Exercises for the Week of February 16, 2009

In preparation for the Critiquing workshop, your first task for this week (and right up until the class if you like) is to choose 3 images to be Critiqued in class.  (Remember, we aren't critiquing them on 'like' or 'don't like' only deconstructing them on a technical basis - and you get to tear apart my pictures first anyways...)  The 3 images can be any images you like - they can be ones you worked really hard to capture, ones that were total flukes and you don't know how to re-create, or ones that you take just for this purpose.  Please email the images to me by no later than March 1, 2009 so that I have time to prepare the slides.

Next, to keep you inspired for this week, here's the exercise.  Find a game in your house - Scrabble, Mousetrap, Jenga, a deck of cards - whatever you happen to have.  Create a scene using the game.  It may or may not have people or creepy dolls in it, and can be lit using either natural or available light (no flash allowed - sorry!)  Although we of course want to strive to make the technical decisions behind the scenes to get the exposure we want, the challenge is to start incorporating more creative elements like telling a story or showing mood.  So you want to create a scene that says something more than 'here is a game' - we want more than a knock-off advertisement for the game.  Try and let the picture tell the story of who's winning and who's losing, show that someone was cheating, or what happens when an important element is missing.  You can make it as serious or as silly as you like.  Have fun!