USA three day photography course for kids & teens at Waddesdon Manor
We love running courses at new venues, and Waddesdon Manor was no exception. A beautiful house with perfect grounds for learnings and taking amazing photographs! Here’s what we got up to!
Day one: Aperture
Day one was all aperture. We started the class by talking about camera mechanics- how the camera makes a photo and what changing the aperture does to the image. A good way to practice this was to photograph lego men!
Do you see the different variations of blur in the background of each photo? Thats because each student has used a different f/number!
Time to take this new skill outside and around the grounds of Waddesdon Manor! First up, the rose garden!
How beautiful are these photos taken by the kids & teens?
Throughout the rest of the day we set several aperture-based challenges for the students to complete whilst walking around the grounds.
Next up we did a bit of still life photography by photographing fruit and veg in creative ways. This sounds a bit strange but the photos can be really great!
We ended the day with taking some portrait photographs:
Day two: Shutter Speed
Day two was all about Shutter speed! Fast and slow and how each one makes a difference to the photograph. Waddesdon Manor has some amazing water fountains which are perfect for practicing shutter speeds!
Next up we asked the kids and teens to photograph their friends in action- running, jumping and spinning, we wanted them to freeze the moment!
Have you ever tried to photograph bubbles floating around in the air? Its hard! Even with a fast shutter speed, it takes a lot of patience to get the photo you really want. But when you do, they are amazing!
The next shutter speed challenge was to draw with light! A favourite with all our kids and teens every time! We head back inside, made the room dark and played with using slow shutter speeds to capture the movement of the light from the torches:
A really great way to capture spooky photographs is to shine the light on your face, move a little and repeat- this is what they look like:
The next challenge for the kids and teens was to use a slower shutter speed to capture a panned photograph. This means that when your subject runs, you follow them with your camera instead of staying still. Doing this creates a lot of movement in the photo whilst keeping the subject nice and sharp.
Lastly, we asked the students to try and capture they’re shadow in the air… don’t know what we mean? Take a look!
Day three: Composition and exhibition
For the final day focused on composition and framing a photograph. Not only is this a great skill to learn to train your eye, it also means they students had an opportunity to put to practice all they had learnt over the last 2 days. For the majority of the day we were out and about around Waddesdon Manors grounds. We kept setting the kids and teens photographic challenges to get them to think about their composition. These included: rule of thirds, frame within a frame, shadows, edge of a frame and reflections. Check out some of their best photos from the day:
At the end of the day we split the group into two smaller groups so that half the group could start setting up the exhibition whilst the other half were set more challenges. Then we switched half way. So whilst half were choosing and printing their favourite photos for the exhibition, the other group head back outside. Have you ever tried to make a toy dinosaur look life size? That was what we challenged the students to do!
We invited all the kids & teens parents to the final hour of the day to see all their photos displayed in an exhibition. Each student talked about their photos and why they chose them. It was great and their images looked amazing!
Well done to all of our amazing Waddesdon Manor photography course kids and teens! We are super impressed with all the photos taken over the 3 days. If you’d like to see more, we’ve posted a short video for each day on our youtube channel! Click here to watch them now!
If you’re interested in learning more about our upcoming photography courses for kids and teens, check out our courses page!