Academics > Central Study > Personal Photo Documentary

Personal Photo Documentary

In this half semester central study course, team taught by Laurie Giardino and Matthew Kenny, and open to students in grades 7-12, the assignment was to create a personal photo documentary. Using a sequence of black and white photographs, taken and developed as part of the course, students also learned how to create a layout on laptop computers using Adobe PageMaker and PhotoShop. Class meetings were used for demonstrations, group critiques of works-in-progress, museum and gallery visits, slide shows and lectures, guest speakers from photojournalist backgrounds, and the planning and hanging of group exhibitions.On an individual level students were expected to be shooting (lots of) film, processing negatives, printing photographs, scanning, or working on their required two-page layout with the use of the laptops.
Students were assessed by their participation, motivation, wise use of time and by their final personal documentary due at the end of the term in two forms: the original photographs and the digital layout for our class publication. As a result of this course, students learned all about developing themes, sequencing, story telling, writing, ethics in photojournalism, camera handling, proper exposure and metering, basic darkroom techniques, design and composition, visual literacy, use of technology in desktop publishing, graphic design, typography, organization, understanding deadline pressure and showmanship. Note: no previous experience in photography was required for this course, so student work ranged from the beginning to the more advanced levels of proficiency.

To view the resulting publication, in which each student created a two-page spread, and that was produced inhouse on a copy machine, click here (Adobe Acrobat).

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