Assignment – 269 – Touched by Cancer

Due: February 15, 2016

Goal:  To practice the skills of approaching, photographing and talking to strangers. To have fun.

Humans of THON

You’ve probably seen or at least heard of Humans of New York. The documentary project by Brandon Stanton combines photographic portraits with quotes from his subjects. (Stanton spoke at Penn State in the fall of 2014). 

His combination of images and text has connected with millions of people.

Humans of New York example

Brandon on how he does it.  A very nice video of Stanton talking about his process. A great way to improve your interviewing skills.

Your assignment is to steal his idea and photograph and interview 2  people who have a connection to cancer.

Perhaps they are survivors or someone in their family or a close friend has survived cancer.
Maybe they have lost someone close to them.
How has it changed them?
What have they learned?
Can they describe what happened or is happening?

MAKE SURE YOU GET YOUR SUBJECT’S COMPLETE NAME, FIRST AND LAST, SPELLED CORRECTLY

Also, we are going to map the photos on a Google map along with your interviews. So we need the specific home address of your subjects: Street, town and zip code.

To make this work:

1. A strong image  – don’t be afraid to take many photos. These are portraits. You may pose your subject, move them into better light or a better background.
2. Text or audio. If you want, you can use an audio clip of them talking. You can use your phone or get an audio recorder from Media Tech. We can show you how to edit the audio. OR, write down or transcribe their interview to a short “Humans of New York” style caption.
3. Location. We want to map where they are from. We need a specific address that we can put on a map. You’ll need to get their home street address.

You’ll ‘attach’ the gps coordinates to your photo in Photo Mechanic. Here is a quick tutorial. We can also do it in class:

Video Tutorials