If you go to BrooksEDU what will they teach you? Will they help you be competitive in the new digital reality?

Question

If you go to BrooksEDU what will they teach you? Will they help you be competitive in the new digital reality?

Answer 1

Looking at their course descriptions, they teach digital SLR and 4x5 film as the core of their photography program. The advanced classes mention continued instruction in digital imaging, with an emphasis on digital technology in the advanced photography class. It looks like they have digital covered. Maybe too well, they teach more about web sites than they do about the Zone System. The Zone System class, at least, mentions film, chemicals and paper.

Is the "new digital reality" photographers who have never used 35mm film? Hard to use any camera when you have never used one.

Answer 2

They teach you many things ... one is all the technical skills necessary to provide perfectly exposed and composed images every time.

The only thing about digital image making that they need to teach by the time a student has completed the core classes in all the aspects of photography (including how to use a view camera) is the use of the "digital darkroom" ... that is the ONLY difference between using a camera that uses film and one with a sensor.

It is the S L O W process of learning to use film that hones the photographers skills to the point that he or she rarely ever has to think about f/stops or shutter speeds, since by the time they have finished the first year, all of that has become intuitive and more advanced techniques are being learned ... like industrial/scientific, commercial, advertising, photojournalism, motion picture/video, editorial and other fields that photographers are called upon to shoot throughout their careers.

While the use of film has fallen here in the US and in industrialized nations, there are many nations who still only have ten to twenty hours of electricity a week ... so digital photography will have to just wait until the infrastructure of those countries catch up before we can assume that we as pros can forget about using film.

Competition as a photographer has nothing to do with whether they use  film or digital means to capture an image.  They must be able to capture a marketable image, using any camera, at any time, anywhere in the world, consistently.