Learning Commercial Photography - the right way!

In addition to photography’s polarized academic structure and the advent of digital media, many students unwittingly set themselves up for failure in a particular branch of photography because they are unfamiliar with the dual nature of the medium when they enter a college program. Every professor knows scores of students who did not consciously choose the photography program they found themselves in. Th at is, they did not make informed decisions by sufficiently defining their future goals and applying to institutions that, through research, they learned would best meet those goals. Two years and tens of thousands of tuition dollars later, these students begin to understand (thanks to some formal education and practice in the medium) what direction they want to take in terms of their photography career. Unfortunately, too many of these students simultaneously discover that they are not in a photography program best designed to help them succeed. Th e negative eff ects of these combined problems—polarized academic program emphasis, the pressure on programs to convert solely to digital media, and student ignorance of the range of potential careers in photography—can be mitigated by the actions of dedicated professors through course off erings which seek to simultaneously balance and broaden the way students engage in photographic practices. By designing a more holistic approach to photography education, graduates emerge armed with sound knowledge of the range of available tools, and are better able to defi ne, choose, or change the emphasis of their photographic practice throughout their careers. One aspect of this type of mitigation is to develop courses based on the interconnectedness of photography’s technical and aesthetic elements, beginning with the primary technical elements from which all photographic images are made. By integrating hands-on practice with these technical elements with study and discussion of their inherent visual outcomes, photography programs off er students a more well-rounded education in the medium.

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With this premise in mind, I created a portfolio development course for intermediate-level photography students; this course grounds technical understanding while deepening conceptual awareness and expanding aesthetic and visual literacy. Th e course has had incarnations as intermediate-level photography electives in technical programs, as well as aspects of intermediate-level required courses for photography majors. In addition to meeting with equal success in both technical and fi ne art programs, this course has made a remarkably seamless transition from traditional to digital media and everything in between because it is based on four immutable elements (which I discuss in the Introduction) inherent to the making of all photographic images. Th e success of this method of photographic training didn’t diminish with the inclusion of digital media because digital media didn’t change the elements that govern photographic image making. Even as the light-sensitive materials we use continue to change and evolve, the principles that make a photograph . . . well, photographic . . . stay the same. The approach outlined in Work N Learn Center is based on a single bottom line: photography is a unique form of visual language, and as such is based on a specific visual grammar. Th e principles that govern photographic language have been understood and documented in various forms by many practitioners and theorists, notably in John Szarkowski’s The Photographer’s Eye, and Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photographs. Anyone who studies a language intently and for a long enough time begins to know its grammatical structure. And a photographer who understands the grammar of photographic language, and who also has a curious and conceptual mind, can use it effectively as a communicative tool for the purpose of sharing their insights and interests, rather than merely demonstrating a particular brand of training. Th e most successful fi ne art, documentary, and professional photographers—those who produce work that transcends mere technical or visual accomplishment and has the power to enlighten, to educate, to heighten our perception of people, places, events, and things—share a common practice; they acknowledge through their work that the power of photographic image making lies in the interconnectedness of the medium’s technical nature and visual outcomes. When student-photographers are educated in an environment that emphasizes integration of technique and aesthetics, they are better able to create successful, meaningful images in any branch of the profession. I have shared this course and its methods with other photography educators, and the quality of their students’ images and growth in understanding have been as impressive as that of my own students. Use of these simple techniques helps us to bridge the institutional gap between technical and fine art practices and helps to ensure that students receive a comprehensive education in photography that will serve them well in the profession.