LCC Open Day

I went to the LCC Open day for Photojournalism & Documentary Photography for a better look at the course. The first thing I noticed when I arrived was the overall friendly/ open planned feel of the uni. I love the layout of how spacious and open the university was. We where welcomed and made to feel very at home as soon as we walked through the doors. Shortly after this we where ushered into a welcome talk in the main lecture hall. From this we learned the past alumni from the university and were introduced to some of the lecturers. This was really important to me to see as their work was just as inspiring and really showed the level of skill of which I will be learning from.

We then had our course specific talks given from the head of faculty (photojournalism & documentary photography). He started off by explaining that documentary photography and Photojournalism involves the photographer creating a narrative within their photographs. This was very comforting to hear as that is what I try to achieve when shooting. After this, past students work was shown. This was very interesting to see as their work was so broad and it seemed as though they were given very little restrictions with regards to concepts. He then went on to say what the department expected from us as prospective students. They looked for passion and an intuitive nature with regards to the world and environment around us. It was also comforting to know that they didn't expect outstanding technical ability but instead the understanding of how to achieve an effective narrative/ story within a photograph.

After this talk were split into several course specific groups. Our photojournalism and documentary photography group was then lead into the photography department. From here we were given a guided tour of the department. There were a number of different photography studios each have high end technical equipment for digital and analogue photography. Their dark room was of a large size and even had the equipment to develop your own colour photographs. In one of these rooms they had a large scale / high quality photograph printers. This was really encouraging as it showed me that I could further improve my work with their facilities and create more dramatic and high quality photographs. The only thing I could say negatively about the department was the fact that they had no  active students using the facilities.

Overall I thought the university was very promising and offered state of the art facilities and second to none creative direction and guidance from lecturers. The only worry was that with the lack of students about it was hard to grasp the true feel of the place in full swing. This made the university lack in atmosphere and could have done with more students explaining how they were getting on with each course specifically.