Portrait workshop for kids was a success

Yesterday I survived a workshop for kids in a creative class--the kids (my daughter being one of them) and camera survived as well! The idea of the class teacher was to have old-fashioned portraits of just the kids' heads; they would then cut the heads out, paste them on paper made looking old with diluted black ink and then draw or cut-and-paste old-fashioned clothes and attributes, all in black, greys and white. I gave a short introduction about differences between photography 'then' and 'now', and a little about ligth and shadow in portraits. Then the teacher handed round some copies from real old portraits (found on Flickr).

It was quite nice to do, but the real fun started when I was busy quickly converting the photographed portraits to black-and-white and printing them (I love working with Lightroom!). For then my daughter got hold of my camera and started making modern portraits of her friends! They had gotten the message about differences between then and now, and they had fun taking pictures and modelling. Perhaps that fun with photos shoots was an even more important result than my portraits rolling out of the printer.

This time's picture is a slide from the presentation I made. You won't get to see portraits of children whose parents did not get a chance to agree to their pictures being published.

A little late -- Building and handball

Dear folks, sorry for not updating this blog last weekend: work, work, work! The work took place in the Copenhagen Business School, by all accounts one of Europe's top business schools--but that was not my reason for being there and even less was it my reason for mentioning it here. I mention it here, because it offers great opportunities for photography of architecture. Next time when I go there, I'll bring camera (and tripod!). For the moment, I just have an illustration taken from someone else.

Photo activities last week were there, but rather to make a visual memory of my daughter's school activities than as serious search for the ultimate photo. I must admit that for most people, the memories are more important than the photographic quality.
The school activity was a handball tournament among some of the village schools. Sports photography proves to be quite a different discipline: suddenly you miss the 2.8/300 or similar lenses of professionals. The one here was made without flash (not used, because it might disturb the players) at ISO 800, and is better at showing the speed and action (hey, I succeeded in panning precisely with the player's body!) than at portraying the star player of the team: the picture shows his back rather than the front side--why wasn't he a left-hander? ;-)