A Student’s Point of View: First Year Classes
Hello from Ashley Crichton. You may recall I write posts for RITphoto. I recently I spoke with first-year student Sophia Cox about her experiences so far as an advertising photography student. Sophia first became interested in attending RIT because she is from Rochester and – at the time – both of her parents worked at RIT.
She has always been passionate about photography and while in high school, she attended a career focused school where she gained first hand experience working in the studio. When I asked her what she likes to photograph, she told me she likes portraiture but recently has been working with still life as well. She loves photographing fashion and for beauty.
This semester she is taking Photo Arts 2. This class introduces students to artificial light and working in the studios. In this class, first year students use continuous lighting and then in their second year they learn to use strobes. The first assignment students get in this class is to photograph white paper on a white seamless backdrop. For this part of the assignment, Sophia made flowers out of her paper and lit them with one light bounced off of a big white flat to get a soft quality of light. Her goal with this photo was to make something beautiful and simple. Her hope was it would be easy to look at and enjoy the simplicity.
For the second part of the assignment, students were asked to come up with a creative still life. For this part of the assignment, she created a still life by “ xtreme wear” nail polish.
In her free time, Sophia performs circus arts,and she used this as her inspiration for the photo. She used an aerial silk as her background to tie the image back to the inspiration. She put the nail polish in “extreme” situations like those in the circus to play off of the name of the polish. In this image, she used hard light to create a more dramatic feel to the composition.
When I asked her to share her experiences so far, she said it’s pretty much exactly what she expected. Because she has worked in a studio before, she is pushing herself to try new things she wouldn’t have gotten into other ways. She has been working a lot more with still life and learning how to construct images in a particular way. Outside of her Photo Arts class, she says that she has been really enjoying learning about how cameras work from her Photo Technology class. Photo Tech is a class that all photography students have to take, usually in their first year. It teaches students about the science behind how cameras work and other scientific principles that are used in photography. This class ensures that not only can students take beautiful photos, they also understand how their camera and related technology is creating an image.
Something else that Sophia shared that has helped her get more connected to the photography department has been living in Photo House. Photohouse is an organization of 70 current members- living on and off floor which benefits from a large alumni connection. The floor has facilities that include a gallery, studio, darkroom, and projection lounge with social events happening once or twice a week. Many of their activities are paired with academic lectures and other events. Photohouse has been known to help individuals earn higher grades in their courses because many members have been in similar classes. Sophia really enjoys living there because it gives her access to the studios a semester earlier than other students.
Her website is https://www.sophiamariephoto.com/studioportfolio
Her instagram is @sophi_marie_