The Eight-Week Digital Photography Workshop is an intensive exploration of photography in the digital age. Photography school students are immersed in the art and craft of still photography, and are introduced to the tools necessary to capture great images and refine them through digital imaging.

Photography students at New York Film Academy develop the skills necessary to research, compose, and capture digital photographic projects in a hands-on course. Students are encouraged to be creative, but are also taught to think of each project as a concise statement of artistic, documentary, and/or journalistic intent. They expand their repertoire of techniques with light and shadow as they work with professional lighting and grip hardware, as well as inexpensive and unconventional practical sources of light and shadow.

No significant prior experience in photography is assumed. The program brings everyone to the same level very quickly, beginning with the fundamentals and filling the inevitable gaps in the understanding of those who have some experience.

CLASSES

Studio Practice
Studio Practice is the core of the curriculum, encompassing lecture, demonstration, shooting assignments on location or in the studio, and critique. Students learn the mechanics of cameras and lenses and the components of exposure. Students are taught to be aware of the unique characteristics that light can take: direct, diffused, reflected, tempered by atmosphere.

Digital Imaging
Adobe Photoshop may be the greatest tool of visual illusion and manipulation ever invented. Going beyond the flashy effects that wow at trade shows, students use professional digital darkroom techniques that give unprecedented color and tonal control over their images. Students build their digital darkroom from RAW processing through non-destructive editing.

History & Theory
Intensive study, analysis, and critique of the work of master photographers, their techniques, aesthetics and approaches helps to equip students to choose the most effective means of realizing their own projects. Students are guided to analyze the cultural and societal impact of photography, and the evolution of the medium.

Discussions include composition, traditional and non-conventional framing, color theory, design, semiotics (signs and symbols), the effect of technological changes on photography, the use and limitations of photography as a documentary and personal record, and the surprisingly long history of using viewer assumptions to distort the truth.

Documentary & Fine Art Photography
This is an assignment-driven class, consisting primarily of a single long-term documentary assignment and analysis of student images. In this class, students also take a close look at the evolution of documentary and fine art photography through the work of established and emerging masters.