How to See (And Why I Can’t Teach It)

I cannot count the number of times people have asked me to teach photography. More than once, I’ve heard the words: “You should teach a workshop.” “I’d sign up if you did a course.” “Just show us your settings.”

I could probably teach the craft. I could walk through exposure and shutter speed, the rule of thirds, leading lines, et al. I could break down how I shoot a sequence, how I choose a lens, how I frame a subject to hold tension or breathe. That part’s teachable.

But the other part? The part that matters? The most important part of the craft, the art I have grown to love and cherish in my almost 40 years, I wouldn’t know how.

Because I can’t teach you how to feel, I can’t teach you how to see. I can’t teach you how to listen with a camera instead of shouting with it.

And if I tried, I might confuse you.

You have to earn your way into that.

You have to sit. You must sit in silence and figure out why. Why did the light hitting your kitchen table make you stop and want to capture it, to share it, to allow others into your feelings? Do you want to let others into how you feel? Creating gives a window into you and makes you vulnerable.

You have to shoot a hundred terrible frames before one feels honest and even then, not be sure why. I have created images and just had a feeling that I’ve accomplished a ‘good photo’ but I’m not sure why it’s a good photo. There is a feeling when a good photo has been accomplished and I cannot teach that either.

Teaching someone how to take a technically “good” photo I could probably do and fake my way to the end. But teaching someone how to show something without explaining it? That’s different. Teaching someone that their voice lives in the photos — that the images created articulate their thoughts? That I don’t know how to teach.

That comes from watching. From failing. From trying again. From not needing to impress anyone, not for the likes or the algorithms.

The best teachers I’ve ever known weren’t the loudest ones. They weren’t the “know-it-alls.”

They were the ones who remembered what it felt like to not know.

They had room for your discovery.

They taught with humility, not just mastery.

If I ever teach — and maybe one day I will — I want to bring that.

Not a workshop full of checklists and camera settings.

But a conversation. A space to notice.

Until then, I’ll just keep doing the work — quietly, imperfectly.

And if someone learns something from watching me work that way? My son, my daughter, my wife—they do that now. They watch me and every so often ask questions, because they understand me and my process.

So if thats a way someone learns?

That’s enough.