Final: Creating A Photo Series Essay

Hello Students,

Creating a photo series/essay is an exercise that can happen spontaneously or deliberately. It is a process that can take days, weeks, years. Your newest assignment is to create a photo series as a final project and present it in photo essay format to the class during finals week.

What is a Photo Essay?

The goal with a photo essay is to use a series of images to invoke an emotional response in the viewer. This is achieved through using photography to tell a story and present them with captions or full written text, such as an article that may appear in a website or print publication. Images can be presented sequentially or non-sequentially, the goal is to connect your images with a story and draw out an emotion from the viewer... such as anger, joy, fear, empathy, etc. For your final project you will create a photo essay about a social cause or issue of your choice, with a script to be read during presentation (although format for presentation is open to interpretation). The number of social issues that could be covered are numerous, find one that resonates with you to create a deeper connection with the story.

What is a Photo Series?

Most photo series will have a continual theme that is pre-defined and all images in the series will revolve around that theme. Some series are created deliberately, some are collections of works that take years or decades to develop and are pulled from a photographers body of work as a definitive series collection. Check out the examples and links below:

Example: Photo Series from a body of work:

Take for instance Philip Halsman, famous portrait photographer who shot everyone from Albert Einstein to Marilyn Monroe. After a photo session with the Ford family he asked one subject to jump for his camera, soon he began to ask other subjects to jump for his camera at the end of their photo sessions, and so began the creation of an important photo series of celebrities jumping. Halsman released a book entitled "Jump" in 1959. Halsman believed that even the most stoic photo subject might be able to hide behind a stern facade, but that their true face is revealed when they are jumping.

Then Future president Richard M. Nixon. (Copyright Philippe Halsman Estate)

Example: Photo Series as Visual Cultural Anthropology:

As another example of a photo series consider the work of Photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek. They have been working to document the distinct styles in their hometown of Rotterdamn and elsewhere. Often shooting subjects they find on the streets, this pair find individuals that follow a distinct dress/lifestyle and shoot them in consistent poses and arrangements in order to show the similarities among these unique individuals. They call their body of work "exactitudes", a mix of exact and attitude. Their work is so exacting it is essentially a display of visual cultural anthropology, a documentation of the styles that are heralded as unique, but how unique are we really? Their work brings into question the very idea of that value that we hold so high... individuality.

French Touch - Bordeaux 2006
By Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek

Miss Shapes - London 2008

By Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek

Other Photo Series to Explore for Inspiration:

Gallery- Children of Russian Oligarchs

Gallery- Where children sleep

Gallery- People with Passions

Gallery - Halsman's "Jumpology"

Gallery - Sophie Gamand's Wet Dog Series

Photo Series Assignment:

• Create a photo series that follows a theme
• Shoot as many examples that you can as long as they fit into the theme, there is no maximum limit
• Create enough images to have a strong series, 3 or 4 examples will not suffice, the final result should be impressive and follow a central or underlying theme. Strive for 10 strong examples of your theme
• Images must be properly exposed, composed and show creativity
• Post processing is allowed, however most of the work done to the image should be done before the shutter is clicked...dial in your exposures first, post process to enhance, not fix errors in exposure
• Series concept must be approved before work begins
• Create a powerpoint or keynote presentation for your project to display your images during presentation to the class. During the presentation be prepared to discuss your work, concept and how you achieved your results. Be prepared to discuss the themes involved in your work and how you translated your concept into imagery, what is the deeper meaning behind your work if there is one? Is your work a commentary or observation, what does it mean to you?

"Meme yourself" Photo series by Seth Wilson 2013

All work is due June 8th,

Have fun! - Mr.W

Double and Multiple Exposure Photography

Hello Students,
For this project you will be exercising two artistic photography techniques, double exposure and multiple exposures.

Multiple Wilson's, 5 photos merged into a single image with photoshop.

Assignment Deliverables:

• Create 1 double exposure image or portrait, must utilize juxtaposition as the driving concept in the choice of images you are combining
• Create 1 multiple exposure image or portrait. Must contain at least 4 exposures/images combined into 1
• Create 1 artistic double exposure (blending of images) using white/clean backdrops, paper filters, experimentation, research and creativity, also Photoshop. You must research and experiment with this process to achieve an artistic result

What is Double Exposure?

Double exposure with a traditional film camera involved exposing 2 different images to 1 piece of film. The effect creates an overlay of 2 images into 1, the areas of dark and light combine. With digital camera's we can take 2 different photos and combine them into 1 by using Photoshop's layers. See examples below:

Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, double exposure made using a film camera, 1980 by Claude Truong-Ngoc / Wikimedia Commons 

Double exposure made using a film camera

What is Multiple Exposure?

Multiple exposure is when a camera is timed to take an exposure at different intervals of time, creating a series of images into 1 image. With a digital camera we can take multiple images and combine them with photoshops layers and some clever use of the Eraser Tool. See examples below:

A multiple exposure image created with photoshop

A multiple exposure composite image of a lunar eclipse taken over Hayward, California in 2004.

What is an Artistic Double Exposure?

When you pay attention to the light and dark areas you can have some amazing results with double exposure. Photoshop lets us combine and erase and change the way our layers blend together. Try to achieve an artistic effect seen below. Can you figure out how the images below were created? The examples below were made by the artist Dan Mountford. Clean backdrops to the individual elements  is important, the architecture needs clean skies behind them and the portrait does as well, plus the "blends" are created with filters/paper close to the lens to block out part of the exposure in the example below. Others are created differently, see if you can reverse engineer the methods used and try to replicate them yourself.

Link: Gallery of Artistic Double Exposures
Tutorial: Artistic Double Exposures in PS
Tutorial: Aneta Ivanova Double Exposure Method in PS

Photo Credit:Dan Mountford

Photo Credit:Dan Mountford

Student Work Samples: Double and Multiple Exposures

New Assignment : "Andy Warhol-ize" A Portrait

Andy Warhol was a painter, printer and filmaker and one of the originators of the pop-art movement. His images were often of mundane subjects such as a campbells soup can, and had deep levels of contrast.

Your next assignment is to process one of your photographs into the Andy Warhol signature style. Follow my tutorial below. Use a portrait you shot in one of our previous assignment for this project. Make sure you have similar levels of color/detail/variation as the examples on this page.

After you complete the tutorial post your results to your blog...

The Andy Warhol Process in Photoshop CS5:

Open up one of your favorite pictures that you have taken during this class in Photoshop.

Create a copy of the background layer

Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation

Pull down the Saturation slider until your  image is black and white

Next, go to Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast

And adjust the brightness and contrast until your image looks "high contrast"

Then go to Image  > Threshold

And adjust the Threshold slider until your image looks satisfactory

Next, create a new blank layer

And grab the Polygonal Lasso Tool, and draw an outline around the elements in your image

Next pick a color from your swatch palette or color picker and fill the selection with your color (Option-Delete, or go to Edit > Fill)

Now change the Blend Mode of your color layer to Darken, this is located on your Layer Palette

And now your image will show through the color

Continue this process until all of your image is filled with color, create a new layer for each color, this is important as you will go back and edit each layer later on.

For an added effect, airbrush the edges of your image with a large brush and black fill color

Then change the Blend Mode to Dissolve

Next, Shift-Select all your layers and go to Layer Palette Sub Menu > Create New Group From Layers. Now you can create copies of those layers and edit the colors of each group like I have below...

Have fun!

- Mr.W