In the first quarter, students learn experimental and photographic techniques leading up to their first project. The assignment for that project is to photograph a high-speed phenomenon in some unique way. Students tend to let their imaginations go wild in coming up with ideas, but they have to settle on something that can be done within the space, equipment, and time constraints under which they must work. Even so, there's much room for creativity, a fact to which the projects on this site attest. At the beginning of the second quarter, students spend a few days photographing splashes of milk drops.
Splashes are a challenge to photograph due to the small size of the subject.
That requires bright lighting, and students must determine ways to boost the light level without increasing flash duration to the point of producing blurred motion. The next assignment of the second quarter is to measure the speed or duration of a high-speed phenomenon. Here is where students learn the quantitative skills that will come in useful for their final project. The final project is a systematic study that may have either aesthetic or scientific emphasis. These projects extend over a period of about 5 weeks in order to provide time for students to build their experimental setups, shoot and shoot again as many times as needed to get the best images, process and analyze the images, write a report, and create a web site.