Week Four: Photography

9/15-9/22

All work is due by midnight on Friday, 9/22

Thanks to the Photo group for their input this week.

This week we will be exploring visual elements of storytelling.

Think about the Visuals of Storytelling: Review the following materials about photography and using visual elements to create stories. Write a blog post (tag: photoreflection) about your previous/current experience with photography. Do you take a lot of photos now? What of? Do you have a particular approach to taking photos? Do you ever work to capture a particular feeling or meaning in your photos? If so, how successful do you think you are? After reviewing these resources, what tactics can you use to improve your photos or to take a different approach to taking photos?

•   Becoming a Better Photographer (section from the ds106 Handbook – just the “Becoming” part, not all the assignments contained on the page)
•   Photography and narrative: What is involved in telling a story?

1. Think about what you read in Becoming Better Photographers and Photography and narrative: What is involved in telling a story?, and try to find examples of the different points and analyze them. I will suggest, but not require, that you look to superhero videos and capture still shots of cinematography. How many of the points below can you find?
   – selection
   – contrast
   – perspective
   – depth
   – balance
   – moment
   – lighting
   – foreground/background
   Put your examples and your thoughts on them in a blog post. Tag it ds106photography.

2. Do one of these assignments:
   It’s a bird, it’s a plane
   The life of a superhero
   And do 6 stars worth of visual assignments, and involve the character you created last week in at least one of them in some way. How you go about doing that is up to you.
   Be sure to write a post in WordPress for each assignment describing your thinking, your process, and evaluating the results, and be sure to tag it with the assignment tags.
   There are a number of tools you can use to edit and manipulate images. The GIMP is a powerful Photoshop replacement that you can download for free. Paint.NET is a free Windows image editing program which is a little more user-friendly. You are not required to use any specific program. Many people opt for one of the free online photo editors. I’m not fond of those programs, but if it works, it works.

3. Do 3 Daily Creates this week.
4. A 20 minute Photoblitz. Be sure to grab the code and include the seven tasks you were assigned in a blog post, along with the photos you took. Include your reflections on the exercise in your post. Tag this post photoblitz. Thanks John Johnston!
5. Commenting. Everybody needs to pay attention to the work the rest of the class is doing and offer regular feedback and comments. A good way to go about this is to go to the course blog feed every day and take a few minutes to leave a few comments. This should not be difficult or time-consuming. It is rewarding and inspiring though.