A Student’s Point of View

This is Ashley Crichton writing again for RITphoto! I am excited to be back posting as the School’s student blogger. Last week, I had a few meetings to lay out the semester’s goals for my posts and having just returned from the summer, I was curious about what other photo students had done with their time away from Brick City during the various internships that I had heard about. I spoke to several students in both the BFA and BS photography programs at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) . Before I sharing what they did, let me tell you a little bit about what I was up to this summer!

This summer, I was the photography intern for Dolby Labs in San Francisco, California. Since I am from the Bay Area, it was a great opportunity to spend the summer at home with my family again while also working at an amazing job.

Dolby is pretty new to having student photographers and there had only previously been one photography intern before me. As a company they had no other employees who specialized in photography. This gave me a lot of freedom to get a really broad look at what a company needed from a photographer. I helped to produce product and advertising photographs, cover any events the company organized, and made portraits of employees for the objective of showcasing the diversity within the company. I got to march in the San Francisco Pride Parade in the employee network, I attended countless movie screenings, and met so many people I could never have imagined having the chance to meet otherwise.

One of the absolutely favorite memories I have was from the summer Dolby screening of the movie Blindspotting. They had a panel of speakers – including the main actors and director – come and speak about the creation of the movie. I am a huge fan of one of the actors, Daveed Diggs. I could barely believe he was going to be in the same building as me, let alone that I was going to be taking pictures of him. I was able to introduce myself to him and tell him a little bit about my photography.  He was nice enough to repost one of the images from the night to his Instagram account and tag me.

All around, it was one of the most amazing experiences I could have dreamed of. Shared below are a few more examples of photographs I made this summer.

Another BFA student Bridget Fetsko, (who I know) also had an amazing internship. Bridget is a third year photojournalism major. This summer, Bridget worked on the documentary team embedded at Camp Stomping Ground, an overnight camp in the Catskills Mountains dedicated  to help campers imagine a world based on trust and radical empathy. Bridget was one of three photographers who were responsible for daily uploads to Facebook, creating weekly slideshows for families, creating videos for Stomping Ground, and leading some activities for campers during the day.

For campers, the schedule of the day at Stomping Ground is based on choice. During each of the different activity periods, they could choose what they wanted to do, whether it was a counselor-led activity such as “the search for newts,” painting, or an outrageous activity like “who changed the thermostat.” The photographers had “degrees of freedom,” which allowed them to choose which activities they would cover, but also allowed them to jump in and help in other ways. Each photographer was responsible for leading one hour of activity per day.

Bridget led a week long activity where campers created a camp newspaper (The SG Newtspaper), writing stories, photographing, and distributing the papers at the end of the week. Some days, Bridget led more “campy” activities such as an “80’s Dance Workout” or kayaking. Usually, Bridget spent all additional activity periods, waterfront, and the night games shooting. Instead of taking scheduled breaks, Bridget would choose to put her camera down for a few minutes to join a game of Ga-Ga or help a camper build a swing in the adventure playground. At night, Bridget would edit in the dining hall and work with the rest of the photo team to plan the slideshow and Facebook posts. The “work day” would usually start at 8 a.m. with breakfast and continue until 11 p.m. most nights. It was often busy and unpredictable, but being a part of the craziness and magic of Stomping Ground, getting to know the kids, and creating work she was proud of, made it worth it.

While working at Stomping Ground, Bridget was able to combine her interests in working with kids and working in nature, with photojournalism. She had the freedom to try out new ideas and to contribute to camp both through photography and through leading activities. Bridget was originally interested in working at Stomping Ground because it would allow her to focus on issues surrounding education while also working as a photographer. Throughout the summer, she was able to be involved in conversations about conflict resolution, empathy, fostering partnerships, and alternative philosophies for education. Bridget enjoyed getting to build individual connections even while working to document the story of camp. After working at Stomping Ground, Bridget is hoping to find ways to continue bridging these interests in her work. She hopes to be able to do work that helps kids, and to work on more stories relating to education and families. Here are more examples of the work she made this summer.

From my own experiences at RITphoto so far, and having seen what other BFA friends were doing, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what kinds of internships students could get, but I didn’t know much about what a BS student did during their coop requirements. I spoke with 2 different students, Lily Lautenschlager and Lauren Beattie, about their experiences.

Lily is a Senior studying Ophthalmic Photography. This summer, she worked at Flaum Eye Institute at Strong Memorial Hospital. She did a variety of ophthalmic imaging, including optical coherence tomography (OCT), fundus imaging, visual field testing, and performed many fluorescein angiograms.

OCT imaging images reveal the layers of the retina and allows doctors to see where swelling is occurring and which fluid in the layer is better for the treatment plan. Fundus imaging is used for documentation of what the doctor observes and used for comparison from one visit to the next. Visual field exams are given to test peripheral vision and monitor vision loss. A fluorescein angiogram test uses a dye test and is photographed revealing how the blood flows through the vessels of the back of the eye. This helps the doctor see where there is a leakage or blockage in the veins or arteries.

Here is some of her work from the summer! The images all feature retinal fundus images.

This image features a retina with lots of different pathology.

This image is of her eye and shows some of the pathology in her eye.

This is a montage of the back of the eye.

At the end of her co-op, she was offered a part time position and currently still works there.

Lauren Beattie is studying Biomedical Photographic Communications. She participated in a co-op at Eagleview Technology as a Flight System Engineer. She was a part of the hardware engineering team, Foxtrot. Her day to day responsibilities included inspections on systems, experiments on new systems, and development of future systems.

While she would love to talk about more details of the top-of-the-line systems she was working on, she has to keep everything under wraps due to the NDA she had to sign. However, she can tell us that she had the opportunity to work with her hands, doing repairs and maintenance on cameras.

She loved this work because there were tangible results. An experiment didn’t just end in a paper, it ended with real implemented results. Unlike school where labs end in grades; experiments ended in presentation, results, and then change or further experimentation. She says it was beyond rewarding. What she found most important to her was that my co-workers and superiors appreciated and sought out her knowledge and opinions. She was not just there to do things they didn’t want to do, they valued her education and what she brought to the table. Her co-op was a great test drive of what the real world and photo tech industry has to offer.

While she wasn’t able to provide me with many photos of what she did due to the NDA, she was able to give me this photo of her wonderful dog with her at work.

Every single person that I featured in this article, myself included, was able to take the knowledge they have received at school and apply it to a job they adored. It makes me feel even more validated that coming across the country to study photography at RIT was the right decision.