I wish I had some samples of a former student's work, but alas, I could not keep everything.
This student would very much be like Doug (and I mean this as a compliment), in that he was binary from his toes to the apex of his skull. Numbers, codes, formulae were his playing fields and math his armor or when needed, weapon of choice.
Photography he could explain to my students better than I could. He spent one morning going through all the formulations of how you could go from f/ 1.2 to 1.4, to 1.8 all the way to f/22...but when he put his eye to the viewfinder he drew an absolute blank. "Poof," he'd say, "I know what it all means, but I can't find a relevance, thus I cannot make good images."
So, being the diligent teacher I was, I went to Home Depot, bought 10 # 1's and 10 # 2's in varying sizes, and painted every other one either black or white and suggested he incorporate these nice binary numbers into each exercise I gave them...boy howdy, while he never really accomplished free-form artistry, he did at least adhere to the assignments and show his relevance as a mathematician/computer guy.
He graduated with the highest GPA ever given at our school and graduated first in his class at Carnegie-Mellon, and yes, he got an A in photography as well. He started with Pixar in the mid 6 figures...geeze, I should have been a math guy.
