about the photography techniques assignment

The Photography Techniques Assignment has five primary goals:

1. to help students learn to learn about and implement various photography composition techniques
2. to help students be more intentional in their photography
3. to help students learn to have their photographs tell stories
4. to help students learn how to write about the photography composition decisions
5. to reflect on the work they have created

The assignment is informed by four Course Learning Objectives:

Objective 1: Effective Communication
Students will begin to understand the foundational and contemporary principles, practices, and ethics of effective media communication, in particular in terms of how it applies to writing, typeface, photography, and social media.

Objective 3. Inclusive Use of Communication Technologies
Students will begin to develop and enhance their use of various communication technologies for the purpose of creating intentional, precise, and inclusive media objects with specific rhetorical and aesthetic goals.

Objective 4: Inquiry and Reflection
Students will begin to develop their understanding of the important roles of inquiry and reflection during the reading, creation, and communication process.

Objective 5: Experimentation
Students will begin to develop their ability to step out of their comfort zones and take risks with their approaches to and understanding of communication, design, and storytelling practices and techniques.

photography techniques assignment specifics

“If you want your images to mean more to you, to be more compelling to those who experience them, then it’s deep, more intentional photographs for which you hunger.” 
— David duChemin (2017)

“I ask, ‘Does [the photograph] have soul?’ Is it alive? Do I see something of the artist within? Does it move me? Does it make me think? Does it challenge me? Does it enrich my human experience?”
— David duChemin (2017)

This assignment is going to ask you to create intentional photographs by deliberately composing your images according to various composition techniques and by finding subjects that lead us toward what David duChemin would call creating photographs with soul.

Specifically, each student will be submitting 4 Technical Photographs and 3 Soulful photographs. This does not mean you will only be making 7 photographs overall. You will need to create many dozens of images in order to get to the point where you can be happy submitting your final curated 7 images.

As part of the assignment, each student will meet with Bill individually via Zoom to discuss their possible photographs. Each student will bring 20 photographs to that meeting. Bill will be brutally honest about what he thinks to help you curate your images down to the final 7.

The subjects of the images must be made for this project and can be most anything you would like, with the exceptions that:

• they cannot be snapshots of friends
• they cannot be banal
• they cannot be items in your apartment or living space (you need to get outside)
• they cannot be selfies

I recommend varying your subjects so you can get the most diverse portfolio of images you can get.

The Technical Images

For the 4 technical images, each student will look to the composition post we read and create:

• 1 image that showcases Rule of Thirds
• 1 image that showcases Depth of Field (what the post calls Foreground Interest and Depth)
• 2 additional images that showcase 2 different composition techniques

In total, 4 composition techniques will be represented. Those these are so-called technical images, they should also be aesthetically pleasing and represent you in some way.

The Soulful Images

For the soulful images, each student will look to the duChemin reading and create 3 images that represent 3 of duChemin’s various photographic words of wisdom. The passages from duChemin you choose to interpret through your own photographs can be ones you selected for class on Monday, Sept 26, or different ones.

Each image must also adhere to one of the composition techniques. In other words, these 3 images will blend duChemin’s storytelling approach with photographic composition.

In addition to the two quotes at the top of this section, here are some examples that stand out to me (with links to some of my photos that I feel exemplify them):

• “The answer is more humanity. More soul.” (p. vii)
• “[T]he best advice I’ve ever heard: ‘Don’t struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.” (p. 95)
• “Curiosity is the insatiable desire to peer into that unknown and discover what lies there, to see what new possibilities exist.” (p. 107)
• “What would happen if I changed my point of view?” (p. 108)

You are free to use these passages or select from some of the many that stand out to you.

Final Submission Details

Your 7 final photographs will be submitted to your WordPress site in the form of a new PAGE (not Post, Page). It is being submitted as a PAGE because I want to you conceive of this page the start of your online portfolio. As a result, you will be presenting the work, not reflecting on it (you’ll do that in Blog Post 2).

For each of your 7 images, you must have:

• a title (that comes in the form of a subheading)
• a brief description of the goals of the image that contains the Composition Technique and/or the duChemin quote (no more than 1 -2 short sentences per image)

Your page should be sure to contain contain the following content:

• a meaningful title that does not in any way reference an assignment (Photographs is fine)
• clear and concise lead (that is, first sentence or two or quote) with larger font than the rest of the body text or bolded font that describes what a reader can expect to see on the page
• appropriate placement of headings and subheadings
• appropriate use of links (such as to the Composition Techniques blog post we read or even David duChemin’s website if you feel in necessary)
• the appropriate header and body typefaces
• ALT and other accessibility features for your photographs

After posting your new page, you should:

• set the new page as your default front page
• add the page your menu

Please follow the steps described in this short video:

Due Dates

• 10/3, 10/4 or 10/5: 20 images ready to be shown to Bill during your Zoom conference with Bill
• 10/7: 7 final curated images due by the start of class
• 10/7 10/10: Blog Post 2 in which you reflect on your photograph selections due by noon