Over the years at my school, I've attempted to develop and improve photography so it becomes a seamlessly integrated aspect of daily life. Some of the strategies I use are pretty obvious to me but I figured that they might not be to others, so here are sixteen of my top tips:
1. Apply for a school Animoto account - they're free for educators and allow you to quickly and easily create slideshow montages of events such as trips out. https://animoto.com/education/classroom
2. If you're using tablets to take your photos, place a little sticker next to the lens so you can quickly say to children where to look when posing and avoid their eyes looking in the wrong direction.
3. Encourage people to take photos of small groups of children facing the camera - either directly looking at it or just having their face (as opposed to the back of their head) in it whilst they are doing a task/interaction. These are the shots you want to keep and display - photos showing the backs of children where they can't be identified are never as interesting, neither are shots that don't actually include children at all (umpteen photos of cute animals at the farm might be nice at the time but are mostly useless back in school).
4. Check out what's going on in the background of a shot before you take it - whilst you're arranging children into position in the foreground, things might be happening behind them that you don't want visible in the final photo. Ask anybody walking behind to step aside for a moment or re-frame the shot to the children in the foreground are physically blocking something behind them from being shown. Also remember to check the floor as well for any unwanted items such as dropped stationary or litter which you might want to remove too.
5. Take the majority of photos in landscape - these display much better on computer displays.
6. Shoot the same subject from three different angles with the camera: tilted left, horizontal and tilted right. This gives you several different takes of the same thing and allows you to pick the best later on. I have a tendency to shoot mostly horizontal or tilted right which results in slideshows I create afterwards looking quite samey so I'm trying to force myself to do more left tilted shots to add a bit more variety.
7. Always be ready with your camera to take photos instantly, especially on event days where you want to try and shoot as much as possible as these are the times that children will most fondly remember and want to look back on in future years. On dressing up days like World Book Day, for example, I will spend all of morning break outside on the yard shooting photos of groups of children.
8. Try to take photos of children within the same year group as these can be referenced and re-used more easily in future. For example, I will often ask for a group of children in just Year 3 say to pose for a photo before I then ask for a group of just Year 4 children. Depending on the context, try to include a mix of genders in photos too.
9.Have one DSLR camera in school that has a good optical zoom lens on it - this is especially valuable for taking photos of assemblies where I'm usually stood right at the back and the children performing are several metres away with a huge audience in between us. If you want to transfer photos to an Apple iOS device, this cable is invaluable - https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MJYT2ZM/A/lightning-to-sd-card-camera-reader.
10. Include digital photography skills as part of your school curriculum. In Computing lessons, I teach photo editing, perspective photography and superimposing, for instance.
11. Run half-termly photo challenges where you invite people to email you photos taken outside of school which can then be compiled into a slideshow to showcase in the final week. These have been immensely popular at my school and have included topics such as: extreme reading, sports, holidays, science experiments, pumpkin carving, Lego models and Christmas tree selfies. These allow you to encourage children to develop both their photography and creative skills beyond the school gates.
12. Let some Year 6 children be responsible for taking photos of aspects of school life such as daily assemblies, attendance winners or favourite library books. I also let these children tweet the photos accompanied with a descriptive sentence typed with the aid of a writing frame like "Well done to #YearX who are this week's #attendance with XXX%!".
13. Create a display in a central location in school that can be used as a background for any celebration photos such as of awards or excellent work.
Congratulations #Y1 who are our #attendance #award winners this week with 91.1%. ⭐️🏆 pic.twitter.com/fxEbfSFhZ1
— Parkfield Primary (@Parkfield) October 20, 2017
14. Use any shared displays or screens for showcasing photos - I use the hall board during dinner times to either show slideshows playing on a loop or an automatically scrolling page of recent tweets like this or this. This not only increases the usage of such displays but also proves the children that you are actually using, liking and keep to show off the photos which are being taken of them.
15. Store your photos in a central location that is accessible by all staff. We save all photos taken on in a dedicated folder on a shared network drive, with photos stored in Academic Year\Term\Event Name. Where possible, I encourage staff to name any events which are just focused on one year group with the year group name at the start of the folder name so they can easily be found later on by listing folders in alphabetical order.
16. Turn off Live Photos if shooting on any iOS device which has this feature. It's aim is to record a few seconds of video to help you recall the ambience in a setting which is great for holidays but not required when the 'ambience' is just you directing children where/when to look.
I hope you find these tips useful. Please write a comment below if you can think of any more!
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