Narrative Photography Workshop: 4-9

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.

Assignments 4-9 have only one step apiece

Assignment 4 - Narrative Tableau

For this project produce one photograph of a scene from a story. Use costumes sets and props to communicate the story clearly. A viewer should be able to “read” the information in the photograph to figure out the story.

Assignment - 5 Miniature

Create a scene using miniature objects. You can play with scale by including life scale objects. Photo manipulation is allowed.

Assignment 6 - Sequence

Tell a simple narrative in a sequence of photographs. Can be anywhere from 3 photos to 12 photos.

Assignment 7 - Character

Do a series of five portraits of the same person as five different characters. Try to choose characters along a theme. Communicate the characters using costumes or makeup as well as through their actions and body language.

Assignment 8 - Childhood Photo

Find some photographs from your childhood. Do something with these photographs to recontextualize them. You could manipulate the originals or stage a photograph in someway based on the originals.

Assignment 9 - Final

For your final project take what you've learned about set, characters, costume, props, lighting, and narrative and produce a final photograph or series. You may use photoshop, you may do a series of any size, stretch the boundaries of “photography” and “narrative.”