PRO 5 — CON 2

I had a hard time marking the Photography course offered by the University as a PRO. Since I have a huge interest in photography and I quite like the professor, tallying it as a CON didn't feel right either. Sixteen weeks passed by but I did not learn a thing.

This was the course I was most looking forward to upon entering MCU. We had one quick lesson on composition and another on lighting. Two or three classes were spent looking at featured photographers' prints although most of them didn't blow my mind. We watched three or four movies that were sort-of photography related but I feel that I can watch movies on my own time.

We were assigned a David Hockney project which required some knowledge of photo editing. It took me an hour to come up with this which the teacher then used as an example for the class. Most of my classmates had no idea how to complete the project.

Our final presentation was to show our work at an exhibition. This is what I quickly came up with. We needed five to eight of our photos from previous assignments — the topic was temples — which the professor requested be displayed on a 30 x 40 template. Again, many students were baffled so one classmate took it upon herself to help a good majority of the class.

I wonder why the professor wouldn't have taken a few weeks to run around the basics of Photoshop and/or Lightroom. These two programs go hand in hand with digital photography, do they not? I'm afraid to say that our time could have been used much more wisely than it was.

And that's not to say that the movies we watched weren't entertaining. I enjoyed them. The thing is, if I'm going to be paying this kind of money to watch movies, I want big comfy seats with surround sound, not uncomfortable old wooden desks that are hardly big enough to hold a book.

There are no other photography or photo editing courses being offered in English. If I take the one or two courses that are available in Chinese at a different campus, it's won't grant me credits. Sad news, indeed.

I best stop here before this PRO becomes a CON.