Due: Monday 2/23
For this mini-project, tell a story through three photographs. Use Photoshop to arrange the photographs in one .jpg image. A series of three images is called a “triptych.” I’ve been pinning examples here. The story will emerge from the differences between the photographs as much as from the photographs themselves. Depending on the story you want to tell, here are a few approaches you could take:
Possibility 1: sequence. If your triptych is chronological sequence, you can tell a story about passing time, change, or an event. Think about how comics work — so much meaning can come from the spaces between the panels. Use the spaces between your photos to create suspense and to advance the story.
Possibility 2: perspective. If your triptych offers different perspectives on a subject, you might tell a story about an individual’s life, experiences, or emotions. Or, your story could be about an object and the different ways it’s used or abused. A selfie triptych is one approach — use photographs to reveal different dimensions of who you are. You could approach “selfie” in a variety of ways, from a “photo booth” style to more abstract self-portraits expressed through things and places that define you.
Apart from these two ideas, there are many other ways you could tell a story in a triptych. Remember that coloring, arrangement, and cropping are all techniques that can create affinity and difference between the photographs. No matter what approach you choose, be sure you have sketched a concept and plan before spending time editing your composition.
Requirements
- Use only photographs that you took. iPhone tripods are available for you to check out from the Communication Studies equipment room in the basement of Merion Hall.
- Experiment with cropping to a grid, tonal range, color adjustments, and arranging photos on the canvas to tell your story. You can add text to your triptych, but that’s not required.
- The triptych should have some black or white negative space around the whole composition — i.e. images should not go off the edges of the canvas.
- Submit your triptych .psd file and your three original .jpg photos to the dropbox on Blackboard. Use good layer names. Also post a .jpg of the triptych to your Pinterest or Tumblr. The .jpg should be optimized for the web: 72 ppi, and no more than 800 px wide for portrait view and 1200 pixels wide for landscape view. Save the .jpg at maximum quality as explained in Foundations.