This past Saturday, I attended a workshop with the Digital Photo Academy at Calumet Photo on Manhattan’s 19th Street. I met with Richard Rabinowitz, the head of Digital Photo Academy, who introduced me to the group. The first thing that struck me was the incredible diversity of the workshop participants – fathers and sons, husbands and wives. Everyone sat together in the Calumet conference room looking a little stiff, like it was the first day of a college class.
A half-hour into the class Richard realized that we needed some surveys from his apartment. I tagged along and as we walked down Broadway, Richard spoke about how Digital Photo Academy and photography in general has the ability to bring people of all shapes and sizes together. He felt that no matter what their background or personality type, when people come together with a shared interest or passion, their superficial differences tend to just slip away.
When we arrived back at the workshop, the conference room had completely transformed. The students were out of their chairs photographing the various objects that Richard had brought, laughing, joking, looking at each other’s photos – the stiffness and apprehension that I had noticed at the beginning of the workshop seemed to, as Richard had predicted, just slip away. I came away from the Digital Photo Academy workshop with a renewed understanding of the power of shared interests to overcome people’s differences. I also thought about how important social activities are to happiness in general. Too often people forget to take time out of their busy schedules to arrange activities that they really enjoy, and that allow them to interact with others on a purely social level. The Digital Photo Academy workshop was a perfect place to find that purely fun, social interaction.
