Lesson video

Hello everybody, Mrs. Barrasso here.

Welcome back to our third lesson together on photography.

We've already explored so much but we've still got more fun things to come and I'm sure you're going to really enjoy today's lesson.

Today's lesson is all about playing something I'm sure you're fantastic at.

And today we'll be playing with materials to create some beautiful photography.

Okay so before we start, you're going to need the following things.

As usual, you will need your sketchbook and pencil and you'll also need your camera or a device that has a camera on it.

And please remember to make sure you do have permission to use it, if it doesn't belong to you.

And then some other things we'll need for today's lesson, we're going to need some sandwich bags or clingfilm, a mirror, a hand mirror or a shiny surface would do, a torch or a smartphone which has a flashlight on it.

And then a colander or a cheese grater.

And what we're looking for is something in the kitchen that has holes in it that we can use for our activity today.

So if you need to pause now please do, gather what you need and then come back.

Okay, so we're going to start today with a recap of what we've already covered in our last lesson.

Then we'll do a lovely warm up with some drawing.

Then we're going to explore playing with everyday items. Then we're going to have a look at some editing of images and we'll finish as usual with a recap of what we've already learned.

So what we did last lesson.

So last lesson, we took selfies facing the light and facing away from the light.

We were looking at the impact that light will have on a photograph.

Remember we realised that light was our BFF, our best friend, as a photographer.

We learned about natural and artificial light, and why photographers like and use both.

We went on a treasure hunt to capture natural or artificial light around our homes or maybe outside.

And we investigated natural and artificial light, when we were capturing the same subject.

It was lots, wasn't it? We did so much.

So let's have a look now at some key words that we're going to use in today's lesson.

First word, manipulate, a skillful handling of something.

Monochrome, a photograph or image in black and white and crop, to remove part of an image to produce a better image.

Okay, let's move on now to a drawing warmup.

So the challenge, first of all find something that you want to draw.

Just something that you've got around you.

Can you draw it without looking at your sketchbook? So that means you've got to keep your eyes on what you're drawing.

Don't look down at your sketchbook.

Press pause, have a go, come back and then I'll show you mine as well.

Fantastic! How did you get on? Well, this is mine.

Can you guess what it is? It was, it's actually a cup of tea.

That's what mine is.

It was quite challenging that, wasn't it? How did you find it? What was the challenge in that activity? Did you find it so hard, not to look down at your page? And did any of you find that you had parts of your drawing here and parts of your drawing over here? They weren't quite connected.

I know it's very difficult.

It's not, it's hard to work out where things are going to go.

Isn't it? Well, just take a little moment to look at what you've done.

Think about the challenge that we've just experienced.

And if you want to maybe give yours a title, I give mine a title, The no looking challenge is what my title is.

And if you want to write a little thing about how you feel about it, you can.

And if not, we can move on to the next activity.

So press pause if you need to and then come back and join us.

Okay, we're going to move on now to the juicy part of today's lesson, playing with some everyday items. Now, playing is such an important part of being an artist.

And sometimes when we start to play with things we don't quite know where it's going to end up and that's okay.

That's actually a really interesting part of being an artist.

Sometimes when you start to do something, it takes you down a wonderful path.

Your curiosity comes to life.

Your creativity comes to life and you sometimes find something beautiful.

Sometimes you find something you don't like at all and that's also okay.

That's part of playing.

So let's keep that in mind.

Keep an open mind as we go into today's lesson.

So the first challenge, is to use a sandwich bag to a take photograph.

So have you decide, on what is it you want to take a picture of? It could be something inside.

It could be something outside.

It could be an everyday item.

And then what you're going to do is you're going to take your phone and know, or your camera whatever it is that you have.

And then you're going to take a picture inside the sandwich bag.

So have everything on and ready and then point your camera.

If it's got writing on, it's a classic one, maybe try and use the clear side, point your camera and take a picture.

What happens? How interesting does that come out? I'll show you mine.

So this was my first picture that I'm taking today, my first photograph and then this is what I wanted to take a photograph of.

So I took a picture of it already to show you.

Then I used my sandwich bag and this is how it came out.

What do you think? Kind of interesting, kind of unusual, kind of blurry, but little bits of light there as well.

I quite like it.

And actually, because I took, this is a bell tower in a church near my house.

I kind of felt that it was the quite the right vibe for what you might find in an old building.

It's in the middle of a graveyard and it just kind of felt a bit spooky.

And then just because I was playing, I also took a picture of my dog.

And there you go.

That's my dog there.

That's Bonnie.

And he is actually, this time I tried it and instead of using the sandwich bag, I just used a little bit of clingfilm for this one and I just covered the back, like so and I played with it and scrunched it up a little bit.

And that's what I came out with which looks kind of interesting I thought.

So here are a few things that you might want to think about when you do this activity today.

What happens, if I scrunch up the plastic to take a picture? So you could try taking it quite flat and neat and then you could try scrunching it off, covering the lens.

Doesn't make a difference.

What happens if I use other see-through plastic? So if there's anything else that you've got at home, maybe a bread bag or a college carrier bag or a plastic carrier bag, does it make a difference on the different types of plastic? What happens if the plastic is coloured? So you might have a coloured bag or you could even try and take a felt-tip or a marker to your sandwich bag and put some colour on there and then put your camera back in.

See if it makes a difference.

Today is all about playing.

Okay, do you like my photograph? This is the shiny surface playing activity.

And in a moment, I'll show you how I created this.

And then maybe you can have a time and create something.

For this activity, you'll need either a mirror or another shiny object and I'll show you what I used.

And if you have another spare one, maybe you could use that.

So this is my final piece, and it, I mean, what do you think it looks like? What do you think it looks like? It kind of looks a little bit like some trees on a lake.

Can you see how, what is in this? What we're looking at has been reflected below.

You can see the trees are almost like maybe they've been reflected into the water.

Well, let me show you how I created this image.

There we go.

This is how I created it.

So that's my back garden.

And I went out into the back garden.

And if you look in the first image, you can actually see I'm actually using, I'm actually using the surface of a smartphone for the reflection.

Okay, 'cause it's so shiny.

And so I angled it around until I found something I wanted to capture.

And then I saw these trees.

You can kind of see them to the side of my garden.

So I moved around, I angled it.

And then with another smartphone, I put my picture there and I captured the reflection in both.

So that's something that you might want to have a go up today.

And again, just have a play with it.

Firstly, you want to take a photograph of, Kindly use a mirror or a shiny surface to capture the reflection of what you're going to photograph.

Okay, so now we come to the torches and colanders section of this lesson.

If you look at the three photographs here, there are three different things that were in my kitchen cupboard or withholding.

And what I did is I use my smartphone and I turned the flashlight on, put it inside.

And then I looked at what it created onto a blank wall.

If you look at these three different patterns, three different lights and how it's coming out to be dispersed around the wall, how beautiful it looks.

Particularly interesting was the cheese grater because the cheese grater had holes on all four sides.

So the light was being dispersed in all different directions.

In this photograph, I only captured it on a wall.

But maybe it would be interesting to have somebody stand next to it and see how the light might fall on their face.

What effect that might have.

And that might be something you want to try.

So let's have a look at some things we can think about when we do this lesson today.

What light patterns can you create, if you were to turn the cheese grater around at different angles, would it make a difference to what you're capturing? Are there any changes when the items are different? I used three different items. You'll probably use different things to me as well.

What changes will they have? How does the light change when you angle the torch differently? And maybe you could even create your own items by cutting up shape and a piece of card and shining the torch through it.

What might happen if you did that? Enjoy half a play.

So your challenge for today is to play with everyday items to manipulate, that was our key word the skillful handling of an object to manipulate an image.

So choose one or two of the everyday items, play with them and see if you can manipulate a photograph.

First, an additional challenge, you might have other things at home that you could use to manipulate an image.

So when you're having a little route in the cupboard and just makes sure you're allowed to do that.

When you're having a little route around the cupboard maybe you find something random interesting.

I think, oh let's see what happens if I use this, go for it, enjoy, that's what being an artist is all about, playing and discovering.

I'll speak to you soon.

Okay, so now we're going to move on and talk a little bit about editing images.

Let me show you what I did with one of the photographs I took today.

Here's my photograph on the left.

This is my photograph I took in a sandwich bag.

Then using just the software on my smartphone, I adjusted the brilliance, the contrast, the colour, the brightness by playing with these dials at the bottom.

And that's all I did.

I just played until I found things that I liked.

Sometimes there were one or two different ones that I liked.

So I saved them, and then I kept on playing and came back to them at the end to compare which one I liked the most there.

When I had done that, I used my smartphone filters to add a filter on top.

This is the filter I added.

It's a black and white filter.

This puts my image into something called monochrome.

Monochrome was one of our keywords today and it means a black and white photograph.

And that's my final finished piece.

So I saw something I wanted to take a photograph of, I used my sandwich bag.

I did to see it in my smartphone and finally I put a black and white filter on.

And I think I've ended up with something really interesting that I've enjoyed creating and I enjoy looking at.

Okay, I wanted to also talk to you about another editing process that I did.

If you look at the image on the left, you can see my original image.

The first thing I did is I put it through my smartphone editing software as well.

I played a little tiny bit with the brightness and adjusted a few things.

But the main thing I wanted to do, is I wanted to remove the colander and the hand from the photograph.

I didn't want that to be seen.

So at the very very bottom of my smartphone, you can see the kind of cross square shape.

That's the cropping feature.

I used that to crop out the hand and the colander.

So all you're left with is my final finished image, with that lovely light pattern on the wall.

So your challenge.

Your challenge is to use editing software, to edit an image.

Choose one of the photographs that you would like to edit, using the editing software on your smartphone, make changes to your photograph.

Now you might have other editing software that you already know well.

Use whatever, you know and understand.

I'm using what already comes in my smartphone just to make it easier.

But there's lots of free other things out there.

Come back when you're finished and we'll have a little chat on all that we've done today.

See you soon.

Okay, to finish today's lesson, I think it's important to spend a little bit of time reflecting in our sketchbook on all that we've achieved today.

So here are some sketchbook prompts for you and you can see a page from my sketchbook, where I've included two photographs that I've taken in today's lesson.

So something to think about as we do this today, which everyday items did you most enjoy playing with? Did you like playing with a bit of plastic or did you enjoy getting the torch and flashlight out? How did you use them to create something interesting? Which image do you like the most and why? And how does editing the image change it? And you can see what I've got there.

How I use my clingfilm, my sandwich bag, my monochrome image, my cropped image from today.

And just a little bit about how I feel about my work.

Well, I've so enjoyed being with you for today's lesson and I really hope you've enjoyed it.

I hope you've really enjoyed playing with everyday and unusual I suppose items to create something beautiful in photography.

And I hope you'll continue to do that and to play and explore and create and be curious in your journey as an artist.

If you've created anything beautiful that you would like to share with us, I'd love to see it.

I'm sure we all would like to see what each other have created.

So on the screen, you can see the hashtag for Twitter if you'd like to share your work, but please check with your adult first.

Lots of love and I'll see you soon.

Bye.