It's been a while since my last post - we've been busy at work this winter launching the new Mac Lab for digital photography and graphic design classes here at the Firehouse. We received generous computer donations from Champlain College and the Burlington Technical Center, which kick-started the project.
We've had a very successful session so far, filling Adobe Photoshop Basics, From Camera to Print: Digital Workflow (a class using Adobe Lightroom) and Adobe InDesign. Exciting! We have one more section of Photoshop this spring... I'll add info below, as there are still 2 more spots available.
We reworked the lower level classroom in the Firehouse Center, starting by cleaning out years of junk. It's amazing what you can find in an art center's basement! The city's fantastic Parks and Recreation staff built us walls to separate the space and a new counter for the computers (the classroom will not only be used as a Mac Lab - we created storage and a youth studio to be used as a mentor arts after school drop in center) . We painted the with warm oranges and yellows to brighten the classroom area (which, as you can see from the images, is separated from the Mac Lab by a half wall).
Jonathan Taylor, who I met at the Burlington Technical Center and who now works down at Green Mountain College, helped me set up the lab in a few marathon weekend sessions. We created identical workstations, so that every computer is the same for ease of teaching, a file server for teachers to share instructional files with their students, and we color calibrated the lab to match our beautiful new Epson 3880 archival printer. We also created a mobile teaching station with projection so that students can follow along with the lectures.
We'll be offering a wide range of new digital classes in this space to get your digital skills up and running - for the summer, we have some great field and lab classes in the works. Leave a comment and let me know what classes you might be interested in seeing in the new lab!
And in the meantime, as mentioned earlier, there are still 2 spots left in the second section of Adobe Photoshop Basics:
Adobe Photoshop Basics with Dan Lovell
Tuesdays, April 6 - May 11; 6-9pm
Prerequisite: Intro to the 35MM Film or Digital SLR or equivalent experience
$250, $225 BCA members (scholarships available)
Limit: 6
Gain confidence working in Adobe Photoshop in this 6 week class. Uploading images into Adobe Bridge, use of Camera Raw, image correction tools such as color and white balance correction, brightness/contrast, layers and much more will be covered. Bring a portable flash drive or hard drive with your images to the first class. (CLASS CODE: 811232-2)
Click here to register.
We hope to see you and your digital images here soon!
