Photo Diary Exchange with Oblikovna in Slovenia

This fall my photography class has been doing an art exchange with the Oblikovna High School in Slovenia. Working with photography instructor, Uros Acman, both classes started by posting a few images from the diary project on Instagram.

Diary Project (Instagram)

Both schools did the same project, documenting and sharing a bit about themselves and their day to day lives. Over a period of a month they were tasked with creating a series of shots from the topics listed below considering lighting, composition and story telling. 

1. Parents/Siblings/Family
2. Pets
3. Bedroom
4. House/Apartment
5. Favorite Food or What I love to eat.
6. Favorite Book
7. Place I go to be alone.
8. How I feel when I listen to this music.
9. What I do in my free time.
10. Something that represents my country.
11. Something that represents the town, county or state I live in.
12. What I love most about my life.

Here is a website that Uros created with the students' work.

The students at Oblikovna were kind enough to stay after school (5pm-6pm) to talk with our 8am class. They are advanced photography students at an art school comprised of students who are 18-19 years old while our class is a beginner class made up of 16-17 year old students from Sonoma Academy. They asked each other questions about food, music, college, the photo project and learned a few words in Slovenian! We hope to continue our exchange with the Oblikovna school.

Hvala!

Here is a quote from Maike which sums up the project.

"The Slovenia project was my favorite assignment we completed in photography class. I loved that it made me go about my life as a tourist. It let me slow down and take in all that I see in my life. It was very fun to take photos for people in another country, all the way across the world. I got to take photos of things I wouldn't usually think about, which made me appreciate all the parts of my life that I photographed. It was cool to know that the photos I took would be for the student in Slovenia, as a way for them to see into my life, especially since they would not typically have any connection to me if it weren't for this project. It was also fun to see all the photos that were taken by the students from Slovenia. I think that their photos were very different from ours, especially in terms of mood. Most of theirs were taken at night, while ours were almost all taken during the day, This gave many of their pieces a darker mood than ours. They used a lot of flash, too, and had more still life photos. Even though our style was so different from theirs, I still liked looking at their photos on the website and Instagram. My favorite pieces included the umbrella and skateboard pieces, because I think they demonstrate the differences between our California photos versus their Slovenian ones.

Throughout this project, I learned how to use my camera much better. The key to getting good at photography is lots of practice. This assignment helped me exercise my photography skills, which helped me learn to gage what settings to set the camera to faster. In my opinion, this project was very fun and very educational. Through learning how to use a camera better, seeing the Oblikovna students' photos and skills, and skyping with them, I think this project was a great experience and a good example of the opportunities Sonoma Academy offers their students, especially in terms of getting to know people with different cultural backgrounds. Because of this, my favorite part of the project was probably skyping. It was exciting to talk to them in person and learn about the differences and similarities between their lives and ours, whether it was about photography or not. I liked talking to them and asking answering questions the most. I thought the project was very fun to do/make, and I learned much about photography as well as foreign cultures."