Through the Lens

In Photography class, the first days of school began with a song. Upper School students listened to the Playing for Change version of Black Pumas’ Colors. The song is a powerful piece that weaves together voices, instruments and perspectives from around the world. Photography Teacher Emily Arnold challenged the students to make parallels between the song, the collaboration and photography. 

“From there, we set out to make something of our own,” Arnold said. “Each photo class spun a wheel of theme words, and their challenge was to capture a single idea through their lenses.” Two classes landed on ‘Hope.’ Another landed on ‘Belonging.’ The task was deceptively simple: illustrate the word with a photograph.

Although there were not enough images to create a video solely on that project, Arnold incorporated images from additional activities the students completed throughout quarter one as they learned about manual photography, including water balloon popping, fruit drops, bubble blowing, bubble gum blowing, light painting, and miniature scenes. She also added some images from Photography II students’ “Cropped” projects. Arnold shared, “We have contests like the show Chopped with different thematic photo prompts each week and the results have been impressive.”

The result is this video.