Photography: Photographer's Voice

A camera is easy to use. Having something to say with it isn't.

About This Course

By this age, the technical questions are mostly solved. The real question is what to photograph, and why. This course is built around a single sustained body of work: a personal project, developed and refined over a full term, shot, edited and printed with the same rigor a working photographer would bring to a real assignment. This is not a hobby class. It's the closest thing to a professional photographic practice you can have access to at your age.

What You'll Create

A complete photographic body of work on a self-chosen subject, ten to fifteen images.
A final edited and sequenced set selected for the end of term exhibition.
A written artist statement on the project, its intent and its process.

Course Details

Age Range: 15-18
Term: Term 1
Schedule: Mondays, 7:15pm
Duration: 10 weeks
Price: $480
Spots Available: 8 of 8

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What You'll Learn

• You'll learn to hold onto one idea for ten weeks instead of chasing a new one every session.
• You'll sustain a visual idea across multiple images, not just one.
• You'll gain advanced technical control: lighting, exposure, manual settings, under pressure.
• You'll learn that editing is a creative decision, not just deleting the bad ones.
• You'll learn to talk about your own work without over explaining or underselling 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: What is a body of work? Finding a subject worth eight weeks of attention.

Week 2: Visual research. How other photographers have approached similar subjects.

Week 3: First shoot. Testing the idea.

Week 4: Reviewing and refining the direction. Second shoot, going deeper.

Week 5: Technical focus: light and control, on location or in studio.

Week 6: Editing. Cutting a large set down to a strong set.

Week 7: Sequencing. How the order of images changes the story.

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.