Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I. Free Choice shoot Sketch, Shoot, and Feedback 18 Slides Copyright © Kenji Tachibana

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Sean’s Rough Sketch: “It was a very long and restful sleep.” The sketch looked to me like two Snowman standing in front of a snow bank. Sean told me that it was two feet and the squiggly lines were the blanket. Once I got the connection between the sketch and the story, I was able to give helpful feedback. One was to reorient the feet into a more relaxed attitude. Ant the other was describe a Seattle Weekly cover with the headline “Dead on Arrival” which had the feet in a similar attitude to his sketch.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Sean’s Success Story: Changing the orientation of the feet looks much more relaxed. The only simple and fast fix needed was to retouch out the saturated blue from the top right corner using the “Clone Tool” in Photoshop.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Restful Composition: Restful lines and gentle angles were used in the layout design, which makes the subject look peacefully cradled. Good vertical breakup of space, 1/3 x 2/3. Just enough hint of the fabric to explain the material but the rest is kept texture free to create a peaceful environment.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback More in Front: Classic rule is to put more negative space in front than the back. Another rule is more subtle which is to give more or less space based on the object’s shape or lighting. In this method, the bigger or brighter side gets more space. LessMore SpaceSpace Optical spacing: Squint view this image. Notice that the left side is much darker than the right side.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Hope’s Layout: “The meal is ready to be eaten.” The story title and layout did not look promising. The title is a bit too wordy. And the layout looked A little too sparse. It’s also an example of split subject. Feedback: 1.Use a higher camera angle to fill-the-frame with the subject. Also utilize grouping technique by using the overlap method. 2.Another was to study compositions found in good food magazines for examples and hints on composition, lighting, and food styling.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Hope’s Strong Effort: The higher camera angle and overlap works well to show off the meal. The overlapping also helped to make each food item Bigger. The title for the assignment Image can be shortened to ‘Ready to Eat’ following the rule of Less-is-More.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Composition Feedback: Framed too tight which resulted in a number of near tangency and amputations. This image could have used the additional 10% image provided by the safety margin cropping shown to the right by the dotted yellow line. Good vertical 1/3 x 2/3 space breakup

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Fine Tune Feedback: The shot is way beyond a snap shot. Although, it’s not Primetime-ready yet. Hope had not pursued my suggestion to study food magazines for examples. I asked her again to check out food magazines for ideas on composition, lighting, and food styling before re-shooting the shot.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback And She Did… This re-shoot exhibits improvements in layout, design, color, lighting, and exposure control. The coffee cup cropping is causing a tangency and there are a few other minor framing concerns due to the still too tight cropping. But, overall, it’s got the high WOW factor. Although it could still use the 10% more image which would have been provided by the safe margin cropping.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback One More Time:

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Drawing from Intuition: “The chef cooking food” is a Good simple story. I like the verb action word ‘cooking’. Try to use words ending in ‘ing’ when possible. Will’s sketch, on the other hand, is an impossibility. We’re looking at the process from two different points-of-view. We’re seeing the chef directly from the side but we’re seeing the stove from the top.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Drawing from Intuition: Since the story is about the chef, the side view works well. But the resulting angle on the food will make it hard to see. Hopes original layout was drawn from the side. Compare the difference…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Very Poor Start: The initial process started out wrong with an almost square layout. It needed to be a 3:4 rectangle shape as shown with the black dotted line. Flipping the layout orientation from facing right to left is no big deal. But the image is not much beyond a snap shot. An assignment image must show a more intentional composition and lighting.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Crop (Frame) for Story: In order to tell the story, I had to crop huge amount of the image area. Now the story fills-the-frame. Hopefully, you can see by the Before and After direct comparison that filling-the- frame is very important to story telling. BeforeAfter

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback More Bang for the Buck: Both images have the same outside dimensions. The newly cropped version is giving more bang for the buck in terms of story telling and image presence. Now if there was something in the pan, the viewer could have seen it…

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Light for Success: Use Skylight (Open Shade) Avoid shooting indoor with artificial lighting which has a high probability of getting you in lighting trouble. It usually comes from top putting the face in shadow which is undesirable in a story about the chef. It also tends to create blown out highlights on the head and shoulder. The recommended assignment light is Skylight. If your shooting indoors, use ‘bright’ skylight coming through a picture window. Open Shade lighting offers and excellent Skylight lighting opportunity.

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I Free Choice: Sketch, shoot, & feedback Team Discussion: Talk about what you learned and seg way that into a discussion about your own story ideas….

Teacher: Kenji Tachibana Digital Photography I End