9/14-9/21
All work is due by midnight on Friday, 9/21
This week we will be exploring visual elements of storytelling.
Questions to think about: How does an image create a narrative by itself? How does an image tell a story?
1. 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?
2. Read:
-  Becoming a Better Photographer (section from the ds106 Handbook – just the “Becoming” part, not all the assignments contained on the page)
- Â Photography and narrative: What is involved in telling a story?
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. Suggestion: Select a movie or video related to our theme and capture still shots of cinematography. How many of the points below can you find? How do they impact the storytelling aspect of the image?
– selection
– contrast
– perspective
– depth
– balance
– moment
– lighting
– foreground/background
Put your examples and your thoughts on them in a blog post. Tag it ds106photography.
3. Do one of these:
You in Collage Form or What’s in your bag? But instead of making it about you, make it about the character you created last week, as a way of visualizing the character without making a portrait.
And do 10 stars worth of visual assignments, and involve the character you created last week in at least one of the assignments 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. I do everything in Photoshop because once upon a time it made sense for me to buy it. If you have convenient access to it, it’s worth experimenting with it. The Digital Knowledge Center offers a photo editing tutorial that can help you learn Photoshop. Otherwise, The GIMP is a powerful Photoshop replacement that you can download for free. Paint.NET is a free Windows image editing program which may be 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 due to their limitations, but if it works, it works. The more powerful tools give you more creative powers though.
4. Do 3 Daily Creates this week.
5. 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!
6. Commenting. Several people have been doing this. Awesome! But we could always use more. This should not be difficult or time-consuming. It is rewarding and inspiring though.