Finding Focus

Fostering Creativity Through a Lens

TAKE YOUR BEST SHOT 1.  Don’t cut your subject in half, cut it into thirds. 2.  Make your subject feel comfortable. Shoot photos of friends. 3.  Let personalities shine through — avoid posed shots. 4.  Take more than one photo. You’ll end up with at least one good one. 5.  Explore perspectives — Move around, go high, go low, get close and go further away. 6.  Always have a camera with you. The best opportunities happen when least expected. 7.  Look for textures, shapes, forms, illumination and color. 8.  Learn how to use your camera for the best results. 9.  Remember, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. Have fun!

You may have to duck when you enter Mike Hunziker’s California surfer-style photography class because the grass skirting hanging from the ceiling and lining the perimeter of the room is just low enough to brush your head. Jack Johnson croons softly from an unseen stereo and the walls are covered with student art — a visual feast of smiles, sunlit trees, captured solitude and stolen moments. Even cutout silhouettes of students are tacked to the painted ceiling.

Students agree it’s the most sought-after class at Key Peninsula Middle School in Gig Harbor. The same holds true at many other schools. And now that cameras have gone to a more-efficient digital format, the shutterbugs can take more pictures than ever; unlike they could with costly film. Now, when they mess up, they can retake it until they get it perfect.

Hunziker, who has been teaching for 27 years and teaching photography for the last six, sees the amazing potential in students because they are at the perfect age for seeing beauty in the world that adults may overlook. “They’re at the pinnacle of their imagination with education. If you over teach middle school kids, you’re going to ruin the product,” he said. “Photography is different from traditional fine arts. Every kid, with a basic set of rules, can take a good photograph and create a creative atmosphere.”

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