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SMC students visit Carmel, California
On Saturday, March 29th, 2008, fifty-four students and eight instructors from Santa Monica College gathered in scenic Carmel, California, for a panel discussion of photography featuring four of the highest-regarded photographers in the country. Freestyle Advisory Board members Henry Gilpin, Richard Garrod and Huntington Witherill, along with noted photographer Al Weber, entertained the enthusiastic crowd, which was thrilled to soak up the musings of these sages of photography. The event was put together by Jan Pietrzak and Santa Monica College faculty members. Jan Pietrzak is an adjunct faculty member at Santa Monica College and also a Freestyle Advisory Board Member.
 The main theme of the afternoon was about encouragement for the students to grow and enjoy photography. All of the speakers related rich anecdotes about their lives and careers in photography (some stretching nearly 60 years), as well as the friendships, community and sense
of sharing during their lifetime love for their craft. The panel made it very clear to the attendees that the sheer passion of creating and communicating is what has kept them in photography for so many years.
Henry Gilpin kicked the afternoon off and really got the crowd fired up with his sharp wit and whip-smart comments. The old-school Monterey photography legend showed his trademark wonderful attitude and huge smile as he displayed his prints and talked about still being excited about the changes in photography, even at his advanced age. Richard Garrod followed Gilpin, speaking of his passion about visually speaking through his work, and encouraged the students to strive for the same ideal in their work. Mr. Garrod strove to make it clear to all that technical skill in photography is not enough, that one has to communicate specific themes and ideas through their work. Richard gave nine books that he keeps in his personal library about composition and visual communication.
Speaking third, Al Weber declared that he was different from the other panel members in that he did not consider himself an artist, but rather a commercial photographer, because he wanted to make money in photography. Mr. Weber also revealed that he is nearing his 2,000th photographic workshop, and that unlike the speakers who preceded him, he works with both film and digital images for his work. Dismissing the perceived contradictions between the worlds of analog and digital that have been raised by some, Mr. Weber's main point was that it doesn't really matter how one prints, but that staying enthused about photography was the important thing in maintaining a long-term career in the field.
Huntington Witherill began his talk by saying that he was surprised to be a part of the panel, because all three of the previous speakers have been his mentors for the past thirty-plus years and that he stills shows his work to them. He then went on to reiterate the theme of the cycle of sharing and community and friendship within the photographic genre.
Then on the following day, photographers Barbara Moon and Fernando Batista opened their studio up to a small group of students and instructors. The talk which ensued covered how the two got their photography business started, how they had to change as the events of 9/11 changed the economic climate, how they work with their clients, and how they work on their client's images. The session concluded with Moon and Batista encouraging the students to always learn from others, and emphasizing how much continued passion they would need to succeed as professional photographers.
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