Kristina Lanuza interviewed Robert Scott from CALL, the Calgary Association of Lifelong Learners, to find out why this photographer and retired architect decided to keep on learning.
TTell us what CALL is. Sure. the letters C-A-L-L stand for Calgary Association of Lifelong Learners. What do the people do that are in CALL? It's like a little mini university. We have lecturers. guest speakers. We also go on field trips. one I went on last year focused on the geomorphology and landforms around Calgary and into Banff. we went with a geologist, who was also a member of CALL. He travelled with us to the mountains stopping at key spots along the way, explaining what was going on.. When I was at university, I took courses, going on field trips up to the mountains doing all kinds of fun things and and those experiences are available to us again. What courses have you taken? A course on sketching and drawing ... we meet twice a month and a course on digital photography. also twice a month. in that course, we're working with digital cameras and Photoshop,bringing images together mixing things and making neat stuff. I also took a course on democracy. It was offered by a CALL member who was a former retired provincial political candidate . The course was on world events and the events leading up to the past federal and provincial elections. So we've got a whole variety of things. There's a course on genealogy where we research our ancestors and family trees. We also had a conference on climate change. So we have all these opportunities to learn new things and just do the fun things that we used to do when we were at university. Many of us are retired teachers…. and we look after the administration of this whole organization. We are all volunteers. So we do everything ourselves. And in this day and age of really expensive education and high tuition … our tuition is $50 a year for as many courses as you can take. And we make a profit because everybody is volunteering. Yeah so we're learning for the joy of learning. So what inspired you to join CALL? A friend of mine who who I have known for years and is also a member of CALL, said it was fun. I was pleased and I convinced my wife that was a good thing too. so we both joined. What's your favourite thing about being in the CALL? Probably meeting with all the people., there's always new folks you haven't come across before. I enjoy just being with all all of them. Do you have a goal that you want to achieve by joining CALL? We take courses and have educational experiences. But we don't have assignments and we don't have marks. We don't have grades. So we've taken that aspect of school away and just learn for the sheer joy of learning... Our group has been going since 2011. And we're still sort of in the formative stages of the organization and I guess my biggest goal would be that it's successful as an organization and that it continues on into the future and it's still here in 50 years. What do you do for a career? What do you do for a living? I have fun for a living I'm a retired architect and also educator. I worked as an architect for most of my career and taught for the last 17 years.. You are also a photographer. What inspired you to start taking photographs? I like doing art and I do sketching as well. And photography is another art form, and I like the experience of being able to capture images and feelings and always looking for the most perfect shot I also enjoy working with Photoshop, messing around with the colours, doing fun things What do you hope to capture through the photos that you take? Ideally, I like to takea photo that tells a story and means something to the person looking at the picture, capturing a feeling or sense, or weather, or something. It's difficult though, so the fun is just doing it. When did you know that photography is something that you wanted to pursue? Oh, when I was a 10 year old little kid I saved my money and bought a camera Since then I've always had a camera and have been interested in taking pictures. Pictures mostly of my dog to start with and our family. I really enjoy using digital cameras now because you can take so pictures and try so many different things.. Are there any movies books or documentaries that you'd recommend for people that wanted to start photography? Parasite just was an amazing film ... a Korean film that just won the Academy Award for the Best Picture, the photography is really quite good and amazing... A photographer that I quite impressed with is George Weber, he and I worked together at SAIT when I was teaching and he was in the photography department. He's since gone freelance and had photography shows,and has published a number of books as well. He's a photographer who can capture the personality of a person. If you could tell aspiring photographers one thing, what would it be? To take lots of pictures and look for that special personality or event or something special about the life that you're experiencing and try to capture it on film. Try to express that special feeling.
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