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Students will learn how to take news photographs. In addition, by understanding how photographs work as journalism, students will develop a better understanding of news. Photographs taken for this class may be used in the student newspaper, The Statesman, if the student editors accept them.
Required Texts
Ken Kobre, Photojournalism: The Professionals’ Approach, 5th Edition
The Duluth News Tribune (you need to arrange 7-day a week home delivery)
Grading and Assignments
Weekly Assignments/Presentations 20%
Mid-term portfolios 30%
Participation /Photo Ideas/DNT 20%
Essay 10%
Final Portfolio 20%
Weekly Photo Assignment. The core of the class will be a weekly three-hour photo shift for each student. During that photo shift, you are responsible for taking photographs of any news that is happening on campus (you should be aware of basic news events). In addition, The Statesman may send you a photo assignment for which you are responsible. (You should check your email at the beginning of your shift). If you do not have a formal photo assignment for your shift, you are responsible for coming up with a news feature photo during your shift. All photos must be turned in to the class’s website within one hour of your shift. Photos without cutline information will not be accepted. [You may, with the advance permission of the instructor, ask to do a specific alternative assignment during the week. But you must receive permission BEFORE your shift.]
You will do a weekly photo assignment every week, with the first shift taking place between the end of the first class and next Tuesday at 6 p.m. You will only need to do one photo shift between March 7 and March 21 because of Spring Break. You will have a total of 14 weekly photo shifts.
The weekly photo assignments will be graded in three ways. You’ll get fairly easy points by posting the pictures to WebX and by presenting photos to the class for a group critique. You’ll get a more substantial critique of your photos by putting them together for a individual critique/grading session three times over the course of the semester.
Group Presentations. Twice during the semester, you’ll sign up for a group critique in which your group or 5-6 students will be responsible for presenting about 30 pictures to the class for a group discussion of the photos. Each member of the group will introduce their own photos. Each group is responsible for coming up with a way of presenting the photos (we can hook up one of your laptops to run a presentation program such as Keynote or Powerpoint; or you can put a series of PDF’s on a thumbdrive). All of the pictures for the presentation must be on the same medium to save time.
Individual Critiques. Three times during the semester, you are required to make an appointment with me for a critique/grading of your photos. You’ll bring in at least 10 photos to each session and they will be graded for both technical quality and news value. Printouts of photos do not have to be especially fancy and you may use the computers/printer in Cina 104 if you’d like black-and-white versions, but they need to be a reasonable size.
I’ll schedule appointments both during my regular office hours and at other appropriate times, including after class during the critique week. If you don’t attend a critique, you’ll get a 0 for that mid-term. Mid-term critiques will be held during the weeks of:
February 13-17
March 20-24
April 17-21
All Photo Assignments. For each weekly photo assignment that you turn in, you must include at least three publishable photographs and provide full cutline information including the proper spelling of all subjects in the photographs. Only on rare occasions will you be allowed to not include the names of the subjects of your photographs. Also, the photographs must be publishable (i.e. you cannot accept conditions from your subjects in order to take your photographs).
All of the standard journalistic ethical rules apply to your photographs, including that you should not take pictures of people or events for which you have a conflict of interest (roommates, friends, significant others, organizations that you have close ties to, etc.).
You will need to turn in photos to the class’s WebX site, reachable at www.d.umn.edu/webx (then select Drew Digby, then select Journalism 3300).
Cameras. The journalism program and ITSS have together purchased more than 10 high quality basic digital cameras (Panasonic with Leica lenses). They are available for checkout from AV. You may reserve them, but I hope we have enough that that will not be necessary. Please limit your checkout of a camera to 24 hours. (ITSS will allow you to keep it longer, but if you repeatedly keep the camera for more than 24 hours, I will revoke your permission to check the camera out and you will have to provide your own digital camera.)
Other Assignments. You will have the following assignments as part of class.
Off-Campus Photos. During the week of Feb. 21-27, you’ll need to find a photo assignment that does NOT involved UMD students or staff members. You do not need to do your normal photo shift during this week, but you must turn in photos to the WebX site by Feb. 28. You are welcome to work in pairs or groups of three to create a project on a part of Duluth that is worth exploring. [Some suggestions: the bus stop in front of the Holiday Inn has been done a million times and I find it boring; the casino won’t let you inside and pictures of its exterior are boring and not worth doing.] To give you extra time to do this assignment, we will not have class on the evening of Feb. 21.
Lighting Laboratory. We won’t have regular classes during the week of April 11. Instead, I’ll schedule a series of two-hour lighting labs in which I’ll work with groups of up to six students with professional lighting equipment. I’ll try to arrange the sessions to match your schedules. You’ll produce a set of projects that I will assign including a formal portrait and a still life. The lab will count as part of your participation grade and you will need the formal portrait and the still life as part of your final portfolio.
Photo ideas. Every week, each student needs to email to the class an idea for a news photo. These ideas count as part of your participation grade.
Duluth News Tribune. You are required to subscribe to the Duluth News Tribune and each week, bring in at least 6 sections from the course of the week with photos to talk about. The newspapers should be from the course of the week; we’ll discuss the photos in small groups and then as a class. This counts as 10% of your grade. You can write out comments if you feel I’m not hearing your verbal comments as I walk around the class.
Essay on Photographer. Due March 7 by 6 p.m. You must research and write a short essay (4-6 pages) about the significance of a particular photojournalist. Please check with me about the appropriateness of your subject. The topic of your essay should be the developments in photojournalism and the accomplishments of your particular photographer. You should attach Xerox copies of some of the photographer’s work and reference those photographs in your essay. You must get approval for the subject of your essay by Feb. 14. Please make sure that you are talking about a photojournalist. Many magazine photographers, for example, fashion and music and some portrait photographers, are not photojournalists.
Final Project: Portfolio. Instead of a final exam for this class, you will have a final project, due at the same time as your final exam would have taken place. In this portfolio, you need to display your best work in the class and the breadth of your work. You will need to turn this project in via the ePortfolio system. So, over the course of the semester, you need to make sure you have taken photographs that will fulfill the following categories. They may be part of other assignments for the class (including the weekly photo assignment), but you can’t substitute them inappropriately for the weekly photo assignment. For example, a stand-alone photo illustration can’t serve as your weekly photo assignment unless it was an assignment from the Statesman:
Portrait in setting (meaning a picture of someone in their environment, but NOT some guy just at a desk, which is known as the guy at desk photo and is unacceptable.)
• Formal Portrait
• Basic News Photograph
• Still Life
• Illustration
• Feature package
• Student life package
• Community package
• Sports package
Class Policies
1.) Journalism requires a very high level of ethical behavior. Any violations of university rules on ethics will be treated very severely. UMD’s academic integrity policies have been substantially updated; every student should be aware of the fairly dire consequences of violating the policies.
2.) Conflict of interest. Whenever you work on a journalism assignment, you must avoid conflicts of interest. In other words, you cannot photograph your roommate, your significant other, your friends or relatives. If there is a chance you have a conflict of interest, you must disclose it to the instructor as soon as possible and at least at the moment the work is turned in. Failure to disclose a conflict of interest, no matter how weak, will result in a failing grade even if disclosing the potential conflict of interest would have resulted in a decision that the conflict was not disqualifying.
3.) Attendance. You must treat this course like a job. In order to get an excused absence, you must notify me in advance why you are not going to be absent. Even a single unexcused absence will have severe consequences for your grade. Two unexcused absences will result in a failing grade. Absences will only be excused after the fact if you were unconscious. (For example, even a note from your doctor will not excuse an absence after the fact.)
4.) Special needs. If you have a disability, either permanent or temporary, which might affect your performance in this class, please inform me at the start of the semester. Methods, materials, or testing will be adapted as required for equitable participation.
5.) Late assignments will not be accepted.
6.) Office Hours. If you have any questions or problems, please use the office hours to talk with me. I am also on campus for a substantial period of time outside of formal office hours, including frequently on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
Schedule
Remember to bring your News Tribune examples each week.
Jan. 17 Introduction. Using the Cameras. Photo Ethics.
Jan 24 Newsrooms and Photographers. Approaches to Photojournalism. Breaking News Photography. Kobre, Chaps. 1-2.
Jan 31 General News Photographs. Kobre, Chap. 3.
Feb. 7 Features and In-Depth Photo Assignments. Kobre, Chaps. 4-5.
Feb. 14 History of Photojournalism. Kobre, Chap. 15.
Feb. 21 Off-campus photo week. No Class.
Feb. 28 Sports Photography. Kobre, Chap. 7.
Mar. 7 (Caucus Night, no classes) Essays are due by 6 p.m.
Mar. 21 Digital Darkroom. Kobre., Special Section.
Mar 28 Ethics and the Law. Kobre, Chaps. 13-14.Apr. 4 Portraits. Kobre, Chap. 6.
Apr. 11 Lighting. Kobre, Chaps. 9, 12. Lighting labs. Special schedule to be announced. Unless otherwise noted, all lighting labs will be held in H 484.
Apr 18 Photo Editing. Kobre, review Chap. 10.
Apr. 25 Photo Essays, Kobre, Chap. 8
May 2 Next steps. Kobre, Chaps. 11, 16