Photography class for 10 year old

[Legomom]

My ds10 is buying a new camera and I thought that it would be fun for him to do photography for art this year. Does anyone know of any good programs for this age? Thanks!

[cottonmama]

I've been teaching myself photography, so my experience comes from that rather than from helping my children learn photography. So I can recommend books but not necessarily full curricula. That being said, I would say a lot of it depends on how serious and technical a study he wants this to be.

 

If he's just interested in learning how to frame the picture artistically, I like the National Geographic Photography Field Guides. He might want to think about whether there's a particular kind of photography he'd like to focus on to start out -- landscapes, portraits, black and white, still life.

 

If he's really serious about photography, the standard book that's recommended for learning the technical skills for photography is Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. This book will be most useful if the camera he bought allows him to adjust settings like aperture and shutter speed. Or if he's naturally technically minded, he may just enjoy reading it to learn what decisions his automatic camera is making behind the scenes.

 

He may also find it useful to learn some photo editing skills. Depending on your budget, you may want to buy a student edition of Photoshop, or simply download the Gimp for free and let him loose. There will not be much in the way of books to help him learn Gimp but there are tutorials online.

 

A full curriculum designed for photography students might still be the best thing for him at his skill and interest level... but unfortunately I don't have any I can recommend.

[cheryl h]

My dd12 did 4H Photography this last year and it was a huge hit. Great Experience! They learned many of the technical aspects like exposure, etc, as well as composition, and practiced taking pictures of different kinds like landscapes, textures, people, etc. They get to submit up to six photos in the county fair, no more than two per category. This year my dd12 got blue ribbons on all 6(which means it meets all the technical criteria), and got 2 Grand Champion Ribbons(best in category), and 2 Reserve Grand Champion Ribbons(2nd best in category) as well. She gets to take 2 pictures to the state fair (she chose her Grand Champion pics). In our area to participate in 4H is only $30 per family per year and they can pariticipate in as many clubs as they want. The usually only meet once a month per club. I found it to be a pricless experience for my dc.