Looking to the Past to Shape the Future: Yup'ik Archaeology, Art and Technology

18 March 2015

Photo Editing

Now that some of our young photographers have taken some pictures, it is time to edit them on the computer. Thanks to the school here in Quinhagak, Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat, we are able to edit our photos on 12 borrowed MacBooks.

We started out with some simple editing on Preview. We learned how to crop images to cut out some of the empty space or get rid of things that we don't want from the background. Also there are many ways to adjust the color of the image, for example if the image was underexposed (not enough light) we can change that under tools to make it lighter. We try to take the best photos we can at the time, but it is good to know that we can fix almost anything on the computer.

After editing our photos we save them on our very own USB drives. It is important to organize our photos into files by date or subject, that way we can find them easily and keep track, remembering always to make a copy of the picture we are editing so that we have the original file as well.

Tonight is the first night we get to start taking the cameras home. Four of us were selected and are responsible for the cameras (remembering if we lose or break them, there are no replacements). We are exited to be able to take the cameras home, that way we can take pictures of life at home as part of our photo essays for our Photographic Time Travel Art Show.

17 March 2015

Take 2

School is back in session in Quinhagak, which brought more young photographers to the workshop today. With some new faces in the group, we reviewed what we had learned last week about taking different shots such as: artifact, museum, portrait, landscape, action, panoramas, ect. As today was above freezing and one of the first nice weather days in a while, the crew opted to go outside to practice taking photos.

16 March 2015

Chilly photo taking

Continuing to practice different types of photos, today we worked on a few more techniques. For every shot making sure we think about what is in the background, what setting our cameras were on, lighting and so forth. To begin the day we went outside (as it was slightly warmer today than it had been this week, but still chilly). Action shots were first on the list today. Luckily we had Lucky to help us out with some of those.

Taking action shots with the pup was hard for some of our young photographers as he wanted to play with everyone. Here Angela Jones is running away from the little guy (photo by Jacqui Graham).

Meghan Cleveland took a good shot of Lucky and Jacqui playing.

Here Sydney Cleveland caught Marita Tunutmoak in a great action shot.

After running outside for a bit, we all got cold and went back into the building to practice our picture of picture shots and warm up. For part of our photo essays we are going to take picture that demonstrate life in the past. One way we are going to do this is to look at the visual resources that already exist, such as photos in books, digital photos of artifacts, and 3D digital models.

Here we have Meghan and Sydney looking at photos on the iPad.

Marita is trying different

angles for her picture of picture shots.

This is Angela Jones' Picture of a picture shot. Some of our young artists in the drawing workshops took some selfies, of which Angela then took a picture of on the computer (technology...pictures...technology...pictures)

After we were thoroughly warmed, we traveled outside again to work on landscape photos. It was a clear day today which meant that we could get some great pictures of the mountains outside of Quinhagak.

Tenaya and Angela looked toward the mountains...

While Gwen included Tenaya in her landscape.

Here we have Tenaya Tunutmoak's shot.

And here is one that Gwendaline Thomas took (without Tenaya in it).

Once again chilled, we ventured inside to finish up the day with panorama shots.

It is really cool that our cameras have a panorama setting on them, so we don't have to stitch them together ourselves, but we learned it can be a bit hard as you need to move the camera at a steady pace and not wiggle.

Marita Tunutmoak caught a took a good one. She even managed to get Angela Jones in it without her moving. Good job!

13 March 2015

Learning to see

Today we started learning how to see... we learned today that different types of photo shots require one to look at things differently. We started to practice some of the different types of shots that we talked about yesterday. With our time today we each got to take an archaeological artifact shot, a museum artifact shot, a full body portrait and a bust portrait. For each kind of picture we had to set up the shot differently. With the archaeological artifact shot, we learned that we as photographers had to be above the artifact for the shot, look for the lighting so there were few to no shadows, have a plain background (white, black or grey), and very importantly all artifact shots had to have a scale in them. The primary purpose of these is for documentation, so... they were kind of boring looking.

Meghan Cleveland's Artifact Shot of a Maskette

Then we moved on to museum shots. These were of artifacts, but the angles were different and shadow were good. These types of pictures are to make the artifacts look "aesthetically pleasing" aka really cool.

Tenaya Tunutmoak's Museum Shot of Owl

To finish off our day we took some full body and bust portraits. Here we had to keep in mind what was in the background, how we wanted to pose our models and how shadows fell on them.

Kaitlyn Henry's Full Body Portrait of Meghan Cleveland

Angela Jones' Full Body Portrait of Marita Tunutmoak

Kayleen Small's Bust portrait of Angela Jones

12 March 2015

We finally got to use the cameras

Today started out by learning about different types of photos and what is in them. We looked at some archaeological artifact photos, museums photos, portraits, landscapes, aerial photos, wildlife photos, action/sports shots, candid vs. posed photos, and even a bit about taking photos of photos.

After that we did a little exercise that some of us thought was a little silly. We cut a rectangle hole in a piece of paper and looked through it with one eye closed, pretending it was our camera. The reason was to get us starting to think about the composition of our photos, so what is in it, what is in the background, what angle we are taking the picture from (up high, down low, on level...). We had fun running around pretending to take pictures of each other, but were getting anxious to get our hands on the real cameras.

Finally the cameras were brought out... We learned a bit about the different settings on the point and shoot cameras. There is the auto, landscape, portrait... but we weren't quite ready to deal with all of that. So for the last bit of the workshop today, we split into groups as we are sharing cameras and got to try them out. Each person was supposed to take around 12 shots, trying out different angles, looking at the positioning of subjects and not forgetting to ask permission to take pictures of other people...its not only polite, it's the law ;)

Here is Sydney trying angles from above...

...and this is her shot of Jawna

Kaitlyn's Landscape

Full Body Portrait of Jonelle

At level "wildlife" shot of our new friend Lucky.

Close up shot of a 3D printed model of the Palraiyuk head from Nunalleq.

11 March 2015

Photography!

The photography workshops are starting! As this week in spring break here in Quinhagak, we had a pretty small turn out for our first day. I think many of our young photographers weren't sure if we were starting this Monday or next. So for our first day, instead of starting with only a few people and having to repeat, we decided to brush up on our Yup'ik language skills. At first there was only three of us, but then the count went up to five. Together we listened to Anna Jacobson's Yup'ik Phrase and Conversation Lessons. There were lots of words and phrases that we didn't know, so it was fun to spend some time getting more familiar with the language. If you want to study the Yup'ik language this is a great resource http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/publications/detail/index.xml?id=22

After the small turn out on day one, we spread word of mouth and on the VHF that we were indeed having photography this week. This time we had 12 Quinhagak youth ready to learn about taking pictures. :) During this workshop we are going to create photo essays telling a story comparing past Yup'ik life to present Yup'ik life, we call this photographic time traveling. We learned in order to make a good picture story we have to plan out what we are going to take shots of and what we want to say. So today started our planning phase. We looked at some of the pictures of the artifacts from Nunalleq, some of the 3D printed models, and at pictures in Yup'ik books. Each of us is choosing a theme to make our story about. We read a bit about our topics in the books (all of which are on the Resources page), so that we knew more about Yupiit in the past.

10 March 2015

Drawing the Past Art Show

Saturday was our big art show! Many of our young artists were there to display their hard work. As good hosts, when our specially invited elders arrived they were offered tea and coffee. Friends and family from the village stopped by to check out our drawings too.

Some of us where pretty nervous, others were just kind of squirrely. After the elders looked around at all of our drawings, we had a chance to ask some questions about life in the past. The young artists had brainstormed some questions the day before, like...

How did you tell times without clocks?
What kind of fur did you use to make parkas?
Did you ever see women with tattoos on their faces?
Where did you go to the bathroom before indoor plumbing?

The young artists started out quite shy and were hesitant to ask questions, but later everyone started to relax and conversations started. We were happy to have Joshua Cleveland, Marie Smith, John Smith, Nick Mark, Annie Cleveland, and John Fox there to share about life in the past. We are looking forward to continuing to develop our relationships with these knowledgeable people.