My state of "busyness" has become a different sort of busy. Now instead of consuming my time with planning events and advising student groups, I worry about backlighting someone or figuring out how to set up my tripod to get the best shot.
I was talking to a friend this evening who started to ask a lot of questions, and I realize that many of you have no clue as to what we're doing here in photography school on a day-to-day basis, so this post is going to (hopefully) give you that fly-on-the-wall perspective. It will be random and my somewhat typical chaotic stream of consciousness....enjoy!!
- We go to school from 8am - 5pm Monday thru Friday. Each day looks different than the next. Sometimes we have lectures on a new topic, then a practical to put into practice what we just learned. Sometimes we have classes all day - classes about business, digital imaging, learning new things about computer programs we're using, classes on photo history - and many more. And sometimes we go on field trips all day.
- We're not only learning how to take photos. We're learning the ins and outs of what it will be like to run a business of our own. We've already have classes on recordkeeping (balancing a checkbook, learning what weekly invoicing looks like, and the importance of organizing), business communications, and in the future we'll having marketing, finance, and various other business-related classes.
- In our Business Comm. class, we had to prepare and give a 5-minute speech about ourselves. The instructor was looking for us to have organization of our thoughts, engage the audience, have good eye contact, and speak well. It's been interesting learning where my classmates come from and what led them to Hallmark. I gave my speech last week. Since I've had to do public speaking before, I felt fairly confident speaking in front of people. When I speak more formally, I don't use the "um", "so", "anyway", or "uhhh" that others tend to use. As the year goes on, I know we'll be speaking more and the time limits they give will have to be adhered to.
- Tomorrow (Thurs.) we're going to Northampton, MA....a "hip" town for the area. Our assignment while in Northampton is portraiture. We are to mimic the work of late photographer Arnold Newman (http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/). It'll be a challenge to create an image like his.
- In the past 2 weeks, we've had assignments to get the following types of images:
+ freedom and the opposite of (basically what does freedom mean to [me]? We had to take a picture of the
representation of this concept, whether literal - a picture of a flag - or figurative - I decided to do a picture of an apple pie with a flag in it. The opposite of freedom was portrayed as confinement; I chose to show this by having my roommate hold a window pane and look forlorn out the window as though she were stuck in her environment).
+ images showing both diagonal lines and curved lines
+ images portraying motion and blur (both to convey speed, grace/flowing essence, and "disturbing" or "weird" images created by motion or blur)
+ an in-class assignment (today) where we had to take a picture that could be used for stock photography if someone were to search for the keywords "couple texting"....i took a picture of two classmates texting near our student lockers.
(SIDENOTE: I hope to post pictures soon)
- One of our upcoming assignments is to create an idea book. We essentially need to look at work on the internet and find ideas we like or would like to create, and put it into a catalog on Lightroom - the software we're using to import pictures - for future work of ours. We have varying categories we need to include: weddings, architecture, stock photos, portraits, sports, nature, etc. In conjunction with showing images of actual photography, we also need to show graphic representation of conceptual things, like website designs we like, letterhead or branding that intrigues us etc. The project is due Nov. 1. I just started working on it today. We have two hours of "free" time (well, time that is to be used on outside client work...since I don't have any outside work yet, the idea book it is).
- We also got an assignment (not due until June 2011) wherein we need to assist two different photographers for the day. I'm hoping to head to PA and spend some time with photogs whom I admire.
For now, this is it. I know there is sooooooo much more I can write, but don't want to overwhelm my audience :)
More soon........... and pictures too.
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