AKGTC + Breakout: Step 4: Photo-palooza!

There are few things more enjoyable than to stroll around small-town Canada on a 23 C November day! We had the perfect day for our our “photo shoot” – which makes for energetic students and relaxed teachers! Good thing, as this day will be one of the most memorable days of the project and the year for these students.

Tip #1: When we take the photos, we like to have the students visible, but without faces showing. This allows the students to identify themselves, yet it provides enough anonymity that privacy is not a concern. After a photo or two, students quickly catch on and can easily get “into position”.

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Grade 4-5-6 Photo Expedition

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Toward the end of the journey, we did have to implement the rule that if you were too far behind, you missed the photo! As most students do not want to be left out of being famous, this usually caused them to keep up with the pack.

This day certainly feels very different than when I have done similar photo excursions in more populated locations. We don’t count kids. We often have to remind the kids (and adults) that we probably shouldn’t walk down the middle of the street. When the community dog starts following along, most of the kids don’t even stop of acknowledge it.

Tip #2: Be sure to take the opportunity to talk out loud about some basic photo techniques:

• high angle, low angle, eye level shots – advantages of each
• background and foreground
• “staging” a photo (there might be a time or two that this is necessary
• lighting – how does the placement of the sun affect a photo
• size and scale – having students stand in certain places to emphasize the size of an object

Talk to the students about the effect that you are trying to achieve. For example, “I need you to all turn a quarter turn toward the store so that I can get the sign at a better angle.”

Of course, if your students are older, enlist some of them to be the photographers. (Check out the town of Redcliff, AB on the Kids Guide to Canada Map – this was an entire student photography class project.)

Tip #3: Use your phone camera – it takes great pictures. To make things as quick as possible for the next step (labelling or captioning the photos), take your photos right into your cloud storage – they will upload and be ready to use immensely faster. As a bonus, if you have more than one person taking photos, be sure to share the folder, this way everyone’s photos end up in the same place and you don’t have to wait for people to try and send them. To do this;

1. open up your cloud storage app on your phone (Google Drive, One Drive, Drop Box, Google Photos)
2. navigate to the folder where you want to save the images
3. (if you have multiple photographers, make sure this folder is saved with each of them)
4. hit the “+” then “use camera”

Tip #4: Take photos with Breakout EDU clues in mind (if you are like us and doing a combined project). Here are some ideas to consider:

• Colour: take photos of groupings of objects that are multi-coloured like playground equipment; or, take individual photos of different coloured items that would fit into a similar category, such as vehicles, flowers, or in our case, antique machinery
• Numbers: address numbers on houses and businesses are the obvious choice here, but consider street signs, or advertising signs that might include numbers such as dates, etc; be sure that you take a closer-up version of the location with the number prominently visible and obvious
• Logos: take photos of identifiable brands like Tim Hortons, McDonalds, etc.; although non of those signs were available in Acadia Valley we did find Pepsi
• Identifiable Shapes: obviously a square and rectangle are easy finds but look for triangles (a roof line, playground equipment, street signs), circles and stars which are often used as shapes in Breakout Clues

Tip #5: When you get back to class or for another day…. The students LOVE to come back to class and see the photos. As you review them with your class, have the students help you create catchy labels or captions. Come up with some criteria of a good caption (eg. short as possible, necessary info, allows for differentiation between photos). This part is important for a few reasons:

• if you have students later use the photos from a “shared folder” they can easily find what they need
• when you upload photos to the A Kids Guide to Canada Map, this caption is what your audience will see; visitors are more likely to click on “Sunset Playground” than “IMG7042.jpg”!
• labelling photos are creating captions is a real-life skill that is especially necessary if students work on digital platforms

Click here to read about the rest of the steps in our Kid’s Guide to Canada Map + Breakout EDU Community project.