RSB & Associates

I like to begin with one double session (2-hrs) where we can review "Photography" as a concept, its categories, your goals, existing abilities, your camera-equipment, and your equipment's technical capabilities, limitations, possibilities and more.

We then spend time discussing a student's personal background, viewpoint, skills, and photographic goals both short-term and long-term. For example, is a student interested in architecture, wildlife, landscapes, portraiture, event, product, sports, fashion, animals or public relations or is it something else they are interested such as medical inter-ocular procedure photography? 

Recently with some of my more accomplished students, we have been getting into the use of filters both for light and depth of field control as well as light modifications such as polarizers, counter polarizers, halves, nets, softs and so forth. As I have a very comprehensive collection of filters built up over the years as well as a fairly complete Cookin Creative system this affords a student an opportunity to try out various techniques and the result before purchasing such as system.  

I started shooting stills back when I was six with an old Kodak Brownie "Fiesta" roll-film camera and under the tutelage of my Father, a renown educator, author and social documentarian. By High School, I was a professional shooting theatrical images, dance, fashion and such mundane imagery as Passport pictures, classical portraiture and product photography. Before college and further field study, I did two internships one with Pete Turner and another with Irving Penn. Basically, Turner uses color and photo illustrative techniques and Penn is famous for his revolutionary black and white work(s) and then his inner-city documentary studies. My College courses further refined the classic commercial techniques and skills in lighting and archival print-production as well as communicating these elements to clients, students and those involved in the photographic process we euphemistically call "talent."    

My rate is $65.00 per hour in my immediate service area. This is less than half of personal photographic tutilage in New York City and reflects the limited use of my extensive personal equipment to illustrate and nurture the elements of photographic style as they relate to the lessons the student will be introduced to. 

To help you decide please allow me to qualify myself a bit for you. 

I am not the tutor for the student that just wishes to know how to hold a camera level and keep their thumb (or other appendages) out of their imagery. I am not the tutor for those that just want to leave their camera on "A" and ask their computer to generate the images they capture.

I am the tutor for a student wishing to exploit the maximum photographic potential in a given event and give their available technology the critical assessment requisite to those that see the visual as an elastic opportunity that they can exploit to capture (share) and bring their viewpoint and opinion to a still image.

In short, I am the tutor for a student who wishes to "think" about imagery at all levels and who wants their images to touch a viewer in a way well above a mindless "point-and-shoot" snapshots.

I think this question is quite revealing as it is at the heart of yourself as a photographer. It has been my privilege to photograph subjects in what I call both "verticle" and "horizontal" plains. By this I mean the context is not what is the event a photographer is fond of but rather can they use the lessons of photography, both technical and conceptual to hone in on how to best capture and present an event and the elements thereof in a manner beyond a "snapshot" or "surveillance" style but rather to bring the viewer along with the photographer as both observer and participant. Ideally, the images a photographer takes should evoke a reaction in the viewer that is of an emotional range the photographer had in mind and that transcends the event.  

I really advise a student to spend a few hundred dollars working with several tutors for an hour or two. I call this "investing" in your learning and as such this will let you know whether a tutor and you have the right chemistry to learn together.

For instance, trying to learn from an individual with limited experience and similarly limited equipment base may be fine for someone with only a cellphone (and no accessories) as their camera, but learning only the basics will never teach you how to "think" about photography and the best to hope from such sessions are really no better than that "A" in the setting might permit.