We recently connected with Ginny Dixon and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Ginny thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

I’m coming to the end of a career as a teacher. I always had my photography business but have taught for nearly 30 years at an advertising school in Miami.

The school was built on the principles that the owners were trying to create a school they would have wanted to go to.

In 1996 when I started teaching photography there– from the moment you walked in the door you could see the space was innovative and different.

The space was designed and really was always being redesigned to encourage gathering, collaborating, healthy competition and ideas. The thing was really to generate ideas.

The owner of the school was Ron Seichrist and he was one of the most forward thinking creatives I have ever known and still is as of the writing of this.
We were on a quarter system and we went to school year round with three week breaks in between. When we went on break, it was not unusual to come back to a completely redesigned space. The school was located in South Beach Miami and he took a classroom and made it an aquarium. He put in a real aquarium as one wall and then created the inside of the classroom as if you were inside an aquarium. He took one of the lecture classrooms and made it a Tiki bar and there was a blender where they made margaritas (without alcohol and then on certain occasions with it if there was a special event.)

These are the kinds of spaces you now see at Google, Facebook and many advertising shops around the world.

So I think a redesign of the learning space to accommodate feeling comfortable, being inspired and taking a break seem to be the breeding grounds of ideas and innovation and creativity. So we had ping pong tournaments and also “Sunday Soccer”.

He also created a “quarter away” program and after the first year of classes you could go to a school in Germany or London or various other places where there were agencies in the school’s network.

I think we also need to teach and emphasize problem solving. In any business or trade, you need to be a problem solver. In the kind of disposable society we live in the tendency is to not fix what’s broken but just order a new one. I think we’ve become lazy and I kind of fear that AI might exacerbate this.

I have always encouraged mistakes and even given extra credit for them. In my experience, this is the fasted way to learn anything. Fail early and often and learn from your mistakes, there really is no better teacher. We need to give space for this as well. We live in a world now where everyone is very concerned about looking perfect but that does not provide the space to make mistakes generally and mistakes teach more than any classroom I think—so let’s make classrooms where learning from mistakes is encouraged.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started out as a photojournalist and then as the news industry changed adapted to magazine, resort and travel, advertising and portraiture. Photography has evolved enormously in the last 20 years so it’s been necessary to diversify over the years.

It seems now with AI we are at another turning point but we will see where that goes. These days I still do a lot of portraiture, Content creation (which can be almost anything) and music. That’s what I always loved about being a newspaper photographer, you never knew if you’d be shooting food, sports, a news event, real estate, a music concert or some ordinary guy doing something extraordinary. In a way, I have always kept that going though most advise against it. They will say to stick with one thing and do that exclusively–maybe that’s true but it’s not really what I have done and it’s always worked out for me. That’s probably the thing that sets me apart, if I find it interesting I will take the job and do my best to make it beautiful and interesting or authentic—as the case may be.

I have always been proud of my photography for causes. Particularly the disabled and breast cancer communities.

The Raw Beauty Project has really now taken on a life of its own and impacted so many but it is still dear to me.

The One in Seven Project, the strength of scars was a series of portraits I did on women with breast cancer and their resilience.

I think what potential clients should know is that my work will be thoughtful, candid and will always have some sort of interesting light. My journalism background influences my work heavily in finding authentic moments.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I would say that my closest call with going out of business was when I was shooting pretty exclusively Resort and Travel and then 911 happened.

I was traveling around, staying at these fantastic resorts and shooting and then 911 happened and it was like overnight, travel stopped completely. No work for a long time in that sector.

I was fortunate at the moment to get a newspaper job again, started teaching more classes and was able to survive it.

The second time was in 2009 during the financial crisis. Business dropped off again considerably but a few good paying jobs came my way and about two years later things got going again but it was a very lean time.

During the pandemic it happened again—but luckily I got a couple of well paying advertising jobs that helped immensely to get me through to the other side.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think keeping your word, showing up on time and again my newspaper background experience of being able to meet deadlines day after day and being easy to work with have been instrumental in having made a living in photography for all these years. I also listen to people. A lot of people spend a lot of time talking and not listening. You can really understand what people want if you shut up and listen.

Someone taught me many years ago that “you either have the result, or you have all the reasons why you don’t have the result” and that has stuck with me for my entire career. No one is interested much in the latter.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ginnydixon.com
• Instagram: @ginpix03

Image Credits
All photos by Ginny Dixon