You know, in high school you get to choose your courses. One of the courses that I took, and probably the one I enjoyed most, was art class. For my final year project each of us had to produce a painting.  That was maybe a couple of years after I had gotten into photography but of course that wasn’t on the curriculum. I had to learn how to do a painting. I was pretty interested in it but honestly, I wasn’t very good at it and finally I was about halfway finished my painting and my art teacher Mrs. Knight leaned in next to me and said, Andrew we’re wasting both our time trying to teach you to paint but I understand you’re a good photographer. Would you rather do that with our time? So, I said yes, absolutely.  How would that work? 

She told me well I don’t know photography so I can’t teach you that. So, it would be a self-guided thing where you wouldn’t have to come to my class but in the end, you would hand in a final project. I could wander around the school photograph campus life. I could spend time in the dark room.

Whatever I felt I needed to do to move my project forward, and then in the end, I had a really wide selection of photographs and made some yearbook spreads that was my final project. Mrs. Knight was also our guidance for the yearbook and so I handed in I think a four-page spreads, four or six pages, and was graded on that instead of a painting which turned out a lot better for me