AP Photography Concentration

<p>Hi, I'm in AP Photography at school, and I think I would like to do it on hands. I am having trouble coming up with a more concrete concept, however. My concentration needs to be more (for lack of a better word), concentrated. If anyone has any ideas, or photos, of hands, I would love to talk or see them. Thank you!<br>

:)</p>

<p>-Maddy Levy</p>

<p>Maddy,</p>

<p>It would be helpful if you supplied a little more information about the assignment. What exactly is the assignment? What will be expected of you -- number of photos in the portfolio (again, assuming there is a portfolio involved), how much writing, etc.? Maybe we can come up with something for you, if we know more about what is expected of you. Give us what your instructor gave to you for the assignment.</p>

<p>I hope we can help you.</p>

<p>Mark</p>

<p>I suppose a little more information might be helpful :)<br>

It is a high school course, and for the AP at the end of the year, you need to have three parts. One of the parts is your concentration, which needs to be a series of 12 photographs concentrating on one thing. It needs to show growth - so it can't just be a series of 12 great images. It needs to show exploration, understanding, and creativity. Although it's actually due in May, my teacher wants us to get started now so we'll have lots of time to develop our ideas. I just don't have any really good ideas to begin with.<br>

Thanks</p>

<p>Let me pitch out some generalities that might help. Remember, hands are a "subject"...not a theme. What you need is a theme to guide your subject (images) through an evolution that leads to a complete story. One of my college professors always pushed the idea of "transformation" as a way to unify a series of images.<br>

For example...you could pick the teme of a single person's complete life told with the story of their hands. It begins with baby hands perhaps with a fist and thumb sticking out representing the act of suckeling their thumb. A middle photo might be a greasy hand holding a wrench representing their career, and an ending photo with an older pair of hands with a gray color and crosses as though in the casket.<br>

Think about telling a story of something...not just a group of pictures.</p>

<p>Maddy,<br>

<p>Let me say how impressed I am that your high school has an AP Photography class. With budgets as tight as they are in education, the arts are often cut first. If you have an AP Photography class, there must be other good fine art classes happening at your school. Let us know if your school has a website that showcase its student’s work. Maybe your instructor has a site where he or she shows what’s going on in the classes. I know I would like to see what this high school is doing in its fine arts programs.</p>

<p>Michael’s story line idea sounds interesting. You could even start before birth with his or her parent’s hands and continue after death with the hands of an angel. It would be fun to come up with a 12 images that flow well from one to the other telling the life of the person. You could include hands from other significant people including appropriate backgrounds and settings.</p>

<p>Another option would be to take this idea and use it to tell the story of a main character of a famous or well-known novel or movie. You could depict a scene taken from the novel or movie.</p>

<p>You could take an event and tell it from conception to end -- wedding, birth, preparing a meal (Christmas or Easter feast or just an everyday meal), making a cake, putting on make-up, getting ready for a date, preparing for and performing in some sort of production -- play, musical performance, dance recital – the list could go on and on. You would just use the hands as an integral part of each photograph. I'm not real sure how easy this would be, but that difficulty makes it even more worthwhile in the end.</p>

<p>Have you considered putting these 12 photographs together in a slide show? You could add interesting transitions from one photograph to the next with a music background and/or narration. This would be a multi-media production. It would be something different that perhaps other students haven’t considered doing. Your instructor may give you extra points for your initiative, creativity and the extra time involved. Just a thought … do you also write poetry? Often artsy people are artsy in more than one area. You could write a poem (or use someone else’s) and use your 12 photographs to conceptualize the poem. Record the poem, with a tract of music if you wish, and add the photographs. If you have the time and inclination you could create you own music tract with GarageBand or some other music program. Maddy Productions could create the whole kit and caboodle. It would also be a nice addition to your personal portfolio.</p>

<p>I think the real key to success with this project, or producing most good photographs, is to keep the images simple by moving in close to your subject and removing any extraneous things within the frame. Creative lighting is always a plus. I have found that when you try to tell anything very complicated in a single photograph it can end up confusing the viewer. Perhaps this is why the first “rule” of composition is to simplify. I just threw this paragraph in for no apparent reason – now that I go back over and read this note to you.</p>

<p>Good luck and keep us informed about your project and your interesting school.</p>

<p>Mark</p>

</p>

<p>I think you'd enjoy the work of Alfred Stieglitz, especially his portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe. In particular look for his awareness of her graceful hands. But his approach to nudes and portraiture are instructive and would relate as well to hands. Your largest local library will have a number of Stieglitz photo books... the best I recall for hands is a Boston Museum publication.</p>

<p>If you have a friend with unique hands...especially strong, especially damaged, a different race, especially fine or graceful...that person has one or two hands, whose different hand-expressions or positions, rendered identically at the same distance and framed identically, could lead to your entire dozen. You'd probably want to direct as well as ask for hand-expressions. Work out your lighting and background in advance...perhaps a black background and soft window or bounced light for example.</p>

<p>Alternatively, your P.N portfolio is full of expressive hands. Might be worth reviewing :-)</p>