Spring 2013 5-7pm Beginning Digital Class
WEEK 6:
Quick review of camera controls, post production basics with Lightroom 4 and Photoshop, review of work on your blogs.
Assignment: 12 image project on something you love and couldn’t live without.
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These images should move me, us, and especially you.
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Now is your chance to show what you have learned, and give justice to what you love. A person, a place, an event, a story, a food, an exercise.
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Make it something you have access to.
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Black and white or color, but not both
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Images should be all polished / edited, so that it would be a portfolio that you are proud to show.
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If it is a story, keep our interest, have a beginning, middle and an end.
WEEK 5:
Shooting Day around Berkeley!
Assignment: is 6 of your images all polished for your project up on your blogs.
WEEK 4:
Class: Intermediate Composition, Flash Exercises, Review of Assignments, Class Discussion of Images
Assignment: Make a photography story out of something seemingly un-story like, using COLOR as a major composition element. Seven final images to your blogs. How to use color effectively? Look at fine art color photography, as well as food or product magazines… they know their stuff! Also, spend at least 3 hours looking through photography work. See “Highly Suggested Resources” on my class blog for some great sites with exceptional photographic talent.
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WEEK 3:
Class: Shooting on the streets around campus in Berkeley, with three mini assignments. Compose with Color, Nothing at Eye Level and Using Pedestrian Traffic To Complete The Frame.
Assignment: 3 finished examples of each of these three to your blogs.
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WEEK 2:
Class: Today we went over a lot of camera basics. Here is the site that we used for reference in class. Get to know all of this information to get better in photography!
Assignment Two – Side Light: Take photos of somebody, doing something, in beautiful sidelight. Upload seven of these shots to your blogs, with 1000 pixels on the longest side before upload. This is by far my FAVORITE quality of light. I look for it in every photographic situation and use it whenever I can. Here are some examples…
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WEEK 1:
Welcome to a semester of learning about photography and your camera! You’ll all be shooting in manual mode and learning the foundations of photographs with staying power.
The first assignment is to create your own personal photography blog and to upload five of your favorite images that you have ever taken to it. I recommend using WordPress.com, but you can also check out Tumblr.
Good luck!
– Doug D.
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Winter 2013 Tuesday Evening Class
Final Assignment: 12 image photo project on something / someone you LOVE. This is not the casual love, this is the love that if this person or thing or place was not to exist, you would feel deflated. You should love and adore this subject, and you should bring all of that emotion through in your images.
Must be black and white or color, but not both. Be careful on your sequencing… it should open with a bang and end with a bang, with ups and downs of variation, mood, lighting, perspective, and composition throughout. Use everything you have learned with your camera. Push yourself! Do this, and your portfolio may be featured on the homepage of the class blog. I may have a hand in designing the current blog for the Berkeley Art Studio, so there could be some significant exposure if the project is strong… GOOD LUCK!
Assignment 5: Create seven images onto your blogs in the essence of one of the photographers contained on the link below. Along with these seven images, you need to write why their photography has a connection to your own, and why it is that their work inspires you. We all will be going over this in the class on week 6.
Also, we will be going over post processing in Lightroom and Photoshop in week 6, so bring a laptop if you have one, and a version of Adobe Lightroom. The current version is Adobe Lightroom 4. Aperture is another software program that photographers use. I will not be spending time in iPhoto or Adobe Elements, so please be prepared.
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Assignment 4: Create a seven image photo story of a “non-event.” This means something small and maybe only appreciated and experienced by you or your family. In the past, this has resulted in the story of an avocado being cut, a junk yard visit, and an outing with a family. An important piece to this one… have a beginning, middle, and an end. Have emotion. Have light. Have design. Have fun! — Also, start thinking about your twelve image photo project, which has to be on “something specific that you love,” due on the last day of class… complete with potluck party!
ps – here’s a little video on how to successfully post images to your wordpress site! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-vmNH6lOsA
Assignment 3: Select and Upload three images of each mini session of our in-class shoot from last week: 3 of non-centered subjects, 3 images where the major design element is color, and 3 images of getting multiple sources of light in a single photo (flourescent, tungsten, sky/sunset, street lamps, headlights, etc.). We will also be viewing images from your previous side lighting assignment!
Here are some examples of each thing for your reference. Also, if you have an additional flash that attaches to your camera’s hotshoe, and has the ability to “swivel,” bring it to next week’s class. We’ll be doing a lot of sharing of blogs, and I’ll be adding your different blog sites to the “blog bank,” so be ready to share!
– Non centered image
– color as design
– various light sources
Assignment 2: Upload to your photo blog five distinctly different images of “someone doing something” in sidelight.
Here are some example images from my own archive…
Also, here is the link to exposure that we covered in class, for easy reference: http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photography-fundamentals/the-ultimate-beginners-introduction-to-exposure/
See you all next week — bring your cameras, with fully charged batteries!!!
Assignment 1: Create photo blog (I use and recommend WordPress) and upload your five favorite images that you’ve ever taken. Ready, set, go!
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Due at Week#6 (THURSDAY NOVEMBER 29th 2012): Final Projects
Final Projects due next week! POTLUCK PARTY! Make or bring your favorite / signature dish.
For examples of some photo essays, here you are. These are taken from some very talented photographers for inspiration… pay attention to where you thing they are standing to make the image. Also pay attention to why they clicked the camera shutter at the moment they did. Oh, and the varied perspectives to keep it fresh!
Again, here are some things to remember about the final projects:
- 12 Images
- Black and white OR color, but not both
- Subject of project should be something you are CURRENTLY PASSIONATE ABOUT.
- Use a variety of focal distances, lighting situations, times of day, perspective of where you shoot, etc.
- 12 images should be on one them, with cohesion throughout them all
- Pay special attention to the sequencing, as different ways of laying the images out will have different effects on the viewer
- Begin STRONG and end STRONG… these are the two most important locations in the project
- Show us that you are passionate about your subject… only accept greatness from your work! Spend time on it!
- The amount of time you spend with your subject, will generally represent itself in the work… more time = better photos
- Have fun, and push yourselves! Custom cropping and all post production is up to you – have at it! – Then post it to your blog!
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Class 4: A lot of good work review and critique! Many wonderful photos from all of you who shared. There are a few of you who haven’t set up your blogs and posted your photos that you’ve been taking… do it! It’ll help you SO much to have a track record of what you’ve done and to establish a starting place for your photographic work online.
Assignment 4: Make a story / photo essay out of an everyday happening. It could be making a salad. It could be putting the kid to bed. Could be building a model Blue Angel plane… who knows. Just make it happen with FIVE images. There should be a story arc with end caps of a beginning and an end… also, different perspectives and a mix of wide shots, medium range and close ups. Good luck! Here’s an example from Ildiko, a student from last semester. Her execution is artful and staged, but you can of course carry out the assignment in any way you see fit:
http://dougsphotoclass.com/portfolio/avocado/
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Class 3: We photographed out around Telegraph & Bancroft today – good job everyone! It was nice to see you all using your cameras and making imagery. If there were images you’re happy with, by all means post them up on your blogs. Next week, we’ll be going over your side-lighting assignment, plus the one below PLUS any from the street shooting that you’re proud of – so get ready!
For this weeks assignment – you have two options… extreme perspective or showcasing shutter speed and aperture. If you want to do both, please do. I want five images posted to your blogs. This doesn’t mean to take just five, but to rather, present five images that you’re proud of, in their finished form, to show through the projector to the rest of the class.
For the extreme perspective, I only want to see shots that you’ve thought out of the box on. Images from above, below, way up in a corner, down low near the water / sand (CAREFUL) or ground. Here are some examples of mine:
For showcasing shutter speeds and aperture – I’d like to see a few different things. For shutter speed, I want to see movement STOPPED… completely. This means something that we can’t see like this with our naked eye. Conversely, I want to also see blur. With aperture, I want you to show that you understand getting a thin depth of field, and a lot of depth of field. Examples below.
– fast shutter speed
– slow shutter speed
– thin depth of field (f2 on a 80mm Contax 645 medium format camera)
– more depth of field
Questions? Email me at doug@dougsphotoclass.com!
Here are those two websites that we covered today. The first on exposure and the second on the major rules of photographic composition… I’ll also be putting a few examples of side lighting below, as it’s this week’s assignment. Remember, get natural daylight, from a window or doorway, and capture someone doing something…
- http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photography-fundamentals/the-ultimate-beginners-introduction-to-exposure/
- http://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/10-top-photography-composition-rules
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Week #5 assignment due at Week#6: Final Projects
Final Projects due this week! Since there are a healthy number of students in the class, we’ll be dividing the projects into these last two class sessions. POTLUCK party for both! Make or bring your favorite / signature dish.
For examples of photo essays, here you are. These are taken from some very talented photographers for inspiration… pay attention to where you thing they are standing to make the image. Also pay attention to why they clicked the camera shutter at the moment they did. Oh, and the varied perspectives to keep it fresh!
Again, here are some things to remember about the final projects:
- 12 Images
- Black and white OR color, but not both
- Subject of project should be something you are currently passionate about
- Use a variety of focal distances, lighting situations, times of day, perspective of where you shoot, etc.
- 12 images should be on one them, with cohesion throughout them all
- Pay special attention to the sequencing, as different ways of laying the images out will have different effects on the viewer
- Begin STRONG and end STRONG… these are the two most important locations in the project
- Show us that you are passionate about your subject… only accept greatness from your work!
- The amount of time you spend with your subject, will generally represent itself in the work… more time = better photos
- Have fun, and push yourselves! Custom cropping and all post production is up to you – have at it!
Week #4 assignment due at Week#5: Compose with Color
I want you to use color as the main design element within your photographs. This means that you’ll have to be very aware of the composition as well. Five images posted to your individual blogs. . . Here are a few examples to get an idea… Also, by now you should now what your final project is going to be on, and be creating an outline for it. I’ll go over this much more this coming week. Good luck!
Week #3 assignment due at Week #4: Activate the edges!
Activate three out of the four edges of your frame, and show us five different photographs on your blogs. Each one should be vividly different from the rest. We will be looking at the blogs next week so be sure to have everything on there and up to date.
Here are some examples of just a few ways it can be done:
And by request, some examples of side lighting (with no flash) that are due from the previous week:
