You have one week to hand in all work for this brief, with everything due Tuesday the 8th at 4:00pm

What is due:

Writing tasks: recipe, descriptive letter, manual and interview.

Class tasks: as listed on this Blogger.

Project: four printed photographs of your chosen community.
(Evidence of each of the LO's needs to be documented on your Blogger to support your submission: Research, evaluation, context & practice.)

Task twenty three: Interview

This is the last writing task, you need to either write a fake interview based on information that you research on an artist, such an example is below. Or you can do a real interview with someone from your community, asking them information about your community.

Course survey

This is your opportunity to give MIT feedback on the course, follow the link

Task twenty two: reflected light

Here is a link to a website that has more information on reflected lighting techniques

Take a photo that uses reflected light

Field trip: Nathan Homestead and Papakura Art Gallery and Fresh again!

Thanks for accompanying me to the galleries today, in a way it was good that the weather was too wet for the gardens.

Colour continued

You can do amazing things with colour and light, just look at these photographers:

David LaChapelle

Gregory Crewdson

Martin Parr

Philip Lorca Dicorcia

Task ninteen: Camera: Pattern

Tea cup ballet, by Olive Cotton, 1935

Life is full of patterns and repetition.

Two techniques come into practice while working with patterns; you can emphasise the pattern, or you can break it:

Emphasising a pattern can accentuate a sense of scale and expansion. The idea is to zoom in onto the pattern and fill the frame with it. 

Breaking a pattern is all about finding an object that disrupts the continuous flow of a pattern. It can be an object that is in clear contrast with the rest of the objects; be it in shape, color, or even texture.  You can also play with your depth of field. Have the contrasting item in sharp focus and the items around it fading slowly into the out-of-focus. 

Camera information: Repetition

Diptychs and triptychs are a brilliant tool for photographic storytelling. They present two or three images which can be from the same session or they can be polar opposites to show opposition or contrasting ideas. Below are 5 such images and what we can get out of them to help us form our own effective diptychs and triptychs.

MIT is going to pay for our prints for assessment

With this gesture comes the responsibility of having your work ready to print in week seven 01/09/15, so the technician has time to print for your assessment. (Please take photos of your community this week in preparation.) For week eight we will have a shared lunch, with invited friends and family.

Task twenty: Color

Follow this link for more information about colour use in photography

Try to start thinking about colour; see if you can take a single photo that uses contrasting colours. And try to take a single photo that uses complimentary colours.

Task twenty one: Direct and diffused light

 Here is a link to a website with more in-depth information on the differences between direct and diffused light

Can you tell which image uses direct and which uses diffused light?

(Look at the shadow)

Take two photos; one that uses direct light and one that uses diffused light

Task eighteen: camera: texture

Hairy Catsear Young Leaf, by Karl Blossfeldt, 1928

Texture

No design element is more capable of moving your deep emotions than texture. The challenge of seeing and capturing texture is mostly based on one element - light. Texture can be accentuated by the side light of early sunny mornings or early evenings, or by overhead light when the sun is vertical and high in the sky.

With the sun high in the sky, the roughness of the walls of buildings, or the wood textures of tree trunks, or any kind of texture along vertical surfaces is emphasized as the overhead light casts small shadows along those surfaces. While the impact is subtle, it adds more depth, interest, and reality to the shots.

Task seventeen: manual

We are up to our third writing task, you need to write a manual, an instruction list that informs someone how to take a specific photograph. Below is a form to assist you with this task.

Learning Outcome Context: you need to research

Remember to research so you understand your context and don't miscommunicate or appropriate in a negative way; like these fashion trendsetters who are wearing Native American headdresses out of context, which removes the cultural significance of a very important practice.

Task sixteen: Camera: Line

Stairs, by Aleksandr Rodchenko, 1930

Line can provide many elements to a photo: movement, pattern, energy, etc

Making the eye of the viewer move in certain directions

Line

Out of the 6 elements of design, line is the strongest and most important and influential. Without line there can be no shape. Without shape there can be no form. Without form there can be no texture and there can be no pattern. Lines are powerful tools that can be used smartly to lead the viewers eyes towards the point of interest in a photograph, and alter the overall feeling and mood of an image.

Lines can be vertical, horizontal, diagonal, or curved. Lines can be short or tall, can be thick or thin. Lines can lead you away, or move you forward in an image. A line's emotional effect on an image cannot be overlooked. They sometimes feel restful, soothing, rigid, active, guiding, or threatening.

Thin lines can be experienced by some as unstable, and by others as vulnerable. Thick lines can be experienced as rigid and dependant, or can be experienced as dominating or stern. Curved lines are often perceived as soft, soothing, settling, and relaxing. Jagged lines can be perceived as forceful, chaotic, sharp, and threatening.

Vertical lines in a photograph tend to convey different moods, ranging from power and strength, to growth. Vertical lines can include strands of hair, poles, trees, buildings, and a lot of other different objects that expand vertically rather than horizontally.

Field Trip: Lisa Reihana at the Auckland City Gallery

It was great to see Lisa's work in Pursuit of Venus last week.

Task fifteen: Learning Outcome: Context

Task fourteen: Camera: edge of the frame and cropping

Cropping allows you to change the meaning of a photo, think about the differences in this photo above ∆∆∆.

Dovima with Elephants, by Richard Avedon, 1995.

Think about what is on the edge of your frame, what is touching the frame? What is cropped? And where?

Task Thirteen: Learning Outcome: Evaluation

Remember to make your own bumper sticker, reminding yourself of an important thing about the evaluation process.

At this point in time your evaluation needs to talk about what you see in your photographs and others work. Photographic techniques that you can talk about include; WB, ISO, shutter (blur and frozen movement), DOF, aperture, vantage, composition, framing, line, texture, fore, mid and background.

Christian Thompson 

Howl Your Troubles 2011

C-type print
100 x 100 cm

Formative

We are half way through our course and it is time to reflect on our progress, please download a formative form from EMIT and fill out your comments. Last step is to meet with Rebecca one-to-one for a discussion.

Field trip: Fo Guang Shan North

It was a real treat visiting the temple in Botany today

Task twelve: camera: composition

Follow this link for information about composition techniques.

Composition is consideration for how all the elements in the photo relate to one another.
Your task is to take a photograph that uses the rule of thirds.

The basic principle behind the rule of thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 EQUAL parts.
If you place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines that your photo, you are applying correctly. Please refer to the image below.

Task eleven: Learning Outcome: Practice

What is the difference between a skill and a technique? 

Skill: someone can show you a basic skill, like how to jump rope.

Technique: is when you spend time practising and developing your skill, eventually becoming professional.

(Application is evidence of you using skills that we have learnt in class.)

Write a haiku that helps you remember what application is.
A haiki has 5 syllables in the first line then 7 and then 5 for the last line.
Look at the example below for help.

Field Trip: Ihumatao Peninsula

Thank you each for a great day, I am looking forward to seeing your photo's to print one for koha for Anna

Task ten: Learning Outcome: Surface Research

When you start researching for your project for this paper, you need to throw out a large net and collect as much information as possible. Remember all the different types of resources that you can use: books, magazines, T.V, film, the Internet, interviews, hui, documentaries, kōrero, drawing, photography, whakarongo, etc.

Draw or collect your own picture to remind you how you should engage with surface research.

Task nine: vantage and depth

What are the camera techniques that we have done so far?

(ISO, WB, Shutter, aperture, depth-of-field, blur)

Here are a couple of new ones:

Vantage: the relationship between the camera and the subject

Depth: the relationship between the elements in the frame.

Below are handouts to assist with these techniques

Task eight: letter

The second writing task is to write a descriptive letter about one of your communities, below is a template to assist you with this task. 

Tuakana Time

If you miss the field trip please attend this event.

Field Trip: Ihumatao

Tomorrow Tuesday the 4th of August we are going on a guided field trip at the Ihumatao Peninsula, please make sure that you are in the homeroom at 9:00am so you are ready to catch the van which will leave MIT sharp. (If you miss the van use this Blogger to get caught up-to-date on the tasks.)

Things to bring:
warm clothes
raincoat
walking shoes
water
snacks

Task seven: shutter and aperture

 Take two pictures of the one subject: one with a slow shutter, one with a fast shutter.

 Take two pictures of the one subject: one with a high aperture and one with a low aperture.