CARIMAC goes back to basics with the Art of Photography
Critics say the proliferation of affordable, easy to use cameras has cost photography some of its artistry. Local award winning photographer, Howard Moo Young, believes that needn’t be the case. Moo Young will teach students to develop their artistic skills in The Art of Photography: Learning to See, a course he will teach in August at the Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC).


Q: What will students learn in the course The Art of Photography?

A: First of all I tell my students that photography allows us to visit outer space, 3 feet below the sea, visit a mother’s womb etc. I try to teach what photography is all about, the different kinds of photography and the different aspects and openings. I try to cover and talk about every type of photography in Jamaica. I introduce photojournalism which
covers news, sports and action. I cover architectural, aerial, underwater, creative, nature, medical and forensic photography. A lot of people don’t realize the wide scope of professions offered in photography.

Q: How do you teach people to recognise things that are visually interesting?

A: It’s one of the hardest, most difficult things to teach. If each student brings an album or portfolio, I can go through the album and tell which person has the gift to do it. I teach them to walk around the subject, look for angles, lighting, colours, and contrast. You can start ‘learning to see’ right in your backyard. I’m not tired of emphasizing it. That is the key thing in photography.

Q: What role do the elements of design play in photography?

A: You have to learn the art of photography, learn to see. It doesn’t matter if you are using an expensive or cheap camera; it’s the person behind the camera. You have to become an artist. The lighting; artificial or ambient, the texture; how you design inside your camera or the photograph you’re going to take. The composition is key.
I’ll talk about the different lenses; I’ll touch on things like nature, animals and flowers, people at work, people at play, people at home.

Q: How has professional photography evolved over the last 10 years?

A: Professional photography has come a long way. You have people like Calvin Bryan who have done a lot of pictures of people. He has found a niche. You have a guy like Franz Marzouca, he would do all those ads with the sweat-beaded bottles. You have photojournalist Bryan Cummings, you have Hugh Wright; he does a lot of model photos for girls and DJ artistes, for cricket and weddings.

Q: What is the difference in image quality between digital photography and film photography?

A: The best film quality up to now, I’m not saying it because I’m biased, is film photography: 35mm transparent photos, you can blow those up. Digital photography can still give you the same quality up to a certain size; you have to use accessories to beef it up to what you want. The digital print from a digital camera looks almost artificial as opposed to film.

But the beautiful thing about digital photography is you see it as soon as it is taken, and you can transmit it to anywhere in the world. Nowadays Asafa Powell will run a race this morning and you see it in the paper this evening.