(Edsel, n.d.)
UNIT plan overview
Unit Title: Photography – Capturing Moments
Year Level & Subject: Year 10 Media Arts
Duration: 4 x 90-minute lessons
Essential learnings, Concepts, and Understandings:
-The deep social, cultural, and political significance that capturing moments with photography has had throughout time.
-Photography’s ability to tell a story and convey meaning through only imagery
-Photography’s ability to represent and empower the culture and lifeways of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders and other diverse groups
-The use and understanding of good composition and shot types
-The use of manual photography settings such as aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in varying settings and contexts
-The ability to decisively annotate research and production process
-the ability to productively reflect upon their media artworks and intentions
Download full unit plan
Teaching and Learning Strategies:
Critical pedagogy - used throughout the unit to engage students with the complex political, social, and cultural representations concerning Indigenous and Torres Strait Islanders, people of colour, and people with disabilities.
Technological pedagogy - blended and integrated learning modes using technologies, reinforcing digital skills and incorporating web and digital based activities.
Instructional/explicit pedagogy - use of scaffolding and procedural tasks to establish clear and manageable task and assessment outcome requirements.
Inquiry-based framing - encouraging students to form their own questions and explorations of content and techniques and processes. Inquiry learning is used alongside collaborative and questioning strategies.
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lesson 1 - Capturing moments and composition
Exploring the deep social, cultural, and political significance that certain ‘moments’ in photography have had throughout time
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lesson 2 - Learning manual photography
Engaging with the technical elements and codes of photography and refining manual photography techniques and processes
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Lesson 3 - idea generation – Project planning
Choosing a project direction/theme and working towards an outcome that will convey unique elements and meaning
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lesson 4 - finalising ‘moment’ photography
Purposefully reflecting and annotating the final project, demonstrating photography knowledge and understandings
Additional Notes:
Consider further incorporating the Media Production Process language for students to develop their technical vocabulary. This includes ‘pre-production, production and post-production’ language.
Consider allowing (if required) more time to experiment, play and explore, with clear guidelines/boundaries. Try not to give them too much to do in one session. You could begin with functions of: Assembling the camera, basic operation such as Zoom, and then move on to Aperture and Shutter Speed. If they start with a standard ISO setting of 400, then this can be explored in a subsequent lesson. Be careful of confusing your students with too much information too soon. Allowing them to take it slowly, and exploring the inherent characteristics of each function (aperture, shutter speed, zoom) will help them to have a greater understanding of manual photography in the long run.
Consider collecting and creating worked examples for students to refer to that demonstrate each step that you are expecting students to achieve.
Further application of scaffolding for annotations (how to write effective annotations) as well as exploration of codes and conventions and their use within their own work will always be useful to touch on.
References:
Abel-Hirsch, H. (2017) Philippe Halsman: Jump. Magnum Photos. https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/philippe-halsman-jump-book/
Alamy. (2000). Cathy Freeman lights the Olympic flame and wins the 400m. [Image]. National Gallery Australia. https://digital-classroom.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/cathy-freeman-sydney-olympics
Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). (2010). Media Arts F-10 Curriculum. https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/the-arts/media-arts/
Braukamper, T. (2023). 61 Famous Photos That Changed the World. Shot Kit. https://shotkit.com/famous-photos/
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NPR. (2013). Nelson Mandela, with his wife, Winnie, walks to freedom after 27 years in prison on Feb. 11, 1990. [Image]. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/06/11/190671704/the-day-nelson-mandela-walked-out-of-prison
Orbey, E. (2020). The Visceral Satisfactions of a Disabled Photographers Gaze. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-visceral-satisfactions-of-a-disabled-photographers-gaze
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