JT Spunk | Photography

Rochester Institute of Technology photography program ?

How good is RIT’s photography program? I’m looking into attending there…as well as Brooks. Right now I’m sort of leaning towards RIT. Brooks has so many bad reviews and they’re extremely expensive. I’m not afraid to bust my ass to get an education, but I’m not going to be dishing out my money for an education that is poorly delivered. Anyways…I would like to hear from people who experienced RIT’s photography program…or know of someone who did. Thanks

Hey, I’m an RIT illustration student, but i can tell you that RIT’s photo program is within the top schools in the country. It is really intense and very into technical issues, but there are some amazing programs ranging from fine art to advertising and imaging science. Freshman year is mostly traditional, but after that you will pretty much only be working digitally. There are some cool classes that focus on social issues, such as one class currently showing at gallery r that focused on homelessness in Rochester, going down to the house of mercy and talking with and photographing homeless people. They have also done hard to adopt children. They have gone to Brasil and I think this year Croatia (but that might be a different trip).

As Rochester goes, its cold and gray and wet. Henrietta sucks (where the school is), but downtown is nice. Good bar scene, nice galleries and independent movie theaters.

But if you want an actual impression of the school, this is not the place to ask. You have to visit it and meet with some professors and students. It cant all get summed up here.

Good luck!

The Portrait: Understanding Portrait Photography $29.8 Glenn Rand, longtime photographic educator and Program Director for Graduate Programs at Brooks Institute, and Tim Meyer, Portrait Division Chair at Brooks Institute, have collaborated to create a thorough and balanced textbook on the modern techniques and practice of portrait photography. They have avoided the single-style viewpoint common to so many books on portraiture and have crafted a definitive resource for professionals, as well as students and avid amateurs, wishing to advance their skills in this discipline. Topics include: Quality of light and the portrait Ambient, continuous, and strobe light sources Understanding light modifiers and enhancers Mastering lighting ratios Importance and selection of backgrounds Extensive coverage of lighting setups Understanding light meters and metering in portraiture Lighting patterns on the human face Facial analysis Composition in portraiture Eliciting the appropriate expression The fine art portrait Portraiture for the masses

A Writer’s Eye: Collected Book Reviews $36.89 Although she is eminent primarily as the prize-winning author of classic works of fiction, Eudora Welty is notable also as an astute literary critic. Her essays on the art of fiction and on the writers who enlarged the range of the short story and the novel are definitive pieces. Her distinguished book reviews, along with her critical essays, augment her reputation for being one of the most discerning author-critics in literary America. This collection of her book reviews manifests the connecting of her penetrating eye with her responsive intellect in forming sympathetic judgments of the books she reviewed. Between 1942 and 1984 Welty wrote sixty-seven reviews of seventy-four books. Fifty-eight of these appeared in the "New York Times Book Review," and others in the "Saturday Review of Literature, Tomorrow, " the "Hudson Review, " the "New York Post," and the "Sewanee Review." The reviewed books include novels, short story collections, books of essays, biographies and memoirs, books of letters, children’s books, books of ghost stories, photography books, books of literary criticism, and books of World War II art. Over nearly half a century she reviewed books by some of the foremost authors of her time: Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, V. S. Pritchett, Colette, Isak Dinesen, E. B. White, E. M. Forster, J. D. Salinger, Ross Macdonald, Patrick White, S. J. Perelman, Annie Dillard, Elizabeth Bowen, and Katherine Anne Porter. "A Writer’s Eye" includes all of Welty’s book reviews, even one published in the "New York Times Book Review" under the pseudonym "Michael Ravenna." Sixteen of the reviews were collected previously in Welty’s "The Eye of the Story" (1978). In this collection Pearl Amelia McHaney’s introduction records the history of Welty’s career in book reviewing and illuminates the honesty and compassion with which Welty wrote reviews. Welty’s keen vision, her wit, and her refined style make these "monuments to interruption," a phrase she wrote in description of Virginia Woolf’s essays and reviews, an important record of her literary standards and special interests. They show as well how book reviewing consumed a large measure of creative time that she customarily devoted to fiction writing. Placed beside her authoritative critical essays, this volume enhances Welty’s considerable literary stature and completes the image of Eudora Welty as a consummate woman of letters. Eudora Welty, (1909-2001), was one of the twentieth-century’s most critically- acclaimed authors and a master of the short story. Her literary canon encompasses works of fiction and nonfiction, including essays, book reviews, and a best-selling memoir. Pearl Amelia McHaney is associate professor of English at Georgia State U

Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography $22.52 "Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography" is the long-awaited collection of essays, reviews and lectures by Tod Papageorge, one of the most influential voices in photography today. As a photographer and the Walker Evans Professor of Photography at the Yale University School of Art, Papageorge has shaped the work and thought of generations of artist-photographers, and, through his critical writings–some of which have gained a cult following through online postings–he has earned a reputation as an unusually eloquent and illuminating guide to the work of many of the most important figures in twentieth-century photography. Among the artists Papageorge discusses in this essential volume are Eugene Atget, Brassai, Robert Frank (with Walker Evans), Robert Adams and his close friend Garry Winogrand. The book also includes texts that examine the more general questions of photography’s relationship to poetry, and how the evolution of the medium’s early technologies led to the twentieth- century creation of the artist-photographer. Among the previously unpublished pieces in "Core Curriculum" are an unfinished poem written in response to Susan Sontag’s "On Photography," a profile of Josef Koudelka and a commencement speech delivered at the Yale School of Art in 2004. "Core Curriculum" also includes a number of interviews with this esteemed photographer/teacher/ author, ranging in topic from his own photographic work and background in poetry to his energetic observations on the art of photography. Tod Papageorge (born 1940) earned his BA in English literature from the University of New Hampshire in 1962, where he began taking photographs during his last semester. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. In 1979, Papageorge was named Yale University’s Walker Evans Professor of Photography and director of graduate studies in photography, both positions he continues to hold today.

Photographing Nature: A Photo Workshop from Brooks Institute’s Top Nature Photography Instructor $38.79 Anyone can photograph nature-just step outside and you’re on location. But becoming a "good" nature photographer takes expert training. In "Photographing Nature, " Ralph Clevenger, whose images have appeared in such publications as" Audubon" and "National Geographic, " shares the techniques he’s been using and teaching to aspiring nature photographers for the last 25 years in his popular nature photography course at the elite Brooks Institute. Each chapter of this gorgeous four-color course-in-a-book opens with a spectacular photo spread from the natural world that Clevenger uses to illustrate themes and techniques essential to mastering the art of nature photography. Just as he does in his classroom at Brooks, Clevenger explains how each photo was captured, tools and techniques used, and typical problems related to capturing such a photo, along with solutions. Each chapter also includes sample Q&A sessions and assignments. Perhaps the only person to spawn an urban legend through his jaw-dropping photography and conceptual work (http: //www.snopes.com/photos/natural/iceberg.asp), Clevenger aims with this book to give photographers motivation to spend more time capturing each shot, knowledge about the equipment and techniques used to create "dramatic" images, and insight into original ways to look at our natural world. By the time you’ve worked through all of the techniques in this beautiful yet informative book, you’ll not only photograph the world differently-you’ll see it differently, too.

Working the Room: Essays and Reviews: 1999-2010 $29.67 Alive with insight, delight and Dyer’s characteristic irreverence, this book offers a guide around the cultural maze, mapping a route through the worlds of literature, art, photography and music. Across ten years’ worth of essays, Working the Room spans the photography of Martin Parr and the paintings of Turner, the writing of Scott Fitzgerald and the criticism of Susan Sontag, and includes extensive personal pieces – ‘On Being an Only Child’, ‘Sacked’ and ‘Reader’s Block’ among many others. Dyer’s breadth of vision and generosity of spirit combine to form a manual for ways of being in – and seeing – the world today.

Photography After Frank $21.79 In "Photography After Frank," former "New York Times" writer and picture editor Philip Gefter narrates the tale of contemporary photography, beginning at the pivotal moment when Robert Frank commenced his seminal works of the 1950s. Along the way, he connects the dots of photography’s evolution into what it is today, forging links between its episodes to reveal unsuspected leaps. Gefter takes Frank’s "The Americans" as a decisive challenge to photographic objectivity, with its grainy, off-hand-seeming spontaneity and its documentation of life beyond the picket fence. Thus viewed, "The Americans" provides Gefter with a bridge to the phenomenon of the staged document" and Postmodernism’s further challenge to image fidelity. Other areas of discussion include photojournalism, the recent diversity of portraiture styles, the influence of private and corporate collections on curatorial decisions and how the market shapes art making. Throughout "Photography After Frank," Gefter deftly demonstrates Frank’s legacy in the work of dozens of important individual artists who followed in his wake, from Lee Friedlander and Nan Goldin to Stephen Shore and Ryan McGinley. The book includes texts written exclusively for this publication as well as essays drawn from Gefter’s critical writings, reviews and even obituaries. "Photography After Frank" offers a page-turning approach to a subject that will appeal to students and art world aficionados alike."

Reviews $39.52 This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR’d book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 $58.86 It is hard to imagine today that the artistic value of color photography was once questioned and controversial, even as recently as the 1980s. William Eggleston’s watershed exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1976, generated plenty of scorn and confusion, as spectators struggled to accept his seemingly ordinary-looking color images of Southern life as art. Early photographs by Stephen Shore, Helen Levitt, Joel Meyerowitz and others received similarly hostile or ambivalent reviews. Color photography also had opponents within photography, most notoriously in Henri Cartier-Bresson. But as color processes both diversified and grew more sophisticated, and further approaches to the medium developed, the floodgates were opened wide. "Starburst "examines the first great practitioners of artistic color photography in the United States: Eggleston, Shore, Levitt, Meyerowitz, plus Joel Sternfeld, William Christenberry, John Divola, Mitch Epstein, Jan Groover, Robert Heinecken, Barbara Kasten, Les Krims, Richard Misrach, John Pfahl, Leo Rubinfien, Neal Slavin, Eve Sonneman and many more. Grounded in reviews of sources from the 1970s, and with an abundance of images, this survey makes a thorough assessment of this paradigm shift in the history of art photography.