Guest Speaking

A few weeks ago I received a call from an instructor at Mohawk College in Hamilton asking me if I would be interested in speaking with a group of first-year students in a Media Career Discovery class. I always try to accommodate requests like this, (although it isn't always possible) and do my best to provide an interesting, informative, and hopefully somewhat entertaining presentation.
I was deciding upon a date when I would be available when I received an emergency call last Thursday. The speaker that was lined up for Oct. 26th had fallen ill with swine flu.(That sucks for them I know because I've already experienced it myself!) I was happy to be penciled in as a replacement, and this morning I went to the college to share my thoughts, images, and multimedia works. My "lecture" this morning, to the class of about fifty students, lasted about two hours, and I stayed on a bit longer to answer more questions from some interested students.

I normally enjoy speaking to people interested in what we do as photojournalists and today was no exception. I was very pleased with the level of interest, and the many questions that students had. I showed several Quicktime versions of some of my past work, and was pleased that the students were still asking for more. It was very encouraging. We had to wrap it up finally, but before doing so I was able to recommend much of my work, as well as work done by colleagues at The Globe and Mail, and elsewhere. Hopefully they'll continue to be interested to look at much of the work available to them on-line, and will learn from the mistakes that we professionals are making as we learn new skills in a very public environment.

Coming up, I'll be doing a week-long members blog for the News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) starting October 2nd, and the following week myself and many other industry professionals will be converging on Loyalist College for the fall meeting of the Photojournalism Program Advisory Committee.

I'm not looking forward to doing the blog everyday.....I am an Occassional Blogger after all. I'm looking forward to meeting the students at Loyalist once again, and having an opportunity to look at some promising work, and hopefully be able to provide some guidance here and there.

As always it will also be a treat to get together with old friends, mentors, and colleagues as well.