Time to see just how much fun it is to be in charge of taking photos for the school! We were asked to provide some photos of the girls’ hockey team. I went and took a whole bunch. You get to go through them and provide the photos in the very specific size and format that they are needed!

If you’re sitting where you normally sit in my class, I’ve done you a huge favour and put the rather large folder of photos on your desktop. You’re welcome! (If you’re part of that confusing back row game of musical chairs – or you can’t find it on your desktop, you’ll have to download the folder from the Hand Out folder. It’s HUGE. It’ll take some time… You may want to ask me nicely to drop it onto your desktop.)

I’m going to demonstrate using Lightroom Classic. You can use the other version of Lightroom if you wish. It’s VERY similar, but not EXACTLY the same, so things might work a little differently.

 

First, Import the photos. You should know how to do this already, but just in case, press Import or go into the File menu or Ctrl + Shift + I

 

Select your source on the top left. It’ll recognize a card, but these aren’t on a card, so you’ll have to find them. Luckily, Desktop is usually a quick option:

Look for that folder I dropped onto your desktop. (again, if I didn’t, you may want to wait or else you can find them in the Hand Out folder.)

Once you find the folder, it’ll probably select all of the photos in that folder. The ones with the checkmarks will be imported. If they aren’t all checked, you can click All Photos at the top:

or Check All at the bottom:

Once the photos you want are checked, Import (bottom right)

 

There are different modes for different jobs. The first job should be done in the Library mode (top of the screen):

if you can’t see a grid of photos, click the little grid on the bottom left

This next step is optional, but HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. You can create different Collections (like a folder or album). I like to click the plus sign beside Collections and then Create Collection:

I’d name my collection to help keep your library organized:

Right now, I have nothing in that Collection

Select all of your photos (Ctrl + A or click the first one, scroll to the last one, click Shift)

Then just click any of the photos and drag them on top of the Collection name.

Now they’re all in there:

While the photos are all selected, I usually do a Quick Develop. I like to click the Auto button next to Tone Control:

SOMETIMES I also like to change the White Balance to Auto. It’s not always a good idea, but feel free to give it a try. You can always change it back later just as easily.

 

Following that, switch to the Develop mode

or in the Window menu:

I think I gave you 197 photos. You only need 21 of them! Go through the photos by pressing your left and right arrow keys and pick ONE team photo that looks the best to you. It’s difficult! There’s always someone with their eyes closed or a weird smile or something. Choose carefully and find one that looks good. For the ones you don’t like/won’t use, just press Delete or Backspace to remove it from the Collection.

You only need ONE team photo! OK, we took some with the coaches and some without. If you want to save one of each, that makes sense. You also need ONE photo of each player.

In the end, your collection should have 21 or 22 photos!

Once you cut down your collection, do a bit of editing.

Carefully adjust the sliders as you see fit. Make the photo look as good as you can.

 

You should also switch to the Crop mode (R on your keyboard will take you there)

These photos should be pretty level because I used a tripod, but you should check and should know how to fix photos that are not level. Usually Auto does a pretty amazing job, but you can drag that slider to rotate your photo to straighten it:

While in that mode, you can tighten up the photo by dragging the corner handles in to Crop out unwanted areas:

The individual player photos are a little trickier. There are some important specifications that need to be followed carefully.

The photos must be cropped so that only the player’s head is showing. The lowest point in the photo must be below the neckline of the jersey or above the team crest.

You also need to crop to a specific Aspect Ratio.

In the Crop mode (R), you’ll see the word Aspect. It’ll probably say Original next to it. Click that and change it to 4 x 5 / 8 x 10

Drag in the selection so you see the player’s head, the neckline of the jersey, but not the school logo. Note that the photos need to be in Portrait orientation (TALL, not wide):

In the end, it’ll be pretty tiny, but it’ll look like this perhaps (yours might be a little different):

Go through all of the player photos and make any adjustments, then crop the photos this way.

 

Once you have finished adjusting and cropping the photos, you are ready to export.

The settings for the team photo and the individual photos are very important and very different.

The team photo has fewer restrictions.

Export your photos by pressing the Export button at the bottom of the screen in the Library mode

or by going into the File menu and choosing Export, or Ctrl + Shift + E

In the Export box, you can choose where your photos are exported to. I chose my Graphic Tech folder:

You can rename your files. The team photo needs to be called Westwood

and perhaps most importantly, the file cannot be over 1 mb in size. It must be a JPEG file, and then choose to Limit File Size To: 1000 K

You do not need to change any of the other settings.

Player photos are a little trickier. You can choose to export all of your photos at once (assuming they are all cropped properly!).

They actually need two different sizes in two separate folders.

When you choose your Export Location, you can choose a Subfolder. My first set will be Larger, so I’ll create a Subfolder for those:

The files will have to be renamed by me before uploading, so your name doesn’t really matter, but the order sure does! Export your photos as a Sequence. I’ll call them player:

For these, you don’t have to limit the file size, so I’ll take off that setting:

But there’s a very specific image size that you have to choose. The Larger ones will be 300 x 375 pixels. Make sure the Resolution stays at 300!

You don’t need to change anything else, so you can Export:

 

My second set will be Smaller, so I’ll create a Subfolder for those as well:

The images will be Resized to be 120 by 150 pixels (again leave the Resolution at 300) 

That’s all you have to change, so you can Export:

 

When you are done, you’ll give me a team photo (Westood.jpg) and two folders, one smaller and one larger, each containing 20 player photos.

Put the team photo and the two folders of 20 photos each into your Hand In folder and you’re done!

Each month you will be required to submit photos of AT LEAST ONE school-related event, activity, class, or gathering. A MINIMUM of 5 GOOD QUALITY photos is required.

You may submit more than one event for bonus marks.

Look at a yearbook from the past few years to see examples of usable photos and events and activities that should be covered. Look at the calendar on my website and the school website to see what events, games, etc. are coming up.

In order to be useful, a photo needs to be GOOD! Make sure the lighting and colour are right. Make sure you’ve made any adjustments that might make the photo better. Make sure you export your RAW photos as a FULL SIZED .jpg (no size restriction). MOST IMPORTANTLY: make sure you are not handing in LAZY photos. Use your knowledge of composition techniques and pay attention to cropping and the background.

I generally can’t/won’t use photos of students unless I can see FACES. If you have photos of the backs of heads, or primarily the backs of heads, I won’t use it so it won’t count.

• Lazy photos from bad angles or with distracting/annoying backgrounds don’t count.
• Photos with terrible lighting don’t count.
• Blurry photos don’t count.
• Photos with unnecessary, excessive noise don’t count.

Here is a list of things you should remember before you go out to photograph an event:

• Check your equipment, does it all work? Is your battery charged?
• Arrive early, check out angles and sight lines – MOVE to find the best location
• Pay attention to the LIGHT available in the location. Adjust your position and your camera accordingly!
• Capture the action in the frame – faces and hands
• Use the “Rule of Thirds” to create appeal
• Look for frames, patterns, lines, and interesting shapes
• Wait. Events will happen. Be ready.
• Use layers / Avoid distractions – consider the foreground and background
• Shoot images in both landscape and portrait format
• Wait until the end so you can record reactions to the event

Photography is and will always will be one of the most important part of yearbook, without great photographs it’s difficult to create great content!

So make sure to take your time and pick the best photos possible for your yearbook.

The makers of our yearbook, Friesens, has provided some great tips for you to keep in mind when you are going out to shoot an event for the yearbook:

Yearbook starts with great photography. The pictures are what pull the viewer in to admire the great design, read the captions, and the copy. Improving your publication’s photography is not only about taking great photos it is also about choosing those photos to be included in your yearbook.

Ask yourself, what makes a photograph memorable to you? Is it the subject matter, the lighting, the colours, the composition, the emotion, or moment? If you can start identifying these characteristics you can better choose the pictures to be included in your book.

Some things to look for:

• Pictures in focus
• Images that follow good composition, rule of thirds, framing, lines, simplicity
• Showing people’s faces instead of the side or back
• Capturing connections or interactions
• We tend to have action shots covered but what about reaction moments?
• Good technical quality – understanding exposure, contrast, colour
• Telling a story with your picture
• Engage the interests of the viewer
• Better cropping of the image, get rid of the extra stuff, focusing on the subject
• Avoiding distracting backgrounds
• Better lighting/ camera settings
• Distance from the subject being photographed, get closer

1. Having 3 subjects in a photograph does a better job of filling the frame, telling the story and being a stronger composition than having 1 or 2 people. Think about all the people you could include or cover in your yearbook if your goal were to have 3 people in every photo.
2. If you are including photographs with only one person, they need to be doing something interesting or amazing to capture the reader’s attention.
3. Capture interesting moments and not just static poses. Look for photographs that evoke emotion or a reaction from the viewer. Subjects do not need to be looking directly at the camera.
4. To capture moments, train your students and staff to ignore the camera. Do this by always having a camera present. Take so many pictures that you start to fade into the background when moments or events are happening.
5. Reposition yourself to capture people’s faces. Figure out where you need to be and where your camera needs to be positioned to capture their face. If they are low, get low. Get out into the action if possible. Get your camera in close. Show the viewer a vantage point they may not get to see otherwise.
6. Learn how to control depth of field and use that to tell your story. Use a shallow depth of field to focus on a subject, blur out a distracting background, or use a deep depth of field to have a group of people in focus.
7. In a crowd or group shot, look for an ‘entry point’ for your viewer. Using an entry point draws the viewer’s eyes and then they can explore the rest of the photograph.
   Different entry points can include
   • one person turned towards the camera
   • focusing on one subject, and slightly blurring the rest of the crowd
   • having the main subject doing something different than the rest
   • use cropping to make the primary subject stand out
   • move in close and make the primary subject larger than the rest
8. Place or frame subjects using the rule of thirds intersecting points. By following this you contribute to your composition, but you also help the viewer identify the main subject of your photograph.
9. Think about foreground, middle ground, and the background of your picture. By doing this you create more of a 3-dimensional image even though the viewer is looking at a 2-dimensional picture.
10. Take lots of photos but mix up the settings, the light, the angle, the orientation, etc., so that when you get to the editing process you will have lots of selection to tell the story.
11. Get to the event early and stay after it is over. Get the complete story. Capture the moments before and the reactions after. Capture both the happy and the not-so-happy moments. As a journalist it is important for you to tell the story.
12. Look at great photography to get inspiration.
    • https://atpi.smugmug.com/
    • https://jeaphoto.smugmug.com/
    • https://unsplash.com
    • https://www.flickr.com/That is a loooong list of tips but start by incorporating a few at a time.

We’ve looked at the three main controls that affect the amount of light that your camera captures, and therefore impact the photos that you take.

HERE’S A GOOD OVERVIEW/REVIEW

Your job for this assignment is to know which control is the most important for different situations and explain why.

Think about what each control does: Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO. Think up at least three different situations where you’d have to make a choice about each of those three, what your choices would be, and why. Take the photo, explain it all in a document or slideshow or video or whatever and hand it in.

You’ll get marks for the quality and creativity of your photos, using the correct settings in the correct situations, and your explanation of each.

Once you understand how the different parts of the Exposure Triangle work, here are some good examples and tips:

download a copy from the HAND OUT folder or ask me for a printout if you need one

The word Photography comes from the Greek roots of “light” and “writing.” Photography is basically the practice of capturing light onto some displayable medium, whether it’s printed out or on a screen of some kind.

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Today, you need to take some specific photos in some specific light situations. Please TURN OFF YOUR FLASH. If you can, or if you want to work with a partner, take the same photos on your camera and on your phone.

These are the photos I want to see:

• A photo in the darkened classroom (no flash)
• A photo of someone or something standing in front of a window (inside, looking out)
• A photo outside
• A photo where the camera is in the shade and your subject is in the sunlight (front steps work great)
• A photo where the camera is in the sunlight and your subject is in the shade (front steps work great)
• A photo in a part of the school where there’s no natural sunlight (if possible – basement, cave,)
• A photo of something really close to your camera (play around, how close can you get and still take a photo)
• A photo of something really far away (zoom)
• A photo of something moving (another person, a car on the road)

Bring those back and import them onto your computer by copying them into OneDrive or importing them with Lightroom or Lightroom Classic. DO NOT EDIT THEM YET.

Photoshop – Creative tool, allows advanced editing, combining photos, adding layers, etc. Many uses beyond just improving photos. Infinite creative options. We’ll use this when we want to get really creative with our photos and work some real magic.

As for organizing and quickly making changes to photos, there are a few main options! You really need to organize yourself as you start to take more photos, and there are three main options. There’s no right or wrong answer for which one you should use, so we’ll take a look at all 3 as we go along.

Bridge – connects everything. Easy to sort, organize, and find. Can quickly open photos in other Adobe apps. You don’t actually import photos into Bridge, it just views them where they are. You can move them and rename them and all kinds of things, but there aren’t actually any photos within Bridge.

Bridge overview:

Lightroom – Cloud based. Easier to understand and figure out, sync with other computers & devices, edit on the go, full access to full quality files at all times, and doesn’t use up hard drive space, but cloud storage is expensive. In the past, I’ve used this one to very quickly import a photo, make basic changes, and quickly export. Throughout the year, we’ll take a LOT of photos, and I kind of need access to them all at some point. If I tried to upload EVERYTHING from throughout the year, I’d run out of cloud storage space in no time. Paying for cloud storage space is kind of ridiculous, so this one doesn’t really work great for me.

Lightroom Classic – looks a little more intimidating, has more features, files are stored locally (uses up hard drive space and hard drives fail/get lost/get stolen), tethering (connect directly to a camera in a studio), great if you only use one computer and don’t need to edit on your phone. I’ve always used Classic for most of my organization and important editing, because it’s so versatile, but I’ve had some issues. I work on the yearbook at home and at school. With this version of the program, I have to have my files accessible on both. I can store my files in OneDrive, but Lightroom Classic has a “catalog” file that contains all of the information about the photos, and I’ve found it extremely difficult to use one catalog in both places. Just recently, Lightroom Classic updated and I seem to have lost my entire catalog. Luckily, I still have all of the photos, but the albums that I’ve created and the presets that I’ve come up with and more seem to be totally gone. So frustrating!

They say a photograph is worth 1000 words. I want 5000 words about you!

A photograph should tell a story. If I see photographs of important people, places, and events in your life, they should give me a lot of information about you. I should be able to learn a lot about you by seeing some important photos about your life.

Here’s my example

In class, I had students guess what the story is in each picture by looking at the people and objects in the photos, where it looks like they are, what’s around, what expressions people have on their faces, and anything else you can notice.

You have two choices. Either show these to me and/or the class directly so that we can talk about them and ask questions OR show me the picture, then on a separate page/slide, explain the photo. I want to guess and figure it out, then see your explanation to see how close I am.

You can put this together however you like. PowerPoint or InDesign make sense to me, but you could use Word or make a video with the photos and your explanations or just come in at lunch and show me your photos. Hand your project into your hand in folder that you created and shared with me.

Looking at the photos you took as part of the Light Scavenger Hunt, I want you to try to notice what the light did to the subject of your photographs in each of the different situations I asked you to capture.

You should notice some obvious differences. I want you to do some comparisons, and do some thinking and reflecting. Answer the following questions, with examples, in a PowerPoint or InDesign document or however you choose.

Looking at photos taken on your DSLR camera:

1. Which is your best photo? (when looking at light and colour and detail). Why? Describe what’s good about it.
2. Which is your worst photo? (when looking at light and colour and detail). Why? Describe what’s wrong with it.
3. Take two other photos and compare them. Perhaps look at one inside and one outside, or another one that turned out good and another one that didn’t. What are the major differences between the two photos? (light, colour, detail)

Next, take at least two photos that need some help (whichever source you want) and put them into Lightroom. Adjust the sliders to see what helps the photo look better? Which ones did you have to move up or down to improve the results?

Put those observations into a document/presentation/video and hand it in!