MDIA 4333: Special Topics Seminar: Travel & Tourism Photography is an upper-level study abroad course for students who have foundational skills in photography and are looking to add a visual storytelling component to their portfolio. The course is taught in the city of Tokyo, Japan. During the course, we will visually dissect Tokyo; breaking it down into its subcategories of people, places and icons. Students enrolled in this course visually investigate the idea of people as individuals and their involvement in situations through professional and social activities such as employment and enjoyment in an effort to capture with their camera the varying degrees of personalities that inhabit a metropolitan area. Students will gather images of places through landscape photography throughout the day and or night in order to grasp how a cities change visually as the light changes. Students will then search for icons, or those items that provide an identity to places within the varying Tokyo districts. More than tourist attractions, icons can be notable places to eat, a wall with graffiti or nighttime skateboarders and so on. Through a combination of lecture and practice, students will learn to be competent visually storytellers.