Programme 2: Wendy McMurdo - Photographic dreamscapes

Activities

Programme 2 activities

Before viewing
Engage children in a discussion on portraiture. Use school photographs and family photographs as examples. Ask the following questions about the photographs:

• What is a portrait?
• What does it represent?
• What is the function of a portrait?

  Ask the children to bring in a selection of family photographs and take them through a short analytical exercise:

• What are the people in the photo wearing?
• What do their clothes or objects tell us about the date of the photograph?
• What else do we read into the photo?
• Is it a formal or informal pose?
• Compare great grandparents’ photos and parents’ photos with photos that the children may have taken recently – what does this tell us about the value, quality and techniques of portraiture in photography through time?

  Language development

  Ensure that the children have an understanding of the following artistic vocabulary and key terms:

• Digitally removed: something taken out of a picture using either ‘cutting’, ‘paths’ or erasing tools on any digital image manipulation package
• Cut and paste: as above, copying and pasting from one on screen window (or page) to another
• Shadowing: following somebody’s actions as closely as possible
• Output: your final picture, as it comes out of the printer
• Doppelganger: your identical other, your imaginary twin, a person with an eerie likeness to yourself

  After viewing

  Taking the children somewhere that fires their imagination will achieve great results.

  Ask pupils to think about their identity and how to present themselves in a photograph that would give the viewer an understanding of their interests. During this exercise, explain to the children that in photography you can be anything or anyone you like. This could be someone real or an imaginary person or thing from a dream.

  This exercise involves the children themselves as the model and requires them to create a backdrop for their photograph using relevant props, costumes, and locations. A digital or video camera is required to take the photographs/stills of the children. If the school does not have access to this equipment, disposable cameras can be used, and a colour photocopier can be used to enlarge the images so that they can then be cut, pasted and re-photographed.

• Plan the portrait - what props will they require?
• Set the scene for the photograph
• Take shots of various angles, eg from the front, the back, both sides, and from above. This will give the children more images to manipulate. Use props if they eventually want to be interacting with something in the work
• Transfer the images from the digital camera onto a computer
• Manipulate the images – eg cut and paste, change the colour, reduce, enlarge or rotate
• Print out using a colour printer
• Cut and paste the print using it as collage material, mixing it with new images that relate to the child’s chosen subject, taking care not to lose the essence of the original portrait
• Photograph the completed collage using a copy stand and the digital camera
• The collage is transferred onto the computer and can be manipulated again if desired, eg change the colour, enlarge, reduce or rotate
• When the desired portrait is complete, a final print is made which becomes the finished photograph

  Materials needed:
  

• digital camera (as high a resolution as possible)
• compatible computer(s) and software or video camera/disposable camera
• good quality colour printer (Epson or similar)
• access to colour photocopier
• various types of paper for the printer to give different looks (eg glossy, matt, coloured)
• dressing-up material and props for creating backdrops