Vivian Maier Project- COVID-19 edition

2020 Spring Vivian Maier Album

This semester is like nothing I have ever experienced.  Covid-19 (coronavirus) took away the second half of the semester.  We went to online learning. That was not a huge hurdle for me as my classes have been using Google Photos and Google Classroom for years.  I did have to figure out Zoom meetings and how to lecture to a video camera.  Zoom classes are a poor substitution to the real thing.  In the spring semester, because of the winter weather, I lecture pretty heavy until March and then we start doing class photo walks.  We did one class photo walk the week before spring break.  My class did the rest of their assignments by themselves at home in quarantine.  They did a good job but it was not the same. You run out of stuff to photograph at home.  You run out of people to photograph.  Every year one of the main assignments is the Vivian Maier project where they have to take 600 photos of just everyday life.  Then they have to pull out their 100 best photos.  This year I dropped the number to 450 and then dropped it to 300.  I made them pick out their 75 best photos to caption.  It is strange to look at my VM project.  The first half is pretty straightforward but after spring break you can tell something happened.   Lots more photos from home and way too many flower photos.  It is just what I had to work with.  I actually made a Covid-19 photo folder for these times and I also made a Covid-19 email folder that I kept all the school announcements in and other strange emails that I want to use to remember this time.  I am glad that we did what we needed to do to stay safe.  I am really sorry that I didn't get to know my Spring class as well as I normally would.  I am praying that things will be better and that we will have a much more normal fall semester.

I was inspired to blog again by a Kathy Dillion blog post on the HU Center for Teaching and Learning blog.  For the last year or so I have been writing in a journal and I really have enjoyed that.  I really like this format but it seems to take more time and effort and I don't really enjoy the layout parts of the blogging process.  However, I have blogged off and on for a really long time to I guess I need to pick it up again and see if I can make it a habit again.  I am thankful for Kathy's inspiration and I am thankful for the journey I had with my Spring 2020 class of photographers.