The Capstone Project is your opportunity to take advantage of the knowledge you have gained through our journey in learning about photography, to develop a meaningful project of 10 well formed photographs based in your passion for artistic expression, or a subject for documentary exploration, insightful portraiture, imaging for work-related subjects, or some other aspect of photography. We are confident that it will be a project that you will be excited to share with fellow Learners, and with Professors Peter Glendinning and Mark Sullivan too! A unique feature of this Course is the individual review and responsive input you will receive directly from Peter or Mark, who will be viewing your pictures and making evaluations of all projects at the end of the Capstone. You should plan on spending more time on this Course per week than any other in this Specialization, and much of it will be in making photographs. During the entire period of development, you and your fellow learners will be supporting each other as you work independently, by sharing your work-in-progress from the initial Project Plan to the final Portfolio. At each stage, all Learners will share comments and suggestions with each other, helping each other to gauge progress and to learn about different approaches to photography and content. By expressing your own ideas and expectations about quality in response to the work of others, you will be forming your own criteria of excellence as well. Along the way there will be multiple opportunities for sharing pictures and ideas through carefully designed Peer Review. This sharing of photographs and comments with peers, and reflecting on their comments about your photos, will be an exciting learning experience that will help you grow in understanding your own photography and that of others. Your contribution of comments to fellow Learners will not only help them understand their photographs better, but it will give you an opportunity to use the vocabulary of terms that are related to techniques, design principles, and content approaches that you have learned through your success in each of the previous Modules. A unique aspect of this Specialization is that everyone who completes the requirements will receive, in addition to their Certificate of Specialization from Michigan State University, access to substantial discounts on equipment, accessories, and membership benefits through Industry Partners from among the premier manufacturers of photography equipment and related items: Fracture, Gary Fong, Gyst, Lensbaby, LensPen, Lume Cube Lighting, Photo District News, PhotoVideoEdu, Think Tank Cases/Bags. In addition, The 'top-10' peer-reviewed Capstone projects each year will be awarded the opportunity for individual reviews, with personal responses, by world renowned photographers who have been honored with the title of Canson-Infinity® Paper Ambassadors.
Lesson Review: Working a Scene from Course One
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Photography Capstone Project
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Cours 5 sur 5 dans Specialization Photography Basics and Beyond: From Smartphone to DSLR
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Mid-Term review time!
At the midway point in this Capstone Course, you will "get over the hump" and continue your progress toward the completion of your photography projects! Peter and Mark will each discuss a project that had "humps" to get over. This is also the week where you will upload a large set of new photographs, ten to be exact, using the Discussion Forum as our "gallery," and the Peer Review process as a way to share and receive feedback from as many of your fellow photographers as you like. You will not only gain from the perspectives of others, but grow in your abilities to engage the processes of critical thinking and dialogue so necessary to developing your own sense of what makes a photograph a "success."
Rencontrer les enseignants
Peter GlendinningProfessor
Art, Art History, & Design
Mark Valentine SullivanAssociate Professor
Music / Innovation Hub
[MUSIC]
Welcome back, we'll get to the business of working a scene, and
you'll find out exactly what that means and hopefully have some fun with it and
make it part of your every day life.
So let's get going.
What does this thing mean, working a scene?
Is it something theatrical, are you going to be in a movie?
What's this all about?
Well, working a scene is a concept that's very familiar to photographers who've been
at it for awhile, but it's something that can only begin
once you find a scene to work.
What working a scene is, is basically every day engaging in the act of
creative problem solving, because you are interested in the act of creative problem
solving, and you are also interested in learning more about your camera.
And making the use of that of that camera something that's very fluid and
natural for you.
Of course, it helps to have a camera with you everyday.
And, of course, if you've got a cell phone,
a smart phone, and maybe that's your primary camera, you're good to go.
If not, one of these little devices thrown in your bag,
over your shoulder, around your neck, carry it with you everywhere you go.
You'll be ready for action.
I'm going to start off with as short and
simple example of what this working a scene thing means.
I came upon this scene when I was waiting for my nephew,
who was working in a surf board shop down in Florida, here in the United States.
And the first thing that attracted me was the color.
I saw this yellow in the surfboard,
little bit of yellow in the scene in behind it in the poster, and
without thinking too much about the rest of what was there, I just naturally raised
my camera to my eye and [SOUND] like this, made a vertical composition.
That was my first picture.
Having the benefit of growing up in the world of film photography
one of the things I try to resist when I'm consciously engaging in this act of
working a scene is taking the picture, and then instantly doing this.
Looking down, hitting the rewind knob, the review button, the preview button,
whatever you want to call it, and examining the first picture that I shot.
If you have to, just cover the screen with your hand, don't look at it or
put a piece of tape over it or maybe take a piece of cardboard or something and and
fix it on there, but if you're going to be working a scene,
try not to constantly look at the pictures that you're making and
just get into this fluid action of making a photograph.
Whatever works best for you, do it.
In my second picture, I switched to a horizontal framing.
And I found myself motivated to work with that yellow content a little bit more.
I don't think it's a very satisfactory picture, not a really good composition.
There's a lot of interesting elements on the left-hand side, but not so
much on the right.
It feels like it's very heavily weighted on the left.
And I really don't like it very much.
But it was a way to work into the idea of what might be there.
This is sort of like a sculptor being presented with a block of marble and
just chipping away until all the sudden the sculpture that was hidden inside is
just there.
In my next picture, I tried to shift my vantage point and
moved around a little bit.
And I found myself on the left-hand side and lo and behold,
there was a really weird, strange little logo on the left side of the board.
I noticed that, and I said, boy, that's kind of interesting, and
it has the same kind of shape, and line, and energy
as the boy that's on the surfboard that I didn't even notice in the first picture.
Behind the head on the poster in the background.
I also found when I was from this vantage point, moving over to the left,
all of a sudden now, the sun and my shadow were playing around together and
creating this shadow figure on the board.
And I thought, wow here's some symbols for people,
here's me as a symbol in my shadow and maybe I can work with this.
I was a little bit satisfied with that previous picture, but
there was something about it I didn't like, and if you look at this photograph,
you see the little black mark in the center?
Well in the previous shot my shadow was overlapping that, and
it just bothered the heck out of me, so I moved a little bit to the side,
just a little bit more to the left.
And then the nature of my shadow,
those lines that I was creating, the lines that were on the board,
the images of the people that were in the poster in the background,
the image of the people in me, those all were kind of working together.
Another thing happened,
the yellow on the left hand-side is really a prominent color now.
And its inter-playing with the yellow that's in the poster board, especially
on the forehead of the man, who appears to be peeking over the the surfboard.
And there's something called an implied line,
an invisible connection between the lower left and the upper right now.
That yellow color, the patterns in the lower left,
the patterns in the upper right, they're all working together pretty well.
And I'm pretty satisfied with the picture.
So I've worked the scene.
Okay, working a scene is practice.
It's practice for your eye, it's practice for your technique with the camera,
it's practice for you understanding the different capabilities of the camera.
Does the photograph I just made there at the serve shot fit into
a meaningful long term series that I've created and
I'm going to show on an exhibit in a gallery or in a museum, or
maybe sell to some collectors or institutions for their archives?
Probably not, although maybe I should put some of them together, we’ll see,
but right now it’s really more a motivation for
me to go out and do something creative and test myself.
It does fit the practice that many of us photographers have of everyday
practicing just like if you are a music student, if you play the piano, or you
play the drums or some other instrument, you're going to practice everyday, right?
And photographers should too.
We should fine tune our skills in exposure, framing,
focus controls, all those various and things that makes us photographers.
Let's take a look at one more.
This is a little bit longer series of working a scene.
But I think you'll see where I ended up and where I started and
maybe how you might find something in your neighborhood that will work for you too.
This series started out as I was walking back to my car after visiting a friend who
lives on a nearby lake.
I saw the sunlight creating the most beautiful colors.
Really nice beautiful warm colors in this tree and the sky above was a beautiful
cool blue, so now you know about what motivates me.
Just as in the surf shop picture and
in this picture the first thing that usually attracts me is color.
What's the first thing that attracts you?
Is it color?
Is it pattern?
Is it people?
Dogs? Who knows?
But think about that.
What is it that attracts you, that gets you started, saying,
gee I gotta pick my camera up?
What's going on here?
So I made that first shot, and then I said, let me get a little closer here.
Let me move in and walk up to this tree.
I just wanted to get near it anyway, it was just so beautiful.
And I found that there was a potential for a balance between abstraction and
reality, when I raised my camera and
looked at a different vantage point to frame something else in.
And just looking at the top of the tree and seeing that
color now isolated from everything else, except for that blue background.
I thought it was kind of an interesting picture,
but it wasn't quite what I wanted.
So, I said,
let me see what I can do about maybe changing things up a little bit here.
Push that abstraction element.
So, I skewed my vantage point.
In other words,
instead of holding the camera straight up, I'm tilting it a little bit like this.
Maybe, getting down and moving around and seeing what's happening in my frame.
In the next few pictures, I turn my attention to the lake itself.
Just to my left hand side actually.
And I was really close by the lake, I was looking up at the tree and
I looked down to the left and I noticed a pattern of branches that was very similar
to the patterns that I was working with in the sense that they were abstract,
that they were linear, that they were warm colored.
And so I played with that for a few photographs.
Let's take a look at those.
Maybe you noticed in those couple of
photographs that I was working with
the branches of foliage emerging from
the tree, from the lake excuse me.
There was this little white fragment at the bottom of the frame
that kept intruding itself in there and
it was the bottom of the boat you see in this picture.
And I figured, well, if the boat wants to be in the picture, I'll let it and so
I stepped back a little bit.
You can see the foliage there behind the boat, that I was working with originally.
And low and behold, there wasn't just a boat there, but
there was something that honestly I had not even noticed.
Don't ask me how.
I guess I was so interested in the tree, but
I hadn't even noticed this steel image of a bird.
Sitting right there by the boat, wow.
So I started to work with that.
And in working with this bird, I said, I don't need the boat.
Let's go with something else here, and tried to place that bird element
in different positions, and see what kind of meaning I could have arise from that.
Using different vantage points.
Soon I got back to the element that interrupted my work in the first place,
and that was the golden glow of that light itself.
Now, I'm looking actually just 180 degrees
opposite from the direction I was looking at the tree.
Remember, the tree was illuminated by that beautiful sunset light.
And now I'm looking back towards the sunset itself.
And bingo, there's the bird, there's the sunset, there's the lake,
there is a little fragment of a boat,
this is standing to fall into place in a different way here.
So I started to move in closer to that bird, and closer and closer,
and finding a few different angles, changing that exposure just slightly.
And looking at how the light was now interacting with this fragment of the bird
in this, I imagine it's a steel image, little sculpture of the bird.
And as I turned my camera I found the sunlight glinting off the bird
in a number of different ways.
Finally I swung my camera around almost completely so
that the sun itself is just behind that bird fragment,
and it made quite a dramatic silhouette of the figure.
But I ended up going back to an original scene where I was actually more
having the, I was looking, perhaps I would okay, say this is more Southwest.
And so the sun is glinting off the bird, I'm not looking directly into the sun, but
I think this composition combination of light is really what I was interested in.
And what I ended up with and what I never expected when I started working the scene,
just looking at that tree so, where should this lead you?
Well, one of the things that I hear quite often from my students is, my gosh,
Professor Glendenny, I'm going away this weekend.
I'm so happy, I'm going to get off campus.
I'll finally have something and someplace that's interesting to photograph.
And, well, I challenge them into go back into their own backyard,
whether it's in the dormitory or the house they might live in off campus, and
see that all around them in their own backyard,
just like in your own backyard, there are absolutely amazing things to photograph.
Ways to test your eye, to test your sense of composition,
test your camera abilities to make pictures that are really interesting and
that might actually get you started on a new project.
So get in your own backyard, work a scene, and work your own creativity.
[MUSIC]
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