I asked George Forss this week if I could hire  him to give me several photo lessons, and he readily agreed. We haggled a bit over price. What do you charge?, I asked. “Oh,” he said, “how is $20?” How about “$30?,” I asked. Okay, he said.

Buying a Canon 5 D is a little like buying an Apple computer, you can take really good photos without ever quite grasping how the camera really works. Modern full-frame cameras are complex, they have sophisticated digital imaging systems and settings. I’ve learned some of them, but not as many as I’d like to learn, and George is a genius at the mechanics of cameras as well as the composition of photographs.

George is one of the world’s most accomplished and respected photographers, he left New York City after 911 for reasons that are too complex to detail here and moved upstate. I am humbled to be able to take a photo lesson from a genius like George, he has become a good friend. He builds his own lenses and meters and is a long-time student of photographic optics. Next Monday is the first lesson, I am very excited about it. I try to be a better photographer every day. As long as I don’t mention aliens, we’ll be good.