Exposure

Photo of the track, Peck Grandstand and Weston Field by Chris M. Chandler, Williams Class of 2014
Photo by Chris M. Chandler '14

At 4 o’clock on a January morning, Chris M. Chandler ’14 embraced the cold weather (along with the hand warmers in the pockets of his coat) and walked from his room in Currier Quad to the track, carrying his digital camera and a tripod.

“I’ve always loved to take star pictures,” says Chandler, a sophomore from Longmeadow, Mass. On this particular morning he planned to combine this love with an assignment for his Winter Study class, “Landscape Photography.”

As his instructor Nicholas Whitman says of the photograph, pictured here: “It’s a beauty! … This is an example of photography expanding our vision.”

Whitman, a Williamstown-based photographer, has taught “Landscape Photography” each January since 2004. His 15 or so students vary in ability and experience and spend their time in the photo lab, local museums and locations around the Purple Valley.

While learning how to take beautiful photographs is the likely goal of many of his students, Whitman’s own intention goes beyond building skills. He aims to “sensitize them to light, time, the land, sky and weather. And to the emotional response they bring to the scene.”

You can read more about “Landscape Photography” in the March 2012 Williams Alumni Review. (Click here for the text-only version.)

Check out more student photography from the class here. And for a list of Winter Study courses offered in 2012, click here.