Monday, April 5, 2010

Back to school.


I had an interesting time on a short trip to my hometown of Los Angeles last month, as it included a stop at Palisades High School, where I graduated from in 1980. Wow! That was 30 years ago.

The purpose of going there was to pay a visit to my photography teacher and school yearbook advisor, Mr. Robert Doucette.

Rob is now the only remaining faculty member at Palisades High that I had as a teacher who is still working there.

I was totally awestruck when I saw the big differences in his classroom as it is now loaded with today's high tech image producing devices, to include I-Mac (Apple) computers for the production of the school yearbook.

Film production is still part of the cirriculum of the photo students but, well, who knows how much longer. I did not even ask Rob about that as I'm sure he does not have the answer either.

Rob is going to retire after this school year, but he will stay onboard as a part time teacher and advisor to the new photography intructor, Mr. Richard Stiel, whom I had the pleasure of meeting that day as well.

I recall the yearbook production in 1980 as an interesting but very difficult task and it taught me a lot as far as things like meeting deadlines are concerned in the aspect of publication production. Unbelivable as well that Mr. Steve Eddy and the Taylor Publishing Company are still working with my old school.

The thing I do most often is continue to ponder my thoughts on the "now vs. then" aspect of putting together that yearbook. I think the "Surf" production staff, now all female, is working on the 2010 (and beyond) yearbooks with the tech tools that I, like most of us, just couldn't see coming back when I was doing their job. My hat will always be off to Rob and his student yearbook production crew.

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