Sunday, in the Hart Community Center in Fredericksburg, VA I talked for a little over six hours! I set up a series of seminars, six total, about different photography related subjects. The plan: start at 10 am end at 4 pm, each seminar would be 45 minutes (including questions and answers) with a 15 minute break. It sounded pretty good. I got started on time and one seminar run into another. At 1pm or so, I really don’t remember, I did take a short break, maybe 10 minutes, to have a drink and a granola bar. While I was having my snack I did talk to a few people but I let them do most of the talking. Then I was off again! Before long it was 4pm. Time to pack up and go home.

I guess it was good that time went by so quickly. There was a bit of a snag during one seminar about Photoshop Layers. As happens in live demonstrations, Photoshop didn’t want to work the way I wanted it to. Oh well, a quick change of course and everything worked out. There were a lot of questions and everyone seemed to enjoy the seminars. But talking for six straight hours? On the drive home my throat was sore and I felt dehydrated. I started thinking about it and I realized that I had talked just about non-stop.

You have to understand something. As a child I was the one who never asked to get up in front of the class. I did only when absolutely necessary and usually under severe duress! All the way through school, even in college, I did not want to stand out. I guess this shows what a turn around someone can make when they truly find something they love and want to talk about it.

I love photography and I love talking about it! I love teaching photography and I live for those “light bulb” moments when someone finally understands something that has been giving them fits as they tried to figure it out. I’m not sure if I will ever set up a day to talk about photography for six straight hours again. Now I know that I can but I’m not sure I will want to.

Thank you to all who came out Sunday! I hope you enjoyed the day. But I have one request… don’t let me talk for six hours anytime soon!