Portfolio Play Date
This month I asked my students to finish the statement “Wouldn’t it be cool if…”
Halfway through the course I gave myself permission to do the same.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Portfolio Play Date where we set up a bunch of lights, and backdrops, and creative stations, and just let our imaginations run wild?
I had a feeling this might be magic in the making, so I invited my friend and colleague Kari Whaley and her Mastery class to join. What I didn’t expect was how my students would embrace them as collaborators and eagerly share their knowledge all things media related.
What’s been really cool for me is how much I have learned since. Unsatisfied with the RAW images we took that day, I asked my student Shane Valentine (and my mentor and my creative collaborator) to teach me how to isolate our subjects on a solid white background using Lightroom. I know how to do this painstaking, tedious work in Photoshop, but Shane is a Lightroom guru and I knew he could teach me a few timesaving techniques.
From there I wanted to figure out how to create a seamless, scrolling Instagram carousel using those edited images. I remember seeing a tutorial online from Chris Do so I spent another class period demoing the technique for my students using Apple’s Keynote. I was able to get the basic premise down in a couple of hours, but truth be told, I had to spend another full day tweaking the design to be satisfied enough to post it here.
I toiled with this work. I thought it would come easier, or faster, or without so much trial and error. Moments like these, though frustrating, remind me what it’s like to be a learner.
That Portfolio Play Date was one of the best days of the school year. The energy was palpable and the atmosphere full of possibility. We listened to music and laughed and generally forgot about trying to get it right.
Wouldn’t be cool if we did this every month?
You better believe it! Who knows what we’ll get into?
