digital photography thesis

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The Lesley Art + Design MFA in Photography and Integrated Media program ran from 2011 until 2024, under the leadership of Christopher James.

From its inception in 2011, our MFA in Photography and Integrated Media program at the Lesley University College of Art and Design has been designed and nurtured as a collaborative work in progress, created to emphasize craft and concept driven photography. It is comprised of an artist / scholar community of faculty, Visiting Artists and candidates, all of whom share a passionate respect for the hand-made traditions of photographic practice while embracing, with equal passion, what is rapidly being recognized as “the new photography” … a marriage of contemporary analog and digital photographic technologies emphasizing rigorous studio practice, art and cultural context, critical and professional studies, and the fluid integration of inter-disciplinary and contemporary media. Our philosophy embraces the concept that photography is in a state of flux and no longer a single entity. It is unique in the visual arts in its ability to merge established and contemporary technologies in the art of making impressions with light and is an ideal nexus of art and culture. We invite you to join our thriving community of contemporary photographic artists who will be defining the future of photography.

Browse through the thesis descriptions below, or use Ctrl+F / command+F to search for specific keywords.

If you find a thesis you want to read, click this link to the Online Thesis Folder  and browse by year and then name.  

To submit your thesis to a global database of theses and dissertations, go here and find your program area. You'll get reports telling you how often it's downloaded, and from where around the world!

Beth D’Elia   – RECEPTIVITY IN PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICE     – 2024

In the past two years, I’ve become particularly interested in what I define as the “receptivity" of photography, whereby the photographer is in a position of collaborating with the camera and other photographic materials to receive, rather than take, an image. My acceptance and openness to this collaborative process — not passive or acquisitive, but empathetic — marks a recent shift in the traditions of photographic practice. Chance, possibility, and the courting of the accidental, whether in or outside of the darkroom is reflected more frequently in contemporary aesthetics

Caroline Waterman   – A reckoning     – 2024

The north side of Dublin is my home. It is where I grew up, where I learned to love, to  play and dance. It is also where I was raped. I have spent the past 30 years of my life shutting  out the assault from my memory… and learning to forget. Although I’ve made my life on  another continent, I’ve returned to my home many times over the past three decades, never  allowing the demons to take away my joy of returning home and my love for Dublin. Now, in  this work and narrative, I have decided to remember, to confront….to heal.

Dominic V. Iacopino   – Between the Solitude in Us     – 2024

The act of operating a radio is, understandably, generally solitudinous. And yet, it is entirely about the  connection between people, as well as their places, ideas, and imaginations. Secluded in an old Massachusetts barn in the woods, on a farm from the 1800s, valuing self-reliance, nature, and wisdom,I would be remiss to  not see the ties to New England Transcendentalismphilosophy; and that is how I have come to summarize the  result of this two-year, technology-centric, ontological journey. I became intrigued by amateur radio during the summer of 2022 after reading about an eight-year-old  girl who had the opportunity, skills, and knowledge required to contact astronauts aboard the International  Space Station. This encounter between “scientists of consecutive generations” piquedmy curiosity enough to  pursue the role of participant observerin the ham radio community.I began an introspective journey, seeking  to define, through my artistic practice, what exactly it was to which I was drawn

Jp Gibson   – In the Shadow of this Mountain     – 2024

I think that practice has come to occupy an even larger role in my life  than it ever has before: both in the making of new images, and also the making of the  prints. Photographing and print-making serve as an escape from the listless void that is  unoccupied time and the things I’ve made since the summer are evidence of my  continued will to exist. I have found physical and emotional comfort in my work making  things by hand. I’ve also learned that coping with the magnitude of this loss is as much  about reassuring those who care about me… as it is about healing myself. I did not  realize I was participating in the mortality of the person I thought I’d spend the rest of my  life with.

Nat Sturzl   – FROZEN INEVITABILITY    – 2024

In my thesis work I am interested in the preserved physical remains of people who have been  excavated by archeologists. The corpses found in peat bogs, preserved by naturally occurring  compounds in the mire, and the contemporary plaster casts of the victims of Mt. Vesuvius, have more  than simple preservation in common. Long dead and buried, they still carry an undeniable look of  viability and personhood. The “bog-men” and the citizens of Pompeii were once real… until  something inexplicably tragic happened to them and they became trapped in a moment in time. Their  decay and expression function as surreal self-portraits, surrogates for myself when I’ve felt stuck in  time due to my own personal tragedies. Like stone carved representations of otherworldly people  unearthed from ancient civilizations, these manifestations stay true to nature while expressing  something even more profound, to me, about the human psyche and the metaphorical preservation  of the spirit. Added to this collection are medieval magical symbols known as staves, compiled in  Iceland by an eccentric magician who called himself Skuggi. Considering all these elements, I’m  creating photomontage, placing figures of death into the surreal Icelandic landscape and coupling  them with the staves. By practicing what Joseph Campbell called “creative mythology,” I join a long  line of artists using fiction, stemming from the vast collections of those who came before, to propose new worlds. My role is that of a curator and amateur archaeologist. I strive to de-code, represent and  illustrate, through a book of spells inspired by my innate fascination with magic, as well as the ideas,  obsessions, and questions that have fascinated me since childhood.

Samantha Barthelemy   – EYE STRIA   – 2024

My thesis stems from coming to terms with the deterioration of my eyesight. When  revealed, I was encouraged to make photographs that would relate to my  circumstance.  I struggled with this challenge and tried making work that was not solely focused on  my eyesight — the deterioration is one piece of the whole, a layer…a part of the  collage. Another consideration was thinking about how to translate my distorted vision  when the image the camera was seeing was complete and representational. Close up, I see double…a fractured viewpoint with multiple blind spots. Adjustments in  my life and artistic practice became essential as I’ve had to learn to accommodate and  shift simple lifestyle habits which I used to take for granted. Driving is no longer what it  used to be; I can not drive long distances at night. On a sun filled day it’s hard to see  anything as I’m literally blinded by the light. Reading is difficult; I now listen to audio  books, and read on a Kindle in order to increase the font size. Injuries caused from  tripping and falling have increased as I frequently miss details, like a step up or down.  Shadows and light constantly trick my eyes, causing things to move when they  shouldn’t, like a hallucination. Nothing appears truly accurate. Both my eyes and camera perceive subject matter differently. While the camera  faithfully records what I direct it to, my natural way of seeing diverges from its  perspective. My camera is my paintbrush, the multiple exposures are layers of paint, I  purposely obscure the representation that my camera sees…painting a story. It’s the layers that speak to one another to create a whole — slivers of my life. 

Adam Finkelston   – NOW YOU SEE ME   – 2023

Now You See Me, is an ongoing series of photography-based linocut self-portraits. The title alludes to  the familiar ending of the axiom, “now you don’t”— implying that while you see me… my body, my  experiences, and perspectives on my life, there are many parts of my existence that you don’t see in these  images. The storytelling aspect of my images illustrates only moments and pieces of my truth. The images are  about me, but they are also about a character I play. The character represents a man who inhabits constructed  spaces acting out the dramas and moments of reflection in everyday life. In this thesis, I intend to make a  connection between the indexicality of photography and the gestural aspects of printmaking. These two ways  of making images – photography and printmaking – are emblematic of the balance between reality and fiction  in my work. My prints seek to show visualizations of my own thoughts and feelings. By starting with a  photograph, I can capture my poses and surroundings in a realistic way, but by departing from the photograph  into drawing and printmaking, I can add or subtract from the original photograph, incorporating details and  quasi-surrealist imagery to enhance the impact of the images. Editing out personal details allows for clarity  and a deeper connection to the universal, harnessing the totality of human experience. The gestural  expectations and nature of drawing and printmaking add a fictional element to the reality of the photograph. A drawing is always necessarily removed from whatever it represents. Even in a direct observational drawing, the artist is a filter between reality and its interpretation. In these prints I am rooted in photographic reality  but adding my own interpretations and reveries through the addition of drawing and printmaking

Harrison Irving Loomis   – American Moments   – 2023

I see the spectacle of society. Brady’s photographs of civil war battlefields haunt my mind as I  walk across the grounds of an American fort in Maryland, where history is performed by reenactors as though trapped in time. As I photographed tourists performing for their own images at Niagara Falls, I question whether their digital keepsakes hold any value, a bad picture  becomes a forgotten experience, but a great experience should be remembered. In Times  Square, tourists stare at the billboards of New York advertising, thinking they’ve found the  beating heart of a city, when the local office workers just try to avoid it. Those same office  workers might be happy to go to a baseball game, but they’ll be focused on their laptops more  than the game, like the suits I found in box seats at Comerica Park. The structures of most  stadiums organize people like a mini city, each person in their place, at levels determined by  class. While everyone is free to walk Boston Common, only the privileged will get to look out on  it without stepping outside, divided by apartment walls and glass windows. Yet everyone comes  together to enjoy the fireworks show on New Year’s Eve, the dazzling lights and concussive  blasts remind them they’ve been alive for another year and ask what they’ll do in the next. My  photographs claim that it doesn’t really matter, the spectacle will still be there, in different  forms, in different colors, in different American Moments. Sometimes I wish I could just enjoy  the show...

Jessica Bonifas   – Filmmaking is a River: My Journey Towards the Camera   – 2023

I use filmmaking as a tool to alleviate suffering. During difficult times in my life I turned to the  camera as I am able to express myself freely without explanations or words. The camera acts as  a bridge between myself and others, allowing people to cross into the mind of the filmmaker.  I’ve titled my most recent film, Fulaing is a Gaelic word meaning to suffer. I use the Gaelic  language as a homage to my Irish heritage and for the preservation of the language itself. This  short experimental film was shot on Super 8 analog film and projected in the gallery. I use fulaing  to describe how I feel sometimes as a mother, filmmaker, and human struggling to survive in the  world today. Fulaing is a piece of my story told in a loose experimental style to express the  adversities that I have faced, and overcome, in my life

J udit German-Heins   – A MONSTER IN THE SHAPE OF A WOMAN   – 2023

This work is centered on my experience as a woman, a survivor, a host. It acts as a  proof of my existence. My photographic images are drawn from stories, dreams, and  feelings about my own experiences and illustrate struggles that I and many women  face through their lives. I am interested in the complexity of being a woman biologically,  socially and historically. My photographs are made with the wet-plate collodion technique, commonly used in  the late -19th century. The slow process of pouring the sticky, volatile, and flammable  emulsion, which records my experiences for centuries to come, allows me to embrace  my past gradually. As I carefully mix acid, alcohol and salt to let the molecules work  together to bring the latent images alive, I wonder about and consider my body as a  collection of cells that encompass my ancestral history and that also carry traces of my  children — dead and alive. For me, noble metals I use interpret and capture the  intrinsic value of a female body and soul.

R. Kevin Combs   – The Milltown   – 2023

In this thesis, I will introduce you to the Town of Fries and many of its characters. The  characters include me, some of the residents, and even the fog. We may find that the fog  obfuscates certain truths about small town life, and occasionally, represents the differences I believe we have in this country. I will tell you stories about how the town was built from the  ground up at the turn of the twentieth century to use the natural resources in the area and to  exploit the tendency for wages to be lower in the Appalachian Mountains than in other parts of  the country. I will tell you the story of the Town of Fries through my photographs and narration.  You might even call it a performance. The story will provide a lesson in tolerance in a divided  age and may assist in lifting the veil of fog that is a metaphor for our society and culture.

MFA Photography and Integrated Media Thesis Menu (2013-2022) Online Thesis Folder

Cotton Miller – The Limbo of Loss -  2013

Our entire lives we spend counting, counting up and counting down. The good things we count down to, and the bad things always seem insurmountable. When we are young, we think more is almost always better. As we get older in age and experience we begin to realize less is almost always more. Counting isn’t always about quantifying; it’s about identifying patterns. Counting is an attempt to find order or structure to gain understanding about the thing being counted. The myelin sheath is the protective layer of the axons in the brain, similar to the insulated coating on electrical wires, and in MS the immune system breaks down this protective barrier. When myelin is lost, and the brain-blood barrier is broken, the axons can no longer effectively conduct signals, which will manifest as a variety of symptoms including physical and cognitive disability. After the demyelination occurs, the symptoms that are experienced might subside, but never be fully extinguished. The possibility of loss, the inevitability of loss, and the uncertainty can be equally as powerful and life altering as the actual loss. According to Kübler-Ross, who introduced the hypothesis of the Five Stages of Grief, “The limbo of loss is in itself a loss to be mourned. Uncertainty can be an excruciating existence. It is the loss of life, going nowhere or going nowhere slowly without knowing if there will be a loss. This has become the foundation of my work, the idea that the mind is distinctly different than the brain.

Tommy Matthews 2013

If I ever build a house I will make it very skinny and tall with all the rooms built on top of each other, strung together through each other’s dreams as we slept. What about the person on the bottom then? Who was holding me in their dreams? Maybe this is what it means to grow up, to care and to provide instead of to receive. I grabbed the framed family photos and laid them flat on their backs, and carefully stacked one on top of the other till they made up a half-foot of thickness. Stepping on the frames I was conscious to keep my weight on the outside edges of the stack where it felt more secure. With time enough to make one last move I followed Vitus to the path that careened down a dirt embankment and bottomed out in a small opening of trees. The forest floor was hidden by arching ferns rising as high as my waist. An old felled Douglas fir was there; having collapsed long ago it was now a nursery log. It was half hollowed out inside and I crumpled my body in its opening. Vitus wedged himself alongside me and curled up in the shape of a scallop. As consciousness began to slip away I was eased to know I’d wake here, happy to be held in the grace of this great nurturer of the forest.

Nikki Seggara - Thalassophobia: A Philosophical Narrative On Congenital Fear – 2013

Though I have no recollection of it, it took years for my mother to get me to willingly bathe. She recalls that, even as an infant bathing in the sink, I would scream to the top of my lungs - even harder at the prospect of getting my head wet to wash my hair. It was the thought of deep water terrified me; the thought of what lies beneath - this trepidation of being pulled under, either trapped and unable to surface, or overcome by a creature where my vulnerable body, drifting in the vast sea, gave me no fighting chance. They could feel the pounding of my heart and the panic I struggled to contain for fear of giving myself away.  It was the thought that my body could forever be lost in the lower depths, never to reemerge.  I could never escape the feeling that this was...my fate.  This question of shared phobia has enveloped the deepest corners of my mind. As an artist, I choose to make work that is symbolic of my quest for reasoning behind my fear. There are many who claim that innate fear exists, without any presence of personal history as a factor. These proclivities have been analyzed at great lengths for at least 50 years within the field of Ethology. Ethologists are particularly concerned with innate behavior, and believe that such behaviors are the result of genetics and in the way genes have been modified during evolution to deal with particular environments (Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Kramer) Konrad Lorenz, often described as the ‘father of ethology,’ spoke about this V-shaped shadow as a releasing mechanism for an innate fear response.  The same fear response is witnessed in apes, who are all congenitally frightened of snakes, one of the few innate animal-based fears to also be widely present in humans. It is a grandiose notion, that my fears were ingrained into my brain from ancient genetic blueprints, passed down from generation to generation.  She paradoxically loved what she also feared, as do I.

Angelina Kidd – Imagining the Unknown - 2013

I believe there is a soul and that it is energy manifested as light. We are connected to the cosmos through the very calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood, which originated from stars that died billions of years ago. My belief is that the earthly body is separate from the soul and that our light energy returns to the cosmos. Energy will not cease to exist, as it cannot be destroyed according to Laws of Thermodynamics. Therefore, if the soul is light energy, then it does not disappear and is instead transformed. Twenty-three years ago, my mother’s life was transformed by cancer. As I approach the same age of her departure, I am constantly aware of my own existence. This is why my investigation into the unknown is relevant and personal. I have no evidence for the human soul or the afterlife, as my research does not set out to prove this. Instead, my consciousness chooses to have faith in having a soul and this leads me into an artistic investigation of how I perceive the afterworld. With my light constructions, I do not seek to exploit this emotion; rather, I aim to provide a visual salve and to encourage my viewer to consider that after death, life will be unknown.

Anna Yeroshenko - Enduring Peripheries

An analysis of 1980’s architectural aesthetic and a physical thesis portfolio of re-photographed folded paper abstractions of architecture in the Boston area.

Anne Eder – Myth as a Semiological Language

Thesis dealing with nature, myths, magic, talismanic objects accompanied by a physical portfolio consisting of an outdoor installation in the Emerald Necklace featuring her giant moss-men made of objects and materials found in nature.

Danielle Ezzo – The Intentional Object

Thesis focused upon the concept of intimacy and its relationship to her professional work as a re-touching artist. This was supported by large scale photographs of only the actual re-touched elements of fashion model portraits and bodies.

E V Krebs – so-totally-ev.tumblr.com

A thesis that is a total interactive experience, different for every “reader” depending upon the links the “reader” elects to follow. A traditional thesis felt too static, whereas the Tumblr venue allowed her to create avenues for exploration through the use of hyperlinks; developing a sense of depth as the “reader” clicked, going deeper and deeper.

Lanai King – Clot: A personal Exploration of Blood as Myth and Medium

Thesis analyzing candidate’s personal psychosis and fear of blood and her exploration of using blood as a medium in artistic expression. Thesis was supported by a video illustrating short vignettes of her explorations.

Natalie Rzucidlo – 2,364 Cuts

A these that explored the relationships and differences between hand-made and industrial objects by mirroring the automatic repetition of a machine through the process of paper cutting and realization through lithography. Physical work were monumental paper abstractions graphically illustrating sound.

Nicole Carriere – The Big Picture

Thesis dealing with the dissection of family photographs through visual language, symbols, and performance of gender.

Tabitha Sherrell – Untitled

Thesis focused upon three generations of women within a single family and supported by large scale photographs of tableaus illustrating reconstructed domestic spaces. Writing dealt with the analysis of posing, and the way photography is used to represent the self and family.

Taylor Singmaster – My Father’s Daughter

Thesis written as an autobiography to document values instilled through childhood and realized in adult life. The thesis was supplemented with a video of the candidate’s work with Down Syndrome afflicted children and how her future career would be dedicated to a foundation dealing with this disease.

Tomi Ni – Wu Xing

Thesis about the lives and existence of illegal aliens, living in building and room-sized communities and their sacrifices to pay off the fees for smuggling them into America and keeping their family healthy, educated, and hopeful. Physical work in the form of photographs of this life.

Crystal Foss – Seeing the self Through the Forest of Judgement: Self Portrait & Power

Thesis engaged in a representation of her life being judged by others for being an overweight young woman. The visual work supplemented the writing and consisted of video, music, and uncompromising mural sized self-portraits.

Katie Doyle – 13 Ways of Looking at X

Thesis analyzing Wallace Steven’s poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. The thesis deconstructed the poem and then reconstructed it in the form of a journal to represent how the identical sentiments related to her present life. Physical work existed in the form of a video illustrating the relationships of words and images.

Kwangtae Kim – Soul Scape

A thesis discussing non-representational forms of photography as an invitational bridge into a state of meditation. The physical work took the form of massive scaled photographic abstractions of natural objects, such as his child’s hair, or water, seen in a way to obstruct identification. These works were painted upon in the style of a Sumi calligrapher.

Maryam Zahirimehr – In the Name of God, The Beneficent, The Merciful

A written thesis telling the stories of her life growing up female in the strict Muslim culture of Iran and how those experiences shaped her future. A video illustrating one particular story enhanced the reader’s experience by bringing the story to life. This thesis was subsequently accepted and shown at the Cannes Film Festival.

Maura O’Donnell – Untitled

This thesis considers the female as it is contested in American culture. The work speaks to the confusion of specific roles of woman, and the communication of contradictory views of femininity. The work and the manner in which it is shown translate the ugly encounters she experiences on a regular basis. Physical work consisted of short vignettes in video format.

Natalie Titone – The Excavation of Meaning

Thesis exploring the immigrant experience in America through the memories, textures, and materials used by the people building a life for subsequent generations. Writing dealt with a narrative story-telling experience and physical work was realized by laminations of photographic images from family albums onto porcelain and ceramic materials. Techniques were learned while in an internship at Harvard University.

Traci Marie Lee - The Implications and Consequences of the Snapshot and the Constructed Image

This thesis documented her search for knowledge about a southern aunt who was a pioneer in women being active in politics. The thesis was based on an envelope of pictures and newspaper clippings and was resolved in the thesis through paper constructions and video, with a strong concentration on sound.

Alicia Turbitt – Hearing what Seeing Says

This thesis documented the degeneration of sight of her sister’s boyfriend and his efforts to remain in a normal life in spite of his increasing loss of sight. The physical thesis work was in video form and featured vignettes such as all of his friends taking turns teaching him how to drive a car down a dark road in the winter.

John Dearing – Chemical Geometry - 2017

Dedicated to a 19 th c. path of investigation following Herschel’s Anthotype process, John made hundreds of combinations of food sources and chemistry and painted the solutions on papers exposed to UV light over time. The thesis included research into chemical additives to our food, the effect of UV rays on those solutions, and the nature of abstract expressionism and constructivist painting, the forms he created for his tests on paper.

Natalie Schaeffer – Trust - 2017

A series of lengthy video vignettes in an installation that illustrated the state of a multi-year relationship in the midst of a decision to go forward. The written component supported the process and analysis of the video investigation.

Noelle BuAbbud – Triduum - 2017

This thesis involved a trinity of videos revolving around the visual perception and recognition of the human body in a state of suffering or sorrow. Research detailed the paintings and sculptures she felt were emotionally profound because of the ways in which artists such as Caravaggio, Picasso, Goya, and Kollwitz depicted grief and suffering through the physicality of the human figure. Videos illustrated the research and were in the subjective forms of shadows, as in the parable from Plato’s Cave.

Xiao Zhao – Ferryman - 2017

This thesis focused on the parables, spirituality and theology of Zen Buddhism and that belief system’s impact upon him growing up in China, and his relationship with his grandmother who was a shaman. Visual components were photographic abstractions.

Sara Bonnick - Acts of Almost Touching (And Other Short Stories, Poems, and Analysis) - 2017

This thesis explored the aftermath of intimacy and was represented through a series of videos, photo-sculpture, and installation. Her work formed a language of clothing as it related to emotional connection of direct physical contact. She investigated the concept through repetition, mending, healing, repairing, and attaching. All alterations to an article of clothing displayed a psychological repurposing interaction and compromise between two bodies. The written component was formed via short stories and free verse poetry.

Britney Segermeister - 2018

In a dissection of social media, its features and influences can often be misinterpreted as an assortment of symptoms associated with a variety of mental illnesses. The ability to rapidly change personas, and impulsively construct personalities, could be a description if Dissociative Identity Disorder or nothing more than editing pictures of yourself on a number of unrelated sites. My thesis project is a visual depiction of signs and aspects of mental illness interpreted by the unique etiquette, trends and algorithms of social media.

Casey Cullen 2018 – 22 Poplar - 2018

My thesis, 22 Poplar, is a partial collection of the many memories my childhood home inspired, and in a very real way, a thank you to the people here, and gone, who raised me in it. I am interested in how memories, old and new, personal and familial, coalesce to fill and define personal domestic spaces. My investigation questions how memories, and the events associated with them, are affected by the removal or change of a key component in that moment. My memories, of our home, and the objects within, are now the only things I have left of my grandfather. After he passed, could some part of his being have gone to the same elusive space where memories reside? Probably not, but I would like to think my interpretation of the faux colonial house on 22 Poplar Street will get me a little closer to wherever his beautiful spirit rests.

Candice Inc 2018 – She Knows Me Now - 2018

In collaboration with my mother, my thesis explores the complexities of communication within a mother-daughter relationship following the death of her husband… my father. Throughout our life together, my mom and i were able to talk about anything and everything without conditions. The traumatic death of my father completely altered our dynamic and we became strangers to each other. Unable to recognize the unique pain and loss that the other was experiencing, our ability to understand one another reached a point where spoken language failed. The only way for me to speak at this point was through the trust in my art and visual expression. Words were useless and so I turned to images. In our recent past, this created an even greater problem because my visual approach to telling the story of my suffering was even more incoherent to her than speech. I was forcing her to learn my side of the story, my truth. Children need to recognized by their parents and my mother’s resistance to that adjusted view of her adult daughter continues to be a constant battle for myself. It is a struggle being an artist and a daughter. She Knows Me Now is a test for us. Testing my responsibilities as her daughter, testing us both to not attack or point a finger of blame, and testing my responsibilities as an artist where telling my truths is my priority.

Rebecca Chappelear - 2018

My work explores the evidence that contributed to my family’s dysfunction and ultimately its collapse, brought on by my stepfather’s own separate trauma and depression—complications that had been ingrained into his personality long before we entered his life. My images are constructions based the events that took place during the period that he and my mother were married, in which time I had gone from my mid-teens to my early twenties, and my sister from kindergarten into eighth grade. A photographic narrative allows me to select the memories that are crucial to my and my audience’s understanding of the events that took place; moments that of course were not photographed, as a family reserves the taking of pictures for times meant to be remembered and looked back upon. With the creation of these photographs, I am able to investigate my experience with a man whose role as as my father deteriorated as he was engulfed by his alcoholism and depression.

Samantha Nieto – Catholic Girlhood Narrative - 2018

Growing up, I idolized everything Disney; Mickey Mouse was my god, The Sensational Six were my saints. Disney movies became my homilies and scriptures, they taught me life lessons and helped me imagine that I could be anything I wanted to be. My Lady of Guadalupe, Pocahontas, was my hero as a child and brought strength to me as an adult. She was the only Disney “Princess” I figured I could be due to our similar dark hair and complexion, which I eventually learned to appreciate. Because of her, I knew I was my own heroine princess who didn’t need a prince charming to save the day, I only needed to have faith and believe. My work is interested in the idea and systems of belief as it occurs in my life and in the objects that represent my values and what I believe in. I am expressing my beliefs from the past, and the present. Each piece represents a time in my life, with reference to a foundation of the Mexican catholic faith I grew up with and have transformed from. I am interested in the connection that one has with faith, symbols and objects of value stemming from childhood memories and experiences testing faith. With time, all these elements look different and change meaning as we age.

Brittney Callahan – Paradise Entertainment Feature of the Week: Splint – 2018

Watching television has been part of my daily ritual since childhood. Every time it was turned on, I was able to enter into new worlds that were exotic compared to my house. Each story on the screen filled me with hope, inspired me with passion, and took me to a place where everything, no matter how terrible, seemed to have a purpose, an arc, and an end. These visual narratives birthed the idea of an equational life, one that seemed simple and mathematical. After I realized that life couldn’t be firmly calculated, I decided to invent my own alternative realities of which I could control through photography and video. My primary interest is in self-construction, how identities and personalities are formed, how they manifest and shift, and the characterization of “self”. With my current work, I am utilizing the techniques of cinema and theater to construct a fictitious reality, that emulates the surface of a world that I have long-envied and idolized: Hollywood. The process of performing in my designed space is cathartic because, instead of being a passive spectator to someone else’s constructed narrative, I create my own and actively participate in it.

Gretjen Helene – Susurrus – 2019

I am currently working on a 24 minute linear video titled ‘Susurrus’ that will be exhibited within the interactive installation ‘Lost In Thought.’ ‘Susurrus’ is a collage of moving imagery which I am calling a living collage mindscape. This projected video is central in the installation and will be introduced by 11 paced photographs titled ‘Framed,’ and accompanied by a resin sculpture titled ’60% water’. For the sake of this introduction to my work, I will concentrate on the video ‘Susurrus’ alone. A discussion about the other installation elements would disrupt their intended affects.

JiSun Lee – The planet, LOVE – 2019

Art allows me to express unexplainable emotions and feelings I have never felt before. Meaning by emotions, for example, sadness and happiness have to co-exist to reveal each other’s existence and the value they have.I always had a hard time controlling my emotions. It may be because I’m a sensitive person; I feel my emotions in huge waves. Many incidences happened to me because my inability to express and control my emotions, Love, relationships, avoidance, jealousy, hatred, anger, and happiness, aresometimes hard for me to express this with words. But I am learning from these contradicting emotions like the light and the dark. After creating my art, I have discovered myself in the process of expressing emotion through art. And I learned to control myself. This is the way I protect myself. The only way to express my sensitive emotions that cannot be created in words because there’s no words for them. My language -I speak through my art.

Kristen Matuszak – Confined In My Skin – 2019

When deciding to create my book, “Confined In My Skin,” I was distinctively thinking aboutcinema, and film reels in particular. The viewer experiences my book the way they would acinematic film, I am continuously manipulating the perception of the viewer. They see what theywant to see, then as they flip through the pages, they get a sense of something much darkerand deeper than their original intake of the work.

Molly Meador – RabbitRabbitRabbit – 2019

The main conceptual focus in this work is obsession, but it has become clear that my living definition of this word is different than the normal interpretation. This is not a project about how obsession can affect a person, and it’s not about obsession as a direct, generally temporary mental state in relation to a specific topic. It’s about how it affects me and the resulting compulsions that occur as a way to live with and control these fixations. It’s about how the obsession can be used and dealt with, but it’s not a solution. An obsession, though intense and consuming, can be finite and have a course. There is a difference between an obsession and an obsessive personality. A life defined by obsession cannot sustain itself with any sort of harmony unless an order is established. That necessity is where this project comes from; and to establish an order to something, you must sometimes first tear it apart.

Vanessa Fischer – This Way Through The Darkness – 2019

I still desire to create a space to preserve and experience my past, only now these memories live outside of my mind in my art. This Way Through the Darkness stems from the Memory Box I created as an adolescent while mourning the loss of my mother. Looking at household surfaces has been my way of connecting to the memory of my mom, because these were the surfaces she touched every day, the same surfaces I have in my life today

Will Harris – Evelyn Beckett – 2019

In this work I confront the complexities of my Nana, Evelyn Beckett’s dementia, by fabricating the pieces that have gone missing.  Within my Nana's mind, history and fiction collide, creating something strangely new, haunting and at times painfully beautiful.  Ten years ago was now ten minutes ago.  There were no seasons; the clocks stood still. My grandmother was both lost and reborn. Fragments of the person I used to know would come to me now and then, but she was no longer my Nana and there was no one to hold our familial history together.

Byron Hocker  – Red Sky Morning – 2020

I have found ways to escape the daunting task of everyday life. I can use photography to play. I am able to convert the seriousness of life to my own comedic circus. Roland Barth in Camera Lucida said it more eloquently than I when he wrote, “What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: She is going to die, I shudder...over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is a catastrophe.” Because of this truth, I must play and create because it is all too serious. I can also transform these people, my family, into anyone I want when I am in control of the photograph.  

Ge Wang   – A Reluctant Citizen – 2020

Photography has been a narrative tool for my family. I did not have much of my own voice in the family narrative because my parents were the photographers. I picked up photography soon after I left China and started to live alone in the US. I became the executor behind the camera, recording my very own story. Even still, I still lose my sense of time here very often. The memories I have formed in America have never managed to dig themselves a deep hole in my mind.

Lys Ciani  – Field Notes – 2020

I practice camera-less photography  and  assume  the  rights  to  these  elemental  processes in hopes of gaining a more grounded and intrinsic understanding of the landscapes I observe, interpret, and create.  I’ve adopted this type of field work as a personal collection of visual-mappings of uninhabited environments.  Field notes are composed of two components: descriptive information and the observer’s reflection about the study that is being conducted. Each print carries light, minerals, and contaminants of the water; literal recordings of the environment they took form in. Untidy records recalling weather conditions, time of day, and where on the bend they were made. They coalesce to form a portrait, a trace of the shifting identity of a riverbed.

Matt Klos  – Field Notes – 2020

In the last four years I have been acclimating, building, and modifying my life. Creating a new normal and reestablishing what it means to be me both physically and psychologically. Paralysis is the metaphorical-well of inspiration I draw upon to create my images, sculptures and studio working environment. I utilize my paralysis as both coping mechanism and visual source, documenting and interpreting my body’s devastation within the fine lines of reality and fabrication.

Anna Clem  – To the Garden and Back – 2021

To the Garden and Backconsists of four distinct series—The Perennial Garden, Floating Petals, Tucked into the Garden Bed, and Visitor—and a video piece called In Her Garden, through which I have examined from all sides my longing for the impossible return to innocence, obsession with preservation, and my present-day “gardens.”

Faith Ninivaggi  – Present History – 2021

I’ve stared into the eyes of murderers and abusers. I’ve studied and documented the masterful kinesics of great athletes, influential politicians, and infamous public figures. Through my lens, I’ve captured victories and tragedies. I’ve documented the literal forces of nature. I’ve talked to thousands of strangers, tapping on shoulders, stopping people in the streets, and knocking on doors...all for the chance to tell their story through photographs.

Fangwei Xu  – The Sun – 2021

The Sun is a series of works that touch on ideology and its relationship to social context, gaze, and subconsciousness, represented by various media. Ideology for me is nothing but a framework, and it requires the context of media to deliver the meaning. Humans have countless ways to explain an idea, like in China, there are multiple words to define snow, or rain, and each method of expression, each medium corresponds to a different kind of cultural interpretation: superficial or cognitive, conscious or unconscious, temporary or permanent, literal or connotative.

John Nanian  –Chepiwanoxet  – 2021

This thesis will explore the idea of place by trying to un-derstand what a small spit of land in Narragansett Bay called Chepi-wanoxet was before colonial ownership. After visiting the area countless times with and without a camera, I am, in collab-oration with the island and the sea around it, attempting to make drawings and light-markings, using organic and light-sensitive materials, and imperfection to show its essence and its meaning to me.

Wenshuai Shi (Ace)  – Isolation – 2021

I have made a series of photographic and video works using "isolation" as the theme. From my initial project “HOME,” completed in Shanghai in 2018 and 2019, to my recent project, “My Fear Journal,” made in Boston this past year. This past year, my intention was to illustrate to the viewer not the state of my loneliness, but the process of my thinking, reflecting on isolation.

Zachary Hayes  – Seeing is Believing, Looking is Loving – 2021

In Seeing is Believing, Looking is Loving, I shall discuss the internal complexities of being able to relate and empathize with others and how photography acts as a vehicle for me to be able to do these things. Here you will be introduced to I (Want To) Love You, a body of images that I have pulled from my personal catalogs of people that I choose to commit myself to.

Abigail Egan   – In This Home  – 2022

My thesis, titled In This Home, is about documenting experiences with my family that are reshaped by the passage of time and the evolution of technology, while navigating my conflicting ethical responsibilities to my art and to my family amidst a world of digital obsession. Sharing my art with a wider audience for the first time, this body of work investigates the layers of emotion within the family home, exploring the intricacies of loving one’s family unconditionally.

Ariana Sanchez   – From Here to There – 2022

My move to New England was a complete 180 from what I had known in Florida. Once settled, I explored my new neighborhood and started photographing its characteristics, searching for ways I could connect both as a person and a photographer. There were days that I wished I could go back to Florida and experience that environment once more. Here in Cambridge I once again felt like an outsider, wondering if this was just another temporary place for me. I still don’t know. My images simultaneously represent my comfort and discomfort to where I am; to where I hope to belong. My desire for “home” is strong. It’s difficult to put down roots in shifting soil.

Jill Bemis  – Homing Instinct – 2022

Homing Instinct is an exploration of walking and the physicality of film photography as it mirrors a poetic and visceral connection to the land.  An ephemerality lingers within the work–a longing to experience and hold on as larger forces cause land and home to change forms.  The work holds space for lightness but also defies it through an ominous representation of the cycles of loss within nature.  I am especially drawn to the birds that live between land and sky, between rooted experience and unmoored wonder. I have a yearning to understand what it is like to be a bird, and a simultaneous acceptance of knowing that I never will.  There is both a separation and a closeness between us.  I do not pretend to understand why, but the observed experience of a bird feels wildly linked to my own returning to the marsh.

Monica Philbin   – Otherworld  – 2022

I began this thesis as a journey to find myself and to piece together evidence of the spirit world in my photographs to show my mom. I soon realized that it would probably be impossible to make a photograph of an actual ghost and subsequently turned my focus up on the mysteries found in my secular and manageable world. Photography has become my way to express myself and to communicate with the world. 

Natasha Major   – The Outpouring  – 2022

The Outpouring is the title of this document that moves between memoir and musing, examining how I came to understand photography as a mediator between inner and outer life as well as how my process has developed and deepened over the last two years. Two artist books are connected to the written document: For an Anxious Mind (2021) and The Light Here and Elsewhere (2022), each is a vessel for communicating a particular feeling or an experience. The Outpouring discusses the organizing principles of each work, what led to their conception and the artists who have helped me locate my work in a larger context.

Quentin Gong   – One, And Two Stories  – 2022

Dramatizing what I have experienced allows me to turn my ordinary experience into a more interesting story. In this way I use my own personal life as a basis for my films. Snap Out of It and Mary were two short films I made in 2021 and 2022. These films are about ordinary people’s stories, and they are both created based on my personal life experience. We are all born ordinary, but we all have the potential to experience extraordinary lives.

Tiziana Meneghel-Rozzo   – The Power of Camera-less Photography to Communicate a Haptic Experience   – 2022

Through my projects, I am searching for a way to visually communicate a moment experienced in time through what it brings to light: a face, a tear, the physical act of leaving an impression or sharing an emotional gesture. I use photography as a way to connect and communicate a lived experience and to visualize bodily intimacies. In my images I like to wonder, imagine, and question what I am looking at — what I know and do not know. It is within the dark realities of a chaotic world that I, as an artist, feel compelled to respond with marks that carry meaning within them. In the two projects that follow, Haptic a nd Tears, I use a 20th-century photographic technique to focus on touch and contact, to convey meaning at the level of physical operation.

Travis Flack   – Lifelong Obsession With Oblivion   – 2022

As of right now, photography has been in my life for more than half the years I have lived on this planet. It has moved with me, and sometimes in spite of me, marking creative growth, existential frustration along with the very specific idiosyncrasies that I now realize are the traits that define me as an artist. In conjunction with this medium that I have chosen as a method of explanation and expression is this other entity, a need for extremes of varying intensities that I have come to realize is the driving force behind a lot of the subjects I choose.  These intense experiences  have broken down my existence in complex ways, making me feel like someone who is in a constant state of  repair or rebuilding. Lifelong Obsession With Oblivion started out as the calculated detonation of my life in order to review it. From this exploded view the work mutated,  from the very literal physical form to the figurative forensic symbolic investigation. Lifelong Obsession With Oblivion is a photographic survey about surrendering, about giving into something that completely consumes you to the point of complete, wonderful, beautiful deconstruction.

• Last Updated: Jun 20, 2024 11:26 AM
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Photography Masters Theses

Graduate students in the Photography program develop visual and critical expertise through course work, seminars, independent studio work and critiques designed to provide a deep understanding of contemporary art practices and criticism. Working in personal studios, students have access to state-of-the-art technical facilities that allow for the exploration of film-based and digital photography, digital video and multimedia production.

In the final semester, MFA candidates focus on creating a comprehensive body of work under the guidance of a thesis committee. All Photography graduate students produce a thesis book that includes a written narrative and a body of visual work. They also participate in the RISD Graduate Thesis Exhibition , a large-scale public show held annually.

Graduate Program Director: Brian Ulrich

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License .

Theses from 2024 2024

I am becoming. , Dai Asano

Intangible shells , Elena Bulet

Winter Solstice , Jingwen Cao

The Day the Door Flew Open , Clara Delgado

Embodied Abstractions: Identity and Representation in the Digital Era , Srikar Hari

America, Dreaming. , Sarah Meftah

Theses from 2023 2023

Mistranslated , Hee Young Cha

In a Condition of No Light , Alana Perino

Coast to Coast , Zeyuan Ren

Garden Etiquette , Kai Wasikowski

Theses from 2022 2022

Rememory , Jonathan Mark Jackson

The great delusion , Beth Johnston

Mason & Dixon: History and Identity in the Borderlands , Drew Leventhal

Bewildering narrative , Ali Newhard

Dead Letter Room , Allie Tsubota

Theses from 2021 2021

Imaging "Interracial": performing racialized desire in "interracial" heterosexual hardcore pornography , Megan Christiansen

Becoming a precipice: the liminality of queer cruising , Chance DeVille

Wounds need air , Camilla Jerome

Martyr (in exile) , Xinyi Mei

I just can't get you out of my head : frenetic vortex, animal as image - field notes (1989-2021) , Steffanie A. Padilla

Fossil morphology , Leah Zhang

Theses from 2020 2020

The knots on the underside of the carpet , Lily Colman

Amor fati , Keavy Handley-Byrne

First sweet truth , Jessina Lynn Leonard

These inadvertent marks , Thomas Wilder

Make yourself at home , Han Seok You

Theses from 2018 2018

Between gods and animals : deconstructing heteronormative masculines pursuit to sustain power , Shawn Bush

Pretend power , Rosemary Engstrom

Theses from 2017 2017

Naturally occurring form , Margaret Kristensen

Theses from 2016 2016

Once there was there wasn't , Svetlana Bailey

Theses from 2015 2015

Mid- , Elise Kirk

The Void, The Mystery, The Vast Array, The Infinity of Unities, The Otherworld, The Absolute, The Hidden Order, The Randomness, The Infraworld, The Nothing, The Zone of Immaterial Sensibility, The Silence, The Hollow of Space, The Ineffable, The Emptiness, The Wild , Drew Ludwig

Theses from 2011 2011

Seven Seas Without , Ambereen Siddiqui

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An evaluation of the current state of digital photography

Charles Dickinson

The field of digital photography is always changing. Due to the rapid pace of new technologies being developed for this area, it is becoming more commonly used by people in all walks of life, particularly that of the consumer. It is therefore important to critically evaluate the current state of this technology to gain a better understanding of how advanced it has become. This research has evaluated the digital photographic systems from digital camera input to printer output. The metrics used to judge the performance of the camera and printer performance were the modulation transfer functions, or MTFs, of the devices, and subjective evaluations of their prints. Previous research of this kind has been done on specific devices, but this project is unique in that it looks at digital photography as a system, and incorporates not only the traditional MTF, but also the ratings of observers. From the results gained by doing this research, several conclusions have been made. The first is that a generic model of digital photography has been gained. What is meant by generic is that the cameras and printers span a wide range of quality and expense, so it is possible to substitute devices of similar qualities and obtain information from the results. The second conclusion to be made is that for low end cameras, an upgraded printer makes little difference in the output of the system. Finally, the effects of interline vs. frame transfer CCDs have not been determined by this research due to the unexpected differences in the two cameras used for this question.

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Undergraduate

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Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science (COS)

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Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in February 2014. senior project.

Recommended Citation

Dickinson, Charles, "An evaluation of the current state of digital photography" (1999). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from https://repository.rit.edu/theses/6763

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• Corpus ID: 12458614

Digital light field photography

• Published 2006
• Physics, Engineering, Computer Science

533 Citations

Digital correction of lens aberrations in light field photography, computational photography with plenoptic camera and light field capture: tutorial..

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2 . 1 . Recording a Photograph ’ s Light

Image quality evaluation of light field photography, the focused plenoptic camera, light-field image acquisition from a conventional camera: design of a four minilens ring device, time-lapse light field photography with a 7 dof arm, a light transport framework for lenslet light field cameras, a practical method for measuring the spatial frequency response of light field cameras, the multi-focus plenoptic camera, related papers.

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Photography Dissertation Topics

Photography is an art form worthy of critical attention, so it’s no surprise that many Arts and Culture students choose to write a photography dissertation. In particular, the technological innovation of photography coupled with its varying sociocultural impacts has encouraged many students to want to write a dissertation on photography. But how you should you go about choosing a topic for your photography dissertation? The following sub-sections provide suggestions on the most recent trends and innovations in photography, particularly concerning technological developments, ethics, and the evolution of photography trends.

Digital Photography

Photojournalism and communications, photography, ethical, cultural, and societal perspectives, the evolution of photography, photography and global politics, photojournalism during the covid-19 pandemic.

Digital photography emerged as a technological innovation during the 1990s, and since then, it has developed into a computer mediated approach to photography. The old methods of taking pictures have, therefore, been improved and enhanced by digital technologies. Also, it has not only replaced the silicon chips and old photography methods, but it has also introduced more advanced methods, as photography has now adopted the use of information technology. This could be an interesting subject area to examine if searching for topics related to technological trends and developments in photography. Examples of topics in this area are listed below:

• How has digitalisation modified the position of photography in society?
• The evolution to Digital Photography and its impact on photography methods.
• A review of the current technologies, cultural methods, and the social practices of snapshot photography.
• How has visual reporting transformed the landscape of news reporting and journalism?
• An analysis of Visual Storytelling during the current era of Post-Industrialist Journalism.

Photojournalism refers to the process of reporting using either still or changing images. The development of photojournalism has been closely aligned with evolving technological trends, and photojournalists have adopted more enhanced approaches for reporting events. Nonetheless, the major core value of photojournalism remains significant, as photojournalists continuously search for the opportunity to witness significant events and share the evidence of such events. Photojournalism also focuses on highlighting important social topics and encourages discussions about public response. Therefore, this is an interesting research area if you are fascinated with journalism and photography. Some relevant topics in this area are listed below:

• The impact of Mobile Technology on the significance and role of Photojournalism in the Society.
• The challenges of Photojournalism: Realism, the nature of news and the philanthropic narrative.
• How has the current era of network media and social media websites impacted on the Photojournalism?
• Is Digitalisation destroying Photojournalism?
• Exploring the relationship between the professional values of photojournalism and the process of digital photo editing and the generation of online news videos.
• Reconsidering Photojournalism: Investigating the constantly shifting work routines and professionalism of Photojournalists in the Digital Era.

Since its early days, photography has prompted several debates with regards to its ethical application and misappropriation in society. Nonetheless, the creation of images has aided in the creation and communication of cultural identity and history. The current ethical, cultural, and societal perspectives about photography would be an interesting research area. Below are some suggestions of topics related to this area of photography:

• Digital age and mass surveillance: The ethical perspective of visual photography.
• The Integrity of digital images: The current principles and practices of image manipulation in document photography and photojournalism.
• A study on visual photography, particularly the relationship between images, objects, and general photographic representations within the cultural and social contexts.
• A critique of Visual Ethnography and Cultural Representation in Photography.
• Compassion, integrity, and the media: Examining current issues in cultural photography.
• Image ethics: The ethical privileges of the subjects in pictures, movies, and television.
• Truth or Fiction? The impact of ethical and societal perspectives on media imagery during the digital era.
• Professional photography and privacy: Are the personal ethics of a professional photographer adequate?

The field of photography has evolved over the past decade, with vast technical and theoretical developments to the standards of photography since it was created in 1839. Therefore, this is an interesting research area, as it gives you the opportunity to investigate the source of a specific innovation or method and examine any historical implications. The suggested research topics in this area are listed below:

• The evolution from camera obscura photography and the era of photographic illusions to the current use of modern, digital, cameras for photography.
• The effect of photography on historical events, including the Civil War.
• The transformation of photography: How has the development of photography impacted Law and Culture?
• An examination of the realism of Landscape Photography.
• How has the use of modern photographic trends transformed news reports and the recording of significant social events?
• What is the impact of photography on the evolution of social media websites and communication systems?
• Closing the gap between Research and Practice: The Interrelationship between Photography and Hyper-realistic Art

Considering the current visual and digital era, it is apparent that images shape worldwide events and the society’s perspectives about them. Also, factors such as television programs and photographs impact on global politics as different phenomena are viewed, including wars, economic downturns, election advertisements, and humanitarian catastrophes. Therefore, visual politics have become the norm, with the use of digital platforms across the political spectrum, from extremist recruitment campaigns to social justice movements. Thus, this is an interesting research area, with a wide range of topics. Some of these topics are listed below:

• A discourse analysis of how photography can be used to support political propaganda in the United Kingdom.
• How does images and photographic representations of political activities impact global politics?
• An exploratory review of the discourse and subjectivity of photographs within the political landscape.
• What are the political functions of images and visual artefacts?
• Photography and Politics: The impact of photography in the Political world.

The current Covid-19 pandemic has become one of the most severe pandemics of this era, with significant economic, societal, and political impacts. Therefore, this would be an interesting area of research, with a wide range of topics that can be investigated. Some of these topics are suggested below:

• How are leading Photojournalists worldwide documenting the resulting impact of Covid-19 on societies?
• Photojournalism: What are the ethical issues of reporting the impact of Covid-19?
• What are the roles and responsibilities of photojournalists during the current pandemic?
• A review of the approach to news reporting by photojournalists during Covid-19 pandemic.

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January 2006

• Stanford University
• 408 Panama Mall, Suite 217
• United States

Focusing images well has been difficult since the beginnings of photography in 1839. Three manifestations of the problem are: the chore of having to choose what to focus on before clicking the shutter, the awkward coupling between aperture size and depth of field, and the high optical complexity of lenses required to produce aberration-free images.

These problems arise because conventional cameras record only the sum of all light rays striking each pixel on the image plane. This dissertation presents a unified solution to these focus problems by instead recording the light field inside the camera: not just the position but also the direction of light rays striking the image plane. I describe the design, prototyping and performance of a digital camera that records this light field in a single photographic exposure. The basic idea is to use an array of microlenses in front of the photosensor in a regular digital camera.

The main price behind this new kind of photography is the sacrifice of some image resolution to collect directional ray information. However, it is possible to smoothly vary the optical configuration from the light field camera back to a conventional camera by reducing the separation between the microlenses and photosensor. This allows a selectable trade-off between image resolution and refocusing power. More importantly, current semiconductor technology is already capable of producing sensors with an order of magnitude more resolution than we need in final images.

The extra ray directional information enables unprecedented capabilities after exposure. For example, it is possible to compute final photographs that are refocused at different depths, or that have extended depth of field, by re-sorting the recorded light rays appropriately. Theory predicts, and experiments corroborate, that blur due to incorrect focus can be reduced by a factor approximately equal to the directional resolution of the recorded light rays. Similarly, digital correction of lens aberrations re-sorts aberrant light rays to where they should ideally have converged, improving image contrast and resolution. Future cameras based on these principles will be physically simpler, capture light more quickly, and provide greater flexibility in finishing photographs.

• Lyu X and Hou J (2024). Probabilistic-Based Feature Embedding of 4-D Light Fields for Compressive Imaging and Denoising, International Journal of Computer Vision , 132 :6 , (2255-2275), Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024 .
• Liu C, Shi L, Zhao X and Qiu J (2023). Adaptive matching norm based disparity estimation from light field data, Signal Processing , 209 :C , Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023 .
• Karim S, Tong G, Li J, Qadir A, Farooq U and Yu Y (2023). Current advances and future perspectives of image fusion, Information Fusion , 90 :C , (185-217), Online publication date: 1-Feb-2023 .
• Zhou Z, Pan T, Wu S, Chang H and Jenkins O GlassLoc: Plenoptic Grasp Pose Detection in Transparent Clutter 2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), (4776-4783)
• Iwatsuki T, Takahashi K and Fujii T (2022). Unsupervised disparity estimation from light field using plug-and-play weighted warping loss, Image Communication , 107 :C , Online publication date: 1-Sep-2022 .
• Wang C, Zhang Q, Ma B, Xia Z, Li J, Luo T and Li Q (2022). Light-field image watermarking based on geranion polar harmonic Fourier moments, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence , 113 :C , Online publication date: 1-Aug-2022 .
• Ravishankar J, Sharma M and Khaidem S (2022). A Hybrid Tucker-VQ Tensor Sketch decomposition model for coding and streaming real world light fields using stack of differently focused images, Pattern Recognition Letters , 159 :C , (23-30), Online publication date: 1-Jul-2022 .
• Zhao Z, Cheng S and Li L (2022). Robust depth estimation on real-world light field images using Gaussian belief propagation, Image and Vision Computing , 122 :C , Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022 .

• Burt R, Thigpen N, Keil A and Principe J (2021). Unsupervised foveal vision neural architecture with top-down attention, Neural Networks , 141 :C , (145-159), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021 .
• Guo M, Hou J, Jin J, Chen J and Chau L Deep Spatial-Angular Regularization for Compressive Light Field Reconstruction over Coded Apertures Computer Vision – ECCV 2020, (278-294)
• Buades A, Duran J and Navarro J (2019). Motion-Compensated Spatio-Temporal Filtering for Multi-Image and Multimodal Super-Resolution, International Journal of Computer Vision , 127 :10 , (1474-1500), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2019 .
• An J, Park S and Ihm I (2019). Construction of a flexible and scalable 4D light field camera array using Raspberry Pi clusters, The Visual Computer: International Journal of Computer Graphics , 35 :10 , (1475-1488), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2019 .
• Rangappa S, Matharu R, Petzing J and Kinnell P (2019). Establishing the performance of low-cost Lytro cameras for 3D coordinate geometry measurements, Machine Vision and Applications , 30 :4 , (615-627), Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019 .
• Zhang C, Hou G, Zhang Z, Sun Z and Tan T (2018). Efficient auto-refocusing for light field camera, Pattern Recognition , 81 :C , (176-189), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2018 .
• Perra C (2018). Assessing the quality of experience in viewing rendered decompressed light fields, Multimedia Tools and Applications , 77 :16 , (21771-21790), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2018 .
• Chen Y, Jin X, Liu L and Dai Q High-Speed Light Field Image Formation Analysis Using Wavefield Modeling with Flexible Sampling 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), (6523-6527)
• Sepas-Moghaddam A, Correia P and Pereira F Light field local binary patterns description for face recognition 2017 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (3815-3819)
• Ren Z, Zhang Q, Zhu H and Wang Q Extending the FOV from disparity and color consistencies in multiview light fields 2017 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (1157-1161)
• Paudyal P, Battisti F and Carli M Effect of visualization techniques on subjective quality of light field images 2017 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (196-200)
• Navarro J and Buades A (2017). Robust and Dense Depth Estimation for Light Field Images, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing , 26 :4 , (1873-1886), Online publication date: 1-Apr-2017 .
• Higa R, Iano Y, Leite R, Chavez R and Arthur R (2014). Employing Light Field Cameras in Surveillance, 3D Research , 5 :1 , (1-11), Online publication date: 1-Mar-2014 .
• Heber S, Ranftl R and Pock T Variational Shape from Light Field Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Energy Minimization Methods in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition - Volume 8081, (66-79)
• Georgiev T New results on the plenoptic 2.0 camera Proceedings of the 43rd Asilomar conference on Signals, systems and computers, (1243-1247)
• Damghanian M, Olsson R and Sjostrom M Depth and angular resolution in plenoptic cameras 2015 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (3044-3048)
• Sun C, Wu Y and Zeng B Synthesis of light-field raw data from RGB-D images 2015 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (1448-1452)
• Miyagi Y, Takahashi K, Tehrani M and Fujii T Reconstruction of compressively sampled light fields using a weighted 4D-DCT basis 2015 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP), (502-506)

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Computer vision

Computer vision tasks

Scene understanding

Image and video acquisition

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Photography Dissertation Topics

Published by Carmen Troy at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 11, 2023

If you are an avid photographer and wish to spend your life doing something that you love, which is obviously photography, you must be thinking about pursuing it further. To become an expert and professional photographer, you will need to study it formally. While many people claim that they can become experts without admission to an institution, you must remember that the basic things you learn from an expert teacher and practice it under his guidance will help you understand and explore photography more than your imagination.

Anyhow, if you have made the right decision of being admitted into a photography course, you must be anxious to graduate and practice it professionally. Hold up! You will need to go through one final phase of writing a dissertation.

If you are supposed to write a photography dissertation but do not really know where to start, you can have a look at some of the most exciting and debatable photography topics suggested by experts.

You may also want to start your dissertation by requesting a  brief research proposal  from our writers on any of these topics, which includes an  introduction  to the problem,  research question , aim and objectives,  literature review , along with the proposed  methodology  of research to be conducted. Let us know if you need any help in getting started.

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2022 Photography Dissertation Topics

Topic 1: an evaluation of the impact of digitalisation on the altering conceptions and communication of contemporary photography..

Research Aim: The research aims to evaluate the impact of digitalisation on the altering conceptions and communication of contemporary photography.

Objectives:

• To analyse the concept of contemporary photography.
• To evaluate the influence of digitalisation photographic conceptions and communication.
• To evaluate the impact of digitalisation on the altering conceptions and communication of contemporary photography.

Topic 2: Investigating the influence of digital photography evolution on the photography methods and affinity towards the profession.

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the influence of digital photography evolution on the photography methods and affinity towards the profession.

• To analyse the impact of digital tools and technologies on photography as a profession.
• To identify the evolution in photographic methods and the perceptions towards photography as a profession.
• To investigate the influence of digital photography evolution on the photography methods and affinity towards the profession.

Topic 3: An evaluation of the present technologies and cultural methods associated with snapshot photography.

Research Aim: The research aims to evaluate the present technologies and cultural methods associated with snapshot photography.

• To analyse the concept of snapshot photography and identify the available technologies.
• To evaluate the cultural and social contributions to snapshot photography.
• To investigate the impact of present technologies and cultural methods on snapshot photography

Topic 4: Evaluating the impact of visual storytelling on the changing landscape of mass media and society.

Research Aim: The research aims to evaluate the impact of visual storytelling on the changing landscape of mass media and society.

• To analyse the concept of applications of visual storytelling.
• To examine the alterations in the mass media and societal landscape due to the new forms of photography and presentation.
• To investigate the impact of visual storytelling on the changing landscape of mass media and society.

Topic 5: An investigation into the impact of mobile technology on the choices of photojournalism and its associated professional values in society.

Research Aim: The research aims to investigate the impact of mobile technology on the choices of photojournalism and its associated professional values in society.

• To analyse the impact of mobile technology on the scope and extent of photography.
• To investigate the photojournalism choices of invidious and the accepted professional societal values.
• To critically evaluate the impact of mobile technology on the choices of photojournalism and its associated professional values in society.

Topic no.1: photojournalism during Arab spring

Research Aim: Arab spring was a series of anti-govt protests that spread all around the Arab countries in the 2010s. The role of photographers was exceptionally crucial at that point when they were continuously informing the world about the ground realities of the conflict. The aim of the research is to study the role of photojournalists in disseminating accurate information during the Arab spring.

Topic no.2: Scope of photography in the age of social media

Research Aim: Photography was a supplementary hobby and interest, but today it is a full-fledged profession that many aspire to pursue. Photography has gained immense importance, especially in the age of the internet, given that it provides many channels for sharing. The main aim of the research would be to examine and evaluate the scope of photography in the age of social media.

Topic no.3: Photography and ethics

Research Aim: No matter what you take as a subject of photography, you must never avoid the basic ethical norms suggested for photography. The aim of the research will be to study different cases in which the photographers followed and violated the ethics to understand the consequences of each regard.

Topic no.4: Photography and the reflection of culture

Research Aim: Each photographer has his own style, which is usually influenced by many things. This research will study culture as one of the determining factors that affect the style of photography. The research will thoroughly explain the reflection of the photographer’s culture in his photography.

Topic no.5: Photography and advanced editing trend

Research Aim: There are many tools that help us make an image more appealing by making significant modifications. The research aims to explore and identify the impact of advanced editing software and tools on the essence of photography.

Topic no.6: Impact of photo manipulation and self-image

Research Aim: Artificial intelligence has gone so far ahead in advancement that it is able to do anything, merely anything. The prompt changes in the physical features while taking photos are exciting, but on the other hand, they are very harmful. People make themselves look appealing through filters, but when they look at themselves, in reality, they lose their self-esteem. The research will aim to study photo manipulation and its impacts on self-image.

Topic no.7: Art of photography in the 1800s

Research Aim: The main aim of the research would be to discover, understand, and evaluate the art of photography in the 1800s. It is evident that photography would be completely different back in those times, but how much different is a question that the research will address.

Also Read: How to Write Dissertation Aims and Objectives?

Topic no.8: Role of director of photography in a movie

Research Aim: When we watch a movie, we heap praises on the actors, story, and songs, but we do not realize the leading individual behind the lens who makes it look the way it does and connect to the audience. If the audience feels emotional, it is the art of camera work that makes a scene emotional, and it goes for all scenes such as dramatic, happy, and anxious.  The main aim of the research is to vastly study the role of the director of photography in a movie.

Topic no.9: Photojournalism during the pandemic

Research Aim: The current pandemic posed severe threats to humans economically, politically, and societaly. People were circumscribed to their homes due to the surging infected toll. The main aim of the research would be to find out how photojournalists documented covid-19.

Topic no.10: Instagram; a photo-sharing medium

Research Aim: The broad aim of the research would be to study and evaluate Instagram as one of the most popular photo-sharing mediums. It will explore and analyze the thriving trends and the nature of images that are considered instagrammable by photographers.

Topic no.11: Photography and storytelling

Research Aim: Photographs are not merely images but are capable of telling stories if they are being taken rightly. The researcher will take a sample of a few images and critically analyze how they are capable of delivering impactful stories. 

How Can ResearchProspect Help?

ResearchProspect writers can send several custom topic ideas to your email address. Once you have chosen a topic that suits your needs and interests, you can order for our dissertation outline service which will include a brief introduction to the topic, research questions , literature review , methodology , expected results , and conclusion . The dissertation outline will enable you to review the quality of our work before placing the order for our full dissertation writing service !

Topic no.12: Risks of wildlife photography:

Research Aim: While wildlife photography is one of the fascinating types of photography, it requires lots of guts and passion for pursuing. The research will identify the most common problems wildlife photographers face and what security services are offered to the photographers working for an organization.

Topic no.13: Photography vs. painting

Research Aim: The main aim of the research is to compare and contrast photography and painting and figure- out the similarities and differences. It will also determine the best one amongst them with respect to different variables such as depth, story, flexibility, etc.

Topic no.14: Trends in wedding photography

Research Aim: Wedding photography has improved and has become creatively advanced in the last few years. The aim of the research would be to identify and analyze the current trends in wedding photography and forecast the ones for the upcoming years.

Topic no.15: Nature photography:

Research Aim: Nature photography is a vast field that incorporates multiple types. The aim of the research is to study nature photography in detail and explore the features and techniques of each type. 

Topic no.16: Evolution of camera

Research Aim: Nowadays, we use our smartphone cameras; some years back,  digital cameras were commonly used, and in that way, it goes way back to giant cameras. The main of the research would be to critically analyze and evaluate the evolution of the camera over the period of time. 

Topic no.17: Photography lenses and specialties

Research Aim: Lenses are the hearts of cameras, and therefore, cameras are unuseful without lenses. The research will aim to check and evaluate the different types of lenses and offer true insights into their capabilities.

Topic no.18: Improvements required in photography

Research Aim: The research will aim to identify and discuss the major problems in photography that need to be addressed. The researcher can survey different photographers and figure out the improvements that they spire to see in the field of photography.

Topic no.19: Photo manipulation and their repercussions:

Research Aim: Photo alterations and manipulations have become very easy with the different tools and software. They,  on the high levels, are used for political gains and propaganda. The aim of the research would be to explain the repercussions of photo manipulations and alterations. The researcher can conduct case studies to find the most accurate results.

Topic no.20: War photography:

Research Aim: War photography is not less intimidating than wildlife photography; in fact, it is more dangerous. The aim of the research would be to explain photographs taken in war situations. The researcher can pick a couple of different wars from the recent timeline and provide critical analysis.

Conducting photography research can be one of the most exciting things, but when it comes to writing, students become dreadful. But do not worry, we have got your back. Whether you want a section of the dissertation to be written impeccably or the whole of it, we are here. Don’t wait; click here.

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Are you looking for unique and intriguing branding dissertation topics, ideas and topic examples? If yes, continue reading this article because it provides several branding dissertation topic suggestions for your consideration. 

Pick from our top 50 taxation dissertation topic ideas varying from laws in taxation to the effects of tax evasion to help you in your taxation dissertation

There are a wide range of topics in sports management that can be researched at the national and international levels. International sports are extremely popular worldwide, making sports management research issues very prominent as well.

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Photography Thesis Ideas

Micah mcdunnigan.

Graduate-level photography students, and sometimes undergraduates, culminate their program of instruction with a thesis. A thesis is a novel creation using tools the student acquired during his course of instruction. In photography, students use technical skills they have acquired, and concepts behind the form, to create a portfolio.

Explore this article

• Conveying a Story
• Beauty in Unexpected Places
• Understanding Emotions
• Photojournalism

1 Conveying a Story

Photography is not about simply capturing a snapshot of an objective reality. As students will have learned during their courses -- and probably realized before they started formally studying photography -- photography uses real-world images to convey the world as the photographer sees it. In this way, a photographer can tell a story by preparing a scene for his camera. Some photography students experiment with ways to tell stories with photographs as their thesis.

2 Beauty in Unexpected Places

Most people are familiar with conventional images of beauty: the picturesque landscape, the 20-something on the street, the touched-up photograph of the supermodel on a magazine cover. Leonard Nimoy, famous as an actor but also a photographer, undertook a project to show beauty in photographs of women who were overweight but comfortable with their body image. Students can follow in this vein to seek out beauty in unexpected places, and capture it using what they have learned in photography class.

3 Understanding Emotions

Art expresses the infinite range of human emotions. These include basic contentment and fear of the unknown, to more abstract notions such as awe and the sublime. Photography students working on their thesis can experiment with expressing emotions with photographs. Different items evoke these emotions in different individuals, just as different individuals notice different items in any given situation. Students can use what they've learned to prepare scenes, or simply photograph everyday situations, and use their technical skills to emphasize the scene's elements that evoke the photographer's emotions. By emphasizing these elements in the photographs, they can communicate what the photographer felt, and why.

4 Photojournalism

Not all photography is purely artistic. Photojournalists use their skills to capture real-life scenes that tell, and supplement, very real stories. Photojournalists -- especially those covering chaotic or violent situations -- do not always have the freedom or ability to frame scenes that other photographers could. Students specializing in photojournalism can choose to do their thesis on ways in which photojournalists can capture discrete events amid fluid scenes. Students can use protests and demonstrations as a laboratory for these techniques.

• 1 SMITH Magazine: Full On With Leonard Nimoy
• 2 Academy of Art University: Graduate Student Showcase -- School of Photography
• 3 Digital Photography School: Telling Stories With Photos

About the Author

Micah McDunnigan has been writing on politics and technology since 2007. He has written technology pieces and political op-eds for a variety of student organizations and blogs. McDunnigan earned a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from the University of California, Davis.

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TSA Now Accepts Digital IDs From These Nine States

At more than two dozen U.S. airports, TSA security checkpoints will accept a digital driver’s license in lieu of a physical ID—but only if it was issued by one of these states.

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More than two dozen major airports in nearly half of all US states now accept digital ID in lieu of physical driver's licenses.

N early 70 million Americans are now eligible to fly within the U.S. with a digital ID stored on their phones.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Tuesday that it now accepts mobile driver licenses (mDLs) issued by New York, the ninth state whose digital IDs can be read by the agency’s Credential Authentication Technology (CAT-2) readers.

“We are pleased to be able to add this state-of-the-art digital ID to the list of acceptable IDs at our security checkpoints,” says Robert Duffy, TSA’s Federal Security Director for LaGuardia Airport. “Travelers who want to take advantage of this new capability will find that their New York mobile ID is a convenient option when going through the security process.”

To obtain a TSA-compliant digital ID, New Yorkers can download the New York Mobile ID app from the App Store or Google Play to their smartphone. Residents of New York can obtain a New York Mobile ID at no additional cost as long as they have a valid license, permit, or non-driver ID card issued by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Paperless boarding passes have been around for nearly two decades, but the TSA and individual states haven’t kept pace in issuing mobile identification. The agency only began testing digital ID acceptance at select checkpoints in early 2022.

How To Fly With A Digital Driver’s License

To use a digital driver’s license at a TSA checkpoint, your flight must be departing from one of the more than two dozen U.S. airports where the agency’s CAT-2 readers available at security checkpoints.

“Digital credentials are the future of identity verification,” says Mark J.F. Schroeder, New York’s DMV Commissioner. “This is an exciting way to prove who you are without having to dig through your wallet or purse to find your physical document. Rather than handing over your physical ID with lots of personal information, the mobile ID gives you greater control over what personal data you share, making it both more convenient and much safer for you.”

Travelers can scan their mobile ID with the CAT-2 reader to validate their identity. (CAT-2 readers can also scan REAL ID-compliant physical driver licenses.) These devices snap a real-time picture of you and compare it with your digital ID using facial recognition technology. Through a secure internet connection to TSA’s Secure Flight system, the units are also able to verify that you are ticketed for air travel that day, so there’s no need to show a boarding pass to the TSA officer. After the transaction, “your photo and biographic information will be deleted from these devices,” according to the TSA website.

TSA scanners accept both mobile IDs and REAL ID-compliant physical driver's licenses.

Will The TSA Accept Your Digital Driver’s License?

Not any digital driver’s license works; it must be issued by one of the nine states whose mobile IDs are compliant with TSA technology. For example, travelers can’t simply store a photo of their physical driver’s license in Apple Wallet or Google Wallet and head to the airport.

In March 2022, Arizona teamed up with Apple to become the first state to deploy a new technology that allows passengers to use their state-issued mobile driver’s license or mobile identification card in Apple Wallet to verify their identity for airport security screening purposes. Since then, Colorado , Maryland , and Georgia have since joined Arizona. (All four states also allow storage in a Google Wallet.)

The TSA also began accepting mobile IDs from Utah in March 2023, Iowa in October 2023 and California in December 2023.

Last month, Louisiana became the eighth state to have its mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) accepted at TSA checkpoints with digital ID readers nationwide. Louisianans who download the state’s LA Wallet app to their smart phones can now use it for identity verification during the screening process at airport checkpoints equipped with CAT-2 readers.

The mDL program is not to be confused with TSA PreCheck , a separate paid, expedited screening program available at roughly 200 airports across the country where travelers are pre-screened for their security risk. TSA PreCheck uses biometrics to verify a passenger’s identity during the enrollment process.

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