Category: Photography

Exploring Environments

10/22/2014

8th grade students are still exploring the theme of Environments/Spaces/Places this week and will be wrapping up their efforts tomorrow by publishing all of their work to our online gallery on Artsonia. As you can see from the process images above, there are some very exciting progress being made by students engaged in a variety of media and methods.

The images below are some examples of work that has been posted online, along with their artist statements:

Kendahl D.: This picture I took while in Montana in the summer. At first it was a normal boring picture then I put the image into photoshop and edited it to make more colorful. Photoshop made the picture look really cool.

Blake H.: My photoshop picture is a part of Africa, the bottom, and Chicago, the top, to show what we live in and what Africa has to live in. I used my materials as pictures and objects by composing them together and making a whole new picture. I used this technique to show what we live like and what people live like but into one picture as if they are in the same country. The principles of photoshop that i used are to show a statement of what people don't get that they need our help.

Austin W. : In this picture, I like how the sun is seeping through in the corner of the photograph. I laid on the ground and took the picture even with the ground. The little seedling is blurred, making the piece look so intricate and detailed. I used a camera with high pixels to take this picture showing all the little details and the beautiful look of all of the little green plants just sprouting in the fall sunset.

While I was Away

3/15/2014

One of the neatest things to come out of the 1:1 work with students is their ability to continue working on things when I am out of the classroom. I had the great honor and privilege to not only attend the MACUL (Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning) at the end of this week, but I also got to be a part of three presentations while there. Even though this meant spending time away from my students to get and share insight in best educational practices, my students did not miss a beat and here are some of the pieces students submitted while I was away:

7th grade Portraits

7th grade students finished their portraits this week using Chuck Close and Noli Novak as inspiration. After drawing their faces in a neutral value scheme, they selected a material for their background and filled it with color. They then experimented with collage as they cut and pasted a portrait using their reference photo as a guide. Using Artsonia classroom mode, I was able to see these works get done in real time as students turned them in on the computer Thursday and Friday.

For Emma's portrait, she decided to use pencil to show her values in the face and a water/chalk shred for the colorful background.

In Ava's work, she uses a stippling technique to explore value and in the background she overlaid tissue paper on a wet surface to get the tie-dyed look.

After students drew their portraits, they then created a collage from them with images cut from magazines. Here is Noah's collage.

8th grade Portraits

In addition to studying the artists mentioned in the 7th grade unit, 8th grade students also examine the work of Shepard Fairey and Rob Kelly before making decisions on how they want their portraits to look. Students have complete control over the pose, material, and execution of these works. After completing their portraits in real space, they went digital and (with the help of Ian Sands) created the pixelated versions of themselves.

Lauren decided to show the different levels of value in her face through both color and patterns.

Kayla used paint in this image to explore value. She then decided to add some different textures and shapes to activate the background.

Shane used marker in his image to show the values of his face.

After students completed their portraits in real space, they went digital and created these pixelated portraits. This one is created by Dillon.

Finishing out Photo

5/11/2013

Students finished out their Dual Enrollment class this week with a presentation of the assignments given as they relate to the Artists we studied. Students were challenged to create a presentation with a tool of their choice (iMovie, PowerPoint, Google Presentation, Prezi, etc.) and then present their work to the class. When presenting, students explained how each image was made and the process of selecting a companion Artist's image to correlate with it. It was fun to see how the student created images related to the works we studied in class and how students presented on subject, composition, and overall mood of their works.

depth of field

3/17/2013

This past week, students in my Photo class turned in assignments that explored depth of field through the use of the aperture in the camera lens. Here is a great video that explains how this works. The following are images students produced that shows both shallow and wide depth of field.

Mason, Jordan S.

Skull, Emily M.

Feeder, Shelby L.

Sign of Power, Nicole H.

Intermission, Tyler P.

Chains, Olivia B.

Time, Tyler C.

for Valentine's day...

2/14/2013

For the past three years, I have had the privilege to teach Dual Enrollment classes for Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University to our High School Junior and Seniors. I taught 3D my first year, Color last year, and this year I am teaching Intro to Photo for Non-Majors. We started the term using Digital SLR cameras and will be moving onto traditional black and white processing in a couple of weeks.

For our first project, we focused on perspective and point of view. Our second project, which was handed in today, was all about movement. I decided to select an image from each student to showcase their efforts. It was a great critique today, with a lot of interesting and exciting experiments happening with the use Manual mode on the camera. One of the most satisfying moments during critique today was hearing a student express how much they have learned about their camera by turning off the Auto-mode. I am really excited to see what happens in our next project when we move into the darkroom.

Jackson, Assignment 1, by Olivia B.

Hidden Mystery, Assignment 1, Nicole H.

Water, Assignment 2, Emily M.

Bouncy Ball, Assignment 2, Tyler P.

Lens, Assignment 2, Jordan S.

Showdown, Assignment 1, Shelby L.

Path for the Lost, Assignment 1, Tyler C.

more art camp pics

6/17/2012

Below are a few more pictures from Art Camp last week. In addition to learning photography techniques and animation tools, students also used image altering programs like Photoshop and Picture Manager to create colorful and humorous images like those displayed below.

art camp day 1

6/11/2012

Digital Photography on Prezi

Today students decided they did not want to be done learning things for the school year, so they came into my classroom and learned basic ideas and concepts concerning digital photography. This is my second year teaching the Digital Art and Animation Camp and the 12 participates worked on taking and editing pictures today. We talked about the ideas in the slideshow above before going outside and putting the concepts into practice. After taking many pictures, students shared their favorites and learned some basic editing using Photoshop, Sumopaint, and Picture Manager.

Tomorrow we will talk about animation and use various digital and traditional methods to create a slew of projects to share!

enjoying nature

10/10/2011

7th and 8th grade students are using the nice weather as an excuse to get outside and "research" our next subject - Nature in Art.

Armed with cameras and excitement, students took turns taking pictures of the nature around our school. Students even found a frog who was kind enough to pose for a portrait. Afterwards, students logged into Moodle and watched a presentation about two artists who use nature in their work: Henri Rousseau and Georgia O'Keeffe. When I see students next time, they will be able to use their images as source material for creating nature paintings and drawings that will be submitted for the Sooper Art 2011 contest due October 22nd.

photographing phun

1/5/2011

Today was the last day of our photo-workshop with professional photographer Teri Genovese.

BCFAB sponsored this after-school workshop that met three times from November to today. Teri taught students about composition, lighting, and having fun capturing the essence of a subject.

Teri and I first met at Armstrong Middle School, when we were in 6th grade. It was awesome to have this friend and talented photographer in our Middle School Art room to teach these sessions!