Assignment Overview

The goal of the photography assignment is to hone your photography skills and build a community of people on Instagram who are interested in similar subjects as you are.

While Instagram is often used for selfies and celebs sharing pic of their cats, like the 10th most liked Instagram photo of 2015

it is also used for more serious endeavors. For example, Matt Black, winner of Time Magazine‘s 2014 Instagram Photographer of the year award, used Instagram to photograph the geography of poverty:

Further, in September 2015, Getty Images awarded three Instagram photographers $10,000 each for the work they are doing to record the results of various tragedies. The photographers, Ismail Ferdous, Adriana Zehbrauskas, and Dmitry Markov create stunning portraits of life and place and humanity. And news organizations, like @NPR, are using Instagram to create short photo stories that lead viewers to the larger story on their web site. Particularly wonderful are the 15 second stories by @nprmusic (which I would totally show if I could get the embeds to work….).

So, like all media, Instagram has been used by people for a variety of purposes. In #digs16, we’re going to try to use it for more profession and educational purposes (with the occasional cat or #vinyl photo in there for the fun of it, of course).

Assignment Specifics

To get started:

1. If you do not yet have one, create an Instagram account and install the app on your phone.
2. Follow everyone in the class on Instagram:
   1. usernames to be added
3. Link your Instagram to your Twitter stream

Using the required text, The Visual Toolbox: 60 Lessons for Stronger Photographs, I would like you to choose 20 – 30 lessons and post to Instagram (or Twitter if the image is better not square) the results of your work.

For each photograph, include the following:

• the #digs16 hashtag
• a photo title followed by what number the photo is of the total you’ve taken for this assignment, for example: “The Tree” (photo number 5)
• a description of the lesson (or the lesson chapter title)
• a description of what you were trying to capture with the photograph
• what you thought worked and what you might improve upon

Do not wait to do all these at the end of the semester when the weather is nice. You will be required to incorporate some of the images into your Story of Learning.

When you start to get into your investigation, I’d like all the photos to be connected to that work, but for the first few weeks of the semester, you can choose your subjects.

Due Dates

Please begin your work starting week 3 and finish by the end of week 12, which gives 10 weeks to complete the assignment. Create a schedule for yourself of 2 – 3 images per week so you are not doing them all at the end.