Light, Shadow and Reflection slideshow

Here is the slideshow for the beginning students new assignment on Light, Shadows, and Reflections. Also, check out the winners work from Lincoln's photo department for the Scholastic Art Awards. Meagan Fuchs won a gold portfolio key and has shipped her portfolio to New York for national adjucation and a chance for a 10,000 scholarship. She also won an individual gold key as did Stephen Day for his digital photograph.

Winter Break

"Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful...Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!! Yes, it has been very wintery and so much school time lost. But, what great opportunities for fabulous photos!!! So, over the break I expect you all to capture some great shots. When we return to school in January, everyone will be getting their semester portfolios together. This is a large part of your grade. For beginning students, you should have a minimum of 7, maximum of 15 prints. I will be looking for evidence of effective use of composition techniques, creative camera controls, excellent print quality, and clean presentations. Never, ever turn in work that is not to the best of your abilities. That means you may need to reprint or remat work. You all should get some good new work over break. Print out the "Shooting with Purpose". Remember if you get film at Fred Meyer or someplace like that, make sure it is not a C-41 film. You want a true black and white film such as TMax.
Advanced students should be finishing up registering for the scholastic awards. I will be back on the 6th to help finish up any of the forms, etc. Email me if you have any questions- nancy.abens@gmail.com Hope you all have a really happy, relaxing break.

Cindy Sherman Video

Here is a video showing some of Cindy Sherman's self portraits.

December News

The beginning photography classes are just finishing up with experiments with shutter speed. This tends to be one of the most difficult assignments for students. Everyone starts realizing how much you have to think about with photography. It is not just clicking the button. Lots of interesting work is coming out of this. Some students are ready to move on to the next assignment which is working with depth of field and abstraction.
Advanced photography students are exploring a variety of alternative processes which include polaroid, citrasolv, and acrylic medium transfer techniques, photoshop, hdr, and soon liquid emulsions. They are also working on self portraits. Below is some work that has been done by both beginning and advanced students this year.

November News in Beginning Photography

The beginning photography students just finished shooting and printing their first rolls of film. Some really great images were made. Students learned how to work with filters to raise or lower contrast in a print. In the self evaluations, most students were feeling like they are understanding how to meter and how to make a good print. We are now going to start going more in depth with creative controls. First we will be exploring motion and working with shutter speed. Here is a slideshow showing examples of what you should be trying to do.

Advanced Photo News

The advanced photo students are working on their quarter portfolio pieces. Students are learning how to window mat, how to work with fiberbase paper, and how to fine tune their digital pieces. The diptychs turned out very well overall. Some students are going to continue working in this way. I will try to get student work photographed so we can upload the images to the blog.

Beginning Photography News

The beginning classes are halfway through their photogram assignments. There is some very cool work being done. Several students will be finished in a couple of days and will then start shooting with a pinhole camera. They will all be making a camera. To me, this really starts showing the magic of photography. Students have made cameras out of metal bats, a traffic cone, plastic film containers, cookie tins with multiple lenses, altoid tins, and even a metal suitcase! Always a very entertaining time in the photo room. We start looking at the history of photography next week and then it is time for film and cameras.

Advanced Photography News

It is the end of September and the advanced photo students are finding their groove. They finished up the multiple perspectives assignment with some terrific pieces. The subject matter ranged from a closet full of hiking and climbing gear to an underwater swimmer. We read another good article by Brooks Jensen that gave all aspiring photographers "21 Ways to Improve your Photographs". Everyone chose at least one that they are going to work on. The next couple of weeks will be predominately studio work. Students should just be shooting and printing toward their portfolios and secondly, I want them all to make some diptychs. Some examples of diptychs are shown on this page. In October, we will start thinking about self portraits.

Advanced Photography September Projects

In the advanced class, students are deciding what overall theme they will be concentrating on this quarter. We read a great article by Brooks Jensen that posed the question "What is your natural vision?" Students then reflected on their past work about where they felt their natural vision may be. This is where we will start with the 1st quarter portfolio. They also are researching two photographers, one historical and one contemporary, whose work inspires them. They will be giving a presentation to the whole class on these particular photographers and how their work influenced their own. Besides working on this independent side of the class, we are just finishing up the multiple perspectives assignment based on the work of David Hockney. Besides the studio portion of this assignment, research on Hockney and cubism was also required. Some upcoming projects include a free choice studio assignment, an involved journal exercise in which students will "curate" an exhibition, and self portraits. This week students are making diptychs.

Beginning Photography September Projects

School is in full swing already. Did we have a summer vacation? It is getting hard to remember. The beginning photography students have started making photograms and getting used to working in the darkroom. This is one of my favorite projects. I can't wait to see what students decide to do with this assignment. We are discussing composition quite a bit and students will be working on a self portrait collage incorporating some of the elements and principles of design we are concentrating on right now-namely shape, texture, asymmetrical balance, pattern and rhythm. While the weather is good, we will also be enjoying the sunshine while making cyanotypes-an old process in which you paint your emulsion onto a surface, in our case watercolor paper or fabric, and lay objects, transparencies, or even bodies on the emulsion, use the sun to expose this and develop it in water. Later on this month we will be making pinhole cameras and learning about the early history of photography. Here is a slideshow of some photograms by various artists and past students.

Getting Ready for September

I hope you are all having as good a summer break as I am. It is time to start thinking ahead to the fall though. Students who are returning to take Advanced Photography should look over the Multiple Perspectives assignment in the Documents for Printing section and also read up on David Hockney in the Interesting Links section. Slideshow below shows some Hockney and some student work from this assignment. You should all be taking lots of photographs and thinking about ideas you want to pursue. Students who have signed up for Beginning Photography should read over the Supply List and Syllabus. It is a good time to look for used cameras. Make sure it is manually operable. Familiarize yourself with the camera you are going to be using. Take it to a camera repair shop to clean and make sure it is in good working order. Make sure to get new batteries for it. We will be starting out making photograms-a cameraless picture. On a personal note-I was recently awarded a spotlight feature in Black and White Magazine for being a winner in their portfolio contest. The article is coming out in Issue 63, which hits the newsstands in mid October. You can check out my work on my website: NancyAbens.com Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Goodbye and Good Luck, Seniors!

On May 14th, the advanced photography class showed their best work from the past two years. They wowed the audience! The overall caliber of the work from these incredibly talented students was, as Will Stevens-Cardinal Times reporter stated "rival(ing) that of professionals". I have loved working with this group of students. I can't wait to see where they go and what adventures they have in the next few years. You can see works by the students who have won various awards this year on the side of the blog. Below the slideshow is a print by every other student in the advanced photo class. I also had some very good beginning photography students who are graduating. A slideshow of their work is below.
Next year's advanced photography class is promising to be another one filled with stellar students.
It has been a pleasure working with the outgoing seniors. They have inspired me to be a better teacher and artist, they have made me laugh and appreciate my job everyday.

May Projects

May and spring are here. The beginning classes are starting their last assignment-landscapes. They will be shooting both the natural and the urban landscape.
We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful environment. The coast, the gorge, the mountains, the high desert, the rural countryside, and Forest Park are all terrific areas to shoot photographs of the Natural World. We go to school in a city with amazing public gardens, fountains, great architecture, bridges, and sculptures all within walking distance.
The advanced class is finishing up their books and getting ready for the big show. Mark your calendar for the evening of May 14, from 5 to 7 to celebrate all the Lincoln students in advanced visual arts classes. The opening of this show corresponds with International Arts Beat night going on in the cafeteria from 6 til 9.
Here is a video on the king of landscape photography-Ansel Adams.

Projects for April

Spring break came and went very quickly. I spent most of it working in the garden and my studio. I played quite a bit with photoshop. It is easy to get lost in it. Many of the students traveled to warm and wonderful places. I am looking forward to seeing the photographs they took.
In the beginning photo classes, students are working on photo essays. This is based in the Life Magazine format, but really can be considered a mini portfolio on a subject of one's own choosing. They will be constructing an envelope to house their images.
The advanced students are going to be extremely busy. They are working on an emulation and bookmaking project. We will be learning several bookmaking techniques in the first two weeks of April. All of the students have chosen an artist to emulate. They will use these artists' work as a starting point to make their own pieces that are inspired by another's work. The final images and research will be displayed in a book. They will also be finalizing their portfolios in preparation for the Senior Show which will open on May 14.Meanwhile, here's some new work from both the beginning and advanced classes.

March projects for Advanced Photography

In the advanced class, students are just about finished with the Words>Images assignment. This was an assignment designed primarily to get students thinking about concepts more and pushing them to try something new with their photography. Some interesting work came out of this. I will get some of the images uploaded in the next couple weeks. The students who are shooting digital primarily are going to start working on how to do HDR images. This is the hot new thing in digital photography. You can get some pretty amazing images with this technique. Film students will just be working on perfecting printing with fiberbase papers. Towards the end of March we will start work around an emulation and bookmaking project. Look for the links about HDR images in the sidebar on interesting links.

Projects for March-Beginning Photography

Spring has arrived! It is an excellent time to be out shooting photographs. I love spring light, especially in the early morning hours and the late afternoon. In the beginning photo classes we are just finishing up the portrait assignment. Some really beautiful work was made. Students worked with natural and studio lights. Black velvet backgrounds were a favorite with many. The group portraits didn't quite turn out how I wanted them to. We are going to be redoing that part of the assignment a bit later in the month. For now, though, students will be shooting a roll of double exposures. They can work with someone else or go it alone. I think the best way to go about this assignment is with a little planning. Think about having some of the first set of exposures being textures, clouds, water, backgrounds, etc. The second time the film goes through concentrate on shooting faces, hands, still life objects, etc. Who knows what will happen!
Here's a slideshow with some of the portraits that are finished. I will add more a bit later.

Advanced Photography February Project

The advanced photo students are working on their new assignment-Words>Images. Many have chosen to work with homonyms that they picked and then make images to show those words. Others have decided to tackle the more challenging part of the assignment, that of using two synonyms and an antonym and then using one image, alter it in any way to fit the words. Some students are working with the words emergence, anticipation, or metamorphosis and illustrating one or all of them. I am looking forward to seeing where they are going to go with these. Check out the slideshow of their work from first semester.

Beginning Photography February project

The beginning photography students have started working on their portrait assignment. A few students from the 3rd and 4th period classes painted some dynamite new backdrops to use. This is an extensive assignment that will probably take all of February to complete. Towards the end of February, we will start looking at photography from the 1950's and '60's and some of the well known photojournalists of that time. Here's a new slideshow of some of the beginning photo students work from first semester.