The United States’ current economic situation has resulted in budget cuts all around the country. Because of these cuts, Angelia Perkins’ photo studio has come up with other ways to address the budget crunch.
The Lawrence Photo Alliance, a group that meets monthly at the Lawrence Art Center to discuss photo techniques and photos, has agreed to help as much as they can. They work with students on projects and give helpful tips.
Also, photo studio students are selling their artwork to raise money for the department. Students find sponsors and sell their images to them for $50. Sponsors can be anyone — friends, family, teachers, businesses: anyone willing to support the cause.
“We talked to people who were willing to help the arts because we are struggling to get supplies,” senior Carlin Francis said.
Perkins said that going out into the community helps students develop “soft-skills.” It helps students get ready for college and teaches communication skills. Even though photo studio students have to get sponsors, some of them do get a little shaken when it comes to their sponsor’s opinion.
“Anyone can snap a picture, but it’s about the composition,” senior Carrie Klemencic said. “So it’s just really about your opinion.”
This process of selling artwork can be a little intimidating, but the rewards are plentiful. Through this system, photo studio has raised close to $1,500. This money goes back to the department, and if there is enough, it will be used to buy film and paper. Going out into the community and selling photos gets the student’s artwork exposed as well.
Not only are the photo studio students selling their artwork, they are selling their services as well.
The students are doing photo shoots for families. The cost is $50, no matter the size of the family. Typically, the shoot will take 30 minutes to one hour. The photographer can make minor changes to images, and then a student will give a disc back to the family. The family can then take the disk to Walgreens or another photo-card store and have the image put on a holiday
card. The student obtains his or her customers by, like with the sponsor program, going out into the real world. Customers can be anyone.
“It’s not like book knowledge. It’s real life experience,” Perkins said.
Photo shoots can be anywhere, as long as it does not take too long. Family photo shoots are not the only service that photo studio offers. They can photograph anything, as long as it is appropriate.
The solutions have proved helpful, but not all of the photo studio’s problems have been solved.
Students normally receive 40 sheets of photo paper for this course, but that number has been reduced to 20 this year.
“We’re more aware of re-using things and trying not to waste as much photo paper,” sophomore Wendy Hamm said.
After the student has used up his or her 20 sheets, the student must buy photo paper from a supplier such as Image Works. One problem arises. Some students cannot afford the extra photo paper, and that has presented a problem. District officials suggested assigning an alternate assignment, but Perkins says that is hard to do with photo studio, since the course is about taking photos.
With problem after problem, another roadblock came into view.
“Fifty percent is what we got in supplies,” Perkins said. “We could order absolutely no photo chemicals. We could only order half the film.”
Film plays an important roll in photography; after all, it is the surface on which the image is recorded. This year, students not only get half the film they normally would, but they only get 15 exposures instead of 24.
“Now that we have [fewer] chances to get those quality images, it makes it a lot tougher,” senior Dakota Summers said.
The supplies dilemma is not the only difficulty facing the class.
LHS and district staff had discussed adding another room to the photo department. This room would be used to work with digital images. In the ever growing technological society, digital images have become the current style. This plan has been put on hold because of the budget cuts.
“We’re trained to be more digital, but until we have a classroom to work on digital, we’re not able to grow with what the industry requires because we don’t have the budget for that,” Perkins said.
These cuts were essential to make due to the decreasing budget. Budget cuts or not, everyone must find a way to cope. Although their sponsorship system does not solve all of their problems, the photo studio students have displayed an effective example of a dealing with budget cuts and scarce supplies.