Project #1: Response to your personal environment

ART 2030 - Photography

Due:  TBD                                                                                                  


The greatest failure is the fear to fail.                                                                                                                                                        – Duane Michals

What is your environment? How do you define it? Is it intimate or vast? Is it physical, psychological, or both? How far does it extend? Think about what this means to you – it is completely open to interpretation. Make a series of photographs that both explore your environment and communicate something about it to the viewer.

                                                                                               

Assuming you’re photographing a place (again, open to interpretation), what can you convey about the place as well as the space? Is there a diiference? How does it feel? Is it warm or cold? Is it comforting or threatening, calm or chaotic? Is it a personal environment or a shared environment? Does it include people? How does the idea of time factor into your photographs? Your environment can be anywhere and should be a place you can return to over a period of time. The idea is for you to push yourself to see how many different ways you can photograph this environment and what you can communicate about it through photography.

Have fun, be creative, and see how far you can push your creativity. Experiment with camera angle, camera position, distance, lighting, time of day, color, lens, shutter speed, aperture, composition, mood, drama, etc. Just be sure you have enough light for proper exposures. Pay attention to the entire frame and aim to create images that are both visually interesting and communicate something about your subject. These photos may be shot indoors or outdoors, or both, but  if you shoot indoors, use natural window light or the correct white balance with artifical light to avoid unwanted color casts. Plan to explore this theme over a period of time - do not shoot this the day before it’s due!

Suggestions:

• Move away from, and close to, different parts of your subject (physically or through focal length changes)

• Consider figure/ ground relationships and focus on different parts of the scene to change emphasis

• Shoot at eye level, crouch down, stand on a ladder, lie on the ground, turn and face different directions

• Vary the placement of your subject within the frame/ play with the composition in various ways

• Experiment with color within the composition (consider color relationships such as complimentary colors, etc)

• Experiment with different aperture settings and shutter speeds (use a tripod when necessary)

• Shoot in morning, afternoon, evening & in various weather conditions for different effects

• Pay attention to the lighting and the mood it creates!

Criteria for Grading: Grades will be based on creativity and technique with an emphasis on creativity. Experimentation is required!  See "What does your grade mean?" on the syllabus.

Requirements: Shoot at least 75 different photographs with a digital camera. Upload the images to Flickr. Before the critique, create a set of the strongest 3-5 images (these will be projected at the critique). If you shoot in RAW format and upload your images via Bridge, they will automatically be converted to JPGS for Flickr. Save the RAW files on your hard drive for future use and editing.