# High School Photo Assignment



## Patm1313 (Jan 9, 2011)

Hey, I shot this for my high school photo class assignment, and I'm looking for some critique. The assignment was named "Portrait Within a Frame" and I chose to do something out of the ordinary.

Lighting was two warm white incandescent (can't tell you the wattages) bulbs on either side of the model. Shot with a Nikon D40, and NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. I used both GIMP and Photoshop to edit the picture.








By the way, I haven't been on this forum for quite some time. So if this thread is located in the wrong subforum, I would appreciate it if the mods would move it.

Thanks for any critique,
Patm1313


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## kezsaj (Jan 9, 2011)

The unpressed backdrop is very distracting.


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## dirtfan21 (Jan 10, 2011)

Sorry dont do nothing for me.,unpressed backdrop, and alot of ps.


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## ghpham (Jan 10, 2011)

I don't get it.


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## Patm1313 (Jan 10, 2011)

I know that the unpressed backdrop is distracting. Unfortunetly, I have no say in the matter. The setup was in class, so I couldn't go up to my photo teacher and say, "Hey, go home and iron this and when you get back I'll take shots for your assignment." I did consider editing it out in Photoshop and replacing it with a texture, but I was unable to do that because had I, my photo teacher would have challenged me saying that I had taken the assignment out of class.

This guy is the "I-got-an-art-degree-but-I-didn't-put-it-to-use-so-now-I'm-a-high-school-photo-teacher" type. Him and I don't see eye-to-eye on just about anything. As far as his critiques of my work, they aren't worth much to me as a photographer. It's mostly a lot of hand waving and questioning me on whether I followed the exact pretexts of the assignment. For this assignment, the guy was giving me a crappy setup, and not any real way to add variety.

Which is why Photoshop came into play. Because of my inability to do anything creative during the shoot, I had to substitute Photoshop for creativity. Trust me, I don't like throwing 2 or 3 hours of my life away on Photoshop for a high school photo assignment that I'll probably forget about in two month's time.


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## KmH (Jan 10, 2011)

You're so right!

Why _*in the he!!*_ should your instructor expect you to follow the the assignment?
After all, none of your future employeers will have any assignment requirements, right? They'll just let you do whatever you think is cool, right?

Why the he!! should you be required to demonstrate that you understand the information the obvious looser, "but-I-didn't-put-it-to-use-so-now-I'm-a-high-school-photo-teacher" instructor is trying to convey.

Why should he even bother trying to teach you anything at all. You obviously already know way more about photography than he does.  :thumbup:


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## Patm1313 (Jan 10, 2011)

KmH said:


> You're so right!
> 
> Why _*in the he!!*_ should your instructor expect you to follow the the assignment?
> After all, none of your future employeers will have any assignment requirements, right? They'll just let you do whatever you think is cool, right?
> ...


 
Please understand, Keith, that I'm not trying to put my instructor down when I talk about him. If you met him, I have a feeling you would agree with me on my assessment of him. He is a bitter person that appears (at least on the surface) as someone who doesn't enjoy the position in life that he is in. I do feel that in some regards he takes this out on his students.

You're seeming to me like you are the "I walked to school both ways barefoot, uphill, in the snow" sort of person who envisions me as a hellion that just needs something to complain about. I'm not the typical teenager with the "I'm better than everyone else" attitude. As much as I dislike my photo instuructor, he has taught me key things, which run the gamut from photography techniques to just how to try to work with someone whom you rely on for your short-term success. Like I said in the previous post, one of my main concerns with him as a teacher is that his critiques are not helping me evolve as a photographer.

And just an end note: Your condescending and sarcastic tone in your post is quite hypocritcal, as you seem to be putting me down for putting down my instuctor. I never once said that I wasn't intersted in following his expectations for the assignment. I think you severly misunderstood my post as an immature attempt to denounce my instructor. Rather, it was just a post explaining the undpressed backdrop and the issues that I had with the project, some of which where out of my control. But I guess I shouldn't be expecting enything crazy coming from a high school photo class budget. So staying true to the final line of your post, "illegitimi non carborundum", I'm not interested in what you have to say if you are going to continue to use your mocking tone, and not offer me any critique on my shot.

On a different note, I showed the project to my photo teacher today. Despite his usual attitude of being overly critical of my work, he said that he liked it. It has been suggested by several of my peers in the class with more experience with the teacher than I that this was so because of my project being unique in comparison to other works. Now that I know this, I plan to focus on bringing in new techniques to my work in an attempt to always stand out from the crowd, so to speak.

-Patm1313


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## Fender5388 (Jan 10, 2011)

if you feel that strongly about your art then you can do whats requried in class and then outside of class, work on your own thing, if you know what your teacher is into then conform to his ideas for the grade and take his teachings with a grain of salt if you dont agree. 
but really you shouldnt post a photo asking for critiques if you are just going to make excuses as to why its not your fault. turn in one copy to your teacher, then edit one to your liking for your own portfolio. 

as for the photo, BG is distracting yes.
the purple shirt doesnt really go with anything in the photo.
i would try to get your model a little more into whats going on. she looks kind of lack luster sitting there.
i would try to shrink the head(hand) a bit. its a little large and over powering. also i would remove the shadows for mthe hand.

you could go a step further and draw a face on the hand, or draw eyes on the finger tips. 

but remember that you are 100 percent responsible for your own work. so if you dont like something take the steps you need to fix it.


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## Patm1313 (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanks Fender, your post is really beneficial to me. 



Fender5388 said:


> i would try to get your model a little more into whats going on. she looks kind of lack luster sitting there.


 
To start, this part of your post made me laugh out loud, in a good way. I understand exactly what you are saying in this, but at first glance I was thinking, "How the heck does she look lack luster? She has a hand as a face!" But I do agree, looking at the shot now I do wish I had had the model pose in a way that is more interesting than just sitting in a chair.

As for the shadows, I noticed right as I scrolled down to read your post that the shadows were messed up throughout. This is definetly something I will pay attention to when I'm merging different shots in the future.



Fender5388 said:


> you could go a step further and draw a face on the hand, or draw eyes on the finger tips.


 
This is a great idea. The "hand instead of a head" idea that I showed in this photo is one that I've thought about for a while. Depending on the time I have and how developed my Photoshop skills are, I am consider making this theme a series, with the hands doing different actions instead of sitting limp ontop of a neck. If I do this series, I will definetly put in eyes on the fingertips (think the glowing thing on the end of ET's hand style) and maybe a mouth of somesort. I'm not sure how I would do it, but I guess I'll just play with this image in Photoshop until I figure it out.



Fender5388 said:


> the purple shirt doesnt really go with anything in the photo.


 
Not to make an excuse, but just to tell something unique about me: I'm mildly colorblind. I don't know whether that shirt is purple or blue, or whether the back drop is green or brown. Because of this, how the heck I'm going to be a successful photographer, I have no idea. My least favorite part of photoshop? Curves. That interface is like cyanide to me.

As far as the thing with the photo teacher goes, I am trying to absorb his teaching to the best of my ability, and I am trying to work so that we can see eye to eye. I understand both what you and Keith are saying, and even though I may spurn him from time to time, I'm not going to shut out the valuable skills that he is teaching because of our issues.


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## kundalini (Jan 10, 2011)

Your lighting of "The Hand" is in contention with the remainder of the image.  

There is a stark difference in the color of your hoodie inside the frame to the color outside.

The frame is lit poorly and has 3 of the 4 corners with blown out detail.

Your fingers holding the frame are indistinguishable.

The space between your ears is where creativity is found.... not Photoshop.  The excuses about the stage forcing you to dumb down are just that.... excuses.


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## Patm1313 (Jan 10, 2011)

kundalini said:


> Your lighting of "The Hand" is in contention with the remainder of the image.
> 
> There is a stark difference in the color of your hoodie inside the frame to the color outside.
> 
> ...


 
Thanks Kundalini.

One thing that I really messed up on with this project was compressing this image multiple times. I did so by saving it on a network (at school) that has a tendency to compress files (in this case a .psd) in order to save space. So every time I saved the file, resolution was lost.

The model with the frame and the model's head (before being removed and replaced) are two seperate shots, which is why the lighting and color is off. On thing you'll notice is that while the hand lighting is in sync with that of the hoodie withing the fram, the lighting is off in the hoodie outside of the frame.

I think I worded what I meant about using Photoshop wrong. I'm not trying to say that I invested in Photoshop to provide me with creativity, but instead that I didn't see any way to follow the guidelines of the project without doing 90% of the creative work in photoshop.


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## KmH (Jan 11, 2011)

Patm1313 said:


> .....
> This guy is the "I-got-an-art-degree-but-I-didn't-put-it-to-use-so-now-I'm-a-high-school-photo-teacher" type. Him and I don't see eye-to-eye on just about anything. As far as his critiques of my work, they aren't worth much to me as a photographer. It's mostly a lot of hand waving and questioning me on whether I followed the exact pretexts of the assignment......


 


Patm1313 said:


> Please understand, Keith, that I'm not trying to put my instructor down when I talk about him.


Sure you were. You wrote an entire paragraph portraying your instructor as a total failure, and we're only hearing one side of the story.

I don't think I misunderstood anything.  Since your instructors critiques of your work "aren't worth much to me as a photographer", it seemed to me doing a critique would be a waste.


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## Patm1313 (Jan 11, 2011)

KmH said:


> Patm1313 said:
> 
> 
> > .....
> ...


 
I'm not calling him a raging dickhead that's a waste of space. My view of him is, admittedly, is more than a bit biased. But I'm not putting him down. I'm stating the man how he is, and it seems a bit strange that you would defend him (or more aptly, attack me) without knowing him. I'll repeat myself, he got an art degree, and didn't use it, and now is a high school photo teacher. You go ahead and tell me if you disagree (because I know you will anyway), but being a high school photo teacher teaching kids what shutter speeds and white balance is is not the right way to utilize an art degree. I will also repeat that "his critiques of my work... they aren't worth much to me as a photographer." That doesn't mean that CRITIQUES are not worth anything to me it means "HIS CRITIQUES." As you can see from my other posts in this thread, I am very much open to improving myself through proper critique.

And I'll be honest, I'm not exactly in love with typing walls of text. Though I don't feel this way, if I wanted to portray my instructor as a "total failure," I would have simply stated that.


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## Snyder (Jan 12, 2011)

Be fortunite you have a photography class in High School, I was glad to have a mass communication class in high school but sadly no photography courses. It was by far my fav class in high school and I still keep in contact with my old Comm. teacher. Having a photo teacher that has a BFA in photography is a good thing because he has the proper education to teach photography. Im hoping once I retire from my current career to move on and teach photography or mass communications at a high school or college level.

Anyways whats your concept having a hand for a head? What message are you trying to convey? Again the background needs pressed also move the subject 5-6ft away from the background and use a longer lense around 70mm-120mm range. Tone down the lighting in the background to around zone III. You need to re-light the hand its casting shadow of the fingers on the palm, also the hand looks flat give it some depth with a 3:1 lighting ratio. The hand attached to the neck has a very harsh transition into the shadows needs some gradient work by burning it a bit. The photo frame has some harsh highlights that are blown out.


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## Patm1313 (Jan 12, 2011)

Snyder said:


> Anyways whats your concept having a hand for a head? What message are you trying to convey?


 
First, thanks for all of the advice Snyder. I'll keep it in mind when I'm doing portraits like these in the future.

My idea behind having a hand for a head is that I see my younger generation losing a lot of brainpower. To put it in layman's terms: We're becoming more stupid. Especially with everyone using technology nowadays, we're destroying our own ability to think and apply ourselves. I want to show my audience that our head is our most important tool, and is as vital to everyday life as our hands. We are going to be no more successful in the future without our intelligence than we would be without having hands.


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## Snyder (Jan 12, 2011)

hmmm I dont feel a hand represents stupidity, I feel a hand more represent the blue collar, working class, who usually works with their hands. I like the concept you stated about the advancement of technology possible dumbing kids down. I cant tell you how many time one of my professors would ask a question and I see fellow classmates looking up the answer on google using their Iphone. So here my thought instead of a hand have the subject head as an Iphone with google displayed on it wearing a graduation cap. Funny stuff.


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