Hard Editing Vs. Soft Editing

When I started the first photo assignment I noticed students struggled with knowing when the editing went too far. There is a time and place for both styles, but I did require all photos to be at least soft edited. 

So in this assignment, practice finding that line and when and where is the time to cross it my more intense edits for your pictures. 

We start will a lesson where we talk about the "looks" soft editing VS. Har editing. As a general rule I say soft editing a person should think, "Wow look at that great picture." in Hard editing a person look at the image and say, "Wow, look at the editing in the picture." In hard edits Photo shopping become the star of the show. 

Assignment:

2 different photos of still life top shots 
2 Different photos of Controlled light 
2 different photos of foreground disrupted photos 
2 Black and White Photos (both just in black and white no hard editing required)

Expectations:
all photos must be edited
all photos must be original
all photos must be take for this project (do not turn in a old photo you like from a year ago)
all photos must be exported as jpgs (no screenshots or photos of your screen)
all photos must show intentionality and purpose

Examples of student work from this year.

Soft Edits:

Hard Edits:

My recent AP Hack

As you may or may not know AP made some big changes to the Portfolio requirements before the pandemic. I went to the AP training and with respect to the lovely instructors, it was not informative. 

Their Goal: Make the portfolio more inquiry-based. Make the student focus on an essential question, that culminates in a themed portfolio. They want to focus on the synthesis of materials, revision, research, and experimentation. 

With that being said one of the big things they wanted to see was evidence of research and sketches. As a digital art teacher, My students are not usually making large amounts of sketches. So what I have been doing for research and revision is using Canva. 

Canva for research:

 

Students can share their inspiration, state a color palette, show sketches, show past work and demonstrate revisions. it creates a really easy and aesthetically pleasing way of doing research.

This also will work for tradition art classes. Students can upload work in progress inspiration and revision. I found last year that the students that added revision and sketches in a collage format did better on their portfolio by an entire score level.