Discovering Your Creative Vision Youth Guidance Teen Program

Discovering Your Creative Vision
Youth Guidance Teen Program
Summer 2013

The photographs on display are the result of the creative photography class I developed and led for Youth Guidance in Vero Beach this summer. In particular, I was able to work with the teen program that Youth Guidance holds for middle school aged children on Monday evenings.

A group of about 8 of us met for 6 weeks to explore photography and creativity. During the first session I presented the participants with some examples of photography selected to challenge their preconceptions of what a photograph can look like. Colorful images that transform the ordinary into the extraordinary sparked their imaginations.

The following week the students were given point and shoot cameras to share along with the assignment of photographing textures and patterns. Once the students began making photographs their eyes really lit up. Patterns and textures seemed to appear everywhere! Even though it was raining their enthusiasm ran high as they continued to look and explore with their cameras.

The next week I presented their images of patterns and textures back to them. We gathered around my laptop computer and I provided critique aimed at inspiring future explorations while providing the students with some language to discuss the images we were looking at.

The program continued like this for the remaining sessions. Their second assignment was portraits and “selfies” which proved to be lots of fun. Their last assignment was to photograph color as subject. We all enjoyed walking around looking for images about color and the students created some surprising images.

I hope you enjoy the enthusiasm and creativity of these images.

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