Is a picture worth 1000 words? --- Narrative Assignment

This next assignment will require you to do some more thinking before you shoot the photos.

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• You will be telling a story using only 5 or fewer photos.
• Choose any subject, but the entire sequence should visually tell a story.
• A title is the only words that can be used.  Rely on the photographs to bring the story to life
• You MUST include a title. 
• The title can help guide the viewer to better understand your story.
• THINK ABOUT COMPOSITION and LIGHTING ALWAYS!

Guidelines for Telling a Story

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for story telling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential photos that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative.

The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. Fortunately a lot of information can be given in a single photograph, enhancing the limitations of five photographs for your story. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination. Keep individual composition in mind, but pack as many story telling elements in one photograph as possible to develop an action.

Remember:  these are just guidelines.  Creative people may not use these, and be even more successful!

1st photo: establish characters and location.
2nd photo: create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
3rd photo: involve the characters in the situation.
4th photo: build to probable outcomes
5th photo: have a logical, but surprising, end.

Important Tips

• Also, give your Narrative a title when you post it to your blog.  
• DO NOT USE WORDS on your images!
• Make sure your story makes sense to a 1st time viewer. 
•  (Be warned that any extra information in your photos may cause your viewer to get confused.  Be aware of the background at all times!!)

LINKS for examples

My Mom and I
December 3rd
The Night (anbiguous, but leaves you to make your own assumptions)
Om nom nom  (uses a white background, similar to your egg photos)
Don't Stop me now!
Plugged In  (only uses 4 images, but it is good)
A Ladybug's Trip  (only uses 3 images, but the photography is nice)
Sickness to recovery
Nature Can Be Cruel (only 3 images)
EggO   (cute!)
Scramble the Egg  ( very cute!)
Humpty Dumpty (notice the use of motion blurs!)
Foot to Flight (tells a story, but it is too boring. ::yawn::)
Daily Grind.
Day in the Life of a Coffee Bean


Former Student examples:

Message in a Bottle  (notice the use of the rule of thirds, and the unity in the series due to the sepia tone)
How Crayons are Made  (unity due to the simple background)
story board  (no title)
duck love  (this one really only needed 3 images to tell the story. The rest are just overkill)

Texture Collage

You will first create a TEXTURE COLLECTION.  Find interesting textures and photograph them.  You'll need a collection of at least 30 photos of just textures.

http://www.mayang.com/textures/  This is a site where you can find free textures.
You may also take your own photos or use sxc.hu.  Google is fine as long as images are licensed for reuse with modification.  You may also use www.pixabay.com 


Then, use your textures to create a digital collage that uses texture using Paint.NET.  Below are some examples.  Notice how they have selected a color theme.  This helps to give the collage unity.  

 

Links:

Link to an awesome Artist's blog who uses GREAT texture
Awesome Collage Artist Carly Swenson

Texture Collage SERIES

For your texture collage assignment, you will be creating a SERIES.  Your series may be either 3 or 4 different images, but they must RELATE and look like they belong hanging together.

Please make something that you are proud of!!!  Don't just throw something together because it is easy.


Here is an example of a texture collage Series:  Notice they are all formatted the same (aka the same height and width).  However, I find this example to be slightly boring.  Make something interesting, unique, and different!!!  Perhaps using rectangles and squares isn't the ONLY way to do this!!!!

Links to examples from the Internet:
Texture Collage Artist: Lance Letscher (I think you will like this one!)
Textures in Blocks  (a little boring and predictable with the squares)
OMG....Check out this artist.  I. Love.It.
Guy wearing headphones- again, Not a series
Dreams -mixture of textures with photos (not a series)
Example of a series

Reflections Photos... (DUE MONDAY April 28th)

 Check the following websites for some examples of reflections in digital photography.

1. http://www.digital-photography-school.com/20-effective-reflection-photos
2. http://pixelcurse.com/photography/50-excellent-uses-of-reflections-in-digital-photography
3. http://www.idigitalphoto.com/reflections-in-photography/

Your assignment is to take at least 30 photographs that incorporate a reflection of some sort.  Be inspired from the previous links.  Remember to think about the elements and principles of art.  Also, remember to think about composition! You are expected to have a concise series of 3-10 images for this assignment.  Refer to the last post titled "What is a Series?"  You do NOT want just random photos of reflective items.  




Examples:

This photo has a reflection, however the tree is very centered and symmetrical.  The composition could be much improved.   Keep the rules of composition in mind as you are taking photos.


This photo has a reflection, too, but the artist has thought a little more about composition.  The walkway isn't centered and it creates a leading line that guides the viewer's eye through the photo.  The shadow creates interest. However, the horizon line is still centered in the photo, so the composition could still be improved.


Remember FRAMING makes for a really interesting composition.


This photo also has a reflection.  Be creative when it comes to your reflection ideas.  It doesn't HAVE to be a body of water.  It doesn't HAVE to be water at all.



Mirror's make reflections....but there are a lot of shiny surfaces in our daily lives that create reflections, too.  BE CREATIVE.



 Try to avoid getting the camera in the reflection, unless you are doing so in a creative way.

  You will most likely need to turn off the flash.  Flash is ugly, especially in reflections.




Former Student Example
Carly's Reflections (include the camera)  This one is a good example of a SERIES!
Eeeek! Super-boring example
Brooke's Reflections
Another boring example

What is a Series?

In Fine Art, most photographers work in a "series."  A series is a group of images that "go-together."  They have a strong visual connection.  They express unity and harmony.  There are a variety of ways to accomplish this.

Most of the time they are formatted in the same way and they are the same size.


Examples:

List of Past Assignments

As a reminder, here is a list of your past assignments.  Make sure you have any old work completed and posted to blog.


List of Past Assignments:

• Egg Whites Photos  (original & the histogram edited photos)
• White Paper Sculpture Photos (contact sheet & 3-5 Best on Blog)
• 5 Minute Walk-Composition Photos & Collage 
• Identity Photo Collage (self-portrait with layers)
• Aperture-Macro Photos (contact sheet & 3-5 Best on Blog)
• Shutter Speed-Blur Photos (contact sheet & 3-5 Best on Blog)
• Composite-Choose 3-Editing Assignment (3 images!)
• Environmental Portraits  (contact sheet & 3-5 Best on Blog)
• Out of Bounds Editing Assignment (3 images!)
• Silhouette Photos (contact sheet & 3-5 Best on Blog)
• Mini City Editing Assignment
• Scary Signs Editing Assignment
• Spaced Out -Landscape photo collage 

Editing Spaced Out

Editing of Spaced Out:

Review the work of David Hockney. Click here to view some examples
You can be really creative with this assignment!! As long as you are making a collage of many photos into one canvas, you can do ANYTHING!!

To begin construction of your photo design, create a new blank page in Paint.NET.  You may select the size, but I suggest going large and then you can crop it later.  You might want to try 24" wide by 18" tall at 150 dpi resolution. You can be really creative in your format (long skinny, panoramic, tall, square, rectangle, portrait, landscape, etc.) but you will want to start with a large background.  Later you can crop it down to the size that you want.

Then, you will paste your image pieces onto this blank canvas to construct your image. Be warned! You will have to reduce the size of each individual photo -- they will be too large to fit all of them onto the blank page. So, before you paste it into your background, you will want to do this...Go to Image Menu.  Click on Resize.  Then select "By Percentage" and change the percentage down to 10 or 15%.  You can then copy and paste your smaller image into your 24" by 18" canvas.  Be sure to paste each photo into a new layer.  You will want some freedom to move the image around.  When you get 4 or 5 images onto the canvas, I suggest that you make sure you are happy with the arrangement.  SAVE THE FILE AS A .PDN and then merge the layers down.   Keep a solid white Background layer separate.  You may want to add a background later.


**REMEMBER--AS YOU WORK, SAVE YOUR IMAGE AS A .PDN OFTEN.  When you have many photos and many layers, Paint.NET will sometimes freeze up and crash.  You've been warned!  YOU WILL WANT TO KEEP YOUR PDN in case you need to change something later***

WHEN FINISHED:  Crop your work down to a size that you like.  Add a background photo, texture, gradient or color.  Save your work as a .jpg at the full size (ex: Space.jpg.).  Post it to your blog.

If you are having trouble getting this to load on your blog, you may have to shrink the file down to 50% to 25% of the original size and save again, but make sure you change the title (ex: SpaceSMALL.jpg).  Then you can try to post the smaller version to your blog.  Keep the fullsized image saved though!