2/16 Progress Critique. Initial shooting/groupings due.
2/23 Final extended photo due... series, grid, or otherwise.
Turn in:
- Final "extended format" version of your extended image (one file containing all supporting pictures). If you are doing a grid, this would mean one file. For diptychs, this would mean one file per diptych, etc. Format: jpeg, quality 10+, sRGB, no longer than 1500 pixels in one direction (use image processor to set this up)
- Prints of the above
- How much to do? If you are doing diptychs or triptychs, turn in at least 3 separate ones. If you are doing a large grid, one would be fine. It depends on your project—discuss with instructor. If you are doing a series, aim for 6-8.
- All of your individual photos that go into this project should be edited appropriately in photoshop. This includes the skills covered so far in class: WP/BP, global tone adjustments (brightness and contrast using curves and/or camera raw), color adjustments, local adjustments (dodge and burn using the new method, blending mode curves with masks), sharpening. All Raw conversions must be smart objects.
Now remember that when you are assembling your multiples (grids, panos, diptychs or otherwise), save out flattened versions of your work files just to keep things manageable. But make sure you are not losing your layers; after flattening, always "Save As," rather than "Save"
As photographers, the frame is perhaps our most important tool. With the camera, we "frame" our subjects, including what we feel is important for the picture, and excluding what isn't. Essentially, we are editing from the visual world with our frame. A common goal in photography is to try and get it all in one frame—to create a singular image that conveys our full expression.
There's value in that—and it certainly pushes us to be stronger photographers, but it isn't the only way.
Sometimes we need multiple images, multiple frames to convey the breadth and richness of our visual message.
For example,
Duane Michals used extended series of images to convey complex and (often amusing) narratives. Some of these visual story lines went in a straight line, sometimes they made bizarre spirals.
Robert Richfield has an interesting take on the panorama. Instead of stitching together a seamless expanse, he presents it with the frame divisions. How does this affect the meaning of his work and how we "read" it?
Sparky Campanella makes non-tradition portraits of people by mapping the textures of their skin and displaying them as large grids. What are the implications of this work—portraits that are literally "skin deep"?
Jeff Brouws (and numerous others going back to Bernd and Hilla Becher) are obsessed with cataloging and "collecting" with their camera. For instance, Brouws isn't interested in singular train cars, but the almost endless variations between numerous cars. Working with a mode called
typology, he creates grids that simultaneously show similarity and contrast.
Uta Barth is a photographer of place. Instead of creating visual descriptions of places, like a traditional landscape photographer would do, she is more interested in evoking or suggesting how we experience places. Often working with multiple frames, she changes the scale, plane of focus (in some she focuses on the "space between" foreground and background), in an attempt to more closely mimic the process of human perception
On more of a documentary, story-telling mode,
Lucia Ganieva, creates rich biographical portraits of people relating their persona to their vocation, past, workplace, etc. using diptychs and triptychs. Notice how the frames work together to build meaning.
There are others. Check out those from the reading, this blog, and other sources:
Some Student Work:
For this project create a combine image that engages strongly and boldly with one of the common themes of contemporary art (time, place, spirituality, identity, science, body, language, etc.) and/or the human condition (war, peace, religion, mythology, etc.). Its great to start with the personal, but see if you can extend the meaning of the work to something universal.
