This gallery is the result of my first semester of study at Photographic Studies College (in Melbourne) - www.psc.edu.au
I had been toying with the idea of actually studying photography for a few years now, having found short courses, workshops and camera clubs to be a waste of time (for me). The trouble is that most tertiary education here is at least partly government funded and is thus skewed very heavily towards 17 year old school leavers and towards vocational learning (i.e. will get you a job, not learning for the sake of it.) The university options were one BA (photography) course (at RMIT) or a BFA with a photography major (most of the universities offered this). All of those were full time courses and places were fairly keenly sought. With an over-supply of arts graduates and limited government funding there seems little desire for any of the institutions to offer any arts courses to mature age students part time. The next step down is the TAFE system (Technical and Further Education) and these are diplomas, not degrees. I had three options there, two places offered courses skewed towards producing assistants and studio managers and the last was PSC which offers an Advanced Diploma of Photography. It offers a rather expensive (by local standards) full time course that runs over three years or a much cheaper part time course (2 nights per week or all day Fridays) that takes four years. The full time course if basically for school leavers who normally aren't anywhere near as motivated or organised as mature age students. Our part time class did have a few teenagers but the bulk were in the 25-35 range with a few of us in our 40s and 50s to balance out the teens. There weren't any complete beginners but most had little technical knowledge. The course is entirely digital which does allow for much more rapid assessment and feedback and plunges us straight into all of the colour concepts. The downside as one tutor put it is that where in the past they would see all of our work for the week in the form of a couple of B&W proof sheets, now they just see the 5 or 10 shots that we think is best from the few hundred we may have shot that week. Our best work may be lurking in amongst the rejects because we aren't sufficiently developed to recognise it. Certainly there were many occasions in the review sessions when someone was almost apologetic about a shot that they thought inferior but a lot of us absolutely loved. By then end of the semester it was clear that everyone was able to produce good work although some were more consistent than others. The first 8 - 10 weeks was taken up with technical concepts in the morning and art theory in the afternoon. We were expected to shoot in our own time and upload images each week for review. In practice nobody managed to have something new every week and there were a few that had a lot to do in the last couple of weeks. The second half of the semester concentrated on shooting for our final folio. The constraints were no cropping (apart from straightening horizons), no flash, no monochrome. We had to provide 15 - 20 images in each of three sections: People, Places, Objects (animals were generally regarded as people since we tend to treat them in a similar way). In one of those sections we were expected to provide a series of 6 - 9 conceptually linked images. Otherwise we were expected to show a variety of subjects and methods which is why the folio is varied to the point of being disjointed. For my concept I started with "waiting" which gradually got refined to low light shots of lone people and objects. It took me so long to work out what I was actually doing that the last few shots were done in the week before submission but I enjoyed the challenge immensely. www.paulewins.com/PSC/semester_1/folio/index.html All shot on the K7, mostly with FA24 and 43 but also 15, 77, 100 macro and 18-250. The FA 24 is annoyingly large compared to the limiteds but it was great for the low light stuff. Despite the obvious shortcomings of a large range zoom the 18-250 (and perhaps the 43) is the best option for a lightweight kit for when I was just wandering around. Paul -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
