Narrative Photography Workshop: 3 - Body Language

Narrative Photography Workshop from KCAI (The Kansas City Arts Institute) - Level 1

This workshop deals with staged photography.  From it you will learn to tell stories through the use of props, sets, costumes, and acting.  You will also learn to operate a digital camera.  Though this is a photography course these lessons apply to the moving image as well as the still image.

EQUIPMENT:

All that is necessary for this class is a digital camera with a manual focus setting and an adjustable shutter speed. 

Assignment 3 - Body Language 

Part 1

Find a location from which you can covertly photograph people interacting.  Take at least 10 photos to study how people behave when the are not aware that they are being observed.  You must photograph the from the same location looking at the same space between all 10 photographs.  Find a place where you know people will be passing through and wait for subjects to come into frame.

Part 2

Go to place with many people interacting.  Try to capture people behaving naturally.  Unlike part 1 you may move about.  In this set of 10 photographs you should practice capturing events spontaneously as well as how to compose photographs quickly based on you environment and what is happening.

Part 3

Hang a sheet and an set up a single light source such that a person behind the sheet will cast a crisp silhouette onto the sheet.  Capture as series of 10 photographs of a model's silhouette expressing 10 different emotions only through their body language.

Part 4

With the same set up as part 3 study the body language of a pair of people.  Capture a series of 10 photographs experimenting with the body language of couples using the silhouettes of two people.

Part 5

Cover two people in fabric sheets to conceal their bodies.  You could either have them under one sheet or two separate sheets.  Produce a set of 10 photographs of this pair interacting out is a space (Non studio).