Loyola School has kick-started a project that focuses on improving the visual sense of its students. The mentoring programme was ideated and led by young photographer and filmmaker Arun Kunjunny, a former student of the school. “My idea was to mentor the kids who are members of the photography club, on a long term basis and gradually improve their visual skills and civic sense through the medium of photography,” says Arun.
As a start, the school organised a one-day workshop for the 16 plus members of the club. The workshop had two major segments, with Arun focussing on the visual side of photography, which includes introducing various types of lighting and talking about rules of composition and how to train the eye to see colours, patterns and so on and cinematographer Prasanth Mohan. focussing on the technical aspect, including the settings for the camera and how to judge the right setting for a particular scenario. In the afternoon, the kids were split into groups of two or three, depending on their choice and were asked to click pictures to present a photo story. This was aimed at being a preliminary exercise to see how they thought together visually as a group. “The results were quite interesting and we reviewed the images and gave them feedbacks too. At the end of the session, we shared our email addresses and phone numbers with the kids and asked them to send us their clicks for feedback and mentor them to gradually turn them into individuals with better visual skills,” explains Arun.
He adds that the next phase would probably be to make a good and diverse collection of their best images and conduct a photography exhibition in the school. A photo tour of Loyola’s extensive campus is also on the anvil.
