Last Week!

All assignments and portfolios have been graded and returned with a comment sheet inside the portfolio. Grades will be submitted on line next week on or before May 12th. Please try to pick up your final portfolios before May 19th.

Have a great summer!

Assignment #9 Self Portrait

Here's you chance to make your work all about you! In this assignment make a self portrait that is about you, you may be in it in whole or part, it may be as others see you or as you think you see yourself to others.

Robert Cornelius, self portrait 1839

Hippolyte Bayard, Self Portrait as Drowned Man

1840

Critique for this assignment is April 20

Assignment #7 Studio portrait

Photography can be an additive practice as we have discussed in class, but no where is this more evident than the lighting studio. You begin with a black room, add a back ground, set lights, determine  camera angle and lastly choose a subject.

In this assignment you will enlist the help of a human subject, no younger than 14 years old and photograph them under controlled lighting conditions in the lighting studio. Pay attention to direction of main and fill lights and ratio between each source. In the studio, everything matters.

Richard Avedon

Artists to research are: Karsh, Avedon, Halsman, Leibovitz, Scavullo and Penn.

Assignment/critique April 18

Assignment #8 Night Photography

Assignment #8 Night Photography

The world is a very different place at night, light, which normally falls from the sky to the earth, now radiates up. Pleases once illuminated are now in deep, deep shadow. The color of light is also an issue, mixed light sources record in a range of color.

What are our tools in night photography?

ISO experimentation, with excessive noise in mind, try a range of ISO's on your camera depending on conditions.

Tripod. While not always necessary (see further on for how to cheat on this), a tripod will give you the greatest flexibility to get the angles you need while keeping your camera steady for those long exposures. The department has some for limited check out.

Wide-angle lenses. This is a personal preference, but I love the way they work in night photography. If these are out of your price range – don’t worry! Try it out with whatever you’ve got as the only thing that will limit you is your imagination.

A lens hood. To minimize lens flares from light entering at angles outside of your frame.

A flashlight. Sometimes you’ll want to draw attention to or simply lighten up an important part of the foreground which is too dark.

Tools lie all around us in everyday objects to help us make our work better in this; I’ve used bicycle lamps, lampposts and newspaper boxes to get it done.

The same composition rules that apply to day apply to night, except with night we have our long exposures to take advantage of and more negative space to consider.

Stan Strembicki, Florence, Italy 2005

Assignment #6 The Narrative Image

This assignment is driven by our TA this semester and her lecture that will be presented on March 9th.

Assignment due for crit April 6

Assignment #5 Still Life

Photography has a grand tradition of the still life, in fact some of the earliest work every done were still lifes.

In this assignment you will select and object of your choosing and using either natural or artificial lighting, photograph it.

Assignment due for critique March 28

Assignment #4 Environmental Portrait

“The subject must be thought of in terms of the 20th century, of houses he lives in and places he works, in terms of the kind of light the windows in these places let through and by which we see him every day.”

Arnold Newman

                                                 "Willie The Lion Smith"  by Arnold Newman 1960

Simply put, an environmental portrait is a portrait of a person that includes enough of the environment around that person to provide context that helps the viewer understand more about the defining characteristics of the subject. One of the keys to a successful environmental portrait is that the portion of the scene included in the frame should be "representative" of the environment or context you want the viewer to associate with the subject. The relative importance of the subject to the environment is also important in defining an "environmental portrait." The subject should be the most prominent element in the scene, with the surrounding elements providing strong supporting context. If you are too close to your subject to include enough of the environment, then the image simply becomes a normal portrait. On the other hand, if the subject is so small in the frame that other elements become more prominent, or viewers cannot discern the defining characteristics of the subject, then the image would be better classified as something other than an environmental portrait.

"Baker" August Sander

Shoot a minimum of 50 images/frames. You can shoot this assignment at a number of locations and even on different days. The subject must be part of the process and may include others, no candid photos of random people you have not met however! No animals or no humans under the age of 14 year as primary subject matter.

Submit one print, any size for in class critique *** NOTE NEW DUE DATE March 7!!!