Norah Head Lighthouse

Last year I was lucky enough to spend three full days at Norah Head Lighthouse with my Master Class in photography. I think we were talking about colour. How it works and somehow we ended up on creating abstract photographs.

We spent each night and morning photographing. Just walking out the door and photographing on the headland, the rocks at low tide and on the beaches. Not once did we get into our vehicles.

Breakthroughs were made that week. Doors were opened and new possibilities were explored. It marked a turning point.

It was one of my highlights from last year. Though as always, life seems to be so wonderful as to keep giving them to me over and over.

Yesterday I was reading up, again on magenta. As many of you may know that magenta isn’t a colour in the spectrum of light. ROYGBIV. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. Yet we see it, because it is made up of a mixture of colours. Nearly all of the colours we see are made up of mixtures of colours from the visible spectrum. So I think the argument about it not existing has some pretty big flaws…

Did you know that brown is just a dark orange. Or that pink is a light red, or a barbie pink has a bit more of the violet in it. Fascinating stuff.

What is more important though is that the colour wheel we were taught in school isn’t as helpful for visual artists and photographers as we were led to believe. To understand visual composition we need a colour wheel that has blue and yellow opposite each other, and red and green opposite as well.

To understand processing, printing and using software, we need a different colour wheel again.

I can’t wait to get my teeth back into this again. It is probably another month or so before I to this in my composition course for visual artists (photographers in particular). It has been so wonderful to create new presentations, to research further, and start afresh with this series. Topics I breezed through in a couple of hours in my Master Class, I am now spending weeks on, explaining carefully what is going on visually.

Art teacher. Hm… it seems a lifetime ago that I completed my Graduate Diploma in Secondary Art Education at Sydney University. I was lucky as I snuck through on the last year that the old course from Alexander Mackie was still available. After my year it was totally abandoned and replaced with a course based on theory rather than practice. No more learning to fire a kiln, or use an etching press. No more classroom management skills. Instead they lecture you endlessly about the theory of education. Was the demise of a very very good course.

Not much similar to the Bachelor of Teaching (Adult Vocational Education) that I taught for the University of Technology, Sydney. It was also an Alexander Mackie course. Designed specifically for tradies to learn how to teach at TAFE NSW. It was full on practical. Learn how to write on a white board and make educational resources. How to dissect skills, knowledge and attitudes into learning outcomes, and create teaching sequences. Again it was abandoned for a theoretical degree in education. I mentored a few of my work mates through this new course. Again it was stripped bare of what teachers really need to learn.

I studied my photography at Alexander Mackie too. The left over degree in arts, that was eventually picked up by the University of NSW and again stripped of its foundations and replaced with ‘Fine Art’. Do you know I was awarded “The most outstanding advanced colour photographer” in my graduating year. Wiping the floor with straight distinctions in every photography subject, and topping the year with my grades.

This dismanteling of the education system that was great to something that isn’t, is applauding behavior. Decisions made by accountants and financial controllers not educators. It is actually what is currently wrong with the world in my opinion. We have let this left brained logical financial thinking take over the humanities and other people centered areas. All to the detriment of our society.

We must strive for a balance. Between both types of thinking. We must celebrate and teach people skills.

We continue down this road of abandoning humanities even further is seems as our Australian federal government increases the barriers to studying them even further.

Alexander Mackie what happened to you? You were once a shining light in Sydney. There are so many of us from those doors in Paddington, or the other campuses. It had so many iterations.

We really need a specialist teacher training college again. There was once a time I would have told you my destiny was to run such a place. But how have things changed.

I used to tell people my vocational specialty was teaching teachers, training trainers and educating educators. It is what I specialised in with my Masters Degree in Adult Education.

Those days have passed. Now I have returned to art. Teaching something I am so passionately in love with.

There is so much great joy in teaching for oneself, without curriculum’s. Watching students grow and blossom.

Len’s Club has really turned out to be my new classroom. I envisioned a place like netflix where you could dip into videos and articles to learn what interests you. Yet I have discovered that I am teaching an enthusiastic group of photographers, committed to learning and developing their skills.

Teaching is my life. I teach with passion. Caring and support. I encourage. Photographers blossom.

Now you can learn from me from anywhere in the world. Amazing isn’t it.

If you haven’t had a look at Len’s Club or considered it, and you want to keep working on your skills as a photographer, an artist, and to work on your photography? Then joining today is an amazing opportunity.

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It is time for us to revisit our marketing for this, as it is clearly no longer just a series of videos and articles. It is clearly a valid and valuable extension of my photography school. Len’s School.

Come and join us. I hope to see you there…

Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2020