Hands-On: Evan in the Greenhouse

Working towards completing both of my minors in applied photography and journalism, I had the opportunity to complete a photojournalism class this semester. It is a practicum class, meaning instead of various lectures and assignments, we get one big project to complete within the semester. Our project is to choose a topic, research, snap photos, and write supporting articles that explain the photos. After doing all this, we then will be compiling articles and photos into a book for our portfolios. Its pretty exciting, and an awesome opportunity to make something employers will be impressed by (hopefully!). 

As far as choosing a topic, our professor has set the bar pretty high. He has given us two things to think about while taking photos: 

1.) If I was painting this scene, would I include everything in the photo right now? This helps us think through unnecessary props and awkward  composition.

2.) Can I imagine this photo on the cover of National Geographic? Or If this photo was on a cover of a book, would I be compelled to read the book?

Both of these tricks have helped me exceedingly so far, and for my project I’m planning on doing an exploration of the hands-on aspects of UW Stout’s campus. 

So, the general idea would be to catch students from various majors working with their hands. For every activity, I want to snap a photo like this one. This is my friend Evan who works in the student greenhouse on the third floor of Jarvis science wing.

The idea actually came from this photo I took of a friend at the rock wall.

Then I want to snap some photos of the student working with his/her hands.

My photojournalism class meets once a week, and its a great opportunity to bring in what I’ve worked on during the past week. My photos are critiqued and I get the valuable insight of others that I can use in the coming week.

So obviously, I won’t be using all of these photos in the final project. But, as my portfolio professor says, ‘you need to give 300% to get 100%”. How does that translate to photography? Take a whole bunch of photos.

Outside the greenhouse

As I work on this project, I will be posting updates on here. Like I said, I will not be using all of the photos that I do post, so you get some sneak peeks of the behind the scenes! I have always loved the fact that Stout is more project-based than test-based, and I’m so excited to communicate that. Stay tuned 🙂 if you have any great ideas about things I could take photos of, send me an e-mail!