How Mood Boards Were Killed For Me SLR Lounge has a decent article on why and how someone should use a mood board. It makes some good points, even if I have historically refused to use it for my own work. TL;DR version: It boils down to copyright theft ruining things, but nuance gets boiled off to get it to a soundbite as simple as that. My first degree is in Art Ed, but to get one of those my university required so many Level 1 courses that specialization just wasn’t a thing, and even then a lot of stuff was left out. (I took a ceramics course, for example, but never got to load a kiln until I was student teaching.) Anything involving graphic design or even taking a class that expected me to set foot in a computer lab was unheard of. (Granted, this was the ’90s. Things have likely changed.) So the first time I encountered anything like a mood board was when Pintrest was new. My experience was … disappointing. I went in thinking Pintrest would be an artist tool, and it had the potential for that, but with no prior training or experience I looked at it like someone seeing scissors who thinks “Yeah, I could probably use that to tighten a screw.” I expected a site where I could share things I made. Instead it was a site where one “pinned” things that helped build inspiration and a sense of a target aesthetic. Oh, and very little effort in regards to crediting creators. A lot of that. Mostly that. If Pintrest was an entirely offline tool, this wouldn’t have been as much of an issue for me. Personal use is, as stated, personal. But Pintrest was and still is public. Boards were shared and copied with no regard for who made what. For over a decade, I’ve said Pintrest is where copyright goes to die. I can see good uses for mood boards, just not publicly viewable online ones. Someone fills a Word (or in my case, Libre Office) doc or plasters a bulletin board with a bunch of color prints? Great, build things up! The moment it goes online, I remember the bad taste in my mouth. There’s a thing happening with my school in partnership with a local organization. We’ve been doing things with them for years now and it’s a lot of fun. This year it’s been suggested we build some mood boards to help set expectations. (See that link in the first paragraph? It’s relevant!) I don’t know if I’ll like the experience, but I need to find a way to have my students learn how things are done without compromising my artistic morals. I’m sure it’s possible. We just need to set some expectations. https://academicaesthetic.com/how-mood-boards-were-killed-for-me/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

News Review: October 2026 Often, when I’m perusing my RSS feeds looking to learn things and perhaps be inspired to write something here, I find an article where I’ve nothing to add or I’ve already given my two cents a half-dozen times or more. Rather than just nod thoughtfully and move on to the next story, I thought I’d share a few of them here. I figure I’ll post a collection like this once a month in order to not overdo it. PetaPixel: Nikon Disqualifies Winner of Small World in Motion Competition for Using AI PetaPixel: This Competition Celebrates New Photographers Who Have Been Shooting for Less Than Three Years PetaPixel: AI-Edited Photos Can Lead People to Form False Memories PictureCorrect: The Simple Manual Mode Formula for Night Photography PictureCorrect: 12 Things to Check When Your Photos Aren’t Sharp PictureCorrect: The Best Aperture Settings for Long Exposure Photography SLR Lounge: How to critique a photograph SLR Lounge: The Ultimate Guide to Long Exposure Portraits SLR Lounge: 7 Steps to Branding For Photographers SLR Lounge: 12 Creative Photography Ideas & Techniques to Try SLR Lounge: 6 Night Photography Ideas & Tips You Need to Try 404 Media: How Schools and Universities Try to Censor Student Journalists EdSurge: Will Kids Pay the Price for AI Panic? EdSurge: How AI Is Breaking the Way We Reward High-Achieving Students Education Next: Is Improving Schools from the Bottom Up the Key to Real Reform? The Hechinger Report: OPINION: Americans are losing faith in shared institutions, but public libraries are one of the few we still trust https://academicaesthetic.com/news-review-october-2026/ #slrlounge #photographyideas #nightphotography #longexposure #tryslr #celebratesnew #portraitsslr #creativephotography #universitiestry #photographypicturecorrect #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Photography Edge Cases PictureCorrect has a fun photography challenge where you take your shots using a 1/10 second exposure time without a tripod. This comes at a time when I’ve been looking for more photo lessons to teach my middle school students. I already have one where they take higher speed “frozen in time” shots and much lower speed shots where a tripod is needed, but this isn’t either of those, technically. That’s one of the neat things about photography. You can get the mechanics down to a science, and most companies do just that, but the art of it frequently comes from knowing all the rules and saying “OK, but what if I did the thing I’m told to never do?” And let’s face it, just like attempts at this challenge, most of the time that’s not going to work out. The point isn’t for it to always work. It almost never will. There’s a reason why I tell my students to absolutely never set a shutter speed for 1/30 or slower without using a tripod, even with the many ways you can mitigate camera shake. But that one time out of 10, or 100, or 1,000 (The aforementioned challenge asks for 30 shots) where it DOES work out, well … you end up talking about that shot for a long time afterwards. So what are the things I tell my students to do, that I could have them intentionally ignore for a lesson? Use a tripod for low shutter speeds. Follow Rule of Thirds. Don’t put your hands in front of the lens. Don’t hold the camera away from your body. Don’t point the camera at a bright light source. Don’t use the built-in flash. Focus before taking the shot. If I spent a bit more time on this I could probably get a year’s worth of lessons based entirely on doing what I say not to do, but this is a start. I’m going to have to type up a few of these. https://academicaesthetic.com/photography-edge-cases/ #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Limit Choices For More Ideas The title seems counterintuitive, but it actually works. R. Schneider’s article over on PictureCorrect gives some great advice on how to get past “photographer’s block.” The advice boils down to looking for specific things, but the examples provided could quickly be turned into a photography unit. In fact, I might do that. It makes me think of a specific photography exercise I was told about (but not required to do) when I took a photo class in college: “Lock yourself in a bathroom until you’ve taken 100 unique photos.” I’m assuming the intentions for that were 100% clean, as I’m sure the bathroom would also be before the first shot was taken. In that class we were fortunately given the less claustrophobic task of agreeing to a single location on campus to go to for our photo assignment. The point of it is to force the photographer to think more and more about interesting composition. The first 50 photos are standard, run-of-the-mill shots, probably a mirror selfie or two. That’s where the obvious options are checked off. After that, things get more interesting. Perhaps the camera’s pointing up from inside the cabinet under the sink. Perhaps medicine cabinet items are arranged into a haphazard tower of expired medications. The last 10-25 shots are golden. I don’t recommend locking yourself in your bathroom, specifically, but limiting yourself to a single location for 100 shots will definitely force you to think, even if you don’t take them all in one go. https://academicaesthetic.com/limit-choices-for-more-ideas/