Attract with Pictures – part II

  3. Aside from composition, look at light. Sunny is helpful, but not always. Dark shadows will hide the face and look unattractive. Cloudier is also fine, with less contrast, but make sure that the camera or phone can record in the dimmer light. Always hold the camera as steady as possible. Brace your arms as you hold the phone away from you, to avoid blurry images. When using a camera, brace it on the face for extra stabilization. Press the shutter slowly.

  4. Tell a picture story. One photo can tell a story, but four, five, 10, or more can amplify it. We call it a “photo essay” and each image tells another aspect of the story, in a way that one image can’t convey. Look around for a subject that lends itself to this. Stories have a beginning, middle, and end. Photo essays can cover some or all of the sequences of a given subject. Experiment: try to do create something quick and intriguing during your Lag b’Omer outing.

When back at school, ask students, teachers, volunteers, and staff to submit some of their better photos. In class, students can write short notes to accompany and explain their pictures and, equally valuable, their motivation for taking it. These can be used on your school website, to accompany press releases or in end of the year montages. Classroom teachers might be so thrilled with the results that they will want to involve the children in creating a montage just for their class.

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Judah S. Harris is an accomplished photojournalist and fine art photographer. His photo essays have been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, and Country Living Magazine. Judah’s photography documenting Jewish life has been exhibited at the Jewish Museum and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York City, Beth Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv, and the Klutznick National Museum in Washington, D.C. To learn more, 
visit his website or to explore Judah’s evocative photo essay about the educational process, click here.
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Click here to read Attract with Pictures – part I

To learn more about crafting compelling mission statements, creating memorable narratives, or any of my other day school marketing and development services, please feel free to send me an email or call me at 516.569.8070.

Kol tuv,

Candace Plotsker-Herman