cascom Loc: Redmond

The Stadium High School yearbook or photo teacher might be a good contact

John Battle Loc: Tacoma, WA, USA

Thank you, All, for your helpful suggestions and well-thought-out answers. I'm sharing these with my daughter, and she really appreciates them, and I think she will be following up on several of your ideas.

cascom Loc: Redmond

John - one more idea. If she has a web page, post a photo of the week or month for the other students to admire. See if the local paper will allow a student to go on an assignment with a photographer. Maybe one of the weeklies would have room for a photo.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

There is a tendency in photography education tk jump straight to the hardest and least interesting topics...exposure and other technical drudgery. This doesn't go very far with kids, especially kids who are already taking very serviceable photographs with their cell phones.

A fundamental tenet of a good education process is to meet students where they currently are and build from that point. This would suggest that you ignore exposure and manual controls and other technical baggage for a while.

Instead, start with storytelling. Show them that they can shoot in horizontal orientation, if they haven't discovered that already. Have discussions of subject matter, story, and viewer interest. This will lead naturally to learning the elements of composition as they start recognizing that some photographs are stronger than others.

As they develop a desire to make "good" photographs, they are going to start wanting to take photographs in more difficult situations. This can lead to using dedicated cameras, learning exposure control, and even choosing different focal lengths.

Good photographs should be good images of interesting subjects in interesting environments. Students should be working on filling the entire frame with engaging material. I strongly advise against talking about faddish cheats and shortcuts. An example of this is bokeh, which is only a mindless cheat to eliminate the need to get the surroundings right.

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

Well said, high school students are much more interested in learning "the basics" when it directly applies to their own photos.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Same principle as the New Orleans Jazz great who replied to an interviewer who found out he also liked Country and Western (this was decades ago) and asked "Why?":

"It's the stories, man, the stories!"

Stories will get them into photography more, and then they will want to move on to more advanced gear and techniques, so they can expand their stories beyond the basics and produce great stories made up of great images.