Project Presentation, Round 1: What Is the Project?

Script: Put Your Photos into Google Slides

Google Drive's grid view crops your photos and is slow to click through. The Slide Template puts every photo in your folder into its own slide, uncropped, in file-name order. Use it to look through everything, then use Slides' grid view to sort and group

How to use the Slide Template:

Open the Google Drive Folder and choose Slide Template (Make Copy - Do not use). Right click and choose Make a copy. Work in your copy, not the original. Rename it.
In your copy, go to the menu Photo tools > Add photos from Drive folder. (If you don't see Photo tools, reload the page and wait a few seconds. It may take a minute to load)
The first time, Google asks for permission. Click Continue, choose your Reed account, then Allow. If you see "Google hasn't verified this app," click Advanced, then "Go to ...". Then choose Photo tools again.
It will ask you for the link to your Google Drive folder. Either:
- Paste the URL from the browser while you are inside the folder (it looks like https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/...), OR
- Use the Share option on your folder, click Copy link, and paste that.
Wait. Slides appear about five at a time. A message tells you when it's done.
Google stops the tool after about 5 minutes. If the message says there are photos still to go, run Photo tools again with the same link. It picks up where it stopped.

Use the folder that holds the JPGs themselves. The tool does not look inside subfolders.
Each photo's file name is in the speaker notes below the slide.
Delete the instruction slide at the start of your copy once you're done.

The Goal of This Round

This first round is about identifying what your project is: finding what is actually in there, which photographs hold it together, and what the next 120 need to do.

The second round will focus on sequencing and editing. This round we will figure out what belongs in your project.

Format: about 10 - 15 minutes presenting, then about 10 -15 minutes of discussion.

Step 1: Sort Everything

Before you pick anything, go through everything you have shot so far.

Step 1: Keep / Maybe / Out (or any other category that make sense): Sort every photograph in one of three areas (stand in for piles). The areas are demarkated by the colored slide you see in the slide template. Be fast. Don't agonize over the maybes.

Clusters: Take the keep and maybe piles and group them by whatever holds them together: subject, place, people, light, mood. Count your clusters. Many of you will find two or three possible projects inside your photographs, not one. That is normal, and it is the most useful thing you can learn this round.

Optional Step 2 (if you already have a developed project): From your clusters, make a working edit of about 30 to 40 photographs. This is what you will turn into printed cards later in the semester

Step 2: What to Prepare

A working statement. One sentence: "This project is about ...." Add one line on what it is not about. This is a first draft of your blurb.
Anchors. 3 to 5 photographs you think are the strongest, or the ones that most clearly say what the project is. Be ready to say why each one is an anchor.
Your clusters. How many did you find? Which one is the project? Show your second-strongest cluster and say why it isn't the project. (Or is it?)
A rough count. Out of everything you shot, about how many photographs could actually go in the book?
Gaps and a shot list for the next 120. What's missing? What pictures would make the project stronger? The next month of shooting should fill specific gaps, not add more of what you already have.
A reference/model book. One photobook, from the class list or elsewhere, that is close to what you are thinking of. Say what/why you're referecing: its tone, its structure, how it uses text...etc.
Early format thoughts. Portrait or landscape? Color or black and white? Any text or captions? These are guesses for now, not commitments.
Your questions for the class. See below.

Questions

Prepare 2 or 3 questions the class can actually answer by looking at your photographs. Specific questions get useful answers. Vague ones get polite ones.

Not: "What do you think?"
Not: "Is it good?"
"Which of these two clusters is the project?"
"Do these two photographs read as the same project?"
"Which of these three would you cut?"
"Does the xyz feel like a choice or an accident?"
"Without my statement, what would you say this is about?"