Spring Semester Professor Feedback

I recently received feedback from my students in my Photo I and Photo II classes at Concordia this past semester. The part where students checked the box for "strongly agree," "agree," "undecided," "disagree," or "strongly disagree" came back in my favor. I was above the university average for all categories except one (which was about the relevance of the course among all majors):

Photo I. Click the image for a larger view.


Photo II. Perfect marks. Again, click the image for a larger view.

I always like it when students leave written feedback, but my older (more jaded and ready for graduation) Photo II students didn't leave any. And my Photo I students just left a few remarks:

Simple but sweet comments.

Student Juried Exhibition at Concordia University

The student juried exhibition was earlier this month at Concordia, and here are some photos of the show. I've had about 1/3 to half of these students in my Photo I, Photo II, or Advanced Photo classes over the years, and some of the photographs are from projects in my classes. I love to see their work exhibited!!

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That bigger image of Aidan's was from a great project in my class.




An intriguing photo on the left, and a panoramic image
from another former photo students on the lower right.










Two current photo students with prints near off to the left.










The closing reception was packed! I was just there for a few moments, but I snapped these last 2 pics.

Congrats students! Good luck with finals coming up!

Two Former Students Exhibiting

Two of my students just had a exhibition come down in the smaller "teaching" gallery at Concordia University. They were in my Photo I and Photo II classes, and one of them was in Advanced Photography with me as well.

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The poster for the exhibition.


All of the work.


Lee's work.








Haylee's work.

Nice job Haylee and Lee!

Film Processing: All Successes with One Strange Failure!

We had a 100% success rate in processing film in my Photo I class earlier this week:

Washed tanks after processing.


Film drying!

But one strange thing happened. Most of our white reels have the small "teeth" which are tricky to load. I have 2 reels from my personal stash that I brought in years ago that have the big "teeth" that are easier to load (and easier to keep the film from jumping off the reel as you're loading). One of my students was trying some practice film with one of my reels, and suddenly, it stopped pulling up the film. We noticed the little ball bearing had fallen out. I gave him a standard "smaller tooth" reel, and we kept working.

After they were done processing, I notice what had happened... Normally, the side of the reel looks like this, with a little white "cap" holding in the ball bearing:

But the white cap had fallen off on the other side:

Luckily, I was able to find the cap...

... but not the ball bearing. I might harvest a ball bearing from a different reel and see if I can super glue the cap back on. We'll see if that MacGyver fix will work!

First B&W Prints from Photo I

Here are a few prints from the start of last semester's Photo I class at Concordia University. We had just finished "The Photographer's Eye" by John Szarkowski, and students worked to make photos in the 5 ways he wrote about in that essay. It was every student's first time working with a 35mm camera and printing photographs in a traditional darkroom.

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Ella: detail


CeeDee: detail


Raina: vantage point


Grace: detail


Emily: vantage point


Megan: the thing itself


Natalie: detail

A Design "Pop-Up" Exhibition at Concordia Gallery

It's nearly time for finals! Last week, the design department at Concordia University held a "pop-up" exhibition in the gallery showcasing work of current design students. Here are a some photos of the exhibition, including a few from the opening reception last week:

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The following are some pics from the opening reception.

Nice work, design students! I hope you were able to make some sales!