In August 2018, I was very lucky to meet a very nice & kind man called BT. He lives in Singapore, loves to travel & owns a Leica Q. An inspiring man with an amazing gear. Or the other way around, as you prefer :).

He got in touch with me to organize photo lessons during his one-week holiday in Istanbul. I'm used to teach photograph to foreigners living here, one lesson every week or every other week. 7 days with 3-hour photo lessons per day was quite a challenge for me. And I loved it! We loved it!

On day 1, we met to get to know each other & to go through the basics. Then, I organized 6 walking tours in different places in Istanbul, at different times of the day so we'll have to face quite a large range of situations & photography challenges.

BT is a mindful, curious & hard-working student. He faced, like everybody, difficulties & mistakes but his will to achieve what he wanted to achieve was strong. It was great to witness him spreading his wings into the photography world. I could see he was not seeing things anymore, he was looking at them & looking for something different to capture.

Albert Einstein, one of the men who worked on the most complicated themes, said that "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough".
So every time I struggle to explain a technic point, I know I have to study more, to understand more, to find new ways of looking at the situation. And then I study until it becomes simple & spontaneous for me to explain.

If I may, I'd add that you need to be able to explain it in different simple ways, so everyone, with different knowledge & backgrounds, can understand it.
That's another trick about lessons: the teacher needs to discover the way the student thinks, understands & memorizes, in order to explain things in the most suitable way.
So I ask questions, not related to photography, to find how to explain things to my student: I draw, I show a video, I give an example with the camera, I ask the student to do the same & to explain it to me.

The 3rd point is to give confidence to the learner by supporting them on their journey. Step by step, through hesitations & mistakes, that's how we learnt how to walk & that's how we learn everything.
I'm always supportive & I listen to the doubts, fears, issues of my students. And I am very curious about the kind of photography they love & what kind of images they want to achieve.

Learning photography takes time, efforts, commitment but it is simple. Not easy but simple.

Since I gave photo lessons, I discovered myself much more patient than I thought & I learnt how to become a better listener and a good & positive critic.

I feel very lucky & blessed to give photo lessons and to be part of someone's photography journey.
To receive more info about my lessons, get in touch with me here.

Here is the feedback from BT. THANK YOU so much for your trust & kindness!

Teaching photography teaches me so much!