Steve Anchell - Digital Photo Assignments: Projects for All Levels of Photography Classes

Are you building a syllabus for your first photography class? Perhaps you have been teaching for many years and need to revitalize assignments for your students? Do you need to add DSLR video, workflow, or color correction to your class? This collection of more than 40 photo assignments begins with using the camera, and progresses through learning composition, aesthetics, and working in genres.

The systematic, assignment-based approach to learning photography is a wonderful working guide for teachers of introductory and intermediate photo courses at colleges and universities, or workshop and short-course formats. These lessons are designed to help all studentsfrom beginning freshmen to experienced seniorsreach their full potential as photographers.

Even though the assignments have been designed for instructors to use in class, photographers at all levels can equally use them, beginner to advanced, to improve or reinvigorate their photography.

Steve Anchell has taught both digital and darkroom classes at Oregon State University. Internationally published, with his fine art work exhibited in galleries and private collections, Steve has conducted workshops since 1979, including workshops for the International Center for Photography in NYC, Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, Toscana Photographic Workshops (Italy), the Universities of California at Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Irvine, the University of Cincinnati, University of Denver.

Steve is a former contributing editor to Outdoor Photographer , Camera & Darkroom , and PhotoWork magazines, and has written for Shutterbug , Rangefinder , photo technique , View Camera , and Camera Arts magazines. He is the author of The Variable Contrast Printing Manual , The Darkroom Cookbook , and co-author of The Film Developing Cookbook , published by Focal Press.

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Digital Photo Assignments

Projects for All Levels of Photography Classes

Steve Anchell

First published 2016
by Focal Press
70 Blanchard Road, Suite 402, Burlington, MA 01803

and by Focal Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Focal Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Taylor & Francis

The right of Steve Anchell to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Anchell, Stephen G.
Digital photo assignments: projects for all levels of photography classes /
authored by Steve Anchell.
pages cm
1. PhotographyStudy and teachingActivity programs.
2. PhotographyDigital techniquesStudy and teaching
Activity programs. 3. PhotographyDigital techniquesExaminations,
questions, etc. I. Title.
TR162.A53 2015
771.076dc23

2014042864

ISBN: 978-1-138-79449-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-79448-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75921-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Stone Serif and Frutiger
By Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton

Digital Photo Assignments is dedicated to Professor John Maul (1954-2012), a visionary artist and the former Oregon State University Director of the School of Arts and Communication.

Without John this book would never have been written.

Thank you, John.

When John Maul hired me to teach photography at Oregon State University, I admit to having been nervous. Even though I had been teaching adults since 1979 I had no training in conducting a semester-long courseone in which there was meant to be an orderly progression of learning from one class to the next.

I was confident that I would be able to go on amazon.com and find plenty of books with lots of ready-made assignments and inspirational ideas for teaching. Sure enough, there were about a dozen books that claimed to have photo projects and assignments. I ordered every one.

With almost no exception, these books proved to be worthless. Not that there werent a few good ideas in each of them, but they were either so remedial as to be a joke, or so advanced you needed to be enrolled in a master of fine art program to use them. None could be effectively used to teach an undergraduate course in photography.

I asked other instructors for assignment ideas. I was disappointed to find that instructors at the university level, perhaps any level, were proprietary about their assignments. Not that they said no outright, they just werent readily forthcoming. It soon became apparent they werent intending to share anything substantial.

I know a great deal about photography, more than forty-four years worth of knowledge. Much of it gained from working photographers who had enough self-confidence, that they didnt mind sharing. As a result, I tend to be inclusive, as can be seen in my first book, The Darkroom Cookbook . In that book I share as much as I know and then ask my peers to share their knowledge, so it will be there for everyone.

My theory is that no two people create alike, and that by sharing what each of us knows, another artist may be able to create something I couldnt or wouldnt, and thereby enrich the world.