Target Audience
First and second-year SUNY Orange students from a wide range of majors — Visual Communication, Liberal Arts, and non-majors fulfilling an arts requirement. Most enter with no formal photography background; many have never used a DSLR or shot in manual mode. They arrive with a smartphone-native visual fluency to build on.
Course Context
A 3-credit foundational course (2 lecture hours, 2 lab hours) in the Arts and Communications department at SUNY Orange. Taught across in-person, hybrid, and fully asynchronous virtual formats from 2015 to 2022, including pivoting the entire course to remote delivery during COVID.
Student Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate an understanding of basic digital camera functions and exposure (shutter speed, aperture, ISO).
- Manipulate images in Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom using non-destructive workflows.
- Apply compositional principles and lighting techniques to original work.
- Think critically about the ethics of digital photography and image manipulation.
- Produce, present, and defend a cohesive body of original photographic work.
Learning Design Approach
A 15-week scaffolded curriculum that introduced one new technical concept per week — shutter speed, aperture, depth of field, composition, light, photo collage, ethics, photo essay, portrait, advanced portrait — each paired with a hands-on shooting assignment due the following week.
Every project ran through a four-step rhythm: lecture → in-class assignment → independent shoot → critique.
Students submitted an artist statement with every image, weighted at 25% of the project grade, to force technical reflection (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, post-processing decisions) alongside creative intent.
Critiques were structured as both peer-led discussion and partnered written reviews at three milestone points (after Projects 1–4, 5–7, and 8–10), giving students repeated practice articulating creative work in a constructive register.
The course closed with a two-part final: a 5-image themed portfolio (Comfort, Space, Geometry, Lifestyle, Color) and a 3-image editing challenge, each accompanied by 200+ word artist statements.
Key Outcomes & Impact
- Taught the course continuously across 7 years and 3 modalities, iterating the curriculum based on each cohort’s evaluations.
- Adapted the full course for virtual delivery in Spring 2020 with no loss of project rigor — students continued producing 10 photo projects plus the two-part final remotely.
- Multiple students went on to BFA programs and creative careers based on portfolios developed in this course; wrote letters of recommendation for students applying to film and arts programs at SUNY Purchase, San Diego State (Journalism and Media Studies), and competitive scholarships.
- Course consistently filled across Fall, Spring, and Summer terms.
Project Deliverables
- Weekly Photo Projects
- Artist Statements
- Photographer Research Essay
- Two-part Final Project (Themed Portfolio + Editing Challenge)
- End-of-semester student art show
Related Skills
- Curriculum Design
- Scaffolded Instruction
- Critique Facilitation
- Adobe Creative Suite
- Online Course Design