Project three: Visual narratives and photographing the intangible.
Long story short:
A series photographs… when placed together they share similarities in style and concept. Even though each one looks great on its own, they look great when placed together.
Short story long:
This project is about working with a narrative, a feeling or a concept in mind. Your focus is what we’ll refer to as the “intangible”: anything beyond a material object. It is a reference to representing human emotion and intellect; something that we see in a photograph that triggers our emotions and thoughts. You could tell us a visual story, express the mood of the day, talk to us about culture without saying words. All we have to do is look at your photographs and feel and think.
It’s important to keep in mind that you need to step away from the conventional definitions of narrative, culture and mood. In the first, photographing a narrative, there doesn’t have to be an exact sequence of events. It could be expressing a place, an event or a feeling through photography. In the second, photographing culture, we are not talking only about folklore, ethnicity and race. We could talk about other human cultures where a group of people share similar interests, activities, behaviors, or beliefs. For example, coffee culture, gaming culture, sports culture. In the last theme, photographing mood, the conventional is to express happiness and sadness but to go beyond that you can express silence, darkness, or chaos.
This project is very open to your own interpretation and you can select one theme or combine more than one! Important note: don’t sit down and write a concept and ideate it. Go out and shoot! Try to find these ideas in your surroundings and when something clicks for you try to do more of it.
You will need to look at the environment differently now. You will need to not only turn your attention to detail and balance but to also breath in the world around you. It is not required that you stage anything, you can simply look for these visual stories and document them.
Project details:
- Six photographs, printed and cropped without any margin.
- Black and white is preferred, and only use color if it’s a must to your concept.
- Be consistent with using one application to take photographs.
- Check the dimensions of the photographs your smartphone or app produces before printing.
Proposal and tests due: 03/10
Final Due: 03/24
