Melanie Heinrich Artist
Melanie Heinrich, Artist
Workshops and Tutorials

Photoshop Projects

Teaching Philosophy

Teaching plays a major role in my life. For that reason, I have included this section about my teaching philosophy and style. Let me first say that I am interested in finding untraditional ways to teach. It is more important to meet the students where they are, whether that is an emotional place or a physical place.

As a teacher of art, I believe that students who are interested in the field of art are visual. In fact, I think most people, even those outside the arts, learn better with visual examples to back up the written and spoken word. Using visual examples, I designed an outline for a textbook on photography, "Photo Tips and Tricks". My idea came from a book that I wrote early in my teaching career. I wrote this book for the photography classes that I taught after realizing that the photography books on the market were filled with overly detailed explanations that left the students confused. My book is filled with visual examples to help the student grasp the concepts and visual outcome of the technique used in photography. This way the images describe what the text is saying in a slow, step-by-step, visually descriptive pattern. The text and the images work together and bring the instruction to life. I teach my classes in the same manner, using a projector to visually show a procedure or method. I verbally explain what I am trying to create using a camera or other photography tool and then show the process of achieving that outcome one step at a time. Tutorials also make learning the arts easier and can be done at the student’s own pace, which is advantageous because there is generally more than one student in a classroom. I spend class time giving demonstrations and walking the students through the process via the projected information. I also think it is important to give projects to the students to put the demonstrations to use. While they are working on their projects, I give them one-on-one help. It is important for me as the teacher to always know the ins and outs of the tools that I am teaching. Therefore I am constantly in a state of learning myself. This challenges me and keeps me stimulated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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