Photo 1B Syllabus

SPRING 2009

Comfort is your enemy!

"Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself." Chinese Proverb

"Create like a God, Command like a King, and Work like a slave" Brancusi

 

This class is about you, your interests, your passions, your desires to make photographs. Many of us have been telling students for years what we learned from Joseph Campbell. "I say, follow your bliss and donÕt be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time."

 

"Be serious, be passionate, wake up!"—Susan Sontag

 John M. Grzywacz-Gray

Photo Lab Phone  805.378.1442

John's office 805.378.1400 x1875

Fax: 805.378.1499

                                      

E-mail   johngrzz@gmail.com please put "student" in header

My web Site: http://www.oocities.org/grzz4856 click on Links for useful class sites 

Text book web site: http://www.prenhall.com/london/

 

Office Hours:
Monday: 5 pm until 6:00 pm
Tuesday: 4 pm to 6:00 pm
Wednesday: 4 pm until 6:00 pm
Other Hours are available by appointment.

 

ACCESS Information:

"If you have a learning, attention, or physical disability that may require

classroom or test accommodations, please let me know as soon as possible.

If you have not already done so, please register with ACCESS.  ACCESS is

just to the right of the Campus Center Building or you can call them at

378-1461.  Verification from ACCESS Is required before any classroom or

testing accommodation can be made."

 

Course objectives:

Demonstrate a complete understanding of exposure, film development, digital workflow and printing.

Prepare and process prints on fiber base papers and ink jet prints

Explore the rudiments of 4x5 camera work, Studio electronic flash lighting, Medium format camers.

Demonstrate your ability to express yourself.

Explore contemporary fine art and professional photography.

Explore experimental techniques.

Identify conceptual ideas in specific photographic works.

Demonstrate the ability to scan negatives.

Demonstrate the ability to make digital prints.

 

The Class

This course will explore digital and film processes as well as creative possibilities.

We will  explore advanced technical topics based on the Zone System of Exposure.

We will examine the role of the computer and digital imaging.

The ideas we will explore will be applicable to photographers practice their craft as professionals, and fine artists.

We will look at work created by photographers and try to enlarge our perception of what photography is or can be.

 

Materials

You can choose to print digitally in our new digital lab.

Printing Paper - any you choose.

If you have NO preference use Ilford MultiGrade RC.

Film - T - Max 100 or 400 or Tri-X or whatever

You will need at least 12 rolls of 36-exposure 35mm film

Mounting Boards: You will need archival or conservation mounting boards for preparing your final prints.

—Manila Folders. You will need Manila folders for turning in Assignments. You will need to tape the edges shut so that the folder is a pocket.

—Negative Holders. You will need negative holders to store your negatives safely. There are several different kinds available from your local camera store. Pick the one that is best for you.

You should have a clean Towel for every lab period.

Locks for Lockers .... See Lab Staff and/or Steve Callis

 

Time required for class: Approximately 9 hours a week, 2  hours of lecture

3 hours of lab, 4 hours of outside work ... (2 hours for every hour of lecture)

 

Grades

Effort is important. Do not try to figure out what I am looking for. I want you to listen to yourself. I want you to find your own voice, follow your own bent.

Your grade is based on:

Attendance, Participation in classroom discussions., Assignments, Final Portfolio

Each assignment must be printed. A digital portfolio of your semesters work must be turned in at the final.

                 

Assignments are due two weeks after they have been assigned.

You are encouraged to work hard in this class. Every discipline requires a work ethic, your work rate will determine how much you accomplish. You may occasionally choose or be encouraged to go off on your own ... that is fine as long as you turn in the work and even better if you put it up on the wall for a critique.

 

Completion of Assignments

The most important issue is to complete the assignment. You may not always do it to your satisfaction ... but complete it.

Final Critique

The final requires a portfolio of five archivally processed and matted prints that make a cohesive statement. In other words they all share some common concept / vision. You are responsible for a presentation not less than 5 minutes and not more than 10 minutes.

Gallery Requirement:

You must attend 2 photography exhibitions and write a brief statement that describes your response to the photographs. I am interested in an intellectual and emotional response. Please, get from me, approval for the gallery visit in advance..

 

Assignment  Next Week bring a print that represents your best work to date.

It should represent the best you have done to date ... by your standards. Develop criteria between now and next week that you will use in evaluating photographs by yourself and others. Please put it in written form and turn it in next week. Since this is an image that you feel is representative of you and one that you feel relatively close to ... write a paragraph or two about the image and be prepared to read it to the rest of the class next week.

Assignment Prepare a short self-promotion resume or biography

Prepare a resume or short biography and bring it to your next class.  Make it as visually interesting as you can, but it must be no larger than 8.5 by 11 inches. Include a photograph of yourself ... the photo will not be returned.

I am interested in the following: Your Past Achievements, College Major, Goals, Music, literary, film, activity and artistic preferences. What are you most passionate about? What do you expect to learn from this class?

Assignment Bring in a paragraph or bullet points that state as specifically as you can what you hope to get out of this class.

 

See 1B assignment directory for more information

Week 1 introduction and slides of previous student work

The exposure meter,  Assign: bring Biography to next class, Shoot a roll of film on any topic of your choice, Bring your favorite photo to class next week for a friendly critique.

Week 2 - Process first roll of film, make contact sheet and print.

The Zone system and exposure, how it relates to digital. Critique,

Assign: ISO speed and development test.

Week 3 - Printing techniques, diffusion, multiple filter, flashing.

     Lee Friedlander, continue printing from first roll

     Assign: No Peekee/Shoot from the hip. 1 roll

Week 4- Lab - Introduction to printing on the Ink Jet printer

     DUE: Prints from first roll

     ASSIGN: A digital print from a scan or digital image

     Overview of Digital.

Week 5- Introduction to Medium Format

ASSIGN: Hassleblad 2 student teams, 1 roll of film minimum per team and 1 print each from the team.

DUE: ISO speed test / development

Week 6- LECTURE: Inroduction to studio lighting.

      DUE: No peekee

Week 7 Introduction to the 4x5

      ASSIGN: Team with one or two other students to make a 4x5 photo.

Week 8 DUE Hassleblad prints for critique

      ASSIGN: Infrared

Week 9 ASSIGN: Architecture - preferably a Ventura County Historical building or site. Use

     35mm, or 4x5. Film or Digital. Pick something close.

DUE: Digital Print

Week 10- Lab demonstration toners, potassium ferricyanide, archival processing.

      DUE: Infrared

Week 11 -

      Expansion and Compaction

Week 12 - Optional assignment number one due

Week 13 - SPRING Break

Week 14 - Portraiture

Week 15 - DUE second optional assignment due

DEMO: Matt Cutting and Presentation for Final, permanence issues for film and prints, digital and film.

Week 16 - Space Project

Week 17 - DUE: Space Project

Week 18 - Final - portfolio of 5 compelling images that are connected by vision and concept.

 

Some quotes to think about:

 

from Emmet Gowin

"As I worked, I soon realized that I was not able to foresee the best pictures and often could not identify the better negative until much later. This mean that in my future efforts there would be an element dedicated to what canÕt be foreseen - to risk and chance. (It turns out that the Ôunknown is more friendly than we think;Õ as D. H. Lawrence said, ÔEven an artist knows that his work was never in his mind, he could never have thought it before it happened.Õ Rarely am I tempted to speak of originality.) I far prefer the formulation ÔI am the origin of this work.Õ That simply means that I am responsible for it-that I accept the consequences.

I had set out to describe the world within my domain, to live a quality with things. Enrichment, I saw, involves a willingness to accept a changing vision of the nature of things-which is to say, reality. Often I had thought that things teach me what to do. Now I would prefer to say: As things teach us what we already are, we gain a vision of the world."

 

from Lasso Moholy-Nagy

"The true function of art is to be the graph of our time, an intuitive search for the missing equilibrium among our emotional, intellectual, and social lives. Art is the most intimate language of the senses, a direct linking of man to man."

 

"Photography is a true expression of how one feels about life in it's entirety." - Ansel Adams

 

 

"To see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things." - Ansel Adams

 

"To capture a moment that people cannot always see." - Harry Callahan

"The creative photographer sets free the human contents of objects; and imparts humanity to the inhuman world." Clarence John Laughlin

 

"I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed." - Gary Winogrand

 

"Photography is a tool for dealing with things everybody knows about, but isn't attending to." - Emmet Gowin

 

"...it is my conviction that photographs are merely by - products of man's spiritual quest toward fulfillment. Attempting to improve photography, while ignoring the individual's life attitude, is as futile as trying to print a blank negative created by the camera's malfunction. What is the 'malfunction' of contemporary photographers? The answer comes to me ever clearer. They have been defeated by the trivia, lethargy and valueless ness of everyday life. They are not aspiring to greatness, because such aspirations seem to be a futile effort. The problem with contemporary photography is that it has no heroes. This word does not refer to any particular person rather to the fact the spirit of greatness has been lost." - Bill Jay

 

"Photographers have chosen to be artists. That presumes that they have 'moments of intensity' that transcend the banal ordinariness of life. Yet here they sit wallowing in trivia trying to convince people their childish pies are castles. Art is more than that. Photography deserves better." - Bill Jay

 

"I call art everything that takes us out of real life and tends to elevate us —The one aim an artist could confess to should be that of producing great art. But this postulates a nobility of spirit that at no period has been so difficult to attain." Ozenfant

 

"And here is the essence of humanistic photography. In order to make photographs that transcend 'what is,' the photographer must make value judgments. In order to make value judgments he must have an all-pervasive personal code of values or ethics. In order to use this code of values he must make choices. In order to make choices he must be aware of alternatives. In order to understand the alternatives he must have a sure knowledge of, and be constantly involved in, the nature of self. The humanistic photographer has a philosophy or attitude to life based on his personal relationship with reality. This is the real subject of his photographs, not the material objects as they exist; even though they might appear to be of something, they are about the photographer as a transmitter of messages through metaphors. ...The humanist acts out of volition, towards change. Value judgments are essential to humanism..." - Bill Jay

 

Fredrick Sommer once wrote: "Reality is greater than our dreams yet it is within ourselves that we find the clues to reality. Clues are essences and keys are stronger than the doors they open. Life itself is not reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles. If we did not dream reality would collapse."

 

 Alfred Stieglitz once wrote: "What may be the deepest meanings of the images shown are not always easily recognizable at first glance. They emerge with increasing clarity only as we experience them. They take on a reality to the degree that we are able to penetrate the masks that hide us from ourselves."