Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/08/23
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]No, it is not a beginning how-to course; it can, however, be a beginning course for people more interested in the documentary process than in technique. I had a wide range of students in the class - not one of whom was an art or photo student; MIT doesn't have them.;-) A few of my students were technically quite accomplished and good shooters to boot - one strings regularly for the AP and the Boston Globe, two were or had been photo editors of the student paper. On the other hand, I had some people who's technical skills were quite rudimentary, but who had excellent eyes, and did some imaginative, meaningful work. Do you really mean you don't think you could write about the contrast in styles between Richards and Salgado, and what those styles add to, or take away from, the purpose of their work, without having studied HCB - a surrealist with a camera, NOT a documentary photographer or photo journalist for that matter - or a Brady or a Stieglitz? Most of my students had very rudimentary photo history backgrounds, if they had any at all, and they wrote some damn interesting papers. I wasn't suggesting, btw, that my course was a course for students trying to learn where to put the film in the camera and what f stops are. But then I believe there is a book entitled "Photography for Dummies" that can answer all those questions in a single afternoon's setting - along with hundreds of other very basic books that can do the same thing. It seems to me that in addition to teaching the students in a hands on way the fundamentals, someone can throw into a basic course something about issues in photography, the purposes of photography, the history of, to give them a sense of why we take photos in the first place. If nothing else, a few selections from Sontag are certainly worth considering. B. D. - -----Original Message----- From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us [mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of DFangon@aol.com Sent: Friday, August 23, 2002 2:36 AM To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us Subject: Re: [Leica] Photo education In a message dated 8/21/02 9:33:55 AM Pacific Daylight Time, bdcolen@earthlink.net writes: << It's not exactly a beginning class...but if you go to http://web.mit.edu/21W.749/www/syllabus.html >> This is definitely not beginners. The course has moved from the technical to the philisophical. It's a course I would love to take......after I learn about lighting and exposure and aperture and shutter speed and different kinds of films, after I can tell the difference between 35mm and medium format, after I can differentiate a rangefinder from an SLR from a TLR from a P&S and understand the strenghts and limitations of each one, after I can grasp the principles that govern shape and form and texture and color, after I learn about lightmeters and learn how to use them, after I master the tonal range and the zone system. Finally, I must first study some history, about Daguerreotypes and calotypes etc. about Brady and Stieglitz, Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke White and Henry Cartier Bresson before I will feel confident and competent enough to do a paper on Richards or Salgado. Dante - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html