Please make your own blog, and post at least two of your past favorite photographs.
DUE: 1/17
TECH 1: Aperture & Shutter Speed
Using any location, make 50 photographs that use depth of field to enhance your subject. 25 of these photographs should use shallow depth of field. 25 should use a wide depth of field.
Also, make 50 photographs that use shutter speed to enhance your subject. Create 25 photographs that explore creating a sense of motion through blur. Create 25 photographs that create a sense of drama by freezing motion.
For this assignment you will upload your 3 best photographs from each set onto your own Blog - a total of 12 photos. Please spend time editing and perfecting these images in Lightroom - pay attention to exposure, color accuracy, composition and focus. Please label your photographs on your blog to specify which are using wide depth of field, shallow depth of field, and fast or slow shutter speeds.
DUE: 1/22 @ Midnight
PERSONAL PROJECT 1: Looking at Pictures
Photographs are everywhere around us - as information, as advertising, as news, as pictures of our family and friends. For this assignment I would like you to consider your current relationship with photography. Do you like to flip through magazines while looking at the latest fashion photos? Do you scan Facebook looking at photos of your friend’s life adventures? Do you go to the library and study the old masters - Alfred Stieglitz, Brassai, Edward Weston - paying attention to light and shadows? Or maybe you like looking at photos of yourself?
I’d like you to consider the types of photographs you tend to look at and enjoy, and the types of photographs you do not like. Look at artists such as: Thomas Ruff, Larry Sultan, Thomas Demand, Nancy Burson, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine and others. How have they interpreted common photographs into works of art? Some of them work from photographs they don’t like to critique the intent of those images, and others bring new meaning to common photographs that are easily overlooked.
I would like you to translate these questions into your own interests in pictures and respond in a series of 8 photographs. Choose to focus on photographs that you commonly look at - and make images that are very similar - pushing your technical abilities. Or, focus your attention towards photographs you don’t like, and critique those images. If you want you can also combine the two approaches.
You will digitally print these photographs for a class critique as well as post them on your blog.
DUE: 2/7
TECH 2: Disfigure your Face, Professional Portrait
For this technical assignment I would like you to mindfully take a self-portrait (headshot or torso-up) - with the intention of somehow disfiguring, destroying, improving or altering your face. You can use multiple photographs, or one photograph, but your face must look very different from normal. - I suggest making yourself look ugly, but if you want to make yourself look better, that’s OK too.
When photographing yourself, you want to be careful that you take into consideration how you will alter yourself later in Photoshop. For instance, if desiring to elongate my nose - like Pinocchio - I would try to get a profile photograph, so that I can easily grab onto my nose with different tools in Photoshop. In addition to manipulating your face, I would also like you to place your head-shot/portrait into the background of your choice.
You will be graded on how well you execute your disfiguration - the quality of your original photograph(s), your blending skills when making selections, not having much noticeable noise, attention to Layer differences, color balance, and general perfection.
Please turn in your final image as a print and post it on your blog.
DUE: 2/19
Quick & Clumsy Example:
PERSONAL PROJECT 2: Absence of Content / Visualizing Metaphors
Photographs are often thought as windows into another place - a way to see a landscape you’ve never traveled to or learn about a person you’ll never know. But what happens when the subject of the photograph is not what the photograph is about?
Consider work such as Roni Horn’s photographs in I Am the Weather. Because of the mundane repetition of photographs of the same girl in a pool of water, at some point the viewer notices something else - the weather changing around her. What is actually represented in the photograph, is an aid to reach another thought.
Jim Campbell’s installation pieces SHADOW For Heisenberg and UNTITLED For Heisenberg beg the viewer to walk up to them, and upon walking up to the work, a sensor detects a body near and fogs the image. The viewer never gets to see the details embedded in the work he/she desires.
These artworks, as well as much of the work by artists in ARTISTS #4 & #5, utilize metaphor in conveying visual experience or ideas.
For this personal project, I would like you to consider how you can use photography to visualize metaphors, using specific subject matter to do so, or through an absence of specific subject matter.
You will produce 8 excellent prints for critique and upload your images onto your blog as jpegs.
DUE: 3/7
TECH 3: Amplify Subject with use of Artificial Lighting
For this technical assignment I would like you to utilize class time during our lighting demo to make at least three perfected images - if you don't get them done during class you'll have to continue your work outside of class time. Your choice of subject matter is up to you (portrait, object, animal, etc) but I would like to see strong attention to tonal control: your highlights, shadows, and midtones. I also want to see careful attention to color adjustments - accurate color balance. For this tech assignment I will not accept black & white images or overly edited images. If you want to make those edits, do so in addition to 3 true-to-life perfected photographs. You can add drama to the images with light, but don't go - over the top.
These 3 images will be posted on your blog - no prints necessary.
DUE: 2/26
PERSONAL PROJECT 3: Non-Traditional Photography
For this project you will make images without just the use of your camera and Lightroom. Create images from direct scans of objects, converting the scanner into a camera, or invent your own camera: create a digital pinhole camera, create a new type of camera. Alternatively, you can collage images together, alter the surface of your prints, or explore alternative printing. You could print your photographs on laser paper, coat them with gel medium, and collage them on wood. In between taking the image and showing it, you are free to use whatever techniques you want - just think outside of your camera box. You have a lot of possibilities - just check with me how to execute your idea!
The final work should be the equivalent of 10 8x10 images. In addition to the images, which you will need to document and post on your blog, you need to have a one paragraph (about 250-350 words) artist statement - also posted on your blog. The statement should explain the origin of the idea, how that idea manifests in the work (why it looks the way it does), and what the work is about or what you want viewers to consider when they see the work.
DUE: 4/11
FINAL ASSIGNMENT:
A portfolio of 7-10 perfectly printed and presented images. These must all be focused on one idea (up to you). Scale, materials, and presentation method are your choice, but must be expertly done and in keeping with the concept of the project. Two of the prints can be reworked previous prints. You can include an artist statement, but it is not required for this assignment.
DUE: 5/2
