What separates a great photograph from a snapshot?

In our online Art of Photography course, students learn that good design doesn’t just happen. A snapshot captures a moment, whereas a great photograph captures it beautifully by being composed. All of the elements are chosen and arranged to fit together. Elements such as line, texture, and pattern can add visual interest and heighten a photograph’s drama.

The students discussed examples from photographers Pamela Pecchio and Aaron Siskind, whose work is in our permanent collection, exploring how actual and implied texture can create a visually engaging image, and also created photographs of their own.

Examine these images and consider students’ choices in composing each photograph. Whether you notice the skewed worm’s-eye view of brightly patterned ribbons or the rhythmic patterns of leaves growing between pipes, your eye is drawn through the composition.

The students’ work will be on display in the Museum’s Education Lobby from January 11 through April 14. Pecchio’s work is featured in the exhibition Dwelling: Interiors by Page H. Laughlin and Pamela Pecchio, opening February 10 in the adjacent North Carolina Gallery.

Art of Photography is one of five online semester courses offered through the Museum that students can take for high school credit.

Teenagers tend to see the world a little differently—but that’s not a bad thing! A distinct point of view can be an asset to a photographer. The Museum’s recent Digital Photography Workshop encouraged high schoolers to express their creativity in a variety of media.

The workshop combined a photo shoot in the Museum Park with computer manipulation and hands-on art projects. First the teens took a look at our current photography exhibition, Landscape Sublime, and saw how North Carolina artist John Menapace transformed ordinary daily spaces into extraordinary arrangements of light and form. They took their cameras into the Park to capture worm’s-eye views of oaks covered with kudzu and the geometric angles of the amphitheater stage.

Back inside, they got their hands on computer software to manipulate photographs, distorting and enhancing their own photos for a dramatic and sometimes humorous effect. The students experimented with printing on unusual surfaces and combining photos of themselves with works of art for mixed-media projects.

They drew inspiration from Anthony Goicolea’s Sea Wall, a sculptural installation of photos, glass bottles, and glass blocks, to print photographs of each other on acetate for a group installation, which they then photographed. They looked at vanitas paintings in the Dutch collection—still lifes that symbolize the emptiness and transience of earthly things—and then created another three-dimensional installation using still-life objects. Their work graced the Blue Ridge patio for just a short time, but the images live on in students’ photographs.

We invite you to peer behind the lens for a new perspective of the Museum.