My job as a teacher is as diverse as my classroom, involving multiple tracks of teaching and learning. I assume the roles of teacher, artist, mentor, critic, and coach, to lead and learn from my students in an environment where we work together, critiquing, debating, and evaluating ideas. I encourage them to address photography from a wide range of perspectives, and to research, explore, and initiate work that reflects their own experiences. 

I provide technical training to help them master the craft of photography using a variety of tools and techniques, and at the same time, help them to develop their own personal voices as contemporary artists living in a complex, multiethnic world. I want them to have an understanding of photography along practical, historical, and theoretical lines, and from local, national, and global perspectives. And I want them to be good citizens; tolerant, benevolent, and just.
 

My courses are constructed around the belief that students learn best when they are invested. So, I give them a say in course objectives and let their own interests drive their work. I want them to achieve goals I set out for them, but also achieve their own goals, and assess their own performance. Practical training underlies their ability to work well with photographic images, knowledge of history and theory contribute to their understanding of messages and meaning, and personal investment allows them to investigate both what they know, and what they want to know.
 

All of my students have something to say, my job is to help them say it, with creativity and heart. I want to provide a track record of positive experiences for them to build upon to help set the stage for a more confident and mature artist voice to unfold, and work with them to achieve a higher level of visual literacy that allows them to decode the barrage of visual signs presented to them by visual culture, and see their own work against a broader backdrop of historical and contemporary art practices. If in the process their romantic notions of photography tend to fade, a more informed vision of it and how they will use it can take shape. “Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed,” wrote Robert Ingersol.
 

In the classroom I coordinate a mix of lectures, hands-on demonstrations, group projects, critiques, workshops, visiting artists, reading and writing assignments, slide shows, videos, websites, and field trips in a multipronged, multiethnic approach to teaching and learning that blends art practice with a broad range of topics and artists working in a variety of contexts and media. I am constantly adding new ideas to my list of projects and assignments to foster creativity and supportive dialogue in a laboratory think-tank environment where I can help students grow into critically engaged visual artists. 

Perceptual Adaptation

Comparing a camera eye to a human eye, the following images trace the evolution of human sight from the paleolithic to the post-modern era.