One of Photography Education’s Best-Kept Secrets.
“I’m your advisor for life,” shares David Strohl, Mount Hood Community College's Integrated Media program advisor, of his commitment to see students steadily employed once they graduate.
“Nobody’s offering photography degrees anymore,” a colleague mused to me recently.
“Not so,” I corrected them. David Strohl’s Commercial Photography Integrated Media program, a two-year course of study at Mount Hood Community College, is a photography degree – and more.
“We are the best-kept secret,” Strohl smiles. His students enjoy coursework in commercial photography as well as video production, broadcasting and graphic design in this federally designated career-training program at MHCC. IM students choose their focus from these four trades, while also learning the other three – skills that frequently overlap in today’s marketplace.
This fall, I paid a visit to Strohl on campus with commercial photographer and fellow American Society of Media Photographers regional board member Michael Jones. We wanted to find out how our Oregon chapter of ASMP might best help Strohl and his students. But first, we needed to learn more about his program.
Strohl greets us cheerfully, unassuming and approachable in jeans and a zip-front hoodie, mulberry purple over dark blues. Before we start the tour, Strohl pauses at a steel shelving unit topped with apples. He’s been offering free food here since SNAP benefits were suspended, he explained.
Michael and I sat in the (expansive!) campus studio while Strohl listed some of the pros of Integrated Media: Supplemental classes like Documentaries, in which students create five-minute stories; Digitechs with Capture One; a sweet gear room; plentiful Canon lighting the students can check out; and equipment donations that come into the program regularly, often finding themselves in the hands of deserving students.
The Integrated Media program, which runs on a cohort model for its 40 enrollees, trains folks in state-of-the-art skills, but doesn’t leave behind photography’s foundations. It includes everything from darkroom classes and the paper, film and cameras to go with them; to sophisticated color correction (think big monitors and neutral-painted walls); to navigating the complexities of metadata and file management.
Strohl has a wedding and nature photography portfolio that would impress any artist, and he still shoots, but that’s not where his passion lies. You can see it in his eyes when they light up as he talks about IM: Shepherding this program is his passion.
“I’m your advisor for life,” Strohl says.
He has students attending from as far as Albany, OR and Battle Ground, WA (MHCC offers in-state tuition to neighboring states).
In arguably the toughest market image makers have faced in the history of the art, does Strohl still believe in photography?
“Yes,” he answers emphatically. There are answers, and elements that still matter from the days before AI and smartphone cameras – elements like storytelling.
“The way to make money with it is evolving,” he says.
Strohl has some advice for prospective students. Know that salaried positions are rare, though they do exist. He keeps an eye out for where those opportunities await so he can connect students to them. Also, he advises future pro photographers to think entrepreneurially.
Mentorship from the American Society of Media photographers would be a major help to his students, he said, as would free ASMP membership for them. Happily, as of January of this year, students are, indeed, invited to join ASMP for free. Joint ASMP-Integrated Media events are also in the works, like a photography portfolio review on the Mount Hood Community College campus.
Most of all, ASMP can offer his students community and consistency, Strohl said. Keeping up with them would be key.
“I don’t think there’s a secret sauce to that; I think it’s just being there.”
Sounds like that’s Strohl’s personal strategy for helping his students, too.
You can catch David Strohl in the wild as a judge at PDX Squared, coming up this May 15 and 16. Learn more about his Commercial Photography Integrated Media Program at Mount Hood Community College here.
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Charity Feb lives and writes on The Herbalist’s Homestead, a progressive little hobby farm rebelliously tucked into the southwest hills of Camas, Washington, USA. She photographs portraits in her home studio and environs under the business name Portraits of Connection by Charity Feb.