Digital Photography

10/10/21: Upcoming Project

Object on a Journey - see instructions in the file immediately below. I will be posting some examples of this project that we've already looked at and discussed in class, as well as some additional examples, in the coming days. Due date to be determined/announced, but definitely at least a couple of weeks from now.

Here is a link to a file with information on Photoshop selection tools, methods, and strategies (including saving and loading):

https://drive.google.com/open?id=16CxQ5QWDIkpVqE0Vko2LrkRw5sYekjvK

Quarter 2

Open and review the two files just below. One is about our "heron" project, which now has two parts, and is all about exploring foreground/background relationships as you compose photographs. The other is about the project for which you'll explore ways of creating contrasts between sharpness and blurriness relating to motion rather than to selective focus.

Quarter 1 - 2019-20 - The three files below provide verbal and, in the case of the top file, verbal AND visual, information and reminders about our entire first unit of work relating to: selective focus/depth of field; change of focus, color and grayscale (in terms of both the original scene/shot and in terms of later computer manipulation); focal length and camera-to-subject distance and how those factors determine the feeling of SPACE in photographs

In my absences on 3/14 and on 3/15/19, I'd like Digital Photo students to do the following:

Note: You could skip the first two steps and simply open and read each file without saving them, but I think that having a saved copy of each will make things work more smoothly. The absolutely vital steps begin with #3.

1. Create a Digital Photo folder in Notability on their iPads.

2. Open and save the following files (see just below) to your iPad. There are four different brief readings, and a fifth file with prompts/questions relating to those readings. (All this material relates to some big questions about how mechanization and automation affects the arts.)

3. Read the articles. Note that the one on Google's new "Pixels" device has been highlighted to indicate the key passage. You should probably skim the whole reading, but that highlighted section (the non-grayed out part) is the key part, so read that part carefully and closely.

4. Read and respond to the prompts/questions in a Google Doc. I think it will be easiest for both you and me if you simply refer to the prompt/question by number as you proceed with your responses in your Google Doc.

5. Share your Google Doc. with me. (Typing in my last name, Sheinfeld, should get my email address to pop up, allowing "Share" to proceed.)

If you don't finish within the period, please still share your incomplete responses with me. You will have the opportunity to re-share a more complete version later, if necessary.

In my absence, on 2/13/19: If you are in the lab, you can work on one or more joiners either on your iPad or on your computer. I don't expect that you'll be using the DSLRs in my absence, though one or two of you may have your own with you, and you're of course free and encouraged to use them for joiner work. Keep in mind that you can shoot with your iPad (or smart phone) and still put a joiner together on the computer. (One of the two finished joiners from our class that I showed you last week was done this way: the grid-type joiner by Melanie.) Working on the computer using Photoshop gives you much more control, but there's a lot to be said for trying out joiners on the iPad, as the process involves more "feel" and also places more limitations on you. (Keep in mind that it's possible to further modify a joiner originally made on an iPad once you've sent it to the computer. And i f you send it via Dropbox as a .psd file (IF this is still possible: I'm having some trouble doing so, but will check this out further when I'm back in school), you'll even still have whatever layers you've kept in Brushes Redux.) In any case, you will have these choices if you're in A-109.

On the other hand, if you're having class elsewhere, plan to do joiner work with/on your iPad. (Note that some of you, if you're photographing for a joiner, may prefer to use your phone to the iPad. If you're confident that you'll be able to get the shots from your phone onto the iPad, this is OK.) Feel free to show this message on our class webpage (note that I included today's date up top, for added credibility!) if you need to get permission from a substitute teacher to photograph around the school. (But please follow through and do so: please don't abuse the privilege!)

Start of Quarter 3:

We'll begin Q3 by making photographic "joiners." British artist David Hockney coined the term in the sense we intend: photographic scenes created by piecing together multiple separate photos. He first got the idea when he used this piecing-together technique for a very practical purpose, trying to show someone large interior spaces that he couldn't capture in a single shot. But he developed more expressive and aesthetic reasons for making joiners, as he felt that they let him use photography in ways that captured or conveyed a sense of time. Hockney's joiners, by combining shots with somewhat different vantage points, are related to cubism (an artistic style or movement initiated by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque starting around 1907), which challenged traditional Western linear perspective as the one "right" way to see/depict the world.

Here's a link to a short film showing David Hockney at work on a joiner. This film will certainly give you a good sense of what joiners can be about, and how one might work on them. Keep in mind that Hockney started working on joiners before digital photography had really gotten going, so all his joiner work began with film photography and with the actual placement of actual prints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGtraVb_0vY

The basic idea of joiners can be taken in LOTS of different directions. Each of you will be exploring and trying out at least a couple of possibilities during this unit.

Just below are four pdf files. Each is a different collection of joiners: by artist David Hockney; by former students (including work done with film cameras); by a variety of other photographers; by your teacher.

Two projects related closely to each other follow right after the sequence assignment. One project involves photographing an object/thing in different ways so as to reveal different aspects of the object. The other involves taking an object on a photographic journey. Here are the assignments:

Here are four files exemplifying the "Object on a Journey" idea. One is a set of photos shared with me by a friend who travels for work, and who often photographs Gumby in various locales. Another slide show presents a few photos from a project done by two photographers back in the 1970s, involving traveling around the United States with a red couch (two, actually, to speed things up) and using it as a prop in various landscape, portrait, and other shots. A third comprises photos that a local photographer made into a series of postcards, with each involving one or more sock monkey. The fourth is a series I took over December vacation of this school year (2018-19) specifically as an example of this project.

I've updated the instructions for the sequence project. This includes both the warm-up activities and the final sequence project itself. See the word file (in both .doc and .pdf formats) immediately below.

Here's a file highlighting some key aspects and techniques involved in the four expressive self-portrait project:

Welcome to our Digital Photography website, just getting underway and still very much in the construction phase!

For class on 10/31/18, in my absence:

1. Check in Aspen to see which of our early Photoshop and iPad warmup assignments are blank — indicating that those pieces of work were either not done or were, for other reasons (e.g., saved in weird places) unavailable to me when I was doing progress report grades.

2. Make a NEW FOLDER in your Digital Art I Google Drive folder (you can do this right through Drive File Stream). Label this folder: "finished work not yet graded."

3. Put any work that you HAVE completed for those early assignments in the folder you've just made.

4. Complete any early assignments that you have not yet completed and put them into this same folder.

See instructions just below for two of those early assignments.

I've also inserted, below, my own example of the walking-in vs. zooming-in comparison.

With any remaining time (and some of you who got everything, or nearly everything, in on time to me way back when should have a good deal of time), please work on completing the four self-portraits with backgrounds photo assignment.

Technical note #1: Remember that one good way of getting the background image into the same file with a portrait is to duplicate a layer and send it to another file. Both files must be open to do this. We used the same technique when making the crop compilations.

Technical note #2: Remember the trick of setting the crop tool in Photoshop to a particular size and resolution and cropping each portrait/background file down using the same settings. Doing so before trying to compile all four portraits/backgrounds into a single larger file will be very helpful.

Overall reminders for the self-portraits project: Try to keep the proportion of yourself to the background fairly constant in all four images. And remember that all four selfo-portrait/background images MUST be the same size for the compilation.

For those of you who have already completed the self-portraits (lighting/expresssion/matching background) project, please do the following warmup for our new sequence project:

• Search the web as creatively as you can (trying a variety of search terms, for example, and perhaps searching within sites where people post and tag their photos, such as flickr, for photographic sequences. Collect examples, and put them together in a Google doc. in your class folder. Do your best to find a variety of different sorts of sequences, and label the examples you've gathered appropriately. In addition, briefly describe/explain/discuss your ideas about these different types of sequences. For instances, what are the similarities and the differences from one type to another? Finally, come up with a couple (preferably several!) ideas for photographic sequences. (If you want to make sketches and include them, that's great!) For each idea that you're serious about, please note any technical problems or questions you think may arise, and please list all the things (including the type of setting: e.g., will your sequence best be photographed in a dark room? etc.) you foresee needing to make your sequence.

For those of you who already completed all this, please stretch your minds even further and try to come up with some amazing additional ideas!

I've inserted fourfiles with several sequences in each to help further encourage your thinking and planning. One file has student sequences. (I've inserted one very good motion sequence involving a dive; the others you've seen before.) Two files have some recent sequences I've put together. One of these centers on animals, and you've seen these before. The other file has brand new sequences done as I explored some techniques to better prepare for helping one student who hopes to make a sequence involving a water droplet and ripples. In this final file, the last sequence is the simplest (including having the fewest shots) and clearest: the easiest to see without zooming in.