The Aesthetic Mind: Subject, Light, and the Professional Way of Seeing

An image that creates the connection — that is what we have always worked and striven for, because people's definitions of beauty vary, yet it is the aesthetic quality of an image that connects it to the person looking at it. In this course the professional photographer takes stock of every aesthetic decision in the workflow: the subject chosen and the subject refused, the elements gathered inside the frame, the direction of light observed before anything else, the visualization done before the camera is even raised, and the color kept or surrendered. Each lesson names the course in our curriculum where the foundation was laid — Judging the Frame and The Science of Style, The Vocabulary of Photography and Light, Color, Motion, and Perspective, the Creative Composition pair, Understanding Light, and the Seven Dimensions of Visualization — so that as a Master's student you know precisely what has already been covered, and precisely what is now being asked of you beyond it.