Camera Skills

You must experiment with ease of these skill areas and produce a blog post on each key skills that includes evidence of your experiments and successes over the next few weeks…

The images should be of an abstract nature, and show an appreciation of abstract qualities such as line, shape, colour, form, texture, pattern, repetition, symmetry (the formal elements)

1. Using Auto-Focus
2. Using Manual Focus
3. White Balance
4. ISO
5. Aperture
6. Focal Length
7. Depth of Field
8. Slow Shutter Speed / fast shutter speed

Photoshop Skills

1. Cropping
2. Selections
3. Adjustments and corrections
4. Transforming an image
5. Layer control
6. Image size / canvas size
7. Double + multiple exposures

Working towards a vision…

Use this method to analyse key images

Rule of Thirds

Homework | Practical / photoshoot

Due in WEDNESDAY 30th September

Minimum Expected frames/ exposures = 150-200 images

Choose from a range of camera skills that you have learned in Week 3 and 4 to complete a new photo-shoot…

We want to see that you can explore and extend your handling of

INSPIRATION >>> choose from the following to inspire your ideas.Look carefully at the examples and aim to produce similar images that work well as a group…together.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: 
‘No Focus’

Meatyard made his living as an optician. He was a member of the Lexington Camera Club and pursued his passion for photography outside the mainstream. He experimented with various strategies including multiple exposures, motion blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series are particularly concerned with focus and depth of field, both stretching the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when looking within the ordinary world.

‘Zen Twigs’

You must:

• Research the work of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Saul Leiter and Uta Barth. How have they experimented with focus and depth of field in their work? Choose specific images to comment on in detail. You could also find other photographers who are interested in experimenting with focus effects.
• Explore the effects of changing the aperture settings on your camera to alter depth of field. You could illustrate this with a series of photos of the same subject shot with different aperture settings.
• Create a series of deliberately out of focus images. Consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. How out of focus are the subjects and are they still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white. REMEMBER TO USE MANUAL FOCUS AND THE INFINITY SETTING
• Create a series of images which explore dramatic depth of field (selective focus). Experiment with switching between foreground, middle ground and background focus. Remember, you will need to use a wide aperture (small number e.g. f2.8) and/or a longer lens for this. Remember to share all of the images you make (including those that you deem failures) in a gallery/contact sheet.
• Curate your images into different groupings (see below). Experiment with editing the images in each set differently. Give each set a title and write a short evaluation explaining your editorial decisions.

Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :

1. Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
2. Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
3. Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
4. Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
5. Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
6. Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
7. Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
8. Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
9. Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
10. Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)