Worth a thousand words

There is an adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. For photography students in the UW Extension program, a picture is also worth three quarters and countless hours in a darkroom.

The common denominator for Extension students who gathered in the Art Building for four-hour class sessions was a deep-seated interest in photography, said David D. Johnson, who has taught the UW Extension photography class for the past four years.

Trained as a fine-arts photographer himself, Johnson makes a living teaching his passion to students eager to learn the ins and outs of a camera lens.

Students enter the Extension program with varying degrees of experience and skill in photography, said Johnson. He has found students can often be tentative about their choice of subject, so Johnson pushes them to explore one area of interest and build upon their theme.

"I've had some that are basically scared to death and don't know what to do - they're afraid of the camera, they're afraid of the f-stop, they're afraid of the whole concept," he said.

More importantly, said Johnson, students are taught to break what he calls the "tourist habit" - from taking pictures of anything and everything to thinking about what they are trying to capture in their photo.

By the time they earn their photography certificates, students have taken courses in black-and-white, color and digital photography. A photography history class helps students learn to develop a style by examining photography of different eras.

At the end of spring quarter, when photos go on display inside the glass cases of the HUB gallery, Extension students have learned to use the darkroom as well as frame and mat their prints. Matting and framing, according to Johnson, can be the trickiest concept to grasp in photography.

"Matting and framing is the hardest thing to do because it has to support your art while being totally invisible," Johnson said. "If you notice the matting and framing, the photos are weak. If someone walked up to you and said, 'I really like the way you've matted your show,' it might not be a compliment."

Most students who ended up spending two evenings per week learning photography techniques and every Saturday using the art building's darkroom facilities to make prints didn't plan on being photographers. Jesse Olson started out in the nursing program.

"I found out it wasn't my field," Olson said of his experience as a nursing student, "so I went to something that kept me outside."

Today, Olson is driven to use his photography skills to advocate for animal rights.

He also hopes to use his photographs of animals to create a children's book.

"There are a lot of kids books that deal with animals, but [the pictures] are a lot of animation drawings, not a lot of photos" he commented.

New photography techniques cultivated within the past few years have brought students to photography classes in droves, said Johnson. Since digital cameras have gone mainstream, Johnson has witnessed a photographic renaissance.

"A lot of people don't realize [digital] rekindled an interest in traditional photography," he said. "As an instructor, I watched photography interest start to dive a little, and then digital hit the market. My classes have been full ever since."

Last summer, demand for the photography classes was so high that what was originally scheduled to be a one-section course ended up being divided into two sections - one taught at UW and the other at Cascade Academy in Issaquah.

The first two quarters of the program were devoted to introducing basic photography techniques and the art of printmaking. During spring quarter, the two sections merged for a lecture seminar taught by Johnson.

Following the lead of their instructors, students completed a portfolio-building photo project during their third quarter.

Olson, whose interest in animals led him to take a series of tiger portraits at Woodland Park Zoo, said he was inspired by the earthy photographs of his instructor at Cascade Academy.

"She took pictures of common things like rocks, but found an inner light in them," he said.

Photographers in the Extension program also have to come up with inventive ways to get the perfect shot. Michael Barrett used Cheetos to lure seagulls close to his lens. His black-and-white prints of seagulls swooping toward his camera against a backdrop of heavy clouds give an impression of the last thing a worm might see before being plucked off the ground by gull's beak.

Janet Sherwood had an original idea: When a friend told her about her work at a retirement home for Catholic nuns, Sherwood offered to take the sisters' portraits.

When she displayed two of her photos at the class' reception in the HUB gallery, viewers marveled at how Sherwood captured Sister Theresa Kessel in her habit sitting in the retirement home's chapel, her profile magnified by a white light that seemed to radiate from her body.

Leslie De Lorenzo, who was inspired by the homeless people she saw living in their cars and vans in her neighborhood, chose to photograph them and learn their stories. A strict traditionalist, De Lorenzo refused to use digital imaging to enhance her shots.

Extension students often work other jobs and have to sacrifice their time off to spend time in the classroom or darkroom, said Johnson. Many of his students come straight from their day jobs, change out of their work clothes in the Art Building's bathroom and eat bites of dinner in between taking lecture notes.

"Three quarters is a big commitment for night school," said UW Extension graduate Stephen Stone, who earned his Extension certificate in photography last year. "You've got to keep shooting no matter what."

De Lorenzo, whose photographs are on display in a gallery in Fremont, likened completing the program to climbing a mountain.

"While you're doing it, you're like, 'Oh my God, it's so hard, I'm never going to make it to the top,'" she said.

"Then when you get back down you look back and you go, 'Wow, that was three months of a lot of really hard work and I came out the other side.' I wouldn't have done it any differently."