The Course

Art 180 – Photographic Approaches
Course Description

This course introduces students to the basics of photography/phoneography as a way to communicate ideas emphasizing content, composition, and technique. We will examine contemporary and historic artists through lectures, interviews and student presentations. With the use of a variety of digital cameras including cell phones, point-and-shoot, DSLRs students learn to create, edit and critique images. We will be using Canvas.net as a way to communicate throughout the semester. Students will create their own personal website through Weebly as a way to showcase their work and turn in course assignments.

Example site: http://studyphoneography.weebly.com/

Course work will follow a general model of observation, inquiry, interpretation, and presentation. Course content and interaction will be delivered online through discussions and resources via Canvas and a variety of external online sources. Everything produced in this class will be made by you during the course (unless otherwise directed) no web image downloads. This course requires that you spend 6-8 hours per week working on projects, viewing online content and practicing software tutorials.

To be successful in this course you should:

  • Login to Canvas on a regular basis and participate in course discussions.
  • Complete all assignments fully and on time. Late assignments will be reduced by ten points for every week they are late.
  • Participation in the discussion critiques: explaining, justifying, and offering criticism of other students’ work.
  • Back up all digital work every week on an external hard drive of DVDs. If you back up, you will not need to worry about lost data.

Course Units:

Unit 1 – 5 weeks

Equipment and app overviews
Set up your personal website
Learning to see photographically
Shooting in the field

Unit 2 – 5 weeks

History of photography past-to-present
Criticizing photography
Creating a photographic multimodal presentation

Unit 3 – 5 weeks

Develop your photographic voice
Photography and society
Sharing your photographic vision with the world

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