A Student’s Point of View – RIT’s Photo Facilities are the Best
This is Ashley Crichton writing again for RIT Photo! For my next three upcoming posts, I am planning to showcase the facilities we use the Photo program. From my point of view, the entire photo world at RIT exists between the second and fourth floor of the Frank E. Gannett building. I am going to start on the fourth floor and work my way down one floor for each post.
As an Advertising Photo student, I spent the most of my time on the fourth floor of Gannett Hall. It is where the photography studios are, it is where the Kodak computer labs that I use most often are, and it is where my classrooms are.
The first thing I want to describe is the fourth floor cage. This cage has all the equipment you could ever need to work in the studio as well as location lighting kits. It has light modifiers that you can put on strobes, or continuous lights ( for if you are shooting a video), light stands, adapters for lights and lights stands, and pretty much anything else you could need to light a beautiful picture. It’s also where you check into and out of a studio. You can borrow everything you need from the cage for up to 24 hours. Studios have to be renewed every five hours. You can’t keep a studio checked out overnight. The cage always has your back during shoots. Whenever I go up to the cage with some crazy idea of how I want to light something, the cager working will talk through my idea with me and help me figure out a better way of lighting it than what I had originally come up with. They will also show me all sorts of weird light modifiers that no one really checks out but are sometimes exactly what I need to get the light I’m looking for.
I spend most of my time in the studios on the fourth floor. My favorite part of photography right now is studio work and I spend as much of my free time trying things out with light. There are single and double studios you can check out and you can pick if you want one with black or white walls. I like to be the only photographer in the studio when I’m working, which means I almost always check out a single studio or a double studio if the other side is out of commission. Here are some of the different things I have done in the studios during the last 2 years.
The Northlight Studio is my favorite room in the entire building. Since we spend so much time in completely dark studios with no daylight, being in a room that has such beautiful natural light is a great break from normal. It’s also so big that a studio set-up doesn’t feel cramped and the best part, you can have all your friends come hang out on your set and have fun making pictures together. Below are some photos I made working in the Northlight Studio.
Most of the time, when I have a photography class in an actual classroom, it is in a room on the fourth floor next to Northlight. I have lectures designed to inspire us for our next project in this room. I also have meetings with people if we have a larger group project and need a space to discuss our ideas.
When we need to learn things hands on and not in a classroom, there is a studio next to Northlight called Demo Studio where our professors can show us different lighting setups. Classes in there are the most fun for me, I love being shown new things I can do with the lights and how small changes in the lighting setups can make such a big difference. This room also has the most interesting things in it, professors bring all sorts of things in that we can’t check out at the cage and show us what different things will be available to us when we get out into the real world. Here is what it looks like when we get a demo:
Another place I spend a lot of time is in K Lab short for Kodak Lab 1 and 2. There are 2 K Labs. They are big and very nice computer labs with excellent printers. If we have a work period during one of our classes, we work on editing images or getting feedback from professors or peers on what we can do better with our images. Outside of class, we can use it as a lab to get homework done. These computers work a lot better than any laptop if you are trying to edit big files such as videos. On most nights you can find a big group of students in the Kodak Labs printing and working until all hours of the night since these labs are open 24 hours. The best thing about K Lab is dropping the projector screen down in the front of the classroom and putting on Netflix while you work. Recently, my friends and I have been watching Friends starting from the beginning on the big screen while we work. It makes the time somewhat more enjoyable.
As an Advertising Photography student at RIT, my life is pretty much centered around the fourth floor. It has a lot of amazing resources that make my work easier and better, as well as a lot of great places to spend time with my friends while we work.
Ashley Crichton is a 3rd year advertising photography student from California. You can read more about Ashley by following this link.