot, creating depth of field, focusing properly and making sure all important elements make it into the frame.  I am trying to develop my “eye” as a photographer because I think it will help me improve my visual literacy, see the world around me in a new way and enhance my ability to present information in a more visual way in my teaching.  I never realized how much technical information goes into the process of capturing a great photograph - at least when I am trying to be intentional about it.  It is fairly easy to put the camera on automatic and just point and shoot, hoping that the subject is in focus and will turn out ok.  But I want to understand how to make some of the technical decisions myself to purposely create shots that look the way I want them to look.  

It is hard to select just one of the abilities from chapter ten that I have demonstrated in my example project, so I will highlight a few cognitive and physical abilities.  In order to effectively compose the photos I included in my artifact, I had to use a few sensory abilities, such as near and far vision, depth perception and visual color discrimination.  I also utilized my inductive and deductive reasoning abilities when I selected the photos to include in my artifact, while verbal ability, spatial orientation and visualization skills were needed to create the layout for my artifact and prepare my written explanation of the photographic process and results.

It is really exciting to experiment and see what happens - I don’t have to be right or perfect or an expert - I can just enjoy the process of capturing the beauty in the world around me.  I have already begun to see things differently - recognizing patterns and visual cues that I never consciously noticed before.  

I think that continuing to develop this type of visual-spatial intelligence will help me be a more effective teacher.  Since it is quite expensive to purchase stock photography, I also intend to incorporate my photographs into my Presentation Zen style lectures, on my professional website and in the example Digital Media Projects that I share with my students. I hope you enjoy looking at my DMP3 example - as I develop my eye as a photographer.

Thanks for checking out my Digital Media Project 3 example.  Good luck as you create your own project.