This page will provide you with information necessary to successfully complete your Photography Assignments.
Photography Assignments Description
You will shoot three (3) Photography Assignments at intervals throughout the semester. Each individual Photography assignment will have a potential scoring value of 100 points, which is 11% of the total semester score. Together, all four Photography assignments represent approximately 33% of the potential 900-point course score.
Photography assignments in this course are tasks where you communicate ideas to an audience visually through photographs, which you take. Although the assignments are creative activities, they also have definite critical goals, which you must accomplish. Most importantly, your audience must be able to interpret and understand your ideas. This is more difficult than it appears. Although you may know what your intentions are with the photos you take, you must also convey that to the audience in a picture, without additional explanation.
Photographs work on the literal level. That is, we can see what is happening in a photo as we might if we were looking at the scene. However, photographs also work on a symbolic level. Unlike with sight, photographs have unique attributes such as frame boundaries, focus variations, and various visual distortions. You will use these attributes to add symbolic meaning to a photo beyond the content. For example, you can use selective sharp focus to draw attention to an important aspect while the rest of the photo is out of focus. You can also use Photoshop techniques such as dodge and burn (lighten or darken) tools or black and white filters to add additional meaning to a photo. If you do not have Photoshop available then try a free online app such as Pixlr Editor at https://pixlr.com/editor for a similar experience.
You are expected to make creative photographs. To best accomplish that you will need to do research to determine what techniques and styles most interest or intrigue you. Google searches for creative photography will yield many helpful results. The Penn State Libraries also have extensive resources, which are available for check out, browsing or interlibrary loan. World Campus students may find similar resources at their local libraries.
When we return to school from the Covid 19 lock down, if you have an ongoing interest in photography and are at University Park Campus, there are many photography picture books located on the 3rd floor of Pattee Library in the “TR” section. If you have an interest in photography, library resources such as these are very valuable since a knowledgeable librarian has specifically chosen the most academically relevant material for the library. Therefore, you do not have to wade through pages of Google searches wasting time trying to make sense out of countless confusing results. The librarian has done a lot of that work already and all you have to do is browse the library shelves.
How to Submit your Photography Assignment
To turn in your photography assignments simply submit your jpeg photographs in Canvas using the Submit Assignment link. You can add commentary to your assignment where you describe what you did to meet the assignment objectives or explain to the audience what you were trying to acheive creatively. This is especially helpful to other students when they are making Peer Review comments about your work since they can more directly comments on how well you achieved what you intended and how you could do it better in the future.
Photographic critical seeing and thinking expectations
Photographs used in class projects must communicate to the viewer something meaningful beyond the elementary content of the photo. Therefore, the construction of your photos must put the image content (all the things and people that appear in the photos) into some kind of expressive context, which you and your classmates will express in writing during the Peer Review portion of the assignment. This creative style of creatively integrating content and form in photographs will require thought and planning.
Three potential ways to accomplish this are to:
- Emphasize relationships between elements of content using interesting composition,
- Use stylistic techniques such as expressive lighting to give special meaning to the content,
- Find and include dramatically meaningful content to give the photo extraordinary power.
The goal of this approach is to teach you, through experience, to communicate complex ideas visually without the need for additional written or verbal explanation. During the Peer Review process, your classmates will tell you how successful you were at accomplishing this.
Photographic Assignment Requirements
For each assignment you will be required to submit photographs that meet the goals of the assignments. You will also be required to submit ten (10) critical evaluations of your classmates’ photos, which we refer to as Peer Reviews.
Submit different photos
All the photos you submit for the assignment must be completely different from one another. Therefore, do not submit similar variations of the same photo. If you submit few photographs than required or you do not follow the assignment topic the highest score you will receive for the assignment is 64% or the equivalent of a “D”.
To ensure this variety, they must either be taken in different locations and/or have completely different content. Give enough thought to the assignment to develop three unique approaches. If you submit visually similar photos or submit fewer than the required number of photos, the highest score you can expect to receive is 50% of the potential maximum, which corresponds to a maximum grade of “D”.
New work is required for each assignment
The photos for each assignment must be taken after the start date of the assignment listed on the course schedule. This makes the assignment more challenging since you have to develop ideas for new photos more quickly. Old photos may not be used.
This is very important. We consider using old photos for the assignment to be a violation of academic integrity; therefore, if you use old photos, you will receive a zero for the entire assignment (photographs and peer reviews) on the first occasion and then fail the course if it happens again. Remember, digital images carry date codes as embedded metadata.
Late or incomplete work
Late work is not accepted unless it meets the University guidelines for submission of late work. If you intend to turn in work late, contact your instructor in advance of the due date and make the appropriate arrangements. Late work will not be able to participate in the Peer Review process and will receive a score of Zero. Ample time is allowed to complete all assignments, therefore any late work due to illness must be accompanied by a physician’s excuse explaining the situation. Whenever possible, student athletes should make accommodations to complete the work before they travel if the assignment due dates conflict with travel dates.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is copying or using someone else’s work. For example, using any photo that you did not take or that you found on the Internet will constitute plagiarism. Do not do this. On the first occasion, you will receive a zero for the entire assignment and if it happens again, you will fail the class. It is just not worth the risk.
Camera
You may use any digital camera to take photos for this class. This includes anything from iPhones/Androids to professional DSLR cameras. The focus of this course is on making creative and meaningful photos. The course text will introduce many photography technique-oriented concepts. If you find that you have an interest in more professional techniques, you may consider taking PHOTO 202, The Fundamentals of Professional Photography. It is part of the proposed Professional Photography Minor and the Bachelor of Design (B.Des) in Professional Photography. You can ask your instructor for details.
Computer
You will need a reliable computer with updated software capable of running the latest versions of Internet browsers. We have found that old browser versions may not be reliable or allow you to predictably upload your photos so bring your browsers up to date before you need to access the course materials or resources.
Internet
You will need a reliable Internet connection to access the course materials and upload your photos.
Software
No special software is necessary on your computer. Photoshop or Gimp (open source) are available in Penn State computer labs and may be helpful for resizing, color correction, filtering, or image manipulation.
Pixlr Editor (more advanced) or Pixlr Express (more simple) – from pixlr.com – are good online, mobile and downloadable free solutions from Autodesk that will give you a lot of control of your images. Pixlr Editor gives a surprisingly Photoshop-like experience, which even includes layer masking. In addition, your camera, smartphone, tablet or other imaging device may have proprietary software that works well and you like to use. Remember that our PHOTO 100 image gallery website only accepts jpeg images so whatever software you use must be set to save the photos in that format.
Our Photography Assignments have two parts that you will participate in over two weeks.
Part 1. Photography (1st week) –
Watch the tutorials associated with the assignment. Make photographs that meet the assignment criteria. Upload the photographs to Canvas and write a include a brief statement that explains your work, which your classmates will read when reviewing your images.
Part 2. Peer Review – (2nd week) –
IMPORTANT: All Peer Reviews are due one week from the due date of the assignment.
At noon on the day after each assignment is due, Canvas will automatically assign to you the ten classmates’ work, which you will review. You will have approximately one week to complete the Peer Reviews. Consult the Modules section of Canvas to see the due dates for each Peer Review. Based on the assignment criteria, assignment learning objectives, and information you learned in the tutorials, write peer evaluations that explain how well you think your classmates accomplished the assignment. Include suggestions for improving the photography.
Participating fully in the Peer Review is a requirement for the assignment. If you choose to not participate, review fewer than ten classmates, or write less than the minimum requirement of 150 words for each review, the maximum score you can expect for the assignment is 64%.
Minimum word amounts ensure thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your review. If you are not sure what to write, look carefully at each submitted photographs and discuss details of the images such as content choices, compositional choices, and technical choices such as lightness/darkness, color, etc.
Peer Review Requirements
Canvas will automatically assign to you peer evaluations to perform. Peer Reviews are critical reactions that you write regarding your classmates’ photographic assignments. You are required to comment on ten (10) of your classmates’ photographs for each photography assignment. If you make fewer than ten (10) complete comments, the highest score you will receive for the entire assignment will be 64% of the potential score, which is the equivalent of a “D.”
Peer Reviews require a minimum of 150 words for each Peer Review Comment to be accepted as complete. Peer Review Comments that have fewer than 150 words are incomplete. The purpose of the minimum word count is to ensure thoroughness. You most likely will have to write more than 150 words to thoroughly meet the assignment criteria listed below.
We recommend that you write comments on photographs that you think meet the creative and technical goals of the assignment and write comments on photographs, which you think fall short of the assignment goals. Most photographers appreciate receiving constructive comments on the technical and aesthetic quality of their photographs. Be honest and be thorough when making your peer comments.
Every peer review posting you make must be thorough, thoughtful, unique, and clearly address specific qualities of the photograph, which you are judging. They must clearly explain your reasons for your evaluation.
Every peer review that you write must be unique and specifically address the images your are reviewing. Do not repeat or copy the same review or passages of the same review to simply complete the assignment without providing thoughtful and useful feedback. Such behavior will be regarded as a violation of academic integrity and will result in a zero for the assignment.
Scoring the Assignments
The scores you receive for your photography assignments are subjective and frank evaluations made by an experienced instructor based on the criteria in the assignment descriptions.
If you do not agree with your instructor’s evaluation of a photography assignment, you can ask for specific feedback, then based on that information and the peer critiques re-photograph the assignment to create photos that are more effective, and then request a reevaluation. Alternatively, you can write to your instructor and clearly explain how you accomplished each of the above criteria to a level beyond the instructor’s evaluation. It will be your responsibility to support the effort and execution of your photography. Be aware, the instructor may or may not agree with your reasoning.
By taking an arts course like this, you agree to receive an experienced instructor’s subjective evaluation of your creative work. Merely doing the assignment will not qualify you for an “A”. To accomplish that evaluative level, you must unmistakably demonstrate exceptional effort and execution.
We expect students’ emphasis to focus on how they can improve their work. Angry or argumentative messages regarding assignment scores do not reflect scholarly behavior and do not follow Penn State’s academic integrity policy of maintaining a respectful and dignified learning environment.