#5 - Triptych

You are almost there!  The Triptych assignment is the last assignment for this session.

A triptych is a series of three photographs that are connected by a common element, theme, color, content, or style.

Use what you have learned about color, composition, and emotion to create your triptych.  Each image in the tryptich should be interesting on its own - three pictures of your shoe might share a subject, but might also be horribly boring.

Here are some examples by Ed Kashi:

#10 Self-Portrait

You all have done great this session!  Just one more assignment to go: Self-Portrait.

Take photographs of yourself using the timer setting on your camera.  Please let me know if you need a tripod.  Think about what you want to tell the viewer about your personality.  You may tell the viewer a story about an important event in your life through pictures or you can focus on describing your personality.  This is your last project of the session, so make it count!  Think before you shoot, bring in props, use the "rules" of composition, color, and lighting effectively.  This is also an opportunity to use Photoshop to increase the contrast of your images or crop.  Please do not alter your images too much for this assignment.
Post your best 5 images on your blog.

The following is work from a famous photographer named Cindy Sherman.  She is an excellent portrait photographer and here are some of her self-portraits:

Emotion (no faces) #4

Choose two emotions to try and capture in a photograph. Be specific-instead of happy or sad, try joyful, elated, surprised, or melancholy, lonely, defeated. You may look up words in the thesaurus if that is helpful.Now use what you have learned about photography in the other assignments to take pictures that express these emotions.

Post 3 pictures of each emotion without using faces.
Some things to think about:
-color
-perspective
-composition
Here is an example of "defeated" pictures:

The emotions that you picked should be obvious in the photograph and you should not need to tell people what emotion you are trying to show.

Due March 25th

#9 Ideas

Here are some story board ideas:
Stone Soup
Jack and the Beanstalk
Cat in the Hat
Alice in Wonderland
The Emperor's New Clothes
Hansel and Gretel
Rapunzel
Beauty and the Beast
Sleeping Beauty
Cinderella
Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs
The Princess and the Frog
Alladin
Toy Story

Due March 25th

Plot (#9)

Eugenio Recuenco

For this assignment you are to tell a story in 5-10 photographs. 1. Choose a well known fairy tale or children's story. 2. You may NOT use words 3. Decide what the most important details of the story are-these are the things that the audience must know in order for the story to make sense. 4. Plan out your images using a storyboard. You may use props and backgrounds, but be realistic about what resources we actually have here at school. 5. Take your photos. Make sure to take many photos for each part of the story so that you can select the best. It is much easier to take extra pictures then to try and set up and re-shoot! 6. Post the story on your blog.

Here are some story board ideas:
Stone Soup
Jack and the Beanstalk
Cat in the Hat
Alice in Wonderland
The Emperor's New Clothes
Hansel and Gretel
Rapunzel
Beauty and the Beast
Sleeping Beauty
Cinderella
Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs
The Princess and the Frog
Alladin
Toy Story

Due March 25th

Ghosting and Painting With Light

The Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 students will be working on this assignment together.  This is an in-class assignment. 
I will be showing you images of past student work in class, but if you would like to learn more about these techniques go to the following website

Assignment #7 Examples

Character and Relationships

You can tell a lot from a photograph about what kind of relationship people have with one another.  Think about what you want to show about the relationship before you photograph.  Is there tension, anger, hate, love, friendship, etc?  You can do this with expressions, but also think about how you can say something without words using body language.  Put your best ten shots on your blog.

Richard Avedon

Sid Grossman

Dorothea Lange

Assignment #2 Examples

Portraits Using the Rule of Thirds

You can do this vertically (up and down) and horizontally (side to side).

Take several photographs of a person or people using the rule of thirds.  This basically means you will put the person off center where the rule of thirds line would be.  Nothing should really be centered in the photo, especially not the eyes.  Try placing the eyes where the lines would intersect (the red dots above).  The rule of thirds is a compositional rule that helps the viewer move his/her eyes throughout the photograph.  Rules are meant to be broken, however, not for this assignment :)  Take several photographs and put your best ten with explanation on how you used the the rules of thirds underneath the photo.

Benny Joseph

Andrea Klarin

Raya

Part 3 students only - #12

Your next assignment (after "macro") is Pattern, Texture, and Leading Lines.  Please post 10 images with at least one image from all three of these compostional elements on your page.  For example, if you really love your texture pictures, post 8 of them, 1 pattern, and 1 texture for a total of 10 images.

Due March 4th.

For more info click here

PS - Levels (Image Contrast)

Open your image

Go to Layers < New Adjustment Layer < Levels

The Level graph will show up on the right.  You can change the arrows to adjust your contrast.  You can also your the eye drop tool on the left side of the graph to adjust the contrast.  Contrast is the difference between the shadow and highlight area.  You may also try hitting "auto," however I suggest changing levels manually.

Photo 1: Assignment #1 Photo 2: Assignment #6

Happy Valentine's Day Students!
I am happy to be here to help you learn Photography.

I will do my best to keep this updated.  If you are absent often, check this often!

First assignment for Photo: Part 1 is the "Who Are You?" assignment.
First assignment for Photo: Part 2 is the "Setting assignment."  I think of this as an architecture and langscape assignment.  Please remember to use the rule of thirds and create a mood in the photograph.
First assignment for Photo: Part 3 is Marcro Photography.  Use a macro lense, magnifying glass, and the "flower" feature on your camera to create interesting macro shots.  Macro photography gives the artist the ability to distort photos, enhance details, and really show shape, pattern, and texture (elements and principles of design).

You can find these assignments on the New Start website: http://sites.google.com/site/newstartphotography/Home