Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. spEnv Case Study 14 slides Copyright © 2003 – 2009 Kenji Tachibana

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: Adam’s rule breaker… R ules & Recommendations: I recommend that you avoid making global or universal statement. And instead to tell a personally meaningful story. Well, Adam succeeded in doing both. The image to the right is his Next choice and it has been highly image edited in Photoshop.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: Recognize the story potential H ere to There: Making choices The Best choice (top) shows a person walking by a sign. The Next choice (bottom) image starts to show a PERSON walking by a sign that is possibly personally relevant, Best Choice Next Choice

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: Tighten up the story idea T ell the Story: Better I took the Next choice image and altered it into a ‘tight layout’ for the re-shoot. My image editing goal was to help tell his story better. It started with a simple ‘fill-the-frame’ cropping. Then I moved the person into the frame until it created an overlap to unify the story. Lab work made it more photo realistic. In the final version, the shirt will also get colorized. Next Choice Tight Re-shoot Layout

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: Extremely challenging R e-shoot Layout: Adam now has an extreme challenge of reproducing the tight layout. First recognize that there are many happy accident that came together to make this image. Adam will be doing a number of re-shoots trying to recreate this tight layout. In doing so, he will learn a lot about his camera, lighting, location shooting and prop manipulation.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: It’s all in the… D etails: Meet the devil The camera position for the re-shoot must be the same as the original shot. If not, the visual elements will lose their relationship to each other. Then the tighter cropping must be achieved by zooming out to fill the frame. Lighting must also be the same. There is just a lot of stuff to get right…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I U niversal Concerns: Adam was lucky that no one was around on the first shoot. He may not be as lucky when doing his re-shoot. In these times and conditions, a lot of potential problems can arise. And the problems that come may strictly be inter personal. Although, a simple interpersonal interaction can become complicated by race related issues. I strongly suggested to Adam that he wear his student ID card in plain sight. Tell my ‘Freeway Shooter’ story… Case Study: Answers and Concerns

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: After many hours M ake Comparisons: Start Next Almost Final

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I T im: Doing his duty… My initial response to his image was ‘so what’. The image ‘as is’ does not look meaningful nor interesting. I can’t even see who is doing the raking because the hat is covering most of his face. I made up a story for Tim about preparing for his grand mother’s 100 th birthday party. At least that gave me a starting point to say… Case Study: Another example

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I M ade Up Story: Give meaning This might not have been best ‘decisive moment’ in the process to take the assignment shot. In the re-shoot, a better decisive moment might have been after cleaning up and getting the birthday decorations up to capture a more colorful scene. For now, the subject of the image are the fallen leaves. And secondarily, the bright rake pole stands out more than the real subject… Case Study: Decisive Moment

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I I mproving What Is: Crop out anything not related to the ‘in the environment’ story. It might have worked better as a horizontal image. And in order to do that, some image area must be added to the right side as indicated by the gray. Case Study: Going with it…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Light at the End of the Tunnel: Good story Rebekah’s story is personal and classic at the same time. I applied the design concepts of scale, contrast, perspective, and color to help her and the class tell the story. Since this is a self portrait, the viewer needs to see her face. I photographed a small part of a NSCC campus screen saver to visually show what the image still needed. Case Study: Good start.Case Study: Good start

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Case Study: Good start. Case Study: Good start Putting it Together: Borrow an idea and make it yours. Rebekah pulled it together for the Final Project. Expose yourself to lot of story telling and high quality images. Let those stories and images flow through you. And what comes out will be uniquely and creatively yours…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Pulled Together with High Skill and Artistry: See the final print at the NSCC Library soon.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I x End