Avedon Documentary and Socratic Groups

Homework, Due: March 9th, 8pm. Point Value: 50pts (includes the best 3 plus evidence of your many photos shot over the weekend)

Take a series of photographs over the weekend that 'tell a story'.  Have fun, find interesting people, groups, situations, or stage something with a group of friends and use photography to tell a story. Think of freezing a moment in time from a story. In order to get one good shot, be a photographer all weekend  long. Take your camera with you where you go. When an opportunity comes up, get the camera in hand and capture the stories before you. Shoot many photos, select the best 3 and upload them.

Please upload your best 3 photos to this folder, Stories, under the homework folder.

Tips:
Shoot higher resolution. Think about your composition and exposure. Get involved, move, be active and take part in the experience.

Please respond to this blogspot reflection:

Look at the work turned in from Thursday's action shots. We will analyze the work in terms of camera mastery, composition and communication. Please explain which shot you would choose as examples of

1. Best Mastery of Camera Technology/Technique
2. Best Composition
3. Best Communication

Follow up by writing 1 paragraph about your experience on Thursday making action shots. Was it fun? Was it embarrassing? Was it easier the more you did it? If you did it again, how might you prepare differently?

___________________________

Click here to download the Avedon learning guide which includes insights into

1. Why we want to learn about Avedon
2. How it can help our own work
3. How the Socratic Process will work
4. How we will use documentary as a learning tool

Schedule:

• Monday-review/critique action shots, reflect upon the process and Avedon
• Tuesday-break into groups and watch the documentary parts in groups (1 computer per)
• Thursday, Monday, Tues-socratics run by groups. Socratics will use documentary rather than books to form foundation of learning. Each group will prepare a Socratic Seminar that will explore their Documentary Part (2-9) by creating and posing questions, running the seminar and making sure the learning is relevant to improving our own work. 

Socratic Groups:
Each group will watch their assigned part of the documentary Darkness and Light. You will distill what you think is most important for the class and create questions that will engage the class in discussion.

When you run your Socratic, you will play the movie (approx 10 min), and prepare a discussion that will run 8-10 min in length. The purpose of each discussion is to deepen our own understanding of Photography and to apply the concepts learned from a modern American Master of Photography.


Darkness and Light-Part 2

1. Tomas, Corinne, Carolina

Darkness and Light-Part 3

1. Erin, Jessika, Patrick

Darkness and Light-Part 4

1. Caitlin, Daniella, Allison, Brooke

Darkness and Light-Part 5

1. Taylor, Samantha, Ryann, Jay

Darkness and Light-Part 6

1. Nina, Rahul, Juliette

Darkness and Light-Part 7

1. Jimmy, Andrew, Jason Y.

Action Shots

Thursday:

Upload 4 action shots that respond to the 4 concepts below here

Moving outside today you will take a series of action shots around campus.

Take dozens of shots, at least 24-36 action shots to show Mrs. L in your camera, or transferred to computer using a transfer method. From your 24-36 shots, you will pick your 4 favorite to focus on.

Taking your 4 favorite shots, alter in Photoshop by:

1. Desaturating, look at the image and action in color and black and white. (Show Mrs. L for points). Demonstrate to Mrs. L and yourself the photo as B&W and Color. Which is more effective and why?
2. Demonstrate your knowledge of exposure as applied to action shot (what does this mean to you?) Is there an advantage to using an exposure that provides interesting depth of field, or is a high shutter the best approach? In looking at both photographers' work, do you think they use a high shutter to freeze the action? How can you apply the idea of exposure to your work. If you use high shutter, where do you get enough light?
3. Demonstrate your knowledge of Avedon through an Action Shot-get in the photo, make your subject move and have fun with them, enter into the action with your camera, become an active participant. Think about your exposure, lighting, camera angles, etc
4. Demonstrate your knowledge of Avedon through an Action Shot, but this time, convey a mood that would support a fashion advertisement.Think about more posing the shot and actors and look for a specific mood-this time you are making a fashion photograph - your job is to develop an "Image" to associate with a product.

You will have Thursday and Monday to shoot, edit in Photoshop and upload to Google drive.  Final uploads by Tues, next week.


Final assignment, Due Tues Mar 4th:
Hand in 4 shots based on #1-4 above.

Critique March 6th, review all action shots 1-4 using online methods for review. Students will select the best 3 for each category 1-4.

Upcoming:

Click here for Avedon Socratic overview

March 6th-Avedon groups assigned. Watch Avedon sections, create 3 questions to pose for Socratic. Socratics.

March 11-14 Avedon documentary, socratics.

Homework: Avedon- student choice, inspired by learning about Avedon.

March 17th-Levitation, special effects (intro green screen and worm's eye view)
Classwork: Try levitation concepts
Classwork: Plan worm's eye view-shoot background, shoot foreground (over green)

Homework: Student choice, inspired by either levitation concepts, or worm's eye view and green screen.


March 24-April 4th 
Portraiture and lighting, metering.

Homework: Portrait series around topic/subject of your choice, over 2 weekends. Total of 10 shots around a topic with theme and focus. It must fall into portraiture category and be a series of photos exploring a theme or concept. It could be the same model in different poses, different models/people but in the same pose, different people all expressing a similar emotion, same person expressing different emotions.

April
Found object, wabi sabi, google street maps.
Final trip of the year - Cantor Art Museum/Stanford (schedule pending)

Homework: Student choice, found object or wabi sabi with a study of cultural influences

May
Student Choice-develop an independent project that allow you to explore creative areas of interest, identify remaining areas of technical challenge, culminate in student show the final week or school year.

Homework: Student identifies topic, theme, angle. Student will demonstrate a series of photographs (8-10) that fall within the same communicative topic. Student will demonstrate concepts in these photos learned through the year including:

1. Triad relationship (subject, photographer, audience)
2. Exposure
3. Composition (rule of thirds, golden mean, sweet spots, visual hierarchy, balance, camera angle, etc)
4. Conceptual meaning, symbolism, emotional response
5. Lighting
6. Metering
7. Bracketing, exposure compensation
8. Multiple exposure concepts, overlay, multiple layers 
9. Photoshop retouching, cropping, sizing, resolution, file formats, rotation, intentional horizon line, image adjustments, histogram, effects, image compositing etc)
10. Genre of photography

Student will hand in at least 8-10 photos (no more than 12) for review along with a 2 page paper that explains these concepts and how they are demonstrated in the work.

Action Shots

Landcape and Color

List as a response to this blog post 3 things you would like to learn or try this week during each location shoot? What is your shoot plan for both? Will you shoot black and white? What angle? What kind of shots (wide, close, closer, tight shot, angle, same shot with various angles, aperture on same shot with different angles, panaroma at Vasona - either in camera or stitch in Photoshop-, HDR, etc). Look at the resources below first before you answer.

1. Street Scene Downtown Saratoga 
2. Landscape shoot at Vasona

read and watch the following links:

Amazing Landscape Photography Click Here
Fine Art Photographer Elizabeth Carmel Click Here
Luminous Landscape Click Here
HDR Photo Examples

Photoshop-Excellent Tutorial for Landscape Adjustments

HDR Shooting (Nikon D700)

Masters of Photography

This week you will study 4 major photographers of the 20th century, Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Imogen Cunningham and Dorothea Lange.

The class will divide into 4 groups. Each group will be assigned a photographer to research, view and select work to show and finally, report to the class how these photographers may influence our own work.

Monday:
Please look at select works of each photographer in this folder.
Find the 2 photos that most move you or may be inspirational to your own work.
At the end of this blog post please respond by citing the two photos by their titles (i.e., Cunningham1.jpg, etc) and discuss what draws you to each photo.

Tuesday:
Please look at select works of each photographer in this folder and on this document's links.

Compare/contrast the work of the photographers by selecting 1 photo from each photographer and write about the similarities you see and the differences. This should result in about a page reflection, 12pt type, double spaced.

Break into assigned groups and watch the movie and read the selected research articles assigned for each photographer. Prepare a Google Presentation that highlights the following questions/ideas (and make sure to use plenty of photos to accompany the points of your presentation for each page:

1. Birth/Death dates, timeframe of most important work
2. Location (birthplace, significant places photographer lived/worked)
3. Describe their compositional approaches (particularly geometric, forms, golden mean)
4. Describe their photographic practice (do they previsualize, do they look for the right moment, do they always take a camera, do they capture a moment, do they pose, do they wait for the right moment, do they analyze light, what is their practice, what tips can you apply to your process)
5. What angles do you see the photographer use?
6. Describe the tonality in their work
7. How does their work communicate?
8. What does their work communicate?
9. Significant accomplishments.
10. What you have learned that you may apply to your own work.

Thursday:
Finalize/present presentations

Assignment for weekend shoot:
You will shoot one scene or shot from 12 different camera angles, varying your position relative to the subject. The scene should be complex enough to be interesting from different angles. An example might be, your dog in the backyard sleeping shot from 12 angles might not be as interesting as your dog playing with a sibling or friend shot from 12 angles. The dinner table with family and or friends gathered around in conversation shot from 12 angles is interesting. A vase of flowers beautifully lit from 12 angles is interesting, a flower in bright sunlight at high noon sitting in a pot in your backyard, not as interesting. Walking downtown Saratoga shooting the same scene in a coffeeshop from 12 angles is interesting, shooting a coffee cup from 12 angles is lazy. Shooting team mates, bandmates or friends all doing something is interesting, again, shooting your sleeping bird from 12 angles, probably not as interesting. So the scene itself should have the potential to communicate something of value. The assignment of shooting this scene from different angles is what we want to practice. I would suggest looking around your neighborhood. A nighttime scene outside at dusk or even dark could be very interesting shot from different angles. Be creative, think about your weekend and all the opportunities you have to practice photography!

Please upload your final shots to the homework folder under the 12/8 sub-folder. You must hand in 12 photos. Late work will be docked one grade point, no exceptions, so plan ahead if you need to.