G'day Rob

well yes you are in the right spot for info about RMSP. I am sorry I can not coment on AI as it did not exist when I went there. ( I actually had to go to their web site and see what it was)

As far as SI is concerned I can only tell you my experience. I went to SI with 14 years experience in the entertainment industry as a senior technician and wanted a change. I had looked at a number of other schools and financially for what was on offer this was far and away the best for me. Now I am Australian but I had been working in Florida for Disney when I found an article about RMSP. That was it for me I knew this was where I wanted to go. Now for me as far as the course was concerned I found the first half of the course was revision for me. The second half of the course was awesome. The instructors were the defining characteristic for me. They could see where I was at and gave me extra challenges like photographing a sun set without including the sky... What the ?????? but it worked and worked really well. I adored the course but I consider the saff friends and would move back to Missoula in about 6 secondsd, ok as long as it took me to pack my cameras and studio. It is truely a life changing place. Even if you take the course and decide not to persue life as a photographer I can not think of a reason not to take this course, if for no other reason than to spend summer in Montana.

I am curently working in Hong Kong in a dual role as a Technical Director and a commercial Photographer. I was offered this job after being here shooting an Electronic Press Kit for a corporation that is a major contractor for the Beijing olympics.

Feel free to contact me at chippychu@hotmail.com if you would like to ask me any more direct questions. Hope this has helped and not confused you!

Cheers Chippy

This question is perhaps better answered by more recent alums, seeing as how I am now 5 years out and attended only SI (DI either started that year or the next... can't remember!), but I'll take a crack at it!

My initial reaction to your question, not seeing any samples of your work, is to suggest that SI may not be necessary for you. While SI was a wonderful experience full of bonding and learning new things, my feelings about the program (to echo what Chippy said) was that it was geared too much towards the lowest common denominator -- the truly novice photographer. While it was great to have a mix of students that ranged in both skill level as well as age (beginner to experienced, 20-65 years old), I felt that a lot of time was spent bringing everyone up to the same intermediate level before moving into more advanced studio work. The beginning assignments that covered the basics of exposure, depth of field, composition, and more were all able to be done individually, but when we moved to studio work (portrait and product), we worked in teams, so we individually got less time than I would have liked to have really gotten a handle on working with studio hot lights and strobes. What made it harder for us in 2002, is that at least 90% of us were working with film, so the delay between shooting and seeing your results made it harder to connect your setup with your resulting image and to see how the changes in setup changed the light. Also, few of us were going to go home and have the same studio equipment to continue to practice and learn with, so it was hard to retain what we learned about the equipment and everything. If we could have gotten through the basics quicker to spend more time on the advanced stuff, that would have been more to my liking.

I didn't consider myself advanced at all coming into the program, but looking back now, I realize I had a pretty solid photography base already. I had taken several semesters in college, covering everything from beginning black-and-white with darkroom up to a digital photo retouching course. Additionally, my degree program was in graphic arts, so my computer skills in Photoshop and everything were beyond what was taught in SI at the time. Despite all this prior experience, I did learn a lot in SI. All of my previous education had been with an old manual camera shooting in black-and-white... I had had limited experience shooting color slides for class assignments, and SI gave me an opportunity to work more in that medium. I also had no prior experience with flash photography (other than of the point-and-shoot variety) and no studio experience. So the nice thing about having that knowledge base coming in was that I had more time to spend on improving technique and thinking about composition, where maybe others were still getting a grasp of basic concepts.

So back to you... what I don't know about SI today is how the widespread use of digital SLRs has now changed the curriculum. They may now be able to move through the basics quicker, and I am sure the learning experience in the studio is improved by the ability to have real-time results. I also don't know how much the addition of the AI phase may have impacted what is covered in SI. But if you truly are experienced, you may want to think about taking one or more of the 7-10 day professional studies courses that run between SI and AI and then going in to AI. If you feel your camera and photography skills are pretty good and you know a lot about exposure and filters and light, and your computer skills are pretty good, having worked on your own with Photoshop and Lightroom, then you could pick a couple Prof Studies courses that would address weak areas for you and then move into the Advanced session, particularly if they have restructured SI and moved some of the more advanced topics completely to AI that we only touched on in SI.

If you have some samples of your work that we could look at, we may be able to advise you on where your skill level falls with respect to the program curriculum. While SI is great and I think it is beneficial to anyone who goes through the program, I do know that it is quite a financial investment (more so now even) and with the ever increasing number of workshops and extended programs, one has to spend their money and time wisely. The cost of SI/DI/AI is more than just the listed tuition... there is equipment and supplies and living expenses and time away from earning income. I knew a year in advance that I wanted to attend SI, so I lived at home for a year after graduating from college and worked and saved as much money as I could. I had very little equipment before SI... just a hand-me-down manual Pentax camera and a couple lenses, so I got the supply list early and asked for items from it for birthday, Christmas, etc and I bought used equipment whenever I could. In the end, I believe the grand total of my investment for the summer was about $15,000 (1/3 of that being tuition). Some got through the program cheaper, some spent more... I was probably average. A lot of it depended on how much additional equipment and supplies you ended up purchasing over the summer... my big purchases were a macro lens and a used film scanner and photo printer, but some people bought studio lights and medium format systems and first digital SLRs, and some signed up for additional workshops and photo outings. Others were very cost conscious and only bought what they really needed as assignments came up (the supply list they send is a list of all possible equipment/supplies you might want, not what you really need to complete the assignments, I found out). The best advice I got was to meticulously document every purchase made in preparation for SI and made during the summer... including food purchases and mileage/travel costs. Almost all of it was tax deductible as continuing/professional education expenses (I think food and travel and living expenses were deductible up to 50%).

So now that this "comment" has turned in to an essay, I hope it is helpful to you. Like Chippy, feel free to contact me if you have some more specific questions. Hopefully some more recent grads will chime in as well to comment on the more recent status of the programs.

-Erin

I went in 2003. I was pretty good at some things already. However, I got a lot better. No doubt Erin has some valid points, there will be times when, if you could design the program for yourself, you'd want more of one thing and less of another. I am a business person, and that part of the program did nothing for me. But I really liked the breadth of topics presented, the variety of instructors, and the overall atmosphere.

As a result of my improved skills, among other things, I'm now much, much better. I am still only a part-time photographer; I've kept my original career. But this book I'm about to make will be good. I'll post another image or two in a sec.