POV: Mentorships

Photo ©Tewfic El-Sawy-All Rights Reserved
A recent spate of photography mentorships and scholarships have appeared on my radar screen...and for obvious reasons, some more than others.

For instance, the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops recently announced that it offers the opportunity "of working with a mentor to expand your photographic knowledge and skills, and to refine your photographic personality.". The mentors are from a group of photography "titans" such as Nevada Weir, Sam Abell, Mary Virginia Swanson and others.

The cost for the long-distance (ie telephone/online) mentorship is $4,500 for a 12-month (17 sessions) Photography Mentorship, $2,200 for a 6-month Photography Mentorship (8 sessions) and $375 for a single session of 60 minutes.

Regular readers of The Travel Photographer blog will recognize what I'm thinking of whilst writing this post....so I'll leave it unsaid (or unwritten).

But hallelujah! Not everything requires a Wall Street bonus in the world of photographic scholarships and mentorships!

We have the stellar example of David Alan Harvey's generosity as just announced on the Magnum blog, and which describes a $10,000 grant which comes under the non-profit umbrella of the Magnum Cultural Foundation.

We also have the brilliant example of the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop, whose faculty of 20 or so photojournalists/photographers are not paid for tutoring the 100+ students expected to attend the workshop in north India.

Yes, there are some bright spots after all.