This week we move into the part of the course where we are doing a lot of creation, starting with photography and visual stories.

(a) Photography
For the next two weeks, get in the habit of doing photographs everyday; make sure you are carrying a camera and using it regularly. For this period, all of the Daily Create challanges will be photography ones. You must do the daily create every day and include your week’s work either as daily posts or a recap by the end of the week (Sunday).

We suggest that you create a flickr set for your daily create assignments so you can collect your work in one place (see one of many web tutorials).

As you are working on your photography this week, try to expand your approach and try new techniques. We have some resources to help you here:

• How to Become a Better Photographer
• Photography as Digital Art by D’Arcy Norman
• Flickr fun (A guide to flickr) by ds106 open participant @wwnorm

On Wednesday, February 8 the Section 2 class will bring in two photographers, D’Arcy Norman and Kris Krug to share insight into their craft. This session will be live streamed (and archived) via http://dtlttoday.com/live

(b) Visual Assignments
Here you will get an introduction to the ds106 Assignment bank where most of your subsequent work will happen. This is a collection of assignments that have been contributed by ds106 participants. Each one has a star rating indicating how difficult/complex it is (rated from 1=easy to 5=hard).

For this week, you need to complete 10 stars worth of Visual Assignments — this could be doing 5 assignments rated 2 stars, etc. It is your choice which ones to do. For each assignment you do, write a blog post that includes:

• The visual you produced for the assignment, this should be embedded into your blog post.
• Write some text that shares your thinking behind the assignment, your inspiration, what it means to you. Think of this as similar to the extras on a DVD, the “making of” material.
• In addition, share your process. What tools did you use? What techniques? Thinbk of this as information that would help someone else doing the same assignment.
• To have your work connected back to the assignment, your blog post must include the two tags for the assignment, one will be Visual Assignments and the other will have a name like Visual Assignments324
  

Keep in mind that simply completing 10 stars worth of assignments is the bare minimum to satisfy your work for this week (a “C”). How you do it, and how you write it up is what elevates you.

Also note that part of your requirements for this course is writing up how-to tutorials. The visual assignments will likely beto document as tutorials than the later audio and video ones, so it might be worth your while to knock one or two of these off now. If you write a very complete post, it could include your assignment work and count as a tutorial. Note that there is a tutorial tag that goes along with each assignment.

And here is the nifty part- if you do not like the assignments in the site, then step up and add one yourself. This too is a requirement for the course, so like the tutorials, this is a good time to get ahead of the game.

Now go out and create some visuals!