Photography (PHOT)

How to Read Course Descriptions

PHOT 11.     Digital Photography I. 3 Units

General Education Area/Graduation Requirement: Arts (Area C1)

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

An introduction to digital photographic image making. Course acquaints students with photographic equipment and techniques used to create and disseminate digital images. Aesthetic, conceptual, and cultural issues surrounding the production and application of photographic images are also discussed.

PHOT 12.     Digital Photography II. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 11. Fee course.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

An introduction to composited photographic images. Course provides a broad primer to digital editing and compositing techniques. Lectures and discussions provide artistic and ethical context for contemporary photographic practice.

Fee course.

PHOT 15.     Survey of Photography. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

PHOT 20.     The Photographic Self. 3 Units

General Education Area/Graduation Requirement: Understanding Personal Development (E)

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Focuses on photography's influence on notions of self from its inception in 1938 to the present. Enhances students' understanding of how and why photography became the powerful and ubiquitous tool that shaped a new form of visual self-expression.

PHOT 40.     Darkroom Photography. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Course covers basic concepts and skills in chemical-process photography. Emphasis is placed on basic camera theory, film exposure and development, darkroom printing, and post processing techniques. Lectures, discussions, and assignments provide artistic and historical context for the creation and interpretation of photographic images.

Note: This course requires safety training. This course requires personal protective equipment (PPE).

PHOT 101.     Photography, Inception to Mid-Century. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall only

Introduces students to the history of photography, from inception to Mid-20th Century. Practices of photographers and artists, working with photographic technologies, will be discussed. The course examines photographic vision and the impact of the medium through lectures and readings by art historians and photographers.

Cross-listed: ART 101.

PHOT 102.     Photography, a Social History. 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Spring only

Examines photographic vision and the impact of the medium on society through readings by both photographers and photographic critics. Establishes the importance of photography as a contemporary medium, explores the development of photographic vision and the relationship between photographs and cultural events. Lecture/discussion.

PHOT 111.     Intermediate Digital Photography. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 11 and PHOT 40

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Covers intermediate to advanced concepts and techniques in digital photographic practice, providing students with the ability to explore both new and previously mastered software and hardware applications. Emphasis is on using digital techniques to generate and print effective and imaginative photographs. Lectures, discussion, and assignments focus on expanding the technical, aesthetic, and conceptual concerns surrounding the creation of contemporary photographic images.

PHOT 141.     Intermediate Darkroom Photography. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 40 and PHOT 11

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Course covers intermediate level concepts and skills in chemical-process photographic practice. Emphasis is placed on the artistic potential of camera- and darkroom-based image production and manipulation. Lectures, discussions, and assignments focus on expanding the aesthetic and conceptual concerns surrounding the creation and application of photographic imagery.

Note: This course requires safety training. This course requires personal protective equipment (PPE).

PHOT 148.     Artificial Light, Studio. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 111 and PHOT 141

Corequisite(s): PHOT 102 and PHOT 155

Term Typically Offered: Spring only

A commercially oriented course with assignments covering such topics as food, fashion and products photographed with artificial light in the studio. Business, legal and ethical practices in commercial and editorial photography are discussed as they apply to work done in a studio setting. Students are expected to become visually and technically competent with artificial light sources used in a studio setting.

PHOT 149.     Artificial Light, Location. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 148 and PHOT 155

Corequisite(s): PHOT 165

Term Typically Offered: Fall only

A location lighting course covering the use of artificial light and non-studio photography. Assignments cover such topics as: interior and exterior architecture, food and fashion shot on location. Techniques for combining the use of hot lights, electronic flash and ambient light are discussed. Students will use a body of work demonstrating their visual and technical understanding of artificial light sources for editorial and commercial application.

PHOT 155.     Advanced Photography Techniques. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 111 and PHOT 141

Corequisite(s): PHOT 102 and PHOT 148

Term Typically Offered: Spring only

Explores advanced techniques in the production of photographic imagery, with special emphasis on the hybridization of photographic processes. Lectures cover advanced chemical and digital photographic procedures in camera use and printing techniques. Students must demonstrate a high level of visual awareness and technical competency, and must be willing to take risks in the creative application of photographic processes.

PHOT 161.     Photography in the Field. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 141 or instructor permission.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

The class visits specific sites followed by a group critique of the resulting photographic work. The course objective is to examine how one situation can be interpreted by many varied sensibilities, broadening the artist's visual vocabulary. Students are required to create visually unified portfolio that demonstrates a sense of place.

Cross-listed: ART 161.

PHOT 162.     Alternative Photographic Processes. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 141 or instructor permission.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Studio course exploring alternative photographic processes that may include: printing-out paper, new cyanotype, argyrotype, and platinum-palladium. Slide discussions, individual and class critiques.

Cross-listed: ART 162.

PHOT 163.     Pinhole Photography. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 40 or equivalent.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Intermediate course investigating the theory, history, and practice of pinhole photography. Use of student-made pinhole cameras of varying focal lengths using black and white and color materials. Emphasis on creative approach in both camera making and image formation, supported by intermediate-level photographic technique. Individual final portfolios and group exhibition of cameras and prints at conclusion of course.

Cross-listed: ART 163.

PHOT 165.     Issues in Contemporary Photographic Practice. 5 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 148 and PHOT 155 Fee course.

Term Typically Offered: Fall only

Covers advanced problems in the process of creating photographic work. Emphasis is on the ways which content/form relationships within a body of work are informed by the artist's conceptual and material engagement, as well as the way in which process and context shape meaning in photographic work. Course centers on readings in contemporary theory and aesthetics, discussion, the production of photographic work, and critique.

Note: Type III Fee, $45

Fee course.

PHOT 175.     Studio Topics in Photography. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 148 and PHOT 155

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

This class is a broad investigation of photography's potential. Each semester the class concentrates on a photographic strategy including but not limited to: documentary, journalism, fabrication, image and text, and the archive. Students are introduced to photography's varied application, new developments and conversations in the medium. Readings and discussions will enlist a range of theoretical and critical approaches. Course center on readings, discussion, production of photographic work and critique.

PHOT 180.     Senior Portfolio. 5 Units

Prerequisite(s): PHOT 165 Fee course

Term Typically Offered: Spring only

A senior level course aimed at furthering student's knowledge of postgraduate opportunities. The required final portfolio of images will reflect the student's photographic education, experience and area of expertise. The content and format of this portfolio will depend on the student's future academic or professional goals.

Note: Type III Fee $45

PHOT 195.     Internship In Photography. 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): A minimum of two upper division photography courses.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Directed observation and work experience with public agencies, organizations, publications, design or photography studios. Fieldwork is offered to give students experience, personal contacts and orientation in the area of professional photography. Supervision is provided by faculty and the cooperating community employer. Students are required to maintain a detailed record of activities and report regularly to the supervising faculty member. To receive credit the selected activity must be approved prior to adding the course. Ten hours weekly.

Credit/No Credit

PHOT 199.     Special Problems. 1 - 3 Units

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Individual projects or directed readings in photography. Open to students who are working at an advanced level of photography and competent to carry on individual work.

Credit/No Credit

PHOT 299.     Special Problems. 1 - 3 Units

Prerequisite(s): Requires instructor approval.

Term Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Individual projects or directed readings in photography for graduate level students. Open to students who are working at an advanced level of photography and competent to carry on individual work.

Credit/No Credit