Final Portfolio

Please submit the following for your final portfolio:

Due: 12/10 (5pm). This is Wednesday of Exam Week. Earlier is fine.

JPEG, in the class drop box on the server:
1200x1200 pixels, quality:12, sRGB

20 images total, pulled from the following. Examples from all listed below should be represented in your final selection of images

1. Various shooting exercises (composition, depth of field, motion, sign diptychs, etc.)
2. Project: Images in a theme
3. Project: Narrative
4. Project: Photo Extended
5. Project: Fictional Reality

When making choices, prioritize the strongest images. Choose carefully to present your strongest work. Consult with instructor and classmates. But please make sure that all major projects are represented. It is okay to have more images from one project/assignment than another. You may also include images that have not "fit" a specific assignment, provided they were shot for this course. If you have questions, please ask.

Naming protocol:

lastname_project_number.jpg

Examples:

jordan_depthoffield_1.jpg
jordan_panorama_2.jpg
jordan_project2.jpg

Final Project: Fictional Reality

Due Dates:

• White Screen production shoot: Monday 11/17
• Preliminary critique Monday 11/24
• Final critique Wednesday 12/3

©Loretta Lux

©Kelli Connell

Create something that is both possible and unlikely, at the same time. Create a character and place them in an environment or situation. Something might be weird, strange or just "off". How is the line between fantasy—reality blurred? Consider myths, fairy tales, other stories. Or make something up. Move beyond the simple and silly to something that works on many levels. What questions are raised? Beyond that, anything goes. There's a lot of latitude for creative interpretation. 

Think big for this one... props? costumes? styling?

Integrate the subject with the unlikely background/situation. Unify lighting direction, scale, point of view, shooting angle, etc., so that it truly appears that the subject is occupying the unlikely place.

There are just a few technical ground rules for this project.

1. At least 16" x 20" @300 dpi. All component pieces should be at adequate resolution
2. At least one of the main subjects should be shot with white screen techniques
3. The white screen subject should be masked and appropriately integrated into the new background, with scale, perspective, point of view, light quality and direction convincingly matched.
4. The finished image should "read" realistically and convincingly as a single, genuine photo

Gregory Crewdson
Grace Weston

AES+F
Kahn and Selesnick

Bill Finger

Patrick Nagatani

Sarah Anne Johnson

Loretta Lux

Wendy McMurdo

Kelli Connell

Cornelia Hediger

Gillian Wearing

Student Work:

Conceptual approaches using extended formats

Description:

1. Generate a concept/subject/idea that can expressed with an extended format such as a series/typology, multiple pairing, grid, panorama, joiner, cluster, etc. (Refer to examples below and from the textbook.)
2. Shoot, process and print the project
3. The total number of images generated will depend on the format and what you need to express your idea. Discuss with instructor.

Due dates:

Prelim critique: 11/5 (Wednesday)

Final critique: 11/12 (Wednesday)

Evaluation of work will be based on:

• Originality, clarity and development of idea or concept
• Use of extended format fully explored
• aesthetic: photographic design
• techncial: camera
• techncial: prints
• development of project from prelim through final submission

Series/Typology

Dinah Fried depicts fictitious meals based on characters from classic fiction. Clever.
http://laughingsquid.com/fictitious-dishes-photo-series-depicts-meals-from-fictional-characters/

Jeffrey Milstein creates a typology of aircraft.

Jeff Brouws (and numerous others going back to Bernd and Hilla Becher) are obsessed with cataloging and "collecting" with their camera. For instance, Brouws isn't interested in singular train cars, but the almost endless variations between numerous cars. Working with a mode called typology, he creates grids that simultaneously show similarity and contrast.

There is a long, unfortunate history in photography of objectification based on race, gender, stereotypes and notions of "otherness". Photographer Myra Greene turns the tables on this history with her clever and effective series: "My White Friends"

Roni horn is a conceptual artist who uses photography frequently in her work. http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/roni-horn

Multiples (diptych, triptych, etc.)

Uta Barth is a photographer of place. Instead of creating visual descriptions of places, like a traditional landscape photographer would do, she is more interested in evoking or suggesting how we experience places. Often working with multiple frames, she changes the scale, plane of focus (in some she focuses on the "space between" foreground and background), in an attempt to more closely mimic the process of human perception, as well as the passage of time.

On more of a documentary, story-telling mode, Lucia Ganieva, creates rich biographical portraits of people relating their persona to their vocation, past, workplace, etc. using diptychs and triptychs. Notice how the frames work together to build meaning.

Grids and Joiners

Keith Johnson now works almost exclusively with grids, exploring the hidden language of forms found in the natural and human landscape.

Susan Bowen implies what we might see over the course of a long walk...the visual wanderings of our curious eye. She uses plastic cameras, only partially advancing the film between exposures to create one long, continuous flow of visual stimulation.

Robert Richfield has an interesting take on the panorama. Instead of stitching together a seamless expanse, he presents it with the frame divisions. How does this affect the meaning of his work and how we "read" it?

For examples of Contact Sheet Sequences, look at Thomas Kellner.

Essentially these are a form of what the book author terms joiners, or many-make-one, extended images that functions like fragmented panoramas both vertically and horizontally. David Hockney is well known for working this way. The following images, by Hockney, show some variations of this approach. How do they differ?

Layers

Idris Khan quite literally quotes Bernd and Hilla Becher's work with industrial architecture, but layers the multiple variations of structures within a single frame instead of a grid.

Margaret Hiden is explores how family histories can be told through narratives that blend the past and present to form richer tapestry of telling. Here, images function much like memory... where our present is continually colored by the echos of the past.

Extending the Single Photo: Narrative sequence

Please read chapter 7 by Monday, October 20th.

As photographers, the frame is perhaps our most important tool. With the camera, we "frame" our subjects, including what we feel is important for the picture, and excluding what isn't. Essentially, we are editing from the visual world with our frame. A common goal in photography is to try and get it all in one frame—to create a singular image that conveys our full expression, sharp, clear, with a single point of view. 

Further, we capture single points in time,  often orphaned from the longer story. They float, untethered without revealing what came before or after, or for that matter, what else was going on at that time. 

There's value in all this—but it can also be limiting!

Cartier Bresson "The Decisive Moment"

How can we extend the story of a photograph? What happened before our  decisive moment? What happened after? What did the other person see? What about the fly on the wall? Sometimes we need multiple images, multiple frames to convey the breadth and richness of our visual story.

For this phase of the course, we will explore the following modes.

Narrative Sequence
Typology/Series/Multiples
Joiner/Cluster/Panorama
Digital Collage

1. Narrative Sequence

The first assignment is to explore the use of narrative sequence, or visual narrative, to tell some kind of story through time. Think about change and movement...what changes? What moves? What stays the same? How does this change tell a story?

Duane Michals used extended sequences of images to convey complex and (often amusing) narratives. Some of these visual story lines went in a straight lines, sometimes they made bizarre circles and spirals.

Grandpa Goes to Heaven, Duane Michals

Change Meeting, Duane Michals

Countless photographers have borrowed his approach to make narratives of their own.

E.Sariozkan

elodie fougère

The Personal Telling of Story

Jennifer Shaw

New Orleans photographer Jennifer Shaw illustrates the trials her family faced during and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The images are told through the use of toys and figurines.

http://jennifershaw.net/hurricane-story/

Metaphoric narrative

The photographer Masaru Goto created a compelling narrative documenting the difficult subject of his mother's sickness, decline and eventual death. He draws a comparison between the life-cycle of cherry trees passing through the four seasons from the blossom stage through the shedding of leaves as extended metaphor for the phases of a human life, from full glory to eventual decline. The result is sad, but poetic and contemplative.

Ideas to get started:

• Create a character and story...depict this visually, telling the story through a sequence of images. Shoot in a way that links the images together in a coherent way.
• Choose or stage a sequence of actions and consequences that are related...show us the before, during and after in a compelling way. Even better, throw in a twist or surprise.
• Illustrate a recent (or current) news event using a fictional or illustrative approach. Instead of photographing the actual events, recreate the event in a compelling or believable way through a sequence of images
• Take a photo every hour for a day...document what you are doing or seeing. Or what someone else is seeing or doing. What stays the same in every photo? What changes?
• Same place different time...photograph the same place, the same way, but at a different time...vary by minute, hour, day, week...decide one method and keep it constant
• Same person different time...photograph the same person, the same way, but at a different time...vary by minute, hour, day, week...decide one method and keep it constant.

Prelim critique: 10/22

Final Critique: 10/27

Expressing Movement

In each of the examples above, how are the images affected by shutter speed? How can creative use of shutter and/or camera movement create different impressions of time and movement?

Use shutter priority. This is "Tv" with Canon, "S" with Nikon. This is an automatic mode where the camera chooses an f-stop based on the shutter speed that you specify, based on available light. 

ISO can also factor in to this exercise. Some guidelines: To freeze a fast moving subject, shoot with ISO 400 or 800 (depending on light available). For long exposures (drag shutter) and panning shots, shoot with the lowest number ISO available, and perhaps shaded light.

Create interesting examples of the following:

• Create the impression of blurred moving object passing across a stationary background with a slower shutter speed (drag shutter). Try 1/30. Make sure camera is as stable as possible, using lens stabilization, if you have it.
• Freeze a fast moving object with a fast shutter speed, 1/500 second or faster
• Track a moving subject across a background, with 1/2 to 1 second exposure, creating a PAN shot. For this shot, use a very low ISO, high f-stop, and shoot in deep shade.
• Try a very long shutter speed to create overall blur. For this shot, use a very low ISO, high f-stop, and shoot in deep shade.

Suggestions: For all of the above...have all motion occur across the frame rather than coming directly toward or way from the camera. Also, get in close to the subject so that the sense of motion fills the frame.

How creative can you be with these examples? Originality will be rewarded!

Project 1: Images in a theme.

Project 1: Images in a theme.

Using your continually developing skills as a photographer, create a concise group of images closely related to a subject/theme/idea. The images should be well exposed, well composed, well selected, and properly processed in Photoshop. Plan to turn in a group of the strongest images from the many that you shoot.

Themes may be fictional, personal, political, documentary, visual, or aesthetic...up to you, but theme should be concise and meaningful. No cute pet pictures, beer cans, flower gardens or similarly trite subject mater, please.

Due dates:

9/29, preliminary critique

WEDNESDAY 10/8, final critique, REVISED

Plan to turn in:

• 7 files, processed (using image processor) to 1200 pixels by the longest side, jpeg quality 10 or higher
• 2 of the above images as LAYERED photoshop files, 1200 pixels by the longest side, to demonstrate photoshop skills 
• 3 high quality prints, using an inkjet printer, with correct color management. These prints should be created from your full resolution master files, rather than the 1200 pixel screen files

Work will be evaluated on:

• Conceptual: The quality and development of central theme or idea
• Conceptual: How well the theme is expressed through images
• Aesthetics: Quality of images (composition, lighting, depth of field, point of view)
• Technical skills: (camera, photoshop, printing)
• Adequate development of project from start to finish

Subject matter versus meaning

Merely capturing a subject does not automatically convey its meaning, or content.

For example, a photographer who claims to "like photographing people," is saying very little specific about what they are really trying to communicate. Yes they are showing something, but they are communicating little.

The clearer the idea you have about what you hope to communicate, the more clearly your photographs will communicate this idea meaningfully.

If this photographer who "likes photographing people" instead asks him or herself the following questions:

• Who are these people?
• What are they doing?
• Where are they?
• Why?
• What difference does it make?
• What story do they/I have to share? 
• How can this be shown/created/expressed?

...they will have a much better experience with creating and communicating meaning.

Assignment:

1. Select a subject that you are commonly drawn to. Person, place, thing. No animals or pets, for now. 
2. Apply the above questions
3. Create images that answer the questions, visually

For Monday, 9/15. 

Reading and Class Discussion

Wednesday 9/10

Read Chapters 1, 2 and 3 in the textbook, Light and Lens.

Prepare discussion points for the following:

Chapter 1: From the history of photography described by the author, please choose a historic "movement" or approach to the medium that personally resonates with you. Be able to explain how this is pertinent to you as a photographer. Where might you go with this inspiration?

Chapter 1: Read pages 18-30. Pick at least 2 question/answer combinations that you resonate with the most (in a positive way). Then pick 1-2 that you agree less with. Be prepared to discuss your reasoning in class.

Chapter 3: Generate 1-2 points about camera technology from the reading that you found intriguing, or have a question about. Be prepared to discuss.

Making color the subject

Field trip exercise:

Create a set of images, where you are exclusively looking for color. Let color itself be the subject. At first, keep it simple, limiting yourself to one color. Relax and simply respond to the perceptions that grab your attention. Get close and use your frame to isolate the color. Do all "cropping" in camera at the time of shooting. Eliminate all distracting elements that detract from the main subject of color.

Avoid flowers, for now!

Depth of Field

Field trip / homework exercise:

Deep depth of field. Achieve with small aperture and/or wider angle lens.

Shallow depth of field. Achieve with wide aperture and/or longer (telephoto) lens.

In class:

Explore depth-of-field using Aperture Priority Mode. 

Nikon: use "A" mode

Canon: use "Av" mode

The photographer chooses the aperture and the camera automatically adjusts shutter speed for optimal exposure.

Shoot in fairly bright conditions to ensure adequate exposure, or use higher ISO. Create a photograph where there is a distinct foreground object and the background is fairly far away.  Focus on the foreground object, and maintain this focal placement. Shoot the image three times, varying the apertures. Create at least 3 3-image sets.

• f4 or wider (f2.8, f1.4 okay)
• f8
• f16 or smaller (f22 okay)

Shooting (for Monday 2/2)

Chose specific subjects and shoot them with widely varied depths of field, while maintaining the same composition/framing. This means 2-3 variations of the same "shot" but created with a range of apertures to vary the depth of field. Again, shoot on aperture priority

In the examples below, we see the same subject and the same framing, but with different depths of field. How does this affect the image? Which do you prefer? Why?

f4.0

f18

Printing Paper

We will be printing many of your pictures in this class. Here are recommended papers. Please stick with Epson to ensure compatibility with our printers. The standard, required, size is letter, but if you prefer larger paper, the printers will accommodate up to 13" x 19"

Choose matte or glossy. You only need one kind, your choice. But having both can be nice, if you want.

Ultra Premium Presentation Matte:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/203721-REG/Epson_S041341_Ultra_Premium_Presentation_Paper.html

Ultra Premium Glossy Photo:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/543611-REG/Epson_S042175_Ultra_Premium_Glossy_Photo.html

Assignment 1

Due: Wednesday 9/3, bring files to class

Rules of the Game: 

• Natural light (window or outside)
• No flash (so please use plenty of light)
• Shoot JPEG (Large File, Highest Quality) or RAW
• Auto Exposure and Auto Focus is okay for now
• Shoot 50-100 images
• No camera phones (for now)—use a proper camera
• No pets, flowers, beer cans or cigarette stubs...be adventurous, and try something different.

Pick one subject, a specific person, place or thing. Shoot that one subject for the whole assignment. How many different ways can you shoot one subject? Vary angle, background, lighting, (very) close-up/middle/far, composition...anything you can think of to create as much variety as possible. Again, do not change subject...just change the way you see and photograph the subject.

Welcome

Please follow or join this page to keep up with information pertinent to the course, such as assignment descriptions, projects and due dates. Use it as a resource for information and inspiration. Please make comments or suggestions as you see fit.

Student Work, Recent Years

(Image: Culberson)

(Image: Craft)

(Image: Dublin)

(Image: Thornton)

 (Image: Busby)

(Image: Culberson)

(Image: Kerr)

(Image: Kerr)

(Image: Kerr)

(Image: Ross)

(Images: Taylor)

(Image: Rogers)

(Image: Loggins)

(Image: Marguerite Gray)

(Image: Anne Masline)

(Image: Hayden Sloan)

(Image: Heather Orlando)

(Image: Busby)