20 Mar Creative

Creative Project: A Photographic Composition Deadline: Consult the Calendar page in your course Syllabus for the submission deadline. Submit your completed project in Canvas by uploading it on the Creative Project Submission page. Your assignment for the Creative Project is to produce a photographic composition. A photographic composition is a collection of photographic images that communicate some concept, theme, or narrative. You have two primary options for the type of composition you choose for your project. The first option is to construct a photographic essay, which is a composition on a single subject or theme. The nature or conceptual basis of the composition can be interpretive, meditative, or analytic. The second option is to construct a photographic narrative. A photographic narrative is a set of photographic images that communicate a sequence with a defined beginning and end: an act, an occurrence, a story, a set of events, or a process of some kind. The key in a photographic narrative is to capture a sequence of moments that contains some kind of change or transformation in the subject being depicted. Whether you choose to do a photographic essay or a photographic narrative, you must have an underlying, abstract concept that gives structure to the essay or meaning to the narrative. Technical Requirements · Your photographic composition will consist of no less than 8 images and no more than 10 images. Note that a prudent production strategy would be to create at least twice as many images as you need for the final product, giving yourself the opportunity to choose those images that are most effective in satisfying your goal. (It’s seldom the case that every shot turns out the way you wanted it.) In other words, leave yourself room to choose, cull, and edit. · Before the collection of images, you need some kind of title page or slide or panel (depending on the kind of program/file format that you use). The only information needed here is a title for the composition (which should appear first and most prominently) and then your name. Also, at the end of the composition, you will include a “self-critique” (about which I will say more in a moment). · All images for your photographic composition must be produced specifically for this project. In other words, you are not to use existing images found elsewhere or produced by you at some other time for some other purpose. If you’re uncertain of your photographic skills and/or your ability to create images of an adequate quality for your purpose, you may get help from someone who has more experience with photography. However, all images must be produced at your direction and to your own design. In other words, even if you aren’t the person pressing the shutter button on the camera, you must be directly in control of the creation of the images. The end product – the underlying idea, the design and selection of the images, the arrangement and presentation – must be your own. · The photographic images can be produced with a conventional camera (film or instant), with a digital camera, or with still images extracted from a video camera (if you know how to do that sort of thing successfully and if you can extract images at a high enough resolution to make a clear image). Ultimately, your images will need to be in electronic form, so that you can submit them to me in an electronic file inside Canvas. If you’re using a digital camera, your images will already be in electronic form. If you’re using a conventional camera to create the images, converting them to electronic form can be achieved through the use of a scanner. · Although your underlying concept and its effective communication is a key criterion for your project, you should also pay attention to the aesthetic quality of the images and their presentation. There are two reasons for this. First, this is a creative project, one designed to familiarize you with the demands and challenges of the creative process. Second, your attention to the aesthetic quality and execution of the images provides a measure of the effort and care that you invested in the project. · The end product that you submit must have a unified form of presentation: that is, don’t simply send me a jumble of photographic images and say, “Here’s my project.” Your images must be organized in some way, collected or integrated into a single electronic document that presents your images in their proper sequence. My preference for the file format is PowerPoint. MS Word or PDF are also possible if you aren’t familiar with PowerPoint. If you’re unable – or if you’re unsure if you would be able – to create the file in one of these formats, you MUST contact me so we can jointly find a file format you can use and that I will be able to open on my office computer. If you submit your work in a file format that I’m unable to open or read on my office computer, I will simply give you a 0 for the assignment – no discussion. · You are not allowed to use text captions for the images to communicate the meaning of the composition; your images must speak for themselves. The content will need to be something that you can use to communicate a concept purely through images. I will give a fair amount of latitude in the content choice, with the following exceptions: 1) the subject matter cannot be “about” you, a friend, a family member or other close relative; 2) the subject matter cannot be a pet (yours or anyone else’s); 3) the subject matter MUST NOT be profane, obscene, pornographic, abusive or insulting. This includes nudity or any form of sexual content . . . think in terms of a G or a PG rating. Violating these content restrictions will result in 0 points for the project. (If you have any doubts whether your subject matter might be in violation of these restrictions, consult with me about it.) · In addition to the photographic composition itself, you must include a self-critique as the last slide or page of your project. This critique must be between 300 and 350 words. The purpose of your self-critique is to discuss your decision-making process and/or problemsolving process while planning and creating the photographic composition, as well as to discuss strengths and weaknesses or areas that could be improved. · The kinds of questions you should attempt to answer in your self-critique include: o Why did you think this subject would make a good choice for an essay or narrative communicated through photographic images? o How much planning went into the sequence of images? How many of the images that you used in the final product resulted directly from your plan? How many resulted from unforeseen developments or discoveries that occurred while producing the images? o What obstacles did you encounter? How did you go about resolving the problem? o What criteria entered into your choices of which images to use for your final product? o If there was an aesthetic or communicative intent that factored into the arrangement of the images or your choice of presentation format, what was it? o What do you consider to be the strongest aspect of your project? The weakest aspect? How might the weaker elements have been improved? o There are other topics or issues that could potentially be included in your critique, and you’re welcome to address any that occur to you as being useful or pertinent to your own particular project (as long as you don’t ignore the ones I’ve listed above). However, keep in mind that the critique must not be used to “explain” the images. If the images can’t communicate their own meaning or purpose, then something isn’t working right. The critique is strictly for examining your own execution of the project and the creative and decision-making process in which you engaged while producing your photographic composition. · Your self-critique should be organized in paragraph form, with standard grammatical usage, proper spelling, etc. In the upper-left corner, you should include a two-line header with your name on the first line and the title of your photographic composition on the second line. The critique should appear at the end of the photographic composition (the last slide or page). Point Distribution For scoring purposes, the various components of the project are weighted according to the following distribution:  Adherence to requirements and directions: 15%  Quality (clarity, interest and originality) of underlying concept: 15%  Execution of composition clearly communicates concept: 30%  Attention to aesthetic quality of project execution: 15%  Self-critique is insightful and pertinent: 25% Other Things to Consider On content or subject matter: A narrative, story, or process can potentially be composed or recorded with a variety of different subject matters. Events or processes with a beginning, middle, and end, or with some transformative sequence, can be found in the natural world as well as the human world. For essay compositions, patterns or repetitions of form, content, or meaning can be used to communicate a thematic concept. On narrative: If developing a narrative, keep in mind that a narrative, at its beginning, needs to supply the reader or viewer with certain information: a setting or context for the narrative, and a subject (whether human or non-human) about which the activity or events of the narrative transpire. The introductory stage of a narrative might take anywhere from one to three images – how many is one of the decisions you would need to made. Some elements of setting or context can, in certain situations, be left implicit (that is, left for viewers to presume for themselves based upon the information that’s present) rather than being explicit (openly and obviously included); this is another creative decision. The majority of the images, of course, need to develop the narrative sequence itself. Then, one or more images at the end of the sequence need to provide some sense of conclusion. On composition of images: With photographic images, information can be communicated in ways that go beyond the basic content. As with any other form of image (like a painting or drawing), the manner of composition can communicate information. For instance, the way in which you use light and shadow can convey information. The choice between color images or black-and-white images can convey information. Images that are full of hard or jagged shapes or forms convey a different feeling than those with softer or more rounded shapes and forms. Harsh or vivid colors communicate a different feeling than images that use soothing colors or pastel shades. The way in which images are framed – for instance, what is included in the image, what is excluded, where the primary focal point of the image is positioned in the frame, whether some things in the image are only partially visible (and, if so, which things those are) – will communicate information to your viewer. Remember also that framing decisions can be made both at the time the photographic image is created and also at the time that the images are being selected and arranged (or “edited”), since the images can be physically cropped or manipulated before placing them into their format for presentation.