Final Project : Choose Your Own Photo Adventure

Hello Students,

Your final project is to choose from one of the assignments or propose your own final project (with my approval). If your interested in developing a skill further with a specific process, technique or medium consider a project that will challenge your skills to grow. Consider the work results that will be the most attractive to your potential employers or college admission reviewer. Many photo, film and communication programs in higher education require portfolios/demo reels for student applications.

Consider the projects below and take action to complete the work. All metrics in the course rubric will be applied to the work upon review.

Option 1 - Invisible Camera Self Portrait:

How was the image above created? Challenge yourself to recreate these results by reverse engineering the image composition. Look at examples, read the authors article on his process and try it yourself. Experimentation, photoshop skills and exposure and camera control are required to complete this project successfully.

Option 2 - Create a Comic Book with Photography and Photoshop:

This is your chance to become the next Stan Lee... use your own creativity (or someone else's and steal a character or story idea, I don't care... I am the American Audience) and your skills with photography, photoshop, storytelling and composition to create a 3 page comic book. Save the universe with digital photography!

Option 3 - Photography in History, Research and Present:

Are you tired of shooting? Right index finger worn smooth from pressing the shutter so often? Take to the interwebs to research and present a history of photography or discuss a key component, individual or technology related to photography and it's development. See details and ask your instructor for examples.

Option 4 - Revisit a previous project, redo, remake, retry for better results:

Did you struggle through a previous project? Feel like you could do better now with your improved skills? Tackle a previous project with renewed energy to achieve better results. Project must be approved by me and the results should show new original work, not refine/rehashed previous efforts.

Have fun! All projects are due by end of 11th.

- Mr.W

Portfolio Development

Hello Students,

Having a polished and professional looking portfolio is key to your success in finding work after High School and moving on to developing a career. Download the ROP Portfolio Handbook to use as a guide for creating your own portfolio, a requirement in all ROP classes.

Portfolio's are due by beginning of May and must be ready for presentation, evaluation and critique (make it perfect!) but that is no reason to slack on this project. You should put great time and care into creating the professional side of your portfolio and then you will be ready to add your creative projects as the semester progresses. You will complete a digital version as a PDF file for evaluation. Class winner will be able to print and prepare their portfolio for inclusion in the Portfolio Showcase competition. Everyone can print a copy to keep and report covers will be provided if possible.

Remember that the best portfolio in class will be sent to the portfolio design competition that ROP has at the end of each school year, your portfolio will compete against other graphic design classes across the county, and there are prizes!

A judge evaluates print portfolio's from past entrants...

Portfolio Cover Design Assignment:

• Design an eye catching cover design for you your portfolio
• Include your name, the title of this class, the school you are currently attending and the year
• Design your cover for standard letter size 8.5X11 inch paper
• When you are done post your portfolio cover design to your blog
• Rough copy of portfolio due on Tuesday!

Portfolio Development Long Term Assignment:

• Your portfolio must be created in Indesign and the final file must be a multi-page PDF document
• Use the Pages palette to create multiple pages for your portfolio with Indesign
• Your portfolio cover, table of contents and all materials should look clean and consistent. Use consistent design style across all aspects of your portfolio, this includes color, typography, layout and style

Your Portfolio must contain in this order: See portfolio handbook for more details...

1. Cover page with your name, class title, year. Spend some time on this, it should show good design skill and be reflective of your personality
2. Table of contents
3. Letter of Introduction
4. Resume
5. Handwritten Job Application 
6. List of References
7. Letter of Recommendation -  cannot be from your ROP teacher or a family member
8. 3 or more work samples with written explanation about the work, why is it important to your career choice? What did the project entail, what were the challenges and difficulties? Give us details.

How Your Portfolio Is Evaluated:

• Contains required content and format
• Well organized
• Free of grammer problems
• ROP related work samples
• Shows creativity
• Nice appearance
• Shows skill development
• Appropriate for use in job search
• Professional appearance
• Nice presentation
• Shows good design and wise choice of color palettes
• Shows consistency across all pages
• Reflects your style, personality and interests

A print portfolio can take many forms, it can be professionally bound, stitched by hand or bound with a spiral ring... how will you create your portfolio, what will make it stand out above the rest?

Tips For Winning The Portfolio Competition:

In the last few years the portfolio competition has gotten fierce, especially for the graphic design category. Other schools have printing facilities that we don't, so you must use your creativity, ingenuity and eye for design to stand above the rest. Consider purchasing a large format portfolio binder and printing work samples at 11X17", or consider making a hand-bound book format to showcase your work. The limits are only contained by your creativity!

Use this as a rough guide to laying out your own portfolio...

Part 1 - Launch and Explore InDesign Before Creating Your Portfolio:

• If you are confident with Indesign you can skip ahead, if you feel you need more familiarity with Indesign than read through and try out all the tools in Indesign before proceeding.
• Go to the dock and launch InDesign, or look in your Applications folder to find the app
• Go to the File Menu and create a New Document
• Go to the Window Menu and set your Workspace to Advanced
• Explore the tool bar, click on the text tool and draw a text box to create text, try the shape tools and look for the color modifiers to change colors
• Open all the palettes under the Window Menu and explore all the functions, look at the quick guides below for reference
• See if you can create text of different sizes, change the colors, modify the text kerning and tracking and draw shapes in different colors and with different borders

Hidden Tools and Shortcut Keys

Character Formatting Panel In InDesign

Paragraph Formatting Panel in InDesign

Previous Student Portfolio Cover Design Samples:

P.S. There are more samples on the back table for review...

New Project: Keepin' It Surreal!

Hello Students,

Your newest assignment is an exercise in surrealism. You must pre-plan your image with a few pencil sketches so you can plan and shoot all the elements you need. Post processing is necassary and encouraged, you can use all the software tools available to you to achieve the final image you have in your mind.

Surreal self portrait of Kel Varnsen, from District #3. Seth Wilson 2017

"To be a surrealist... means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been." - Rene Magritte

"My idea of a perfect surrealist painting is one in which every detail is perfectly realistic, yet filled with a surrealistic, dreamlike mood. And the viewer himself can't understand why that mood exists, because there are no dripping watches or grotesque shapes as reference points. That is what I'm after: that mood which is apart from everyday life, the type of mood that one experiences at very special moments."- Ian Hornak

What is Surrealism?

Taken from the Heilbrunn timeline of Art History: "Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious. Using Freudian methods of free association, their poetry and prose drew upon the private world of the mind, traditionally restricted by reason and societal limitations, to produce surprising, unexpected imagery. The cerebral and irrational tenets of Surrealism find their ancestry in the clever and whimsical disregard for tradition fostered by Dadaism a decade earlier. The visual artists who first worked with Surrealist techniques and imagery were the German Max Ernst (1891–1976), the Frenchman André Masson (1896–1987), the Spaniard Joan Miró (1893–1983), and the American Man Ray (1890–1976).

Can you guess how this image was created? Surreal Photo by CTE student Danial Bragg 2017.

Keep It "Surreal" Assignment:

• Research surreal art, artists and photography for inspiration. Post 3 examples of surrealism in fine art, photography, filmmaking that you like. Cite the sources, artists, creators. Discuss why you chose those examples, what is it about the work that you appreciate?
• Brainstorm a few ideas and create a full page pencil sketch of your surreal photo concept. Try to think of all the visual elements you would like to incorporate... consider setting, backgrounds, models, objects or props, costume, stylistic effects. Plan every detail of your shoot for best results. I expect QUALITY work.
• Begin shooting your photo(s) and use photo manipulation to achieve your desired look with Photoshop. Ask if you need help in executing your vision.
• All processes are available to you, cropping, fine edge selection, airbrushing, colorization, layering, enhancement effects etc... try to achieve an enhanced and artistic yet realistic look to your image.
• When complete post to your blog along with your separate source images along with your 3 examples and accompanying writing.

Inspiration:
Exquisite Corpse Student Project
Secret Garden Surreal Photo Series
Martin De Pasquale surreal photo manipulations
Arthur Tress: Haunting Surreal Photographs from the 60s Inspired by Children’s Nightmares
Laura Williams surreal self portrait
Kyle Thompson surreal self portrait
Oleg Oprisko dreamlike images
Surreal portrait breakdown
Fruit slice surreal image creation
Levitation photography tutorial

40 surrealistic photo manipulations

Image by Gala Darling

This photo was shot live, no amount of post-processing or Photoshop has been used to achieve this effect. It took 26 attempts and 5 hours. Philip Halsman would count to four, where Dali would leap into air, and three assistant will throw the cats, another will throw a bucket of water, and Mrs. Halsman held the chair.

Student Work Examples:

Scanner Camera Results

As one of our rainy day projects, students recently created cameras from an old scanner, some cardboard, tape and old lenses and magnifying glasses. Students were challenged to craft their own cameras in teams of 3 and refine them until an image is produced. Here are the results from this hands-on project...

Scanner Camera Student Images: