March 20, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR LYNN FRASER IN NEVADA
Artistic pursuits can definately benefit you in a science/technology
career - in addition to giving you an opportunity to learn about optics,
many science and technology fields require a talent in visualization and a
creative mind. Unfortunately years of purely technical classes can stifle
that creative part of your brain, so you should nurture it every chance you
get. If both art and technology are passions for you, consider pursuing
fields such as Product Design, Architecture, or Graphic Design which will
challenge you on both of these levels.
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March 18, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR MAUREEN O'BRIEN ROZENHART IN WA
Absolutely. Both can be very valuable as a basis for many careers
in the technology fields. For instance, Photography is going to get you
started on understanding F-stops, apertures, depth of field and how to
focus in a subject, positive and negative space, lighting and it's
affects on your colors, subjects, etc. Painting is going to get you
started on understanding value, hue, chroma, how the color wheel works,
when and how to utilize primary, secondary, tertiary, complimentary,
colors, subject placement, balance, etc., etc.

All of these things can be extremely valuable in careers involved in the
film and video, web page design, industrial engineering, and more. For
instance, industrial engineers design and create user interfaces for
software applications and more. Industrial engineers start many of
their ideas with sketches and felt pens or whatever their favorite media
is. Then they transfer their ideas to the computer for say icons or
buttons you use on all of your applications. Look above you at your web
browser menu line. Someone designed all those icons. Their mission is
to make those little buttons somewhat intuitive so you might be able to
guess which one to poke to help you use that application. All of the
design and color you picked up with painting and photography will be
well used here. Another example would be Film Colorist. This is a
little known career that pays incredibly well! There is a person who
literally just deals with making sure the color is perfect for your
movies and videos. And little tip here: women are biologically better
at determining proper color then men are. Men are more likely to be
color blind and had difficulties determining proper color. Imagine if
your favorite film came out with a green hue --not good, right? That's
why they make the big bucks.

Other careers (among dozens) where photography/painting could come in
handy would be for research in color matching systems, designs for paint
in the automotive industry, multimedia production, compositing (the
process of producing something with software that looks like the
"sandman" coming to life in the mummy or when the man's face is half
there and bugs are running around in it) and special effects, post
production for the film industry, video editing, streaming video,
software developer for tools used in graphics editing applications (like
the paintbrush, smudge, and stamp tools in Photoshop), digital screen
printing, and more, more, more.

So... basically, either is wonderful; I'd do both personally. ;-

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A: FROM MENTOR MINI VARUGHESE IN MD
Photography will help in a scientific career where you publish your work. It is not only graphs that you publish, but pictures as well. Knowing something about photography will help in creating those eye catching pictures that might end up on the cover of the journal.
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A: FROM MENTOR NORRIE ROBBINS IN CA
Photography is a really useful skill for scientists. Every scientific article I write has photographs in it, particularly photomicrographs (those taken through a microscope). Every scientific talk I give has color photographs (2x2 color slides) of my field site and the objects I studied. Some are power point presentations with digital photographs (images). Most scientists ignore this aspect of science, primarily because photography is taught generally in the art department. I took color slide photography many years after my college career, and I was amazed with the amount of information I learned. I also learned from the professional photographers who worked in my big government office—two of them loved to teach, and one of them was an award winning photographer. I thought that his photos were too beautiful—I couldn’t see the science because the photographs were generally too beautiful. Isn’t that ridiculous? He often got sent out with scientists, especially to politically important field sites, to make sure the photographs that came back were gorgeous.
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A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI
If you think you will enjoy photography or painting and have time in
your schedule, by all means try them out! Scientists use photography
a lot to record their observations, and there is a lot of science
underlying photography: pigments, photochemistry, optics. Paints are
made of chemicals by chemists - how they appear on a surface makes
them into art. You might be inspired to an great science project by
your experience in applying science to the arts. And it's just fine
to enjoy the arts even without thinking of the science that underlies
everything we do. It can be very refreshing to use our minds on
something completely different.
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A: FROM MENTOR DIANA DIONISIO IN CA
Some colleges have art requirements so I'm sure painting would fulfill that but I'm not sure about photography. You should find out which colleges you are interested in that ave an art requirement and for how many quarters. Even if you are in science and techonology, you will still take classes in social sciences, art, humanities, etc in college for general education and requirements to graduate.