Manic Monday

There's a lot going on today!

Concentration:

• Upload all your photos to your laptop
• Save your 25 images in a FOLDER on your computer (label it CONCENTRATION)- not in iphoto (it's easier to open them in photoshop this way) If you uploaded via iPhoto, all you have to do is highlight the images and drag them into the new folder.
• Save your 25 image folder onto your flashdrive as well. Put your Pocket Portrait on the Flashdrive too so I can grade that (the blog pictures were so tiny!)
• Pick out your top 5-10 favorites from your concentration. Upload them to a blog post labeled CONCNTRATION, include a description of your concentration (it may have changed from your original plan!) and any captions under photos that you wish.

Critique:

• You may have noticed there are 2 new Tabs at the top of this blog! One for Period 3, and one for period 4.
• I would like you to view and comment on 5 classmates (stick to your class- so i can find your comment for a grade) Concentrations. Look through a bunch and decide which 5 you'd like to comment on.
• Comments should be WELL THOUGHT OUT. Helpful hints, praise of talent, polite suggestions, etc. This is graded, make it count.
• You will have to prove to the blogger you're not a computer each time you post- sorry!

Photoshop Basics:

• After we've dealt with concentration business we will move on to PHOTOSHOP! Hopefully you've gotten a chance to play with it already, as I think it's more fun to figure things out on your own, and usually easier to understand too.
• We'll start slow today and go over how to
• open files
• how to crop
• how to change to black and white, or sepia.
• how to up the contrast/levels (darks and lights)
• Some of you may already know this- bear with me while we catch everyone up and feel free to ignore me and play with other features during this time.
• We'll do more tomorrow, we'll be touching up old damaged photos
• Bring in your own OLD DAMAGED PHOTOS from home to restore!

This Week

A few Reminders:

There will be a showing of the National Geographic movie for anyone who missed it this Wednesday, April 3rd after school. Remember- those questions are a quiz grade.

Your 25 photo concentration is due Monday! Have the photos on your computer and on your thumbdrive. (I'm going to ask you to post a blog with your top 5-10 favorites).

This week is Photoshop week :) prepare for some fun!

Photography Reference File

Make a Photography Reference File on your Laptop

Label each photo with the technique used.

Please scour the internet, magazines, and photos you've already taken to find STELLAR examples of the following photography tricks:

*Note: These should be outstanding photographs that you really get inspiration from, not the 1^st one that popped up on google image.

Then post your FAVORTIE TEN on your blog and be sure to tell me what technique each is using

1. high depth of field
2. low depth of field
3. rule of thirds
4. selective color - only one thing has color
5. macro - close up
6. silhouette
7. below eye level
8. at eye level
9. above eye level
10. aerial view
11. wide angle
12. movement
13. motion blur
14. stop motion - no blur
15. emotive portrait- should evoke some kind of feeling/mood
16. landscape
17. night photography
18. candid - subjects don't know the photo is being taken
19. abstract - can't tell what the subject is
20. photomanipulation - altered in photoshop or a darkroom
21. lines
22. framing
23. Wildlife
24. Fashion
25. perspective
26. multiple exposure - layered photos
27. something unexpected
28. something for fun
29. a series (include at least 3)
30. SOMETHING OF YOURS!
    
    
    
    Emotive Portrait (note that it's not a face, but still a figure)
    
    
    
    Framing- when the subject has objects around it like a "frame"
    
    
    
    Multiple Exposure! this one has a LOT of layers, but sometimes they just have 2
    
    
    
    WIDE ANGLE photos can be spotted because they tend to look "bigger" on the sides, notice how the 2 waiters look so tall compared to the Newlyweds?
    
    

Eye Levels

Composition Trick Alert!

You can change the entire feel of a photo just by changing your point of view.
Lay on the ground to get a BELOW EYE LEVEL photo
Stand on a chair to get an ABOVE EYE LEVEL photo
Rent a helicopter (or a spaceship) and get an AERIAL photo!
Or, sometimes, standing at your regular height and getting an EYE LEVEL photo is all that's needed.

Examples below...

Aerial view of the East Coast (this is also a NIGHT photo!)

At regular eye level- who doesn't love penguins?

Below eye level. Worlds tallest and smallest dogs.

Another below eye level- this is also a WIDE ANGLE photo

This is WAY Below Eye Level- poppies

Above Eye Level- This photographer used a Fisheye lens, that's why it looks like a bubble!

Where We're At:

A lot has gone on in the last week and a half, and many of you (and I!) have missed days, So here's a run down of what we've done, what you should have done, and whats coming up:

So far we have:

• Created blogs - emailed the link to Peabody
• Posted a test post
• Commented on MY BLOG (which you should have bookmarked) 1st 2 posts (video & right or left brained)
• Watched National Geographic movie & answered questions- posted on blog for a quiz grade
• Scanned our pocket contents & faces- posted on blog with writing about objects/you
• Taken notes on Basic Camera Functions (powerpoint) - save for a future quiz
• Learned about Depth of Field- blog post about both high & low DOF
• Turned in Signed syllabus for quiz grade
• Showed Ms Peabody your thumb drive for a quiz grade
• Learned about Rule of Thirds- blog post with photo & description
• Learned about CONCENTRATION- Assigned to shoot 25 photos with common theme (due Monday)
• Had a camera play day- time to play with the buttons and figure out each camera.

Upcoming:

• Wordle Wednesday- blog post
• What makes a good photo?
• Learn about lighting options
• Create plans for our concentrations- blog post
• Photograph our concentrations (25 photos due Monday)
• Submit thumbdrive with 25 photos & Pocket Portrait for grade (Monday)

Remember, it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to make up work you miss while you're out, and this may require you asking what you've missed. I will not be hunting you down, you must come to me. 

Thank you! Hoping things will calm down in the coming days and we will get into a rhythm!

Wordle Wednesday!

HAPPY WORDLE WEDNESDAY!

Every Wednesday, I will post an image on my blog. Your task will be to create a WORDLE about this image.
What is a WORDLE you ask? Wordle's are word clouds. They are a visual way of displaying a large amount of words. Eventually, you may be able to create your own wordles in Photoshop, until then, there is a lovely website that makes them for you, all you have to do is enter in the words!

Wordle is the place to be.
Tagxedo is also fun- shaped word clouds.

You must use AT LEAST 15-20 different WORDS in every wordle. Without this many it may look kind of lame. The more, the better.

*Note, Wordle.net is lame, so you'll have to screen shot your finished wordles in order to save them. You can screen shot a selection by holding down COMMAND SHIFT and 4. Then you'll get a cross looking tool you can use to select the outline of your Wordle.

Example:

Today's photo is THE SCREAM.

This is a painting by Edvard Munch from 1893.

What words does this make you think of?

You can choose to wing it, and write whatever words come to mind first, or if your curious, you can read more about THE SCREAM below and perhaps the story will bring even more words to mind... 

From The New York Times: "...Over the years these colors may have been further intensified, in our imaginations, by the text Munch carved into the work’s gilded frame. As translated by MoMA, it reads: “I was walking along the road with two of my friends. The sun set — the sky became a bloody red. And I felt a touch of melancholy — I stood still, dead tired — over the blue-black fjord and city hung blood and tongues of fire. My friends walked on — I stayed behind — trembling with fright — I felt the great scream in nature.” "

From The Smithsonian: "Munch's The Scream is an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time. As Leonardo da Vinci evoked a Renaissance ideal of serenity and self-control, Munch defined how we see our own age—wracked with anxiety and uncertainty. His painting of a sexless, twisted, fetal-faced creature, with mouth and eyes open wide in a shriek of horror, re-created a vision that had seized him as he walked one evening in his youth with two friends at sunset. As he later described it, the "air turned to blood" and the "faces of my comrades became a garish yellow-white." Vibrating in his ears he heard "a huge endless scream course through nature." He made two oil paintings, two pastels and numerous prints of the image; the two paintings belong to Oslo's National Gallery and to the Munch Museum, also in Oslo. Both have been stolen in recent years, and the Munch Museum’s is still missing. The thefts have only added posthumous misfortune and notoriety to a life filled with both, and the added attention to the purloined image has further distorted the artist's reputation."

My Wordle: (I wont do this every week, but so that you can see what it is...)

A Concentration of Images

Your challenge: Create a concentration of 25 photos..

These photos should be all along a common theme. Here's a really awesome concentration by photographer Wes Naman. He scotch tapped all his subjects faces!

http://www.businessinsider.com/scotch-tape-series-by-wes-naman-2013-1#namans-inspiration-for-the-series-was-seeing-his-assistant-tape-her-nose-1

There's more if you click the link above!

This is a very specific concentration- you could do something more vague, like human emotions (show someone holding hands, someone crying, 2 people playing...)

Your 25 photos are due MONDAY, April 1st.

Remember, you may have to take WAY more than 25 photos in order to get the 25 good photos you want to submit.

If you are going to need to borrow a camera outside of class time, you will need to sign one out, for one night only, please plan ahead.

What Makes A Good Photograph?

-strong composition

-underlying story

-emphasis point

-movement

-lines

-emotion

-depth

-lighting

-capture the unexpected

Resources for further research:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/basics.htm

http://www.fuelyourphotography.com/what-makes-a-good-photograph/

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/09/30/what-makes-a-great-photo-according-to-national-geographic/

Photography 101: Framing your shots

I could type a ridiculous long blog here, but I would want to steal everything from this blog:

JOURNOGRAPHICA: Basic Photo Tips: Framing Your Shots

So why not just click that link and explore? :)

The Rule of Thirds in action

Please create your own Blog post on THE RULE OF THIRDS.

Composition Trick: Depth of Field

Changing your Depth of Field can give your photo an entirely different feeling. I encourage you to play around with it on your own cameras.

Please create a blog post explaining to me what Depth of Field is in your own words, and how you might use it in your own photography. LABEL IT DEPTH OF FIELD and TRICKS

Include example images of high and low depth of fields, spend some time looking for these. It's very easy to just type "high depth of field" into google and take the first one that pops up, but I'm hoping you'll really explore the many ways in which this can be used and choose a photo that fits your own style.


Quick Refresher:
Depth of field is the amount of distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear in acceptably sharp focus in a photograph.

A large depth of field means that a large area both in front and behind your main subject will appear sharp. A shallow depth of field implies that anything other than your main focus point will appear blurred. A smaller f-stop (F2) will create a shallow depth of field. A larger f-stop (F11) will create a greater depth of field

National Geographic's "THE PHOTOGRAPHERS"

On your own blogs, please answer the questions below while watching the film in class. It may help to copy and paste these into a pages document, and then into your blog after answering them. This will be a Quiz grade.

1) National Geographic's pioneer photographer Gilbert H Grosvenor maintained that “The mind must see before it can believe.” Do you think this is true? Explain.

2) The photographers come across many obstacles, problems, and dilemmas while out on photo shoots. List 5 that stood out to you.

3) Nick Nichols specializes in wildlife photography. What happened with the elephants on his trip to the Rainforest? How do you think you would have reacted in that situation?

4) What do the National Geographic photographers tell you makes a great photo? (Tell me 2 things)

5) National Geographic gives some good pointers on Portraits. What did you take away from this film about photos of the human face?

6) Photographers often shoot hundreds of photos and only pick one or two from the group. Did you agree with the explanations of why certain pictures get chosen for the cover? Which cover was your favorite?

7) David Doubilet photographs underwater. He comments on making the reader “feel the ocean.” How do you think YOU can make viewers FEEL your subjects when you take your photos?

(at 37 minutes in, the Lion hunting scene in the African bush is a little brutal, some may not want to watch this, turn away until 39.5 minutes)

8) National Geographic's mission is to provide its readers “with a window on the world.”

9) What are your thoughts on the Peruvian sheep faming boy? The photographer felt that his “intrusion” had made an actual difference. How can you make a difference with your own photos?

10) Did this film inspire you in any way for your own photography? We're going to explore photography more in depth next week, what lessons will you retain from this film?

Intrigued? More exploration in this quick 5 minute video: 

Making Simply Beautiful Photographs

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/photography/photographers/simply-beautiful/

Pocket Portraits

Project #1 - Assigned Weds 3/20/13 - Due Thursday 3/21 (period 3) and Friday 3/22 (period 4)

Who are you? In these initial days of class, we are all getting to know each other. One way artists tell their story is through self portraits. The portraits generally contain an image of the artist and objects or a setting that tell you about him or her.

I'd like to get to know you, and I'd also like to show you how to use our scanners! There is a virtual phenomenon currently happening that will help us accomplish both these tasks, it's called "Face Your Pockets."

Essentially, a bunch of amateurs emptied their pockets onto a scanner and squished their face behind it and then hit the scan button, and voila- Art was made. Lets follow their lead.

Process-
1. What kinds of things do you have with you everyday? Do you wear the same ring every day? The same belt buckle? Hat? Do you always have a chapstick? A house key? Your license? Can't last a second without your cell phone? Can't see without your glasses?
Make a list of at least 5 objects you ALWAYS have on you. This is obvious, but lets keep it school appropriate.

2. We have 2 scanners set up in our classroom, and they both work different ways.
The iMac set up is pretty straight forward, in the bottom right hand corner of the scanner, there is a button that looks like an arrow inside a rectangle. This is the SCAN button. Press it. A window will open on the iMac. Press it a second time and voila, your image will scan.
The PC set up is similar.

YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR TEACHING THE GROUP AFTER YOU HOW TO USE THE SCANNER. This is key! We will be learning lots from each other this trimester!

3. Grab a partner and sign up for a chance to use one of the scanners together. You can only sign up if you BOTH currently HAVE all your objects.

4. When it's your turn, arrange your objects on the scanner (if you're using a license, I'd try to cover the address with something else...). Make sure you leave a gap somewhere so that your face will be visible behind them!

5. Have your partner hit the scan button, and stay still! Try 3 or 4 different arrangements so you have some options to choose from.

6. Save your files with your LAST NAME the PROJECT ABBREVIATION and a SEQUENCE NUMBER.
This projects abbreviation is PP (Pocket Portraits)
For example, if I scanned 4 images, I would name them PeabodyPP01, PeabodyPP02, PeabodyPP03, PeabodyPP04.

7. For all of our projects you will be using a Flashdrive to Save and Store all your images. Since the majority of you do not yet have one, Log on to firstclass and e-mail yourself your images! If you do have one already- use your flashdrive to transfer the image (this will produce a higher quality image, as e-mailing degrades the image)

8. Once your back on your own computer, go through your images and pick a favorite. Write a Blog Post about it! Tell us why you chose the items you did, and a little bit about yourself, then post your chosen portrait.

Blogger Set Up!

Blogger Set-Up

1. Log-in to your Google Account.

Username: First Class E-mail 

Password: lunchnumber24

2. Click MORE . . . a drop down menu appears . . . Click BLOGGER

3. You should see something like this . . .

4. Click NEW BLOG . . . Now you’re here . . .

5. Title : Be creative but appropriate!

6. Address: first initial last name - Digital Art    example: rpeabody-DigitalArt

7. Choose a template.

8. Click CREATE BLOG

9. Now, you have a blog . . . start POSTING . . .

10. When you log-in you come to the DASHBOARD . . . you will find your blog here . . .

NEW POST    SETTINGS       VIEW IT

The Right and Left Brain

Are you right or left Brained? Do you think more analytically or more creatively?

Here's a little test:

Which part of your brain reacted more?

Respond with your thoughts.

Welcome to Digital Art!

On this blog, you will find everything to need to get through this trimester of Digital Art here at Ellsworth High School.

We're going to start the trimester off talking about the basics:

• What is Digital Media?
• How does is affect our every day lives?

Please watch the video below and add your thoughts...