8 Days A Week

I've learned something. Getting a group of photographers to agree on something is like herding cats on catnip in a room full of mice. I'm president of a local camera club and we've been trying for the past 3 years to create and conduct some photo workshops. This year, we're the closest we've ever been to developing and actually conducting a series of workshops. But, we still haven't determined a workshop date, a plan to market the workshops, or a definite fee. We're held up now because of an issue with software (the lab we are wanting to teach at doesn't have the software available, so we have to decide how to approach that). The problem is there are 8 photographers, each wanting to do workshops on their "pet" specialty or area of interest, and each of the 8 have their own things going on outside the club, so the amount of time being spent putting the workshops together is hugely disproportional to the results to date.

As I've said, we've been trying to do this for the past three years. We've had three relatively productive meetings over the past two months and are farther along than we have been, historically. But, our original expectation of getting the first workshop in the bag by the end of June is looking less likely.

On my own, about a month ago, I approached the staff at the local wildlife refuge about the requirements (permits and fees) for me to offer workshops out there. After an initial meeting, a second meeting with the board of the Friends group (a citizen group that helps coordinate activities at the refuge), and a third meeting today, we have a first workshop date, the location, topic, a university photojournalism intern working on press and publicity (with an article in the regional audubon society newsletter due out next week), an entire class of designers from another university working on developing a poster and postcard by the first part of April, and plans for additional workshops as well as continuing university involvement. Five people involved, one photographer.

I've also set up a fun activity called a PhotoCrawl, scheduled for March 29. The PhotoCrawl is modeled after SketchCrawl, started by a sketch artist in San Francisco several years ago. SketchCrawl is itself loosely modeled after the famed Pub Crawl, but involves roaming the city with a sketchpad. PhotoCrawl will be similar, except with cameras, and initially will be only 4 hours instead of all day. I already have nearly 10 people signed up to participate as well as interest by the press (a phone interview is scheduled for Sunday). One photographer.

So, what's the lesson learned? Artists are quite productive on their own, but get them into a group and you might as well have a hundred chimps trying to bang out Shakespeare. It's a bit frustrating because I know these folks and they are all excellent photographers in their own right and all have great ideas. There are also a lot of egos to work with, and everyone wants to be first. It's also frustrating because we all recognize the local need for workshops and the available market for the club to make some good money and become a regional Go-To for this type of thing, but can't seem to pull it together. I don't know if we'll be successful or not, but we're giving it another try. If it doesn't work out this time (like a few years ago) we'll no doubt try again in another few years.

But, in the meantime, I'm going to be doing regular workshops at the refuge, helping coordinate additional art workshops with painting, drawing, writing, etc. for adults and kids. And, if all goes well, expanding the program to other areas.