As many of you know, I’m going to be one of the instructors at the Genesis Workshop in Durham, NC this coming September. There’s a lot of flack flying around on the internet right now about workshops, so I thought that I would take this opportunity to elucidate some of my thoughts and motivations with regards to this workshop.

First off, I love teaching. In my former life, I was a Special Forces soldier in the US Army. And while for many of you, this has connotations of door-kicking, gun-shooting, and various secret-squirrel activities, another big part of my job was teaching. I taught both US and Iraqi troops in a variety of disciplines from medicine to marksmanship, and I’ve retained a great love for helping people grow and improve in their fields of choice.

I have a few important philosophies of teaching. First, if you are expecting my classes to focus on giving you “tricks” and “shortcuts” to taking better photos, you’ll be disappointed. While I am teaching the lighting section, I have absolutely no interest in telling you where to put your lights, and to what settings they should be adjusted. I’m not interested in selling you on one particular style of lighting or piece of gear. My goal for this curriculum is to arm you with a series of principles and properties that will enable you to make your own decisions with regards to lighting, whether you prefer strobes, windows, monolights, video lights, reflectors, or the sun. Along the way, I’ll be happy if you are inspired to experiment with a new type of gear or approach… but it is NOT my goal to provide you with a lighting “system” that you can simply plug your own clients into and achieve “rockstar” effects.

Another principle that I find very important is that I’m coming to this workshop to teach you, not impress you. I will certainly be providing demonstrations of certain techniques where it is appropriate. However, I have seen (and attended) workshops where the instructor creates a killer photo, and then simply cycles the students through that setup and allows them to “trace” the instructor’s photo. It is my belief that this is of limited value to students, even if they are excited by the quality of work they may imagine that “they” are producing. Wherever and whenever it is possible, I am going to make YOU the students do all the work. I will be there to guide you, but I want YOU to be placing the lights and YOU to be deciding on settings, because even if the shot might be a little more polished if I did it for you, I want you to take home skills that you can actually reproduce on your own. I believe that you will retain the skills you learn through a hands-on approach.

Be prepared for me to ask you questions. I don’t like to give you answers, at least without forcing you to think about them first. In many cases I don’t expect you to be able to answer my questions right away, so you should never be embarrassed by not knowing the answer. I’m not doing it to put you on the spot. I believe that answers that you find through your own mental sweat will be retained longer and more richly than formulas that I might ask you to recite by rote, so I’m going to push you to do your own thinking wherever possible.

In the end, I want you all to finish the workshop with a feeling of light as paintbrushes of different types. I don’t want you to be “strobists” or “natural light shooters,” I want you to be students of light.

And in closing I want you to say that I am truly humbled by the responsibility with which you have entrusted me and the other instructors. You have invested with us both your hard-earned money, and more importantly your dreams for growing as a photographer and business. I am fully committed to honoring that trust.