Photography

Photography enables you to explore practical digital photography and helps you to develop the knowledge and skills to take high quality and varied photographs and to experiment with and edit your photographs professionally and creatively using Photoshop software.

In KS4 Photography you are required to work in some of the following areas of photography – portraiture, location photography, studio photography, experimental imagery, installation, documentary photography, photo-journalism, moving image (film, video and animation) and fashion photography. You will do this through studying a range of projects that are broad enough that you can develop your own photographic interests that inspire you. You will also have the opportunity to study outside of the classroom on a field visit – a previous visit has been to Crosby Beach and the Albert Dock in Liverpool to explore sea scape and architectural photography.

You will learn the technical skill of how to use a DSLR camera so that you can use aperture, depth of field, shutter speed and ISO to produce high quality photographs. You will also learn about lighting, how to compose and arrange a good photograph and how to use Photoshop to experiment with and edit your photographs. In each project you will go through a creative process of researching the work of photographers that inspire you and help you to develop your own ideas, planning photo shoots, taking photographs and experimenting with and editing the photographs using a range of techniques in Photoshop to develop your creativity.

Your work will be assessed at the end of each project. It will be assess using four assessment objectives – AO1 assesses how you develop ideas and link to an artist, AO2 is about experimenting with different techniques, AO3 is about how you record ideas, observations and insights and AO4 is about presenting your final idea.