Exercise #3: Art Direction: Photography ADV 93 Design Fundamentals

Introduction

Every picture should tell a story .... many pictures put together should REALLY tell a story. A photo story, or photo essay, is a means of visual storytelling. Photo story, or photo essay, means presenting a story or essay primarily through images. Of course, many photo stories have written elements that help narrate the story. And, individual images may even have captions that give more in-depth information or context to that photo.

Presenting a story through photography communicates a different — often deeper — understanding of person, place, event or narrative than can be expressed through written or spoken word.

Eman Shurbaji, 2014

This article talks about photo stories, offering a number of really useful tips: Peta Pixel.

What do we do?

For this assignment you must compose a story visually, using a series of six photos. The only words allowed are a title and your name plus any captions you may decide to include as a way of enhancing the story.

What story should you tell? You should use the theme of IDENTITY as your starting point and compose the story around personal experiences, or the world around you, who you are, pop culture tribes, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, issues you've seen in the news. The choice is yours, but don't spend an age thinking about it - make quick decisions.

Your story could be linear or non-linear. Images may be linked thematically or literally. You decide how best to express your ideas. Be consistent.

And then?

Decide on a story. Research and find out as much as you can. Make notes, script a story outline, sketch out a storyboard, and plan your shots.

Story Outline

A good visual story needs to follow a specific path, just like any story. You wouldn't begin a piece of creative writing without any planning, right? Same here. A visual story needs a beginning middle and end.

Story Board

Visual stories are best planned .... visually. A story board helps you visualize how the narrative will flow. remember, you only have pictures to communicate through so you need to make clear decisions about subject, framing, etc.

Shot Planner

Following on from your story board you need to figure out the logistics of each shot. When, where and how you shoot will be determined by the subject and mood you are trying to capture. Research comes in handy, scout around looking at the space you plan to shoot in. Follow the natural light, think about artificial light, consider angles and positions. A good plan saves time.

Photo Tips

Take more shots than you'll need. Shoot RAW format if you can. Have several edited versions to choose from.

Putting it all together

Editing

Taking photos is the first step. You then need to edit and curate before designing an environment for the story to live in.

Here's what I mean:

Create a collection in Adobe Lightroom and edit your photos. You may edit further in Adobe Photoshop. Review each image and ask yourself these questions:

Does the composition look ok?
Do I need to crop?
Do I need to alter the color, contrast, exposure? Note: When editing RAW images you always need to play with these settings in order to make the picture pop. Read this article for more information: How To Process and Edit RAW Images.
Are the focal areas sharp?
Are my lines aligned?
Am I following the rule of thirds? Read more on the Rule of Thirds here.

Consider all the edited images. Which six work best together, according to your story board, in telling the story? Put these six into a Final Images folder.

Composing

With a collection of edited photos (you should have finalized your selection of six, remember?) it's now time to open Adobe InDesign. You are going to create a six page magazine with a front and back cover.

Front Cover: Make sure you include the title of your story, your name and the date (just Month, Year). Zoom in and offer us a glimpse of one of your key images - a detail, if you will - that will tease the content we'll find inside.

Inside Pages: These can be landscape or portrait, depends on how you want to position your images and how they have been shot. Have one image per page with a caption but no other text.

Back Cover: Another detail from a image, one that closes the story effectively and add some credits: the camera you shot on, the apps you edited in, the location details. This info should be caption size.

Once you are done, publish the document online. Once published you will be able to access Share links and an Embed code. The Embed code can then be entered in your Behance project page.

Lightroom, Photoshop and InDesign Instructions

Adobe Lightroom

1. Open Adobe Lightroom and click on the white cross (it’ll become a blue cross when you hover) or File>Add Photos. Find your images folder and select the photos you want to import.

2. Select then Add.

3. Start off with Presets and also Edit manually

4. A new option is AI Lens Blur. It adds depth of field to your images and recognizes the focal point.

5. Other useful options include the ability to Crop to standard photo sizes or create custom dimensions. But remember that the preset sizes reflect existing paper sizes.

6. When you're ready, select all the images you want to Export into your Final Images Folder.

7. Select the Destination Folder and File Type, and Export.

Adobe Photoshop

1. You can also edit in Photoshop - select Lightroom Photos from the Photoshop home page.

2. Select and Import

3. Either work in Camera RAW (essentially Lightroom) or Open to edit in Photoshop.

4. Maybe select Neural Filters.

5. Colorize enables you to add a tone that you can repeat across the other images.

6. Head on back to the main workspace. The Neural Filter image is saved as a separate file, retaining the original.

7. Or select, for example, Gradient from the Color menu. This adds a gradated tonal layer over your image (don't forget to Unlock the Background layer). Reduce Opacity as required on the Gradient Layer. Your settings will repeat on the other images. This is a simple way to achieve consistent tone across your set.

8. Save a Copy so you can export as a PNG.

9. Name the file and select the destination folder before saving as a PNG (or JPG).

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is a layout design application for publishing both online and in print.

1. Open Adobe InDesign and click on Create New 2. Select Custom and change the page size to 8.5” X 11” (standard magazine size). Make sure the page count is 8 (Front and back cover plus 6 inside pages)

2. Select the Rectangle Frame Tool and create an image box on your front cover. You can alter size and position later.

4. Go to File>Place and select your image for the front cover.

5. Select the Type Tool and create a box. Add your cover text and select font/color/size/fx from the right hand menu. You can use the Eye-Dropper tool to create color swatches from your image.

6. Moving into the inside pages, create image boxes and place your photos in order. This landscape image works well across both pages - a double-page spread. You may add captions underneath if you wish to explain further.

7. Once you're done, go to File>Publish Online

8. Give it a title and maybe a description, select Publish

9. Either Copy the link or head to the Publish Online Dashboard

10. Copy the embed code to clipboard. You can now paste this into your Behance Project and it will be viewable as a horizontal scrollable embedded PDF.

When's the Deadline

This assignment is due on December 6th, 2023. You need to create a project on Behance. Introduce the project and explain your rationale for your subject and your aims regarding the story you want to tell. Take us through your process - upload your thinking process, your story outline, your story board and your shot planner. Also upload the individual photos. Then embed the PDF as shown above. Submit the Project URL in the Canvas Submission Box and post the PDF in Slack as well. Comment on each others work supportively.

One more thing you need to do ..... upload the photos as an Instagram Gallery. Tag the post as follows: #adv93fall22 #identityphotostories #artdirection #sjsuadprogram and send me the link as a DM on Instagram and I will then post them all on our adcreative_sjsu_adv93 Instagram account.

How do we do the Behance thing again?

When you log onto Behance, select "Create a Project". Follow the steps - give it a name: Art Direction, Photography:<title of story>. Write a short introduction - what are you trying to achieve. Then follow the instructions in the previous section.