 The Department of Technology’s latest addition, Assistant Technology Professor John S. Latimer, discusses how the photography program is expected to take a major turn toward digital shooting. Photo by Sarah Bono | The Appalachian A wide-angle 35mm lens is designed for high-quality performance.
Add in a digital flash, Adobe Lightroom, and a top-of-the-line CCD image sensor, and a professional photographer’s digital tool kit can be more complex than film photographers of the past.
“If you want to be relevant in today’s industry you need to know how to work with a digital image,” said John Latimer, the newly-named coordinator of the technical photography program at Appalachian State University.
Latimer, who has studied and taught digital imaging at the Rochester Institute of Technology, was hired at Appalachian after John Scarlata, the previous coordinator, passed away over the summer.
In addition to organizing the program’s curriculum, overseeing student advisement and teaching, Latimer will be responsible for moving the program into a digital orientation.
“My goal for the technical photography program is for it to be mostly digital in the next couple of years,” Latimer said. “We’re going to be re-vamping the curriculum to address changes in course descriptions to update them in a more digital orientation. Our program’s goal is to put students into applied photography jobs.”
Since the introduction of digital imaging technology in the 1970s, most professional photography jobs have shifted to using digital technology instead of film.
Fields like fashion, industrial photography, portraiture and wedding photography are a few applied photography jobs that use mostly digital technology today, Latimer said.
Though the shift from film to digital photography continues to occur in the professional realm, some Appalachian faculty members are concerned that traditional skills could be lost with a digitally-dominated curriculum.
Elizabeth Crabtree is an adjunct instructor in the department of technology at Appalachian.
“It’s like pencils and pens,” Crabtree said. “When you use a pencil you have the capacity to erase and change, and a digital camera allows you that also. But a pen is more like film, where you commit it and you’ve got what’s in there whether you choose to keep it or not.”
Though Crabtree understands the changing professional arena, she said the program would be remised to do away with analogue skills like dark room development.
Students in the technical photography program currently spend a year studying film using the dark room.
“The dark room has always been one of those aspects of photography that’s really intrigued people for a variety of reasons,” Crabtree said. “It’s the same media just performed in a different way, and it’s my hope that we can still offer both in the future.”
Architectural and forensic photography are two professional occupations that still utilize film, but even these fields are beginning to utilize digital technology, Latimer said.
Even though Latimer is excited about integrating new digital aspects to the program, he said traditional skills like dark room development will not go away entirely.
“It’s not a complete getting rid of the dark room as much as it is perhaps moving it and facilitating it with other programs,” he said. “I think film will still be taught at Appalachian as it is at a lot of schools in one fashion or another, but it won’t be the focus of the technical photography program.”
Anna E. Stringer, a sophomore technical photography major, said she loves using the dark room.
“To learn how to do photography itself, you need to start with film,” Stringer said. “Actually being able to put the print into the chemicals and see it appear is awesome.”
Stringer said she used the dark room almost every day last year, but understands that the technical photography industry is going into a digital age.
Story: NASH DUNN, News Editor
Photo: SARAH BONO, Intern Photographer |
