In the United States, May is National Photography Month, and we’re celebrating by sharing some impressive photography from our students.

Photo By: William Wotring, Associate of Science in Photography

Photo By: William Wotring, Associate of Science in Photography

Photo By: Traci Peterson, Associate of Science in Photography

Photo By: Rob Heber, Associate of Science in Photography

Photo By: Penny Anthony, Associate of Science in Photography

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh – Online Division offers several online photography programs, including the following: Bachelor of Science in Photography, Associate of Science in Photography, Digital Workflow Certificate, Portrait Photography Certificate and Studio Photography Certificate. Learn more here.

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is the crux of the photography profession. Where words sometimes fail, pictures have swiftly moved in and told the tale in a way that words can only attempt to. The advent of technology has made photography into a lucrative field; from journalism, advertisement and freelance photography. A picture is valuable because it is a self expressing medium whose intricacies can only be captured by a keen eye. The Art Institute of Pittsburgh - Online Division offers photography courses that can put your career into focus and close the shutter to capture the essential nature of photography as a career.

There are many career opportunities in the photography field. Here are seven of the most exciting ones:

• Photojournalism - This entails taking photos for print and online media. Your task is to take photos of newsworthy events. The exciting part of this job is that it is dynamic; no news piece is the similar to another. If you love the adrenaline rush of danger and controversy that journalism carries, this is definitely your line of pursuit.
• Commercial photography - this branch has more diversity pegged to it; merchandise, home décor, fashion, automobile trends and other areas of your choosing. The photos are usually taken and sold to advertisers and product lines. It is exciting because of its fluidity and versatility hence nonrestrictive.
• Advertising - Advertising photography requires an eye for detail and creativity. These two aspects will enable you to strike a balance between the client's needs as you showcase your prowess.
• Fashion - the glitz and glamour of the runway has to be immortalized in film. The result is the glossy pages of all the fashion magazines which women globally pore over. It is the most lucrative photography career, and it offers a lot of traveling opportunities.
• Wildlife photography - For those who love outdoor activities and the wild, this is the career for you. It draws its inspiration from nature and the animal kingdom. However, it requires patience, and a lot of film to capture the right shot. It is also very remunerative.
• Travel photography - as the name suggests, this area of photography requires a lot of travel locally and internationally. You capture people, places and their cultures. This is the emerging field in photography that is in high demand because of the immortality of such work. If you aim to leave your mark in the sands of time, this is the field for you.
• Forensic photographic - this is a career path for a person with an eye for detail and threading stories together. This will involve working with agencies of law enforcement like the police to take photos of crime scenes for evidential purposes.

The Art Institute of Pittsburgh- Online Division can help prepare students for an illustrious career in photography. With certificate programs, associate’s degree and bachelor’s degree in photography, we give students an opportunity to turn their passions of photography to a rewarding career.

Lincoln Ramirez, a student in the Bachelor of Science in Photography program at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh – Online Division found himself in the right place at the right time a few weeks ago. He was able to capture footage of a women being rescued from fast-moving water in the Blanco River in his hometown of Kyle, Texas. The local news used his video and photos on their website and even interviewed Lincoln in order to understand what had happened on the river that day.

“It was a great opportunity for me to use what I love to do,” said Ramirez.

To view the footage and read more about the river rescue, check out the story on KXAN NBC’s website.

In honor of Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting some of the pioneers in creative fields, today we’re looking at some groundbreaking female photographers.

Annie Liebovitz

No list like this could start without mentioning Annie Leibovitz. For more than 4 decades, Leibovitz has been at the forefront of Photography and she is widely considered one of the world’s foremost Portrait Photographers.

Her start came in the early 1970’s with Rolling Stone magazine, where she was made Chief Photographer at the age of 23, a title she would hold for the next decade.

It was at Rolling Stone that:

“Leibovitz developed her trademark technique, which involved the use of bold primary colors and surprising poses.”

In later years, Liebovitz would go on to earn greater fame and popularity at Vanity Fair magazine and eventually through self publishing her own work, including her widely acclaimed book:

“Annie Leibovitz published the book Women (1999), which was accompanied by an essay by friend and novelist Susan Sontag. With its title subject matter, Leibovitz presented an array of female images from Supreme Court Justices to Vegas showgirls to coal miners and farmers. Currently, many of her original prints are housed in various galleries throughout the United States.”

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was a documentary Photographer and Photojournalist who gained great notoriety during the Great Depression for her portraits of migrant workers and the conditions they lived in.

Her work is considered among the first of the Documentary Photography genre and it helped raise awareness of what people were going through during the Depression. According to a Biography channel profile of her:

“During the Great Depression, Lange began to photograph the unemployed men who wandered the streets of San Francisco. Pictures such as White Angel Breadline (1932), showing the desperate condition of these men, were publicly exhibited and received immediate recognition both from the public and from other photographers.”

Lange would go on to continue to document the struggles of everyday people through photography, and in the year after her death in 1965, her life and work was paid tribute with a retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

These are but just two of the trailblazing female photographers who have contributed so much to our view of the world, we invite you to learn more about some of them in this Biography Channel special, or in another post at Bright Hub.

Do you share their passion for Photography? You might want to explore the Photography programs at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh – Online Division.

See www.AiPrograms.info for program duration, tuition, fees, other costs, median debt, federal salary data, alumni success, and other important info.

Welcome to part 2 in our series looking at the future of some of the occupational fields related to our program at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh – Online Division. Today we’re going to take a look at some trends in outlooks in the field of Photography.

As anyone who has been paying attention can tell you, the world of Photography has undergone tremendous changes over the last several years. With the advent of digital photography and improving technologies, photographers face a very different landscape than they did 10 or 20 years ago.

These changes have obviously affected the career outlook for the professional photographer. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics put it in their outlook:

"Employment of photographers is expected to grow 12 percent over the 2008-18 period, about as fast as the average for all occupations. Demand for portrait photographers should increase as the population grows. Moreover, growth of Internet versions of magazines, journals, and newspapers will require increasing numbers of commercial photographers to provide digital images. The Internet and improved data management programs also should make it easier for freelancers to market directly to their customers, increasing opportunities for self-employment and decreasing reliance on stock photo agencies.

"Job growth, however, will be constrained somewhat by the widespread use of digital photography and the falling price of digital equipment. Improvements in digital technology reduce barriers of entry into this profession and allow more individual consumers and businesses to produce, store, and access photographic images on their own."

With these changes to the industry, what are some of the best practices for the aspiring photographer? As with any career where there is expected to be a lot of competition, being dedicated to excellence in your field is a best practice that should always be regarded. You can hear it directly from two of the most successful photographers working today as they discuss their advice for the future, Chase Jarvis and Albert Watson.

Also, if you’re interested in how the technology of the camera has changed over the years and what may lie ahead, this examination of the past and future of cameras may be of interest to you.

For more information on the photography industry, you may want to consult the Professional Photographers Association of America, or explore the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ full page on the career outlook for Photography.

Stay tuned for part 3 of our series, a look at the future of graphic design.