Lens MediaIntended as a follow-on course for DigiDesigns, Lens Media has students breaking out the family camera and working in-depth with photography and videography. It's all about learning to tell the story--leveraging free internet-based tools to learn about, edit, and publish quality photos and videos.
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(This class is coded NCES 11002)
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Students can use any lens for this class, including those built into a smart-phone. But it's best if there's a digital camera to hand, even if it's an older model, because we'll be talking about aperture and shutter-speed a bit, and those are generally not available on a phone or tablet.
Sample Student Portfolios
Sample Project Checklist (from Week 3 of Lens Media)
3-09 (50pts) Aspect Ratios
Aspect Ratio measures the relationship between the width and length of a photograph. Just like movies can be formatted for newer wide-screen monitors (16:9) or older 4:3 TVs, photos can have different aspect ratios. Photos can be printed on 4x6 paper or 8x10 and many other sizes, and every print size has its own aspect ratio (2:3, 4:5, 5:7, etc).
Photos can be cropped from the original file so they can fit different physical frames or digital screens. And even if the aspect ratio of a photo doesn't change, cropping can be an important step in editing a photo. In this project you will learn to crop photos and adjust their aspect ratio when needed.
Take a variety of photos around your home base (be that a schoolroom or around the home) and choose five of your favorites. Make sure than none of them are noisy (too-high ISO) or out of focus--that means you may have to start with WAY more than five pics so that you can "cull" out the noisies and blurries. With each of those five photos, crop each one in different aspect ratios so that you have multiple versions of it. For example: start with a photo, upload it and crop it in Pixlr.com and save it as a copy. Then, upload the original photo again and crop it in a different way. When you save this one, you will end up with two variations of the same photo. Note the aspect ratio of each, because you'll need to include that information.
You don't need to change orientation every time--you may have a landscape (wider-than-tall) picture that you want to accentuate in its width (like a wide banner). That's okay. But somewhere in your slideshow, you'll need to crop a landscape-oriented picture so that the cropped pic is portrait-orientation, which means that it is taller than it is wide, and vice versa.
On your Portfolio, embed a Google Slideshow displaying all five of the original photos along with the two variations of each one. Below or within the slideshow, include a paragraph telling us a little about each photo group and the reasoning for cropping the images like you did. Also, please tell us which one of each group that you like the most and why.
Spend 12 minutes (use a timer or a clock) reading one or both of these articles:
Aspect Ratio - The Enemy of Digital Prints
Understanding Aspect Ratio in Photography
PROJECT CHECKLIST
____ Before starting to crop, read all of this assignment AND 12 minutes (at least) of the two linked-articles.
____ Post a single slideshow displaying five original photos along with two cropped variations each. Fifteen photos.
____ Each cropped photo makes a notable improvement compared to its original and is labeled with its cropped Aspect Ratio.
____ You cropped a photo originally taken in landscape orientation to make it portrait orientated (cropped to portrait--not rotated 90 degrees to portrait!)
____ You cropped a photo taken in portrait orientation to make it landscape orientated.
____ Paragraphs explain your cropping decisions in each photo set.
____ On the page or blogpost in your portfolio devoted to this project, make sure to offer enough explanation so that a visitor to your site would understand what she is seeing. Submit that link.
____ Also include this Project Checklist (copy and paste and mark with __x__) in your Turn In area.
3-09 (50pts) Aspect Ratios
Aspect Ratio measures the relationship between the width and length of a photograph. Just like movies can be formatted for newer wide-screen monitors (16:9) or older 4:3 TVs, photos can have different aspect ratios. Photos can be printed on 4x6 paper or 8x10 and many other sizes, and every print size has its own aspect ratio (2:3, 4:5, 5:7, etc).
Photos can be cropped from the original file so they can fit different physical frames or digital screens. And even if the aspect ratio of a photo doesn't change, cropping can be an important step in editing a photo. In this project you will learn to crop photos and adjust their aspect ratio when needed.
Take a variety of photos around your home base (be that a schoolroom or around the home) and choose five of your favorites. Make sure than none of them are noisy (too-high ISO) or out of focus--that means you may have to start with WAY more than five pics so that you can "cull" out the noisies and blurries. With each of those five photos, crop each one in different aspect ratios so that you have multiple versions of it. For example: start with a photo, upload it and crop it in Pixlr.com and save it as a copy. Then, upload the original photo again and crop it in a different way. When you save this one, you will end up with two variations of the same photo. Note the aspect ratio of each, because you'll need to include that information.
You don't need to change orientation every time--you may have a landscape (wider-than-tall) picture that you want to accentuate in its width (like a wide banner). That's okay. But somewhere in your slideshow, you'll need to crop a landscape-oriented picture so that the cropped pic is portrait-orientation, which means that it is taller than it is wide, and vice versa.
On your Portfolio, embed a Google Slideshow displaying all five of the original photos along with the two variations of each one. Below or within the slideshow, include a paragraph telling us a little about each photo group and the reasoning for cropping the images like you did. Also, please tell us which one of each group that you like the most and why.
Spend 12 minutes (use a timer or a clock) reading one or both of these articles:
Aspect Ratio - The Enemy of Digital Prints
Understanding Aspect Ratio in Photography
PROJECT CHECKLIST
____ Before starting to crop, read all of this assignment AND 12 minutes (at least) of the two linked-articles.
____ Post a single slideshow displaying five original photos along with two cropped variations each. Fifteen photos.
____ Each cropped photo makes a notable improvement compared to its original and is labeled with its cropped Aspect Ratio.
____ You cropped a photo originally taken in landscape orientation to make it portrait orientated (cropped to portrait--not rotated 90 degrees to portrait!)
____ You cropped a photo taken in portrait orientation to make it landscape orientated.
____ Paragraphs explain your cropping decisions in each photo set.
____ On the page or blogpost in your portfolio devoted to this project, make sure to offer enough explanation so that a visitor to your site would understand what she is seeing. Submit that link.
____ Also include this Project Checklist (copy and paste and mark with __x__) in your Turn In area.