My wife had just left me and moved to the coast with my 2 year old daughter.
I walked into my downtown studio in Johannesburg, after almost 10 years of commercial/advertising work. I looked into the back of a Sinar 10X8 camera on a set, and I thought "What the hell am I doing here?" This isn't what I wanted to do with my life. Dealing with the crazy advertising world and shooting all these "Paint-by-number" pics to layouts etc.
Many people outside have a very strange view of what it is to be a commercial photographer. But the truth is that you're shooting other people's ideas to tight deadlines and it's a lot of damn hard work with very little margin for error and with not much creative input. The adrenalin catches you and so does the ego-feast. (And the money is good too!) but it really takes it out of you.
So I dropped out in 1986. Withing a couple of months I was li
ving in
Cape Town, close to my daughter and looking for more rewarding ways to make a living. Teaching was one of the things I decided to do and the other move was to video. (I started out as a 16mm news cameraman in 1975! )
I got my teaching diploma just over a year later. I taught part-time at first and then full time and later, I opened my own college, teaching Digital imaging and Photoshop to (Mostly) professionals interested in switching to digital.
It was a lucrative business. I also ran workshops of varying durations.
The offer came to move to Oman and start a new photography school and it was exciting so I took it and sold the school.
Of course I still do the odd commercial job, on my own terms. I just shot 2 cars for Mitsubishi last week, But I am now a full-time educator and it's a real challenge. I now have a new daughter of 15 months (The other one is 23) and I'm spending a lot more ti
me with
her and enjoying it immensley.
herschel
Herschel Mair
Head of the Department of Photography,
Head of the Department of Photography,
Higher College of Technology
Muscat
Sultanate of Oman
Muscat
Sultanate of Oman
Adobe Certified instructor
+ (986) 99899 673
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