Assignment

Mini Documentary II

Review Assignment 5—Story Proposal and determine if you want to use the same idea or images from that project.  If so use the steps below to expand your story/documentary.  If you are starting a new project, follow the steps below with your new subject in mind. These projects are created using the free online software Adobe Spark Page.

If you have not yet done so, complete Parts Three & Four.

To embed the Spark Page into WordPress, Select the “Share” link at the top of your Spark project, the select all the “embed code”, then paste this into the TEXT tab of the Post editor, (NOT the Visual tab)–the the upper right of the text entry area.

This should bring up a window with your Spark Page right in your WordPress post.

PART ONE: Focus & Collect

• Decide on a Focus for your story. Pick a Title. (provisional if necessary)
• Collect any related media: pictures, drawings, photographs, maps, charts, etc.
• Organize all your materials in a folder on your desktop.
• Try to find informational content, which might come from interviews, web sites, articles etc
• What is the purpose  and audience for your story. Are you trying to inform, convince, provoke, question?

PART TWO: Organize

• Select the photos you would like to use for your digital story.
• Select any additional and related images.
• Draft the narrative you’d like to tell.  What is your main point? How are you leading up to it?  Why will the viewer care? How are the parts of your story laid out. You may want to storyboard if this helps.

PART THREE: Create

• Clarify the purpose and point of view of your digital story. Revise Title if needed.
• Begin adding photos, captions, and text to Adobe Spark Page.
• You can get photos directly from Lightroom, Dropbox, Google Photos or on your desktop right fro Spark Page.

PART FOUR: Revise & Publish

• Show your digital story to your group and/or class (and/or your original subject)
• Gather feedback about how the story could be improved, expanded, or updated.
• Publish stories and show them on New Media Night and on the New Media Website.
• Share stories with your original subjects.

Mini Documentary

Review Assignment 5—Story Proposal and determine if you want to use the same idea or images from that project.  If so use the steps below to expand your story/documentary.  If you are starting a new project, follow the steps below with your new subject in mind. These projects are created using the free online software Adobe Spark Page.

Part One & Two are for this week, but feel free to move onto Parts Three & Four.

PART ONE: Focus & Collect

• Decide on a Focus for your story. Pick a Title. (provisional if necessary)
• Collect any related media: pictures, drawings, photographs, maps, charts, etc.
• Organize all your materials in a folder on your desktop.
• Try to find informational content, which might come from interviews, web sites, articles etc
• What is the purpose  and audience for your story. Are you trying to inform, convince, provoke, question?

PART TWO: Organize

• Select the photos you would like to use for your digital story.
• Select any additional and related images.
• Draft the narrative you’d like to tell.  What is your main point? How are you leading up to it?  Why will the viewer care? How are the parts of your story laid out. You may want to storyboard if this helps.

PART THREE: Create

• Clarify the purpose and point of view of your digital story. Revise Title if needed.
• Begin adding photos, captions, and text to Adobe Spark Page.
• You can get photos directly from Lightroom, Dropbox, Google Photos or on your desktop right fro Spark Page.

PART FOUR: Revise & Publish

• Show your digital story to your group and/or class (and/or your original subject)
• Gather feedback about how the story could be improved, expanded, or updated.
• Publish stories and show them on New Media Night and on the New Media Website.
• Share stories with your original subjects.

Elements Visible & Invisible

Pick one location, and photograph 7 of these 14 elements. Be sure that you create a good number of exposures for each using different angles, or exposure settings, or lenses.  Try to vary your means of capturing images.

Then try to capture at least one element that is usually not visible (i.e. joy, temperature, time, soul, grief, surprise, gravity, magnetism, etc )

• Color
• Shape
• Form
• Texture
• Light
• Shadow
• Line
• Size
• Depth
• Focus
• Pattern
• Negative space
• Tonality
• Quality of light

Post your best  image for seven elements in a gallery/slideshow, with a caption indicating the element and your camera settings. Then after your gallery entry describe any patterns or insights about what settings worked best for the elements you were working with.  What did you learn? How might you do it similarly or differently next time? For what effect? What are you learning about your way of seeing and about your cameras capabilities?

Use “Insert Shortcode” button, select “Carousel”, and the following choices:

su_carousel source=”media: 6090,6089,6088,6087″ limit=”4″ link=”lightbox” width=”800″ height=”600″ items=”1″ autoplay=”0″ speed=”100″        NB: the media numbers will appear after you select “media library” then pick your images

Assignment8_8C

Assignment8_8B

Assignment8_8A

Assignment8_8

Collections

In preparation for publishing/distributing your work, please create three “collections” in Lightroom:

1. Web Portfolio
2. Print
3. Social Media

Each collection should have at least 5-7 of your best images at this point, though you may add more by the end of April. To do this, you should be continuing to take photos, practicing with the techniques you’ve learned and experimenting with new techniques.

To create collections, you should use “smart collections” by tagging your photos with keywords line “web” “print” and “social media” OR  use colors (6-9), stars (1-5),  and then using these tags or or keywords as criteria for your smart collections.  That way if you add a new photo to  your “Print” collection,  you just have to give it the right tag/keyword.

Be sure to put in only your best photos, and continue to capture images if you need more quality images.

To respond to this post just create 3 galleries (one for each LR collection):

1. Web Portfolio
2. Print
3. Social Media

And then add optimized images of your best photos from each collection into each gallery. You can keep updating this until the end of the semester. I will use it to evaluate your progress over the semester.

If your collections are thin, it’s time to go out and capture more photos!!

See Pete Turner or Nina Hauser for examples

Panoramas

To Capture the Panorama images:

You’ll need at least two different frames to stitch together to create your panorama, but three to five will give you more to work with, and allow for a much richer image. When capturing these frames make sure to overlap each frame by about 30% or so to allow enough information for the algorithms to match each image with its neighbor.

A few other quick pointers to make it as simple as possible for yourself when you get back to the computer include:

• Use a tripod to line up each shot, or find some way to keep your capture images steady.
• Make your settings consistent: Set your white balance, ISO, aperture and shutter speed as consistency between each frame is extremely important.
• Keep your area of focus consistent through each captured image.

High Dynamic Range  (HDR) Images

Create a High Dynamic Range image, using regular, under and or-exposed images of the same scene.

Using Google Nik software (which you must install with Lightroom off), within Lightroom, create at least one final HDR image (you can repeat the process and create many versions, say a color and a b/w image.

Export all 4 + images as web sized jpg, and upload to a gallery, with category “Assignment 8”

Show N Tell

During your Spring Break take your camera with you. Experiment with some of the techniques we have used so far, then import your photos into Lightroom. Make a few minor adjustments and export you favorite set of 5-7 images in a gallery or slideshow. Be sure you note your camera setting in your caption, and any notes you want to share with class.

Those need not be perfect. You may want to show some strange effects that you’d like to explore, or accidents that were lucky.  Take some risks and play a bit. See what happens.

Lightroom Workflow

Workflow & Import 

Create a workflow process in Lightroom that allows you to quickly organize, process and export images so that you can get your work out into the world quickly and efficiently. Create an Import “preset” for importing images, and then use P (pick) U (unpick), or X (reject) to quickly sort through your photos. Use color labels (6-9) and star ratings (1-5) to sort your favorites, or special  edits. You may also want to create Regular and Smart collections so you can view your sets of images easily. I like to create smart collections that have 4+ stars, and also 5 stars, as well as ones that have particular labels like “all red label photos–which may be my color code for landscapes.

Processing

Open the histogram window and use it to guide your setting adjustments.  Using the Crop tool, and the Basic settings (and more if you are already comfortable with them), to alter your images to improve composition, exposure, detail, clarity and tone.  You may choose to make  them more realistic or more artful. Have a goal in mid when you process, as it can be tricky to simple aim for the best photo–there are many ways to get the best photo (e.g. b/w, natural, painterly, surreal, etc.)

Export & Gallery

Create an Export preset with the following settings:  name your files with your full name, followed by sequence number, set resolution to 72 dpi, shortest side length to 600, and file type to jpg, with max file size 400k.  Export the before and after images as jpgs and post them in a gallery with captions in the class WordPress. Select 10 images that show a variety of techniques or effects that you tried. Your aim should be producing good photos, but you may also include experiments that just taught you something you value.

Use the “AddTwenty20” button above to select your before and after photos for inserting into post.

Example:

Post settings:

• Post Title: Assignment 5_FirstL  ( First=first name, L=last name initial)
• Post format: Standard
• Post category: Assignment 5

DUE TUES FEB 28

Creative Shutter Speed

Practice using Shutter Priority mode (Tv or S) on your camera to control shutter speed.

Motion capture

Choose at least 3 moving subjects–water, ball rolling, object falling, animal, person, plant in the wind, etc. Try a photo at slow (use tripod if you can), medium and fast shutter speeds. Use the chart below from Camera Exposure: Aperture, ISO & Shutter Speed to help you assess what shutter speed you will need to create the effect you are looking for.

Post your3 sets of 3 subjects (9 photos) photos in a slideshow .

Post settings:

• Post Title: Assignment 4_FirstL  ( First=first name, L=last name initial)
• Post format: Standard
• Post category: Assignment 4

Creative effects (optional)

Try using shutter speed to create other effects besides capturing motion. See Using Camera Shutter Speed Creatively for tips and suggestions.

If you are able to create an interesting effect in these photos you may add a few to your slideshow—use captions to describe your technique and or subject.

Lightroom Catalogue

In addition, you should be adding all your photos to your Lightroom catalogue. This will allow you to make changes to your photos and export jpg from the raw format you should be using when you create your photos.  See Workflow—Import, Organize, Edit/Develop, Export, Publish for tips and suggestions.

GETTING COMFORTABLE PHOTOGRAPHING STRANGERS (due next Tues)

Bring or Rent a DSLR camera to Thursday class!!

Use the UMaine campus as a setting for street photography techniques. You can borrow a DSLR camera or use a smartphone or iPad for this assignment.

In street photography, often the fear of rejection is worse than the rejection itself, so practice asking, and practice dealing with rejection.

To build your confidence, try the “5 yes, 5 no” challenge.

Approach a bunch of strangers and ask for permission to make their portrait. You have to keep asking until you get 5 people to say “yes” and 5 people to say “no.”

You will discover it is harder to get a “no” than a “yes”.

If you’ve got all 5 “yes’s” but not 5 “no’s” — you need to purposefully go out and look for the scariest people you think will say “no.”

Also try to frame your photos in different ways–POV, angle, subject (just feet?). Try to vary your techniques. Bring all photos to class for review/discussion. Take risks, don’t be afraid to create unusual or even ‘bad’ photos in an attempt to learn something or be creative. Your task is not perfection, but experimentation & learning.

Basic Camera Settings:

• Focus mode Servo or Continuous
  Setting the camera to Servo or Continuous focusing mode will allow you to capture moving and static subjects effectively.
• Shutter speed 1/125sec or faster
• Aperture f/5.6
• ISO 400
• Lens 18mm to 200mm
• Drive mode Single or Continuous
• White balance Auto

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to help you face rejection. In life, photography, and everything else — we are slaves of fear. This will help you face your fear head-on.

Uploading photos:

• Use jpg image ( set camera to raw + jpeg until you learn to export jpg in Lightroom)
• Use Preview (on Mac) Irfanview or Xnview (for PC)
• Max image size for length or width= 1024 px;
• Max file size = 400K
• Max resolution 72dpi

Post settings:

• Post Title: Assignment 2_FirstL  ( First=first name, L=last name initial)
• Post format: Standard
• Post category: Assignment

WHAT ELSE THERE IS TO SEE (due next Tuesday)

Bring or Rent a DSLR camera to Thursday class!!

Go to any familiar place–street, restaurant, forest path, etc.  Pick five different spots, and from each spot (the size of a hula-hoop), create as many photos as you need to in order to realize 5 satisfactory photos. You’re look for an unusual angle, composition, color, movement, moment, gesture, etc.

You should end up with five good photos from each “spot”, then arrange the five best photos from these 25 into a carousel with image height 300.

Uploading photos:

• Use jpg image ( set camera to raw + jpeg until you learn to export jpg in Lightroom)
• Use Preview (on Mac) Irfanview or Xnview (for PC)
• Max image size for length or width= 1024 px;
• Max file size = 400K
• Max resolution 72dpi

Post settings:

• Post Title: Assignment 1_FirstL  ( First=first name, L=last name initial)
• Post format: Standard
• Post category: Assignment