Course: "Cinematography Skills"

Course: Project Design (Photographer-Photo Editor)

This course could also be titled "Photographer-Photo Editor." It encompasses everything that was missing in our other training programs: photo editing in graphic software for both media/print and commercial/fashion shoots, layout of books, photo stories, and online projects, principles of photo selection, and setting tasks for photographers. Tuition fee: 8,500 rubles per month. The fee includes 3 practical sessions with a curator on Saturdays at 1:00 PM, as well as 3 lectures per month by renowned photographers (on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 7:00 PM).

If you apply after the course has started, you will have access to recordings of past sessions in your personal account.

If you cannot attend a class in person or online, no problem – it will be available as a recording in your personal account the very next day.

The course offers a somewhat distinct, though not entirely new, perspective on a photographer's work: from the viewpoint of achieving a final product—a photobook, photo blog, photo series, periodical, or media project.

One could say there are two main approaches to a photojournalist's work:

1. Shooting everything around you, which later coalesces into an impromptu message.
2. Planned shooting, where a certain result is predicted in advance.

In the second case, we're not talking about staging, but about an analytical approach: studying any subject beforehand and presenting in photography material that has been previously developed.

The first approach aligns more with an artist-photographer working on inspiration, the second—with an analyst-journalist developing planned material. It is this second approach that we propose to study in more detail. It encompasses work not only during the shoot but also a huge layer of preparation and an equally large volume of work with the finished material: photo editing, design, and the final presentation of information.

In addition to working with the primary tool—the camera—the course will pay special attention to:

• Analytical work on a topic
• Shoot planning
• Working with subjects/characters
• Photo selection
• Writing accompanying text or short captions
• Processing shots in various software
• Designing books and web pages
• Nuances of presenting photography across different outlets
• Archive management
• Group project work

First Year: The training involves strictly individual work and studying different stages of creating an authorial project: topic development, design, processing, preparation for publication.

Second Year: The training proposes a group photo-media project. The group becomes an editorial team, and each student can choose a suitable role: besides authorial work, they can handle general project tasks or, conversely, work on an independent fragment.

First Year of Study, Semester I:
Introductory study of all stages of working on a photo story in photobook format, introduction to design software and photo editing programs.

First Year of Study, Semester II:
Continuation, development, and expansion of the chosen photo theme, creating another form of presentation for it (longform), in-depth study of photobook and photo page design, and working with text and photos.

Second Year of Study, Semester I:
Studying the work of a photo editor: with one's own and others' photos, commissioning shoots, creating photo archives, working with shoot subjects, editorial offices, other photographers, and editorial team members. The practical part will involve creating a large group project where each student is responsible for their own separate theme while also being part of a broader concept.

Second Year of Study, Semester II:
Working on the project, creating a periodical publication with a photo context, implementing a system.

First Semester Lesson Plan:

• Basics of a photo editor's work in a publication.
• Choosing a topic, studying the subject of the shoot.
• Trial shoot.
• Basics of working in Adobe InDesign.
• Photo selection.
• Preparing a photobook layout: format, margins, page composition.
• Work on creating a photo story.
• Working with a photobook page template, placing photos and captions.
• Selecting and placing photos on a page. Book design and layout.
• A photo series as a unified informational message.
• Photo processing: The necessary and the limits of the acceptable.
• Basics of working with Photoshop and Lightroom.
• Subtle color processing of photos.
• Working with finished material: proofreading, editing layouts, replacing photos.
• Final evaluation of the resulting photo story.
• Preparing material for publication.