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Photography at UCA

Photography can manifest itself in so many ways, and that makes it one of the most accessible creative mediums. Our BA (Hons) Photography degree at UCA Farnham allows you to take your existing skills and develop them into professional practice. 

Our close-knit course means you’ll get plenty of time with the team of expert staff who will guide you through your learning. You’ll get to collaborate with people on other courses, too – sharing some lectures with our Fine Art students to broaden your horizons and start inspiring conversations.  

Professional experience is written into the course throughout, and you’ll get chances to gain exposure for your work through competitions and other live projects – for example, our second-year students recently worked on a project with the National Portrait Gallery. 

And we have all the facilities and software you’d expect for a top-level photography course, including Capture One software, in our dedicated post-production suite.  

So, whether you want to become a commercial photographer, photo agent, curator, or picture editor, this course will give you everything you need.  

 

Course entry options

Select from the following options to find out more about the different study options available for this course:

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
W640
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
3 years full-time
Entry requirements

112 UCAS points
International equivalent qualifications

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
W64F
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
4 years full-time
Entry requirements

32 UCAS points

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Institution code
C93
UCAS code
W64H
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
4 years full-time
Entry requirements

12 years of schooling (with good grades)

 

Close
Institution code
C93
UCAS code
W644
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
4 years full-time
Entry requirements

112 UCAS points
International equivalent qualifications

Close
Institution code
C93
UCAS code
W64G
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
5 years full-time
Entry requirements

32 UCAS points

Close
Institution code
C93
Campus
UCA Farnham
Start date(s)
September 2024, September 2025
Duration
5 years full-time
Entry requirements

12 years of schooling (with good grades)

 

Two minute stories


Discover the stories of our Photography students
What you'll study

What you'll
study

The content of the course may be subject to change. Curriculum content is provided as a guide.

UCA’s Integrated Foundation Year is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and more.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated Foundation Year

For our students coming from a non-UK educational background, UCA has launched an Integrated International Foundation Year, based at UCA Farnham to bring students from around the world to one hub of creativity.

This year of preparatory study is designed to give you the skills you’ll need to start your degree in the best possible way – with confidence, solid knowledge of creative practice, study skills and the English speaking and writing skills you’ll need to succeed.

You’ll explore a range of creative techniques and develop your portfolio, with your chosen subject in mind. We’ll work with you throughout the year to ensure you’re on the right track and give you the tools to achieve your highest potential on your degree.

Find out more about the Integrated International Foundation Year

Launch
This primary week at the beginning of the course will be used to prepare you for university learning. Many of the workshops on offer will be programme wide and will be enhanced with subject specific learning. You will be introduced to a range of skills workshops designed to audit and refresh your existing skills in order to prepare you for the commencement of the course learning, including an introduction to 35 ml cameras and how to process a black on white film to ensure that basic skills are refreshed at the beginning of the course learning programme.

The Real
This is a programme-wide unit, run in course-specific groups, giving you the opportunity to investigate core subject-specific themes and ideas interpreted through the lens of ‘the real’. You’ll explore situations or communicate ideas about the social, political, and economic circumstances that shape human experience.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
You’ll be able to demonstrate an awareness of how your own social identity (such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability, sexual orientation, and religion) informs how you navigate creative practices.

Printmaking
This is an interdisciplinary skills-based unit open to Photography students that introduces you to different printmaking processes.

Opportunity
During this opportunity week, you will receive one personal tutorial that feeds back on the work of the previous term. There will also be a number of refresher workshops designed to recap any skills.

The Body
You’ll be introduced to a range of genres, styles, and critical and methodological approaches which are related to or centred on the body and our relationship to the body. This is a good opportunity to improve your research skills and gain a deeper understanding of your own creative practice.

Professional Identities
This employment-focused programme-specific unit offers you the opportunity to identify relevant professional contexts and navigate your relationship with these contexts.

Learning Enhancement
In this unit, you’ll have the opportunity to undertake enhanced subject-specific workshops and training to enrich your existing skillset.

Launch
You’ll prepare for the year ahead with a range of refresher skills workshops designed to recap on previous learning, together with preparation work for the forthcoming core unit Spatial Practices.

Spatial Practices
You’ll explore spatial practices and their relationship to ideologies and systems of power, looking at the ways in which photography practices document, intersect with, and subvert traditional approaches to space and place.

The Conscious Practitioner
You’ll engage with subject specific concepts of inclusion, exclusion, and diversity, and interrogate how belief systems, values, and attitudes influence approaches to creative practices.

Conceptual Disciplinary Elective
You’ll have the opportunity to select either a discipline-specific or an interdisciplinary elective unit from within the programme, in order to build on and enrich your existing learning. Each elective will include practice-led, research-driven lectures and seminars, supported by relevant skills workshops.

Opportunity
During this opportunity week you will receive one personal tutorial that feeds back on the work of the previous term and take part in workshops designed to recap on any skills that were omitted during term 1. You’ll also prepare for the forthcoming core unit Expanded Practices.

Expanded Practices
You’ll explore photography as an expanded field of creative practice, and how it can open out across multiple mediums and engage with the world. We want you to examine imaginative possibilities that sit between meaning and materiality using a range of approaches and processes.

Professional Development
You’ll build on the work you did in Year 1 on your professional outlook, develop the necessary skills to confidently engage with relevant professional contexts, and put together a professional experience plan.

Professional Experience
Following on from the previous unit, you’ll get the opportunity to engage with external-facing professional contexts as part of your journey from student to graduate. This will enable you to understand how your practice sits within a range of professional contexts outside of an educational environment.

If you opt to complete a professional practice year, this will take place in year three. You will undertake a placement within the creative industries to further develop your skills and CV.

While on your Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee for that year. This fee will be determined using government funding regulations. Based on current regulations, we expect this to be a maximum of 20% of the tuition fee rate that you are charged for your second year of study. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during this year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this as you approach your Professional Practice Year.

Please note: If you are an international applicant, you will need to enrol onto the course ‘with Professional Practice Year’. It will not be possible to transfer onto the Professional Practice Year after enrolment

Launch
Your final Launch Week is a space in which you can reflect on your own independent learning journey. You will be encouraged to rework an existing piece of work to produce a new outcome and be guided through how to draft a viable proposal for the next unit.

Final Major Project – Development
You’ll begin developing work for your final major project, identifying and experimenting with a range of relevant creative and technical methodological approaches in a way that reflects your own research interests.

Critical Contexts
Drawing from interdisciplinary approaches to gathering research, you’ll be able to synthesise and contextualise your research interests within relevant critical contexts through either the written or spoken word.

Opportunity
During this opportunity week you will receive a personal tutorial that feeds back on the previous terms work, and work independently to refine your final major project..

Final Major Project: Realisation
In this two-component unit you’ll complete your final major project with a major body of work that reflects your individual practice, and also complete your independent professional exit plan, as part of your transition to either a professional or postgraduate environment.

This course is designed to offer you (if eligible) the opportunity to study part of your degree aboard at a UCA partner university, while still earning credits towards your UCA degree.

For more information please visit the Study Abroad section

Industry placement
offer

Preparing graduates for successful careers underpins everything we do, and all students on this course may be offered support to identify and prepare for an industry placement according to their individual needs. We’ll draw on our wide range of contacts within the creative industries to help provide you with opportunities that align with your interests and future career aspirations.

Course specifications

Please note, syllabus content indicated is provided as a guide. The content of the course may be subject to change in line with our Student Terms and Conditions for example, as required by external professional bodies or to improve the quality of the course.

Explore our gradshow

Each year, we’re privileged to be able to share our graduates’ incredible work with the world. And now’s your chance to take a look.

Visit the online showcase
Fees & funding

Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,250
  • BA course: £9,250

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated International Foundation Year: £9,250 (see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,250 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £1,850. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Tuition fees - 2024/25 entry

  • Integrated International Foundation Year: £16,950
  • BA course: £17,500

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2024 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,390. You will also incur additional travel and accommodation costs during your Professional Practice year. The University will provide you with further advice and guidance about this.

Please note: The fees listed on this webpage are correct for the stated academic year only, for details of previous years please see the full fee schedules.

UCA scholarships and fee discounts

At UCA we have a number of scholarships and fee discounts available to assist you with the cost of your studies.

Financial support

There are lots of ways you can access additional financial support to help you fund your studies - both from UCA and from external sources. Discover what support you might qualify for please see our financial support information.

Additional course costs

In addition to the tuition fees there may be other costs for your course. The things that you are likely to need to budget for to get the most out of a creative arts education will include books, printing costs, occasional or optional study trips and/or project materials.

These costs will vary according to the nature of your project work and the individual choices that you make. Please see the Additional Course Costs section of your Course Information for details of the costs you may incur.

Facilities

Photographic studios plus access to hire cameras, tripods and lighting equipment from the media stores. Colour and black and white darkrooms for traditional printing from small, medium and large-format negatives. Photography studios and digital area with medium and large format printers and digital scanners. On-campus media store with good supply of 16mm, super 16mm, digital HD video cameras and high-end sound recording equipment to hire.

View 360 virtual tour

Photography studios, UCA Farnham

Photography digital suite, UCA Farnham

Darkrooms, UCA Farnham

Photography studios, UCA Farnham

Career opportunities

As a long-established photography course, our renowned teaching team bring with them high-profile industry connections, both nationally and internationally. We regularly arrange visits to, and lecturers from, a wide range of companies and institutions, such as:

  • Autograph
  • Impressions Gallery
  • National Media Museum
  • Berg, Blackwell, Focalpress, Routledge and other publishers
  • bookRoom
  • Brighton Photo Biennial and Brighton Photo Fringe
  • National Institute of Design, India
  • The Photographers’ Gallery, London
  • Photography & Culture journal
  • Photoworks magazine
  • Source: The Photographic Review

As well as a course team including a number of practising professionals, we're connected with the Association of Photographers, a national body that works to give student members a head-start as photographic practitioners.

Skilled and creatively gifted photographers are needed across an enormous range of industries, and many of our graduates have secured professional roles in a variety of fields, including:

  • Fashion
  • Editorial
  • Advertising
  • Fine Art
  • Documentary-making
  • Curatorial posts
  • Gallery/ project management
  • Writing
  • Teaching
  • Lecturing
  • Technical support.

Alumni of this course include Paul Seawright, Gareth McConnell, Eileen Perrier, Andrew Bruce, Jane Bown, Stephen Bull and Anna Fox.

You may also like to consider further study at postgraduate level.

Alice Andrew

"Having the opportunity to be so ambitious and free with photography has to be the best and most enjoyable aspect of the course, because it provides you with the opportunity to truly create a body of work which you are genuinely interested in and motivated to develop."

Alice Andrew

Entry & portfolio requirements

We’ll need to see your portfolio for review. You'll be invited to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person, meet the course team and learn more about your course. Further information will be provided once you have applied. View more portfolio advice

Select your country to find the equivalent requirements

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