Is It Really A Photography Class? Pt.3
In a previous post I described a situation at a local university where the photography teacher was requiring students in a beginning photography class to use B&W film. This thinking is wrong.
I have already listed two reasons that digital is better in the classroom:
- Expense.
- Instant feedback.
Here are three more reasons that the technology of digital photography is better used in a classroom than film.
- Teaching tool. If the instructor was really doing his job, he would be using a camera tethered to a computer/projector in the classroom to demonstrate how changes in the camera, lighting, model, etc. affect the final image. I saw this several times this year at WPPI. The speaker would set up the lights, model, camera and take a picture. Instantly, it would appear on the screen and he could point out the problems, make an adjustment or two, shoot another image, and we could see the results and why he made the changes. It was almost as good as working with the camera yourself. In a beginning photography class, how could an instructor NOT use such a tool?
- Creativity. Bill told me that he wanted to take a chance and try some different things for his final project, but was unwilling to do so because of the limitations of film. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes because of the cost and time involved with film. He is right. With digital, he would be able to experiment, challenge himself, and further his photographic skills. He could try different situation, compositions, and techniques. But because he was limited to film, he took the easy way and just did the minimum to accomplish the task required for the assignment.
- Preparing students for the future. The future of photography is in digital. There is nothing wrong with film, but if students are going to learn for the future, and that is the purpose of education, they have to be able to shoot in digital. Film is fine in a an advanced class, but for preparing students for the future, it is wrong.
I will give my final thoughts on this in my next post, but until then I welcome your opinions and thoughts.
Tags: Digital vs Film, Education, Photography
Posted in Thoughts 1 year, 10 months ago at 8:00 am. 7 comments
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I enjoy your thoughts on this, particularly because it’s from your perspective and not some outsider observing the education system. Working at a CSU, I see several administrative and budgeting issues with making digital more mainstream in our time.
Regardless if a class provides the gear or if the student provides their own, the cost advantages of digital can’t be realized at the administrative level given the current budgets and faculty. The cost of transitioning can be overwhelming, not so much from digital equipment and repair costs, but faculty training as well.
If the standard in art was to be progressive, which it isn’t, then things might be different. There are few colleges of the arts that enforce continuing education, and as a result faculty tend to stick to their own ways.
It would be about 10 years if I had to guestimate, when there is a transitioning of retiring faculty and college administrators, before state funded college programs start adapting. Yes, It’s sad when you see high schools doing digital.
Speaking of which, I’m going to speak for a few days to a high school where they have 12 film cameras (3 of which are working while the other 9 have been under repair all semester along), and 2 digital cameras (I’m presuming not point and shoot) for a class of 30. I think I’m in for some enlightenment.
Your posts make me contemplate the past, current, and future market for photography education outside of schools and colleges. It’s obviously there; all the “leaders” of wedding photography are capitalizing on it.
The tethered camera sounds great if it is a class that emphasizes camera settings but I think the course description emphasizes composition. To me, this is what an introductory photography class should emphasize. Fine tuning the camera settings won’t make a difference if the camera isn’t pointed at something visually interesting.
I would think that the visual arts department has the tethering technology. If it doesn’t have it I would assume that it probably isn’t in the budget. Tch, these are the woes of California’s current financial fiasco. Talk to the Govenator. Better yet, make a donation to CSUSB’s Visual Arts program.
As far as limiting Bill’s creativity, the limitations were actually imposed by Bill. It would have been more difficult but certainly not impossible to go with his creative idea. I suspect it wasn’t that film was prohibitively expensive but rather that it would haven taken extra time to develop the film. It might not have turned out and he would have to go back for more photos. As you stated, he took the easy way out. Most students want to complete a project quickly so they can get back to campus life. No offense Bill, I was a college student myself way back when. We’ve all BTDT…
Preparing a student for the future – For crying out loud it is an introductory class, not the entire photography degree. In SAT parlance: Shakespeare is to British Lit as Film is to Modern Photography.
In your words “Creativity. Bill told me that he wanted to take a chance and try some different things for his final project…” As a teacher, isn’t this what you strive for, a student who has integrated what you have taught and now wants to use the new knowledge to synthesize new ideas?” I would think this would be holy grail of teaching. If I was Bill’s professor, I’d be pretty darned proud.
Really, why not contact the professor and ask? Wouldn’t you like it if someone nicely started a dialogue about something you are passionate about?
Hey Rob, as to the photo gear in the university classroom, I honestly believe that it is due to the department and professor not willing to step outside their comfort zone and challenge themselves. I think that they have lost sight of what the class is supposed to accomplish.
I think that chemical based photography has to be WAY more expensive than digital. The libraries have computers that the students can use to work their images and with digital there is no cost of chemicals and chemical disposal. And I am not suggesting the whole department make the transistion, only the beginning class.
I’ll contact you about your speaking thing in the near future. I’d be excited. if I were you. I think that would be really cool experience.
I’ll continue under the name of Bill for the sake of these posts, and as wonderfully as you put it Marti, campus life was not the motivation for my rush. Simply put I am involved with a number of activities currently.
I work two jobs, am attempting to get a photography business started, go to school full time, am a student officer in the Latin dance organization on campus, am a member of the performance team for this organization, have plenty of studying to do as the final exams approach (and with them the final project in question for photography) and a few other things.
The fact of the matter is that I do not have time to go back and develop these images and say “oh well none of those ideas worked I guess I’ll just go back and shoot them later” because I do not have time to do those things later. I can only organize so much time to getting my work for this class finished and as a result I have to make sure that I can get results that are readily usable and can be made into a strong, presentable final project.
With a digital camera I could know right on the spot if my experimentation was not working and adjust or abandon the idea if its execution eluded me. I am not simply taking my easy way out to get 10 simple shots to develop in a dark room in 2 hours, slap them onto some mat board and go back to my toga parties and other campus life activities.
To be honest outside of my student organization I spend almost NO time on campus due to the numerous other activities I have to balance in my life at the moment. So, I appreciate you calling me lazy and saying that I took the easy way out just as “most” students do, but to be quite honest I don’t feel I am anything like “most” students, and while you mean no offense with your statement I cannot help but feel some from your assumptions of my personality when you in fact know nothing about the person I am, the things I do, or the amount of work I put into my projects.
I do not half ass anything that I feel is worth doing, and my photography is something that I will not accept a lower quality work on. I will not turn in flat, under/over exposed images that have been heavily altered in the darkroom because I was trying something new and risky, I will take my safe shots for class, turn in my excellent quality work, and experiment further down the road. I know I’m not the only student in the class with this dilemma, many of them have children, or are in masters programs or other numerous activities much like myself who do not have the time to drop everything we are doing to take risky shots, have them fail, then rinse wash and repeat until desired effects are achieved.
As for the composition aspect you have mentioned, there is nothing you can do in camera with a film body that cannot be done with a digital body. That is the beauty of modern technology, it takes everything the past institution did well and simply adds onto them. So why would we not use the most advanced technology available to us?
I have never felt more inclined to take pictures of a “boring” subject with my D1H and likewise, holding my F2 does not make me say wow I really need interesting things to take photos of, I approach the subjects the same way, the only difference is I say things to myself like “Do I really want to waste a frame on that knowing that down the road I may see something infinitely more relevant to my topic or exciting and not have a frame with which to capture it?” With digital if I decide that I would rather sacrifice an older image that I have taken for one I feel will be stronger, I can do that, for the price of one 4gb compact flash card I could have avoided paying for all of my film for the quarter and literally taken hundreds of frames that I passed up with the film constraint.
Bill, I don’t think I could have put it better myself. Thank you.
Quotes from Bill:
“Do I really want to waste a frame on that knowing that down the road I may see something infinitely more relevant to my topic or exciting and not have a frame with which to capture it?”
It seems like this means that you were more discriminating in your choice of photos. That was my point.
I truly believe that college, particularly at the university level, is much more about the *process* of learning than the actual material itself. Perhaps this is what your instructor had in mind.
Quotes from Bill:
“The fact of the matter is that I do not have time to go back and develop these images and say “oh well none of those ideas worked I guess I’ll just go back and shoot them later” because I do not have time to do those things later. I can only organize so much time to getting my work for this class finished”
“like myself who do not have the time to drop everything we are doing to take risky shots, have them fail, then rinse wash and repeat until desired effects are achieved.”
“because I was trying something new and risky, I will take my safe shots for class,”
These are the limitations I was talking about.
Time limitations have always and always will be a problem, as you acknowledge with your comment “I know I’m not the only student in the class with this dilemma, many of them have children, or are in masters programs or other numerous activities much like myself who do not have the time”
You seemed to think that I was personally attacking you when I repeated, verbatim, the phrase that your former teacher used in Pt 3… “he took the easy way and just did the minimum to accomplish the task required for the assignment.”
Quotes from Bill:
“I cannot help but feel some from your assumptions of my personality when you in fact know nothing about the person I am, the things I do…”
“Simply put I am involved with a number of activities currently.”
“I work two jobs, am attempting to get a photography business started, go to school full time, am a student officer in the Latin dance organization on campus, am a member of the performance team for this organization, have plenty of studying to do as the final exams approach.”
Bill, this is campus life. I looked at your website before I posted my reply and I knew that you were involved in other activities. I never said that you spent all of your time at “toga parties” nor did I call you “lazy”! Heck, I didn’t even know they still had toga parties!! Your activities are an important and valid part of your college experience.
Quote from Bill:
“you in fact know nothing …or the amount of work I put into my projects.”
I know, because you told us, that you didn’t spend as much time on the project as you would have liked to spend. Few people have the luxury of unlimited time. For the rest of us, the reality is there are many, many times that we have to be satisfied that we have completed something “well enough.” That’s life. Campus life, family life, recreational life, whatever. If we want to enjoy life we need to have give a little here and there. It is legitimate to (as you put it) “…get results that are readily usable and can be made into a strong, presentable final project.”
Bill, out of curiosity, what grade did you receive in this photography class? I would think you earned an “A.”
Yes, I did recieve an A in the class.