Reward and Extra Credit

If you can help find a missing camera you will receive 30 points extra credit and a cash $$$ reward.  The camera is a canon EOS with a zoom lens and neck strap.  It belongs to a student and went missing a week prior to spring break.

Thanks for any info.

more portrait tips

For every shot you should consider your subject, their expression, the "mood" you want in the image, the background, the pose, and your composition.  You are the boss when shooting portraits, take charge?

Think about:

• perspective
• eye contact
• rules of composition
• experiments with lighting
• dramatic subject (out of comfort zone)
• shoot candidly
• introduce a prop
• focus on a body part
• obscure your subject
• take a series of shots (this will require more than 15 total pics)

Portrait Details/Assignment

1. Find no more than 2 interesting human subjects. The people you choose should WANT to be in the picture and they should be willing to cooperate.

2. Talk to your subject. You are the director of this adventure, make it what you want. Use colors or lighting to create a concept for your portrait. Costumes or uniforms work great. Imaginary ideas are OK. Choose an interesting setting based on your concept.

3. Change angles between shots. Shoot at least 10 pictures of EACH of your two subjects. This will give a good variety.

 

4. Change your lighting; Use filters, flashlights, lamps, or multiple lights to enhance your picture.
 

5. Remember you are the boss, make them change their expression. Pretend it is high fashion and they have to create the next great "look" like blue steel (Zoolander).
 

6. Most importantly for this assignment don't forget your composition rules. Use framing, leading lines, rule of thirds, color contrast etc. to enhance your photo. Fill the frame!!!!

HAVE FUN & BE CREATIVE!!!! try to think out of the norm to come up with a creative setting, pose, expression, outfit, etc to make an amazing portrait!!!!

 

 

 

You will need to shoot at least one whole roll of portraits.  The 2 prints for this will be due mid May.

Portraits

your next task is portraits, here are some tips:

11. Frame Your Subject

Framing is a technique where by you draw attention to one element of an image by framing it with another element of the image.

Image by darkmatter

Framing gives an image depth and draws the eye to a point of interest in the image.

You could do it by placing your subject in a window or doorway, have them look through a small gap or even use their hands around their face. See more examples of framing in photography here.

12. Go with a Wide Angle

Shooting with a wide angle lens attached to your camera can help create some memorable shots when you’re doing portrait photography.

At very wide focal lengths you can create some wonderful distortion. It might not be the type of shot you take of your wife or girlfriend (unless she’s in a playful mood) but using these focal lengths will enlarge parts of the face or body that are on the edge of the frame more than what is in the centre.

It can also give a wide open and dramatic impact when your subject is in an impressive setting.

Image by paulbence

13. Play With Backgrounds

The person in your portrait is the main point of interest – however sometimes when you place them into different contexts with different backgrounds you can dramatically alter the mood in a shot.

Sometimes you want your background to be as minimalistic as possible.

Portrait by akbar1947

While other times a dramatic or colorful background can help your subject really stand out.

Photo by paulbence

The key is to experiment.

14. Change the Format Framing

Many photographers get stuck in a rut of only ever shooting either in ‘landscape’ (when the camera is held horizontally) or ‘portrait’ (when the camera is held vertically) modes. Look back through your images and see which one you use predominantly.

Just because a vertical framing is called ‘portrait’ mode doesn’t mean you always need to use it when shooting portraits. Mix your framing up in each shoot that you do and you’ll add variety to the type of shots you take.

Image by bikeracer

15. Hold Your Camera on an Angle

Horizontal and Vertical framings are not the only options when it comes to shooting portraits. While getting your images straight can be important in when shooting in these formats holding your camera on a more diagonal angle can also inject a little fun into your images.

This type of framing can add a sense of fun and energy into your shots. Just don’t ’slightly’ do it or you’ll have people asking themselves if you might have mistakenly held your camera crooked.

Photo by puja

16. Take Unfocused Shots

As photographers we have ’sharp focus’ drummed into us as an ultimate objective to achieve in our work – but sometimes lack of focus can create shots with real emotion, mood and interest.

There are two main strategies for taking unfocused images that work:

1. Focus upon one element of the image and leave your main subject blurred. To do this use a large aperture which will create a narrow depth of field and focus upon something in front of or behind your subject.

Photo by Jeff Kubina

2. Leave the full image out of focus. To do this again choose a wide aperture but focus well in front or behind anything that is in your image (you’ll need to switch to manual focussing to achieve this).

These kinds of shots can be incredibly dreamy and mysterious.

Portrait by peskymac

17. Introduce Movement

Portraits can be so static – but what if you added some movement into them? This can be achieved in a few ways:

Photo by Michael Sarver

• by making your subject move
• by keeping your subject still but having an element in the scene around them move
• by moving your camera (or it’s lens to achieve a zoom burst)

Portrait by philippe leroyer

The key with the above three methods is to use a slow enough shutter speed to capture the movement.

The alternative is to have your subject obviously move fast but to use a shutter speed so fast that it ‘freezes’ their movement.

18. Experiment with Subject Expressions

In some portraits it is the expression on the face of your subject that makes the image.

Get your subject to experiment with different moods and emotions in your image. Play with extreme emotions

Portrait by carf

But also try more sombre or serious type shots

Photo by Stuck in Customs

19. Fill the Frame

One way to ensure that your subject captures the attention of the viewer of your portrait is to fill the frame with their face.

It’s not something that you’d do in every shot that you take – but if your subject is the only feature in the shot – there’s really nowhere else to look.

Portrait by kkelly2007

20. Find an Interesting Subject

I have a friend who regularly goes out on the streets around Melbourne looking for interesting people to photograph.

When he finds someone that he finds interesting he approaches them, asks if they’d pose for him, he quickly finds a suitable background and then shoots off a handful of shots quickly (if they give him permission of course).

The result is that he has the most wonderful collection of photographs of people of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds.

While many of us spend most of our time photographing our loved ones – perhaps it’d be an interesting exercise to shoot interesting strangers once in a while?

Portrait by .mushi_king

Read more: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/tips-portrait-photography#ixzz14Q5tYPUl

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Portraits...

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography. I’ll share ten of these tips today and a further ten tomorrow (update: you can see the 2nd part here).

1. Alter Your Perspective

Most portraits are taken with the camera at (or around) the eye level of the subject. While this is good common sense – completely changing the angle that you shoot from can give your portrait a real WOW factor.

Photo by striatic

Get up high and shoot down on your subject or get as close to the ground as you can and shoot up. Either way you’ll be seeing your subject from an angle that is bound to create interest.

Photo by TeeRish

2. Play with Eye Contact

It is amazing how much the direction of your subject’s eyes can impact an image. Most portraits have the subject looking down the lens – something that can create a real sense of connection between a subject and those viewing the image. But there are a couple of other things to try:
A. Looking off camera – have your subject focus their attention on something unseen and outside the field of view of your camera. This can create a feeling of candidness and also create a little intrigue and interest as the viewer of the shot wonders what they are looking at. This intrigue is particularly drawn about when the subject is showing some kind of emotion (ie ‘what’s making them laugh?’ or ‘what is making them look surprised?’). Just be aware that when you have a subject looking out of frame that you can also draw the eye of the viewer of the shot to the edge of the image also – taking them away from the point of interest in your shot – the subject.

Photo by monicutza80

B. Looking within the frame – alternatively you could have your subject looking at something (or someone) within the frame. A child looking at a ball, a woman looking at her new baby, a man looking hungrily at a big plate of pasta…. When you give your subject something to look at that is inside the frame you create a second point of interest and a relationship between it and your primary subject. It also helps create ’story’ within the image.

Photo by paulbence

3. Break the Rules of Composition

There are a lot of ‘rules’ out there when it comes to composition and I’ve always had a love hate relationship with them. My theory is that while they are useful to know and employ that they are also useful to know so you can purposely break them – as this can lead to eye catching results.
The Rule of Thirds is one that can be effective to break – placing your subject either dead centre can sometimes create a powerful image – or even creative placement with your subject right on the edge of a shot can sometimes create interesting images.

Photo by reportergimmiâ„¢

Another ‘rule’ that we often talk about in portrait photography is to give your subject room to look into. This can work really well – but again, sometimes rules are made to be broken.

Photo by Bukutgirl

4. Experiment with Lighting

Another element of randomness that you can introduce to your portraits is the way that you light them. There are almost unlimited possibilities when it comes to using light in portraits.
Side-lighting can create mood, backlighting and silhouetting your subject to hide their features can be powerful.

Photo by Bukutgirl

Using techniques like slow synch flash can create an impressive wow factor.

Photo by diskomethod

5. Move Your Subject Out of their Comfort Zone

I was chatting with a photographer recently who told me about a corporate portrait shoot that he had done with a business man at his home. They’d taken a lot of head and shoulder shots, shots at his desk, shots in front of framed degrees and other ‘corporate’ type images. They had all turned out fairly standard – but there was nothing that really stood out from the crowd.
The photographer and the subject agreed that there were plenty of useable shots but they wanted to create something ’special’ and out of the box. The photographer suggested they try some ‘jumping’ shots. The subject was a little hesitant at first but stepped out into the uncomfortable zone and dressed in his suit and tie started jumping!
The shots were amazing, surprising and quite funny. The shoot culminated with the subject jumping in his pool for one last image!
While this might all sound a little ’silly’ the shots ended up being featured in a magazine spread about the subject. It was the series of out of the box images that convinced the magazine he was someone that they’d want to feature.

Image by TeeRish

7. Introduce a Prop

Add a prop of some kind into your shots and you create another point of interest that can enhance your shot.
Yes you might run the risk of taking too much focus away from your main subject but you could also really add a sense of story and place to the image that takes it in a new direction and gives the person you’re photographing an extra layer of depth that they wouldn’t have had without the prop.

Photo by Mrs. Maze

8. Focus Upon One Body Part – Get Close Up

Get a lens with a long focal length attached to your camera – or get right in close so that you can just photograph a part of your subject. Photographing a person’s hands, eyes, mouth or even just their lower body… can leave a lot to the imagination of the viewer of an image.
Sometimes it’s what is left out of an image that says more than what is included.

Photo by Bukutgirl

9. Obscure Part of your Subject

A variation on the idea of zooming in on one part of the body is to obscure parts of your portrait subject’s face or body. You can do this with clothing, objects, their hands or just by framing part of them out of the image.
Doing this means that you leave a little to the imagination of the image’s viewer but also focus their attention on parts of your subject that you want them to be focused upon.

Photo by BigBlonde

10. Take a Series of Shots

Switch your camera into ‘burst’ or ‘continuous shooting’ mode and fire off more than one shot at a time.
In doing this you create a series of images that could be presented together instead of just one static image.
This technique can work very well when you’re photographing children – or really any active subject that is changing their position or pose in quick succession.

Image by diyosa

GRADES

Your quarter grades are coming out very soon.  The gradebook will be finalized on Wednesday 4/18/2011.  Anything turned in after that will not be represented in your Q3 grade report.  Please check and make sure you have no missing work.

Darkroom Care!

The use of our darkroom is a privilege, not a right.  You NEED to clean up after yourself.  The darkroom should NOT be littered with scraps of paper, test strips, negatives, or other junk.

You need to use what you need and clean up after yourself in the darkroom.

Thursday

Today you have a couple options.  Please choose the one which will help you meet our upcoming deadlines best:

• Taking pics (landscapes or MOP)
• Developing contact sheets/prints (you need 2 landscapes, one with a filter).
• Processing your film (landscapes or ?)
• Writing your essay on your photog

You will need to let the sub know at the start of the class what your name is and what you are doing, this must be indicated on her spreadsheet for you to get credit for today.  Those off task will loose participation for today.

Dodge & Burn

Dodging and burning are terms used in photography for a technique used during the printing process to manipulate the exposure of a selected area(s) on a photographic print, deviating from the rest of the image's exposure. Dodging decreases the exposure for areas of the print that the photographer wishes to be lighter, while burning increases the exposure to areas of the print that should be darker.
Any material with varying degrees of opacity may be used, as preferred, to cover and/or obscure the desired area for burning or dodging. One may use a transparency with text, designs, patterns, a stencil, or a completely opaque material shaped according to the desired area of burning/dodging.
Ansel Adams elevated dodging and burning to an art form. Many of his famous prints were manipulated in the darkroom with these two techniques. Adams wrote a comprehensive book on this very topic called The Print.



Dodge and Burn Project
When a photographer shoots a subject that has more contrast or a greater brightness range than the film can record the final print in the darkroom may lack detail in either the shadows or the hightlights. In the darkroom the photographer must dodge or burn a print to fix it. MOST pictures need one or the other for best results.
DODGE
This is where a portion of a print is too dark in the shadows after the main exposure is made on the enlarger. To cure this a new exposure is made in the enlarger during which time the photographer holds back or shades the problem area using their hand or a piece of cardboard on the end of a paper clip. This may only be done for a few seconds during the enlarger exposure.
 BURN
This is where a portion of a print is too white after the main exposure on the enlarger. The majority of the print looks good, so additional exposure would make it too dark. The cure, to add additional light ONLY to the white area. This will be adding additional exposure to an area that looks dark on the enlarger image as you view it in the paper. To do this you cut a hole in cardboard or use your hand in a cup shape to project a beam of light back onto the paper AFTER the main exposure.
 For this assignment you need to find a negative that prints with a dark shadow or bright highlight that needs these techniques done to it. MAKE two prints...one where no additional work was done and one where EITHER dodge or burn was done to make the print good. This is a challenge assignment for students with good darkroom skills.

The Burn in Mask is always kept in motion while making an exposure. The light is ìpaintedî on the photo to make a portion of the print darker.

The dodge tool is a piece of plastic or cardboard on the end of a metal wand. This tool is also kept in motion during exposure. It is used to hold back light from a portion of a print to make it lighter.

The print on the left was exposed using a test strip placed in the shadow area on the building. The photo needs to be either dodged or burned to allow the shadows and the highlights on the mountain to print. The print on the right was exposed for the bright mountains. This is typical of a print that needs extra work in the darkroom. For this shot we decided to dodge the building, it was easier than burning in the mountain.

The finished print To make this a piece of cardboard was placed under the enlarger about 6 inches from the lens. The outline of the building and trees was drawn on the cardboard and then cut out with a knife. Test exposures showed that to make a good print of the shadows (print on left) it would take an exposure of 8 seconds on our enlarger. To make the print on the right with the same enlarger it would take 20 seconds. That is a difference of 12 seconds. The enlarger timer was set to 20 seconds. During the first 12 seconds of the exposure the ìMASKî was held in place and moved around slightly to keep the image edge from showing. After 12 seconds the mask was removed and the rest of the print got the 8 seconds exposure it needed. It is possible to do both dodge and burn on the same print. Dodge work would be done during the main exposure and burn would be added to portions of the print AFTER the exposure.