Student feature – Brittany Bateman

Bio:  Brittany Bateman grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She is a fourth-year Imaging and Photographic Technologies  student  and is specializing in Biomedical Photographic Communications. At graduation she will have a photographic concentration in ophthalmic photography. She loves working in ophthalmic imaging because she believes the work is helping the patients that she is photographing. The photographs she has shared are concentrated around the coop she completed in the summer of 2014 at the Virginia Eye Institute. Even though ophthalmic photography is her main focus, Brittany also likes photographing  in the studio of working with both small or challenging subjects. She will be graduating  May 2015.

RIT Photography  –  “What was your most challenging assignment as a photography student?”
[BB] I think the ophthalmic photography concentration in general was the most challenging. You have to adjust to a new type of camera that being the fundus camera. In addition, you are shooting inside your lab partners’ eye. Therefore, you must learn patient management. There are two very challenging assignments that come to mind in this concentration. One is the boot camp assignment in which I had to shoot a certain amount of fields, in stereo, in both eyes, in a certain amount of time. This assignment really helped me become more skilled in obtaining the required fields and also made me practice so that I became faster and faster on the fundus camera. The other assignment was the retinal montage assignment in which I had to shoot several fields in one eye, which was easy enough, but then I had to take those individual photos using Photoshop and fuse them  into one montage of the eye. This was very difficult because of the aberrations of the lens created distortions on the sides of the photos. I had to shoot several “in-between” fields so that everything would match up properly. There were also color and exposure changes, which created even more challenges. Both of these assignments gave me confidence and I used these skills during my co-op. I am so grateful that these assignments were required because they pushed me so much.

RIT Photography – “What do you love about the school?”
[B.B.] This school is amazing for several reasons. First, the facilities are one of a kind. We have several different labs that are unique along with the endless options from the photo cage. I also love the faculty; they really push you to try everything and make sure you learn as much as you can. They genuinely care about you and are always willing to work with you to make sure you produce the best work you possibly can. Lastly, the Imaging and Photographic Sciences major is unique in itself and that’s what I love about it. Nowhere in the country can you find a school that offers ophthalmic photography as part of a bachelor’s degree.  We are a small, tight knit group of people in this major, which makes our time together very valuable.

To see more of Brittany’s work visit:
www.brittanybateman.com
or
http://www.linkedin.com/in/brittanybateman