PRACTICAL ASSIGNMENT 1: PORTFOLIO REVIEW

 

This is the first Practical Assignment, through which you will get to know your tutor, and establish with him a conversation about your photography. The idea of this first Practical Assignment is to review your portfolio, analyse your photography in terms of personal vision and expressive character and identify a group of images that you will analyse and study, from message to print, throughout the different Practical Assignments of the MasterCOURSE.   

1) MAIN OBJECTIVES:

  • Meeting personally your tutor.

  • Getting introduced to the practical assignments of the MasterCOURSE.

  • Showing a representative sample of your work to your tutor for initial Assessment of your personal vision, centers of interest, approach of the photographic process and expressive load of your images at this day.

  • Receiving a feedback in terms of common "patterns" and ideas, compositional traits, use of light, visual design, and style and register that are frequently present in your work.

  • Analyse with your tutor where you come from, photographically speaking, and where you might go from here.

  • Identifying with the help of your tutor a group of 10 images that you will work throughout the different Practical Assignments of the MasterCOURSE, from message to print.

  • Asking questions or clarifying doubts you might have with your tutor, now that we are starting the MasterCOURSE

2) INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT:

For this PA1, the student is asked to:

a) Compile a group of 70 to 100 images that best represent your work today and are diverse. 

At this point, you will have seen the presentation "Introduction to Expressive Photography" (if not, please do so and come back here later!). For this initial selection of 70 to 100 images we want you to favour pictures where you feel the addition and contribution of the photographer (you!) is as big as possible. In other words, try to choose images where you feel your subjective load, personal eye and need for expression are as big as possible, even if the subject matter, the light or the weather were not as "spectacular", unique or extraordinary.

In other words, it is not so important to choose images that are very beautiful, technically difficult or that display extraordinary subject matter and/or extraordinary light conditions. All this is not prescribed, of course! But you should focus more on those particular images that you feel are more personal and special to you, where you reacted to something in a personal and particular way. Try not to overthink while choosing the images. If these instructions confuse you, then just pick images that you feel right and that you think represent you as an individual photographer. We will clarify things later during our one-to-one meeting!

Another important detail is, these images do not need to be part of a same and coherent body of work or project. In fact, it might be a good idea that they are diverse, tackling different subject matter, using different visual design, different compositional schemes, different styles and registers, different post-processing and different formats. During the Practical Assignments we will analyse each image as a standalone unity, from an expressive point of view, by then considering its message as an individual image, its visual design, its use of composition, its post-processing and finally its possibilities for printing. For this reason, having different "kinds" of images in the initial portfolio will give us the possibility to understand how different images work and how we can use that diversity to communicate different things, in different ways.

b) Compile a collection of images as a zipped file

To do so, follow these instructions:

  • Export all images from Lightroom in JPG, Adobe sRGB, maximum dimension size of 1000 pixels.

  • Put all these files into a folder called “Yourname_YourSurname_PA1”

  • Compress this folder (use ZIP, RAR, or any other compression software)

c) Send the images to your Tutor by email and plan with him a One-to-One online meeting for a portfolio review.

  • Please send your files to your tutor via Wetransfer.com, Swisstransfer.com, Gdrive or Dropbox.

  • Propose by email up to 5 different dates and time slots you would be able to meet your tutor online. Please put aside at least 1 to 1.5 hours of time.

  • Your tutor will answer you back and arrange with you a time to meet online for the One-to-One Portfolio Review and Initial Assessment.

d) Meet your Tutor online and receive the link to download the video with the recorded session of the Portfolio Review

  • The meeting will take place through the free platform Zoom. When the meeting time approaches, please connect to the following URL to get in touch with your Tutor: https://zoom.us/j/4812449153

  • Once the meeting is over, your tutor will send you the link to download the Portfolio Review & Initial Assessment video session. 

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact your Tutor for help!