PHOTO 1 ASSIGNMENTS

REMOTE LEARNING ASSIGNMENT #3: TWO STORIES (INDOOR / OUTDOOR)

(HAND IN VIA ILEARN)

Since most of you were born after the year 2000, that alone puts your visual acumen (the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions, typically in a particular domain (photography)), far ahead of what mine was at your age.

Your understanding of photography as a language and your consideration of what can happen inside a frame is much more developed due to the omnipresence (the state of being widespread or constantly encountered) of smartphones, image-editing software, and the proclivity (a tendency to choose or do something regularly) to use pictures to tell simple stories on social media. 

Yes, I grew up staring at my generation’s version of a framed screen, and during a golden age of photography, but to you almost everything is told with a photo. Present day teenagers (this means you) do read and play, but when stuck indoors 23.5 hours of the day due to the Covid-19, they communicate with and absorb images—good, bad, and very repetitive—at a very fast pace I still don’t completely grasp.

Binary Confusion

So how can I teach you about photography?  These lessons I will be giving you won’t be about film, the darkroom, and F-Stops due to us not being in the classroom anymore.  It’s going to be about story, editing, and eliminating wasted imagery.  I want you to understand how to use the incredible image-making equipment at your disposal in a better and more meaningful way. I mean, people take a photo nowadays just to check their hair.

I am asking you to come up with two stories that you should tell with no more than five photos each.  I don’t care how many you take, but you need to edit the series down to a reasonable number.  And due to your current status as indoor kids, you will be doing an indoor story and an outdoor story from your windows.  Fortunately, there’s a lot to see and many stories to tell…even though I feel you don’t really believe me right now…don’t worry…there is always something.

  1. Write down the two stories (one inside / one outside) you want to tell
  2. Do a self-critique / write a reflection afterward on both stories, making sure you include / describe how your equipment (your phone) is appropriate (or not).

For this lesson, the tools will be very familiar: your smartphone.  You already know how to operate them…you know how to edit (Exposure: darker/lighter, framing your subject, saturation, and cropping just to name a few options).  With that you can utilize certain tried-and-true photographic techniques to aid your storytelling, but also test the limits of your gear (your phone) against your vision.

As for the stories, you can tell the story of what your life is right now, for example.  What is a not normal / now normal typical day for you or for your family.  If you have a brother or sister, interview them and ask them what their life is like, write a story based on that, then come up with pictures that tell their story.  (Or your mom, dad, grandparents, pet, cousin, etc.).  If you feel that your day to day life is too boring, make up a story about how you want your life to be.  Set up your make-believe world and document it with the pictures 

Just because the general theme of the stories are 1. indoor and 2. outdoor, does not mean that you cannot be outside shooting through the window to see the indoors for the indoor theme and vice versa.  You can shoot through the window looking outside for the outside theme; you don’t necessarily have to be outside to convey your story.  Plus think about what you can do to the window in order to have different effects on the photos.  Try fogging it up and wiping parts of it away so that specific things show up or do not show up that are behind it.  Try spraying water on it to create water droplets…approach the window from different angles to see what happens to your picture.  This is the time to experiment with these things…it doesn’t cost any money to take pictures with your phone.  If you don’t like it, just delete, delete, delete…and try, try, try again.

STUDENT #2 / EXAMPLE #2a

Another student who is happily spending an inordinate amount of time in her room these days, offered this.

Story #1 Inside / Project Statement: My inside story is really just my story but, told from the point of view of my cat, who is in my room almost all day. How does she see me? Using the self-timer on my phone, I set up the camera where my cat often is (bed, shelf, on my desk when I’m trying to write) and put myself back in place.

Story #1 Inside Self-Critique / Reflection: This is more like a series of self-portraits, but not selfies. They were maybe too easy to take but, I think if I used a bigger camera, they would not have a casual feel, which is how I assume a cat looks at humans.

One question after shooting: What is the difference between a self-portrait and a selfie?

Answer: Ask Cindy Sherman.

Teacher’s Comment: I like the idea of using the camera to explore “someone” else’s P.O.V. and this does tell a story about your day doing homework and your cat’s day, distracting you from said homework. Good use of the camera’s limited features, but perhaps it’s possible to get more out of a phone camera’s imaging capability and expand the story from just your room.

NOTE: You also have the option to submit different types of files in iLearn, rather than a Mahara page. Just make sure that you have organized your pictures and reflections in a way so that I know what goes with what and the order they should be in. Otherwise it will not be a passing grade even though you may have turned in something. I do not feel like doing a puzzle with your project…

Stories x 2 = 4 points each = 8

Self-Critique / Reflection x 2 = 4 points each = 8

Pictures x 5 (x 2 indoor pictures & outdoor pictures) = 4 points each picture = 20 points = 40

TOTAL AMOUNT AVAILABLE TO EARN = 56 points

(CLICK ON THE PAGES BELOW TO ACCESS THE REST OF THE REMOTE ASSIGNMENTS…)