Photographic Studies  Course

With an introductory exploration at level 5 (year 1) to advanced practice at level 6 (year 2).

Running since 1997, the full time Photographic Studies course successfully provides an in-depth education in photography; from film to digital, darkroom to image processing, studio to street, within the context of historical and contemporary perspectives.

Students who have successfully completed the course have gone on to start their own businesses as freelancers, as wedding and portrait photographers, as photojournalists, as artists.  Inspired by the course, a high degree of students also go on to study photography at Third Level, with a significant number also coming from Third Level courses to study with us based on the reputation of the course.     

We provide a passionate, interactive environment for students of all ages to find their feet (and often themselves!) in our well-equipped facilities, for a very affordable fee.

‘ Thanks again for a wonderful two years of studying photography, your knowledge and passion for photography is soooo inspiring.  I consider it a stroke of unbelievable luck the day I stumbled upon the course. ‘             

    Nora Quane,  2020  

The 2022 Photographic Studies graduate gallery ….

Katie O’Brien –

To be alive ...

“ To be alive is to notice the world. To be dead is to notice nothing”

—   John Banville (Novellist)

Katie O’Brien

“The photos I’ve chosen for this project are very much an expression of how I feel in life right now. I will leave it up to you as the viewer to take what you like from these images.” – Katie o Brien

“Headland: it’s the world that’s inside your head, as well as a landscape.”- ‘ Elizabeth Magill- Painter

Nathan Maiden  – Book 1 – Street

Maarit Komulainen

The Greyhound racing industry is responsible for the deaths of up to 6,000 dogs in Ireland each year and most of them are killed because they fail to make the qualification times or
their performance declines.

Greyhounds are brutally killed with a bolt gun in knackeries for
as little as €8 or just shot and dumped in pits and many are found in mountain burial sites. In Ireland Greyhound racing is not even classified as a sport. Greyhound racing falls under
the Ministry of Agriculture and greyhounds are not classified as dogs but as “Farm animals”.

With this body of work, I wanted to highlight the caring and loving nature of greyhounds.
They are calm and gentle animals and therefore make excellent pets. Also, to demonstrate the loving relationship between humans and their greyhounds. This breed is so much more, than a commodity, and their lives should not depend on their ability to perform. They are pets not bets.

My inspiration for this work was British Photographer (conceptual artist) Keith Arnatt and his body of work “Walking The Dog”.
Arnatt photographed dog walkers in and around his hometown Tintern, Monmouthshire in England, between 1976 and 1979.

Maarit Komulainen

“ Its Not Yet Dark” is a series of images that explores the symbiotic relationship between people and their environment.

All images were taken in and about Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork

Rachel Baker

Ineta Jokubauskaite  –

Abandoned

Images taken at St Kevin’s hospital and Spike Island Cork

Sadhbh Ní Chathasaigh – Portráidí

‘’Smaoinaigh ar an daoine a smaoiníonn ort.’’  …  ‘Think of the people who think of you’.

My gut instinct was that this project was about exploring a part of myself I had not been in touch with and expressing that through my photography. I found as I edited after each shoot the first few images were just me feeling my way into shooting and after that my lucky strikes found me. Visually, my project narrows in on the muted colours of mundanity, a banal aesthetic and capturing life as I find it rather than how I fantasise about it. The evolution of the work involved re-evaluating both myself and photography

‘There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.’  – Ernst Haas.’

Bárbara Emilyn Cardona –

THERE IS NO POISON IN THEM 

 Images of two Cork local bands, The Wha and The Love Buzz and their friends.

 Back in November my friend Finn Cusack, had a show in Cyprus avenue with his band The Wha supporting their friends, The Love buzz, and I was invited along.

 And that was the gig that changed everything.

I  wanted to capture the connection that’s between them. I wanted to grab with my camera the feeling I have when one of the lads  turns around and decides to sing to me straight to my face, screaming his lungs out

 Loads of things have happened and my life has changed very much, since then, as I now have decided to shoot them for as long as I can. Because I love the way the lads live, because I love the way they are, how pure they are, how beautiful their friendship is. I think this is what life is all about, being there, even if I do not really know them, even if I get anxious, even if I do not really fit in. I just want to take pictures of them, print them and think: “I was fucking there“.

Chiara Rabjohns

Obscuro

It is a study on the fringes of the world that I see around me. A take on the strangeness of scenes that are so familiar and close, but how through the lens they become a kind of paradox-mysterious and unknowable. For me, this work lingers in the subconscious. I cannot quite say what I am trying to say or focus on with them, other than that I am drawn to explore the off moments of life, to capture the absence of self when in daydream, to freeze moments of ‘normality’ and look at them till they become more than that. The sense of presence and movement that carries on beyond the literal thing itself.

Chiara Rabjohns

Merry-go

To me, these photos capture what it is to be a human, the ins and outs and ups and downs of daily life. The longing for everything to just work out and be okay all the time, and the painful reality that, that will never really be the case. At these times it became clear to me how love keeps us all going, how even after hitting rock bottom-even after losing what was once your everything, love will get us through.