With a focus on developing individual expression, the photography and digital studio program at Oregon State University embraces a forward-thinking and collaborative approach to photography. Students learn to use traditional darkroom techniques as well as the latest concepts and technologies in digital photography, digital printing, exhibition techniques, studio lighting, and video-art. Students have access to digital computer labs with up-to-date imaging software, wide-format digital printers, a dedicated darkroom, and a lighting studio.
With an emphasis on inclusion, diversity and equity, our program seeks to challenge our students to confront and respond to critical issues, such as the environment, identity and social justice and other topical concerns that face our society. Students are encouraged to use their mastery of technical skills and aesthetics to develop their own visual “voice” - creating and framing their personal and professional work within the historical, theoretical and ethical contexts of the medium. Collaborative image-making is encouraged linking photography to other creative practices such as the moving image, sound, sensor-technologies, social media, book-making, installation art, design-fields and with other university programs. Developing curiosity and embracing a flexible approach to the evolving field of photography enables students to gain the critical thinking skills that will serve them in a number of creative professions.
- Photography and Digital Studio BFA option Catalog
- 4-year pathway to graduation BFA Photography and Digital Studio
- Photography and Digital Studio BA/BS Catalog
- 4 year pathway to graduation BA Photography and Digital Studio
- 4 year pathway to graduation BS Photography and Digital Studio
- Photography Minor Catalog
Note:
For the digital photography classes, students should have access to a digital camera with adjustable exposure controls – most suitable is a digital single lens reflex camera (DSLR). These cameras are also available for loan at media services. For the darkroom classes, a working 35 mm film camera is required.
Our noteworthy Visiting Artists program provides students personal interactions and critiques with world-renowned artists including Marina Abramovic, Alice Aycock, Ann Hamilton, Wangechi Mutu, Philip Pearlstein, Do Ho Suh, and Bill Viola.
To learn more about the program or to arrange a visit, please contact Felix Oliveros, Academic Advisor.
Student Spotlight
Brook Ferris: Finding focus behind the lens
Non-traditional undergraduate student Brook Ferris left behind her career as a pharmacy technician to pursue photojournalism at the College of Liberal Arts
Ferris spent nearly a decade in pharmacy, working behind the scenes helping patients fulfill their medications and navigate insurance plans. It was an enduring job that rarely let up. But in the background, something else had been quietly developing: a growing desire to tell stories—not with prescriptions, but with pictures.
“I had taken this two-week solo trip through Washington,” Ferris recalled. “I planned it all around photography; specific places, scenes, lighting. When I got back, it hit me: why am I not doing this full-time?”
Student Spotlight
Spotlighting local issues through photography
Photojournalist Jessica Hume-Pantuso utilizes photography and journalism skills from her time at the School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts to educate readers in the Corvallis, Albany, and surrounding communities
As a photojournalist for the Corvallis Gazette Times and Albany Democrat-Herald, Jessica Hume-Pantuso, ‘22, finds fulfillment and joy in the work that she does.
“My goal is to use photography to help and support others,” said Hume-Pantuso. “The most rewarding part are the messages I get from people that tell me they saw my photos in the paper.”