Photography readings and viewings

Rather than buy a "history of photography" book or a "photojournalism" text, we will use a number of Web sites and videos to learn about photography, starting with an excellent Public Broadcasting series. We will use some of the other links below in class; others are here for inspiration and browsing. Additions will be made as the semester goes along.

What do images -- especially photographic images -- mean in our lives? How are they used? What makes "a good picture"?

• American Photography: A Century of Images, a PBS series resource site, features seven one-page essays, transcripts of the documentary itself, and an interactive "Image Lab," with exercises in manipulating both the content and meaning of images.
• UPDATE: I've gotten the library staff to revive online streaming copies of the PBS video documentary series. Your computer needs the Quicktime video player to play them.
• VHS tapes of the documentary (three one-hour episodes) are also on reserve for this class at the library, which will let you see them on a bigger screen. You should make time to watch roughly an episode a week before a mid-February test on general knowledge of photo history, styles and famous photographers. There will be a review class before the test. The library page for each video has two resolutions; I've put shortcut links here to the higher resolution versions.
  1. The Developing Image (library page) | PLAY high-resolution
  2. The Photographic Age (library page) | PLAY high-resolution
  3. Photography Transformed (library page) | PLAY high-resolution
• Even if you can't get to the library to watch the programs and the streaming video doesn't work on your computer, you still should be able to pass the test if you study the text-only transcript and search the Web for people and pictures it discusses. For example, you can find Wikipedia pages on people like Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Curtis and Eddie Adams, or Masters of Photography site pages on Walker Evans and Margaret Bourke-White, or Bourke-White and W. Eugene Smith in Life magazine's archives -- or other sources by searching for people's names in Google.
• Extra help: These links and more notes to review for the test.

 

Photography How-To Sources

• Digital camera features and terminology from Photo.net's beginner's guide.
• Kodak Photography Tips
• Popular Photography magazine How-To Page
• For comparison, classic analog photography: The Leica Manual -- 1937 edition!
• BetterPhoto.com Beginner Top 10 Tips
• Andre Gunther's Ten Most Common Mistakes
• Kodak Top10 Tips (non-Flash or Flash version)

 

Photographic inspiration

• Photos that Changed the World, a six-minute TED talk by Jonathan Klein of Getty Images
• How Photography Connects Us, a 15-minute TED talk by David Griffin of National Geographic
• James Nachtwey's searing photos of war, a 22-minute TED talk.
• Masters of Photography website: Choose a photographer from a list of 50 or so in the left column and get a page with "articles," "photographs" and "resources" links. (For most photographers, the "Photographs" page has a magnifying glass to show a large view, then presents one image at a time with an easy-to-miss small gray triangle in the bottom right corner to go to the next image.)
• American Masters website. This PBS series profiles musicians, artists and other creative folks, including famous photographers: Annie Leibovitz, Robert Capa, Man Ray, Richard Avedon, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz, Andre Kertesz and maybe more.

 

Imaging technology books

• Radford's library has access to both http://www.netlibrary.com and http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/ from its on-campus network. Search either one for "Photoshop CS5" or "digital photography" for a wealth of online resources.