Our Last 3 Weeks – Final term work, a test, and Summative Activities

Here’s What We’ll Do – it should be busy, but fun and very “doable” if you plan well.

Thursday May 28: What Makes a Great Photo?

We’ll try to answer this by looking at some examples of good photos by you, me and some of the “greats”. This should help you in your Theme Shots, and for the rest of your photographic life!

Knowledge & Skills

You will have your last test on Thursday June 4. I will give mini-lessons on most of these topics between now and then. I’ll tell you which topics will be covered on the test. Expect the first 10 minutes of each class to be devoted to this.

· Important parts of a digital camera: lens, body, sensor, storage, batteries

• Resolution: Sensors, file size & formats (RAW, jpeg, psd)
• Lens types : focal length, standard, telephoto, wide-angle, zoom, macro, fisheye
• Exposure compensation, fill-in flash

Summative Activities

As you know, these are worth 30% of any course, and are meant to let you demonstrate what you’ve learned. Ours are a mix of Photography and artictic creation in Photoshop.

There are 3 parts, each worth 10% of the course mark: 1. A Photo Montage 2. A Surreal Montage OR a Time Lapse Movie 3. Theme Shot Photography

1. Photo Montage (viewable in Internet Explorer only (not Firefox)

• Depiction of your life and the things important to you, things that define you
• Include at least two photos of parts of yourself (you set it up, a classmate shoots it). Show only parts of them, as in the Linder example
• Use PShop skills to subtly blend the parts together
• All layers must be your own photography shot for this project (not, for example, a collage of friends downloaded from Facebook)
• Save all original photos used as jpegs in your AWT3/Montage folder, along with a PSD and JPEG named your_name_montage e.g. fred_flinstone_montage.psd, fred_flinstone_montage.jpg

2. a) Surreal Montage, after Uelsman or Geddes

• Again use all your own images
• Blend images objects or people together seamlessly, in the style of Jerry Uelsman or Anne Geddes
• Use odd proportions, juxtapositions and other devices to achieve a surreal effect e.g. a person made to look as if they're climbing a plant, yet the plant is normally much smaller than the person
• Pay attention to details like colour cast and shadows to make the blend look convincing

OR

2. b) Time Lapse Movie

· Can be done solo or with one partner

• So I can guide you, show me a roughly sketched plan – show what you’ll shoot, what will happen, how often you’ll shoot and about how long you’ll shoot, etc.
• I’ll help you create the movie in Powerpoint, and set up the timing. That part is easy! You can even add a soundtrack if you want to improve it.

3. Theme Shots

Shoot excellent shots at home or at school in several categories. Put them into a Powerpoint, with a very brief writeup on each.