Those early days were some of the most fun I have had teaching.
My dear friend Bob and I ran a little teaching team called The Photographers Connection. We called our workshops Bootcamps. There was one for landscapes and seascapes, one for portraits, and one for Lightroom, and we ran a couple a month.
The classroom was Bagelz in Wakefield. The real classroom was the coast in Narragansett: Point Judith Lighthouse, Fishermen’s Memorial State Park, the fishing area at Black Point.
Bob and I taught the lighting classes. We’d use a studio, or set one up in the bagel shop’s classroom, and bring in a model. It wasn’t really about lighting. It was about how to get the flash off the camera, and the power of a reflector.
Then there was what I called Light on a Stick: a flash in a small softbox on top of a painter’s pole. I wore cargo shorts and put the end of the pole in the pocket. Buy the fancy pole at your favorite big box store and you can make it longer and shorter. It was awesome for portraits on the fly.
Our friend Don joined us to teach macro and flower photography. Don was retired, and he had spent his entire career in the photography industry. Studios, stores, you name it, he did it all. Probably the kindest man I have ever met. We lost touch when I stepped back from photography to deal with my health, and I was saddened to learn of Don’s passing.
We taught so many people through those courses, and I have so enjoyed the friends I made along the way. So many of our students took multiple classes with us and became good friends. That was what was special.
I named it The Photographers Connection because I felt we were building a platform that allowed photographers to connect. In hindsight it should have been called The Photographers Community, because that is what it really became.