Visual Assignments
Choose one assignment each week to complete. You may only complete the assignment once.
Picasso Yourself
Create a Picasso-esque portrait out of your own face! Take an existing photo, or a new one, and make yourself or someone else into a Pablo Picasso masterpiece. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso). Distort your features and add extra ones, just like the late Cubist did. The results may be weird, but so is a lot of art.
Return to the Scene of the Crime
Take a photo from the past that you took in a particular location. Return to that stop, and take another picture, "framing" the original within the current view.
Before and After
Inspired by the Return to the Scene of the Crime assignment, comes a related idea which asks you to digitally mix the past and the present. This was done exceptionally well by Shawn Clover in his series 1906 + 2010: The Earthquake Blend, "featuring photographs captured during the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake blended into views of what the city currently looks like." Use a photograph from the past and digitally blend it with an image of the present. And for five thousand bazillion extra stars, blend the past and present photos with a digital concoction of the future.
Over Edit Yourself
Use a "touch-up" photo editing program (like on PicMonkey) to overly edit a photo of yourself. The object of this assignment is NOT to touch-up the photo to make yourself look better.
Pencil Versus Camera
Take a photo and superimpose a drawing. See how much you can change the meaning of the original photograph! Alter the original photograph, or be liberal in what you draw!
This assignment was inspired by Ben Heine (whose work can be seen at http://benjaminheine.blogspot.com/ as well as on Flickr at www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/).
Warhol Something
Andy Warhol was an iconic pop art mastermind. Now you can be one too! Take a photograph, or use an existing one, and create a piece of pop art. You can use something ordinary, like Warhol's Campbell's Soup can, or do a portrait, like Warhol's Marilyn Monroe. This can be done in Photoshop, Gimp, or whatever photo editing software you have available. This website: http://www.melissaevans.com/tutorials/andy-warhol-up-your-photographs shows one way to Warhol Something.
Creep On a Movie Scene
Add yourself to a movie scene using digital software like PhotoShop. Preferably a famous movie. The creepier you are, the better.
Optical Illusion
Take a photo that manipulates distance to create an optical illusion. For example, this image created using an image of a woman holding the Washington Monument in her hand.
Is That a Ghost?
Take a photo in which there is a ghost like subject by either using a long exposure or two different pictures in a photo editing software. Check out the example here.
Time Of Day
Take a picture of the same spot outside several times in a day, then merge them all together in a way that shows the differences in appearance over the day.