Friday Fun Facts #1

Winners of the 2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year Contest

The winners of the 2016 National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year contest have been selected from thousands of entries in four categories: action, landscape, animal portraits and environmental issues. Greg Lecoeur of Nice, France, is the grand-prize winner, winning a 10-day trip for two to the Galápagos Islands with National Geographic Expeditions and two 15-minute image portfolio reviews with National Geographic photo editors. Let’s take a look at all the winning photos, along with the honorable mentions.

Daily Photo #21

Robert Frank - "Parade, Hoboken, NJ, 1955" -  from "The Americans"

Robert Frank (born November 9, 1924) is an American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ . . . ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century."[1]Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

Video #1 

Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #20

Walker Evans

"Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His elegant, crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications have inspired several generations of artists, from Helen Levitt and Robert Frank to Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The progenitor of
the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past, and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art. His principal subject was the vernacular—the indigenous expressions of a people found in roadside stands, cheap cafés  (1971.646.35), advertisements (1987.1100.59), simple bedrooms, and small-town main streets. For fifty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, Evans recorded the American scene with the nuance of a poet and the precision of a surgeon, creating an encyclopedic visual catalogue of modern America in the making..."

Video #1 

Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #19

Edward Henry Weston 

Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called "one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…"[1] and "one of the masters of 20th century photography."[2] Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a "quintessentially American, and specially Californian, approach to modern photography"[3] because of his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.
Weston was born in Chicago and moved to California when he was 21. He knew he wanted to be a photographer from an early age, and initially his work was typical of the soft focus pictorialism that was popular at the time. Within a few years, however, he abandoned that style and went on to be one of the foremost champions of highly detailed photographic images.
In 1947 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he stopped photographing soon thereafter. He spent the remaining ten years of his life overseeing the printing of more than 1,000 of his most famous images.

Video #1 
Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #18

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Arguably the youngest master photographer ever, Jacques-Henri-Lartigue took family photos that captured the ‘joie de la vie’ of an era. Jacques-Henri Lartigue was 8 years old when his father gave him his first camera. Little did he suspect that one day young Jacques' extraordinary photos would be displayed in museums and published in books. The photo on the right shows Jacques-Henri holding the big glass plate camera his father had just given him. With that camera, and many others to come, little Jacques produced an enormous photographic record of the joys and wonders of family life, an achievement any of today's grown-up photographers would be proud to have created.

But for decades his fantastic images remained sealed up in photo albums and scrapbooks meant as family keepsakes, not as photographic treasures to share with the world. That is, until Jacques-Henri was 69 years old, and his photographic genius was finally seen and recognized by the art world.

Video #1 
Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #17

Robert Doisneau's Le baiser de l'hotel de ville (Kiss by the Hotel de)

Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. In the 1930s he used a Leica on the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and with Henri Cartier-Bresson a pioneer of photojournalism. Doisneau was known for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes.
Influenced by the work of André Kertész, Eugène Atget, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, in more than twenty books he presented a charming vision of human frailty and life as a series of quiet, incongruous moments.

"The marvels of daily life are so exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street." — Robert Doisneau

Doisneau's work gives unusual prominence and dignity to children's street culture; returning again and again to the theme of children at play in the city, unfettered by parents. His work treats their play with seriousness and respect.

Video #1 

Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #16

Don McCullin : Cyprus, 1964: A grieving woman and her family

Donald "Don" McCullin, CBE Hon FRPS (9 October 1935) is a British photojournalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialized in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and the impoverished.

[As]One of Britain’s most celebrated and respected photographers [he] has lamented the digital domination of his field, calling it “a totally lying experience” that cannot be trusted.
Don McCullin, one of the world’s finest photographers of war and disaster, said the digital revolution meant viewers could no longer trust the truthfulness of images they see. He said photography had been “hijacked” because “the digital cameras are extraordinary. I have a dark room and I still process film but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience, you can move anything you want … the whole thing can’t be trusted really.” ...

Video #1

Video #2 

Video #3

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Daily Photo #15

John Paul Filo - 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Photography

John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller minutes after he was fatally shot by the Ohio National Guard

The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, in the United States and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970. There were 28 soldiers who admitted to firing on top of the hill, 25 of these soldiers fired 55 rounds into the air and into the ground, two of the soldiers fired .45cal pistol shots, three into the crowd, and three into the air, one soldier fired birdshot into the air (James Russell was also hit with a shotgun's birdshot, some believe that some of the shot may have ricocheted off a tree and hit him).[6] The guardsmen fired 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[7][8]
Some of the students who were shot had been protesting the Cambodian Campaign, which President Richard Nixon announced during a television address on April 30. Other students who were shot had been walking nearby or observing the protest from a distance.[9][10]
There was a significant national response to the shootings: Hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students,[11] and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[12]

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Landscape : "My Rochester"

Skyline Photograph - Rochester Ny Skyline In Black And White by Tim Buisman

Start this project first by creating a new blog post with the following:

Examples of landscapes and cityscapes that you think might work well as inspirations for your Landscape : “My Rochester” photo essay. 

You should plan to take new photos for all of your photo essays, but for now, it is ok to post 2-5 photos you previously took or images captured from the internet that you may potentially use as substitues in this first post.

Include in your post: a few sentences describing potential subject matter you may want to photograph for this project, as well as how you plan to photograph this subject matter. Also, include a few sentences analyzing your current strengths and weakness regarding photography, and how you will use these to your advantage in your photo essay. This is just an in-progress post the actual Lanscape : "My Rochester"  project must be a separate post.

Project Requirements:

1). 10-12 quality, edited (if necessary) photographs of landscapes and/or cityscapes united by the theme “My Rochester”

2). Photos are to be black & white using the settings and filters in your cell phone or camera.

3). Photos should fit all criteria of good photography discussed up this point. (ie. composition, defined vantage & focal points; proper lighting & contrast; interesting angles; clear subjects in focus; a sense of narrative that tells a story; backgrounds that adds to, rather than detract from, the subject of the photo)

4). 250 word artist statement in the same blog post as the final 10-12 edited photos

Here are some examples of powerful photo essays:

Halloween in Brooklyn

A Tale of Two Flint, Michigans: The Most Violent City in America

A Day in the Life of a Sengalese School Girl

A Day in the Life of a Fashion Week Model

Daily Photo #14

Toby Harriman 

Toby Harriman is an aerial, fine art, travel and landscape photographer. He also works as a timelapser and content creator. Toby Harriman tries through his photographs to discover more about the surrounding world and document his adventures. His photos are really stunning even those black and white ones are also amazing and this is the reason behind making Toby Harriman’s work spread across the internet among all of those who like this kind of photographs especially his cityscape photographs.

Toby Harriman

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise. This particular photo is meant to be inspiration for the, "My Rochester" photo essay project which includes cityscapes as one related assignment.

"My Rochester" Fall/Winter Photo Essay & Portfolio

For all your major Fall/Winter photography assignments, you will be creating a series of  photographic essay projects representing Rochester through your eyes. Over the course of several assignments you will photograph landscape photos, street photos, portrait photos and even journalistic photos to culminate in the creation of a Portfolio and Essay of your photographic work. You should photograph your neighborhood, family, sports team, favorite after school hangout, friends, neighbors, events etc., all with the purpose of developing your own creative eye for photography, light and composition. Take as many photos as you can! – the more options you have to choose from, the better! At the end of each project, you will post 10-12 photographs that you feel best show your vision of Rochester. Oh, and...along with that...a 250 word artist statement to your blog. Yay! :)

Today we will:

Introduce the new photojournalism project:
"My Rochester"

You will: Create a new Project Proposal blog post with the following:

A few sentences describing potential ideas and subject matter that you may want to photograph for landscape photos, street photos, portrait photos and even journalistic photos of Rochester for the My Rochester Photo Essay Series, as well as how and what you plan to photograph for these projects. You may post a few google photos of Rochester for your project proposal posts if needed.


I will:

Post a few sentences analyzing my current strengths and weakness regarding photography, and how I will use these to my advantage in my photo essay.

My Rochester: Landscapes

Project Requirements:

• 10-12 quality, edited (if necessary) Landscape photographs united by the theme “My Rochester”
• Photos must be in black & white
• Photos must fit all criteria of a good photograph discussed up this point (proper lighting; interesting angle; clear subject that is in focus; tells a story; background adds to, rather than detract from, the subject of the image)
• Photos should clearly label the vantage point used. (ie. worms eye, birds eye ect)
• 250 word artist statement in the same blog post as the final 10-12 edited photos

Any photos you took for previous assignments this year that you think may work well as part of your “My Rochester” photo essays. (You should plan to take new photos for the majority of your photo essay, but for now, it is ok to post 2-4 ones you may potentially use.)

Here are some examples of powerful photo essays:

• Halloween in Brooklyn
• A Tale of Two Flint, Michigans: The Most Violent City in America
• A Day in the Life of a Sengalese School Girl
• A Day in the Life of a Fashion Week Model

The Speech that Inspired the Project

Shortly after taking office in 2014, Mayor Lovely Warren referred to Rochester as “a tale of two cities.” Here is a brief excerpt from that speech (you can read the speech in its entirety here):

“In his State of the State address just a few short weeks ago, Governor Cuomo candidly and accurately described Upstate New York as being in a “cycle of decline” — and the evidence of this is clear to see in Rochester.  The Rochester of today is far different from the Rochester of just a generation ago. Rochester is a tale of two cities.  One city is vibrant, hopeful, wealthy, and highly livable. The other suffers from escalating poverty, dysfunction, unemployment that is higher today than it was during the Great Depression — and a deficient educational system.  This divide has both immediate human consequences and short and long-term economic consequences.

The Mayor’s challenge — our community’s shared challenge — is to bridge these divides so that all people feel there is hope for them and their children; and we all feel that we have an equal stake in the future.  A recent report by the Rochester Area Community Foundation outlined the harsh reality we face; and the findings are a call to action that cannot go unanswered.

Rochester is the:

• Fifth poorest city in the country among the top 75 largest metropolitan areas;
• Second poorest among comparably sized cities in those metro areas;
• Ranked third for highest concentration of extremely poor neighborhoods among cities in the top 100 metro areas;
• Poorest urban school district in the State.”

Daily Photo #13

Josef Koudelka

Photographer, Josef Koudelka's early work significantly shaped his later photography, and its emphasis on social and cultural rituals as well as death. He soon moved on to a more personal, in depth photographic study of the Gypsies of Slovakia, and later Romania. This work was exhibited in Prague in 1967. Throughout his career, Koudelka has been praised for his ability to capture the presence of the human spirit amidst dark landscapes. Desolation, waste, departure, despair and alienation are common themes in his work. His characters sometimes seem to come out of fairytales. Still, some see hope within his work — the endurance of human endeavor, in spite of its fragility. His later work focuses on the landscape removed of human subjects. He is considered by some a master of street photography.

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Video #1
Video #2
Video #3

Artist Bio : Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

As a class students watched and took notes for a quiz on a documentary about the Iconic American photographer, Ansel Adams. This is the precursor to a series of projects related to Ansel Adams photography.

Ansel Adams, Photographer, Conservationist

“At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been a visionary in his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature’s monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.”

President James E. Carter

Presenting Ansel Adams with the

Presidential Medal of Freedom

Daily Photo #12

Sam Shere ; Hindenburg Disaster

In 1937, Sam Shere photographed the Hindenburg disaster while on assignment in New Jersey. The crash killed 36 people and ended the era of passenger-carrying airships, which were once hailed as the future of flight. "I had two shots in my (camera) but I didn't even have time to get it up to my eye," Shere later said, "I literally shot from the hip -- it was over so fast there was nothing else to do."
Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Video #1
Video #2

Daily Photo #11

AP Photo / copyright-Alfred Eisenstaedt / Life Magazine

"The Kiss", On August 14, 1945, Alfred Eisenstaedt took one of the most iconic pictures of all time of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square, minutes after they heard of Japan’s surrender to the United States. Two weeks later LIFE magazine published that image. It became one of the most famous WWII photographs in history (and the most celebrated photograph ever published in the world’s dominant photo-journal), a cherished reminder of what it felt like for the war to finally be over. 

A sailor sweeps a nurse off her feet with a kiss in New York’s Times Square in this famous photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on the day Japan surrendered to end World War II.

Contact Sheet

George Mendonsa, now over 92 years old, still remembers kissing that nurse in Times Square. Born and raised on the water, Mendonsa grew up in a family of commercial fisherman in Newport, R.I., and decided to join the Navy once the Army started drafting men for the war...

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Video #1
Video #2

Daily Photo #10

Stanley Forman : Fire Escape

1976 Pulitzer Prize Winning Photo: On July 22, 1975 in Boston, a 19-year-old and her 2-year-old goddaughter were trapped in a burning building. A firefighter, Robert O’Neill, shielded them from the flames as a fire ladder inched closer. Then the fire escape collapsed. Although the woman died from her injuries, the infant survived. Fire Escape Collapse circulated around the world. The photo led to the passage of new fire escape legislation across the country. It provided Stanley Forman with his first of two Pulitzer Prizes for spot news photography. 

We also watched a 2 videos on YouTube about the historic situation that led to this photo being chosen for the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and the controversy over sensationalism in photo journalism and ethics in photography. This photo was controversial in it's day and fostered serious discussion and was one of the more iconic photos of it's time. 

Students do a daily "Bell Work" activity analyzing a significant or historical photo. They must make written comments about the composition, contrast, focus, balance, framing and statements each photo is making. This is our daily warm up exercise.

Video #1
Video #2

Assignment #4: Line, Space, Shape & Shadow

Michaël Luitaud

Essential question: How can I use the art elements of: Line, Space, Shape & Shadow to create interesting photographs with good contrast and composition?

You will take photos, trying to capture: Line, Space, Shape & Shadow in interesting ways. (If the assignment is not sufficiently challenging, feel free to focus on color as well.) You must post your best photos to your blog AND write a reflection following the instructions on this blog post and you must have at least 3 photo examples of each category (Line, Space, Shape & Shadow) posted to your blog in order to receive full credit!

Look for photo opportunities that already exist, but at the same time, be ready to stage photos if you get an idea that fits the assignment.

You will:

• Take interesting photos of line, shape, and space (or you may instead choose to focus on color)
• Create a new blog post with the following:
• The best photos you took must have at least 3 examples of each category!

• Label each photo with the appropriate category (line, shape, space, shadow)

• A paragraph reflection on the following things

• What are some ways your photography skills have improved over the past few assignments?

• What are some things you struggle with in photo?

• Which of the elements you photographed (line, shape, space, shadow) was the easiest for you? Why?

• Which of the elements you photographed (line, shape, space, shadow) was the most difficult for you? Why?

• Tell me what you feel you've learned from this particular project.

• Is there a photograph or photographer we have looked at that inspires you?

Examples:

Line

   

Shape

  

Space

 

 

Shadow

Michaël Luitaud

Option: Color

If the assignment is not sufficiently challenging, feel free to focus on color instead.

Here are some tips to take great color photos:

• Look for a Dominant Color
  

• Create Contrast
  

• Use Colors of Similar Intensity
  
  

  
• Keep It Simple

• Use One Color Against a Neutral Background

• Know When to Use Black & White!

Michaël Luitaud