[MUSIC] It's time to meet the professors, and I guess we'll start with me. Well, here's a photograph that shows my Boy Scout merit badge. When I was 12 years old, I earned the merit badge in photography and also the merit badge in citizenship in the United States. Those two things have been very important to me for my whole life, actually. I went on to college, Syracuse University, earned two bachelor's degrees. One in political science, that's one side of me, and the other side in photo journalism, that's the other side. After I graduated, I became a taxi driver in New York City to earn a living and occupy myself, while I was making photographs down in New York and trying to figure out what to do next. I went to law school, actually, after that, and studied law for about two years, and then I decided the other side of my brain really wants me more than the left side. So I walked over to the college of visual and performing arts at Syracuse University, and started my studies in photography at the masters degree level. 1978, Michigan State University offered me a job. And now, here I am, teaching you. My very first photo book was, Edward Steichen's autobiography, actually. A Life in Photography, published in 1963. It was a really, really important thing for me. This man was incredible in terms of the career that he had throughout so many iterations of that word, photography, and the profession, very much of an influence on me in terms of work ethic and approaching photography as something you could do from a lot of different directions. I'm either a dilettante or a virtuoso. That'll be up to you to figure out and decide for yourself. I read constantly, and a lot of it is about photography and I've got a suggestion for you. Go to loeildelaphotographie, sign up and every morning you'll get an email with some wonderful, amazing, interesting news about photography from around the world. Had a career at Michigan State in the art department doing any number of things. I published a book, actually Prentice Hall published my book, Color Photography, our created photographs for Fortune 100 companies, nonprofits, United Auto Workers, just about everybody. And I've had exhibits in major museums and the tiniest of galleries. You can learn a lot more about me at this website, which is the site for the Art Department of Michigan State. You can learn even more, if you care to, by going to peterglendinning.com. And whether I'm photographing trees or photographing people, just about anything else, my photographs are driven by a curiosity about what lies beneath the surface. It can be expressed by showing the surface. That's true, whether I was making the official photograph for the governor of the State of Michigan, Jon Engler, which I did, or this portrait of a farm worker who happens to be a Christian Pastor on the weekends. The highest honor that I received professionally was being named among the best of 2015. By the American Society for Media Photographers for the series entitled, My Paris. You can read a lengthy interview about me and by me and of me and learn more at this site. ASMP is the premier advocate for photographer's copyrights and professional practices. Throughout the world. And I recommend that you look them up too. The main thing I'd like you to know about me is that, just like you, there are times when I struggle to get control of my camera and get in touch with what's essential, so I can make pictures that will convey the expressions that I feel are important. I still consider myself a student and I have a passion to create that keeps me motivated to solve problems. And I'm sure, you do, too. It's a real privilege to be teaching you in this format. Thank you for joining with us in this community of learners and for helping yourself and others grow throughout the course, as you contribute your photographs and your comments in our review sessions. [MUSIC] >> Hello there, I'm Mark Sullivan and I'll be one of the instructors of the course. Before diving into the work on photography, I want to give you a short overview of my own history as a photographer. It's a bit of a winding history and has another unusual twist. Over the last 25 years of my activity as a photographer, I've also been a professional composer, writing music and teaching at a university. The story starts in senior year of high school. I borrowed my father's Yashica DSLR film camera and started taking pictures around the St. Louis area, where I lived. That was the beginning. Here are a few of the first shots from that year of photography. This is a scene behind the restaurant, where I worked as dishwasher and is one of the first rolls of photographs that I took when I was 17 years old. There are two other shots here. One, from the same location of a piece of farm equipment, which at the time I treated as an abstract. The other is a shot in a parking lot with some friends of mine that I tried to put into a kind of urban pose. And then, one final one from a few months later, which is of one of those famous happenings in a city park. I kept on taking photographs and about six months later, I went on camping trip to Canada. I took one photograph, but when I took it, I thought it would be quite special. But when I had the film developed and looked at the negative, it actually didn't look so good. Lots of dark areas and almost nothing visible. It wasn't until later, when I saw it on a light table that I realized what I thought when I took the shot was right. It was something special. What I saw, convinced me that I wanted to keep taking photographs and now 45 years later, I still am. After entering college, I took photography courses for two years. I learned how to use an SLR, single lens reflex, the predecessor of the current DSLR. And I also learned how to use medium and large format cameras. I love the dark room. I spent many nights there, developing negatives and printing. There was no Internet and no social media for sharing, so usually you had a few conversations with other photographers and among friends, and maybe at some point you got an exhibition. If you worked at it, you could get your work around, but it wasn't anywhere near as easy, as it is nowadays. I never dreamed a day would come, when you could get your work out around the world in a few minutes. Not long after that, I got my first paying job as a photographer, documenting a theater production at my college. I was able to borrow a medium format film camera, a twin lens reflex Roloflex, wonderful camera. And I also borrowed an upperclassman's film camera, a Pentex SLR. At this point, everything was still done with film. Photographing rehearsals and run through of the play, presented some new and strikingly different challenges from taking shots of nature, shots of the street, or even in the studio. Just to jump back to the present for a moment, I'd like to show some images from that time that demonstrates something interesting. Even in the beginning of your work, it's possible to take meaningful photographs. For example, these two images here, were shot in the first two years of my work with photography. About ten years ago, I scanned them and posted them on social media. Each has now received multiple thousands of visits and many, many comments. Many more, than some of my most recent pictures. So as you develop as a photographer, you might create works of high quality, even though you're just beginning to learn. And you'll notice, that no matter how much experience you acquire, each image you take, will not always be a stunning, distinctive success. After working for a couple of years, I returned to the university, but this time, to pursue another passion, music. After completing two advanced degrees, for the next 30 years or so, I developed a career as a music composer. Through all this time, and even when I became a professor, I continue taking photographs and was able to integrate studying the work of a wide range of photographers in photography. Not only into my free time, but also into courses I though. One, on Arts Relationship to Society and another interdisciplinary course on the Arts in the America's. As an artist, I also took part in a wide range of interdisciplinary projects, stretching across computer science, cybernetics, rhetoric, physics, cinema, poetry, and yes, photography. And here and there, now and again, over and over, I found time for photography. Another source of inspiration during this time came from travel. During these three decades, I had the chance to make several shooting trips to various parts of Puerto Rico to Portugal to England and Austria. And in the last three years, to Cuba. Travel is one way to inspire the desire to photograph. Often the lack of familiarity, allows us to see with fresh eyes and notice things others ignore. Taking time to create shooting tours while traveling, was another way for me to keep active as a photographer. Various things happened that little by little, led me to become evermore involved with photography. I became increasingly involved with artists working across media, some working in several media. I work with a film maker, who was active as a photographer. I work with a rock musician, who became a music photographer. And more importantly, I began working with young people who went from a photography project, to a film project, to a music project without any anxiety about who they were. Whether they were a photographer, or a film maker, or a composer. I began to think there might be a fluid boundary for various kinds of art making. I had a chance to get a film scanner at this point and I spent about a year and a half digitizing the negatives I had created over the last 25 years, which I had kept in boxes. Disorganized, but mostly in good shape. The process of digitizing these negatives, not only forced me to organize them, but it gave me a chance to look over all that I had done. I was generally quite amazed and determined that I should find a way to connect with the potential I saw there and to begin afresh to create photographs. Around this time, social networking exploded the range of contacts. Suddenly, I began posting more and more, both my older work and my current work were getting responses from an international audience. This dynamic began to amplify and transform with and the responses that I received from many people and many walks of life, encouraged me and inspired me. And that's still happening. And now in recent years, I've had the chance on several occasions to teach photography courses at the university. I enjoyed the teaching and the students and found the title even inspired me, seeing with fresh eyes and a little experimentation. Another exciting project involved each person making a photography book. The results were amazing. You'll have the chance at some point in the future to make a book and there may, at some point, be a course that allows you to do so. In some ways, even though not as extensive or detailed, the response to images posted on social media is like the response you get from another person who views your photographs and tells you things about them. Each of the images here has received more responses than I ever could have dreamed of on social media. And that goes to show that sometimes you might be very surprised with what images resonate with other people. Sometimes, an image might resonate more with others, than it does with you. But we'll get to that later, when we turn to looking at ways to go about responding to photographs, both your own and those of others. For now, let's say the history is up to date. [MUSIC]
