This was the last week of classes, and therefore the last photo project for my students this year. Here are a few samples of what they just completed.
Seaside landscapes by Alex H:
Exotic Cars by Taylor:
Eye switch by Laura:
Lego story by Alex M:
Eye recoloring by Brittany:
Students continued with another self defined project this week. Here are a few that stood out.
Animals on campus by Zander
Bus reflection by Leah
Colorized infrared photo by Nick
Lego portrait by Jessica
Tilt shift effect by Macklan
Sky-scape by Kyle
Light painting by Sarah & Brittany
Light painting by Sarah & Brittany
Students are currently working on self-defined, week-long projects. As you can imagine, there is quite a bit of variety. Here are a few examples of what they are doing.
Light Painting by Kylee:
Intentional Bokeh by Janet:
Reflection by Jessica:
Photo Collage by Taylor:
Infrared Photo by Kyle:
Conceptual Photos by Lexi:
Food Photos by Annelise:
Collage by Elaine:
Photo Collage by Leah:
This week, students worked with Photoshop on several specialized types of photography.
1. HDR (High Dynamic Range), where multiple photos with different levels of exposure are combined together to provide color and detail in both the darkest and lightest areas of the photo. Here’s an example of HDR by Sarah B. Notice how the bright sky and darkest shadows have vibrant color.
2. Panoramics, where several photos are stitched together to provide a much wider or taller image than normal. Here’s an interesting example combining 5 photos by Laura M.
3. Collage, where many photos are stacked or overlayed on top of each other to produce the resulting photo. Like this example from Lilja G.
4. Planetoid, here a landscape image is distorted in a special way to produce a small world, or planetoid like the one here from Nick G.
We even had some interesting collages like this one by Alex M.
A few photos from our Spring Exhibit. Kelly with her hand-made camera. Kyle and his mom check out photos on display.
Students are continuing with their mobile photography project this week. In addition, each student is preparing 6 themed photos for our Spring Exhibit. They are selecting their photos, adjusting each image in Photoshop (Exposure, Contrast and Sharpness) and making final prints which are matted for the exhibit.
Menlo School: Spring Photo Exhibit
Thursday, 6-9pm in the Creative Arts Center
On Display Until May 2nd
This event is also a reception and a sale. All the prints are for sale. Most prints are $20 each. Proceeds go to the Photo Department toward the purchase of additional equipment and supplies.
Here are some examples of what’s on the display.
Kyle Perez
Hannah Rubin
Maddy Frappier
Janet Chavez
Alex Herrmann
Rebecca Larson
Austin Marcus
Students also worked on two DSLR camera exercises this week:
We started our Mobile Photography module this week. Most students have iPhones and already know how to use them. However, we are stressing some new ideas with this project:
Here’s a list of essential iPhone apps to try out:
Here’s a few examples of student work from this week:
Ali:
Leah:
Jake:
Sharon:
Andrew:
The 2013 edition of Menlo’s annual Viewfinder book is now available for online viewing and personal orders from Blurb.com. The book features a two page spread for each photography student’s work.
The cover image is by Janet Chavez.
This week, students have been learning about land art through artists like Andy Goldsworthy and Walter Mason. They have made their own constructions using found natural materials, and have photographed them. Here are a few samples of their results:
Janet & Lexi:
Sharon:
Lilja:
Austin:
Hannah:
Land Art
My students have been learning about land art and working in the style of Andy Goldsworthy. As you can see here, they’re really getting into working with natural materials.
We’ve been exploring the idea of abstraction in photography last week. So we looked at abstract paintings by Rothko, Pollack and others to better understand the idea of non-representative art. Students were encouraged to think about the 2D plane and to use color, geometry, pattern, shape and light to “paint a photograph” without an obvious subject.
Many said it photographing in this manner was an enjoyable and freeing experience, because they could just look and shoot instead of interpreting or judging the subject or the photo.
We also practiced 2 simple ideas while editing with Photoshop:
1. Identify portions of the photo which you like, or are strong, interesting or important. Enhance those areas to emphasize them.
2. Identify portions of the photo which you don’t like, are weak, uninteresting or unimportant. Delete, diminish or de-emphasize them through the editing process.
Here are some examples of student work from A Block:
Nick G:
Priya M:
Leah S:
Elaine S:
Jennifer S:
This week, students were asked to shoot an action sequence and blend the images with Photoshop to create a composite of the motion. This gave them practice using a tripod, shooting rapid motion, and assembling the image with Photoshop layers. Many of them had the best success with static subjects. Here are some examples of what they produced this week:
Kylee: 
Rebecca:
Lexi:
Jasmin:
This week students have been practicing with Photoshop by creating surrealistic collages. For inspiration, we looked at the work of Man Ray, Magritte, Salvador Dali, as well as some contemporary artists like Cristian Girotto, Ulric Collette and Giuseppe Mastromatteo.
Here are some examples of the work they produced this week:
Lexi:
Nick:
We’re back in session after a few weeks off. This week, we’re learning much more about the basics of Photoshop editing. These fundamentals include:
We’ll practice with some very simple drawings first, and then working with layers to cut and paste between several images to make a digital collage. Lastly we’ll be learning how to modify and hide portions of an image through Modification and masking.
Students used Photoshop layers to make digital sandwiches and to replace faces in photos like the examples below:
