[Anita Giraldo]

New York City Col­lege of Tech­nol­ogy • The City Uni­ver­sity of New York
School of Tech­nol­ogy and De­sign
De­part­ment of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion De­sign

Course TITLE: COMD 1340 • Pho­tog­ra­phy I • Sec­tion D189• Fall 2019
COURSE LO­CA­TION/MEET­ING TIMES Tues­days, 8:00 AM – 11:20 AM in V-111
In­struc­tor: Pro­fes­sor Anita Gi­raldo
Email: agi­raldo@​citytech.​cuny.​edu
Phone: 718-260-5839 • Of­fice: N-1111
Of­fice hours: Tues­days 11:45 AM – 2:30 AM in N-1111 or any other time by ap­point­ment.

Course De­scrip­tion: An in­tro­duc­tion to the fun­da­men­tals of pho­tog­ra­phy for stu­dents in ad­ver­tis­ing de­sign and graphic arts. Op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures for dig­i­tal SLRs and com­pact dig­i­tal cam­eras. Em­pha­sis is on com­po­si­tion and cam­era op­er­a­tion. In­tro­duc­tion to con­tin­u­ous and strobe light­ing, file man­age­ment, fun­da­men­tal dig­i­tal dark­room tech­nique, and di­rect and archival print­ing. Lab­o­ra­tory pro­jects in­clude still life and por­trait pho­tog­ra­phy.

On Lo­ca­tion: Var­i­ous ex­er­cises to il­lus­trate con­cepts; at least one on-lo­ca­tion shoot, TBA. The lo­ca­tion shoot will be de­ter­mined by weather con­di­tions fur­ther in the spring. The pur­pose of the shoot is to put into prac­tice one or more con­cepts cov­ered in class and to as­sem­ble a col­lec­tion of im­ages to ex­press a nar­ra­tive.

Course Ob­jec­tives
IN­STRUC­TIONAL OB­JEC­TIVES AS­SESS­MENT
For the suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of this course, stu­dents should be able to: Eval­u­a­tion meth­ods and cri­te­ria
Use pro­fes­sional vo­cab­u­lary to dis­cuss tech­ni­cal and aes­thetic is­sues in pho­tog­ra­phy. Stu­dents will demon­strate com­pe­tency in dis­cus­sions about
pho­tog­ra­phy and through two quizzes
Frame and com­pose pho­tographs using basic prin­ci­ples of de­sign and com­po­si­tion Stu­dents will demon­strate com­pe­tency by tak­ing pho­tographs both in-class and as home­work.
Use avail­able and ar­ti­fi­cial light to pho­to­graph still life, por­trait and land­scape sub­jects Stu­dents will cor­rectly ex­pose pho­tographs in a wide range of light­ing con­di­tions.
An­a­lyze both the aes­thetic value and the tech­ni­cal com­pe­tency of one’s own work, the work of one’s peers, and the work of pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers. Stu­dents will dis­play com­pe­tency through in-class dis­cus­sions and writ­ing ex­er­cises.
De­velop the skills nec­es­sary for col­lab­o­ra­tive team­work. Stu­dents will dis­play com­pe­tency through in-class team pro­jects.
Op­er­ate com­pact dig­i­tal cam­eras, dSLRs, tripods, light me­ters, and basic light­ing equip­ment Stu­dents will dis­play com­pe­tency through quizzes and in-class hands-on ex­er­cises.
Demon­strate pro­fi­ciency in dig­i­tal dark­room tech­niques and the color cor­rec­tion work­flow in­clud­ing op­ti­miz­ing global and local tonal range, re­mov­ing color casts, in­creas­ing con­trast, and sharp­en­ing. Stu­dents will dis­play com­pe­tency through a port­fo­lio of prints.
Gen­eral Ed­u­ca­tion Goal: How the goal is cov­ered:

Think­ing Crit­i­cally

The stu­dent will demon­strate the abil­ity to eval­u­ate ev­i­dence and apply rea­son­ing to make valid in­fer­ences. Eval­u­ate through class cri­tique to de­ter­mine how well stu­dents were able to ad­vance their pro­ject con­cepts through cre­ative, crit­i­cal and tech­ni­cal de­ci­sions.
So­cial In­ter­ac­tion
The stu­dent will demon­strate the abil­ity to work in teams, in­clud­ing peo­ple from a va­ri­ety of back­grounds, and build con­sen­sus.
Eval­u­ate the col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­te­gra­tion of the team with a rubric for cre­ative and crit­i­cal team per­for­mance and pro­ject out­comes.
Life­long Learn­ing
The stu­dent will demon­strate an aware­ness of the re­sources for con­tin­ued life­long learn­ing. Eval­u­ate through class dis­cus­sion and writ­ten tests if stu­dents have de­vel­oped a sen­si­tiv­ity and aware­ness of pro­fes­sional ethics.

Teach­ing/Learn­ing Meth­ods:
• Dis­cus­sion
• Hands-on Photo Shoots
• Edit­ing, Color Cor­rect­ing and Print­ing Pho­tos
• Photo Gallery Vis­its
• Peer-to-peer re­view

Re­quired Equip­ment: Each stu­dent will need a cam­era to com­plete his or her as­sign­ments.
To get the most out of this class, your cam­era should allow man­ual con­trol over ex­po­sure and flash. If you don’t have a cam­era, please be­come fa­mil­iar with City Tech’s cam­era check­out re­source.

Re­quired Ma­te­ri­als: Cam­era mem­ory, flash drive

At­ten­dance/late­ness Pol­icy: Your par­tic­i­pa­tion in class work is a crit­i­cal part of this course. While there is no of­fi­cial CUNY at­ten­dance pol­icy, the class pol­icy is to be pre­sent and on time at all times. Please make every ef­fort to be on time. Two late­nesses equal one ab­sence. If ex­ceeded, you will be asked to with­draw from the class. A late­ness is de­fined as ar­riv­ing 10 min­utes past the start of the class.

I un­der­stand it’s early, but look at the bright side: it’s late sum­mer. It would be a lot worse if it was Jan­u­ary.

Grad­ing For­mula
As­sign­ments must be done con­sci­en­tiously and on time. Weekly work must be up­loaded to the Black­board ac­count when prints are not made for cri­tiques. Four final prints will be due; more on the cri­te­rion dur­ing course­work.

To hand in a shoot­ing as­sign­ment, the stu­dent must cre­ate and up­load to Black­board an op­ti­mized pdf of edited im­ages show­ing the as­sign­ment has been ful­filled. The num­ber of re­quired im­ages re­flects the min­i­mum num­ber of edited im­ages for the as­sign­ment; not the total pho­tographed. EMAILED AS­SIGN­MENTS WILL NOT BE AC­CEPTED.

I will teach you how to make an op­ti­mized PDF. You MUST use the fol­low­ing nam­ing con­ven­tion for your up­loads:

COMD1340D189_­Fa2019_SHAP_Last Name_­First ini­tial

I will not grade any work with­out this nam­ing con­ven­tion.

I will teach you how to name im­ages and make con­tact sheets in Bridge. It’s easy.

As­sign­ment Break­down:

a) 4 Home­work Pro­jects : 400 points, 100 points each.
b) Midterm Pro­ject 200 points
c) Final Pro­ject 200 points
d) Final ISSUU Doc 100 points
e) Quizzes (2) 100 points

a) The four home­work as­sign­ments re­in­force the con­cepts learned in class; they’re meant to fol­low a plan of thought to mas­ter a prob­lem in pho­to­graphic prac­tice. While more de­tail will be given, the four as­sign­ments are:
1. Shape shot
2. Lo­ca­tion
3. Mo­tion
4. Stu­dio Shoot (Por­trait/Still life)

there will be other, sim­pler shoot­ing as­sign­ments to re­in­force class­room work

b) Midterm Pro­ject is to cre­ate a suite of four por­traits of four dif­fer­ent peo­ple that de­fine each sub­ject’s in­di­vid­ual and cul­tural iden­tity.
Two will be stu­dio por­traits and will be shot dur­ing class time. Stu­dents will work in teams to brain­storm, plan and then pro­duce the work. Two will be en­vi­ron­men­tal por­traits shot by the in­di­vid­ual stu­dent as home­work, using avail­able light in a lo­ca­tion.

c) The Final Pro­ject is to cre­ate a suite of four im­ages of The Amer­i­cans In Brook­lyn, from the iconic pho­tog­ra­phy book Robert Frank, The Amer­i­cans. A list of im­ages from the book The Amer­i­cans is on re­serve in the li­brary. Chose four im­ages from the book and travel around Brook­lyn, copy­ing the im­ages from what is seen in Brook­lyn as a back­ground. All work will be shot on lo­ca­tion. The pro­ject is de­vel­oped over sev­eral weeks.

The suite will in­clude an in­tro­duc­tion of 100 words, about the ob­jects (lo­ca­tions) and a re­flec­tion of the se­ries.

d) The Final ISSUU doc is a dig­i­tal as­sem­bly of the se­mes­ter’s work on ISSUU.​com, a free on­line pub­lish­ing plat­form. The doc­u­ment will con­tain work from the four home­work as­sign­ments, the Midterm and Final pro­jects and “con­tact sheets”—back­ground im­ages—that show the de­vel­op­ment of the pro­jects.

e) Quizzes: 100 pts. 2 quizzes will be given. Each one is worth 50 pts. One will be on photo tech­nique and the other on photo his­tory. See 4) below. No make-ups.

Photo his­tory

Each week, two or three pho­tog­ra­phers will be dis­cussed dur­ing lec­ture. It is your home­work to re­search their work and fa­mil­iar­ize your­self with their most well-known im­ages. In one of the two quizzes, you will be asked to pair their name with their work.

Field Trips
Field trips will be sched­uled be­fore it gets too cold or rainy. The field trips re­flect class top­ics and are not nec­es­sar­ily lo­ca­tion shoots. Any stu­dent who is not yet 18 years old must have a signed per­mis­sion form from their par­ent or guardian for each trip be­fore­hand.

Aca­d­e­mic In­tegrity Stan­dards
Stu­dents and all oth­ers who work with in­for­ma­tion, ideas, texts, im­ages, music, in­ven­tions, and other in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty owe their au­di­ence and sources ac­cu­racy and hon­esty in using, cred­it­ing, and cit­ing sources. As a com­mu­nity of in­tel­lec­tual and pro­fes­sional work­ers, the Col­lege rec­og­nizes its re­spon­si­bil­ity for pro­vid­ing in­struc­tion in in­for­ma­tion lit­er­acy and aca­d­e­mic in­tegrity, of­fer­ing mod­els of good prac­tice, and re­spond­ing vig­i­lantly and ap­pro­pri­ately to in­frac­tions of aca­d­e­mic in­tegrity. Ac­cord­ingly, aca­d­e­mic dis­hon­esty is pro­hib­ited in The City Uni­ver­sity of New York and at New York City Col­lege of Tech­nol­ogy and is pun­ish­able by penal­ties, in­clud­ing fail­ing grades, sus­pen­sion, and ex­pul­sion.

Course Sched­ule


Week 1- Aug 27, 2019 Course Overview
In­tro­duc­tions, Re­view Syl­labus, Black­board Tour, pdf and in­tro­duc­tory image pro­cess­ing.
Prin­ci­ples of pho­to­graphic com­po­si­tion: fram­ing, shape and pat­tern, em­pha­sis and bal­ance
Read­ing: Cam­era p. 3-16, Au­to­matic Focus p. 41, His­tograms pp. 58-59, Re­spond­ing to Pho­tographs, pp. 147-151, 170-1.

As­sign­ment 1: Pho­to­graph A Shape. Travel around the city with your cam­era and pho­to­graph as many im­ages of your as­signed shape as you can find. At least five are re­quired. Make an entry in your learn­ing log.
Pho­tog­ra­phers: Karl Bloss­feldt, Mo­holy-Nagy’s pho­tograms, Henri-Cartier Bres­son

Week 2 – Sep 3, 2019 – Pho­to­graphic Com­po­si­tion
Com­po­si­tion prin­ci­ples: Line, Rule of Thirds, Angle of View, and fore­ground/back­ground
Set­ting the cam­era: file for­mats, res­o­lu­tion: image size and com­pres­sion, ISO, shoot­ing modes: pro­gram, shut­ter-pri­or­ity, aper­ture pri­or­ity, man­ual, ex­po­sure, read­ing the his­togram, fo­cus­ing, set­ting the auto focus points, lock­ing auto focus.
In­tro­duc­tion to Bridge, nam­ing files, or­ga­niz­ing and sort­ing, meta­data, key­words.
Read­ing: pp. 22-25, 40-49, 152-153.
Pho­tog­ra­phers: Henri-Cartier Bres­son (again), Robert Adams. Thema Stauf­fer’s land­scapes.

Week 3 – Sep 10, 2019 – Ex­po­sure Ba­sics– Shut­ter Speed and Ex­po­sure Chal­lenges
Con­trol­ling depth of field: aper­ture, focal length, prox­im­ity, depth in a pho­to­graph, per­spec­tive, shal­low depth of field. Com­po­si­tion prin­ci­ple: Con­trast of Light and Dark
Pho­tog­ra­phers: Jan Staller, Robert Adams (again)

Week 4- Sep 17, 2019 – Pho­tograph­ing Large Ob­jects—build­ings, bridges, trucks, cars.
Out­door in the City Tech area.
As­sign­ment: Read and re­search Hud­son Yards
Pho­tog­ra­phers: Gor­don Matta Clarke, Ansel Adams, An­dreas Gursky, Ed Bur­tyn­sky

Week 5 – Sep 24, 2019
Pho­tograph­ing Large Ob­jects—build­ings, bridges, trucks, cars. Field Trip TBA

As­sign­ment 2: Pho­to­graph ob­jects of dif­fer­ent sizes demon­strat­ing pro­por­tion: a Per­son under a bridge, a bench by a build­ing, a child by an amuse­ment park ride. Due when we get back.

NO CLASS NEXT WEEK OR THE WEEK AFTER

MIDTERM IS AS­SIGNED—re­turn in two weeks with an idea and pre­lim­i­nary pho­to­graphic sketches.

Pho­tograph­ing a live event.
Live events are the trial by fire of any pho­tog­ra­pher. It doesn’t have to be a po­lit­i­cal con­ven­tion; even a wed­ding doesn’t have a do-over.

For your midterm, es­tab­lish a life event—could be a chris­ten­ing, a birth­day, a sport event (like the marathon) or an event like the Hal­loween Pa­rade. Re­search is nec­es­sary, be­cause there’s no do-over.
If it’s a per­sonal event, like a wed­ding, for ex­am­ple, what will you pho­to­graph? The morn­ing of, as the bride gets dressed? The an­tic­i­pa­tion, the groom and ush­ers wait­ing at the altar or at City Hall? The cer­e­mony, the re­cep­tion, the de­tails? Be­fore, dur­ing or after? Here, when and who? All the re­search has to be pho­tographed—sketched out–in ad­vance; that’s your dry run. Im­ages are due each week of what you’ve gath­ered or re­searched.

The fin­ished midterm pro­ject is a suite of four to six fin­ished (edited) im­ages, pre­sented to the class dur­ing week 9.

Pho­tog­ra­phers: Gor­don Parks, Matthew Brady, Se­bas­tao Sal­gado, WeeGee

Week 6 – Oc­to­ber 15, 2019 – Mo­tion
Shut­ter speed, light, fol­low­ing the sub­ject, back­ground ref­er­ence, stop ac­tion, sports, “When to hit the but­ton”. We will go on lo­ca­tion to shoot ob­jects in mo­tion.

As­sign­ment 3: Mo­tion. Pho­to­graph a mov­ing ob­ject in bright light and in lim­ited light: day and evening. Search out sim­i­lar ob­jects in close prox­im­ity: fly­ing birds, pedes­tri­ans, leaves in the wind, water in mo­tion. Ten im­ages due of each treat­ment. Make a GIF an­i­ma­tion and post to YouTube. Due in 3 weeks.

Pho­tog­ra­phers: Ead­ward Muy­brudge, Harold Edger­ton, Adam Pe­sapane http://​pesfilm.​com/​pages/​fresh-​guacamole http://​www.​pbs.​org/​wgbh/​amex/​pickford/​peo​plee​vent​s/​e_​silents.​html

How to Do Stop Mo­tion Pho­tog­ra­phy: An In­tro­duc­tion

How to Do Stop Mo­tion Pho­tog­ra­phy: An In­tro­duc­tion

Week 7 – Oct 22, 2019 – Mo­tion
Shut­ter speed, light, fol­low­ing the sub­ject, back­ground ref­er­ence, stop ac­tion, sports, “When to hit the but­ton”.

As­sign­ment 3, con­tin­ued: Mo­tion. Con­tinue to re­fine your mo­tion pro­ject. Pho­to­graph a mov­ing ad­di­tional ob­jects in bright light and in lim­ited light: day and evening. See above. Due in 3 weeks

Pho­tog­ra­phers: Ead­ward Muy­brudge,

Week 8 – Oct 29, 2019 – In­tro­duc­tion to the Dig­i­tal Dark­room
Read­ing the his­togram, color modes, gamut, spaces, and pro­files, as­sign­ing a pro­file Crop­ping, Tonal ad­just­ments, sharp­en­ing, the edit­ing work­flow. Image pro­cess­ing cheat sheet.
Image edit­ing and Print­ing, Quiz Re­view
Curves, Se­lec­tions, Lay­ers, Inkjet print­ing.

As­sign­ment: Print your im­ages for the Midterm Pre­sen­ta­tion.

Week 9 – Nov 5, 2019 – Quiz, Mid-term Pre­sen­ta­tions. All must at­tend.

Week 10 – Nov 12, 2019 – In­tro­duc­tion to Por­trai­ture
Basic Stu­dio Light­ing—For Por­trai­ture.
Di­rec­tion: front, side, back. Qual­i­ties of light: in­ten­sity, con­trast; light­ing for por­traits.
Size of the Light. In­verse Square Law. Dif­fu­sion and con­trast. Tri­pod use. Spot­light vs flood­light, light­ing ra­tios, using dis­tance and light size to con­trol light in­ten­sity and con­trast. In­tro­duc­tion to strobe lights, flash meter.
The mean­ing of the por­trait: why are you pho­tograph­ing a par­tic­u­lar per­son? Will you at­tempt to re­veal an as­pect of who they are, or your per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of an as­pect of their phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance?
Pho­tog­ra­phers: Eli Reed, Roy De­car­ava, Robert Map­pelthorpe, Richard Ave­don, Irv­ing Penn, Bruce Weber, Annie Liebovitz,

FINAL IS AS­SIGNED

The Final is in two parts
Part A: Robert Frank: The Amer­i­cans In Brook­lyn
Part B: An ISSUU Doc­u­ment cre­at­ing an on­line port­fo­lio of your se­mes­ter’s work in this class. The ap­pli­ca­tion is very user friendly. The most im­por­tant part of the pro­ject is or­der­ing your work for the book.

Part A: Robert Frank: The Amer­i­cans In Brook­lyn
The Amer­i­cans by Robert Frank is one of the most in­flu­en­tial pho­tog­ra­phy books ever pub­lished. It is a col­lec­tion of 86 black-and-white pho­tographs taken from two road trips that spanned two years and the en­tire United States dur­ing the mid-1950’s.
The re­sound­ing crit­i­cism was that Robert Frank, orig­i­nally a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­pher from Switzer­land, had over­stepped his bounds—a for­eigner pro­duc­ing a col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of the un­der­belly of Amer­i­can life had no right to do so.

The final pro­ject of COMD 1340 is to delve into Robert Frank’s The Amer­i­cans (two copies are on re­serve in the Li­brary) and in­ter­pret one—or more—of the pho­tographs in the book, as a clan­des­tine ob­server of life in Brook­lyn.

To ac­com­plish this pro­ject, week by week, progress must be made to­ward the re­al­iza­tion of at least one 11 x 14” pho­to­graphic print based on a pho­to­graph from The Amer­i­cans.

Back­ground As­sign­ments:
Week 1, No­vem­ber 12:
• Read at least one chap­ter of ON THE ROAD by Jack Ker­ouac. Six chap­ters can be read for free at
http://​www.​wenovel.​com/​book/​331.​html
It’s avail­able in the li­brary; it’s not ex­pen­sive to buy. It’s a clas­sic tale of travel and free­dom that de­fined Amer­i­can cul­ture up until the com­puter.

• Go to the li­brary and look at the en­tire The Amer­i­cans. Go with friends.
Se­lect one image, shoot it and and up­load it to Bb so I know which image you plan in­ter­pret.

• Study the image and look for it in your daily life wher­ever you go.

• Set aside one day a week and travel around Brook­lyn with your cam­era, search­ing for the image of Robert Frank’s that you se­lected in the streets, houses, build­ings, and parks of Brook­lyn.

• Ten im­ages—photo sketches–are due every week for the next three weeks.

• Make a PDF weekly and to up­load them to Bb. We’ll be cri­tiquing your PDFs every week. 6 each ses­sion.

VERY IM­POR­TANT: Look at the work of JAMEL SHABAZZ and CAR­RIE MAE WEEMS

Week 2: Re­search the pro­ject:

https://​www.​nga.​gov/​collection/​art-​object-​page.​88902.​html

https://​www.​nga.​gov/​features/​robert-​frank/​the-​guggenheim-​trip-​1955-​57.​html

Go through all the links.

• Look at the con­tact sheets:

https://​www.​nga.​gov/​features/​robert-​frank/​photographs–work-prints-and-con­tact-sheets.html

Find the sheet where the image you chose re­sides and study the im­ages be­fore and after it.

Week 3: With half the pro­ject done, seek out new lo­ca­tions where you might un­cover your image in Brook­lyn. Go to neigh­bor­hoods you’ve never vis­ited, pho­to­graph the same place at dif­fer­ent times of day, seek par­al­lel cir­cum­stances to the im­ages you have al­ready shot.

Weeks 4: Con­tinue as last, so you end up with a suite of 20 im­ages from which to glean your final image(s).

Week 5: Go to

http://​www.​npr.​org/​2009/​02/​13/​100688154/​americans-​the-​book-​that-​changed-​photography
this is a nice 8-minute intro.

If you have time, go to:

and lis­ten to the talk by Robert Frank. It’s an hour long and a lit­tle slow, so I un­der­stand if you don’t get to it. But lis­ten­ing to him tell his story is an open win­dow to the work.

Week 6: Write one para­graph about the image you chose, why you chose it, and what your jour­ney to re-in­ter­pret it has taught you about your­self and the Brook­lyn that sur­rounds you.

De­liv­er­ables:
a) 20 im­ages—edited, dated and named—demon­strat­ing the de­vel­op­ment of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of one of Robert Frank’s pho­tographs in The Amer­i­cans, up­load dig­i­tal con­tact sheets to the ap­pro­pri­ate por­tal on Bb.
b) One 11 x 14 inch print—black-and-white or color—of your final image, printed on our print­ers in V-111
c) One 8×10 inch pdf of this image up­loaded to the ap­pro­pri­ate por­tal on Bb.
d) One para­graph up­loaded to Bb dis­cussing the process and jour­ney you un­der­took to com­plete your image. Tech­ni­cal data may be in­cluded.

It looks like a lot, but it’s not. I’ve out­lined the re­search; the im­ages exist all around you. Stu­dents have told me that start­ing was the most dif­fi­cult part, but then they re­ally got into it.

Week 11 – Nov 19, 2019 Por­trai­ture Con­tin­ued in-stu­dio

Week 12 – Nov 26, 2019 Basic Stu­dio Light­ing for Still Life
Using con­tin­u­ous lights. Di­rec­tion: front, side, back. Qual­i­ties of light: in­ten­sity, con­trast; Light­ing for still life sub­jects. Size of the Light. In­verse Square Law. Dif­fu­sion and con­trast. Tri­pod use. Spot­light vs flood­light, light­ing ra­tios, using dis­tance and light size to con­trol light in­ten­sity and con­trast.

As­sign­ment 4: Pho­to­graph some­thing trans­par­ent. It could be in­doors or out; set up or as found. 4-5 fin­ished edited im­ages re­quired. Due next week.

Enjoy your Thanks­giv­ing break

Week 13 – Dec 3, 2019 Cri­tique of trans­parency pro­ject, Robert Frank work, any catch-up shoot­ing.
How To Make an ISSUU doc. Quiz. Easy Quiz. Re­ally.

Week 14 – Dec 10, 2019 – Final Pro­ject Sup­port, ISSUU Sup­port, print­ing.

Week 15 – Dec 17, 2019 – Final Pro­ject Pre­sen­ta­tions, Cri­tique. All must at­tend.