Field Trip to the Wadsworth

My best students, along with the Honors English and History students, were lucky to enjoy a trip to the Wadsworth Antheneum. We enjoyed a scavenger hunt for the oldest gravestone in the cemetery downtown, and talked about life in Hartford when our state was just a colony. At the museum, two wonderful docents gave tours of historical paintings, photographs, and my personal favorite, a variety of Andy Warhol screen prints. Below are some photographs from our adventure, as taken by stellar photographer Shanice McKenzie.

I am extremely proud of our students behavior on the trip. They were mature, respectful, and engaged in the presentations given to us in the museum. Students also showed off their knowledge by easily answering questions during analysis of the different works of art. It was a great way to reward our students who have worked hard during the school year!

Mood and Emotion in Photography using The Color Purple by Alice Walker

As the 4th quarter comes to a close, the best of my students' hard work shows in their Color Symbolism photographs based upon the book The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Mr. Allard and I came together to do a side-by-side cooperative teaching model, using the book The Color Purple to within our respective curricula. As his Junior students read and analyzed the literary content of the novel, my students used passages from the book to examine how mood and emotion can be conveyed in a variety of art forms, and created photographs based upon those passages.

My photography students were asked to analyze the mood and emotion in music, famous works of art, and poetry, leading up to working with longer passages from The Color Purple. Students were asked to interpret the mood within 5 passages, and to create a variety of photographs based upon those passages. Using Color Symbolism (how colors can convey emotions), students were then asked to create duotones, or two-toned photographs in Adobe Photoshop based upon the color symbolism chart. They chose the duotone color that reflects the same mood and emotion as found in the passages from the book.

Below you will find the best student works, and the quote from the passage that they used to create that photograph. I'm very proud of all that my students have accomplished this year, and with the diligence they had in this complex assignment.

Tina Fontanez
"Their skin glows even in the sun."

Takerra Purnell
"Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble."

Stephen Francis
"She got the nottiest, shortest, kinkiest hair I ever saw, and I loves every strand of it."

Shunyce Davis
"The hair that come out in my comb I kept."

Shanella Charles
"I pray for strength."

Daejonne Rock
"I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie you a tree."

Nehemiah Gray

"Everything you touch will crumble."

Nastacia Valentine
"I pray for strength."

Michael Campbell
"The jail you plan for me in the one in which you will rot."

Jada Carr
"He tired, he said, he weak, he cry."

Irisabelle Soto
"I wink at her, she act like she scared to look."

David Braithwaite
"I pray for strength, bite the insides of my jaws."

Ashley Santiago
"The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks."

Anabelle Dejesus
"The jail you plan for me in the one in which you will rot, I say."

Amanda Fontanez
"He beat me like he beat the children...he say, Celie, git the belt."

The Color Purple Color Symbolism #1

1. I

Creating Emphasis with Spot Color

Tiffany Williams

Tashjian Farrel

Tashane Walters

Tamika Jenkins

Takerra Purnell

Shantel Gayle

Shaday Gaston

Natalie Ruff

Nashae Morgan

Michael Campbell

Keyanna Pettiway

Keshana Osbourne

Julio Cruz

Jaquan Chandler

Jada Carr

Brandon Robertson

Betty Joiner

Audley Willocks

As usual, my students have been hard at work with their cameras and computers, this time learning about how to create emphasis with spot color. We talked about different ways to emphasize, or how to make something more important. Students learned what it means to emphasize in writing - using adverbs as intensifiers: this room is extremely hot or my students work really hard. They also learned that when we modify fonts, such as making a word bold, italic, CAPITALIZED or a different color, it creates emphasis on that word. So how can we create emphasis in photography?

There are many ways to create visual emphasis, but we focused on using the Spot Color Process. This means that only one "spot" in the photo is in color, making it the most important part of the image. Students took a variety of photos around the school, and then used Adobe Photoshop to turn the image black and white, isolating color to one area in order to emphasize what they thought was most important to them.

We will be continuing our theme of using color to convey ideas when we return from Spring Break. Our next assignment will work with Color Symbolism, as students re-interpret a work of literature into photography, and use color to convey a sense of mood in a photograph.

Using Depth of Field to Create Emphasis

My students have been diligently working on learning to use the camera's manual settings, and have mastered the Aperture! We have been working in different areas of the school, trying to capture unique angles and see the building in a new way. Understanding how to manipulate the aperture on a camera gives a photographer a greater sense of creativity, with the ability to choose a focal point. Having only one object or area of a photo in focus can create emphasis, making one thing more important in the photo, drawing the viewer's eye to it. Here are some great examples from all my classes:

Terrence Ward
Tashjian Farrel

Natalie Ruff

Jayquan Brown

Michael Campbell

Irisabelle Soto

Dajah Smith

Julio Cruz

Paula Lumpkin