Photography: Camera & Craft

Learn to control the camera instead of letting it control you.

About This Course

This is where photography stops being automatic. You'll move off "auto" and start making real decisions: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and what each one actually does to an image. It's technical, but it's never just technical. Every setting is a choice about what the photo should feel like. By the end of term, you're not just operating a camera. You're directing one.

What You'll Create

A technical folio demonstrating control of aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
A ten-image project on a self-chosen subject.
A brief artist statement on the project and the choices behind it.

Course Details

Age Range: 12-14
Term: Term 1
Schedule: Mondays, 5:30pm
Duration: 10 weeks
Price: $480
Spots Available: 8 of 8

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What You'll Learn

• You'll stop guessing settings and start choosing them on purpose.
• You'll control depth of field to direct attention in a frame.
• You'll freeze or blur motion, on purpose.
• You'll learn basic photo editing: what to adjust, and what to leave alone.
• You'll learn to stick with one subject long enough to actually understand it.

The Support You'll Get

You won't be handed the answer. You'll be shown how to find it.

Your practitioner has spent years making their own work, and their own mistakes. In the studio they work alongside you: asking the right questions, pointing out options you hadn't seen, helping you push through the moment you get stuck. The ideas stay yours. The decisions stay yours. They're there so you're never finding the way through alone.

Week by Week

Week 1: Taking the camera off auto. Aperture. Depth of field and what's in focus.

Week 2: Shutter speed. Freezing and blurring motion.

Week 3: ISO and light. Shooting in difficult conditions.

Week 4: Putting it together. Manual mode, full control.

Week 5: Composition revisited. Using technical control to make better choices.

Week 6: Starting a project. Choosing a subject worth ten photographs.

Week 7: Shooting and editing the project, building a final set.

Week 8: Exhibition. Public showing, families attend.

Every course ends with an exhibition

Celebrate what you created with the people and our community. Every term concludes with a presentation or exhibition of your work: a chance to share your process, your ideas, and what you've made.

Your Instructor

Andrew Chew

Visual Communication & Photography

Andrew studied Visual Communication, majoring in Photography. Twenty years on, he's worked as a designer, photographer and gallery director, running No Vacancy Gallery and later directing YAVA. He built Assembly because the system around young people kept treating creativity as decoration instead of discipline. He teaches the way he's worked: try, fail, try again. Back your ideas. Test them. Push through when it's not working yet. He's spent years making his own work and his own mistakes, and in the studio he works alongside you, showing you how to look, how to frame, how to decide what matters, then make it.