An interesting thing about my instructors was that they both came from Navy backgrounds. One had been a photographer in the Navy and taught photography in the Navy. The other left the Navy and went to Brooks Institute in California and studied photography. They pretty much split up the teaching with one teaching more of the color processing and commercial end while the other taught most everything else. You quickly learn that things are a lot different when you leave high school. Nobody watches over you all of the time and a lot of our assignments were on location or in studios with little or no supervision, which meant it was up to you to get everything done on time. Because of this a lot of people would get behind and rush like crazy at the end of a quarter to catch up. Also, when you were being graded it could be very rough so you needed some thick skin, this made you want top put things off. Nothing was ever perfect, not even close.
During my time in school we had several people join the Navy, a lot of us thought why pay for them to teach us when they would pay you and teach you if you join the Navy. The recruiter came around a lot, I guess he knew that we would think like that. I stayed, but if I had gone I could have retired by now!
All in all it was a lot of fun and we learned a lot and made some great friends that I still consider some of my closest friends to this day. We formed a close knit group, so close that some of the other classes didn’t like us too much. It wasn’t that we thought we were better than them, we didn’t think that at all, we were just together 24/7 and didn’t get out much because there wasn’t much to do in the area. A few years ago, thanks to Facebook, we all got together again and we all seemed to pick up right where we had left off almost 30 years ago.
In my final quarter while at the Georgia Professional Photographers Association (GPPA) convention in Savannah I won several awards. I had a job lined up when we left and I was on top of the world. Everything was falling into place. Graduation was around the corner, look out world here I come!
Next would come the big wake up call.
Graduation Day
GPPA Convention in Savannah
First Place General Commercial with GPPA President Tony Armstrong, who would have guessed that I would end up working for him in a few years.