Explore >

Teaching Photography >

Assignments Compendium

Referring to Gustave Moreau

He didn't set his pupils on the right road, he took them off it, said Matisse. "He made them uneasy."1

The articles and tutorials in the Tips and Photoshop Elements sections can be adapted into assignments.

There are more assignments below.

Photography Gallery in a Notebook

The following two assignments can become part of a student's portfolio in a three-ring binder.

Magnetic Page Collages

The magnetic pages used in photography albums are now purportedly made from archival materials.

Collages can be constructed easily on the sticky surface, and can then be protected with the film overlay.

Identity Portraits

Have the students do headshots of each other.

They can do it spontaneously, or can use the Mood Cards described below.

Convert the files to B&W, and print them on overhead-transparency film.

Print them somewhat lighter than you would normally.

Remove the film overlay from a magnetic photography album page.

Students place smaller photographs, text, and other materials, on the magnetic photography album page.

Perhaps the materials are about who they are, and where they're going.

They then place their transparent headshot over the materials.

Their faces and the materials below are merged.

Mood Cards

When photographing someone, they will often put on the face they usually do.

Students can be directed toward doing portraits more about the person under this face by using Mood Cards.

The subject fill out the card, and thinks about the situation they wrote on the card.

The photographer can direct the subject like a film director would, as well.

Go to Mood Card (PDF).

Guest Artist

While not an assignment, having a photographer visit the classroom can inspire assignments.

Nearly any community has art photographers and commercial photographers who would be happy to show work and answer questions.

A photographer that does senior portraits and weddings would be of interest, as well as the medical photographer at a hospital.

Crash landed Alien Space Ship

You're walking in a woods.

You smell something like nothing you've smelled before.

Your brain administers a shot of adrenaline and you keeping going.

Smoke.

Quiet.

You come upon a crashed alien space ship.

Identity

Young people are understanding who they are as they grow.

Self-portraits

• As yourself

• A diptych of the who they present and the who that's hidden

• For the cover of a CD jewel case containing a portfolio of your work

• A collage for their page on a social networking website

• But you don't appear in the photograph

Letters in Your Name

Look for letters, or for shapes that look like letters, to spell out your name in a series of prints.

You can photograph any letter or shape, or you can look for ones that express your personality.

Cyanotypes

Sun Print Paper is available from Free Style Photo.

The developer is running water.

Go to Make a Cyanotype.

Photo Mosaics

• David Hockney

• Slice several large prints into strips (vertical and hoizontal), and then weave them into a new photograph.

• Slice several prints into vertical strips, and mix them together.

Glow Paint & Glow Paper

Glow Paint

Glow paint is available from art supply stores and craft stores.

Be sure to explain to your students that the paint is not radioactive.

Glow Paper

Brightec makes glow-in-the-dark photography paper.

Cameras

• Camera obscura

• Pinhole

Animated GIFs

You can make animated GIFs easily with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

Go to File > Save for Web.

Digital Imaging, Mr. Olejarz, Eisenhower Middle School, Wyckoff, NJ - Animations

Photograms

• Make more than one exposure so that there are also shades of gray.

Remove some of the objects between exposures.

• Contact print the first photogram to obtain an image with a white background instead of black.

• Tone the photogram with a toner.

• Use large negatives made on overhead transparency paper, which is available for laser and inkjet printers.

Reverse a photograph with Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Go to Filter > Adjustments > Invert, or press Ctrl + i.

Then, print the negative on transparency paper.

Unusual Field Trip Destinations

• Cemetery

• Retirement home

1 Courthion, P. Conversations avec Henri Matisse. Unpublished ts., Getty Center for the History of Art, Santa Monica, CA. In Spurling, H. (1998). The Unknown Matisse. Berkeley, CA: University California of Press.