Photography Course

This photography project was designed to be a creative exploration of both the process of taking portraits and post-production manipulation. Students worked collaboratively to take their photographs and had a chance to express their creativity with both the taking of the photographs and the manipulation. All students followed the Splatter Dispersion tutorial and the class was differentiated with an additional post-production technique of Double Exposure. The class culminated in a Gallery Walk where students responded to the work by writing an emotion, question, or statement that the work evoked.

Students were introduced to the fundamentals of composition, the history, and photographic genre of still lives. Their project challenge was to create their own composition, this was coupled with an introduction of additional Photoshop tools and techniques. An emphasis was placed on the use of space and negative space with the four fundamental elements of composition; a clearly defined subject and background, a sense of balance, a point of view, and a degree of simplicity. Students were also asked think about the lighting. Students also created a Pinterest still life idea board. The project culminated with a class presentation and a peer-to-peer critique.

This multi-layered and multiple class project was designed to introduce students to the concept of composition, the fundamentals of composition in photography, the idea of looking versus seeing, and increasing their Photoshop skills. Students were introduced to the basics of photography; focal length, aperture, iso, & shutter speed. Students used iPads with the grid turned off to take photograph a series of landscape photographs that epitomized their chosen compositional element. Students then choose their best photograph and followed the project tutorial to edit the photograph. The project culminated with a class critique.

For the independent project, students were asked to utilize the skills and concepts they learned throughout this course and their own creativity to propose a photography series of their own creation. Students researched ideas and concepts, proposed a project based around a concept or subject matter, had to get approval for this project, shot their project, edited, and presented their final curated work along with their process and intent as the final pièce de résistance for the course.de résistance for the course.