Final Few Days: This Was Posted in the Lab Today

ATTENTION:
ART 178C – ADVANCED PHOTO
• Meet in class 1:15 PM on Wednesday, 4/20, for first half of Final in “room 201” (now a famous book). 5 people need to be ready for their critique session and sign up below; or, everyone needs to be ready with 8 to 10 images to be critiqued in our first half. Also, don't forget to write your project statement that will hang next to your work.
1. MJ

2. Crystal

3. _________ , 4. _________, 5. _________

• Our next and last final will be on Wednesday, 4/27, at 1 p.m. in room 201.

• Pay Doug or Lee for digital printing costs (paper / ink). Digital print costs are posted near printer in Adams 208.
Doug and Lee also have a copy.

• Bring $35 for books – they have been ordered and will arrive late this week The will be awesome.

• Lee will allow you to mat prints on Monday – Wednesday, as long as you keep it clean (facilities, I mean).

• Stay tuned for an announcement of an event for late next week.

Color / B & W / Digital Photo Contest - Celebration

Want to enter a photography contest, exhibit your work, win some cash? We have the MJC Celebration of the Humanities with big cash prizes going on - enter by March 24, this Thursday at 5 P.M. in the photo lab. And after that, we'll have another chance to enter a different show - with much different work - so get your experience down this week. Purchase your $5 receipts at Business Offices on East or West.

Special request to color photographers who did not enroll this semester - we need your entries from Fall '10, or before.

Also, extra credit is offered for entering at least two photographs.
Here's the link for rules, etc.:

http://celebration.events.mjc.edu/

Projects and Portraits

Please bring your project descriptions to class tomorrow. In working on them, you may want to look at the ideas and methodology of others. In addition to my recent blog posts, here's a helpful resource.

Photography Now.Net offers extensive portfolios of many diverse contemporary photographers. Go to the link above, click on the index of "Selected Contemporary Artists" and select Robert Adams and Sheikh Fazal. The latter may be helpful in looking at simple lighting used in portraits that could be similar to our lighting assignment. Also, here's the info on Sheikh's reasons for doing this project.

We've seen Robert Adams many times in class and at galleries. Here's a program about Adams on the PBS (Public Broadcasting System) Art21 site. It's about a 11 minute video, somewhat slow and definitely contemplative. Once you read Adams' bio, click on the "Watch Now" and then move to Chapter 9, The New West, on the bottom bar.

Project Ideas - Like Thrift Stores?

I asked you to write some ideas down for your final project this weekend - something that has intention and that you care about, whether it's about picture structure or society's structure. Here is a project that appears to be very personal even though the photographs are fairly formal. Read the artist's statement and get much more out of the fascinating images.
AND very importantly, use the Helsinki School website to search through other's projects and their statements for photo projects.
photos by Riitta Päiväläinen

Let's Get Involved - Ideas for Inside Out PhotoMurals?

Here's the link for the Inside Out project related to the video I showed in class Wednesday: http://www.insideoutproject.net/ It's about 4 to 5 minutes long and explains how we can get involved. Please watch and we'll discuss it on Monday. Also, if you go on the March in March, please take some pictures of yourself there (and much more) - I will not count you late if you bring your work in Wednesday - if you go to the March.
http://www.insideoutproject.net/

Diptychs and Lighting Assignment #2

The Diptychs assignments are due on Wednesday. Lab day all day Monday. Please be ready for class critique so all work will get viewed and get full credit.

In the meantime, Lighting Assignment #2 should be fun and good for working inside on these un-spring-like gray days.
Here's some guidelines for preparing for LA#2:
Use your photo or clip lights - this time you'll need them and not just house-hold lamps. Pick an appropriate ISO setting for making sharp pictures (hand-held or tripod) of live people.
Think about the pictures you want to make and be very intentional about the following:
1. Pick a person that will be an interesting subject; ask her/him/them to wear what you want them to, including make-up if you want. Be bold.
2. Make a a choice of interesting interior backgrounds for this portrait.
3. Find an area inside that you can control the lighting so your clip lights will be the ONLY lighting. You'll need a space large enough to clip your lights to chairs, lamp poles, and whatever (check out lightstands in lab) you can move around for lighting arrangements. If you want props, pick ones that will shop up against whatever is behind them (tones, colors, etc.).
4. Decide what pose and expression of the sitter you want. Be sure to try several different moods/expressions for editing later.
5. Use tinfoil for covering the edges of lights so you don't get lens flare or light spills into areas that you don't want.

I'll have a handout tomorrow to give specifics about what pictures to make. (Advanced repeats use the studio and strobe lights to create your photos.)

Also, find a portable flash to work with in the next part of our lighting assignments - bring it to class 3/14.
Photo: Doug Smith ©2009

San Francisco - Pier 24

We're leaving tomorrow morning and have to get there, park and enter close to 10:30 A.M. Since the forecast is for rain, bring a rain pancho, or raincoat (maybe one of those cute yellow ones we used to wear to school?). It may be wet but at least the umbrellas (oh yeah, maybe you'll want to bring one) will be colorful for pictures. Tripods may be in order if it's overcast and you want to do landscape; flashes may be interesting with rain - I'll instruct you on flash if you bring one. Don't forget your lunch and a snack to share?

See you at 8 A.M. in front of Sierra and Adams Hall.

Photos by Andre Kertesz and Wm. Eggleston

In case you want to look up any artists we'll be thinking about at Pier 24:
Artists presented in the exhibition From the Collection of Randi and Bob Fisher include:
Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Harry Callahan, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, John Gutman, Helen Levitt, Richard Misrach, Man Ray, Charles Sheeler, Aaron Siskind, Alfred Stieglitz, Thomas Struth, Paul Strand, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Edward Weston, and Garry Winogrand.

Projects: Here's one from Alec Soth

Portraits From a Job-Starved City

Each photo has an accompanying audio statement: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/23/magazine/rockford.html

Photographs by ALEC SOTH. Interviews by MICHAEL CATANO.

Lighting and Bring Work for Home Design Show

Last week I mentioned that your work could be exhibited in the Home Design Expo and you'd be helping the MJC Interior Design class decorate their installation. Please bring work that would be suitable for such an event. They asked originally for Modesto-ish looking views but later opened that up to anything, particularly but not limited to black and white, that would look good in a living room interior. Please bring framed and unframed work for consideration.

And, if you haven't noticed, our printed schedule is not accurate. Tomorrow we'll look at the lighting assignment #1 in class for a short time and then I will have some diptych's to show and a method for printing them in the darkroom. In the meantime, please plan and pay for our field trip to Pier 24 and other activities in San Francisco.

Our revised schedule is below:

W 2/16 Discussion /Demo of lighting equipment and Assignment 1

M 2/21 Holiday – no class

W 2/23 Meet in class – Diptych Demo; Make blogs – look at Lighting Assignment 1

M 2/28 Required Open Lab

W 3/2 San Francisco Field Trip

M 3/7 Required Open Lab

W 3/9 Dyptich prints Assignment due in class

Photo by Doug Smith

Lighting Assignment 1: Magic Light and Silhouette

After seeing examples shown in class, make photographs using at-home lighting. Find a "studio" in your home that you can construct an area with a light background and lighting arrangement. See the notes in the class handout for advice regarding doing this assignment.

Set A:

1. In the first pictures, use an object with an interesting contour shape. Set up a bright light to show a bright background so that the object in front of it will be a black or near-black silhouette. Make several images of different angles and exposures.
2. In your studio, light your interesting object with the shutter open (use a middle ƒ/stop setting) by "painting" with a flashlight or other small directed light source. Experiment and take several photos with several settings. Also see this site about painting with light.

Set B:

1. Photograph a setting outside that has a dark area and a light area in the background and use your flashlight (you can add colored gels to add color to your picture) to paint objects in the foreground. You're encouraged to use models or other identifiable elements in your photograph. Students who have taken Art 175 can use your flash to illuminate larger areas of your night scene. I encourage you to use models or interesting foreground elements in these settings.

Those who are repeating advanced and may have done similar assignments before, you may skip Set A and spend that time developing your final project but do Set B and add a different twist to your images this time; use a sunset or other interesting background and add atmosphere to your image (take more than simply a technical approach).

Photo by Tochka.jp on Flickr and by Doug Smith

Valentines

Hope you had fun making Valentines over the weekend. I will try to be in the lab from 12:30 if you need to use the digital lab before class. We'll look at our hearty work at 1:30 and begin sharing it and a treat in class. Please bring work to do in the lab after.

Two posts to read: from S.F. and from Africa

Gloria Baker Feinstein has a great blog about her experience creating photography projects as well as some philosophical comments that enrich our appreciation for artmaking. Please read her post about the show that some of us viewed in San Francisco and then scroll to the bottom and read the comments about the "Slow Photography" movement that's becoming very popular and relates to why I wanted you to use your "90 minutes" to experience your own "seeing."

WOW - is Lightroom Boss or What?

You're getting to know Lightroom and I encourage you to explore on your own in either the classroom (Adams 201) on the MAC's or in the digital lab when available in Adams 208. The next thing I was going to show in class is in this video put out by Adobe.
Please go to this Link and view the 12-minute program before class on Monday.
In addition, I am working on possibilities for making our book and our exhibition happen. Hope you're out photographing on this beautiful day,
Doug

Welcome

Art 178C will offer several unique skills and thoughtful discussions about making art using the broad spectrum ofl photography. Depending on your previous classes, you'll be able to make artwork in a variety of ways related to the photographic medium, using color, black and white, film, and digital. In the past, people have used tools that range from the large-format view camera, to the ultra-casual (or not) Holga, to the cameraless, to the digital SLR, to the digital flatbed scanner and beyond.

Of course there will be some structure imposed so that the curriculum that the instructor has chosen and that which students will add in our first classes can be covered and accounted for. The main goal, however, is to make the class conducive to your working and progressing further to understand, appreciate, create, provoke, suffer (you thought I'd leave that out?), and experience the joy of photography. Welcome!

Photo: D. Lange, K. Grannan, Doug

Field Trip to San Francisco - 1/27/11

Bring camera gear, film/cards, snack, your receipt, water bottle, (no ice chests), warm clothes, good walking shoes, and a great on-the-road-outlook. It's going to be a beautiful day. See you in the parking lot between Sierra and Adams Hall at 12:20 P.M.

photo by M. Huey, 2004