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2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange

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Pedagogy in the Landscape: Synopsis

Northwest College's Photo Field Studies Confronts the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Friday, September 21 - 2:00PM to 3:00PM

For the past twenty-eight years the Photographic Communications program at Northwest College in Powell, Wyoming has offered the Outdoor Photography course as a way to introduce novice photographers to the intricacies of f-stops, shutter-speeds and ISO conversions, and also foster critical thinking about the land, particularly how it's used by both humans and the animals that depend on it. This presentation offers a guideline for educators interested in situating, or refining, an outdoor photography field-studies course within their curriculum and the institutional and corporate support systems needed to sustain it.

"To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin." bell hooks in Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom

For incoming freshman interested in pursuing commercial photography as a career choice, the First Year Freshman Seminar class, Outdoor Photography, acclimates students to the rigors of the academic life on the Northwest College campus while simultaneously treating them to the visual delights of the natural landscape that surrounds them. The eight-week class consists of evening lectures filled with information on how to photograph moving water as well as not to be attack by Bison or Grizzly bears. The course culminating with an intensive weekend excursion into the Beartooth Mountains via the Sunlight Basin and on into Yellowstone National Park. While on this immersive field studies trip, students explore the photographic concepts of aesthetics, lighting, and composition while tackling the technical aspects of capturing landscapes and wildlife with telephoto lenses and tripods set upon uneven rocky surfaces. Photographic assignments include creating representations of Humans and Land, Water, Light or Shadow, Trees, and a Strong Graphic. Embedded within these assignments comes the intrinsic questioning that human occupation has upon the landscape, both visually and economically.

This presentation offers a guideline for educators interested in situating, or refining, an outdoor photography field-studies course within their own curriculum. Information will be shared on how the course is structured--5 sections, 10-12 students in each section, taught by a team of four to five full and part-time faculty). Institutional support from the administration, commercial/corporate partnerships with Roberts Camera, PhotoVideoEDU, Tamron Lenses and the National Park Serves have become essential to the sustainability of the class thought-out the years.