Many of the assignments require that you write about the 'Techniques' used in Photography. Sometimes this involves you looking at the techniques used by the photographers you research or the techniques that you employ in your own photography. So it's important that you know what's meant when your required to identify/analyse and write about 'Techniques'. It's advisable to write about the techniques in terms of how it helps to communicate the creative intention... what is the photographers creative intention and how does the technique help to convey this?
Technique - The definition
a way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure.
If you think about the sentence above it should give you some sense what you're looking for or trying to explain. If you look at the work of Richard Avedon "In the American West" (Below) and find images of him shooting on location you'll see what his basic technique involves...
10 x 8 View camera.
Tripod.
Reflectors.
Soft Diffuse wrap around day light.
A background set up on the shadow-side of a building (North light).
A large paper background taped/fixed to a wall.
Composing the subject from 3/4 length to 1/2 body
Pure white background
Tri-X pan film
Direct eye-contact with the camera
Basic and consistent use of central rule of thirds composition.
Uniformity.
Direction of the model/subject.
There are other more subtle aspects to his technique which involve the way that he speaks to the people and gets them to pose in the way that they do, that's also a part of his technique.
Once in the darkroom there are further more complex techniques that come into play with regards to decisions and complexities involve in producing prints in the size for this series of images.
Your technique also involves - decisions with regards to the lens used and the field of view. Whether you use colour or B&W media, fast or slow shutters speeds, differential focus, depth of field, view-point and more - take a look at this link for some more 'Cheesy' approaches aimed at Amateurs
To get this aspect into your work it can be explained during the planning/intentions sections, or identified when researching the photographers or reflected on when producing your Gibbs reflections and final evaluations.
https://aphelis.net/avedons-instructions/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/nyregion/richard-avedon-unsigned-prints.html
Techniques (General)
Choice of camera - Pinhole/DSLR/35mm film/medium format/5x4/10x8
Choice of lens - field of view, depth of field, distortion, flattening, wide angle, standard, telephoto
Choice of film - contrast, sharpness, grain
Single shot
Multiple shots
Fast shutter speed - freezing the action
Slow shutter speed - allowing the image to blur
Panning
Hand -held
Tripod
View-point
Diffuse light
Point light
On-camera flash
Studio lighting - studio lighting on location
Mixed light
Ambient light
Daylight
Informal/formal/directed (models)
Person + background + symbol + involvement - 1 shot formula
Typology
Deadpan
