Photography Mentor Wanted

That's the title of the posting I put up 2 weeks ago on Craigslist.

Saturday I'm hooking up with my new-found mentor. We're heading down to Toronto's Distillery District to do some learning/teaching. As he said "Jim there's a reason it's shot so much". Cool.

Connecting through Craigslist was easy. I only got two responses but they were from the right people. Both were pros. One said she's too busy but just wanted to say she liked my stuff (I included my Flickr link). Hey. Thanks. I really appreciated the encouragement/feedback.

My ultimate mentor saw potential but pointed out the areas where he could help. Bang on. Composition. Lighting. Setttings. Editing. Photography 101. If I weren't so lazy I might have tried learning that stuff from books - but I hate learning that way. Let's go do it.

When I've mentioned this story to people, the first take is that without something like Craigslist it would have been impossible to connect like this. Basically I agree - although it does remind of those bulletin boards you see in grocery and drug stores with the telephone numbers written on little tear off tags at the bottom of the page. Still very cool.

Surfing around Craigslist is also very interesting. If you're a temporary job agency, you have serious competition. Or a dating service. There's a best of Craiglist postings here. Don't go here if you're easily offended but if you're not, you'll laugh. There are some good ones.

My flickr page is here. Let's hope for an uptick in quality over the next few weeks.