Taking pictures has become an everyday activity for most people. Between food, social events, pretty landscapes, animals, and more, people take photos every day.
But there is a difference between a picture and a photograph.
There is a reason photography is a profession, and it is because it takes some skill to get those good pictures we see people posting after events.
Photography is a rising hobby, and a lot of people do it on the side of their day jobs to make a little extra cash.
Everyone starts somewhere, and for a lot of kids, that place is a photography class in their high school.
Lakeland High School has a photography class offered to all grades that can end up being the seed that grows a kid’s love for photography.
Photography is interesting in itself, and the photography teacher at LHS, Michael Dunn, makes it even more interesting through his comedic quips and knowledge of the hobby.
Dunn takes photos professionally, on the side of his teaching job, and a lot of those are media day photos for the sports teams.
The class is a semester long, and it teaches kids everything they need to know to get started in photography spanning how to adjust your settings, how to get good angles, and how to make sure you have good, quality, photos to release to your audience.
Freshman Madison Justesen started the photography class at the beginning of the new semester. She said it seemed like a fun class to take.
Justesen is my younger sister, and the same class she is in now got me into photography. I take photos for her club volleyball team, and she said it seemed like a fun hobby.
“You seem like you have fun taking pictures, so I wanted to have fun too,” Justesen said.
Justesen mentioned that she enjoys the class and has a lot of fun taking photos despite only being in the class for a few weeks.
She wants to continue taking photos after she’s learned everything she needs to learn, and said that she’d probably focus on taking nature or volleyball photos as a hobby in her free time.
On the other end of the spectrum, Dunn’s class has inspired kids to continue the hobby even after the class has ended.
Junior Soli Landin took photography in the first semester of her sophomore year.
She chose to take it because of her love for taking pictures of her pets as well as the places she’s visited.
She said that the class was really enjoyable and one of her favorites because Dunn made it that way.
“Mr. Dunn is a really amazing teacher, and he knew what he was talking about so it was really easy to pick up information and incorporate that into each of the photographs I took,” Landin said.
Having friends and her older brother in the class made it even better because she was able to learn the basics of photography with people she was comfortable with, eliminating the awkwardness of learning new things with new people.
After the class ended, Landin didn’t really pursue anything with photography, but in the everyday pictures that she takes, she has started to incorporate the skills she learned in photography.
Along with the rising popularity of the hobby, schools offering a class to teach photography is a great way to get kids engaged while also sparking that curiosity of ‘what if’ in those kids that have been thinking about pursuing photography.
I myself have taken Dunn’s photography class, and it certainly sparked the curiosity in me. Now, I take photos of my sister’s volleyball team and my friends as a hobby in my free time, and I’ve been thinking about starting to open up to taking clients as a way to earn a little extra cash.
Photography is a great way for kids to express creativity, and having it in schools lets kids use that creativity while also learning about a new way to make some extra money as they get older.
There is also the fact that you can be creative with what you want to do and focus on something you love, like taking pictures of people, sports, or things in nature.
For people just starting out with photography, the prices are typically cheaper to get the experience needed to professionally pursue photography.
For professionals, they can make a livable wage by taking good, quality photos that are more expensive but a lot better quality than the beginner level photos.
Taking pictures in everyday life is something everyone does nowadays, and with a photography class in high school, kids that love taking pictures can expand their knowledge and learn how to turn those pictures into photographs that everyone is asking them how they got.
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