High School

One of the things I not only enjoy about my job, but really sets me apart from my competitors is my passion for helping teach my customers all the ins and outs of what they need to know to be happy with their prints. Theres a lot more to it than most people think. Another thing I really enjoy about my job is the community aspect. So something I’ve wanted to do for a long time is give back to the community by offering my instruction to various places, the main one being schools. So early this year I reached out to Roosevelt High School to connect to their photography teacher about speaking with his students. And it finally came together.

Roosevelt has an advanced photography class so we decided that would be the most appropriate, where the kids would have a general background in color space, file types, etc. I put together a basic outline of what I felt was the most important info for the kids, and Travis, their teacher agreed with it. I was really nervous, but Travis calmed my nerves a bit by pushing me to create visual aides, so I made a slideshow to keep me on point. It was really hard, I fumbled a lot. I don’t know if I connected to the kids at all. This kind of thing is totally new to me. Teaching an artist technical info is far different from standing up in front of 20 17 year olds. But I’m really glad I did it.

The goal I wanted to accomplish was to try and let these kids know how passionate I am about what I do. And how big printing your work can be in the journey of any photographer. Thats something that I think gets very lost these days with people primarily viewing their work on a 3″ screen in their hand. I also wanted them to know that there is very real careers out there that involve working with photography, if it doesnt pan out actually being one for a career. If you are a creative, which I imagine most people who pick up a camera are (not people who just take pictures with their phone), its always good to know about all of the job possibilities out there in creative fields.

I want to do more teaching. I think it will have to be to a camera for a while until I get more comfortable with connecting to a live audience. But I do enjoy it. If you are passionate about something, chances are someone else out there would share that passion, or at least appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and as usual supporting my shop!