I’ve been encouraging my students and workshop participants to pay attention to their inner artists . . . to take it on a spiritual outing every so often. For me, one of the great spiritual places I can think of is the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. The grand space, the stair case that leads to the portals, the flower arrangements, the contents that adorn the wall therein . . . very inspiring and up lifting.

Last weekend, while in NYC for a series of lectures and workshops, I had the opportunity to pay homage to my masters, the French Impressionists and the painters of the Hudson River School. My NYC Producer, Joan Tedeschi, a long time and trusted friend, joined me, or did I join her?  It was all there . . .  the magic of the spaces, the grandness, the people . . .  but what surprised me this time was the new lighting, which certainly helped, along with the lack of restrictions of the picture taking process.  Not only was I allowed to photography the paintings that I would normally have acquired as slides or a CD for my lectures in the book store, I was allowed to walk right up and photograph the details of most any image I wanted . . . to study the bush strokes . . . then  snap a photo of the description card adjacent. Not only was I happily photographing away  . .  but so was everyone else, with cell phone cameras, no flash and no tripods. This was a whole new way to experience the museum, to take away not only the memories, but now to have a visual data base of the experience to refer to.

I’ve been developing and giving lectures on image composition, color and the use of light for 30 years now, illustrated by slides I had to acquired at the Met and the book stores at other museum. Most faculty members who lecture on art history have been doing eh same, until recently. To now make my own images, to capture the details of specific images to illustrate a point in my lectures, has made the Met an even more valuable resource.

But . . .  making photos of the paintings and sculpture was only one of the joys of my few hours at the Met . . . here were the people to photograph as well . . . the well dressed, absorbed in their own world of observation, posing for me. And there were people photographing each other . . . so I photographed them. I then asked if they’d like a copy. “Sure . . . .”

“Then give me your email address. Do you have a card?  No? Here write down your email address on my card, I’ll photograph the address, so I have it adjacent to the image. You can keep my card.”

I emailed off the image that night and Debora responded, right away. We are now corresponding . .  she’s helping me establish a workshop program in Brazil.

Photography is great . . . .