Photoshop Editing Assignment

Editing Assignment NEW
HEADSWAP IN PHOTOSHOP INSTRUCTIONS  (10 marks)

1. Find/or take photo of a person. If using google to find the image, get the largest size photo possible. ( ie superman, famous model or celebrity) no animals or cartoons.

2. Bring in both photos to Photoshop. Go to IMAGE, ADJUSTMENTS, IMAGE SIZE and change the photos to both be close to the same size. If one is way bigger than the other it will be difficult to do the assignment. While under ADJUSTMENTS, you can also change both photos to BLACK and WHITE.
3. Next go to the SELECTION TOOL, 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.

4.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.
5. Then you want to tweak the image by moving into place with the pick 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 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 and then print out the assignment, put your name on it and hand it in.

Criteria for this assignment: Looking for a clean transition, not warped but looking accurate, limited blurring to make the face/hair work. If I cannot tell it has been photoshopped it is a 10/10. Good Luck.

More on Composition

Link to more information on composition
Composition

Please make sure all of your work is posted in albums on Flickr.

New Photography Assignment: Focus on Composition

This is your first official shoot. You are focusing on composing good shots and experimenting with angles.  Each shot is worth 2 marks and should be titled and put into an album called First Shoot.

1. Texture
2. High Angle
3. Low angle
4. Eye shot
5. Ground Level
6. Shadow shot
7. Pattern
8. Focal point
9. Grafitti
10 Fill the Frame
Bonus: Round

Criteria: In focus, well composed shots trying to utilize composition elements. Marks 20

10 Questions

Digital Photo School

New Writing Assignment

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

Update of work: week ending Feb 15

In order of priority, make sure you have the following done by the end of this week.

1. Flickr: make an account, make Ms Chase a contact, make a few contacts in the class, put your photo on the buddy icon, change the background photo to make it one of yours, put all of your assignment photos into albums, and join the Mark Isfeld Photo group. ( 10 marks)

2. Bio: Complete your rough copy of your bio in writing, hand in to Ms Chase for editing, fix up, and then hand back in your good copy for marking. ( 10 marks)

3. Head shots: Take 2 good quality head shots of 2 DIFFERENT people, and put into an album on Flickr. Make sure you also include a head shot of yourself. ( 10 marks)

4. Rule of thirds:You were to look up the rule of thirds on the internet and then go out and take two photos focusing on this concept. Edit these photos. Put into an album on Flickr. (5 marks)

5. If finished all of this, see Ms Chase for the new writing assignment.


Grading for Photography: What I am looking for in a good photograph:

• photo is in focus and sharp
• photo has strong compositional elements
• photo has some thought put into it/fits the assignment criteria
• photo is sometimes taken from a unique angle/evidence of experimentation
• photo has been edited if necessary, but not over-edited

Resources:

What is composition?

Elements of composition are: patterns, texture, symmetry, asymmetry, depth of field, lines, curves, frames, contrast, color, viewpoint, depth, negative space, filled space, foreground, background, visual tension, shapes. Use one or more of these elements to create a composition that works for your image.

How to improve composition VIDEO

Knowing the camera

 Check out this link on the parts of the Canon camera
Knowing the Camera

Intro to Photo/Writing 9

Welcome to Photo/Writing 9

This course will run a full semester and will combine both writing and photography. Students will complete the course by producing a portfolio of written work and a slideshow of their best photography.

As a result of budget cuts and a number of cameras getting broken last year, it is strongly encouraged that students have their own camera or at the very least access to a family camera at home. Camera phones are OK (  but the quality of photography is not always great, even if you have a good phone camera, I suggest you use the school's digital SLR's to learn about how to utilize camera settings.

ALL STUDENTS MUST HAVE THEIR OWN 16GB or larger sd card. This is your notebook for the class. Cards will only be provided on an emergency basis after the first 2 weeks.Not having a card could interfere with your success in the course. I would suggest an online order, or Bestbuy. I would like students to have this card by the third week of class.

Creation of Writing and Photo folders on Ldrive

Flickr Assignment: create an account, make Ms Chase a contact, insert your buddy icon, change your background photo, join the Mark Isfeld Photo Group. 

MAKE SURE ALL PHOTOS ARE PUBLIC. (10 marks)

Writing Assignment #1: Students are to write a bio telling about themselves including: interests, hobbies, likes/dislikes, favourite foods, fav. books,movies etc. This assignment should be written 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

Sample Bio
GLYNNIS CAMPBELL is a USA Today 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, and a voice in those violent video games you won’t let your kids play. She does her best writing on cruise ships, in Scottish castles, on her husband’s tour bus, 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: 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 m:drive or print and hand in to Ms Chase.

Check out Stephen King's bio