31: Teaching Photography Taught Me…

Sunrise Over Suburbia. Winter Garden, FL. Photo: Mark Lepow

“Hi Mark, this is Rick Lang over at Crealdé, we need a digital photography instructor for our Winter Garden classes, are you interested?”

I met Rick while attending Daytona Beach Community College’s photography program. When I started, he was in his last year of studies, but we struck up a yin/yang type of friendship. His passion was blues music and documenting the Southern US states. Rick was quite a humble guy though he had no problem expressing his thoughts, regardless of the subject.

Rick passed away in 2013 due to complications from melanoma. Visit his website to appreciate his art.

That phone call was not without some history behind it. He knew that one of my dreams was to be a photography instructor. About a year before the call, Rick invited me to give two seminars during an open house weekend at Crealdé School of Art. The subject was how photographers could harness this new thing called social media to grow their business. Roughly sixty people attended my seminars between the two days.

My Dad was a first or second-year industrial arts professor at NYU before meeting his future bride, who was studying nursing at NYU. Other relatives have been teachers, including their only natural child, my sister. Somehow she passed all the tests she needed to become a certified teacher in Florida. My ex and her NEVER saw eye to eye when it came to teaching.

My ex was a special needs teacher for decades, while my sister was first a kindergarten teacher (my brother and I would joke how we felt so bad for those kids), and then she taught older kids along the elementary school ladder. At some point, she managed to talk her way into a technology position. Eventually, she became the head of the county public school IT dept. I’m sure my ex and her still have spirited discussions on how to best do things. My sister is like her parents and attempts to rule an argument by raising her voice and making rude comments, while my ex usually has poise and knows to lower their voice forcing the other person to have to concentrate on what they are saying. It was actually quite humorous to see them have a chat back in the day.

What I didn’t know was that on both days, members of the board of regents were present. To this day, I have no idea who they were. The school planned another open house weekend, maybe six months later, but it was canceled, I believe due to a hurricane. I do not remember at this point.

Around that time the city of Winter Garden commissioners were making it well known that they didn’t like the idea that Crealdé (based an hour away in Winter Park) was giving classes to WG residents, yet the instructors were not WG residents. They were quite clear that they wanted WG residents to lead these programs. They also wanted the residents to receive a discount, a decent discount since the classes were being held at the city-owned rec center (rent-free) and it did not have all the amenities that Crealdé’s main campus had (such as photo labs, darkrooms, printers, etc).

So, Rick thought about who he knew who lived in Winter Garden, and guess who it was? Yep, me. It helped that members of the board of regents (or leadership, I don’t remember the term) remembered my seminars. Yes, I still had to be interviewed, present a portfolio—which was quite weird because I had spent nearly my entire career avoiding the need for one—and come up with a syllabus. I was approved, and then the fun started. But they trusted Rick’s ability and I became the last person he recommended to join the team.

Rick had me sit in on a couple of the existing classes that were led by Michael Van Gelder. We hit it off quite well, though I did try hard to just blend in while observing how he led his classes. Crealdé made it quite easy on the instructors, they gave us the presentations to show during our weekly lectures, and the study material. We were encouraged to include our photos in the presentation.

After a couple of sessions, while I was helping him set up the classroom, he leisurely said, by the way, Rick told me to let you lead the class today. What? Dude, you are so ready for this, you know your stuff. Just be yourself and have fun. Well, that was on a critique night. Our role as instructors was not to tear apart the students, but to help bring out the positives of their work. In my career as a photographer I have had a few interviews with prospective assistants, and I always drilled them about why they did this or that. I wanted them to think. However, I always felt bad for other photographers who had photos from the same concert in a nightclub or small venue where I was shooting.