LIHU‘E — Working on a shoestring budget has groomed Waimea High School teacher Beth Sette in the area of creativity and ingenuity.

Sette, normally an English teacher at Waimea High School, opened the doors to a special showing representing about 42 students in her two photography classes, Saturday at the Kaua‘i Society of Artists gallery at the Kukui Grove shopping center.

“I really wanted people to see how creative these students were, so I called Sally French and Friday night she and I were setting up the display until about 10 p.m.,” Sette said.

This is the first year that Waimea High School students have worked with photography as one of their elective classes and Sette said she was lucky to be able to coordinate the two available periods with the needs of the students.

“I’ve always wanted to teach photography and the students wanted something more than Hawaiian dance, so we were lucky the school had the extra space,” Sette said.

Funds for the first year of the program came through the Kaua‘i Economic Development Board.

“We’re lucky we secured an Aloha ‘Ike grant administered by the Kaua‘i Economic Development Board. Everything else has been on a tight budget to where the students are supplying their own cameras,” Sette said.

Through the grant, students worked on a standards-based project fusing literacy and photography where they selected proverbs from Hawaiian, Japanese and Filipino cultures. They analyzed the statements, writing their interpretations, explaining how the selected proverb is relevant in the community and how important it is in a global society.

The photography part came into play when they went out to artistically interpret the proverb or quotation using photography as the medium.

Ayami Nakanishi moved here from Japan when she was 10, but the influence of Japan remains embedded in her artwork, which displays the characteristics of contemporary Japanese photography.

Using GIMP editing software, because there was no money to buy Photoshop, Nakanishi’s contemporary Japanese style turned European in her depiction of “Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka ‘Aina i Ka Pono,” the state motto.

“There are some students who have Photoshop on their home computers, so their editing was done in Photoshop, but for the rest of the students, we relied on GIMP, a free online editing software,” Sette said. “Additionally, we are thankful to our computer lab teachers Helga Ishida and Mark Ulanday for allowing the students the leeway of working on their projects in the school’s computer lab.”

The achievements of the two classes were broken down into 65 prints on display as well as an assortment of notecards and notebooks featuring the student art.

“The larger sized prints were printed by Costco, but anything up to 8 inches by 10 inches was printed using one of the Canon printers at school,” Sette said.

Despite those restrictions, the artwork jumps off the wall and captured the attention of not only gallery visitors, but shoppers who turned in to check out the student work.

Sette said French told her the exhibit could stay up for a week, but the students would need to gallery-sit during the time it was open.

That places a restriction on both Sette and the students who are in school until after 2 p.m. from Monday.

“We are thinking of doing something Wednesday evening,” Sette said. “But for now, the exhibit is open until (Sunday) afternoon.”