Sunday Spotlight On: Shooting For Your Portfolio

What greater time to fill up your portfolio then now? As a student we are constantly shooting and reshooting, but fail to shoot a lot of those images for our portfolio. Here is where the lines of technicality overshadow creativity. We want to know that we can do the assignment and in the end we forget that we had a chance to use the image for our portfolio. 

Art school is a different entity from your more traditional schools. Here creativity is what sets us apart from your traditional colleges. Creativity is limitless and there are many things in this world to photograph as well as many different ways to capture it. Having the knowledge and the skills to create memorable pieces where you can break out of your shell is something that no one can take away. 

Many have seen this image in some class that I have posted in the first week of class. I always mention that this is one of my favorite photos that I have done because it is very different from what I usually shoot. I teamed up with some amazing students and we had a massive production with this shoot. It enabled me to test my skills in other areas and I found that I do like to shoot something other than documentary or photojournalism. 

Day of the Dead, 2013. Quiana P jackson

Let each assignment become motivation to apply the techniques that we learn in class. After all, tuition is something that some people would dream of having but cannot afford. Here at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, the instructors are always willing to help and I am sure they are willing to provide feedback on how they got to where they are now. This upcoming week is your chance to create an image for your portfolio from a classroom assignment. What are you waiting for? Get started! 

I am your Sunday Funday Ambassador. Happy Shooting!

Go out and Shoot!

leafar

Stop making excuses, just go do it.  One of the requirements of every photo class I have taken to date is that students must take NEW photographs unless specifically allowed to use old work on a particular assignment.  Aside from being a giant inconvenience to you the student, there is a very good reason for it.  It is designed to make you a better photographer.  All the online classes and textbooks can't make up for practice and repetition.  That's what will make you a better photographer in the long run.


I know, you're thinking to yourself, I would never do that.  But believe me, it happens.  I can think 3 examples from my time in school that really stand out.  The first one involved a student that submitted pictures of a school class trip to a pumpkin patch.  While the subject matter met the assignment criteria, the fact that the person was located in the northeast and it was the middle of December led me to believe that the images were not taken during the class.  I grew up in that area of the country and I am well aware of the weather and when schools take kids to pumpkin patches (HINT: it is not in December).

Argles

The second one was a little more obvious and I don't know what the student was thinking when posting the rehashed photo.  On the first day of class we were asked to post one of our favorite images in our introductory thread.  Everyone did as such.  three weeks later we had an assignment that required us to take a portrait outdoors.  When I was looking at the posts of my classmates, I saw a picture that looked very familiar.  I went back to the initial post by the same student and sure enough, there was the same image.  For my own knowledge I checked the metadata on both images and sure enough the picture was taken 3 days prior to the start of class.

In both of these instances I do not know if it was noticed by the instructors and if it was how the student's grades were effected which is OK by me.  I just know I wouldn't do it myself.  A decision that I made during one of my early classes when the following situation occurred. One of our assignments was to shoot a group event.  The instructor defined group event as 2 or more people doing something together.  One of the students in the class turned in pictures from their child's birthday party, the previous year.  When told by the instructor that the shots were unusable (since they were not taken during the class) the student was indignant about having met the requirements for the shoot and that when the pictures were taken shouldn't matter and that there just wasn't any events in their town that they could have taken pictures at.  (What a boring town were there are never 2 or more people doing anything at the same time).  The instructor's response has stuck with me to this day, and I wish more people had been in that class at that time.

"You're a college student now and more is expected from you.  It's not going to be easy all the time"

Garlington

Never had I read truer, more eye-opening words at that point in my educational journey.  I wonder if the other two students in my examples had been in that class if they would have acted they way the did...in upper 200 level classes.

The point is, you are only harming yourself if you are trying to rehash your old work from one class to the next.  Get out there and push that shutter button.  Find the time.  Make the scenario that you need to exist happen.  If you want to be the best in this field you have to work at it, and that means taking new pictures all the time.

Comment below with your thoughts on this topic.  I would love to hear them!

Works Cited

Argles, Martin. Photojournalists. The Guardian. guardian News and Media, 18 Feb. 2009. Web. 21 Aug. 2013. <http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2009/feb/18/press-freedom-newspapers>.

Garlington, Michael. Fish Mongers Daughter. N.d. Photograph. 111 Minna Gallery, San Francisco.

Leafar. Panda shooting photo. WixBlog. Wix.com, 22 Oct. 2010. Web. 21 Aug. 2013. <http://www.wix.com/blog/2010/10/why-you-shouldnt-say-yes-to-every-offer-of-photography-work/>.