[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/peopleevents/e_silents.html

http://www.lightstalking.com/how-to-do-stop-motion-photography/

http://www.lightstalking.com/how-to-do-stop-motion-photography/

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.