Summer Task
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Camera Handling Skills
Experimenting with the camera simulator
This first image was taken using a short shutter speed to capture a sharp view of the propeller stopped and not blurry from spinning. However, his image is not good as I haven’t adjusted the other settings like the aperture and exposure metre.
For this photo, I changed the aperture and ISO to balance out the exposure metre. This meant that the image now has more colour and is brighter. The photo has a short depth of field and focuses only on the plane meaning the background is blurred. The settings I used were: shutter speed – 1/4000, aperture – 2.8 and ISO – 6400.
This image has a good exposure and the picture is bright and the whole image is in focus. For this, I used a lower shutter speed, 1/4, which mean that the moving propeller was not captured.
Introduction to A-level Photography Quiz
Q1: What is the etymology (origin & history) of the word photography?
Writing with light.
Capturing light.
Painting with light.
Filming light.
Q2: What year was the first photograph made in camera
1739 (Joseph Wright)
1839 (Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre)
1826 (Joseph Nicéphore Niépce)
1904 (Salvadore Dali)
Q3: When did the first photograph of a human appear?
1874 (Julia Margeret Cameron)
1838 (Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre)
1856 (Henry Mullins)
1939 (Ropert Capa)
Q4: Who made the first ‘selfie’
Kim Kardashian (2015)
Robert Cornelius (1839)
Cindy Sherman (1980)
Claude Cahun (1927)
Q5: When did the first colour photograph appear?
1907 (Lumière brothers)
1961 (Andy Warhol)
1935 (Kodachrome)
1861 (James Clerk Maxwell)
Q6: What do we mean by the word genre?
A study of an artwork
A depiction in art
A style or category of art
A creative process in art
Q7: What do we mean by the genre of still-life?
In image where a person is sitting still and not moving.
An arrangement of flowers.
A picture of food.
An image that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man-made world.
Q8: What was the main purpose of the Pictorialist movement?
20sec
To capture moving objects
To record reality
To affirm photography as an art form
To be scientific
Q9: How do we describe the term documentary photography?
30sec
Capture images that truthfully portray people, places and events.
Staging images for maximum effect.
Provide in-depth information about a subject over a long period time.
An interpretation of reality as witnessed by the photographer.
Q10: What is exposure in photography?
To expose hidden elements in our society.
To record fast moving objects.
To capture bright light.
The amount of light that reaches your camera’s sensor.
Q11: What controls exposure on your camera?
Depth of field, composition, distance to subject.
Aperture, focal length, ISO.
Aperture, shutter speed, ISO.
Shutter speed, distance to subject, depth of field.
Q12: What control on our camera records moving objects?
Aperture
White balance
Shutter
ISO
Q13: How do we explain depth of field?
How much of your image is in focus.
To photograph from a high vantage point.
A view across a field.
A deadpan approach to image making.
Q14: What factors affect Depth of Field?
Shutter speed, distance from camera to subject, and sensitivity to light.
Lens aperture, distance from camera to subject, and lens focal length.
Lens focal length shutter speed and lens aperture.
Sensitivity to light, shutter speed and lens focal length.
Q15: What is composition in photography?
Capturing the quality of light.
A piece of music with different instruments.
Staging a portrait with props.
The arrangement of visual elements within the frame.
Q16: What is your understanding of aesthetics in art?
Concerned with the nature of beauty and taste.
It is subjective and in the eye of the beholder.
Aesthetic qualities refer to the way and artwork looks and feels.
Making a critical judgement based on observation and understanding.
Q17: What are contextual studies in photography?
To provide historial, cultural and theoterical understanding of images.
Consider factors outside of the image, as well as inside the frame.
To give an opinion without any research.
To seek a definite answer.
Q18: How many images are captured on average every day worldwide?
1.5 billion
4.7 billion
800 million
6.9 billion
Q19: Which portrait is the most reproduced in the world?
Mona Lisa
Lady Gaga
Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara
The Queen (Elizabeth II)
Summer Task – Nostalgia
William Eggleston
William Eggleston is an American photographer. His photography is mainly focused with colour but involves street photography too.
He takes photographs which have a vintage look and makes the colours more bright and vibrant. The settings he uses are mainly places like shopfronts, gas stations and anywhere with signs and bold colours.
This photograph is of a McDonald’s next to a camera shop, these two places are a mix of yellow, orange and red colours and have different signs. The photograph is very bold and vibrant making it eye-catching
Photoshoot 1: Nostalgic Locations
This photoshoot is made up of photographs I took of different locations around Jersey that feel nostalgic to me. I grew up in Jersey which is why i focused this shoot on locations over here.
When taking my photos, I tried to get different angles and I took photos zooming in and out with the lense.
Photoshoot 2: Nostalgic Objects
For this photoshoot, I photographed objects that are nostalgic for me. I have specific memories that i associate with these objects which i remember very clear, this is why i chose these certain objects.
To start, I took a photograph of a traffic cone as when I was younger, I dressed up as a traffic cone for Halloween and this has always been a fond memory for me. The other photos have corresponding reasons for them as well.
Although I didn’t take as many photos as I would’ve liked too, I am happy with the objects that I chose to photograph
Evaluation
I like this photograph of mine of a nostalgic object as the object itself is large rather than smaller like the rest of my images. This O shaped structure is nostalgic as it is in a place I would always go to as a child.
This photograph captures the whole object and also the shadow coming off of it. I think I could have taken the photo a little better, for instance, I should have ventured the object more in the middle rather than a little to the side.
This photograph, I think, was a good picture to take to associate with Nostalgia. This is because as a child, I was always intrigued by the clock and the songs it plays.
I think this photo is good as it captures some street photography. The only thing I don’t like about the photograph is that there is a person standing in it and the way that the sun intrudes in the corner. If I were to retake this photo, I would try to avoid this.
A-level Photography Quiz
This quiz will test your knowledge of the origin, history and technical aspects of photography. There are 19 questions with a multi choice of answers and an image which will also add context and help you answer the question correct. it is important that you look at the image before answering.
Link to Kahoot quiz:
Introduction to A-level Photography – Details – Kahoot!
TASK: Produce a blog post with the questions and your answers to the A-level Photography Quiz. Make sure you include images too for each question. Download document below and cun’t & paste into your own blog post.
Check List : Autumn Term 2023
Use this simplified list to check that you are on task. Every item on the list represents one piece of work = one blog post. It is your responsibility as an A-level student to make sure that you complete and publish appropriate blog posts each week.
Homework and due dates will be listed / issued as necessary…
STILL-LIFE
WEEK 1: 5 – 10 Sept
1. Quiz
2. Formalism: Image analysis
3. Summer Task
WEEK 2: 11 – 17 Sept
1. Still-life: history & theory
2. Still-life: introduction studio-lighting
3. Still-life: photoshoots own objects
4. Camera Skills (aperture, shutter speed, focus)
WEEK 3: 18 – 24 Sept
1. Still-life: photoshoots own objects
2. File Management
3: Adobe Lightroom
4: Still-life editing
WEEK 4: 25 Sept – 1 Oct
1. Formalism/ New Objectivity
2. Artist study: Walker Evans / Darren Regan-Harvey
3. Single Object photoshoot
4. Single Object editing
WEEK 5: 2 – 8 Oct
1. Final photo-shoots: still-life/ single objects
2. Editing: still-life / single objects
WEEK 6: 9 Oct – 15 Oct
1. Photo-montage: history & theory
2. Photo-montage: experimentation
3. Adobe Photoshop
Week 7: 16 Oct – 20 Oct
1. Final images: still Life / photomontage
2. File-handling
3. Review and refine blog posts
4. Virtual gallery and evaluation
Half Term
PORTRAITURE
Week 8: 30 Oct – 5 Nov
1. Environmental portraiture: mind-map > mood-board > definition
2. Artists references: Environmental portraiture
3. School-assignment: environmental portrait of a student
4. Homework assignment: plan and shoot 3 different environmental portraits: outdoor > indoor > 2 or more people
DEADLINE: Mon 6 Nov
Week 9: 6 – 12 Nov
1. Environmental portraiture: editing and experimenting
2. Environmental portraiture: final outcome and evaluation
3. Compare and contrast your best environmental portrait and its inspiration (artist reference)
Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :
- Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
- Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
- Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
- Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
- Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
- Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
- Image Editing/ manipulation / experimentation (AO2)
- Presentation of final outcomes (AO4)
- Compare and contrast your work to your artist reference(AO1)
- Evaluation and Critique (AO1+AO4)
Summer Task Nostalgia
Summer Task – My Jersey
Nostalgia
SUMMER PROJECT: NOSTALGIA & FAMILY mvt
MY FAMILY: Explore your own private archives such as photo-albums, home movies, diaries, letters, birth-certificates, boxes, objects, mobile devices, online/ social media platforms and make a blog post with a selection of material that can be used for further development and experimentation using a variety of re-staging or montage techniques .
Archives can be a rich source for finding starting points on your creative journey. This will strengthen your research and lead towards discoveries about the past that will inform the way you interpret the present and anticipate the future. See more Public/ Private Archives
For example, you can focus on the life on one parent, grand-parent, family relative, or your own childhood and upbringing. Ask other family members (parents, grand-parents, aunties, uncles) if you can look through their photo-albums too etc.
TASKS STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE:
- Either scan or re-photograph archival material so that it is digitised and ready for use on the blog and further experimentation.
- Plan at least one photo-shoot and make a set of images that respond to your archival research. This can be re-staging old photos or make a similar set of images, eg. portraits of family members and how they have changed over the years, or snapshots of social and family gatherings.
- Choose one of your images which relates to the theme of family (e.g. archive, family album, or new image you have made) and destroy the same image in 5 different ways using both analogue and digital method techniques. Eg. Reprint old and new photos and combine using scissors/ tearing and glue/ tape. In Photoshop use a variety of creative tools to cut and paste fragments of images to create composites.
- Produce appropriate blogposts with both family research, archival material and new photographic responses and experiments.
Extension: Choose a second image and destroy it in 5 new or other ways.
Jonny Briggs: In search of lost parts of my childhood I try to think outside the reality I was socialised into and create new ones with my parents and self. Through these I use photography to explore my relationship with deception, the constructed reality of the family, and question the boundaries between my parents and I, between child/adult, self/other, nature/culture, real/fake in attempt to revive my unconditioned self, beyond the family bubble. Although easily assumed to be photoshopped or faked, upon closer inspection the images are often realised to be more real than first expected. Involving staged installations, the cartoonesque and the performative, I look back to my younger self and attempt to re-capture childhood nature through my assuming adult eyes.
Thomas Sauvin and Kensuke Koike: ‘No More, No Less’
In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography. The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.
Veronica Gesicka Traces presents a selection of photomontages created by Weronika Gęsicka on the basis of American stock photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Family scenes, holiday memories, everyday life – all of that suspended somewhere between truth and fiction. The images, modified by Gęsicka in various ways, are wrapped in a new context: our memories of the people and situations are transformed and blur gradually. Humorous as they may seem, Gęsicka’s works are a comment on such fundamental matters as identity, self-consciousness, relationships, imperfection.
John Stezaker: Is a British artist who is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.
His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention
There are different ways artists and photographers have explored their own, or other families in their work as visual storytellers. Some explore family using a documentary approach to storytelling, others construct or stage images that may reflect on their childhood, memories, or significant events drawing inspiration from family archives/ photo albums and often incorporating vernacular images into the narrative and presenting the work as a photobook.
Rita Puig-Serra Costa (Where Mimosa Bloom) vs Laia Abril (The Epilogue)> artists exploring personal issues > vernacular vs archival > inside vs outside
Carole Benitah (Photo Souvenirs) vs Diane Markosian (Inventing My Father) > family > identity > memory > absence > trauma
Ugne Henriko (Mother and Daughter) vs Irina Werning or Chino Otsuka > re-staging images > re-enacting memories
Read article in The Guardian
