Review of Art Basics

Even in photography, a good working knowledge of the elements and principles of design will help even a beginning photographer take interesting and high quality images. If you need to review the elements, you can look at several sites to brush up. Here are a few:

We will also be putting our knowledge of the principles of design to use. For starters, let's review one of the principles that you will use in nearly every photo you shoot: Emphasis. Rosalind Ragans' book, Arttalk, defines emphasis as the "Principle of design that makes one part of a work dominant over the other parts." The same book states 5 different ways to create a focal point. They are:

You can review them on pages 316 - 322 of the Arttalk book. Your assignment is in 2 parts. In the first, you will collect a set of 10 magazine or newspaper advertisements with strong focal points and identify the focal point in each. In the second, you will create some designs with strong focal points using construction paper. Your worksheet and rubric for this exercise is here.