FRAMING and COMPOSITION

The widespread use of photography as a documentary medium presents photographs to the public that give it all to the viewer without requiring a response. This is one-way communication. The goal in this case is to impart information quickly and cleanly. These pictures will not keep the viewer's attention for very long. People are happy just to identify what it is a picture of and then move on. 

In the Art world we are interested in two-way communication. It is important, therefore, to make images that raise questions that involve the viewer in a conversation. Meaningful images inspire their audience to compare their personal experiences with those of the photo-artist, using the photograph as linkage.

This end is achieved by creating images with a sense of mystery. Photographs that are filled with clues rather than facts are far more interesting. The artist must be clear about the questions their photos raise. If the motivation behind a photo is confused then the best one can hope for is a confused audience.

In general, the assignment for the semester is to make photographs with mystery, passion and meaning, using light as the paintbrush.  The first endeavor is to imbue your photos with a sense of mystery using a whole series of visual tools.  

Extrapolation

An interesting technique is to take whatever you are doing and figure out the most extreme example of that. Extrapolate it out to its logical conclusion. Below are some shooting strategies, followed by extrapolations to their extremes.

M Y S T E R Y   t h r o u g h   c o m p o s i t i o n   &   f r a m i n g   

COMPOSITION

[strategy >> closeness/ proximity]

remove all the unnecessary clutter or distractions from the image

cameras do not have editing filters that the mind supplies for vision

look carefully at you subject - take your time!

position the subject inside the viewfinder 

get close enough to remove all unwanted background

make sure you fill the frame with only meaningful content

moving closer eliminates any undesired elements

if you can step closer and remove unnecessary things from your image

and the image is no worse, it has been improved, by default!

this is called "economy of means" - saying much with few words

[extrapolation>> fragmentation]

get so close that you literally fragment the subject, 

making it more abstract

focus on the geometrical structure of the subject

[strategy>> unique angle of view/ attitude]

establish a good shooting angle 

never shoot from eye level

much of our lives are spent looking at the world from 5' 6" off the ground

this is where most people see the world from, i.e. the most boring viewpoint

put a new perspective on things that may be somewhat ordinary

shooting from a unique angle shows the photo is through the photographer’s eye, 

not just about the appearance of the subject

[extrapolation >> bird’s eye/ worm’s eye view]

find an extreme viewpoint that is rarely seen

[strategy>> luminance]

light is the bottom line in photography

a camera is merely a box that captures light!

if you are shooting in flat light you will get a flat picture

search for great light 

“if the light sucks, the photo will suck”. It is that simple.

sometimes it is possible make photographs that are just about the quality of light

look for things that either reflect or refract light in peculiar ways

water is a good example of something that both reflects and refracts water

the other side of light is shadow - the absence of light

find things hiding in shadows, or emerging out of the shadows

[extrapolation >> dramatic lighting/ deep shadow]

shoot at dawn, shoot at dusk, or in any unusual or unnatural light

shoot at night and find shadows or hidden features 

FRAMING

[strategy>> corners have power]

look at the corners of your subject 

place important elements of the picture near a corner

“if the corners are great the rest of the picture will take care of itself”

a face pushed up into a corner looking across the page can be inspiring

[extrapolation >> cut things as they are pushed into the corners]

[strategy>> edges have power]

look at the edges

place important aspects of the picture close to an edge

align horizons or prominent lines with the edge of the frame

crooked pictures show a lack of attention

[extrapolation >> push horizons to the very top or very bottom of the frame]

this open up the space and extends the vision

make a painting out of your subject

“But for me the greatest joy is geometry. Its a sensuous pleasure, an intellectual pleasure at the same time to have everything at the right place. It’s a recognition of an order that is in front of you.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

shoot a picture that is blank except for the edge(s)

Shooting with Intuition

take several shots of each subject

you are not allowed to crop your photos

if you could you would not look carefully, thinking, “I can fix it later”

sometimes the best picture is over and inch or down two, and a second later...

A photograph is an “...Immediate sketch done with intuition and you can't correct it. If you have to correct it, it's your next picture.” -HCB  “The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a matter of millimeters- small, small differences, but it is essential.” “And if I take the picture from there it's another arrangement of that. And it's very small moves I'm doing.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

refine your vision with each shot

take a shot, move closer, change your angle of view, shoot again, repeat

“You have to be yourself and you have to forget yourself so that the image comes much stronger, and what you want and what you say.” “And sometimes there's no picture. Alright there's no picture.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

TOPIC 1 - B&W + Toning = Mystery

The first Topic of this Smartphone photography class is to shoot in black-and-white, primarily to better learn framing and composition, and then so we can present a subject with a sense of mystery. MYSTERY is the key to make interesting photographs. If the subject of a photo is easily identifiable then people will not look at it very long. Make people work at understanding the meaning of the photo. Having your viewer to ask questions of the photo, rather than just receiving answers, is the key. [This is the difference between monolog and dialog. Artists are interested in having the two-way version communication.] 

Then we will add some warm tonality to the photos to impart a sense of PASSION into the photographs.

Shooting B&W

Both the iPhone and Android phones have a built-in black-and-white option in the standard Camera app. There is little or no room for adjustment with these apps however, so something better must be found. We need apps that will allow us to adjust several aspects of the photograph.

Tonal Range (Exposure) Control

Our first challenge is to find apps that will give us some control over the tonal range of our shots in general. This is sometimes know as ‘adjustments’. The dark end of the photo should be a rich deep black. The white end of the photo should be bright but not ‘blown out’ (completely white). Some people see high-contrast as a matter of style,  but excessively contrasty photos with either no shadow detail or highlight detail are technically not right. 

The other extreme is not good either. If the dark shadows are not really black the photo will look washed out. If the highlights are too grey, the photo will look flat. You have to find the sweet spot of a full-range tonality without going over or under. 

            

[When I was taught how to make ‘proper negatives’ the mot important quote was ‘If there is no photographic information in either the shadows or highlights then there is no picture, and this is incorrect processing.]

Today with Smartphones people seem to get away with doing almost anything in the name of style, and I am willing to accept that, up to a point. This new Smartphone medium is really changing the way photographs are seen, and this is really great! So let’s see how far we can go in the name of creativity and still make ‘quality’ photographs.

Toning Control

Our next challenge is to find a good app that will add a subtle sepia or warm-tone effect. This a more specific adjustment and is not so readily available by name. It may require using something called ‘aged’ or ‘vintage’ or ‘drama’ but some of these also play with the tonal range as well to make their effect.  So be careful but be adventurous.

The most important advice with this type of adjustment is: Don’t over do it! Just add enough color to warm up the photo. If the effect is too strong and people see the effect before they see the photo it has been overdone. 

Basic Smartphone Photo Apps

Some of the best known apps are listed below, but your challenge is to find something else in addition to these. This is where this class acts as a Research Team. Everyone will post the results of their research in a Recipe at the end of the critique blog. If you find something good you should post your Recipe before the critique so your classmates can benefit from your work. 

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  

SnapSeed from Google (iPhone and Android) gives you the ability to alter the photo into B&W with numerous controls. It will not really give you a direct way to add some warm tone called sepia tone but by blending effects such as B&W and Vintage you can get there. It does have a wide range of other effects, all of which are very controllable. The list includes Selective Adjust, Tune Image, Straighten, Crop, Details, Black & White, Vintage, Drama, Grunge, Center Focus, Tilt-Shift, Retroflex and Frames.

 See the SnapSeed web page for full details. https://support.google.com/snapseed/ 

VSCO Cam (iPhone and Android) works with presets that are tweakable. Not the greatest range of control. Maybe better with color than B&W photos.

  http://vsco.co/blog/category/tutorials

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  

Camera+ (iPhone only) Has 4 banks of ‘Filters’; Color, Retro, Special, Standard,(plus Analog and Hollywood for an additional fee), each with 9 variations, that are all controllable. Plus ‘The Lab’ including Rotate, Straighten, Tint, Duotone, Soft Focus, FIlm Grain, Sharpen, Blur, Saturation, Temperature, Exposure, Brightness & Contrast, Highlights & Shadows, and Vignette. DuoTone allow adding separate tints or tones to the shadows and highlights. 

  http://campl.us

Photo FX (iPhone only) from Tiffen, the camera filter company, is a very professional app that is very controllable. It has 77 filters organized into eight groups, 934 preset settings and 65 different color or black-and-white film looks.

  http://www.tiffensoftware.com/products/iphone-ipad-apps/photo-fx

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  

Camera ZOOM FX (Android only) More an app for composition and shooting control than creative control, but a good app.

  http://www.androidslide.com

Camera FV-5 (Android only) brings DSLR control to the smartphone.

  http://www.camerafv5.com

History & Aesthetics

The first Topic involves shooting in Greyscale. This is important if you want to learn how to compose photographs. Color just seems to get in the way when trying to organize visual space.

[terminology: ‘Grayscale’ refers to a photograph having a full range of monochrome tonality, black to white. ‘Black & White’ technically refers to an image that has only black and white tones, i.e. a very hard contrast image. But since the first film was called Black & White film, the term is now used to refer to Grayscale photos.]

The first question that arises is, why make photographs in black-and-white? If you look at the history of modern photography the first photograph taken with a camera was shot by Daguerre in 1838 with an exposure that was several minutes long. It wasn’t until 1935 that Kodak introduced the first commercial color film called Kodachrome. That gives us a history of almost 100 years of black-and-white photographs. 

The difference is that early photographs were made with light sensitive material that was sensitive to all the light that was hitting the film. The prints worked the same way and rendered images in shades of gray from black, being the most dense, to white, where there was no pigment at all.

The Kodak color process is a three layer film with different layers responding to different portions of the visible spectrum, namely red, green and blue. This same processes is used today. To make prints from this film subtractive color theory is used that employs the colors cyan, magenta and yellow. The technology we are using today, consisting of a computer screen and an inkjet printer, uses the same basic theories. The screen is made of very tiny red, green and blue pixels. The ink in our inkjet printers is cyan, magenta and yellow plus black.

Even today with all of our technology we find that black-and-white photographs still have an enigmatic quality. They can transform a somewhat normal scene into one with drama. The photographs from the first century of photography had ‘feel’ because the chemistry was not really perfect back then. The early photographs were not really cold dead black. They had a warmer brownish tonality that added another layer of ‘feel’ to the prints. It wasn’t until the 1950s they we really had neutral tone black-and-white photo paper.

Many photo artists today turn to the black-and-white image to satisfy their desire to make highly emotive photographs. Then they treat their photographic prints with special chemicals that render them warm tone and even more evocative. Some just see it as the pure form of photography and shoot this way out of reverence. 

Our smartphone cameras have the ability to reduce a full-color world to black-and-white by using special software. We can also easily add a bit of warm tone quality. Working in black-and-white also makes it much easier to learn how to frame the subject in the viewfinder (aka screen) and compose the shot in a way that organizes the scene and creates a visual geometry. [ref: Henri Cartier-Bresson on the Research Pages]  When you shoot in color all the resulting reality seems to get in the way. People’s attention usually gets seduced by the color and we forget about the more formal qualities of the photograph.

Accepting the Invitation to the Blog

You will receive an invitation to the class blog in your TU email. There is a bit of a trick to this. You must have a Gmail account that is different from your TU email account. If you already have a Gmail account you are good to go. If not you will have to create one.

Do not try to use you TU email to accept the invitation to the blog. You will be locked out, creating problems. [If you have any problems, send me you Google account address and I will send you another invite.]

The invitation email will look like this (This example shows section 702 from last semester):

This gives you 2 options:

1- If you already have a Google Account, hit the Accept Invitation button.

That will take you to a web page that says, “You have been invited to contribute to a blog”

Click on the Accept Invitation button there and you’re in.

2- If you DO NOT have Google account and only have a TU email, click on the ‘create one here’ link in the email. 

If this link does not work (it didn’t on my computer) use this link:

https://accounts.google.com/signup

This will take you to a Signup form. Fill out all the information. 

After you have your Google account, go back to the email and accept the invitation.

One last thing:

Once you have your Google Account, sign up for Google +. This will ask you to add a head shot. This will make it possible for the other students in the class to see who you are. This makes the class more personal and therefore more collaborative.

The Blogger 'Accept Invitation' web page looks like this, but with your name in the top line:

Class Schedule and Weekly Routine

A R T   P H O T O G R A P H Y   –   S M A R T P H O N E   P H O T O    

S E M E S T E R   S C H E D U L E   –   S P R I N G   2 0 1 6 

Tyler School of Art/ Department of Graphic Arts & Design/ ARTU 2831-702

Tyler Photography Area / On-Line Class

All students must participate in all critiques!

S16			ART/ SMARTPHONE PHOTO 2831-702
week 1	M	01/11	intro/ blog setup
			TOPIC 1 -  B&W Photo / Mystery
week 2		01/18	shoot, process, post (4 min)
week 3		01/25	shoot, process, post (4 min)
week 4		02/01	shoot, process, post (4 min)
week 5	M	02/08	CRIT 1 Final Photos due (12 + 2 sp*)	5PM
	T	02/09	CRIT 1 Commentary due	5PM
	R	02/11	CRIT 1 Self-Evaluations due	5PM
	F	02/12	TOPIC 2 - Color Photo/ Passion
week 6		02/15	shoot, process, post (6 min)
week 7		02/22	shoot, process, post (6 min)
		02/29	Spring Break
week 8	M	03/07	CRIT 2 Final Photos due (15 + 2 sp*)	5PM
	T	03/08	CRIT 2 Commentary due	5PM
	R	03/10	CRIT 2 Self-Evaluations due	5PM
	F	03/11	TOPIC 3 - Vintage/ Memory
week 9		03/14	shoot, process, post (6 min)
week 10		03/21	shoot, process, post (6 min)
week 11		03/28	shoot, process, post (6 min)
week 12	M	04/04	CRIT 3 Final Photos due (18 + 2 sp*)	5PM
	T	04/05	CRIT 3 Commentary due	5PM
	R	04/07	CRIT 3 Self-Evaluations due	5PM
	F	04/08	TOPIC 4 - Final Portfolio/ Intellect
week 13		04/11	shoot, process…
week 14		04/18	portfolio preparation
week 15	M	04/25	FINAL PORTFOLIO due	5PM

*Each Critique requires 2 Self-Portraits.

Check your temple.edu e-mail weekly for additional information.

CONTACTS

Department of Graphic Arts & Design/ Tyler Building, Room 210U 777-9145

Tyler Photo Area/ Equipment Cage 777-9225

Steven Berkowitz/ Associate Professor          berk@temple.edu www.berk–edu.com

Office Hours (by appointment) Tuesdays 4:00 – 5:00 PM

A R T   P H O T O G R A P H Y   -   S M A R T P H O N E   P H O T O    

W E E K L Y   R O U T I N E

Below is the typical routine for the critique cycles: 

Fridays are the introduction days of new topics including aesthetics, techniques, ways of shooting, ways of processing (apps), etc. (except for the first week of the semester). You should study and absorb this information quickly and, in a day or two, start shooting, processing and posting your photos to the class blog. You should shoot and post every day. That is part of the routine of this class.  

You can only really learn this by thinking, shooting, posting on an ongoing manner [think, make, share]. This is an Art Studio course and it utilizes ‘experiential learning’ that is quite different from ‘book learning’ as in most academic classes. Because of this, it is not possible to cram for a studio class. You cannot wait unit the day before the Critique is due to shoot everything. If you try this you will never learn how to shoot properly let alone how to think about what you are shooting. Do not cheat yourself out of the education you are paying for. 

note: All handouts mentioned below are easily accessible on the Professor’s web site

• > link to Smartphone Photo Web Site

The general rhythm of this class is as follows:

• learn the new topics, incorporate them into your way of seeing, shooting, processing... 
• look at other people’s work of a similar ilk (research)
• > link to Research Pages (more about this later...)

• shoot, process & post photographs every day, at least 2 per day to start, then increase

You should post at least 2 shots per day at the beginning of the semester

8 active days of shooting and posting = 16 photos for Crit 1

10 active days of shooting and posting = 20 photos for Crit 2

This should increase to 3 shots per day by the 3rd crit

10 active days of shooting and posting = 30 photos for Crit 3

When you are ready to start shooting you should first review all the documents that apply to the Aesthetics of Shooting, including;

• > link to Framing & Composition
• > link to Shooting Self-Portraits
• > link to Intuitive vs. Directed Shooting
• > link to Passive/ Active Shooting
• > link to Photo Clichés

You have at least two full weeks to shoot, process and post photos. The weekends are optional.

• > link to Viewing & Posting

Mondays of the third following week are the due date for your Critique photos. 

Before this date you should go through everything that has been posted on-line (there should be more that the minimum number of prints already on-line) and edit down to the actual number of prints due (or a little bit over if desired). 

• the full number of prints required for the critique should now be uploaded
• add numbers above each of your prints so people can easily vote for their favorite

• add a RECIPE for your best photo to the very bottom of the Blog 

so people can learn from how you are working

include then names of any apps used and the relevant settings

Tuesdays are the days to look at and make commentary on the photos of your classmates.  

• look at other people’s photos and comment on them
• base the commentary on 3 criteria: content, form, impact [3 Disciplines]
• > link to Commenting & Voting

• tell any story that the photos remind you of: 

                         (sharing personal experience: resonance)

• cast a vote for each person in the class indicating which shot you think is their best

note: no one will want to comment on your photos if you do not comment on theirs. 

This is another variation of the Golden Rule.

Thursdays are the days that your self-evaluations are due

• review all the comments you have received
• write a synopsis of that commentary, again based on 3 criteria: content, form, impact 
• there is a handout explaining how to write a self-evaluation using these three concepts
• > link to Self-Evaluations

• determine which of your prints is the best (according to peer voting)

• This photo is designated your POW (Picture of the Week)

• include the POW in the Self-Evaluation document

• e-mail the finished Self-Evaluation document to the professor in MS Word format

• add your best photo to your Digital Portfolio folder in OWLbox
• > link to upload to OWLbox

Fridays are the days when the next topic will be posted and the cycle starts over again…

note: the basic information for each Topic is always available on the Professor’s web site.

These topics will most likely be amended, based on the interests of the group as evidenced by the photographs that are posted. 

note: All students must participate and complete all phases of each Critique cycle. Failure to complete any segment results in failure of the entire Critique.