Core technical or occupational classes, as distinguished from general education classes, provide education and training in areas associated with theoretical knowledge, technical skills, occupationally related skills, and associated competencies necessary for the student to achieve the Northwest College of Art program objectives.
These descriptions are typical course offerings that make up our curriculum. They are intended to give you a broad overview of the B.F.A. degree programs. Courses are subject to change at the discretion of the College. Changes may include but are not limited to, course name, title, prerequisite, sequence, schedule, content, or credit value. Changes may occur whenever deemed necessary. Prerequisites may be waived by the Director, Curriculum & Academic Advisor, or the class instructor. Students who began the program prior to Sept. 2008 please refer to catalog supplement A for the appropriate program grid for the date you started the program.
2-D Design: Theory & Application
DT 101 (3 credits)
The 2D Design: Theory and Application course has two goals. The first is to familiarize photography students with the elements and principles of design. This will be accomplished through the application of art theory to specific assigned problems. The second goal is to learn specific ways to think creatively and develop original, innovative ideas. In order to excel as an photographer, knowledge of art theory, while valuable, is not enough. Only by using your knowledge of design in unique and imaginative ways can the student hope to make an impression in any area of the arts. The assignments in this course will involve specific aspects of design and will teach students both the vocabulary and concepts of 2-dimensional design.
3-D Design: Theory & Application
DT 151 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: 2-D Design
This course is an introduction to 3-dimensional design. Studio problems are used to familiarize students with basic design processes, principles and elements of 3-dimensional design. Studio experiences, readings, and written analysis challenge students to explore basic three-dimensional design and color. This course emphasizes a balance between the formal and communicative aspects of design, where students are presented with design problems and are challenged to devise appropriate solutions. Research, problem-solving skills, craft, professionalism and articulate presentations are all important to success in this course.
Advanced Topics in Photography
PT 451 (3 credits) · Prerequisites: Fashion & Lifestyle Photography & Product Photography
This course provides an opportunity for senior level students to focus on particular issues in the field of photography or to study advanced techniques and processes. Faculty, content and prerequisites vary each time the course is offered. The course includes lectures, discussions, individual projects and critiques, depending on the nature of the topic.
Applied Photography
PA 301 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photography 2: Advanced B/W Techniques
This course focuses on advanced applied photography in black-and-white with an emphasis on craftsmanship, problem solving and visual communications. This course has a major technical emphasis. Emphasis is placed on the development of the student’s ability to apply creative thinking and contemporary techniques in executing meaningful and effective photographs.
Business Planning & Practices
BP 351 (2 credits)
This course will provide students with a detailed range of basic business skills specific to planning, establishing and maintaining a creative business. Topics include market research, business plan development, legal issues of business start-up, financing, marketing, accounting and invoicing procedures.
This course will cover issues such as protecting and controlling copyrights, negotiating fees and usage rights, quotes, agreements, and invoices, model and property releases, insurance, hiring assistants, renting versus buying, record keeping, travel expenses, getting paid, and work ethics. This course will also review fundamental principles and practices that can be applied to address basic financial issues in the context of contemporary business practices.
Color Theory (for Photography)
CT 251 (3 credits)
Understanding how color is perceived, its ability to express, and its relationship to composition and form are the goals of this class. Through discussion, projects, and critiques, students gain first-hand knowledge of the most relative medium in art. In this class, students will explore various color theories and their uses. Students will create achromatic (gray-scale) charts to understand contrast and range in values of black and white. They will also create color wheels incorporating primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. Additionally, color mixing and harmonious, discordant, subjective and objective color arrangements and their application to painting, illustration, design, photography, and environmental usage will be covered.
Commercial Photographic Practices
PC 401 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Digital Photography 2: Advanced Color Techniques
This course introduces students to conceptual issues, photographic techniques, and creative visual problem solving relevant to commercial advertising. Creative advertising and editorial photography solutions and applications are explored and both historical and contemporary advertising photography campaigns will be discussed and analyzed. Both historical and contemporary studies of photographic composition and style will be explored. In this course, the emphasis in student photographic work will involve producing creative photographic solutions for advertising involving multiple or sequential images.
Contemporary Strategies in Photography: Conceptual Processes
PC 351 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photographic Style, Theory, and Analysis
The student photographer will look at ideas expressed in contemporary art/photography such as personal vs. cultural identity; privacy and individuality; the self re-imagined through advertisement, media, and technology. This course considers conceptual strategies such as appropriation, decontextualization, multiplication, systems, collecting, mapping, and surveillance. Students will investigate these and other conceptual practices as means for producing bodies of work. In looking at each other’s work the student photographer will be concerned with developing and refining both critical skills and vocabulary. This course will explore these ideas as a laboratory for testing each student’s own conceptual stance.
Digital Photography 1: Basic B/W & Color Techniques
PB 301 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photography 2: Advanced B/W Techniques
This course explores the choices of black and white and color as aesthetic tools in the hands of the photographer. The emphasis of this course is to develop a core understanding of color theory, perception, aesthetics and its application in digital photography.
Digital Photography 2: Advanced Color Techniques
PB 351 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Digital Photography 1: Basic B/W & Color Techniques
This course continues to explore the use of color as an aesthetic tool in the hands of the creative commercial or expressive photographer. Continuing attention is paid to developing an advanced understanding and skill in the practical application of color theory, perception, aesthetics and the use of alternative color processes in digital photography. This course is designed to allow students to further pursue and resolve ideas and techniques introduced in Digital Photography 1: Basic B/W & Color Techniques. Although emphasis is placed on advanced color printing techniques and aesthetics, students are encouraged to pursue their own personal directions using appropriate tools and techniques.
Drawing 1 (for photography)
DP 101 (3 credits)
Artists should never be forced to make stylistic or aesthetic choices merely to avoid technical limitations. Drawing is a key discipline of the arts and this course encourages the development of skill and the education of the artist’s eye. In this course, students study of basic principles of construction of visual forms; emphasis on line, perspective and shading; students create drawings using the elements of art and the principles of composition. The elements and principles consist of: line, shape, form, value, texture, contrast, emphasis, movement, balance, harmony, structure, design, and more. As students advance, they attempt more challenging projects.
Drawing 2 (for photography)
DP 151 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Drawing 1
In this class, students continue the process of developing traditional observational drawing skills and explore diverse compositional strategies as they relate to traditional drawing and photography. Objective visual perception, clarity in drawing, and technical facility are stressed. Students are exposed to visual communications, strategies, and design concepts through exposure to art history and the field of contemporary drawing and photography. Drawing as a tool of ideation and communication is emphasized.
Fashion & Lifestyle Photography
PL 401 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Digital Photography 2: Advanced Color Techniques
This course concentrates on fashion and lifestyle photography and includes location as well as studio lighting techniques. Non-traditional portraiture in out-of-studio locations will also be explored. Strong emphasis is placed on photographic styling, make-up, and use of accessories when and where appropriate.
Fine Art Photography 1: Problems & Projects
PF 401 (3 credits)
In this class, the photographic still life serves as a medium for creative expression and visual experimentation. Tools and techniques particular to the still-life photographer are investigated and demonstrated. The special manipulations explored include possible-choice of lighting, perspective, camera angle, surface propping, set rigging, multiple exposure, front projection and other esoteric techniques-are discussed, demonstrated and applied to assignments. Projects are in a practical vein, relating to actual typical problems that are part of a working studio’s daily life. Assignments investigate the overlapping relationships of fine art, editorial and commercial still-life photography.
History & Aesthetics of Photography 1
PA 201 (2 credits) · Prerequisite: Art Introduction
This course covers the history and aesthetics of photography from 1800 to the present, with special emphasis on the development of photographic seeing, and its related effect on other media. A survey of the numerous processes and how their development affected the image making of particular periods, i.e., daguerreotypes, collotypes, etc. Visual lectures cover topics from surrealism and documentary to conceptual art and post-modernism.
History & Aesthetics of Photography 2
PA 251 (2 credits) · Prerequisite: History & Aesthetics of Photography 1
This course is a continuation of the history and aesthetics of photography from 1800 to the present, with special emphasis on the development of photographic seeing and image making, and its related effect on other media. Photographic integration into other media (eg. as a component of multimedia) is also examined and analyzed.
Imagery & Design: Digital Image Manipulation
DI 251 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Survey of Digital Art Applications
Students continue to develop image creation and manipulation skills using industry-standard computer applications. Advanced techniques in Adobe Photoshop are introduced. Several comprehensive projects including advanced photo manipulation, and advanced digital illustration work will be included. Additionally, a comprehensive understanding of scanning, resolutions, file management, and image output is expected.
Internship: Photography
IP 451 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photography Career Seminar
Internships are an opportunity for upper-level students to earn credit while working, gaining practical experience, and exploring career options in a professional setting. To receive credit students must complete 135 internship hours and meet with the internship advisor through the semester. An internship should provide practical experience in a setting which is relevant to the student’s course of study, such as in a gallery, museum, community art center, photographic studio, etc… Reliability, and professionalism are stressed in this course.
Introduction to Photography: Materials and Processes
PM 101 (3 credits)
This course serves as a basic introduction to the study of how photography works: it is a survey course on the technology of photography, with the emphasis on applications to real photographic problems. Among the topics studied are image formation and evaluation, photosensitive materials, exposure, processing, tone reproduction, visual perception, color theory, variability, quality control and photographic effects.
The course introduces and discusses technical issues such photographic chemistry, the structure of film emulsions and bases, and obscure printing processes such as Platinum, Diazo, and Carbo. Upon this foundation, the course strives to build a conceptual understanding of formal evaluation of image quality given postulates of human visual perception capabilities.
Photographic Portfolio and Marketing Design
PM 451 (3 credits) · Prerequisites: Portfolio: Photography 1
Utilizing the creative process, students will develop a complete marketing package to include personal identity materials, promo cards and a portfolio. Students will incorporate knowledge acquired during the program to target specific markets and develop professional packaging of their work based on the research. The importance of a self-promotional web presence will be emphasized and exactly how to develop an effective web-based portfolio will be a key component of this class.
Photographic Style, Theory, and Analysis
PS 201 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Introduction to Photography: Materials and Processes
This course introduces students to the language of photographic criticism, theory and critique. Students will learn to analyze, understand, and then to critique photographs through class discussions, critiques, readings, and photographic image making assignments.
Photography 1: Basic B/W Techniques
PB 151 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Introduction to Photography: Materials and Processes
Exploring introductory and intermediate techniques of exposure, development, scanning and printing of black-and-white film and print materials, this course also is comprised of a special emphasis on tonal control through the creative application of the Zone System. Areas of investigation include film scanning, paper characteristics, developer choice and fabrication, print size, multi filter printing and chemical after-treatment. Further concentration is placed on aspects of design, composition, perception and content in black-and-white photographs.
Photography 2: Advanced B/W Techniques
PB 201 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photography 1: Basic B/W Techniques
This course is an introduction to advanced applied photography in black-and-white with an emphasis on craftsmanship, problem solving and visual communications. Further emphasis is placed on the development of the student’s ability to apply creative thinking and contemporary techniques in executing meaningful and effective photographs.
Photography Career Seminar
PS 401 (2 credits)
A field trip class specifically designed for upper level students, Photography Career Seminar investigates the changing face of the photography profession. Focusing on current trends in the marketplace, students will develop a clear and essential view of the processes and practices of their chosen vocation.
Photojournalism
PJ 401 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Digital Photography 2: Advanced Color Techniques
This course will explore the use of the photographic image in narrative, documentary and editorial form. Issues of public need and publication will be addressed. The emphasis during this class is a personal one: it is all about the photograph, about the act of photographing, and it is about what it means to be a photojournalist.
Portfolio 1: Photography
PT 401 (3 credits) · Senior Status
Students will be required to determine specific career goals, and to develop a proposed direction to take in their creative efforts. They will organize the existing body of their photographic work to facilitate reaching their stated career goals and propose and execute new works to help them to achieve those goals. While students will each propose and develop their own individual projects, the class itself will become a critique and support group meeting wherein the student will receive weekly feedback from the instructor and their peers. Students will be required to develop their critical and diplomatic communication skills, and to participate fully and honestly in the weekly critiques.
Portfolio 2: Photography
PT 451 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Portfolio 1: Photography
This course is the continuation of the portfolio process initiated in the class Portfolio 1. Special emphasis in this class will be placed upon developing further, and finishing the body of work begun in Portfolio 1. Students will continue to be required to develop their critical and diplomatic communication skills, and to participate fully and honestly in the weekly critiques.
Product Photography
PP 401 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Digital Photography 2: Advanced Color Techniques
This course emphasizes the preparation, styling, and lighting employed in small product tabletop photography. Students study recent developments in the practice of contemporary product photography. Instruction provides students with a thorough introduction to visual sources that inform projects of their choice. Students produce work specific to course discussions.
Senior Thesis 1: Photography
ST 401 (2 credits) · Senior Status · Prerequisites: Fine Art Photography 1: Advanced Problems & Projects; Commercial Photographic Practices, and Photojournalism
This class is the first of a two-part class structure wherein the student begins development and production of their required senior thesis. Each student applying for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography must complete a thesis as approved by the director of Northwest College of Art and the Senior Thesis instructor(s). The thesis will be comprised of four parts: (1) a body of work consistent with the goals of the student, (2) a written thesis with a research component discussing proposed media, subject, and content of the thesis work, and the student’s future goals; (3) documentation of artwork in the form of slides or computer-generated imagery; and (4) an oral examination given and evaluated by the thesis committee. The final thesis work will be exhibited as part of a graduation exhibition at Northwest College of Art. A thesis committee, consisting of no fewer than three active faculty members, will evaluate each student’s progress. The student must satisfactorily complete each part of the thesis requirements in order to receive a passing grade for the class and to be considered eligible for graduation.
Senior Thesis 2: Photography
ST 451 (2 credits) · Prerequisite: Senior Thesis 1: Photography
This class is the second in a two-part class structure wherein the student develops and produces their required senior thesis. In this class, students continue refinement of their thesis, complete all required components of their thesis, and present an oral defense of their thesis that is evaluated by the thesis committee. The final thesis work will be exhibited during this semester as part of a graduation exhibition at Northwest College of Art.
Studio Lighting Techniques
SL 251 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Photography 1: Basic B/W Techniques
This course introduces the use of artificial lighting to create photographs in a controlled environment. Lighting techniques are demonstrated and applied in a series of photographic exercises. Both “hot lights“ and electronic flash are used to achieve total control of composition, color, contrast and reflection. Emphasis is placed on the technical mastery of complex equipment, coupled with an aesthetic understanding of the physical principles of light.
Survey of Digital Art Applications
DS 201 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: 3-D Design: Theory & Application
Survey of Digital Art Applications is a hands-on introduction to the diverse and significant resources the computer offers the artist/photographer. This course is designed for students with either very limited or no experience in the computer arts and is designed to facilitate the student’s ongoing development of digital literacy. It sets the technical foundation for future college level use of digital technology. Students gain an understanding of the computer operating system, and attain a working knowledge of several leading applications currently used by computer artists and designers. Through lectures and applied learning a foundation of general understanding, confidence, and skill is formed. Portfolio type projects are assigned as well as short in-class assignments to assess the student’s basic retention and skill level.
Video 1: Introduction to Digital Video
DV 301 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Imagery and Design: Digital Image Manipulation
This course offers an introduction to the fundamentals of digital video and the creative exploration of the art of moving images. It is a hands-on introduction to the principles and techniques of digital media production: shooting digital video, developing a practical vocabulary of cinematic movement, understanding video lighting and exposure, composition, and the logic of editing. This course begins with a survey the historical and aesthetic development of the medium in order to expand the students’ sense of the possibilities of the medium.
Video 2: Video Production
DV 351 (3 credits) · Prerequisite: Video 1: Introduction to Video
This second video course emphasizes independent video-making techniques, concepts, and production skills. Students explore traditional cinematic and video ideas through structured assignments that emphasize critical visual thinking, narrative development, and encourages the development of an intermediate level of understanding of film (video) structure and language.