In Paul Bonner’s Digital Photo class, students learn to take interesting photos, use a camera, edit in photoshop and much more. Bonner’s goal for his digital photography class is to teach the understanding of camera functions, photoshop usage and basic techniques that will help them later on in life.

“Hopefully it will give them some skills to make artistic photography and go out into the working world to get a job in the industry,” said Bonner. His inspiration for projects comes from a variety of sources such as textbooks, Facebook, Pinterest and other websites. Bonner also tries to encourage his students to submit their photos to other websites like guru shots so that their photos can be voted on and get pointers by professional photographers.

“Anyone can submit a photo,” said Bonner. “I’ve had a professional photographer comment on my work.” Getting closer to Halloween, Bonner wanted to give his students freedom to play and explore with different techniques and take some spooky pictures. By using black light, silhouettes, and smashed faces in pickle jars, Bonner’s class tried to capture the spirit of Halloween in their photos.

“The project gets in the spirit of Halloween. I love Halloween,” said Chloe Armstrong (11).
Armstrong used the silhouette and black light technique to capture her favorite picture which she calls “Wendigo”. The freedom of this project allowed her to creatively capture her love for the season and so far has been one of her favorite projects.

“This project has students design subjects into odd or scary poses by using different props and techniques,” said Paige Smith (12). Smith used photoshop and red lighting to accentuate a skull prop. Holding the camera above the subject, she created an interesting pose. Having fun with editing and lighting adjustments, she created her favorite photo.
“We were supposed to do a blacklight portrait, so I decided to use a mirror instead of doing an actual portrait. I thought it would be cooler,” said Kaitlyn Moore (12). Moore describes how she did the project and her creative processes. Because the project was
different, she had to think outside the box to come up with an interesting photo.

“I enjoyed this project more than others because of the freedom,” said Randle Burtoft (12).
Burtoft and a group of his friends worked together in the black light room in order to get a dozen spooky photos. With fun poses, they used teamwork to hold up the props in interesting poses create their photos.

The Digital Photo class does several projects throughout the year, each inspired by different ideas and techniques Bonner shows the class. He associates seasons and other ideas to inspire and give creative freedom to his students in order to help them complete assignments. The upcoming macro project is a project where students will capture a subject up close and make it larger than life. These projects always inspire the students and always leave them excited for future projects.