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Bright day. Summer. Waking up again.

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Connecting the Learning Process

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photo by Becky Olstad We're zooming through another session of intro and intermediate photography at the ICP and the avalanche of worry and frustration is beginning to feel overwhelming. Apertures, shutter speeds, focus modes, flash ratios, bias controls, clipping indicators, framing options, not to mention working with the scene, feet on the ground, paying attention to light, texture, detail -- and how about actually talking to your subjects? Forgetaboutit. Lightroom? Photoshop? Printing? C'mon.... What are we learning when we learn photography? Let's back it up a bit and take a breath. photo by Colleen Mullins I recently reconnected with a friend from a previous orbit whom I haven't seen in a long time. Colleen Mullins directs the photography program at Art Institutes International Minnesota and we caught up with each other at the Photolucida reviews last month. Her story inspires me to keep inventing the process, to keep challenging the norms. At root she wants to
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Tech Thoughts on Teaching & Learning

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© 2011 Doyeon Kim A question we keep coming back to: how do we balance skill-learning and skill-teaching within the multifaceted conversation about ideas, history, and practice that makes up art education? If you're studying photography, design, new media, or art in any of a dozen guises, this question is at the core of what you're doing — whether you explicitly ask it or not (because the folks who run your course have asked and answered it for you). And if you're teaching photography, design, etc., it's even more critical — because your answer affects, de facto , the lives of everyone who studies with you. There are several ways to divide this up, and many different rationales for arguing this side or that side, but the equation basically comes down to two options: either skill is more important than history and theory, or vice versa. And perhaps a third option — oops, almost forgot — skill, history, and theory might be equally important. Abandoned © 2011 Yar
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Ginko and Hope

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I'm up again. Third try. Hiroshi's ginko seeds are in the dirt this week. A favorite project from this past year is Hiroshi Sunairi's Tree Project . I've documented two previous attempts at growing a seed from the hibaku trees in Hiroshima -- the trees that survived the atomic bomb. Unfortunately, both of those attempts ended badly (view those posts by clicking on the keyword "tree project"). But with Hiroshi's encouragement, I'm going for another attempt. This time I've planted ginko seeds. There are many reasons why this project appeals to me so much. I like the idea of new life generating from the ashes of the bomb site. I also like the idea of nurturing and relationality that is inherent to participation. As well, especially with these seeds, I like the memories that resurface and reconnect me to my South Korean childhood—in the backyard grew a centuries' old ginko that, according to legend, the young emperor played beneath. (The le
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