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06 — Photography

Photography

Choose pictures that feel like a story already in motion: people with people, and people in the places that are ours.

Our people

  • Natural movement, not a posed lineup.
  • Authentic interactions and candid moments.
  • A sense of story, with preference for collaboration, exploration, or celebration.
  • Light and airy.
  • Subjects kept in the frame.

Our campus

From the residence halls to the Chapel of the Resurrection, campus photos give the audience a place to stand. Prefer unique, significant locations, and prefer frames where people are interacting with that place.

Image masking

Lifting a subject off its background is an approved stylized treatment. Place masked images on a solid brand color, or layer them with radiating lines.

The shapes above stand in for a masked portrait. Use real photography in the piece itself.

Halftone patterns

Turn a photo into texture with a halftone. Use it sparingly, and on images that are not full of fine detail. Our pattern is circular and radiating, so it echoes the narrative. Expect to tune the values for each photo’s contrast, detail, and resolution.

Build the stack

  1. Open the image in Photoshop and convert it to a smart object.
  2. Convert it to grayscale.
  3. Set resolution near 300 PPI.
  4. Add a curves adjustment above the image.
  5. Place the concentric-circle pattern from the brand assets, or draw one in Illustrator. Put it above the image as a smart object and stretch it over most of the photo.
  6. Add a threshold adjustment at the top of the stack, around 100, and adjust per photo.

Tune it

  1. Turn the threshold layer off so you can see the next adjustments.
  2. On the pattern layer, add Gaussian Blur around 4 px.
  3. On the curves layer, pull the handles so the extremes quiet down, contrast comes up, and the linework carries the darkest value.
  4. On the image layer, add Gaussian Blur until the subject is still easy to recognize. Watch faces.
  5. Turn the threshold layer back on.
  6. Return to curves. The left handle, moved vertically, changes the thick parts of the lines. The right handle changes the thin parts. Horizontal moves change how they taper. Keep the handles from crowding each other or the effect disappears.