Intro to Photography
Class Time: 1:45 - 2:45, Spring Semester
Grade Level: 7th - 12th
Instructor: Bernadette Dalgetty
Contact Information: bmarie1024@gmail.com
Course Description: Since its invention, photography has been used for documentation, storytelling, exploration, artistic expression, marketing, and much more—as is often the case with meaningful art forms. This course introduces students to
photography as an artistic medium while also exploring its broader cultural and historical impact.
Students will learn foundational photography skills including camera settings, composition, visual storytelling, basic editing, and an introduction to photographic styles and history. Throughout the course, special emphasis will be placed on developing an artistic eye and learning to observe the world more attentively through the lens of a camera.
Class time will include lectures, discussion, weekly photo assignments, and a final project designed to help students deepen their understanding of photography as both a craft and an art form. While the course will briefly touch on photography as a possible career path, the primary goal is to help students discover how photography can be used as a creative way to notice, appreciate, and reflect the beauty present in everyday life and in the human experience.
Tuition: $200
Class Size: 5-15
Course Materials:
- For Note Taking
- Blank Notebook
- Students are encouraged to purchase a notebook with unlined pages, bulleted pages, or even graph paper to take notes and sketch out ideas and foster creativity
- Writing Materials
- Pens, pencils, markers are all acceptable
- 3-ring binder for handouts
- Camera
- While a DSLR or mirrorless digital camera is preferred (as it allows for more control when creating an image), it is understood this is an investment for students and their families, therefore students will simply need access to any camera (phone, point and shoot, etc).
- Students will also need to be able to load their images to a computer to email to the instructor for certain projects and assignments.
- Any other necessary materials will be provided via email and in person by the instructor.
Teacher Qualifications: By God’s sense of humor and abundant creativity, Bernadette Dalgetty’s career path has not been a straight line. She studied at the Franciscan University of Steubenville — where she met her husband and business partner — and graduated with a degree in Biology. She later earned a degree in Nursing from DeSales University. Throughout those years, however, her love of photography was always present: from borrowing her father’s 35mm film camera to capture the beauty of nature and her younger siblings, to photographing events for her high school newspaper, to documenting memories throughout college. After she and her husband received their first “professional” camera as a Christmas gift, what began as a shared hobby eventually grew into their photography business. Over the past fifteen years, Bernadette has photographed more than 300 weddings along with countless families and a wide range of other projects. She is especially drawn to the storytelling and sense of legacy that photography can provide—capturing moments that reflect the beauty of everyday life and the relationships that shape it.