COLLEGE OF IMAGING ARTS AND SCIENCES 
School of Photographic Arts and Sciences
 
 

ANNUAL FACULTY REPORT AND EVALUATION OF PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES 
for the period of December 1, 2004 through November 30, 2005.
 

Name: ANDREW DAVIDHAZY 
Department: IMAGING AND PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNOLOGY 
Highest Degree & date: M.F.A., 1968 
Date of first appointment to RIT : 07-01-66 
Rank: PROFESSOR 
Date present rank achieved: 1986

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REVIEW of 2004-2005 PLAN of WORK and 
Proposed PLAN of WORK for 2006-2007 and coming year(s).





Some general comments: The Imaging and Photographic Technology department is currently under a state of stress caused by a number of factors. Major among these is the departure of one faculty member and the necessity of finding, identifying and to some extent, training, adjunct faculty who hopefully will only be adjunct on a temporary basis. In addition, the looming loss of a one-year appointment faculty member is something that has also contributed to raising the anxiety level within the department.  These are major issue that will need addressing during the coming months but which have been having an impact on planning and development affecting several areas of the Imaging and Photographic Technology program and department. On a positive note the addition of a full-time faculty member to oversee the Materials and Processes of Photography course was welcome and has generally progressed well. A major problem looms, however, in this area as well, and it is expected that this past year and the end of the 2005-6 academic year will serve as a useful “training ground” for this faculty member and whatever supporting “cast” can be secured since next year the M&P course will have to serve 300+ students as M&P has been moved back to the first year for all BFA program students. The plan is to provide the principal faculty member with assistance for every lab period that M&P is scheduled for next year. More concerns are listed at the bottom of the document. No sense in giving it all away at the top!

The changes enumerated above have had for the last few years and will continue to have an impact on the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences in general.

Anyway, as in the past I will again be following the format presented to us by the College to the best of my ability. It continues to be difficult to enumerate and properly categorize certain activities and some items probably will be mentioned in unexpected locations in the document below. Again, if you find such errors, please bring them to my attention so I might fix the document. And if you happen to know of any items I omitted, incorrectly summarized, duplicated, included (when I should not have), overly embellished, etc. I again would welcome your assistance in making this a more accurate and self-reflective document. Thank you.

Now, let's go on to the forms:

1. Teaching/Advising

a. List courses taught (including credit hours, enrollment and any TA support)

ACCOUNTING  OF  TEACHING   ACTIVITIES

Winter 2004-05 (032) 
 course title                                                                   course number    credit hours   enrollment

1. SPECIAL EFFECTS PHOTOGRAPHY                  2076 408 01               4                 14 
2. PHOTOISNTRUMENTATION SEMINAR            2076 431 01               4                   9 
3. PHOTO TECH COOP                                               2076 499 01               0                   2


SPRING 2004-05 (033)
course title                                                                    course number    credit hours   enrollment

1. SURVEY OF NON-CONVEN. IMAGING              2076 503 01               3                 11
2. SPECIAL EFFECTS PHOTOGRAPHY                   2076 408 01               4                 21
3. PHOTOGRAPHY EXTENSIONS (graduate)           2066 753 70               4                   2
4. PHOTO TECH COOP                                               2076 499 01               0                   4


SUMMER 2003-04 (034) 
course title                                                                     course number    credit hours   enrollment

1. PHOTO TECH COOP                                               2076 499 01                0                 14

Fall   2004-05 (041)
course title                                                                     course number    credit hours   enrollment

1. HIGH SPEED/TIME LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHY     2076 511 01               3                 19 
2. INDEPENDENT STUDY                                          2076 553 01                4                   1
3. PHOTO TECH COOP                                               2076 499 01                0                   1

1) As in past years I have never used a TA or GA in any of my classes except when I help out with the Materials and Processes of Photography course on an occasional basis. This past year I only helped out with M&P when the primary faculty were ill or otherwise unavailable. I did do one partial week of M&P in the Fall of 2005-6 . Last Winter and Spring I did play a minor role of assistant with the "mycourses.rit.edu" that we instituted to "run" the M&P course workshop reports, quizzes, etc.

2) Over the Summer I also look after the Coop program for the program which about 12 Imaging and Photographic Technology students enrolled. This is not really a big deal as all I do is to help students register once they have left campus, follow up with the employer evaluations, and turn in grade reports.

While I have not kept a detailed listing and accounting of all the advising meetings I have had with students over the past year I think I have continued to provide individual and group advising to all students in the IPT program on an ongoing and regular basis. I do this through a variety of means. One of the most obvious is the extensive use I make of my departmental students distribution list. I think that the IPT department continues being a leader in establishing and maintaining connections to its students and disseminating information through the use of email. To my dismay, however, the use or impact of email communications with students has somehow become significantly less interactive and effective than in the past. Instant Messaging is where “it”  is at these days. I have signed up but find it difficult to use effectively.

b. Given your 2003-2004 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of teaching/advising. Be sure to include an analysis of student evaluations indicating areas of strength and weaknesses as well as actions taken to address concerns. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request. (Depending on what your plan of work called for, examples of such documentation could include one or more of the following: student performance data, student evaluations, curricula/syllabi for new or revised courses, advising logs/evaluations)

Last year I stated: Try to improve the state of digital high speed photography instruction in the High Speed / Time Lapse Photography course and explore digital alternatives in the Special Effects Photography course. My plan is to develop presentation approaches that utilize digital methods in order to perform the “mundane” job of recording in-camera effects instead of relying on Polaroid materials. However, this is not to say that film will be eliminated from the course. To the contrary, the goal is to encourage the students understand state-of-the-art in-camera techniques but to use whatever processor equipment they can get their hands on to demonstrate experience and mastery of these effects.

If possible refine the sensitometric velocimetry laboratory exercise and continue to explore the educational possibilities of instruction through students involvement in debunking and even the creation of hoaxes and misleading or fake images. The purpose is not to mislead but to understand the process of creation and analysis of visual data that may lead to incorrect interpretation. The principle is that by knowing how fakes are made one learns to identify them. 

I plan to remain actively engaged with the students in the IPT program as the advisor to individual students and the "spiritual" advisor to all IPT students. Do this through a combination of email activities, social event organization such as evening pizza/movie  parties both at school and in my home, outings of various kinds, participation in student organized activities, institution of a photo contest, etc.
 
Unfortunately I failed to improve on digital high speed photography instruction as my plans to garner support from the industry did not yield any positive results. This was in spite of the fact I attended and presented a paper at a major conference dedicated to the general topic of photoinstrumentation.  Also, equipment that I was under the impression would be donated by NASA Glenn Research Center never materialized. I did introduce the topic by way of lectures but lacking hands-on experience is a major disappointment for Tech students.
The Special Effects course again went well as in the past. We did not have the Better Light linear array, scanning, camera  back available to the students as I loaned it to Prof. Sampat who used it to good effect with his courses in Color Management and Fine Art reproduction. Instead I emphasized traditional photographic techniques and introduced a couple of new topics and experiences to the students in this course. This included Polarization Photography, Stroboscopic Photography and light “slave” construction.

I have continued to encourage my students to use a web-based evaluation service at http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/. I don’t know what my current “ratings” are there but I seem to be doing OK in terms of level of difficulty, helpfulness and overall quality.

An additional evaluation process that tends to yield useful feedback from students who have taken my courses is one that I distribute to all “graduates” of my courses during the previous year. This lets them provide truly voluntary feedback and under conditions of total anonymity. Again, the feedback (albeit limited in number but I believe that makes it that much more significant as only students who really feel strongly about the process return their feedback forms)  that I received in this manner essentially still corroborates past instructor evaluation mechanisms much like like year. This is that students generally find me knowledgeable, approachable and helpful but sometimes lacking in organization. I think this latter fault is most evident in my Photoinstrumentation Seminar, which is a seminar-patterned course. While I take great pains to describe the objectives and the plan for the course at the beginning I think that, even though mostly seniors, the students expect a more "by the numbers" course rather than one where innovation, unpredictability, curiosity and serendipity are integral to the experience.

I was very fortunate last year in having Emily Atoine at the helm of TPSA (and the joint chapter of SPIE). In addition there was an orderly transition to the new TPSA leadership and Ariel Schlam is doing a great job this year as president of TPSA/SPIE. We started the year off with several interesting and welcoming events directed primarily at the freshman class. On Saturday, September 3, 2005 all 1st year students were invited out to an ethnic restaurant and treated for dinner. On September 11th I hosted all IPT students for breakfast at my home (about 10 showed up. I worked with TPSA in organizing and holding several pizza/movie nights in Tech Alley and also subsidized their tickets to a space-themed 3D movie in the Fall of 2005. Over the course of last year I organized several such (4-6?) evening pizza plus movie plus raffle nights. The quality of the movies chosen for such occasions has improved significantly!

For next year my plan of work vis-a-vis teaching and advising is to:  See if there is some way to provide instruction at low cost in the area of digital high speed photography. Given the fact that solid fuel model rocket engines seem to offend and cause discomfort to some of my colleagues on the floor next year I will conduct any experiments that involve such experiments over the weekends or use simulations. In fact, the situation is such that I will consider discontinuing all unusual high speed events and make the High Speed course more of a “book” course eliminating hands-on experiences with truly high speed events. At this time we are the only university in the country or the world where some experiments such as are currently included in my high speed course are conducted.

I will hopefully give “sensitometric velocimetry” another chance and try to refine the technique and publish at least preliminary results beyond my website.  This past Fall (and this Winter as well) I was unable to secure enough students to run the Photoinstrumentation Seminar course. Hopefully the situation will improve next year but with dwindling student numbers in the program it becomes harder and harder to fill elective courses – unless they deal with computers, their application in imaging and color management issues.

If photoinstrumentation attracts a small number of students I plan to continue to explore the educational possibilities of instruction through students involvement in debunking and even the creation of hoaxes and misleading or fake images. The purpose is not to mislead but to understand the process of creation and analysis of visual data that may lead to incorrect interpretation. The principle is that by knowing how fakes are made one learns to identify them. 

As before I plan to remain actively engaged with the students in the IPT program as the advisor to individual students and the "spiritual" advisor to all IPT students. I plan to do this through a combination of email activities, social event organization such as evening pizza/movie  parties both at school and in my home, outings of various kinds, participation in student organized activities, institution of a photo contest, etc.
 

2. Scholarship/Creative Activity

Given your 2003-2004 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of scholarship/creative activity. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request. (Examples of such documentation could include summaries of one or more of the following: published articles, editor's response to unpublished material, exhibition reviews, reviewer's response to submitted grant proposals, consulting outcomes.)

My proposed plan for this past year was: Well ... Continue to remain connected with technical professional groups such as the IS&T and the SPIE and although Iíd like to prepare another  paper for presentation at one of these group's national conferences I am not sure I have one in me at this time. The "Sensitometric Velocimetry" topic may be something I can work on. I plan on continuing to produce photographs that have scientific validity as well as aesthetic qualities. I plan on trying to make the exhibition of High Speed and Technical photographs available to other audiences. I also will continue to make my images accessible and available for a variety of purposes through the widespread use of the WWW as a tool of image availability dissemination.

In VERY general terms, especially since my plan statement was not too ambitious as I reread it this year, I think I pretty much met the stated goals as set forth last year.

I was awarded the Fellowship of the International Society of Optical Engineering at the
the 50th Annual Conference of the Society that was held in San Diego in August 2005.

I  presented a paper at the Art+Math=X International Conference that was held at the University of Colorado in Boulder from June 2-5, 2005. My topic was "Scanning Imaging Processes" and was presented on June 5, 2005. This conference was part of the Special Year in Art and Mathematics and was organized by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Colorado.

A collection of 25 of my high speed and scientific photographs was exhibited at the 50th Annual Convention of the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) held in San Diego, CA from 2-4 of August 2005. The response from the hosts of the exhibition was very positive.

I also presented this collection of high speed and technical at the Science Museum of Virginia at the invitation of Sonya Wolen, swolen@smv.org, where my photographs are on exhibit from Sept. 2005 until February 2006. . The response from Sonya Wolen, the host of the exhibition,  was very positive.

One of my photographs was included in a group exhibition held at the Impromptu Gallery located in Huntington, NY. The theme was “The Human Form” and it was on exhibit from September 2 through October 9, 2005. Curator/Director was Bob Mitchell, email: bob@steppingstonegallery.com

As I stated above, my interest in developing the topic of sensitometric velocimetry floundered and I was unable to pull the topic together into a significant technical paper.

Anyway, salient activities from last year are mentioned below and elaborated on further on.

My photographs were included individually in several books but I don't have a ready list of them all. I collaborated with Oxford Press and Cambridge Press and several other publishers typically providing them with physics related images for use in textbooks.

Again this year, briefly and mindful of the fact that an accurate listing of every event, project or contribution throughout the course of the year could be a huge task and unless done with excruciating and painstaking observance to detail is bound to have left out significant items, hereafter follow some records of activities that might fall under the above umbrella classification:

Additional Professional Presentations and Publications:

More of my articles were published in various 2005 issues of the Newsletter of the Atlantic Chapter of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. One of them was: was published in the February 2005 issue. "Camera for Panoramic Photographic Lampshades and More" appeared on pp 17-21 of the publication. If you are interested you can look them up and download PDF versions of all my articles over the past year on the website of the Atlantic Chapter of the Royal Photographic Society at: http://www.photo.net/users/rps-atlantic.org/news.html

My recent work with mechanical stroboscopes was featured in the "You can do it!" column of the October 2005 issue of Popular Photography, the world's largest imaging magazine. Under the heading of Freeze Frame my illustrated tutorial on simplified stroboscopic photography with digital cameras appeared on pp. 73-75 of the publication.

In the June 2005 issue of Popular Photography magazine, in the Letters to the Editor, I had a brief comment and one of my high speed photographs of a bullet exploding a tomato.

A bullet smashing through a tomato photograph of mine was contributed and included in: Physics for Game Programmers by Grant Palmer, a ?? press publication, on page 358 Fig. 12-1.
I have a copy of book received May 12, 2005

One of my photographs became the cover image of a new book published by the American Mathematical Society. "Heads or Tails: An Introduction to Limit Theorems in Probability" by Emmanuel Lesigne is concerned with probability and the cover image depicts the flight of a coin toss made with a stroboscopic technique. The letter from Edward Dunne, Editor, Book Program, AMS, states: "Dear Andy, Thank you again for creating and providing the excellent strobe photograph of a coin toss. The picture makes the cover quite exciting. I am pleased to inform you that you will receive, under separate cover, a complimentary copy of "Heads or Tails". This volume is Number 28 in our Student Mathematical Library series. Regards, Edward Dunne"

Here is a reference to photographs of mine published in Italy: “I am a student at the Institute of Optics. I recently have been in Trieste, where I am acquainted to Ettore Panizon of the science museum "Immaginario Scientifico". He gave me a copy of the medical review "Medico e bambino" ("Doctor and child") which contains an article based on your photographs, with the recommendation to deliver it to you. So if you want to give me an appointment, I will bring the review to your office. Regards, Giovanni Piredda” sent by: Giovanni Piredda piredda@optics.rochester.edu

My stroboscopic photograph of a coin toss was included on the cover of a statistic related book published by the American Mathematical Society. Here is a bit of the transaction: “Professor Davidhazy: Wow, They are beautiful and exactly what we are looking for! The acquisitions editor especially liked "coin-flip_4496.jpg" because the arc of the coins create a parabolic curve.  If we could have a high resolution copy of that photograph, that would be great.  Please let me know how you would like to be credited. Thanks so much for your help! Peter Sykes pxs@ams.org”

I was featured in an article on unusual occupations that appeared in the SUN, a cheap gossip tabloid.
“Lovin it!” appeared in the January 3, 2005 issue.

More Exhibitions of personal work and other related activities:

Among several photographs of mine, reproduction rights for which were either given away for free or where the fee was requested to be paid to RIT instead of to me personally include (this is only a partial listing):

My "splash" photograph of waves on a water surface was included in an online article about imaging Nobel Prize winners Lippmann and Gabor. It can (or could) be seen at:  http://nobelprize.org/physics/articles/biedermann/

Inclusion permission for use of my photographs on several educational and public service websites was sought over the course of the year. I normally extend this privilege to these organizations free of charge but ask for SPAS and RIT be mentioned in the credit line. Two that come to mind (I happened to run across their correspondence) are: the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence and their Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) and EcoNOVA, an Australian water resources organization.

Several of my high speed photographs of a shotgun shell discharging from a shotgun barrel were included in a special program called “Naked Science: Bullets” produced in England for the National Geographic Channel by Pioneer TV Productions and aired in November, 2005.                          

Two of my stereo photographs of human iris were included in an interactive display at the Vienna Museum of Science starting in October 2005. The designer was Katarina Matiasek <katarina@aon.at>

One of my photographs was included as a half-page lead-in illustration for an article on String Theory published in the August 2005 issue of Discover magazine. The photograph appears in Vol. 28, Number 8, page 29.
 
A “triptych” of one of my ultraviolet and visible photographs was included as an illustration for a “tidbit” published online by the Rocky Mountain National Park of the U.S. Forest Service in September 19, 2005 under the title of “Ultraviolet colors?”.

A description of my experiments with conical panoramic photography (along with two illustrations) is included in an online exhibition entitled “The long view” by Richard Schneider. The website is located at: http://www,panoramic-arts.org/subpage22.html
                                 
Continuing from last year, a group of nine photographs depicting the discharge of a shotgun and the subsequent behavior of the shell releasing it's pellets from the casing are part of a new traveling exhibition organized by Peterborough Digital Arts of the Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery located in Priestgate, Peterborough, England. The exhibition, Sequences - Time, space, movement and duration as seen by contemporary artists, is curated by Paul St George and is slated for installation in several venues around England and includes among others: Pia Jansson, Andrea Polli, Patrick Tarrant, Bjorn Schulke, and others. For more information: Paul St George, http://www.sequences.org.uk/

Continuing from last year, 50+ scientific, technical and high speed photographs of mine are included in a new exhibition, "Massive Change: the future of global design", that opened on October 1, 2004 in Vancouver, BC, Canada and is slated for a worldwide tour. In 2005 it opened in Toronto. The notification received from the designer I worked with is included below.

From: ilene solomon <solomon@brucemaudesign.com>
Date:  21-OCT-2004 19:46:56.97
Subject: High speed photos and Massive Change exhibition

Dear Professor Davidhazy, Hello!  (introductory text deleted as it was included in last year’s report)  … Attached is an image of the overall room, and also a close up shot of some of the high speed images in context. As of now, the show will be coming to Toronto on March 11 - May, 2005 and then Chicago in September - December, 2006.  Other venues are currently being arranged in NYC, London, Copenhagen, Germany, etc.  Please check out our website: www.massivechange.com to keep updated and see if you can attend the show. Thanks so much again! Your images were really a highlight!  I will be in touch as the show travels. Sincerely, Ilene Solomon, Institute without Boundaries, Bruce Mau Design, Toronto ON M5T 2C8

I participated with three prints in the Annual SPAS Faculty Exhibition whenever it took place in 2005.

I participated in several web-based or "virtual" galleries throughout the year. These include the (local) PhotoForum list's gallery and the Certamen de Fotored which operates out of Spain and a Haiku oriented gallery out of Japan.

I participated in the 2005 World Pinhole Photography Day project and my photograph and description is available online at their website at: http://www.pinholeday.org/gallery/ My entry  was #126 and I made and uploaded it on April 24, 2005. The text that went along with the image is: Andrew Davidhazy, "Surveying the Landscape" "Self-portrait on Polaroid 667 paper negative (Sabattier-ed) scanned and inverted as per hybrid Phoenix Process. 1 sec. exposure. I teach at School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at RIT."Copyright 2005 Andrew Davidhazy All rights reserved.

I continued to donate additional free-of-charge reproduction rights to several of my photographs to several charitable, educational and non-profit organizations. An example among several over the course of the year is located at the Kings Community Church Basildon (England) at http://www.kccbasildon.com/. My blue water splash photographs seems to continue to attract particular attention on the Internet but new splashes and spectral dispersion and polarization photographs as well as a photograph of a sneeze are also requested periodically. I also authorized reproduction rights free of charge to non-commercial users (but asking for SPAS and RIT connected byline wherever possible) and to individuals working in medicine, dance, sports, water purification, etc.
 
I donated 4 16x20 inch photographs of some of my latest work with my improvised digital streak camera to GalaxyGoo, a science education oriented foundation located in San Francisco, CA. By way of feedback how is this: “Dear Andrew, The prints arrived today, and they're fantastic! Thank you! – Kristin Henry, President, GalaxyGoo: exploring science and community. http://www.galaxygoo.org/main.html,  501(c)(3) non-profit organization

I also contributed a photograph of a figure to the Palm Beach Photographic Centre for a charitable project where they sold contributed images to support a photographic education project for at risk children. It was listed on page 12 as item #155 in the catalog and the estimated value assigned to it by the Centre was $600.

I also sold rights to reproduction of my images but the proceeds from these sales were directed towards supporting my teaching activities here in SPAS.

During the course of the year I wrote and installed on my webpage of articles about my experiments and personal "investigations" the following pieces:

STRING VIBRATIONS
 A little "fib" led to a photographic investigation of vibrating strings to be used as an illustration to go along with an article on the "String Theory". Again, proving that not all photographs need to be sharp to be effective. Added in November 2005.

ENTREVISTAS CON ANDRES DAVIDHAZY
En varias ocasiones me han planteado una serie de preguntas sobre mi carrera profesional tan bien como opiniones acerca varios temas relacionados con la fotografia. Hago disponible aqui algunas de estas entrevistas aunque en algunos casos faltan las preguntas! Añadido en Noviembre 2005

STRESSED PLASTICS BY POLARIZATION
Many transparent objects, especially those made of plastic, although other materials behave similarly, change the character of an incident beam of light in a manner that is hardly visible to the naked eye. However, this property of can be used to produce some truly spectacular visual results. Added in August 2005

BREAKING the EXPOSURE TIME BARRIER!
Most of the time there is a desire to make photographs of action events that do not exhibit any motion blur. But blur can be a beautiful thing and this brief article extolls the virtues of braking the sharpness convention. Added while still in progress in July 2005

SCANNING PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESSES
This is roughly a paper that I presented at the 2005 ART+MATH=X conference that was held at the University of Colorado at Boulder in early June of this year. If you check it out you'll see that it draws heavily from my past work in the area of strip, streak and scanning imaging methods. On the other hand, this group of mathematicians and artists had not heard of such processes before. The good thing for me was the interaction with the group that led to considering additional avenues for future experimentation. Added in June 2005.

TEACHING HIGH SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY AND PHOTOINSTRUMENTATION
This article describes the approach and the content of several courses related to photoinstrumentation designed with the assumption that  fundamental techniques, reasoning and high-speed problem solving approaches have not changed much over the years. This material was presented at the 26th International Congress of High Speed Photographyt and Photonics that was held in Alexandria, VA in 2004. Added  in June, 2005.

SIMPLE LIGHT SLAVE SYNCHRONIZERS
The subject of setting off a flash in response to the light of another one is a problem that comes up from time to time in photographic situations. Here is a non-electronic description of how one might make "slave syncs" from scratch and whether they work or not hopefully have some fun in the process. Added in March, 2005.

CAMERA for MAKING CONICAL PHOTOGRAPHIC LAMPSHADES and MORE
At one time I was hoping that I could interest Popular Photography magazine in publishing a piece on my work with a unique panoramic camera that is able to make conical projections or reproductions of scenes surrounding the camera as opposed to cylindrical ones made by all other rotating panoramic cameras. Well, this was the piece submitted for consideration. They were not interested. Added in December, 2004.


So what are my plans for next year? Well ... the truth is that I am tired of "competition" and hopefully will be able to contribute to the profession/discipline without undue mental or physical stress. I have a couple of publications in mind and was invited recently to present at a High Speed Photography training program in California. Hopefully my collection of photoinstrumentation photographs will continue to travel to new exhibition venues.

I propose to publish more work through Lulu Press possibly. I am already committed to three articles on stroboscopic photography for a Hungarian photography magazine and am working on a second article destined for Popular Photography in 2006. This year there is the IS&T National Conference in Rochester and there will be activities connected to that I know. I will continue to support Prof. Michael Peres in getting the Images from Science exhibition “around”. And maybe bring the project to a final, successful, conclusion. I hope to devote time to “sensitometric velocimetry” and “focusing schlieren … on a budget”.

Who knows what else but if the past is anything to go by, opportunities for scholarship often are unpredictable but they do come around. I will try to continue to make the most of them as they come my way.


3. Service

Given your 2003-2004 plan of work, provide a thoughtful review of what you have achieved relative to what you planned to do in the area of service. Original documentation should not be submitted, but it should be available upon request.(Examples of such documentation could include summaries of one or more of the following: committee chair statements, recruitment calls made, high schools visited, alumni contacts, development efforts, portfolio days.)

Well, my plans in this area last year simply stated the following: For next year I plan on continuing to participate in high school visits, Science Exploration Days, presentations at teacher seminars and high school photo conferences, committees, etc. 

High Schools visited and related recruiting activities:

I contributed to the SPAS Photography Explorers Post of the Otetiana Council of the Boy Scouts of America in the Fall quarter of 2005. On Thursday, September 22, 2005 I demonstrated (as I have in the past) matte-box photography, slit-scan photography, high speed photography and stroboscopic photography for creative and technical applications.

Gave three presentations (3rd period (9:52), 4th period (10:45) and 5th period (11:28) at Allendale/Columbia School on February 14, 2005. Contact there was Mrs. Lori Wun, lwun@allendalecolumbia.org

On Friday, February 18, 2005 I gave a lecture/demonstration in the High Speed Photography Lab to a group of about 25 visiting Lewiston Porter High School students and their faculty.

At the invitation of Gerrie Baker and Julie Bishop I again participated for a full-day Career Day 2004 event at the Spencerport High School held this past year on March 8, 2005. My schedule for the day was presentations on 7:30-8:10, 9:50-10:30, 10:35-11:15, 12:05-12:45 and 12:50-1:30.

At the invitation of Ms. Jennifer Scott, the photography teacher at Medina High School, I traveled to that school and gave a lecture/presentation about careers in photography to her advanced photography classes. This was on March 11, 2005.

On Friday, April 29, 2005 I gave a lecture/demonstration in the High Speed Photography Lab to a group of about 15 visiting Cleveland Community College students and their faculty.

In July 2005 I gave a one  hour lecture/demo to several visiting Pittsford gifted students brought to SPAS by Robert Rountree

On Saturday July 23, 2005 I participated in the College and Careers program hosted by RIT and I had a full schedule both days giving 4 1 hour lecture/demos to a total of approximately 100 students over the two days. I could not do the second day of C&C because I was attending/exhibiting at the 50th Annual SPIE conference in San Diego.

I presented an exhibit on behalf of the IS&T (while also distributing information about the IPT program) at the 34th Annual Science Exploration Days held in May 2005 at St. John Fisher College. I have been doing this for at least 33 consecutive years (except one year when I forgot they had changed the date and I got there a week late!). This event is organized by: Central Western Section of the Science Teachers Association of New York State. My contacts there: Michael Dupre, Mike Cargas, Ted Sawyko, Sheila Root, Jutta Dudley.

I presented a lecture at the 25th annual Science Educators' Conference that was held at the Rochester Museum and Science Center on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 28-20, 2005. My lecture was on Digital High Speed and Stroboscopic Photography, session B23, and included several applications for digital cameras as tools of visualization of high speed events and analysis of objects in motion. Emphasis was on simplified and improvised equipment suitable for experimentation in science and technology classrooms. (I did maple seed falling, ping-pong ball streaked and stroboscopically rendered, falling steel ball to determine velocity, showed Edgerton piddler and mechanical strobe interaction and usefulness of blur in photos). I delivered this on Wednesday Sept 28, 2005 from 2:45 - 3:45 at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Ted Sawyko <TSawyko@rochester.rr.net> invited me to participate in the conference.

On Wednesday May 4, 2005 I gave a special demonstration of high speed photography of bullets in flight to a visiting vip from Adobe Corporation at the request of Bob Rose.

On Sunday, April 27 2005, I hosted an afternoon barbecue/picnic at my home for students in the Imaging and Photographic Technology program.

An article about a small project of mine related to an overabundance of postcards was published in the  RIT Reporter magazine in October 2005 as well as the local City! Newspaper for October 26 – November 1, 2005. See details at: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/postcard.html

I brought the Nikon Small World exhibition back to the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences for the 15th year. This collection of photographs is generously sent to us by the Nikon Corporation and is available to us for a whole year and displayed on the walls of the Dr. Ron Francis Photographic Chemistry lab. The IPT dept pays shipping one way.

I was a judge at the Camera Rochester Photo Competition held during the evening of Monday September 12, 2005 at the Atonement Lutheran Church on Westfall Road.

I was a judge at the Hilton Apple Festival photo competition on Friday, September 20, 2005 at the invitation of Walter Horylev <whorylev@rochester.rr.com>.

On June 8, 2005 I left Rochester at 5 pm and traveled to Syracuse, NY to be a judge at the final Syracuse Camera  Club Photo Competition for 2005. This was held at a church where the club has its meetings. I got back to Rochester at midnight.

I helped organize, schedule and contributed to a faculty recruitment initiative that has been very well received by our own photo faculty as well as visiting teachers and professors of photography from other schools, namely the Basic Photo/Imaging Workshop for Educators. It would not be possible without the generous contribution from many colleagues here at the School but then, again, it might not happen at all if some of them did not talk me into trying it once more for the last 10 years or so. I am not sure I will do it again. I am starting to doubt my capacity to organize the project. Risk factors, while I ignored them in the past, have started to gnaw on my confidence more and more.

On March 22, 2005, at the invitation of Dan Larkin, I gave a presentation to the combined Photo II sections in the BFA programs. Michael Peres was the other presenter at this lecture designed to make students aware of potential educational opportunities within SPAS that they might not have been aware of.

Development efforts:

Development efforts were not really successful in terms of being able to acquire major gifts from corporations. I must admit I am not very good at asking for financial or equipment donations. On the other hand I helped secure a donation of several high speed photography related items from the Pratt and Whitney Corporation. Namely 2 Locam cameras and Hercules tripods. One of these systems was transferred to SOFA for their benefit.

I also helped secure a donation of a Bolex 16mm camera on behalf of the SOFA.

Committees: I am on the SPAS Chairs Committee, Bill DuBois is co-chair but in fact he is the chair that provides leadership and organization to this group. I am also on the Dean's Leadership Committee and on the Institute Academic Grievance Committee. The chair of this committee is Pete Lutz and we dealt with several cases this past year.

I am a member of the International Society for Optical Engineering's Edgerton Award Committee as well as the overall Awards Committee. I am the Internet liaison for The Photographic Historical Society and maintain for them an Internet presence off my website. I am currently helping the Society collect abstracts for the 2006 Symposium and expect this to be a major  external service commitment over the coming year.

Alumni Contacts: I maintain regular contact with all graduates of the Imaging and Photographic Technology program. I have compiled a list of all their email addresses and have been keeping in touch with updates and news of job opportunities and so on over the years. I maintain a news page on the web for them as well as current students. Check it out at: http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/ipt-news.html

My plan of work for next year: For next year I plan on continuing to participate in high school visits, Science Exploration Days, presentations at teacher seminars and high school photo conferences, committees, etc.
 

4. Other

If your 2004-2005 plan of work, called for any special activity outside of the above three categories, please provide an appropriate review of the evidence that such plans have been achieved.

Well, I am not sure if this falls under "other" or what ... these items are simply additional activities accomplished or in which I was significantly involved. Most of these activities contribute, I hope, to overall school recruitment and to keeping the image of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences as a center for top-notch photographic education in the minds of the local and the larger photo/imaging community. (I used the preceding paragraph verbatim form last year's report - FYI)

Last year I stated: For next year my plan is continue to continue to stay active on the web with the PhotoForum and Fotored mail lists and to devote less time to the PhotoHist list. I will be active again next year as the Internet Liaison of The Photographic Historical Society. In terms of the other communications initiatives I plan on simply doing what I have been doing ... much as I have this past year. I plan on remaining active in terms of recruitment presentations and visitations as well as producing more postcards that maybe are not so much school or program promotion pieces but rather achieve a similar outcome less blatantly. I plan on doing this in spite of the fact that most recruiting I do helps the BFA programs and really has very little effect on the IPT program. But this is the way it has been "forever" and enhancing the overall reputation of the School is what brings a few Tech students to the IPT program. A similar situation exists for the Biomed program. 

I plan on continuing to try to maintain a sense of community among the faculty and staff of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences within the limits of my capability to do so. The periodic Friday afternoon R&R sessions have been fairly well received by those who can attend. The coffee "service" in the Faculty Conference Room continues to be (I think)  a welcome addition to the "lifestyle" within the school over the years although there are many faculty who don't remember how it was before we had either the room or coffee readily available to us. The modest expense that it takes to keep these things going is, I think, more than worth it for the good vibes it creates among our staff.


Pretty much like last year I think the items listed below give some credence to the fact I did pursue several activities that could be listed under "other". I noticed I mentioned "postcards" above. I did publish at my own expense (well, with funds earned from sales of my photographs the proceeds of which I directed to a restricted account from which then I spend for such purposes) two more sets of postcards intended for recruitment to the Imaging and Photographic Technology program. I also produced one that is a more generic SPAS postcard.

I helped Prof. Michael Peres organize a SPAS Faculty/Staff picnic at Mendon Ponds Park in May of 2005. We spent the funds generated by the Images from Science exhibition. This came to about $1,000. We have no more money left from that project but I think that was money well spent.

Last year I organized a website showcasing current faculty at work and photographed several of them doing just that. This year I added a few more faculty “in action” to the website.

I participated in the 2005 PhotoExpo convention at the Javits Center in NYC and in addition to my usual routine of making visitors to our booth "happy" by making peripheral portraits.

I have continued my long-term association with William Allen, Art Department, Arkansas State University, working with him on a collaborative project that is an INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY HISTORIANS associated with the History of Photography Group. My contribution to his project is to help him collect people's names who are interested in being listed in his directory. I do this through the RITphoto account that I established many years ago.

I also oversee, manage and forward requests for information about School of Photographic Arts and Sciences photography programs collected through a form installed on the SPAS and the IPT websites. This past year these forms generated about 1700 inquiries (down from about 2000 the year before) about our photography programs with the bulk of them, of course, being requests for information about the BFA degree programs.

Since as part of the PhotoForum project I maintain an extensive (currently more than 3200) list of links to photographers, corporations, schools, etc. I accept "link exchanges" to that list in exchange for a listing for our school. This also helps keep our profile on the Internet high.

This past year (as in past years) I seem to also have been identified as an “expert” in the photography of paranormal phenomena and this has resulted in many questions being sent my way by way of email and one article in the SUN tabloid.

The periodic Friday afternoon R&R sessions have been fairly well received by those who can attend. Maybe we should continue them. It would be nice if someone else would take over!

I continue to manage the PhotoForum mail list on the Internet (going on the 12th year for the list and the 10th for the gallery) and besides dealing with day to day issues related to smooth operation of the list itself, I am "proud" to say that I have for one more year installed a brand new gallery of list member's images on the web every Saturday morning of the year. I have been doing this actually since 1996 without anyone here in SPAS really knowing anything about it.

I also have continued to look after the Fotored mail list. On Fotored the language used is Spanish and it serves about 400 Hispanic individuals worldwide.

I do provide, as a "public service" activity, support of The Photographic Historical Society of Rochester and give them webspace on my site (obviously identified with SPAS and RIT!) as well as web design services.

For next year: For next year my plan is continue to continue to stay active on the web with the PhotoForum and Fotored mail lists and to devote less time to the PhotoHist list. I will be active again next year as a member of the Papers Committee and being the Internet Liaison of The Photographic Historical Society which is holding its XIIIth Symposium on the History of Photography. I may also present a paper at the conference but have not been invited. Yet.

 In terms of the other communications initiatives I plan on simply doing what I have been doing ... much as I have this past year. I plan on remaining active in terms of recruitment presentations and visitations as well as producing more postcards that maybe are not so much school or program promotion pieces but rather achieve a similar outcome less blatantly. I plan on doing this in spite of the fact that most recruiting I do helps the BFA programs and really has very little effect on the IPT program. But this is the way it has been "forever" and enhancing the overall reputation of the School is what brings a few Tech students to the IPT program. A similar situation exists for the Biomed program. 

I plan on continuing to try to maintain a sense of community among the faculty and staff of the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences within the limits of my capability to do so. I have already planned (with the help of Michael Peres) another picnic for the SPAS Faculty and Staff this time supported by a $1,000 fee that I will receive from Popular  Photography magazine for an article on polarization photography that I hope will be published soon!.


In summary, I once again (how do you like that!) want to thank all my immediate colleagues in the Imaging and Photographic Technology department, as well as all its students, for making working in the department such a pleasure (most of the time!). I am certain when I say that without the support of my friends my activities and contributions would not be possible.

I want to acknowledge that the list of contributions mentioned above would not have been possible without the support of the BFA side of SPAS and in particular that of Prof. DuBois. What I mostly mean by this is that I recognize I teach a reduced load and that I do not have the global administrative and local involvement with the numbers of full-time and adjunct faculty or the the photographic industry that Prof. DuBois has. I appreciate the opportunity to be of service in other ways that is made available to me by my colleagues near and far. Thank you.

Also I want to thank the faculty members in the Biomedical Photography program for their overall support and contributions to the School and Michael Peres in particular for his collegiality and responsible leadership of the department.

I want to again acknowledge the cooperation of Prof. Peres in making the Images from Science exhibit a showcase for our school in terms of his management of the "travel" nature of the exhibition. This exhibition, engendered in SPAS, has now traveled the world so to speak and has been exhibited this last year in several venues in European (Scotland and Spain) venues and in several locations in the US. Michael deserves much praise for his efforts on behalf of the exhibition and SPAS, CIAS and RIT.

As far as the Imaging Systems Management program the new McGhee Chair, Prof. Nitin Sampat, has redesigned the program into a minor that is available to students within SPAS. From what I can see there is a significant demand for such a minor. It remains to be seen how the transfer of leadership to the next McGhee Chair will develop as that will have an impact on the IPT program as well if Prof. Sampat returns (or does not return) to the IPT department.

Finally, there are some items in particular that concern me (particularly with respect to the Imaging and Photographic Technology program and department) and that I hopefully will make some positive contribution to in the coming year. They are: 1. The continued development of a strategy to deal with the Materials and Processes of Photography course. 2. accomodation of some kind to the fact that Prof. Sampat is currently a part of the Imaging Systems Management department and really has little time to deal with the computing needs of the IPT department. We need him back in the IPT program and taking care of the computer imaging needs of the IPT students.  3. re-examining the IPT course sequences and the faculty teaching them especially in the areas of sensitometry and tone reproduction.  4. Instituing an effective search procedure for replacing the position left vacant by Bruce Kahn, replacing the 1 year appointment currently filled by Thomas Yeh and initiating processes for identifying replacement faculty in areas such as photographic and imaging chemistry and optics in particular.
 
 

This self evaluation and your proposed plan of work for December 1, 2004 to November 30, 2005 is due to your Administrative Chair on January 13, 2006.




As an end note and only as a matter of curiosity this report took approximately 10 continuous hours to compile and put together during the period of January 3-5, 2006 not counting (again) the sporadic record-keeping that went on during the course of the year and that made the compilation of this document possible.