Make photos every day for 5 days in a row. The idea is to kickstart your photography and have it become a regular practice. You may use any digital camera, this includes anything from iPhones/Androids to professional DSLR cameras. The focus is on making creative and meaningful photos.
This project is about you. Introduce yourself through images. What is your life like? What are your days like? What are your interests? What are your aspirations, your dreams? What is important to you? How do you view the world? How do you see yourself and how do you want to be seen by others? Can you depict a vivid memory? This is an exercise in self-expression.
Following the 5-day period (five consecutive days), upload your strongest image from each day onto Canvas. The images should be high-quality jpeg files.
After you are done with photographing, sorting, editing your photographs, upload all five of your final images at the same time to Canvas.
Take many images each day so that you have a large pool of photographs to select from. Name the images using the dates they were taken: for example 08_23_2022, 08_24_2022, 08_25_2022, etc.
The final five images should be taken at five different locations. Do not select more than one image taken in your home.
No snapshots. No cliché selfies. All of your final selects should be carefully composed, effective photographs. The most important element of a good photo is the ability of the photograph to communicate with the viewer. It should be able to tell a story through its composition, lighting or its subject matter.
One of the purposes of this exercise is to play with your camera and find joy in your photography. It hopefully inspires you to get into the habit of making photos daily. If you do anything on a regular basis and work on your process and analyze the results, you will improve. In due time, your sustained practice will change how you move around in the world and enhance the way you see it.
It is important that you think about your plans and ideas in advance. Get creative. What you photograph does not matter so much as how and why you photograph it. It is not about the content you capture in an image so much as to what kind of emotions your images evoke.
Consider picturing yourself in the photo. If you choose to photograph objects, you should construct a creative arrangement and seek ways to depict your relationship with those objects. You can also make a photo journal and take photos of what you consider the highlight of your day. Remember, there is beauty in little things and you can picture simple moments. Note that even though you do not have to appear in the images, your photos should be personal. They should represent your ideas, they should tell something about you.
A couple creative ideas: seek out interesting perspectives, play with shadows, let your reflection show, photograph your silhouette, include your hands, show off your personality, use a tripod to photograph yourself in action…
If you do not submit five images, the assignment will be considered incomplete. If you skip a day, you will need to start all over. If you do not have enough time to start over, make more images the following day. Your final images will then have two images from the same day (name them as follows: 08_25_2022_1, 08_25_2022_2).
Set up a reminder on your phone. Do not cheat. Remember, digital images carry date codes as embedded metadata.
Each one of your five selected images should be technically, compositionally and conceptually sound and well thought out. I recommend that you take a lot of photos (ideally, hundreds of them every day) in order to have a strong image for each day. If you only take a few photos it is unlikely that they will be very effective. Minimal effort will lead to minimal results.
You may want to use a large RAW format file for your personal needs but use jpeg format for your online upload. When it comes to editing your photos, limit your edits to what is needed. Do not use presets of filters (do not convert your images to black and white either for this assignment).
Use the aspect ratio (the ratio between the width and height of an image) of 3:2 or 4:3 on your camera/phone. (Other common aspect ratios include 1:1, 16:9, 16:10, and 5:9–do not use those). Of course, feel free to use both the landscape (horizontal layout) or portrait (vertical) orientation.
Include a statement (min. 200 words, a pdf file) that explains your work and thinking, which your classmates will read when reviewing your images. Explain the photographic choices you made (in terms of aesthetics, subject matter and techniques). Explain the ideas, the concept behind the images. No need to describe what the photos depict, especially if that is obvious. You may write about the challenges you faced and questions you pondered while working on the assignment. Include technical details (aperture, shutter speed, ISO or any other technical details your peers might find helpful).
Remember, photography is a technically based art form. The composition can be ruined because the image is out of focus, badly over or underexposed, or the victim of other poorly chosen camera settings. Without the aptitude to effectively use your camera, you may lack the ability to make the photograph that you perceive in your mind’s eye. Therefore, pay attention to the technical basics discussed in the tutorial titled Photography 101.
Learning outcome descriptions
Creative thinking
Acquiring photographic skills
Use the camera exposure controls (aperture, shutter speed, ISO as explained in Photography 101 tutorial) to ensure adequate image brightness.
Pick a lens focal length or zoom length that will be most effective for the photo. Your choices will be wide-angle, “normal”, or long (zoomed in) focal lengths.
Make sure you focus the image sharply where necessary. Sometimes autofocus cameras will focus elsewhere so double check the focus in the images you take and switch to manual focus if the camera will not cooperate with you.
Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects that are in acceptably sharp focus in an image. Depth of field indicates how much of the image is sharp. Do you want all of your image to be in focus? You can bring more attention to your subject by reducing the depth of field in a scene.
Solving image making problems
Are your camera’s settings correct for this image? Where to focus? What to include in the image? What is your subject? How to best highlight it? Are you close enough to your subject? Is there something in front of or behind the subject that is distracting? Where is the light coming from? Are you standing in the best place to make the photograph? Is it the best time of day to make the photograph? Is there a better perspective? What do you want the photo to communicate? What makes your image effective?
You’ll be thinking about many different problems at the same time. If may feel overwhelming at first. Yet, with practice, it will be easier to pay attention to all of this at the same time.
Innovative thinking
Your photography is innovative for example when you photograph something in a way that people would not commonly see like that. Perhaps you depict something from an unusual angle. Or you place two objects (or more) in your scene that you would not normally find together. Or you choose to use a slow shutter speed and blur your subject. Conversely, you can freeze the action by using a fast shutter speed. Or you may find repeating patterns or reflections.
Visual communications
Compositional organization
Composition is arranging, creating, seeing, framing, and cropping. Elements of composition are patterns, texture, symmetry/asymmetry, depth of field, lines, curves, frames, contrast, color, viewpoint, depth, negative space/filled space, foreground/ background, visual tension, shapes. Use one or more of these elements to create a composition that works for your image. Of course, not all will be available at all times, but study them, recognize them, and employ them to help enrich your images.
Good composition is the process of arranging forms in a way that is pleasing and that guides the viewer’s eye to bring attention to the subject. In a compelling composition your eye will not search and wonder. You will immediately know what the subject of the image is.
A strong composition may also reveal things in a scene that the viewer might not notice on their own; patterns, repetition or the play of light and shadow. Sometimes the only reason you will find an image interesting is because of the way the photographer composed it. Mundane objects become interesting because of how you arrange them within the frame.
Image content choices
What do you include? What do you leave out? How do you orchestrate content within the photographic frame?
Photographic images are contained within a frame. Every camera imposes a frame, determining the specific segment of space and time that will exist within its borders. You place the camera in front of your eye, and the world, which has no boundaries, is suddenly confined to the square or rectangle of the camera’s viewfinder. So framing begins in-camera and then continues through cropping.
Thoughtful framing must be developed as a very conscious act. When framing the content of an image, you ask the following questions:
-Does all the content in the frame contribute to the meaning of my image and lead the viewer to understand what I am trying to communicate about my subject?
-Does any content in the frame distract from communicating about the subject? If so, how can I eliminate it?
Convey central image message
Before pressing the shutter, survey the edges of your image. Eliminate distracting details. Look for lines entering, exiting, or running parallel to an edge. Can you re-position them to strengthen the visual geometry? Look at the space around your edges. Is it useless? If so, re-compose to reduce or eliminate it. Or could your subject benefit from more space around it?
For people and animals, look for cut off body parts – avoid slicing at a joint. If a limb is almost all there, show it all – such as a hand, foot, or the tip of a tail. Check if you are chopping off the top, bottom, or side of an object. If something is almost whole, should you make it whole or take more away?
Compose with your key message in mind. Be deliberate and intentional as you frame the photo. Remove anything extraneous that might conflict or compete with your main message.
