Tag: learning

Working outside of the Photo-shop centered mainstream

On my ride home from the Maine Media workshops, where I was teaching a class in street photography, I reflected on everything that happened during the workshop. It was a great group of photographers, who grew as individuals AND supported each other as they went through the sometimes-difficult process of growing and changing. Many things that were said and/or done are potential seeds of blog entries. One difficult question that I heard from two different photographers is what I am writing about this week. Read More

An update after a week at the Maine Media Workshops

I am finishing up a great week at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine. There were a whole bunch of small highlights during the class that I think are worth sharing. Read More

Teaching mastery, ethics and excellence, in business and/or photography.

I was discussing ethics and publication photography with a friend. We were e-mailing back and forth in the wake of the recent news of how the New York Times Magazine photos that were not supposed to be “photoshop-ped” actually were. He was joking that the only thing left was to ban digital cameras and force publication photographers back to using film. After laughing at the thought, we agreed that even that drastic a step would not make a difference. The history of photography is full of folks who exploited film’s perceived documentary nature to their own advantage. Read More

So you want to teach photography workshops?

A peer asked me how she could make money “teaching photography workshops as a business.” After picking myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, I gathered my thoughts and reflected on how I started teaching photography. Tracing the path I took from to aspiring instructor to veteran workshop teacher resulted in this blog entry. Read More

Unraveling the “mystical and unapproachable” in photography

One of my more regular correspondents, Michael Colby, wrote me with a two-pronged query: “I’d be interested in reading a blog entry about what set you on the path of being a photographer?” He also asked “I still remember, when I was in high school trying to get into serious photography, visiting a camera store. It was almost a mystical and unapproachable place. I take it that serious camera stores were not “consumer friendly’ in the way that any retailer has to be today.” The answers to both his points are intertwined within my own experiences as a young photographer. Read More

The art of editing – The editing of art

In the last week, I have been editing lots of images, looking at thousands and cutting those down to hundreds (or less.) Over the years, I have become a pretty fast editor who can easily articulate why an image does (or does not) work. When a good friend told me she was having trouble editing down her own work, I walked her through some strategies to help her improve her editing skills. By the time we were finished, I realized our conversation was “made” to be a blog entry. Read More

Learning how to learn, photographically

When I went to college, in pursuit of a Bachelor of Liberal Arts, my mother encouraged me to put my energy into what she called “learning how to learn.” I just finished a workshop where a student told me the best part of the class was that he had “learned how to learn the way to make the best photograph possible of a given situation.” Read More

The workshop I always wanted to attend

As an aspiring documentary photographer/photo-essayist there was always one workshop I always wanted to attend, but I never could. Now that I am in fact “established,” there is one workshop I really want to teach, but I wonder if other students would want to attend such a workshop. Read More

One photographer’s career path (a video)

This podcast explores my career path, from student photographer to established professional. As I tell my story, I show photographs from the many phases of my career. Read More

Photographs as mirrors and windows

I often tell my students that their best photographs are the ones that reflect their personalities, life experiences and outlooks.  I was recently giving a presentation, when an audience member’s question stopped me cold and forced me to articulate how that same idea has played out in my own work. Read More