Photo Contests

Outdoor Photographer magazine's Winter Photo Contest is for anyone 18 and older and is free (unless I missed something in small print...) The deadline is February 20th.

Their Magical Adventures contest deadline is January 4th.

Eliot Porter and Robert Ketchum

If you haven't opened up your January 2008 issue of Art Education yet, you'll be happy to see that the instructional resource center pullout is: Eliot Porter and Robert Glenn Ketchum: A Conversation on Color, Composition, and Environmental Conservation. Although recommended for grades 5-7, it is certainly a great idea for higher grades.

In addition, there is a nice interactive site designed for student learning from the Amon Carter Museum (in Fort Worth, Texas) : http://www.cartermuseum.org/edu_guides/porter/

A discussion of the two photographers on outdoorphotography.com http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/content/2006/dec/form_function.shtml

Robert Glenn Ketchum's website: http://www.robertglennketchum.com

And the book: Regarding the Land: Robert Glenn Ketchum and the Legacy of Eliot Porter

Layers Project

This is always a favorite project with my students because there are always surprises and many creative possibilities.

In Photoshop, the student copies the layer and then applies a different filter to each layer. Then he uses the blending modes to find the best blend. He adds a new empty layer for some Photoshop brushes (I suggest a new layer for each brush). I require that the students do the project twice (with two different images, of course) so that they really explore the possibilities. Also, when learning Photoshop, I've found that doing a project twice makes the process stick in your long-term memory better and, of course, pushes the level of quality up, since during the second attempt they are more fluent and fluid.

If you are on my email list, I will be sending you the handout for this.

Don't know where these came from

They were passed on from email to email. These are just a couple of the creative graphics sent to me.

Short and Sweet Photography Tips

This idigitalphoto blog page has a wonderful list of tips to share with your students. It's called "Improve Your Photos 60 Seconds at a Time" (referring to how long it takes to read each category).

Layers Magazine

Layers Magazine is a nicely designed magazine for Adobe Creative Suite products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Flash, Dreamweaver as well as digital photography.) What I like about it is that the purpose of the magazine content is education, not enticing you to buy more stuff. They also provide many tutorials online.

Illustrator Portrait Project

This lesson teaches drawing skills with Adobe Illustrator as well as the value tone scale and how to see in black and white. It also teaches patience and the importance of focusing and slowing down to improve craftsmanship. Ideally, a tablet is best, but I only own 2, so this guy drew his with his mouse. (Using LiveTrace is cheating! When you are done, you can have them try LiveTrace on the photo to see the difference between letting the computer make all the decisions and the artist doing it.) If you went to art school before computers, you probably remember doing a project like this with first drawing the portrait then using Color Aid paper, tracing paper, xacto knife, and rubber cement for the final.

1. Import a color photo.
2. Lock that layer and make a new layer.
3. On the new layer, make 1 small black square with no outline and copy it 7 times. Now, using the color palette changed to Grayscale, fill each square with gradually lighter grays until the last square is almost white.
4. Tracing the photo, draw a black shape where you see the darkest value tone. Use the eyedropper to choose the black square. Continue with the progressively lighter shapes.
5. Turn off the eye on the photo layer to see all the white spaces left.
6. Use the anchors to stretch the shapes to touch.
7. Add a border or fill the background with a gray. Delete the value tone scale you made in step 3, or if you want to see it for grading purposes, move it to outside of the print area.

Option: Make a copy of the finished file. Now select the highlight areas and change them to warm colors and the shadow areas to cool colors. Now you have a sort of expressionist portrait and you don't have to redraw the shapes.

Another Option: Now go into a studio room, transfer the image to poster board using the grid method and paint with acrylics. Now, they've learned to mix paint as well.

If you want a copy of my actual handout for the students, or have questions, just email me.