My Teaching Philosophy
Practice Over Theory
I learned photography through an accumulation of experiences—watching, doing, making mistakes, getting feedback and doing it again. That is how I teach.
Theory matters. Technique matters. History matters. Ultimately, we have to make pictures.
Photography is a practice, and the learning never really ends.
Your Photographer DNA
Knowing the history of photography and the photographers who came before us and how they connect with our point of view is essential. I call this assembling your Photographer DNA.
We learn from other photographers, artists, filmmakers and storytellers. We borrow, question, combine and transform those influences until they become part of our own way of seeing.
The goal is to develop your Unique Point of View:
What do you notice? What are you curious about? What do you care about? What does the world look like when you photograph it?
Learn the Craft and Then Break the Rules
Photography is both a creative practice and a technical craft.
Learn how light, exposure, lenses, color, composition and equipment work. Practice until those tools become familiar. Understand the rules and why they exist.
Then adapt them, transform them and, when the photograph calls for it, break them.
Technical craft gives you the freedom to make the photograph you intend to make.
Make pictures, fail often and learn together
A photograph that doesn't work is information. An lighting experiment that falls apart may lead us somewhere more interesting.
If everything you try works every time, you probably aren't trying enough new things.
And while photographers often work alone, I believe we learn photography better together. Through critique, collaboration, conversation we help one another solve problems which is fundamental to the photography experience.
Photography is a community.
Stay Curious
Ask questions. Make photographs. Look carefully. Try things.
I want the classroom to be a creative lab: hands-on demonstrations, history, contemporary photography, experimentation, critique, guest photographers, professional practice and connections to Pittsburgh's larger photographic community.
Every class, every course will be a little different because every group of students is different.
What I ask in return is three simple things:
1.Participate & engage fully. 2. Be curious. 3. Try everything.
I choose to live a creative life, and photography has allowed me to do that for most of my life. My hope is that you discover something in photography that stays with you—something that feeds your curiosity, creativity and joy.
Because photography can teach us something larger than how to operate a camera:
Photography can teach us to see rather than simply look.
Richard Kelly