Week Four: every picture tells a story

Image from https://archive.org/details/cu31924031247491/page/n17/mode/2up

2/12/21-2/19/21

All work is due by midnight on 2/19

This week we will be exploring visual elements of storytelling.

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?
   Also: How does an image create a narrative by itself? How does an image tell a story?
2. Read: Becoming a Better Photographer (listed under Resources)
   Think about what you read in Becoming Better Photographers, and try to find examples of the different points and analyze them. In keeping with the your story/our story theme, use photos you have taken, or photos you have, as much as you can, but focus on how the images function as photographs rather than your personal connection to the subjects or events. 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 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!
4. Do 12 stars worth of visual assignments, and involve our theme in at least two 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. Also, say something about how the insights from the two analysis posts impacted your assignments. Learn more about how to do tags in WordPress. Also, see how to do links in WordPress, if you haven’t figured it out already.
   There are a number of tools you can use to edit and manipulate images. Photoshop is nice if you have convenient access to 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. Photopea is an online Photoshop clone. You are not required to use any specific program, but consider using one that supports layers, as they give you more powers.
5. Do 3 Daily Creates this week.
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, as many in the class have observed.
7. Posts of the Week. As you look through the work of the rest of the class this week, which three postings stand out to you in particular? You might consider them the best, or most creative, or ones that inspired you, or have some other reason. Just don’t vote for your own work. Enter your selections in the Posts of the Week form.