A Student, An iPad, A Softbox, and A Mentor

With the Grade 5-6 class down the hall studying Light and Sound, and my Grade 1-2 class studying Light and Color, there was bound to be some collaboration. Mr. Dwyer and I made plans to do a class exchange for a day.

But when I saw the self portraits his students did with the iPads, I wanted my students to do the same thing. It seemed like a good peer mentoring opportunity.

With the student numbers in our classes, there was one unlucky Grade 5 student who was paired with me. Photography is a hobby of mine, so I have been thinking about the kind of self portrait I want to have for a while. So I showed a portrait in the style I was thinking of and took my budding photographer down the hall to a room with few windows. The school soft boxes just happen to be stored down there.

I explained to him that we needed to look around the room for a spot with an uncluttered background. There wasn't really a good place, so I told him if the light is strong enough on the subject, the background will be dark.

His first few shots were throwaways. The first two were too bright, so we moved the light away. The next step was to move him and the iPad closer to me to make more prominent in the frame. One common mistake people make when shooting is to have the subject too small. Fill the frame they say.

Finally he added a monochrome filter and added a border to the shot and we were done. After he sent the picture to me I cropped it down.

Not bad for an iPad 2.