I'm trying to teach my students something important: that photos, especially ones taken with a cell phone, can change the way things look. Even if the photos are good, they might not show things exactly as they are. It was hard for me to understand this until I started painting outside. Then I saw the difference between what I saw and what the camera saw.

It's all about interpretation. As an artist, I interpret what I see and paint it. But cameras also interpret things when they take photos. They usually make the same choices in every photo. For example, they make edges sharper, and they might make things look darker or lighter.

For this painting, I took a photo with my cell phone, which has a good camera. Then I painted in my studio and changed the photo to show my students how to correct a photo from a camera.

Now I need to help my students understand this, so they can make their own artistic choices instead of just copying what the camera sees. It's still a work in progress.