On Educating

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-95) English biologist and writer.

I'm not sure the reason I took on teaching. I suppose, initially I thought of it as a way to give back, mainly because some one or ones had the patience to teach me. Now, 16 years into it, I'm still not sure.

I teach photography at an advertising school in South Beach (Miami). There are initially technical things to teach---the three elements that make up exposure, what all the knobs and dials do, how to hold a camera. It's changed a bit over the years as technology has taken us from analogue to digital, film to disks or cards and darkroom to desktop. But how it works, for the most part, has remained the same.

So after the technical part is learned, there comes the critiquing. There's lighting, composition, lens selection but in the end at least for me, I learned photography by mistakes (and I've learned nearly everything that way) and having my work critiqued. Trial and error, trial by fire---however you refer to it but most things in life we learn by having first learned how not to do it. I'm a believer in failing---early and often. I love failing and I have to a certain degree learned to embrace it as the best teacher I've found. I know that the more times I try and fail, the quicker I stop trying (because really there isn't any "trying", we either do something or we don't) and I figure out how to make something happen. I think that Oscar Wilde said once some version of "nothing that's worth knowing can be taught" and Gailileo said, "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself."

A photograph as with any type of art is subjective, one can love it and the next can hate it and another can ignore it completely. Some times they can tell you why and sometimes they can't. However, certain technical parts need to be there. 


Critiquing a students work is probably the most difficult thing. Some are great about it, and some take it personal, which it definitely is not, some will disagree with you and I don't really have a problem with that either, as long as they get the lesson.
AND I suppose I'd be lying if I said that never in my career did I think to myself that not liking my photo meant not liking me. 


I listen to critiques, I see what I can learn from them, what I can take to the next assignment. It's not personal and if you look at critiques as opportunities to transform your skills, then you will appreciate their value and be grateful (though we never REALLY get there, there is always something new to learn).