The CAS project – An Introduction into Photography for Beginners Workshop
The final part of the CAS program is to plan and initiate a CAS project.
As a passionate photographer, it’s important that I can expand and develop my skills in-camera function, composition, editing, etc. I’m in the Gecko Net service group where our goal is to film, photograph edit, and produce media of OSC service groups and school events. As such it is important to make sure that the younger and newer students are trained and prepared to take, edit and process photos. This is where I come in with my CAS project to create a course where I gave the new students a chance to get a hands-on experience.
The photography team consisted just of three people as though we had a large service group, we are split into smaller teams including the photographers. On our first day, we introduced ourselves and I gave a quick tutorial and presentation regarding how to take photos. I discussed aspects of photography that are often difficult as beginners, however, are important to know. Some examples I discussed were the composition (rule of thirds), how to adjust to lighting (ISO, aperture, shutter speed), and converting the photos to edit. Though our first lesson was shorter than what was needed, it allowed me to get a better understanding of my partners and where their strengths and weaknesses were.
The next part of the course was getting a hands-on experience with the actual camera. We faced the issue that other teams in our service needed to borrow the camera for their side projects and as such, we had to find a way to adapt to these changes. As a way to still practice we decided to use my iPhone 12 which has a really good camera and gave the team a good idea of what to do when taking photos. We would go about taking photos of other service groups trying to show them participating in community activities as a way to later promote them during the weekly bulletin.
This process of teaching allowed me to get a better understanding of both my strengths and areas for growth in teaching. No matter how well I prepared there are always bound the be mistakes, and this event allowed me to learn how to adapt to these changes. For example, when we faced the issue of the camera being borrowed, rather than stop practicing we adapted by practicing with phones as the technology was extremely precise. This experience will hopefully show improvement in the quality of photos which we take and share with the whole school.