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
- X Apple MacPros equipped with Coreware
- X Eizo CG243W 24.1” displays calibrated with X-Rite Color Munki colorimeters
- three Epson v700 printeres
- Epson Expression 10000XL 11x17 flatbed scanner
- Plustek 35mm film scanner
- Hasselblad 646
- Imacon 343
- Imacon Precision III
- 10 Epson inkjet printers (4800s, 4880s, 4900s) driven by ImagePrint printing RIP
- Epson 9800 large photo paper printer
- Epson 9600 large matte paper printer
- Epson 9900 printer (for graduate student use only)
Software
- Photoshop
- InDesign
- Illustrator
- AfterEffects
- Acrobat
- Flash
- Dreamweaver
- Lightroom
- MS Office
- Toast
- Final Cut Pro
- iLife
- PhotoKit Sharpener (a third party Photoshop plugin for output sharpening)
The Photo Cage (photography equipment for temporary checkout)
- 12 Hasselblad 501CM medium format cameras
- six Fujica Rangefinder medium format cameras
- two Mamiya RB67 medium format cameras
- two Pentax 67II medium format cameras
- six Yashicamat 124G medium format cameras
- 10 Calumet large format cameras
- three Sinar F1 large format cameras
- two Omega View Monorail large format cameras
- three Toyo 4x5 large format cameras
- Toyo 8x10 large format field camera
- two Canon 10D digital cameras
- eight Canon 20D digital cameras
- three Canon 5D digital cameras
- Hasselblad CVF digital back
- light meters
- Visatec strobe and hot light portable lighting kits
- Dynalite strobe and hot light portable lighting kits
- Vivitar 285 on-camera flash units
- Canon 580 on-camera flash units
- Manfrotto tripods
- Saunders 4 16x20 blade easels
- Saunders 4 20x24 blade easels
Lighting studio
- two Speedotron 2403 CX Blackline power packs
- eight Speedotron 202vf lighting heads
- variously sized lightboxes, grids and reflectors
- seamless backdrop stand
- translucent Plexiglas light table
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
Majors are issued darkroom kits for the year and grad students for two years. This kit contains an enlarging lens, easel, negative carrier, developing tank, beakers and funnel. Students are able to work autonomously in the darkrooms with no need to check out equipment per session.