Facilities and resources
The Photography department’s studios, labs, Red Eye Gallery, administrative offices and equipment checkout are located on the second, third, fourth and fifth floors of the RISD Design Center, a building shared with the Graphic Design department and the RISD Store. In addition, graduate students have individually assigned studios located on the sixth floor of the Fletcher Building, part of RISD’s downtown Center for Integrative Technologies complex that includes the Sol Koffler Graduate Student Gallery. The Fletcher Building is a 10-minute walk from the Design Center.
The Red Eye Gallery is the Photography department’s central hub and is dedicated to showcasing student work in a series of rotating exhibitions. Exhibitions are curated by students from proposals submitted to faculty. From March through June, the Gallery hosts a rotating series of Degree Project exhibitions by graduating seniors.
The department has dedicated classrooms for instruction and critique. These are equipped with pin-up walls and digital projection systems as well as work tables and teaching stations.
Computer facilities
- HP Z4 G4s with Adobe Creative Cloud apps installed
- calibrated Eizo monitors
- Epson v800 and v850 scanners
- Plustek 11x17 flatbed scanner
- Plustek 35mm film scanner
- Hasselblad 645
- Hasselblad X5
- Epson and Canon medium format printers with ImagePrint
- two Epson 44" printers for majors and graduate student use
- Epson 24" printer with piezography inks for digital negatives and prints
The Photo Cage (photography equipment for temporary checkout)
- 35mm cameras: Pentax K-1000, Canon AE-1, Nikon FM2 and other varieties
- medium-format cameras: Hasselblad 501CM, Mamiya 7, Pentax 67, Mamiya RB67, Fuji GSW69 and Yashica-Mats
- large-format cameras (4x5 and 8x10): Calumet monorails, Chamonixes and Toyos
- digital: Canon 5D series Mark II–IV, 5DS and 5D
- digital: Fuji GFX series 100, 50S and 50R
- digital: Nikon D850
- an assortment of lenses for all cameras
- light meters, card readers and other workflow accessories
- lighting: Tota and Omni hot lights
- lighting: two-head Dynalite kits
- lighting: Vivitar flashes and Canon speedlights
- video: Canon Vixia camcorders, GoPros
- audio: Rode and lavalier microphones
- Manfrotto tripods
Lighting studio
- Dynalite heads and powerpacks
- Profoto D2 heads
- Softboxes, reflectors, grids, Pocketwizards, remote transceivers and other lighting accessories
Darkrooms
- for majors only: 12-station darkroom equipped with Saunders LPL 4x5 enlargers
- for non-majors: darkroom equipped with 21 Saunders/LPL 670 medium format enlargers
- dedicated lab for antique and alternative processes like cyanotypes, gum bichromate, wet collodion processes and platinum printing and equipped with one Epson 4000 inkjet printer for creating digital negatives for contact printing and other purposes
Photography majors and graduate students are issued a darkroom kit per semester. Kits contain an enlargement lens, easel, negative carrier and developing tank. Students are able to work autonomously in darkrooms, including the mixing and dilution of their own chemistry.