Ansel Adams Conservation Photography

This project will be a nine-week unit on Ansel Adams, nature conservation, and digital photography. Students will study the life and work of Ansel Adams and learn what it means to conserve natural resources. Students will document their local natural surroundings using digital photography and create a conservation proposal in the form of a persuasive essay. Using the democratic process the class will choose one conservation project that we will begin. The students will document their efforts through digital photography, a daily journal, and a culminating dramatic presentation to the school.

Week 1: Introduce the artist, Ansel Adams. Students will explore Ansel Adams’ life and artwork using non-fiction literature and the Internet. Students will explore geography through discussion of the different locations he photographed. Students will create a short essay on the life of Ansel Adams.

Week 2: Students will present their essays to the class. Throughout this, nature conservation will be mentioned many times. We will discuss what it means to be a nature conservationist and why someone would want to conserve nature. We would learn about the natural resources in our state. Students will be given digital camera training and we will take a nature walk through the local area taking pictures of the nature we see. We will also be looking for things that we could do to improve our natural environment.

Week 3: We will discuss what we can do to help our community conserve our resources. Students will create a conservation project persuasive essay. They will present them to their peers and we will vote on which project we would like to take on.

Week 4-8: We will enlist the help of parents, administrators, staff, and community members to begin our project. We will write about our project in a daily journal, documenting our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. We will also be creating a photo journal documenting the project. We will wrap up the project at the end of week 8 and reflect on how successful we were.

Week 9: Students will create a dramatic performance to enhance their digital photography that we will present to the school.