Photography is an half-day studio that is combined with Film to offer students an expanded opportunity to experiment with image-making across both lens-based mediums. Students will spend half the day working on projects focusing on photography, with workshops in analog black and white, digital, and experimental processes. The photography studio is led by Bec Imrich, an artist, writer, and educator who teaches at UC Berkeley and CCA. Their interdisciplinary practice is grounded in photography, sculpture, and drawing. In the afternoons students work both independently and collaboratively in the film studio to further develop their documentary, narrative, overall creative approaches to film production, writing, and storytelling through moving images. The film studio is led by Joseph Graham, film maker, writer, producer, and senior adjunct faculty in the undergraduate and graduate film programs at CCA.

An effective image expresses your ideas and personal vision. The half-day photography studio encourages you to explore analog, alternative process, and digital photography while experimenting with new ways of seeing. Through lectures, critiques, and discussions, you will learn the technical and aesthetic aspects of photography:

• Advanced metering, exposure, and processing
• Darkroom photograms and enlargements
• Cyanotype printing (hand-coated non-silver process)
• Manipulating images using Adobe Photoshop
• Making digital negatives using inkjet transparency media
• Self-publishing techniques; DIY magazines
• Alternative origins of digital images (scanning/re-photographing/collage)

By the end of the course, you will have developed a portfolio of images in a variety of mediums, a set of small handmade magazines, and the ability to think critically about and articulate the power of images and image-making.

Photography is an half-day studio that is combined with Film. Students should have access to a DSLR or mirrorless camera with battery, memory card, and fully manual functions (full control over aperture, shutter speed, ISO, color balance), capable of making RAW files, and a zoom or prime lens capable of manual focus.

Pre-College 2024 application opens September 2023.