week of Feb 24-28

Some cool things people are doing with Photography

Flickr Moments: Teen Photographer uses mirror to create an Illusion
Flickr Moments: Photographer Lands Job at Coca Cola

Assignments to date

Writing:

• Bio
• Bucket List
• Fav Place/Setting

Photo: 

• headshots-5
• Mon: snow/rain-5 Tues: Choice
• stepdown-5
• Hunt #1 with digital slr camera -5 labeled
• Head Swap
• NEW  5 reflection shots

HEADSWAP INSRUCTIONS

1. Find a photo of a person on the internet. When using google to find the image, get the largest size photo possible. ( ie superman, famous model or celebrity) no animals or cartoons. Right click COPY, open Photoshop, File NEW, edit PASTE

2. Bring in the Headshot of Yourself or a friend. Go to file OPEN and open from your file on the MDRIVE. It should automatically open in Photoshop.

3. Bring in both photos to Photoshop. Go to IMAGE, IMAGE SIZE and change the photos to both be close to the same size. Height 11 INCHES. If one is way bigger than the other it will be difficult to do the assignment.

4. While under ADJUSTMENTS, you can also change both photos to BLACK and WHITE.

5. The photos should be open in different tabs.

6. Next go to the SELECTION TOOL,(4th tool down on the left, right click) and using the tool, move the tool around the head of one of your photos, then click on EDIT CUT and go to your next photo.

Note: It is probably more interesting to put the student head on the celebrity body, but it does not matter which head goes where. Also if you do not have a head shot that works for the swap, simply go out and take a shot of someone in a similar pose and distance away from the camera.

7. When on the next photo, click on EDIT, PASTE. This will put the head on the page. Then to resize the head, click EDIT, TRANSFORM, SCALE. This will put a box around the photo and allow you to change the size of the head, you can also slightly rotate the head if you go to ROTATE under TRANSFORM tool.

8.. Then you want to tweak the image by moving into place with the pick/move tool, or use the eraser tool to clean up the edges.

Note: SAVING the file: If you need to continue working on the head swap, save as a COPY Photoshop file so you can come back and work on the image. It is always a good idea, to save your edited photos as Photoshop files as a backup in case you need to go back and make changes. However, if you think you are done you can save as a JPEG ( which is save as copy). 

Friday Feb 14

 Review Photo Composition

• Leading lines
• rule of odds
• fill the frame
• centered composition
• Simplicity

Continue to work on Setting and Step Down

Take 5 Step Down Phone Photos: you are to take 5 different photos using this technique. 10 marks. Put in folder called STEP DOWN

Photo by Meredith Holser

The best part about this picture-taking tip is you can execute it by yourself. For the best outfit pics, use the .5 wide angle option on the iPhone’s back camera. Place your phone down low (can touch the ground), making sure you’re in-frame with some test shots. You will need to put the timer on, try 3-5 sec. Once you've found the best perspective, pose by kicking a leg out towards the camera, reach your hand toward it, or lean down to look at the camera lens. Capturing with the wide angle setting adds a level of distortion to your pics for added personality. 

 New Writing Assignment: Setting

• You are going to write about a favourite place using the 5 senses. As you describe the place, I want to you to use words that create visuals, sounds, tastes, and a sense of touch. The idea here is to write to create an atmosphere or feeling. Make the reader be able to visualize your scene in their mind.

• You may need to build a fictional story around this place or simply begin describing it. In this assignment students are to focus on the elements of setting ( time, place, description)  using the senses and the concept of show not tell.  (10)

What is SHOW not TELL?

Show, don't tell is a writing technique in which story and characters are related through sensory details and actions rather than exposition. It fosters a style of writing that's more immersive for the reader, allowing them to “be in the room/connect with” with the characters.

Link for further info on this technique.

Show don't Tell

CRITERIA

• 1 paragraph or slightly longer, typed, edited, and then good copy handed in
• show not tell
• be specific in your writing
• use the senses when you write
• make the reader feel they can be right there with you in the setting

Example:

from "The Old House at Home" (1940)

by Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996)

McSorley's bar is short, accommodating approximately ten elbows, and is shored up with iron pipes. It is to the right as you enter. To the left is a row of armchairs with their stiff backs against the wainscoting. The chairs are rickety; when a fat man is sitting in one, it squeaks like new shoes every time he takes a breath. The customers believe in sitting down; if there are vacant chairs, no one ever stands at the bar. Down the middle of the room is a row of battered tables. Their tops are always sticky with spilled ale. 

Another Example: What makes Tolkien’s Mordor so real in his Lord of the Rings cycle is its gloomy, dark detail:

‘The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomitted the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.’

In this passage from The Two Towers, Tolkien creates a visceral sense of Mordor as a place. Tolkien shows us Mordor using sound (the ‘gasping’ pools), colour (‘sickly white’, ‘poison-stained’) and motion (‘crawling muds’). The atmosphere of death and decay permeates everything, even in how the rock structures resemble a graveyard.

This showing makes Mordor a visceral place of foreboding and ominous danger. The actions associated with the surrounds are violent and negative, from the mountains ‘vomitting’ their entrails onto the lands to the light’s ‘reluctance’.

This passage wouldn’t be nearly as effective merely told. Tolkien could have written:

‘Frodo was horrified by the landscape – every rock formation reminded him of gravestones and there were foul smells and eerie sights at every turn.’

In this case, we lose the specificity, the detail and the power of Tolkien’s clearly visualized setting. The description is too general and vague. To show settings clearly, like Tolkien:

• Use the senses – sound, smell, sight. How do the senses combine to give a setting its atmosphere?
• Use comparison and metaphor: Tolkien personifies the light as reluctant and unwilling. This is an effective example of showing using metaphorical language

Wed Feb 12

 Take 5 Step Down Phone Photos: you are to take 5 different photos using this technique. 10 marks. Put in folder called STEP DOWN

Photo by Meredith Holser

The best part about this picture-taking tip is you can execute it by yourself. For the best outfit pics, use the .5 wide angle option on the iPhone’s back camera. Place your phone down low (can touch the ground), making sure you’re in-frame with some test shots. You will need to put the timer on, try 3-5 sec. Once you've found the best perspective, pose by kicking a leg out towards the camera, reach your hand toward it, or lean down to look at the camera lens. Capturing with the wide angle setting adds a level of distortion to your pics for added personality. 

Week of Feb 9-14

  

Take the camera out and practice using. 

• put strap around neck, have a wide base when standing, bring arms in close to chest
• hold down shutter to allow lens to focus, then press down shutter button
• the squiggly arrow on the dial turns the flash off

NEW ASSIGNMENT with digital slr cameras: Scavenger Hunt

1. something round

2. something red

3. something architectural

4. running shoe

5. a natural object

Routine for Using the Digital SLR cameras:

• Get camera from bin, turn on check battery
• check lens to make sure it is on auto, make sure camera settings are on auto, and stabilization is on
• Next get a card from the front of the room, put in camera
• Sign out the camera and card in the book
• check/clean lens, reformat the card, take a test photo
• head out to take your photos

Returning the camera

• Bring camera back, make sure it is turned off, return card after you have uploaded photos
• Get a card reader to upload your photos onto the computer
• Cross off your name in the book
• If the battery is less than half, switch it out for a fresh battery, and place the other battery in the charger.

Friday Feb7

MON/WED class NEW  Photo Assignment: Snow shots, get creative, choose to try out different angles and ideas in these photos. Feel free to use props. Umbrella, glass balls. Try shoe prints, blowing snow, bubbles, making imprints in the snow.

5 shots ( 10 marks)

TUES/THURS class Scav Hunt

• red
• round
• architecture
• shoe
• eye

Wed Feb 5

 Writing Assignment #2: Bio

Students are to write a bio about themselves. The paragraph should include interesting facts about yourself, interests, likes/dislikes, favourite foods, pets where you live, fav. movies or actors, musical interests, what you like to do in your free time etc.You should write in third person.

Ex. Jane is a shy girl who lives in Comox with her two cats named Goofy and Mittens. Jane enjoys knitting in her free time ……Length 1 paragraph Watch listing things and try to combine your sentences

Criteria: detailed, specific writing, written in bio format ( 10 marks)

When finished, you are to find a partner in the class to read your paragraph to and get them to help you improve  the piece by offering suggestions. Make sure the assignment is typed and has your name on it. Get the teacher to edit if possible, print it out and hand in to the teacher

EXAMPLE: GLYNNIS CAMPBELL is a bestselling author of swashbuckling action-adventure romance. She’s the wife of a rock star, and the mother of two young adults, but she’s also been a ballerina, a typographer, a film composer, a piano player, a singer in an all-girl rock band,  She does her best writing on cruise ships, in Scottish castles, and at home in her sunny southern California garden. Glynnis loves to play medieval matchmaker, transporting readers to a place where the bold heroes have endearing flaws, the women are stronger than they look, the land is lush and untamed, and chivalry is alive and well!

Check out this site for how to write an author bio

Criteria: third person, detailed, specific writing, written in bio format ( 10 marks)
When finished, you are to find a partner in the class to read your paragraph to and get them to help you improve  the piece by offering suggestions. Make sure the assignment is typed and has your name on it.You can put this assignment in the writing folder on the ldrive for now or have Ms Chase look it over.

Mon Feb 2

 

buck·et list

noun

INFORMAL

1. a number of experiences or achievements that a person hopes to have or accomplish during their lifetime.

   "making this trip is the first thing on my bucket list"
2. 
   

Your next assignment for writing is to create a bucket list of the top 20 things you would like to do before you turn 25. Please do not create repetitive lists.

Thurs./Fri Jan 30

1.  Rule of Thirds

What is the rule of thirds? The rule of thirds is a composition guideline that places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open. While there are other forms of composition, the rule of thirds generally leads to compelling and well-composed shots. But, once you know this rule and practice it a bit, you can break the rule. When you get on to the computers, look up rule of thirds.

2. Review as a class, the link to 10 questions to ask yourself before taking a photo.  LINK: 10 QUESTIONS

NEW First Assignment on your phone: Headshots 5 photos of 5 different people. Also include a headshot of yourself in this album. Make sure headshots have a clean, non-distracting background

20 minutes to go out and shoot headshots  DO NOT DISRUPT OTHER CLASSES. 

Headshot Criteria

• background clean
• good eye contact with camera
• edited head and shoulders
• pleasing to the eye
• in focus
• speaks to subject's personality
• all headshots should be consistent

These do not have to be uploaded today. If there is a student who does not have a phone have them partner with someone who does and take them on their phone.

If there is still time, students can begin brainstorming 20 things they would like to do/experience before they turn 25. They can put this into a word document and call it BUCKET LIST

Intro Writing/Photo 9

 Overview Photo/Writing 9: 

In this class you will learn much about how to see the world from a different perspective, how to use the digital SLR cameras, upload and organize photos and how to edit in Photoshop. This class will allow a fair bit of freedom, but with this freedom comes responsibility. Along with Photography you will be learning how to improve your creative writing skills by way of various exercises and assignments.

( Class Guidelines: to be discussed)

We need good photography for the yearbook. Students are encouraged to use their phones for taking photos as much as possible. School cameras will be available for student use in class and may be able to be signed out to take home with teacher permission. Techniques on how to use your phones/digital slr cameras will be taught in class. Students should carry their phone charge cords with them for uploading photos. 

Requirements for success in this course:

• a positive attitude and a willingness to learn and push beyond the level you are at
• your own cell phone and charger cables 
• using class time effectively and a respect the freedom you have in this class
• realizing the benefits of  taking photos outside of class occasionally
• be a good model for your peer/help out others when you can
• Keeping up with writing assignments and getting your work peer, parent or teacher edited

• ALL COMPUTER KEYBOARDS AND MICE ARE TO BE WIPED AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS
• SHOOT OUTSIDE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

Core Competencies

• Critical and Creative thinking
• Self and Social Responsibility
• Visual and written communication skills

Assessment: 

Students are at the beginning stages of learning a skill so taking lots of photos will be important for skill development. Assignments in Photo will focus on developing an eye for composition and learning how to take photos from different angles. Students will have various assignments focusing on specific skills and will be assessed by a portfolio of their work. In writing the same format will be in place. Writing is broken down into understanding character, setting, poetry and creative short assignments. I am a firm believer in process based teaching and assessments for the arts.

To set your Apple devices to take photos in JPEG/JPG instead of HEIC and to have the resolution be high:

1. Go to Settings
2. Tap Camera
3. Tap Formats
4. Tap Most Compatible

1. Partner Interviews

• create a folder under Chase 2024 on the MDrive
• create a wriing folder on the ONEDRIVE
• Open Adobe Photoshop and Photo Story and drag them to the desktop of your computer