At the start of this documentary project, I was very anxious to pick my teacher and one that came to mind was Mr. Arruda my chemistry teacher. I was planning to choose him for this project because he was one of those teachers where you could talk to without feeling too scared about what you were gonna say. I planned out my images by roughly sketching out what I wanted to shoot, I then went over to his classroom to shoot a couple of images that I could knock out during his prep period. During fifth period which is the period that I have him in, I came in with my camera and took a couple of photos of him teaching the class. I wanted to capture the essence of my subject by finding shots of him working with other students in his space to show his determination and strive as a teacher. Some details that I am most proud of in my photos are the ones where he’s teaching the class and he’s helping someone one on one and I got a really nice shot of that. However, I feel like I could’ve done better with focusing and messing around with the other settings as I felt as though these images weren’t as good as I thought they would be. One significant hurdle I faced was trying to get good images without it feeling to forced or posed, however it worked just fine and I got really great photos. I resolved this just by taking photos as he was in his nature and told him to pretend like I wasn’t there. One thing I learned was how to properly interview a person and it’ll help me along the way to improve my social skills in general.

This is one of my favorite images as it captures Arruda in his natural environment where he’s teaching a kid. If I could start over, I would most definitely want to take more pictures and maybe expand on my interview a little more. I personally enjoyed this project and I would do it again in a heartbeat.