“Learn to See”: Celebrating 10 Years of Student Photography at the Blough-Weis Library 

For the rest of the fall semester, the Blough-Weis Library is displaying the talented photography from students of Professor Gordon Wenzel. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the exhibition, which first began in 2015.  

To celebrate, I sat down with Professor Wenzel to learn more about his journey in photography, his teachings, and the student photographers featured in this year’s display! 

Who is Professor Wenzel? 

Wenzel is one of Susquehanna University’s adjunct faculty members. He has been teaching in the Photography program in the Department of Art and Design since 2012 and teaches five different photography courses. These classes are Digital Photography, which is an introductory course, Advanced Photography, Advertising Photography, Portrait Photography, and finally Photojournalism. These classes all help students to improve their photography ability, or even start their photography journey.  

“I am both an educator and a practitioner,” Wenzel explained. “I’ve had my own business since 1997. I do a lot of commercial work for various companies, which has allowed me to travel lots of places and meet lots of celebrities and photograph them.” 

Growing up, Wenzel was surrounded by photography. His grandfather ran a photo finishing lab, and his father was a newspaper photographer, so he grew up surrounded by images. But it wasn’t until the seventh grade when photography finally clicked for him. 

“That was a defining moment in shop class where I developed my own role of film myself. And then in a little closet, I developed the print, and I can still in my mind see that print magically appear in the developer. And at that point, I was kind of smitten, and I started shooting ever since.” 

Photography at Susquehanna 

Admittedly, I do not know much about photography, so I asked Wenzel to share what each of his photography classes focused on.  

“The digital class is an intro class. So, initially it deals with camera functions, you know, the basics. How does my camera work? How do I control the lighting? How do I control motion, either freezing it or blurring it?” 

“A big component of what I do is Learn to See,” Wenzel continued. “We have a tendency to ignore things that are familiar to us. It’s called habituation, where we don’t tend to notice the familiar. And so, one of the workshops we do downtown, which the students love, is the Learn to See workshop. Where we take the blinders off and really see what’s in front of us.” 

Wenzel then went on to talk about how he teaches his students Adobe Lightroom, giving them the ability to learn how to properly go through a post-production process. The class ends with the students creating a 10-image portfolio and a website, giving them the ability to present their work. 

His advanced class touches on many different types of photography expressions. This includes landscape, fine art, and high dynamic range of photography. This course also introduces students to advertising photography and photojournalism in sports. These skills are further developed in their own respective classes, where student photographers are able to apply their knowledge into real-world applications and fun class projects.  

The Exhibition 

The exhibition is comprised of 19 photographs from 19 different photographers, drawn from assignments in Wenzel’s Digital, Advanced, and Advertising Photography classes. 

Each year, Wenzel curates the exhibition by selecting standout works that best demonstrate the principals taught across his courses. “What I like to do is show a range of different kinds of things that so maybe even students that hadn’t thought about taking photography might look at this and say ‘wow, that’s inspiring. I’d like to learn how to do that too.’” 

Wenzel emphasized that this exhibition is to highlight some of the best examples of photography principles, especially for his intro class. “In this exhibition, for example, there are students where this may be the only photo class they ever took, the digital intro course. And so, there’s examples of freezing motion. There’s a picture of a splash in the river, and a photo of an egret flying. That’s freezing motion.” 

Wenzel continued to highlight a few of the works in this exhibition. He spoke about Adrianna Nicholas ‘27’s work, it being an example of blurring motion as we see the light trails outside of a theater. He also spoke about the black and white photography that is included in the exhibition. “Black and white is a phenomenally dynamic treatment for images that really get people’s attention.” 

“There’s also some that are more conceptual. There are two or three that represent the concept of self-awareness. So how do you represent that in an image, right? Using their imagination and coming up with some things, there’s some real good examples of that in here.”

But this exhibition is not just for his digital photography students. No, Wenzel then raved about the photos that his students completed for his advertising class. “There’s product in situations, so you’ll see a soap bar in a washroom with bubbles floating around it. There’s a flat lay of donuts, right, so food photography. There’s also a really good example of beverage photography, which is tricky because you have glassware that you have to light in a certain way to make it look good.” 

I then asked Wenzel how he has seen his students grow throughout their projects, both in their technical skills and their creativity. He answered, saying that for the digital class, he sees tremendous growth from the beginning to the end of the course. “Most of them don’t even know how to use their cameras, and so once they learn how and how to do some of these skills, they flourish, and it’s pretty neat.” 

“The same way with some of the advanced courses. They start out struggling with lighting or struggling with posing. It all builds till their final and in the final sometimes I’m just blown way with the effort that they put into it, as well as the creativity and the technical execution of the skill that they’ve learned.” 

Photography as Art 

After talking about his student’s work, I asked the professor a question that was both easy and hard to answer. What do you think makes photography such a powerful form of storytelling? 

After thinking for a moment, Wenzel answered with one of the most common, but true, phrases: A picture is worth a thousand words. 

“It is an incredibly powerful tool to move people,” Wenzel elaborated, “to make them feel something. To make them see the world the way you see it as an artist. Photography is a powerful forum for storytelling because it’s so concise and there’s so much information translated or transmitted through an image.” 

“If you see a lot of really graphically disturbing photos,” he said as an example, “they are bad from the standpoint of what happened, but they can move people to understand the world differently and maybe move them to action.” I thought that this was an amazing insight, especially in the climate that we live in today. Photography is an important tool to show the world what people are seeing, both good and bad. 

As I concluded my interview with Wenzel, I asked him one final question: If you could give any advice to inspiring photographers, what would it be?  

“Look at photography,” he suggested first. “Look at great photos and try to understand how they were made and why they’re so good and why they’re so powerful.” 

“And then practice! The more you shoot the better you’re going to get.” 

I thought that both pieces of advice were wonderful, and I know that the second one does not just apply to photography. No matter your major, career, or hobbies, practice always makes you better. 

I hope that you found this interview as interesting as I did! Make sure to check out the Photography Exhibition, now in the library until December 19th to see the photos featured in this piece. And whether you are a seasoned photographer or someone who only takes photos on their smartphone, make sure to learn to see and discover the world beyond yourself and instead through your camera lens. 

Madeline Davis (’28) is a sophomore at Susquehanna University.  She is a Marketing and Advertising & Public Relations dual major. In addition to her marketing work at the Blough-Weis Library,  Madeline serves as the Public Relations manager for Susquehanna’s Best Buddies chapter and as an editor for Ginkgo Magazine. Outside of school, she enjoys reading, writing, and antiquing with friends.