As you all know I love teaching. Another thing I love is traveling. Over the past couple of weeks I've had the opportunity to do both. First, on May the Tenth I traveled to Portland, to give a lecture on travel photography. Giving a lecture to Americans on art before going to France, was good practice. It was more than travel photography, it was about black and white travel photography. I talked to them about black and white film development, and creating a portable studio. The audience found it interesting you didn't have to worry about film damage at the Airport X-Ray machines, if you developed your own prints while on the road. Many folks came up to me afterwards and, asked about the details of how to construct one of these portable labs. The lecture itself ended at 3 in the afternoon, and my flight for Europe was at 6, so I didn't have long to answer questions. It had been thirteen years since I'd been out the country, and now I was spending about two weeks abroad. Of course the security procedures where defiantly bewildering, and I was thankful, that I had recently discovered the miracle of portable film development. In Paris I knew I'd be speaking in broken French (gasp), giving the "Inventors of art," advice. Actually I had thought of the French as more into beauty and the arts then they where. The audience I had was generally easy going, sans a couple of folks. When I lecture to them about film processing on the road, and stated "It would lead to better photos," a mumble spread through the room. I learned to talk less about art, and the times I did cover it, the audience appeared skeptical, which lead to me delivering an even less sound lecture. So I talked more about the technical side of film development. Apparently a lot of French artists have converted to digital photography, and so they where generally interested in the techniques used in mobile film processing and printing. But the next morning when I was to meet Herve Caumont. The lecture hall was the first real piece of France I observed, as my flight came in at night. It was a gigantic room, it probably seated in excess of one thousand people. As I walked through the halls, the sound was perfectly rendered. A foot step even sounded beautiful. I thought this was because of my sleep deprivednes. But when I met Mr. Caumont, the hall still had the same beautiful acoustics. Caumont was an amazing man to talk to. I always loved his travel books, and the life with which he described his travels, but to talk to him in real life was a mind blowing experience. Even with my broken French, and his broken, and British flavored, English the images he "painted" with words, as I said before, where amazing. He was preparing for a lecture but he did manage to tell me some interesting stories that hadn't made it to the final edit of his book. He says he'll add some of his stories to a future book, so I think I'll just leave you readers with some suspense. I then spent my remaining days in Germany. I visited the Alps, and it was sad to see how once covered snowy mountains, now resembled the Appalachians of my hometown. After two days in Germany, I gave a similar lecture in Berlin. Many Germans are proficient in English, I guess because of our occupation of them, so this lecture was relatively easy, and the crowd reaction resembled that of Portland, that is the many questions and surprises of this portable film lab.