The World Wide Web Intensive Workshop 1. 2.

Woody Allen says...

"Those who can't do, teach.
And those who can't teach, teach gym."

While I hope that's not particularly true in my case, I find myself in the classroom these days. A lot. Although I find great satisfaction in teaching, especially when some of my students launch cool web sites like Ben Barbante, I am wistful now and then when there is little time or energy left for me to capture fresh images and near life experiences.

In particular, my past week was entirely devoted to leading our first ever World Wide Web Intensive Workshop at CEA . This workshop is my 'baby' and we had participants fly in from as far away as Paris. The composite photograph you see above is composed of six of the intensive's students. Clicking on it will lead you to the class Netsite they created to support learning this Web authoring stuff from the ground up. Maybe in Internet parlance the "ground up" is when space coorinates are x=0, y=0 and z=0.

Lately, the notion occurs that it would have been great if I did this Web column in the sixties when I spent much of my time with Rock stars, avatars and colorful personalities; or the seventies when fashion models and actors became my focus; or even in the eighties when I peregrinated the social circuit among the beautiful and famous. Although I've still got the photographic mementos from those daft days, it would have been smashing to have this worldwide forum to share those times.

Classrooms. I find myself in yet more classrooms because I also am a student.

I just started spending my Sunday afternoons back in Photoshop class where I study with photodigital wizard Jon Lentz . This is the third time I am putting myself through Photoshop class and I find that each time I do this with a different teacher, an entirely new aspect of the program comes to the fore. Jon concentrates on the powerful new Adobe tool called layers and I kind of sit at his feet because I want to know what he knows. I envision thinking and conceiving in the same Photoshop terms that Jon does, that is, Jon precognitizes shaping his art using Photoshop's 'layers' tool. He thinks in those terms. Right now I only think about those terms.

I am treating my ongoing participation as a student much like any actor or dancer might who continuously 'takes class.' I not only gobble new tidbits and absorb fresh insights, I also love the camaraderie which comes from just being with my fellow students discovering neat stuff in a workshop environment.