Early this year (2009) I was enrolled in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco as a MFA student for Photography major. After 4 weeks of school, I dropped all my classes, apply for refund, and restart my search for an alternative place for my photography education.
(June 1st, 2009 SI Orientation)
I was considering two photography schools – the 12-week Residency Program at Maine Media Workshops and the 5-month Career Training Program at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. After considered the school location and the course content I decided to go with the RMSP.
Finding a place in Missoula is harder than I think because I am allergic to dogs, cats, smokers, and my lease period is a little bit strange (June to October, which is from summer to middle of semester for college). Finally, my perfect place found me (the landlord response to my ad on Montana’s craigslist) and I arrived in Missoula a week early before my school start.
The 5-month Career Training Program at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography break down to three sections – first 11 weeks is Summer Intensive Program, 3 weeks is Professional Studies Program, and the last 6 weeks is Advance Intensive Program.
This year we have total of 81 students from 4 different countries (3 from Canada, 1 from UK, 1 from India, rest of them are from 31 different States); 3/2 are females, age range from 18 to 75, and majority are age 20 to 29 but age 59 and older are increase year after year.
The Summer Intensive (SI) Program start with very basic knowledge about camera setting, photography skills and software editing skills so eventually all of students would be on the same skill level. This program is good for everyone who likes to take photos and wants to take better photos with their cameras. It would be very beneficial even you only own a point-and-shoot camera (but most people who enrolled in this class do own a DSLR).
During this 11-week program we get chance to hear many professional photographers from different fields come to rmsp to share their experiences with us – from Wedding, Sports, Portraits, Stock, Fine Art, Nature/Travel along with people who do consulting with photographers. Although some are great in terms of experiences and speaking style, and some not so great but we do get different perspective for many photography field that you won’t have otherwise.
By the time we finish the SI program we learned a lot in Lightroom, basic masks and layers in Photoshop CS4, printing on our own with different type of papers in school’s printer, basic studio lighting knowledge, and have a decent photography skills. We have a final project in the end to show and summarize what we have learned in the past 10 weeks.
The subject for the final project this year was based on Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents. We need to create a series of 5 images minimal that has a symbolic or metaphor of a story, and we need to write an artist statement for the project. Then one photo and the statement will go to the graduation show.
Above was my work and the artist statement for the final project. The first four images I framed with shadow/floating box to create the airy/floating feeling that I try to convey, and the last image I use traditional mat and frame with larger print to show my final thoughts/result (and this is the one going to the graduation shoe). I was amazed and inspired with all my classmates’ AWESOME work (Group C&D). You can tell everyone put a lot of thoughts and plan into this project - from idea/story development, to taking photos, to choose photos, to select paper type, to printing, to choose presentation style/frame method.
Our Graduation was held at University of Montana's Theater from 2pm to 5pm with a half-hour intermission which give students, faculty and family/friends a chance to go see our Graduates' Art Show next room.
Introduce our instructors again. They are amazing!!!
We had three student representatives from each two groups (A/B, C/D, E/F). The most creative one was Group A+B because all the students were up on stage showcase their own R&B which name every single instructor and assistant, and capture their teaching characteristic (mostly their speaking habits), way cool!!
Congratulations to the Class of 2009 SI students!!!
Group A+B
Group C+D
Group E+F
Ps. If you can read Chinese (or want to use online translation tool or just simply want to see more photos), click HERE for more detail stories about my experiences with rmsp.
