Photography is an ever-changing medium that stretches across fields, including press and editorial, advertising, fashion, fine art, the natural world, and scientific recording.
Photography is about evoking emotion, curiosity, and experiences in the viewer; it can also be a reality check. Everyday photography makes significant impressions on all our lives. Millions of images are made and taken daily and they have unknowingly changed the way we think about and see our world.
We look forward to meeting you all in September – Happy Photographing!
To start with please choose two photographs from this PDF that speak to you the most.
Next visit Portrait of Britain Winners and choose your favourite.
Write an image analysis for all three. Think about why you chose those particular photographs. What is it about them that speaks to you the most? How successful are they at portraying the sitter? Why? How? 300 words for each image.
Save your work to a USB device or upload it to a Google account which you can share and access easily in class for review.
Ever wondered what the difference is between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ portrait? For the next task you need to write an answer to that question. What is a portrait? What is it supposed to represent? How can we recognise a ‘good’ portrait? What qualities does it contain? What is the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ portrait?
Save your work to a USB device or upload it to a Google account which you can share and access easily in class for review.
This practical task is based on what you have learnt from the previous activities.
You should now have an idea of what makes a ‘good’ portrait. Time to put that knowledge to a test.
Plan to take a series of portraits based on people around you, either your family, friends, or maybe even strangers! This could be around your local area, in your home, your garden, the places you visit and from unusual angles, patterns, looking for the light, reflections, viewpoints. Try to capture the personalities and essence of the person you’re photographing.
To complete this project, you will need to be creative in your approach, you will need to take a number of images which you can then select the final series from.
Outcome: A final series of 8 to 12 high quality and successful images which meet the brief.
Save your photographs in a separate folder and bring them along to the first lesson on a USB device or upload at home to a Google account which you can easily access in class for review.
Be assured that for practical activities there are no right or wrong answers. Please take photographs in your own style and approach; your individuality is what makes photography so interesting.
