Picture this…

A picture is worth a thousand words. It’s a famous phrase, and the more I think of it, speaks directly to the access principle at the heart of what OCA is. Text, essays, blogs, articles, may not be easy for everyone to digest, so why not offer the same message but in a visual context?
Now a word of caution, taking selfies with your selfie stick on a day out and uploading to instagram with #nofilter does not a photographer make, even if your hair was on point. Great day out at Harry Potter World too.
Also, an image is open to interpretation, more so than words, which adds an air of mystery; is this really what the photographer meant?
Another word of caution; photographers need to do almost anything in order to get that shot, the dream. We’ve all seen Springwatch; camping out for two weeks with no food or water and not moving in order to get one shot of the super-rare hedgehog. Seems legit.
The OCA Photography degree is that; how do you tell a story through the images you take?
Now you may be thinking, how is Photography accessible? After all, cameras aren’t cheap; but who says that you need the latest DSLR with umpteen modes and settings? An older model will work just as well (they’re back in apparently), and might even enhance your style.
What Photography will teach you, is how to access your own personal artistic style; how do you tell a story, how do you string a collection of images together from being your random holiday snaps into an exhibition.
You’ll then learn how to tell other people’s stories, demonstrate the evocation of their thoughts and feelings. You’ll use light and dark to change the way everything looks, and a range of techniques to broaden your horizons.
It’s not just how to take and edit a photo that you’ll learn either; it’s why we take and make images. You’ll also be encouraged to use industry standard software such as Photoshop and InDesign, as well as online blogging tools which will make you much more employable. And with educational discounts as a student these don’t break the bank either.
And did we mention that you’ll be learning from great practising photographers as well?
If you want to learn, we want to teach you, and you can get started right now. For our 30th birthday we released Key Ideas in Photography that you can take for free and will introduce you to the world of artistic photography.
This has been our sixth day of #accessoca, join us tomorrow for day seven…