Lesson: Constructed Vision: Constructing Value
Course: Visual Art Photography
Show Me Standards: FA1; FA2
National Standards: VA1; VA2
Teacher: Anna Osborn
Duration: One (1) 90 minutes meeting
Missouri Visual Arts GLE: Strands I:1.c; II:1.F; II.2.c
Lesson Objectives
• TLW correctly operate the basic functions of a digital camera (Function).
• TLW work collaboratively to construct a visual arrangement (Design).
• TLW manipulate a digital camera to create a purposeful, desired outcome (Technique).
• TLW create several images in which various qualities of “value” are demonstrated (Formal).
• TLW describe various ways that a personal image has been affected by the purposeful use of “value” (Aesthetics).
About this course.
The intention of Visual Art Photography is to introduce the student to the structure of art through the medium of digital photography and digital image manipulation. We will explore the visual design of photography, a process of learning new ways of seeing and creating through intentional and purposeful arrangement of visual elements. Similar to the way young children experiment with building
blocks, artists play with the "building blocks" of design, thoughtful arrangements of color, value, space, texture, line, and shape...and in so doing, learn how to create meaningful images and visual messages. This course is about design and how its principles and elements affect the way we make art and look at the world around us. The curriculum is designed to impart a technical, theoretical, and historical foundation to
the beginning photographic art maker. We make a lot of photographs: the initial curricular emphasis is on the artist's options, focusing particularly on technique, image creation and manipulation. The Elements of Art and the Principles of Design provide a sound platform of formal composition while our assignments are a broad-based approach to meaning-making in art. Collectively, we look at the work of many photographers. Slide lectures and discussions focus on both traditional and contemporary aesthetic and social themes and issues surrounding the art of photography. The primary aim of this course is to inspire student art makers to cultivate a deeper appreciation and understanding of photography, while building the confidence to make self-motivated photographic artworks.
Mental Set
This lesson is introduced to learners during the first semester of a one-year photography foundations course. Consequently, learners have not yet developed a formal aesthetic and are not yet comfortably literate in the use of digital cameras or the mechanics of Photoshop. A course Blackboard site is a significant component of learning, sharing, discussion, and image archiving; learners visit the Visual Art Photography Blackboard site during the first ten minutes of each class meeting to read course-specific announcements, review that day’s objectives and goals, review online readings, and to post any requisite written or visual assignments for teacher and/or peer review.
Sharing the Objective and Purpose
Objectives are written on the white board every day and reviewed for intention and purpose before studio work or discussion ensues. Objectives are also posted on each day’s Blackboard page.
Modeling or Demonstration
This is the first studio course lesson assigned to students. During the next several weeks, a great deal of emphasis is placed on formal and informal modeling, especially with regard to technique, function, and concept. Demonstration is blended with peer-based learning; functionally, learners are engaged in PBL activities, constructing knowledge built upon personal and group strategies acquired from one lesson to the next.
Check for Understanding
Because this lesson is the first time many learners will have used a digital camera to construct and arrange a photograph in an intentional and purposeful way, it is important to check the following:
• Do learners have their camera set to the correct picture-taking function? (Should be to camera mode, automatic)
• Do learners understand how to compensate exposure for darker or lighter values? (+/- settings)
• Are learners using the camera monitor to review images for arrangement and value? (Yes)
• What color palette is the learner utilizing? (Monochromatic color palette)
Learner understanding of the purpose and intention of this assignment must also be checked:
• Are learners working collaboratively? (Yes)
• Are groups engaged in problem-solving? (Yes)
• Are groups experimenting with multiple visual solutions? (Yes)
• Are paper constructions engineered to be self-supporting? (Yes)
• Are learners using the camera to explore various points-of-view, compositional arrangements, and changes in value to create personally meaningful images? (Yes - this is the main point of the exercise!)
Practice
In practice, learners will be engaged in a series of collaborative and individual visual experiments using a digital camera; a single, simple light source; paper, scissors, glue, and tape.
Creativity Lab Resources
• Student exemplars (on display during entire scope of lesson and following project)
• PowerPoint slide show of student exemplars along with works by practicing photographers
• Blackboard archive of image exemplars, lessons, printable instructions
• 15 Digital Cameras
• Backdrops
• 15 PC workstations with Photoshop Elements 4.0
• 2 scanners
• Misc. art materials
• 9 light-weight tripods
• Rechargeable AA batteries and charging stations
• Five sets of artificial lights, umbrellas, and stands
• White construction paper, scissors, glue, magic tape
Student-provided Materials
· Digital Camera (minimum of 5 mega pixels) if want to use their own,
· Camera Card (recommend: minimum of 512 MB),
· CD (for permanent archiving of finished images)
Sequence of Lesson Plan
• Students review Blackboard for daily reading and explanation of objectives.
• Slideshow and discussion of value creates purposeful effect in a photograph.
• Direction of Discussion:
What is “value?”
What do you see?
Photography is like any observational art form: developing an ability to “crop out” and include only what is important. Photography is also an art form in which you can be dissatisfied with “only” what is there, that you can, in fact, “construct” an image by adding, subtracting, moving, manipulating the universe of your image. Artists make many decisions and choices in their art making: what to leave in or out, point-of-view, the way in which things are arranged, intentionally symbolism, light, color, value - and especially, content, meaning and subject matter
• Introduction and demonstration of basic digital camera features (will change, depending upon model used.)
Review and explain day’s objectives
Demonstrate:
· Care: How to hold and carry the camera
· Power on/off
· Camera/video setting
· Automatic setting
· Monochromatic setting
· Exposure compensation adjustment
· How to use the tripod
· How to record a picture (gently!)
· How to review a recorded photograph
Review lesson and specifications
• Work at a single large table so that group is roughly “circular” in arrangement.
• Distribute paper, scissors, glue, magic tape
• Explain that we are going to “construct” an image while exploring the properties of light and value. We will do this by first collaborating to build a paper construction. Explain that collaboration involves brainstorming and problem-solving.
• Instruct: Each person should take a single piece of paper. Using only scissors, each person should create as many different self-supporting three-dimensional structures as possible in five minutes.
• Stop activity. Briefly discuss what learners have done to initiate the activity.
• Instruct: Each person should combine their forms into a single self-supporting structure. They may use as many or as few of the original structures as they deem necessary. The structure should be engineered and should be visually “interesting.” The activity will last five minutes.
• Stop activity. Briefly discuss what it means for something to be visually “interesting.”
• Have each learner stand in front of their work. Have them move to their left, continuing until teaches tells them to stop (arbitrarily, much like musical chairs.) Each learner should be in front of someone else’s construction. Explain that the artifacts of art making aren’t always “precious,” especially when working in a collaboration.
• Instruct: Each learner should manipulate the form in front of them in some way by removing or adding to it. Each learner may add no more than a single sheet of paper (which may be in parts or whole.) This activity should take five minutes.
• Stop activity. Divide the class into groups of three. Each learner should take the form in front of them and gather with their assigned collaborators.
• Instruct: As a group, work together to combine the three forms into a single self-supporting structure. Discuss how to engineer the structure as well as how to make it visually “interesting.” The groups may use tape or glue. They may also incorporate an additional piece of paper if they choose (which may be utilized in pieces or whole.) Remind the group that “design is the opposite of chance,” that their activities are intentional and purposeful, yet play and experimentation is always an important part of discovery. This activity lasts 10 minutes.
• Stop activity. Briefly discuss how the collaboration has gone so far. What is working? What isn’t? Explain that what began as a single person’s artifact has now become part of a group vision. Have learners look closely at the properties of each form. Ask them to describe the light, the shadow, how forms combine. If time permits, ask learners to use “cropping L’s” or a window mat to frame a particularly interesting close up section.
• Instruct: learners will each use a camera to frame a particularly interesting close up section of the construction. Each learner should carefully arrange the camera by using the zoom, by adjusting point-of view, by adjusting the relative values, by changing the background, by changing the light source (they may use the lighting at this point - sometimes I use flashlights instead of lights and stands.) This activity lasts 10
minutes. Learners should continue to work in groups to assist each other while making their individual photographs.
• Stop activity. Briefly discuss how the photographs differed from the paper constructions. Is the paper construction the same artwork as the photograph ... or a new artwork entirely? Who is the artist - the group of constructors or the photographer? Why? Or is the series of photographs one artwork? What do the learners think we should explore next?
• Explain that this activity was practice for a longer term art making project that will make use of today’s learned knowledge and concepts but that their success will depend upon synthesizing these concepts with new ones they will learn during the upcoming studio sessions.
• Explain that in this upcoming project they will create a self-portrait using only personal objects.
• Assign: for next class, bring in at least five personal objects that are small enough to be held in one hand.
• Check for understanding of concepts and techniques.
• Clean up, rearrange tables, put away equipment, and sit.
Closure and Extension
Written/shared reflection, along with group review/display of work is of key importance to learners as they develop a conceptual understanding of art making processes. Typically, seven or eight works might be selected as student exemplars, printed to 30 x 36”, mounted for exhibition (this course rotates new works out on display every ten days), and archived for inclusion in the Fine Art Department’s permanent collection of student exemplars. One work of each student will be selected and exhibited in an electronic exhibition. Practically speaking, each lesson has many entry points yet there are few finite “end” points: learned knowledge is often synthesized by learners to engage in subsequent visual problem-solving situations. Important note: This lesson is a “lead-in” to a long term (five class day + out-of-class time) studio project in which learners will use the tools and concepts from today’s learning to create a metaphorical self-portrait entirely from personal belongings.