Wednesday April 25 day 2 writing reviews

General Information: How to write great reviews  

When writing reviews of any kind—restaurant reviews, book reviews, movie reviews, art reviews, music or concert reviews, and more—it's important to organize your thoughts carefully and always to keep in mind the people who will be likely to read what you write. Keep a few key pointers in mind to ensure that whatever review you write will be intelligent, informative, engaging, and fair.

1. Ask yourself “what does the reader want to know?”

This is the most important thing to remember when writing a review. You can craft the wittiest prose with the cleverest metaphors, but unless the reader finds out what they want to know, you’ve not done your job as a reviewer.

2. Decide on the overall point you want to get across to the reader.

If you know your subject matter well (which, as a reviewer, you should do), you’ll no doubt have a whole ream of opinions, both good and bad, that you can knock back and forth like a review-writing game of tennis. All those viewpoints can get confusing, so simplify it.

3. Be ruthless when editing – don’t be precious about your “art”.

If it doesn’t help you answer the reader’s question (point number 1, above), or isn’t directly conducive to getting your main point across (number 2), then get rid of it! You might be really proud of a line you’ve written, but unless it helps the review as a whole it’s no good.

4. Don’t write about yourself; it’s about the band, book, movie or whatever you’re reviewing.

A classic novice’s mistake this one. Look at any page of Amazon customer reviews, and you’ll no doubt come across someone who tells a story all about how the guy they work with said The Da Vinci Code is great, but I wasn’t sure because he’s not too smart, but then he did recommend that other book to me that was pretty good, although he’s a religious nut so it probably won’t be my thing, but I suppose I should because otherwise he’ll never shut up about it…WHO CARES?

5. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious.

You’re an expert in your field – anything you don’t know about the works of Stephen King isn’t worth knowing! So it can be a bit frustrating as a reviewer to have to hold your reader’s hand and explain to them that he’s a quite well-known horror writer and that they may even have heard of The Shining – it was made into a film, you know?

 6. Don’t praise—or damn—blindly. If you’re going to enshrine the subject, or entomb it, back up your opinions with concrete evidence. Why is that particular pizza so darn good? What's an example of a particular author's dazzling turns of phrase? What about the artist's technique makes a particular painting so exciting? In what ways did the cabaret singer fail to engage the audience?

7. Have an opinion. Writing a review is not an occasion to be modest or self-effacing. As long as you're capable of backing up your opinion, don’t be afraid to express, emphatically, what you feel or believe. Remember: professionalism is in the details. Specific facts, keen observations, and well-considered insights amount to more than opinions.

8. Avoid “I” and “In My Opinion”

Too many critics pepper reviews with phrases like “I think” or “In my opinion.” Again, this is often done by novice critics afraid of writing declarative sentences. But such phrases are unnecessary; your reader understands that it’s your opinion you’re writing about, not someone else’s. So leave out the “I.”

9. Give Background

The critic’s analysis is the centerpiece of any review, but that’s not much use to readers if he doesn’t provide enough background information.

So if you’re reviewing a movie, that means not just outlining the plot but also discussing the director and his previous films, the actors and perhaps even the screenwriter. Critiquing a restaurant? When did it open, who owns it and who’s the head chef? An art exhibit? Tell us a little about the artist, her influences and her previous works.

How to Write a Movie Review

Writing a movie review is a great way of expressing your opinion of a movie.  The purpose of most movie reviews is to help the reader in determining whether they want to watch, rent or buy the movie.  The review should give enough details about the movie that the reader can make an informed decision, without giving anyway any essentials such as the plot or any surprises.  

Below are our guidelines and tips for writing a good movie review.

 1. Watch the movie (seems obvious, but…)

 The first step in writing the review is to watch the movie.  Watch the movie in a relaxed environment you are familiar with.  You do not want to be distracted by an unfamiliar room.  Watching the movie a second time will help you absorb a lot more detail about the movie.  Take notes as they watch the movie review.  (you will turn these in!)

2. Give your opinion (look over the general guidelines again)

 Most movie reviewers will give their opinion of the movie.  This is important as the reviewer can express the elements of the movie they enjoyed or disliked.  However, as in all good journalism, the reviewer should also give impartial details, and allow the reader to make their own mind over an issue the reader liked or disliked.  Opinions should be explained to allow the reader to determine whether they would agree with your opinion.

 Many regular movie reviewers will develop a following.  If one can find a reviewer who shares a similar taste in films, one can confidently follow the reviewer’s recommendations.

 3. Who is your audience? (In this case it is your peers)

 You need to consider who your likely readers are.  Writing a movie review for children requires a different approach than if writing for a movie club.  Ensure you report on the factors that matter to your likely audience.

 4. Give an outline

 Give the plot outline of the movie, but don't give away essential details such as the end or any surprises.  If there is a big surprise you want to entice readers by telling them something special happens, just don't say what.

 5. Actors

 If the movie contains actors, as most do, detail who is starring in the movie and how well you think they acted. (research the actors / directors, etc)

 6. Structure

 Did the movie follow a regular predictable story line? Flashbacks?  Foreshadowing?

7. Cinematography /  lighting

 Give details about how well the movie was shot and directed.  How did the camera angles contribute to the tone and mood?

 8. Music

Did the movie have its own score, or did it feature songs from popular artists?

9. Many of those literary element terms that have you have had in English classes carry over into the film critic vocabulary: plot (and its various components), setting, characters, tone, dialogue, point of view, imagery and don’t forget to look for symbolism.

10. Read, read and read

 Read and check your review thoroughly.  It can be embarrassing to find errors in your work after it has been published.  This is especially important for reviews that will be published on the Internet, as search engines are always looking for the correct spellings of key words.

ASSIGNMENT: 1. Make sure you have read both the general information on reviews and the specifics as regards writing a film review. As well, even if you did not or, in the case of period 3 need not send along the questions, please have read the New Yorker review of The Hunger Games. This is the level of detail that should be in your review. 

                2. Choose a film from the list below and watch it. They are all approximately 1:35 minutes long; hence you have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in class to watch the movie privately. YOU NEED EAR PLUGS! 

                3. On Tuesday May 1, turn in your detailed outline of the film. This should include, not only the notes you took while watching the film, but background information on actors, director, sound and cinematography.

                 4. on Thursday May 3, send along by 3:00- not the usual midnight- your review, which will be a minimum of 500 words.  My grades are due the 4th; so no late work will be accepted.

1. Commando  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IliiXXDEEBE
2. Religuolous (documentary with Bill Maher) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f8fMmMhwRg
3. Pink Floyd- The Wall http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQE3vcwU97g
4. His Girl Friday (Katherine Hepburn / Cary Grant 1940) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rdSZUlzIQw
5. It Happened One Night (Claudette Colbert / Clark Gable  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZo7Gp03REY
6. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner  (Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCAaEbCDovQ
7. 12 Angry Men  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6QhKPZDZTE&feature=related
8. Urban Legend http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH3FgMtPEVU&feature=related
9. Shawshank Redemption  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtwXlIwozog

Tuesday April 24 writing reviews day 1

These next couple weeks we are working writing how to write reviews. Everyone will write one for a film and another of the their choice: music, theatre, restaurant or art exhibit.
For Tuesday April 24- all journalism classes are responsible for reading the review; however, only periods 7 and 9 (not 3)should answer the questions. These are due by midnight tonight. 
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE HEAD OR EAR PHONES TOMORROW.

Please read the following the film review from The New Yorker on The Hunger Games and answer the following questions.  Due by midnight tonight.
1. How has the author Denby prepared himself with background material to write the review?
2. What liteary elements do you note in the article. Give excerpts from the text.
3. What historical allusions does Denby make?
4. To what does Denby proclaim the success of the film?
5.What do we know of the actor Jennifer Lawrence's background?
6. Who is the cinematographer and what type of camera work is used in the film?
7. According to Denby, why is this film incapable of being a classic?
8  Discuss who the audience is for this review and how you know it.

The Current Cinema

Kids at Risk

“The Hunger Games” and “Bully.”

by David Denby April 2, 2012

Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” (the first book in a best-selling young-adult trilogy) is a sensational piece of pop primitivism—a Hobbesian war of all against all. In a dystopian society in the future, a group of wealthy, epicene overlords—authoritarians with violet hair and the vicious manners of French courtiers—threaten and control an impoverished population. Years ago, the virtuous commoners rose up, unsuccessfully, against their decadent rulers, and they’ve been both cosseted and terrorized ever since by a yearly lottery in which two teens from each of twelve districts are selected, trained, and turned into media stars. They are then set loose in a controlled wilderness, where they must survive hunger and one another, until only one of them is left alive. The survivor will bring home to his district both glory and food, and everyone, rich and poor, watches the events on television. Collins’s idea seems to be derived from the bloodier Greek myths and Roman gladiatorial contests (the big shots have names like Seneca and Claudius); from William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”; and from TV spectacles like the myriad “Survivor” shows and sado-Trumpian elimination contests. Collins’s strategy of putting girls and boys (some as young as twelve) at the center of a deadly struggle adds tense, nasty excitement to the old tales and tawdry TV rituals she draws on.

Trying to explain the trilogy’s extraordinary popularity, critics and commentators have reached for metaphors. Perhaps it’s that the books offer a hyper-charged version of high school, an everyday place with incessant anxieties: constant judgment by adults; hazing, bullying, and cliques; and, finally, college-entry traumas. If you stretch the metaphor a bit, the books could be seen as a menacing fable of capitalism, in which an ethos of competition increasingly yields winner-take-all victors. Collins might seem to be one of those victors herself: there are twenty-four million copies of the trilogy in print in the United States alone. But maybe the reason for its success is simple: it makes teens feel both victimized and important.

Collins understands her audience well, and she can write. Her first-person narrator, Katniss Everdeen, who hails from a shabby coal-mining area, is a tough, resourceful girl, a huntress who protects her family. Collins, staying inside Katniss’s head, produces short, tactile sentences that are precise about apprehension and physical experience. However fanciful the basic premise, the books are rugged girls’ adventure literature of the kind that used to be written for boys. Making an exciting movie out of “The Hunger Games” should not have been that hard.

I certainly have no quarrel with the casting. Jennifer Lawrence demonstrated a convincing strength as Ree, the Ozarks girl with a husky voice and pale-blue eyes in “Winter’s Bone.” In “The Hunger Games,” as Katniss—a more dynamic version of Ree—she has a lightly burnished copper complexion, and when she’s still, there’s something luminous, slightly otherworldly about her. Her gravity and her steady gaze make her a fine heroine. And I enjoyed nineteen-year-old Josh Hutcherson as Peeta, the other competitor from Katniss’s district, who adores her; he has a lost look, an engaging not-quite-handsomeness. In true young-adult-fiction style, Katniss has a second admirer—stalwart, gentle Gale, played by Liam Hemsworth, who looks, in this movie, like a larger Taylor Lautner. Among the adults, Stanley Tucci and Elizabeth Banks, wearing enormous wigs, camp it up as the rulers. Though the satiric point of making some of the plutocrats monsters out of an eighteenth-century farce eludes me,

But the rest of “The Hunger Games” is pretty much a disaster—disjointed, muffled, and even, at times, boring. Collins herself labored on the script, along with Gary Ross and Billy Ray, and Ross (“Pleasantville,” “Seabiscuit”) directed. Working with the cinematographer Tom Stern, Ross shoots in a style that I have come to despise. A handheld camera whips nervously from one angle to another; the fragments are then jammed together without any regard for space. You feel like you’ve been tossed into a washing machine (don’t sit in the front rows without Dramamine). Even when two people are just talking calmly, Ross jerks the camera around. Why? As the sense of danger increases, he has nothing to build toward. Visually, he’s already gone over the top. And the action itself is a thrashing, incoherent blur—kids tumbling on the ground or wrestling with each other. Katniss stalks various kids with her bow and arrow, but she kills only one intentionally—a domineering sadist—and you don’t see the arrow hit him; you don’t even see him fall. Ross consistently drains away all the tensions built into the grisly story—the growing wariness and suspicion that each teen-ager must feel as the number of those still alive begins to diminish, or the horror (or glee) that some of them experience as they commit murder. The camera rushes through the wilderness, but, in the end, the movie looks less like a fight to the death than like a scavenger hunt. Katniss is always finding something useful in a tree or lying on the ground.

“The Hunger Games” is a prime example of commercial hypocrisy. The filmmakers bait kids with a cruel idea, but they can’t risk being too intense or too graphic (the books are more explicit). After a while, we get the point: because children are the principal audience, the picture needs a PG-13 rating. The result is an evasive, baffling, unexciting production—anything but a classic
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Monday / Tuesday April 16 / 17 finishing up project

All research articles for the investigative reporting project were due the Wednesday before the break. Any received after the Thursday earned you an individual 50 points. If I have nothing from you, this part of the project is a 0.

What now?  This is a recap of the previously posted blog information.
Due this Wednesday from each group or individual, if you are working independently:

Newsletter. 
  Of what does the newsletter consist?
 You should have chosen a template either from Microsoft Publisher or Works (Mac folks) You will take the edited articles and insert them. As well, the newsletter person will add photos and a graph or chart. Make sure you have a title for your newsletter. You may also include other relevant information, as in quotes or comments. Just make sure you identify the source. These should be aesthetically pleasing, as well as informational.  ALL NEWSLETTERS ARE DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS ON WEDNESDAY.  THERE WILL BE NO MORE CLASS TIME. GROUP GRADE; SO MAKE SURE YOUR PARTNER IS ON TASK.

Prezi.
 So as everyone knows how to do a Prezi, your classroom presentation of your project is in this format. The Prezi should have your topic title as the centerpiece, with the various parts of reporting supporting this. You and your knowledge are the focus. The Prezi supports you, as it should in a Power Point. That means there are primarily images and very, very few words. You are not reading off the screen. The presentations will take place Wednesday through Friday only.

Wednesday 28 March Investigative reporting project

Investigative Reporting Project.
In groups of two or three (maximum), (you may also work independently...talk to me)your team will choose an investigative topic of national or local interest to report on. Each group member will equally contribute articles from a different angle or issue that is related to the overall topic.
Your group will then organize their articles into a minimum two / three page spread complete with headlines, photos, graphs, and statistics or information boxes. (The page number reflects the number of people in your group.) Lastly, the groups will complete a six to seven minute Prezi presentation that documents their findings and share it with the class. 
Summary / Checklist:
1.  Prezi Presentation: Only one prezi account is needed per group, although each person will work on the final product. This should consist of primarily images and selected, minimal words / quotes from your report. As in a good Power Point presentation, you are the speaker and the technology supports you. (Group Grade- if you are not available on the day of the presentation, but your contributed material is, you will recive a 70 for this part) These will take place the Wednesday after the break on April 18.

2. Printed Material: your group will hand in the your news that includes a minimum of one article for each member of the group,(make sure your name is identified after the article's headline)  an equal number of photos and one item from a statistical chart or graph. (group grade based upon effective use of publisher or comparable MAC program.) This will be collected at the beginning of class on Wednesday April 17.  NO LATE MATERIAL WILL BE ACCEPTED.

3. Printed Material: separately hand in your personal article that you contributed to the paper. (individual grade based upon grammar, punctuation, style and content) Due Tuesday April 3. If you have not sent it in, consider that you are now working independently. That means you are responsible for an individual prezi, and your partner (s) must adapt as well. Communicate with your partner(s). Length of each article: minimum 250 words. Make sure you acknowledge your sources and include quotes.

4.Grading each other: In order to promote work equitablity, each member of the group will grade the other (s). This will go in the 40% category. I will distribute the rubic.
FOR Wednesday: PLEASE POST YOUR GROUP AND TOPIC CHOICE (no duplicates within a class) Below are some ideas. Talk to me if you have something else in mind. Possible investigative reporting topics Surveillance issues: 1.airports, 2. traffic, 3. schools, 4. national borders, 5. satellite technology 6. Homeland Security 7. Head coverings for women 8. Interrogation techniques (www.us-government-torture.com) 9. Disaster Funds- think of natural disasters. 10. Bullying 11. Gang stalking /covert harassment 12. Space weapons ((microwave, electromagnetic, radio frequency, acoustic, infrasound, laser) 13. Condom distribution in schools 14. Experimentation on human subjects using various electronic devices and weaponry 15. feral animals in Monroe County 16. HIV and Monroe County 17. Hospital care – there are numerous angles here. 18. Poverty pimps: Nonprofit organizations seem happy and good from the outside, but from the inside, they can prove devious. 19. Jail occupancy 20. racial achievement gap 21. violent crime in Monroe County 22. Paying for an election 23. clinical drug trials 24. juvenile justice in Monroe County 24. local terrorism preparedness 25. prostitution in Monroe County 25. Food safety 26. Global Warming 27. College athletes and academics 28. nuclear energy 29. Fraking 30. coal as energy 31. alternative fuels 32. cost of flying 33. medical research 34. obesity 35 international sex trafficking 36 race and the media 37 charter schools 38. car safety


Thursday and Friday- March 29 and 30 and Monday and Tuesday April 16 and 17.  This is the time to do your individual research and take your notes, including source material and any quotes you may want to include. Plan so that you can send along your well-written article by Tuesday April 3. Remember that if it's not in, you are considered to be working independently and are responsible for an individual newsletter and prezi. 
 Tuesday Wednesday Thursday April 3, 4 and 5 Send along your work to a team member, who should put the newsletter together. Another member should start assembling the Prezi.
Monday and Tuesday April 16 and 17 ...last days to get everything together.
Wednesday April 18...every group or individual will turn in their completed newletters. Prezi's will begin.

Friday March 23 your photo presentations

Any "What We Eat" photo assignments that have not been received are zeros at this point....if you have any questions, check yesterday's blog.  Thank you to everyone who sent in their work.

Moving on...Today, Monday and Tuesday you will share your photo projects. While you will not be asked to analyze each one, be prepared to to talk about the ones I ask you to.  Make sure you have a theme,  and can discuss whether it is an establishing shot, medium shot or close up, what type and where is the lighting coming from, how you followed - or did not- the rules of perpective, any framing techniques and  how you created motion and drama. Bad shots are fine, but you should be able to articulate why.

Thursday March 22 Where We Eat photo assignment

In class project: due by midnight today (Thursday)
Please remember to bring your photo projects to class tomorrow. They should be on a flash drive.
Please read the material below and look at the pictures that follow.
Read the directions for the assignment carefully. Send along your responses.


Breaking Bread Everywhere, Plentifully or Pitifully
Imagine gathering all the food you plan to eat today. Now take a picture of it.
In an unusual project, Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio, a photographer and writer, traveled the world collecting photos and stories about what people eat in a day. They documented the meager meals of a Masai goat herder during a drought, the fast-food diet of an American long-haul trucker and a veritable feast of lamb kebabs and other foods set out by an Iranian bread baker.
The photos, first compiled in the book “What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets,” have been selected for an unusual exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. The result is an anthropological exploration of the culture of eating that is by turns mouthwatering, repulsive and surprising.
A mountain farmer in Ecuador offers tantalizing cheese empanadas along with roasted potatoes, barley soup and plantains. Meanwhile, a 21-year-old Mall of America worker in Minnesota is photographed with chicken fries from Burger King, tacos from Taco Bell and large cups of Dr Pepper and Mountain Dew.
Flanked by a herd of sheep, a fit-looking Spanish shepherd poses with his dog near a table filled with cans of beer, which he drinks with breakfast and dinner, as well as lamb, cured pork belly, fish and fruit. Several bottles of water and Gatorade dominate the photograph of a 20-year-old American soldier headed to Iraq.
“It isn’t so much to point out problems as it is to open eyes,” Ms. D’Alusio said. “We’ve been focused on food for a while because everybody has to eat. It’s a common denominator.”
David Rabkin, director of current science and technology at the Museum of Science, said the photo exhibit had been a hit with visitors and would continue at least through early next year.
“Food is a hot topic — people are interested in it and its many dimensions, from its health impact, to the experience of great food, to the bigger picture of our global food system and issues of social justice,” Mr. Rabkin said in an e-mail. “Food is personal. It’s a great topic for our museum because it’s so compelling to so many of our visitors and so rich in terms of the educational directions in which we can go with them.”
Each photograph is accompanied by a calorie count of the food displayed, but the authors warn that it’s not necessarily representative of the person’s average daily consumption. Still, the pictures do give a glimpse into how both hunger and excess coexist on the planet. The listed calories range from 800 to 12,300, beginning with a gaunt Kenyan herder and ending with an overweight British woman who claims to regularly binge on junk food.
Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, who wrote the book’s foreword, said the photographs were only a snapshot of how individuals from different cultures choose to eat. As a result, she notes, the reader can’t draw broad conclusions about the diet of the individual or culture pictured, but the photographs are still revealing.
“In some places the food looks extremely familiar, and other places it doesn’t,” Dr. Nestle said. “Clearly, everybody does not eat like us. There’s a college student in China eating Kentucky Fried Chicken, and there she is looking quite proud about it. It does make you worry about the influx of American fast food into these cultures, yet there seems to be much holding on to the traditional foods.”
Mr. Menzel and Ms. D’Alusio had documented food habits in two previous books. “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats” is made up of photographs of the weekly food purchases of families around the world. “Man Eating Bugs” documents entomophagy, the eating of insects, still common in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Another project, “Material World,” has photographs of families with all of their belongings, highlighting their most precious possession. “We present information to people rather than drawing conclusions,” Mr. Menzel said. “We’re trying to educate readers by show and tell.”

Your class assignment:

Objective: to understand what ordinary details of our daily lives say about who we are, where we’re from and what we care about?

On a word document list 10 things you remember eating yesterday. 

Next, compare your list with a partner or two and discuss these questions. 

1) What do you think these lists say about who you are, where you live and what you care about? 2) If, one hundred years from now, a historian or anthropologist was to come upon your lists, what might he or she conclude about you, your life and where you’re from? What questions might he or she have?

Now write out a personal response to the following. These should be sent along.

1. What photographs interested or surprised you most? Why? 
2.  What questions did those photos raise for you?
3. What can these photos tell you about the lives of the people pictured?
4.  What do you think they can’t tell you?
5. What does the photographer for the food series, Peter Menzel, mean when he says, “We present information to people rather than drawing conclusions … we’re trying to educate readers by show and tell”? How does this apply to these  photos? 

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By TARA PARKER-POPE, Editor

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March 19 and 20 photo analysis assignment

 

Monday and Tuesday March photo analysis 

Please read the following short essay. 

a Great Shot by Andrew Hudson

Photography is the perfect companion to travel. It encourages us - as travelers - to discover an area; it provides tangible memories of the trip; and it is an enjoyable way to express ourselves in art.
A camera is really an excuse to delve deeper into a place than we otherwise would. Looking for a good shot forces us to seek out the unique features and scenic beauty of a location, to explore further, and to interact with our surroundings. When you press the shutter release, you're making a personal connection to the place and it's people. You are there. Photographs preserve the memories of our trip. We can show others the exciting places we've been, the wonderful scenery, and the great people we met. Our minds are triggered by images and reviewing our photographs helps everyone on the trip relive its adventures and misadventures. Taking pictures is also a very accessible artform. With a little thought and effort you can create captivating images of your own creation and interpretation.
The Secret of Photography
Fortunately, taking good photographs has little to do with owning expensive equipment and knowing technical data. The secret is in seeing. Ask yourself: What do I look at, and how do I see it? A good photograph has qualities that display the skill, art, interests, and personality of the photographer. What Makes A Good Photograph? A photograph is a message. It conveys a statement ("Here we are in ..."), an impression ("This is what ... looks like"), or an emotion. You are an author trying to convey this message in a clear, concise, and effective way. But how?
Like any message, you first need a subject. This may be your traveling companions, a building, a natural vista, or some abstract form. The subject is the central point of interest and is usually placed in the foreground of the shot (towards the viewer). Now we compose the message by including a second element, a context, which is often the background. The context gives the subject relevance, presence, location, or other interest. It is the combination of the two elements - subject and context, foreground and background - that tells the message.
Just as important as knowing what to include, is knowing what to exclude. Anything that isn't part of the subject or its context is only a distraction, cluttering up the image and diluting the message. So eliminate extraneous surroundings - usually by moving closer to the subject - and make a clear, tidy shot. A painter creates art by addition - adding more paint - whereas a photographer creates art by subtraction - removing unnecessary elements.
The recipe for a good photograph is:
"A foreground, a background, and nothing else."
What Makes A Great Photograph?
A great photograph is piece of art. It captures the spirit of a subject and evokes emotion. Bob Krist calls it "The Spirit of Place." You are an artist that can use subtle tricks to appeal to your viewer's senses. Let's see how.
A picture is a playground, with places for our eyes to wander and investigate, plus spaces for them to rest and relax. When we first see something, we are defensive. Our eyes instinctually find light, bright areas, and look for people, particularly their eyes and mouth. Do we know the people in the picture? What are they feeling, and how does this relate to us? Are they drawing attention to something? If so, do we recognize it (a building, a landmark) and what does it look like? What is this picture about? What is the main subject or objective? How big is the subject? We determine scale by comparing elements to something of known size, such as a person, animal, or car. Once we've checked for people, we turn our attention to more abstract features.
We first notice the subject's color or tone. Firey red, calming blue, natural green, foreboding black. Then we see shape. Soft curves, hard edges, sweeping lines. How the light strikes the subject gives subtle hints as to its three-dimensional form. You, as a photographer, can manipulate this by searching for shades and shadows, shifting intensities of tone and hues. How is the eye drawn into the picture?
Form leads us to texture, how the subject might feel to the touch. Is it soft, is it smooth, hard, or rough? Does it have character and warmth? The way the elements are juxtaposed and affected by the same light, makes us consider their qualities and interrelation. Balance draws our eye from one element to another, investigating their unity, contrast, and detail, each item adding pleasure to the next. What is the relevance of everything?
The overall composition, the proportions of layout, denotes importance of the elements. As the artist, you can decide which features appeals to you, and how best to emphasize them.
The recipe for a great photograph is: "Consider how the parts interrelate with the whole".

ASSIGNMENT: DUE TUESDAY March 20 by midnight:

You will find 15 images below where you will demonstrate your understanding of photo composition and lighting techniques. In a word document, write a short paragraph for each of the 15 images. Begin with a description of what you see in terms of people, place, time of day. Be very descriptive. Taking your time with this will help you visualize your own photos. Next analyze the photo as to why it works. Note depth of field (what is in focus), use of a fast or slow shutter, fill in flash, shadows, focal points and how movement is captured on a flat plane. This is writing assignment, so take your time. Use any handouts I have given you. CHOOSE 10 of the photos only.

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