4-Week Digital Photography Workshop

Many students who take this program enroll in more extensive NYFA photography programs, such as the 1-Year Photography Certificate. NYFA also offers the possibility to learn photography from anywhere through a variety of online photography workshops.

To learn more about the 4-Week Photography Workshop, see NYFA’s Course Catalog or request more information.

Photography
This Area of Study encompasses lecture, demonstration, critique, and shooting assignments on location or in the studio. Students learn the components of exposure and mechanics of cameras and lenses. They are taught to be aware of the unique characteristics that light can take: direct, diffused, reflected and/or tempered by atmosphere.

Imaging
An intensive introduction to Adobe Lightroom as a RAW digital editing and image library management system. Students will immerse themselves in Adobe Lightroom, and will acquire key digital darkroom techniques from nondestructive editing to unparalleled color and tonal control over their own images. They will also learn the entire process of digital workflow, from RAW processing through output for a web page and print. Along with lectures and demonstrations, Imaging I allows plenty of lab time to practice and perfect their image-editing skills.

Ways of Seeing
Intensive study, analysis, and critique of the work of master photographers, their techniques, aesthetics and
approaches help to equip students to choose the most effective means of realizing their own projects. The history of photography is studied from its beginning through 1960. Students are guided to analyze the cultural and societal impact of photography, and the evolution of the medium from the original assumed veracity of photographs to the exploitation of a viewer’s acceptance of the photograph as “truth,” given the use of modern photographic manipulation with tools such as Photoshop. Additionally, students become intimately familiar with a particular photographer’s body of work through written research projects.
Discussions include composition, traditional and non-conventional framing, color theory, design, semiotics (signs and symbols), the effect of technological changes on photography, the surprisingly long history of using viewer assumptions to distort the truth, and the use and limitations of photography as a documentary and personal record.

Vision & Style
This course teaches students critical thinking skills, the visual language of photography, and pushes them to explore their personal interests in photography as they conceptualize, execute, refine, and critique. Students will define and develop a personal, iconic visual style and specific area of interest, studying master bodies of work across both genres as examples. The primary focus will be on still photography, but the use of moving images will also be explored through in-class assignments. Students will become familiar with principles of graphic design, composition, color, editing, sequencing and presentation. Through writing, journaling, drawing, research and photographic assignments, students will gain a level of self-awareness necessary to understand the most salient origins for their ideas, and conceive how their work might fit into the context of current practices and attitudes.

Shooting Lab
A unique, hands on opportunity for the student to develop core professional skills and techniques during weekly in-studio and on-location photo shoots with real-time guidance. Covering a wide range of genres along with aesthetic, logistical and technical challenges, the student will have the opportunity to work directly with their instructor, applying new skills in still photography across a range of assignments of increasing complexity.

Gallery Tour
Students will be taken on a weekly guided tour of current gallery and museum exhibitions of photo-based work and studio visits, becoming familiar with current curatorial standards and practices. They will browse exhibition catalogues, and become acquainted with print prices and editioning as a key factor, while taking advantage of opportunities to directly meet with and hear from exhibition curators and artists. Students will see firsthand the true finished product of the medium, using a diverse array of substrates, mounting and framing techniques and sequencing and presentation ideologies. Instructors lecture and lead guided discussions about artistic practices and bodies of work both contemporary and throughout the history of the medium