Location

Farnham

Start date

Sept 2026, Sept 2027

Duration

3 years full-time

UCAS logo

UCAS codes

Course: W640
Institution: C93

+1

Foundation year

Optional extra year of study

+1

Placement year

Optional extra year of study

Entry requirements

Check qualifications

Photography at UCA

Shoot it. Print it. Show it. Train at UCA Farnham; the place known for producing some of photography’s best talents.

Get your hands dirty

Full colour and black-and-white analogue darkrooms. Print-finishing rooms. Professional photo studios equipped with industry-standard flash and continuous lighting. Large-format plate cameras, fully manual 35mm SLRs, high-resolution digital medium format. The equipment on campus ranges from the rare to studio-standard – and working across all of it builds a sensitivity to light, materials, and process that digital screens can't teach.

80 years of photographers

Add your name to the list of greats who have trained at UCA: Anna Fox, Sunil Gupta, Eileen Perrier, and Mark Harrison, plus new talent food photographer Alex Luck, music photographer Matt Chapman, and artist duo Luke & Nik – alongside graduates leading teams at the V&A, the Financial Times and Wallpaper* magazine. When you graduate, you join that network – and it opens doors.

Every kind of photographer

Documentary, portraiture, studio, editorial, events, commercial – most photographers work across several genres, especially early in their careers. This course is built around that reality. You'll develop the specialism you love while building the range to take on the work that pays.

Real briefs, real audiences

You'll present your work in public exhibitions, collaborate with graphic designers on campaigns for real clients and communities, and build professional skills in marketing, pricing and contracts. Past and present partners include the National Portrait Gallery and South Hill Park Arts Centre, where students have exhibited and presented work, the Financial Times, photo director runs workshops and portfolio reviews on campus.

Two minute stories


Discover the stories of our Photography students

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

Head + Hand: 30 credits
Connecting ideas and practice: An intensive module that grounds you in the essentials – thinking, making, testing and evaluating – through fast-moving projects that build and connect the knowledge, skills and behaviours you need to navigate the discipline.

Career Catalyst: Skills + Capability: 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Skills + Capability focuses on building creative, technical and digital capability aligned to professional standards. You develop transferable skills through practical projects, feedback and reflection, strengthening professional literacy and confidence. This module prepares you to apply your skills effectively across disciplines, laying the foundations for collaboration, industry engagement and complex creative challenges.

Reality + Fiction: 30 credits
Exploring potentials and possibilities: A module that uses solo and group projects to test how your creative work can document, describe, and dramatise real life – but also communicate possibilities, fictions and other speculative scenarios.

Self + Society: 30 credits
Fostering critically engaged practice: A module that shapes your creative voice through investigation, discussion and presentation to audiences, clarified through critical engagement with discipline-specific, global, historic and contemporary theories, debates and practices.

Generalise + Specialise 1: 30 credits
Testing and evaluating specialisms: A module that helps you consolidate your knowledge and skills through projects aligned with existing or emerging specialisms, so you move from broad experimentation to focused practice and develop your own approach.

Career Catalyst: Communities + Influence: 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Communities + Influence emphasises collaboration, participation and real-world impact. Working with audiences, communities and professional contexts through live briefs, projects and engagement opportunities. This module develops professional agency, teamwork and networks, helping you understand how creative practice creates value, influence and opportunity within industry, civic and global contexts.

Generalise + Specialise 2: 30 credits
Shaping a personalised practice: An industry-focused module that allows you to choose, mix and explore existing or emerging specialisms through solo and group projects, to shape your own, personal direction actively within vibrant communities of practice.

Festival: 30 credits
Sharing with wider world: A module that prepares you for professional practice through the planning and/or delivery of public-facing creative work, applying critical analysis, audience engagement and sustainable principles to help define and test your creative practice.

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.

Creative Research: 30 credits
Questioning through critical practice: A module that challenges you to investigate questions or themes through advanced, critical research and/or practice, communicate your findings effectively and evaluate how they shape your own, distinctive creative work.

Career Catalyst: Futures + Direction: 30 credits
Career Catalyst: Futures + Direction supports your transition beyond graduation by focusing on professional identity, positioning and future direction. Consolidating learning through portfolio development, research and career planning you will prepare for employment, freelance practice or further study. The module develops autonomy, confidence and resilience, equipping you to navigate and shape your future professional pathways.

Major Project: 60 credits
Bringing it all together: A module that brings together the knowledge, skills and behaviours you have learned to develop research-informed, critical and sustainable work that defines your practice and readiness for next steps after graduation.

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

Integrated foundation year

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year one

  • Independent study: 72%
  • Scheduled teaching: 28%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year two

  • Independent study: 74%
  • Scheduled teaching: 26%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Year three

  • Independent study: 76%
  • Scheduled teaching: 24%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 20%

Professional placement or International year (if undertaken)

  • Independent study: 98%
  • Scheduled teaching: 2%
  • Maximum percentage of scheduled delivered online: 100%

Please note: these details are for 2026 entry and could be subject to change for other years of entry.

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.

Upcoming webinars

We offer a range of webinars throughout the year that you may be interested in.

You can also view recordings of all previous sessions through the UCA webinar archive.


Fees & financial support

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790
  • BA course: £9,790

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. 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.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £9,790(see fee discount information)
  • BA course: £9,790 (see fee discount information)

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee, for 2026/27 this is £1,955. 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.

Government guidance indicates that tuition‑fee caps will rise annually with inflation from 2026, subject to legislation, so tuition fees are likely to increase each year of study. 

Tuition fees - 2026/27

  • Integrated Foundation Year: £18,000
  • BA course: £18,000

If you opt to study the Professional Practice Year, for 2026 you will be required to pay a reduced tuition fee of £3,490. 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.

The fees listed here 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 the Course Information Document for more details of the costs you may incur.

Find out what's included in your tuition fees.

Photography careers

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.

Eleanor Bangert, BA (Hons) Photography, UCA Farnham

What careers can you do with a Photography degree?

Your guide to creative, commercial and digital photography jobs in the creative industries.

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


Isabella Giddins, BA (Hons) Photography, UCA Farnham

What our Photography students say

"I have thoroughly enjoyed studying photography at UCA... I now feel much more confident and a valued member of the team with new photography friends. I have also made new connections to enhance my work opportunities in the future.

Read Isabella's story Chat to UCA students

Photography entry requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see your portfolio, please see the portfolio requirements section for more details.

Select your country to find the equivalent requirements

Portfolio requirements

For both the BA (Hons) course and the course with the Integrated Foundation Year we will need to see a portfolio.

  • UK applicants: We will invite you to attend an Applicant Day so you can have your portfolio review in person.
  • International applicants: We will ask you to submit an online portfolio. 

In your portfolio we’re looking for 12 to 20 examples of your current work that showcase your level and range of achievements. Your portfolio should be representative of recent study and personal work. 

Please check our Photography BA (Hons) portfolio requirements and read our advice on creating a strong photography portfolio.

UCAS applicants should also check our UCAS personal statement guide for photography applicants.

Full portfolio requirements and advice

Apply to BA (Hons) Photography

Please use the following fields to help select the right application link for you:

UCAS codes

  • UCA institution code: C93
  • Three year degree: W640
  • Plus professional practice year: W644
  • Plus integrated foundation year: W64F
  • Plus integrated foundation year and professional practice year: W64G

BA (Hons) Photography key statistics

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