Photography classes attract students from diverse disciplines. My students have included an English professor looking to expand her travel photography, a Parks & Recreation major who wanted to see how he could supplement his research as well as photojournalism, graphic design and traditional photography students, all with different ideas about image making. The challenge in the classroom is to create assignments that stress visual literacy and technical fundamentals while allowing each student to develop their own conceptual ideas.

I ask my students to find ideas, whether political, social or personal, that move them and then to pursue them artistically.

Regardless of a student’s discipline, I want them to come away from a photography class with a deeper understanding of their interests, a stronger vocabulary in visual language and a better vision of how to proceed with their art.

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