ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2019

Project 1: Place

digital photographs

Students randomly select a section of a gridded map of the town. This area becomes the subject matter for students to explore and photograph. In class we discuss historic and contemporary approaches to landscape, urban, and street photography and the ways photography has been used to represent place and culture. This project is done in black and white.

Learning Objectives

• 2D composition

• figure/ground relationships

• manual camera exposure

• black & white editing in Adobe Lightroom

• genres of landscape and street photography
  

ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2017

Project 2: Portrait

digital photographs

For this assignment students make portraits of people they know, strangers, and self-portraits. In class we discuss the history and uses of portrait photography, the difference between portraits and snapshots, and formal considerations such as body language, distance from subject, expression/gaze, environment, etc. At the same time students are learning to work with environmental and studio lighting. This project is done in color.

Learning Objectives

• 2D composition

• working with models

• environmental and studio lighting

• color editing in Adobe Lightroom

• local editing in Adobe Photoshop

ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2019

Project 2: Portrait

digital photographs

For this assignment students make portraits of people they know, strangers, and self-portraits. In class we discuss the history and uses of portrait photography, the difference between portraits and snapshots, and formal considerations such as body language, distance from subject, expression/gaze, environment, etc. At the same time students are learning to work with environmental and studio lighting. This project is done in color.

Learning Objectives

• 2D composition

• working with models

• environmental and studio lighting

• color editing in Adobe Lightroom

• local editing in Adobe Photoshop

ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2019

Project 2: Portrait

digital photographs

For this assignment students make portraits of people they know, strangers, and self-portraits. In class we discuss the history and uses of portrait photography, the difference between portraits and snapshots, and formal considerations such as body language, distance from subject, expression/gaze, environment, etc. At the same time students are learning to work with environmental and studio lighting. This project is done in color.

Learning Objectives

• 2D composition

• working with models

• environmental and studio lighting

• color editing in Adobe Lightroom

• local editing in Adobe Photoshop

ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2019

Project 3: Covers

digital photographs

Students choose a contemporary photographer to emulate. In class we discuss cover songs and movie reboots, and what makes some covers better than others. Students are encouraged to borrow some stylistic choices or subject matter from their chosen photography, while also introducing their own personal interests and creative vision. Before completing this assignments students also give a class presentation on their chosen photographer.

Learning Objectives

• research in contemporary photography

• “trying on” conceptual approaches

• Intercultural interpretation

• Further exploration of techniques as related to each project

ART 2664 - Digital Photography
Virginia Tech
2020

Project 4: Series

“Botanical Wolds”
digital photographs

The final project for this course is a focused, cohesive series of photographs using the skills and techniques learned throughout the semester. Students choose their own subject and have the option to further develop a previous project, or pursue a new idea. Additionally each student writes a proposal and project statement.

Learning Objectives

• integrating technique, composition, and idea

• exploring personal expression and aesthetic

• further exploration of photographic technique as related to each project

• written expression through proposals and project statements

ART 3564 - Photographic Fact & Fiction
Virginia Tech
2018

Project: Utopia/Dystopia

digital photographs

This assignment uses speculative fiction as a prompt for students making constructed photographs representing alternative futures. This can involve staging, building props, using models/dioramas, or digitally compositing multiple photographs to construct their images.

ART 3564 - Photographic Fact & Fiction
Virginia Tech
2020

Project: Documentary

digital photographs

With the help of VT Engage, the class partnered with a local community group to create social documentary series.

In class we discuss the ways that documentary photography presents straightforward records of events, people and places, often recording important historical or political moments, as well as shedding light on injustice, inequality, and less visible aspects of society.

Our community partner in 2020 was The Calfee Training School Project in Pulaski, VA. The Calfee School is a historic African American school built as a Public Works Administration project in 1939. It closed in 1966 and is now being revitalized as a community center.

ART 3564 - Photographic Fact & Fiction
Virginia Tech
2020

Project: Documentary

digital photographs

With the help of VT Engage, the class partnered with a local community group to create social documentary series.

In class we discuss the ways that documentary photography presents straightforward records of events, people and places, often recording important historical or political moments, as well as shedding light on injustice, inequality, and less visible aspects of society.

Our community partner in 2020 was The Calfee Training School Project in Pulaski, VA. The Calfee School is a historic African American school built as a Public Works Administration project in 1939. It closed in 1966 and is now being revitalized as a community center.

ART 3564 - Machine Vision
Virginia Tech
2019

Exercise: Chlorophyll Prints

chlorophyll prints

For this short exercise students print digital transparencies of images they have either found or taken. These are used to make chlorophyll prints. The assignments introduces students to alternative ways of making a photograph and the material upon which an image is printed.

ART 3564 - Machine Vision
Virginia Tech
2019

Exercise: Computer Vision

digital files

For this short exercise students visited the Institute for Creativity, Art, and Technology at Virginia Tech to learn about the history and material archeology of computer vision. Then using OpenCV in Unity, students experimented with applications used to detect and recognize faces, identify objects, track movements, and produce 3D scans and point clouds.

ART 3564 - Machine Vision
Virginia Tech
2017

Exercise: Kitsch & Glitch

digital photographs

This project is about guilty pleasures, enjoying the “wrong” kind of art, and challenging what one has been told, or believe, to be “good” art. Students are encouraged to go deeper into what they might initially consider the wrong kind of subject matter (kitsch) or the wrong kind of technical processes (glitch) with the goal of coming out the other side with an unexpected, and intriguing aesthetic and concept.

ART 3564 - Machine Vision
Virginia Tech
2017

Exercise: Kitsch & Glitch

digital photographs

This project is about guilty pleasures, enjoying the “wrong” kind of art, and challenging what one has been told, or believe, to be “good” art. Students are encouraged to go deeper into what they might initially consider the wrong kind of subject matter (kitsch) or the wrong kind of technical processes (glitch) with the goal of coming out the other side with an unexpected, and intriguing aesthetic and concept.

ART 3564 - Performance and the Lens
Virginia Tech
2019

Project: Business Unusual

collaborative website and performance

Students work in teams to create a fictional business and accompanying website. Each team can decide if their business will be practical, critical, or humorous. In class we discuss the performance of work spaces, parody, and forms of “identity correction” as practiced by artists like the Yes Men. The final critique of this project is done as a live pitch/performance for a business or entrepreneurship class at the university.

BFA Capstone Mentoring
Virginia Tech
2019

Jessie Almquist
“Self, Obsessed”

digital photographs

Self, Obsessed is a series of staged self-portraits in which Almquist imitates a well-known photograph of celebrities who have played a significant role in the artists youth. This work examines celebrity, fan culture, and the artists’ reckoning with the feelings of obsession in stan culture.

MFA Thesis Mentoring
Virginia Tech
2019

Tacie Jones
“Mending”

“The Gift”
installation, found objects, projection mapping

Mending is a body of artwork created in response to ancestral trauma inherited between women. The work consists of media installation, sculpture, and photography. Mending confronts Walter Benjamin’s patriarchal argument that one must intellectually excavate deep memory. Rather, the processes used to create the body of work engage a sensorial approach, and attempt to both reconstruct embodied memory and reconcile trauma. The act of mending is an historically feminine gesture appropriate for resolving the trans-generational trauma of the female body’s experience.