Photo Shoots

Photography is an important component of this course, and I want to give you lots of opportunity to use your photographic artist’s eye and imagination. Below is a list of the different photo shoots you will be expected to complete. Some of them will have a certain time period and due date attached to them, but others are ongoing background projects you can work on whenever you have the chance. If you ever run out of things to do, research, plan, take, edit and document these shots.

Rules

• Enjoy the process! There’s a lot of opportunity to be creative here.
• The photos must all be shot by you this semester. Record details about where, when and how you took each final shot.
• Most of the assignments can just be saved as jpegs in specific folders. I will also ask you to print a selection of your very best shots.
• Final digital shots should be around 800 x 600 to 1280 x 800 pixels, unless you’re printing. Larger takes too much space; smaller doesn’t give you a chance to show your fine technique. Use Photoshop to shrink larger photos (Image, resize). Save as Jpegs, quality 8-10.
• ONLY keep final shots. Delete what you don’t need. If you’re not sure, send a copy home, or put shots in a folder in a different location. This is partly to save space on the fileserver, and also to make it easy for me to collect your work without having to sift through hundreds of files.
• Each final shot you use must be documented, either in paper for prints, or in a Word document in the relevant folder or on a Powerpoint slide for work to be viewed online. Information to record includes:
• Date, time and exact location
• Why you decided to take & keep the shot – what caught your eye; what were you trying to express or accomplish?
• Technical details: camera, settings (shutter speed & F-stop where available (make sure you don’t always use Auto)) any other relevant settings (unusual lighting, white balance, zoom, macro etc.)
• Any processing you did (levels, filters etc.)
• Your own critical evaluation – what do like about it? How does it accomplish your goal? What elements & principles are important? What could be improved to perfect it?
• Make a folder inside your AWT4 folder named Shoots.
• Inside the Shoots folder, make a new folder for each digital shoot. For instance, the detailed instructions for the “Following the Rules” shoot will tell you to make a folder named Following. In it will be your final shots and a Word document containing details for the chosen shots and whatever other writeup is required.

Photo Shoot List

• Illustrations of ten elements or principles.
• Social Photography – two or three photographs that reveal someone’s relationship to their work – doing their job and showing their level of engagement with it. Must be done outside the school i.e. no teachers, caretakers or caf workers. Try to find someone unique, and someone who agrees to letting you do a real photo shoot as they work. Writeup should include a description of the workplace, the work being done and why you chose to compose your final shots as you did.
• Photographic Construction/Montage
• Album Cover – shoot your friend(s) posing as a fictitious (or real) performer/group. Use existing covers as a starting point, and explain how this affected your final composition. I will give you more detail on adding text & final format
• Emulate the Masters – choose two different contemporary photographers, research them to find out what they think is important and unique about their work. Choose a representative photo from each. Then try to re-create the photo as much as you can. One of the photos should involve significant processing in Photoshop, while the other should be more “raw”, changed little from what you shot. Put a Jpeg of the original and along with your emulation in the folder.
• Open Untitled – invent your own category – a place to put those photos that you love but don’t fit anywhere else.
• Following the Rules (and Breaking?) the Rules – a few shots illustrating your mastery of composition, lighting etc., and maybe one shot that seems to work despite breaking fundamental rules. Include your analysis of what rules were observed.
• Untamed (animal or bird, not domesticated). The challenge here is to get a good well-composed shot of a subject that’s live and not co-operative. Carry a camera and wait for a squirrel (not on a bird-feeder), crow or mountain lion to cross your path!
• Hit Me with your Best Shots – several shots you consider to be your most powerful, beautiful, moving, all with excellent composition, lighting etc.
• Light in the Darkroom – Low & High Value black & white prints, on film or digital.
• High Art – sleek portrait in the style of Cindy Sherman
• Formal Portait – Black & white, in the style of Karsh or other masters.