Tangrams and Photographic Film.

I just finished Day Two of the Summer session at Shoreline Community College and now I gotta go buy some stuff. I'm currently in three classes (tested out of the basic “How to use a Mac” class). I have 2D Design, Photography and in four weeks (after some Mac noobs finish learning how to point and click) I'll have a class on preparing graphics for print. I almost tested out of that class too but missed it by a couple of questions so I'll just suffer through a description of the difference between 8-bit color and 16 or 24 bit color.

In 2D Design, the first assignment involves creating an image using tangrams. I need an X-Acto knife, a straight edge and a felt tip pen. I've been studying tangrams (both the game and the art people do with them). Not sure what I'm going to do for my tangrams but it probably won't be of a NSFW nature. I was thinking of doing something with filmmaking or music. The main point is to learn how to cut straight lines, be creative and learn the process for presenting portfolio pieces for critique and a grade.

Photography looks to be interesting with the first half of the class using film and darkroom techniques before moving on to digital cameras. I have to buy some photographic paper so I can do some direct exposure art photographs. I'm thinking of doing something with tools as I have a lot of them. The idea of building up something through multiple exposures and creative masking is interesting.

I was able to borrow Tamara's Canon film camera (EOS Rebel XSn) for the other film projects. There's still some ASA800 film in the camera from a while ago. The camera will take the Canon EF lenses (and the M42 lenses with the EF adapters) that I already have so I'm looking forward to playing around with this. All of the projects use Black and White film so I won't have to worry about the color temperature of the film (or setting a while balance). I have to see if I need to pull out a light meter and tape measure to get my exposure and focus correct. I may and try to do some forced perspective pictures or something with ultra long exposures at night. We also get to learn how to develop our own film. So stinky chemicals here I come.