Joseph L. Koch
We liked Joseph’s work right away, but when we found out that he took these photos in his kitchen, we were even more impressed. “The school has a full studio,” Joseph says, “but there are 2000 students, and booking studio time when I work full-time is difficult.” A home studio setup for product-related assignments turned out to be an ideal solution.
Joseph’s job is in retail, and upon graduation this March he’ll be working toward an art director position with a major corporation, a position that he feels will allow him to showcase his photo talents and creative eye. “The fascination is to come up with a concept and then implement it, to express an idea in powerful imagery.”
When we spoke with Nathan he was less than a year out of high school and about to conclude the first year of the academy’s two-year program, where his photo class assignments are often more than classwork. “Most of them are practice for me; they get my ideas going, and I go out and do my own shots,” he says. Several of the photos here resulted from that kind of inspiration. The smoking man is Nathan’s grandfather, who also appears in the staged behind-bars image—proving once again the value of a cooperative relative.
A photo history course introduced Nathan to some of the classic black-and-white images, and their compositional strength was a major influence on his work. “I think black and white makes a stronger statement than color,” Nathan says, “and I think that all my really strong compositions will be in black and white.” Still, because he shoots Raw files with his camera set for black and white, the Raw file is preserving the scene’s color so he can compare the results after the capture.
George F. Pearson
Florida International University
Miami, Florida
George is a fine art major at FIU, taking advanced photography courses. He learned darkroom skills in a college-level photo course he took while still in high school, and today is most likely to be carrying the Mamiya RZ67 he got when he was 16.
His strongest influences are Garry Winogrand, Russell Lee, and William Eggleston. “Winogrand said that you’re basically putting four corners on a couple of facts [and] Eggleston’s work showed me a new way of looking at things,” George says. “I learned that everything can be photographed.”
Correspondence Kris, who is 16, has been taking pictures for seven years. His interest in photography coincides with a photography club for 4-H that he suggested to his mother, and which she started. He's largely self-taught, though he has taken online courses and one of his teachers is currently...
Andrew, a senior at the university, is an electrical engineering major. He qualifies for this column because he is taking a photography course. It is, however, his first and only photography course: a portfolio class that's open only to seniors with majors or...
Andrew might be the youngest student we've ever featured in this column. The photos here were taken while he was a student at Hillbrook School in Los Gatos, California, a...
Student Union
Joseph L. Koch
When we spoke with Nathan he was less than a year out of high school and about to conclude the first year of the academy’s two-year program, where his photo class assignments are often more than classwork. “Most of them are practice for me; they get my ideas going, and I go out and do my own shots,” he says. Several of the photos here resulted from that kind of inspiration. The smoking man is Nathan’s grandfather, who also appears in the staged behind-bars image—proving once again the value of a cooperative relative.
George F. Pearson
