digital photo documentary course objectives VSAR 314  syllabus
Detailed Course Requirements and Objectives

FALL 2011
Deborah Small Blog

VSAR 314 Mondays 5-8:45 pm
ARTS 239
Office Hours: Tues 2:30-5:00, and by appointment
Telephone: 760-750-4151

Required texts:
Online subscription to www.lynda.com
$10/month for 3 months: total = @$33
access to 5 software programs for the class

You will create a personal blogsite, which ultimately is your electronic portfolio for this class, for your writing and for uploading and reflecting upon your photos. The class will use wordpress.com.

Storage:
An external harddrive:
You can check out your own hard-drive from arts 239 check-out area. This is no longer the best option!

Chad Huggins' Recommentation re External Hardrives:
While we have some hard drives to checkout, I would strongly advise that students purchase their own drives. Once we run out, we are out, and we have a limited number of 100GB drives which have quite a bit of wear and tear on them.

Also, students will be able to keep their purchased drive, instead of turning them in. From past experience, students end up purchasing a drive at some point anyway because we erase their drive at the end of the semester.

The best prices are online, and I'd recommend a triple interface drive that has a USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 connectors so that the drive can be used on any computer, Mac or PC.

Here's a link to a very good drive (the 500GB is an especially good deal): http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/on-the-go

Locally, Fry's Electronics has the best hard drive prices. Here's a great deal on a 500GB triple interface drive:
http://www.frys.com/product/6310031?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

These are just recommendations; students can search (online or in store) for a Firewire 800/USB 2.0 drive and they will find great deals.

If students are solely going to use their drives for photo storage, than they could use a USB 2.0 drive without Firewire. These drives are great for photo editing (faster burst/transfer rate for photos than Firewire). But, if they want to do any video editing on their drive, they'll need one with a Firewire port also.

Please encourage your students to purchase their own hard drive; it is a valuable tool that they will be able to use while in school and after they graduate.

Thanks, and please let me know if you have any additional questions.
Chad Huggins
Technical Director
Visual & Performing Arts Department
cehuggin@csusm.edu

ALWAYS back-up your work. Systems crash when least expected. It's a good idea to make two backups on different media, as storage media are occasionally unstable. This is an important habit to develop when working with any digital media.

Equipment Check-out
Use your own hi-end digital cameras, which must be able to shoot in Camera Raw, or check out our terrific Canon cameras from ARTS 239, as well as lenses, tripods, pano tripods, lighting, etc.

Still cameras can be checked out starting the second week of the semester. We will spend the second week working with the cameras to familiarize you with them, but you must also spend time with the manuals. Albert Rascon, director of check-out, will go over check-out times and rules.

Lab Access
Arts 239 is open so you can do your homework assignments. Hours are posted on the door. I will also send everyone's name to public safety, and you can call using the phone outside the lab and they will come to let you in. Labs are open 24/7, except when a class is in session. Please never let anyone in if you don't recognize them. All software is also available on computers in the library on the 2nd floor.

Digital Photo Documentary is an upper-division elective course for the Arts and Technology Option within the Visual and Performing Arts Department.

Class Description:
Digital Photo Documentary investigates a broad range of artistic practices and contemporary artists who use digital media as a tool for social transformation. The course will explore a broad range of perspectives to enrich our understanding of current social, cultural, environmental, and political concerns and their interpretation through digital media. Students will experiment with different conceptual approaches to art making and develop aesthetic strategies for engaging audiences.

Students will learn to use digital still cameras and audio recording equipment, and to work with digital editing tools to produce projects that have both a photographic and writing/textual/voice component. Projects may include gallery or alternative space exhibitions of photographs and writing as well as blogs, online exhibitions of the work, or the production on an online published book. The class will combine lectures, screenings, group discussions, research, presentations, and photography/writing projects.

Readings will include excerpts from Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others, critical meditations on photography and its consequences. Important websites include The Digital Journalist, http://www.digitaljournalist.org/index.html, and the Library of Congress’s American Memory collection http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html.

The course will be divided into clusters:

Wks 1-4 Introduction to Digital Photo Documentary

The course begins by introducing students to a broad range of artistic practices and contemporary artists who use digital media to comment on and shape current social, environmental, and cultural debates and their interpretation through digital media. Artists include contemporary documentary artists and photographers Carole Gallagher, Rick Smolan, John Hoagland, Susan Meiselas, Richard Misrach, An-My Lé, Robert Adams, David Maisel, and Alfredo Jaar. We will screen fiction and non-fiction films about documentary photographers and their work, including Under Fire, loosely based on the life and death of war photographer (and San Diegan) John Hoagland; War Photographer, an examination of the work of James Nachtway; Chased by the Light which focuses on the art and nature photography of Jim Brandenburg and how his evocative images were used to set aside prairie land in perpetuity; and Manufactured Landscapes, a look at the large-scale photographs of quarries, recycling yard, factories and mines of artist Edward Burtynsky and the images he produced of the massive factories in China.

In weeks 1-4, you will focus on mastering Lightroom 3.

Wks 5-8 Introduction to Digital Cameras and Imaging Software

Students will experiment with different conceptual approaches to art making and develop aesthetic strategies for engaging audiences in particular social, political, and cultural concerns. Students will learn to use digital still cameras and to work with editing tools including Adobe Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 to produce documentary projects. You will explore ways to combine their text and images in a provocative and compelling manner. The course will continue to look at artistic practices that focus on the experimental forms of documentary, including multimedia artist Kim Stringfellow, whose hybrid documentary forms explore important environmental issues; alternative media presentations, including webzines; The Digital Journalist, http://www.digitaljournalist.org/, a site featuring work by contemporary photojournalists. We will continue to screen videos focusing on experimental artistic practices, including Born Into Brothels, where documentary photographer Zana Briski gives cameras to the children of prostitutes and asks them to photograph their world, the red light district of Calcutta. You will produce a mid-term project that is the culmination of their experimentation.

In weeks 4-8, we will focus on audio recording tools and sound editing software, although depending on the overall level of students in the class, we may begin an emphasis on this earlier.

Wks 9-12 Advanced Uses of Cameras, Imaging Software, and Presentation Media

Students will continue to explore uses of cameras and software to create their final collaborative projects. Students will write a detailed proposal for their project that includes drawings, detailed diagrams, thumbnails, maps and storyboards as appropriate. Students may learn page layout software such as Booksmart to produce books for their photographic images and writing.

Wks 13-16 Development and Presentation of Final Projects

Final Projects will have both a physical and online manifestation of the students’ photographic series and writing. These may include gallery, museum, or alternative space exhibitions, as appropriate. Students may publish a book online with an online publisher such as Blurb.com.

Assessment: Students will be assessed through regular responses to the readings, screenings, lectures, midterm project, final project proposal and their final project culmination.

Learning Outcomes
LEARNING OUTCOME A: Learning digital languages:
Digital cameras: In this class, you will learn to use digital still cameras to create a series of photographs that tell a story, and to use audio recording devices for interviews that you can transcribe.

Software: You will become sophisticated users of Adobe Lightroom 3.0, photographic image software as well as Adobe Photoshop CS5 to edit and enhance your photographs, and you will learn the use of digital imaging tools including scanners and BookSmart, the book publishing software at blurb.com. Learning will take place via classroom lectures, demonstrations, online tutorials at lynda.com, and discussions and critiques of the projects that you will complete for the class.  

Printing: You will learn to prepare your images for printing, and use CSUSM's hi-end HP printer on the 2nd floor of the Kellogg Library, and you will research and use the commercial printing capabilities of online printers. 

LEARNING OUTCOME B: Critically analyze the artwork of others and your own
Through classroom lectures, discussion, screenings, and web research, you will explore contemporary digital artists and photographers, and their traditional and experimental uses of digital media. By viewing and discussing a broad range of artistic practices, you will learn how art making is a means to discover and develop your ideas about the world and to extend the power, clarity, and range of your voice and vision.

Contemporary Photographers: You will visit 4 photography exhibitions: #1, #2, and #3 listed below, and either # 4 or #5. You will write @250 words/one page about one artist from each exhibition on your blogs. If you are in both of my photo classes, you will attend all 5 exhibitions.

1. Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego La Jolla
PLEASE NOTE: LAST DAY IS SEPT 5, Monday, Labor Day
EMPEROR'S RIVER: PHILIPP SCHOLZ RITTERMANN features dramatic landscapes of China's Grand Canal captured through the lens of celebrated San Diego-based photographer, Philipp Scholz Rittermann. In 2009, Rittermann set out to capture China's rapidly evolving economy with a study of life along its historic Grand Canal. The ancient waterway has been a major force in China's cultural and economic development for more than two millennia. It extends more than 1,000 miles across the eastern portion of country's alluvial plain, from Beijing in the north to Hangzhou (near Shanghai) in the south.

2. MOPA in Balboa Park: In terms of the class, this is the most important exhibition
See also Prix Pictet: http://www.prixpictet.com/

Infinite Balance: Artists and the Environment; October 11, 2011 - February 5, 2012
Infinite Balance is the first US presentation of artists shortlisted for the Prix Pictet, the world's top prize for photography and sustainability. The exhibition will showcase noted contemporary photographers from across the globe, including:

Christian Als
Benoit Aquin **
Sammy Baloji
Edward Burtynsky
Thomas Joshua Cooper
Susan Derges
Mitch Epstein **
Andreas Gursky
Naoya Hatakeyama
Chris Jordan
Nadav Kander **
Yao Lu
David Maisel
Edgar Martins
Michael Wolf

The exhibition brings together three years of internationally-acclaimed and award-winning photography, all set on addressing the issues of our changing world and sustainability. Infinite Balance will display works from the three themes that defined each year of the Prix Pictet, including Water, Earth and Growth

3. Mesa College Art Gallery: Disappearing Landscapes: The American Delta in Distress, Monique Verdin; September 6 – 29, 2011

4. Art of Photography Exhibition: Downtown San Diego

5. Ordover Gallery: Balboa Park
Flip Nicklin: Among Giants
With this exhibition, watch The Cove.

Blog site: Throughout the semester you will keep a daily/weekly personal BLOG, aka an electronic portfolio, of your ideas, research, links drawings, photographs, etc. which will act a source for your creative process. You will write posts on all of the class presentations on your blog. I frequently will ask you to "freewrite" about the images and videos we are looking at in class, and then to share those thoughts with others after posting what you have written. In addition to the blog, you also will upload your photos on a photo-sharing site such as Flickr, and link your blog to Flickr.

LEARNING OUTCOME D: Service Learning component. Reflect on how your photographic practice can become a tool for social, cultural, or political change, increase visibility of under-served communities, and/or increase understanding of an important current issue.

Assessment:
Attendance
This course is conducted as a workshop: all students must participate actively and consistently. Much of the class will be devoted to the work of other artists and to the development and discussion of your projects. Part of your final evaluation will focus on your ability to respond thoughtfully to other students' artwork and your ability to work collaboratively with each other. For this reason, it is essential that you attend class regularly. I will take attendance at the beginning and at the end of each class. Class attendance and participation is mandatory!!! Two unexcused absences will result in lowering your final grade. Classroom Participation in discussions and helpful collaboration with your peers will account for 15% of your final grade.

Blogsite/Writing
The course includes the Visual and Performing Arts Department's Arts Events Attendance Requirement. You are required to ATTEND 3 exhibitions. On your blogsite, you will write an approximately one-page (250 words) narrative reflection about the work of one photographer from each exhibition.

You also will write about 3 documentary photographers from the Infinite Balance exhibition whose work inspires you. All of your writing should be in the form of a 1st person narrative about your reaction and relationship to the work or the online site. Again, each entry should be @ 250 words, or the equivalent of a page in Word.

Throughout the semester, you will use your blog to reflect upon and write about the artists we view in class and your ideas for your art projects, and your art process, etc. I am interested in the quality of YOUR think and reflections, your ability to make comparisons among the various artists we view.

My hope is that at the end of the semester, you will have a blog site you are proud of, and that can be used and/or expanded for a graduate school portfolio, job application in the industry, etc.

Projects
I am interested in the quality of your images; that is, your ability to perform key image edits and enhancements that we will cover. You will also be evaluated on the content of your images, the coherence and originality of your ideas.

Grading
20% Blog
15% Triptychs
20% Environmental Midterm Project
30% Multimedia Project
15% Class discussion and participation