Learning to See Beyond the Camera: A Student Reflection on Myron Ort at Sonoma State University

Experimental film pedagogy: the film teacher was not only taught students how to film but how to see. 

Learning to See Beyond the Camera: A Student Reflection on Myron Ort at Sonoma State University

I studied filmmaking with Myron Ort at Sonoma State University, and his approach to teaching shaped the way I understand the art of film and photography. 

What made Ort’s teaching unique was that he encouraged students to move beyond thinking of the camera as simply a piece of equipment. He taught us that filmmaking begins with perception—with how we see, move, experience space, and connect with the world around us. 

His classes were not limited to traditional camera positions or conventional ways of making images. He encouraged experimentation. The camera could move. The filmmaker could change position. The frame could become something unexpected. We explored unusual angles and perspectives rather than simply filming from the standard angles.

Sometimes our class would work in circles, improvising movement and filming from different positions. The process became a collaboration between the filmmaker, the camera, the environment, and the people participating. The goal was not just to capture an image but to discover new ways of experiencing images.

The greatest lesson I carried from Myron Ort was that filmmaking is not about the equipment. A camera is only a tool. The true instrument is the filmmaker’s imagination, awareness, and ability to see.

Ort’s approach reminded me of the work of filmmaker William Greaves, who also pushed beyond traditional approaches to filmmaking. Both understood that the filmmaker’s role is not simply to observe from a distance but to engage creatively with the world.

Years later, I still carry that lesson with me. Teaching, creating, and documenting are not only technical activities. They are ways of exploring ideas, relationships, movement, culture, and human experience.

Myron Ort taught us that before we learn to use the camera, we must learn how to see.

The tool matters less than the vision and the relationship that the filmmakers have when engaging with people, environments, and reality in a participatory ways. When the  artist and filmmaker moves away from the idea that the camera is merely a recording machine.