The reason I’ve given you all these nifty little Moleskine notebooks is to encourage you to improve your powers of observation, memory, and reflection. In addition, our projects will involve writing commentaries to go along with our images, and the place to start writing commentaries is by taking lots of notes.
The notes I would like you to practice taking should relate directly to your image making within the framework of this class on photographing multicultural Berlin. Note-taking is an art, not a science, and so be open to noting things you might not have seen or made notes about before.
Methods
Keep one page active for notes on methods of seeing and photographing, noting what you learn about holding your camera, asking people to pose for you, moving forward and back, and also, noting how the experience of photographing a few dozen years leads you to see people and things differently.
Culture
Culture also lives in details, often momentary ones that vanish from our memory — especially when one is asked about it in class! Keep one page active for notes on what is similar and different about Germany in comparison to your country, including the shape of fried potatoes, how children are sometimes carted around in wooden wagons, that you get to open the u-bahn car doors … when you have written down about one zillion of such details you will be done.
Learn how to learn by sharing
Share your notes with your classmates as if you were all cub reporters . Simply ask: “so, what tell me what youI will ask you to share some of your note — to read a few and offer general observations — to the end of finding support in the responses of others. There is no right or wrong way, only better ways!
I’ll be adding more to this post too!
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