Asia Hamilton

What is Photo Sensei?

Sensei means teacher in Japanese; I am a photography teacher. I teach beginners and some intermediate photography skills – preferably digital photography and i-phoneography. While studying at Columbia and CCS I learned that if you don’t have an amazing teacher or an easy lesson plan then photography lessons can be extremely scientific. My niche is providing photography lessons that are easy and fun. I originally started teaching photography to middle and high school students and we were having such a blast, I thought it would be fun to do this with adults and so I created Photo Sensei.

What was your experience in the Build class?

Build is a great community to be a part of. Being in the BUILD Basics class immediately gave me access to information that I was just kind of skating by on, including the different ways that I could orchestrate a business. The biggest take away was the supportive community and access to other entrepreneurs and business owners that are now in my network. It makes it a lot easier to start or grow your business when you have a group of peers to bounce your ideas off of and BUILD gave me that group.

“It makes it a lot easier to start or grow your business when you have a group of peers to bounce your ideas off of and BUILD gave me that group.”

What are your recent developments?

I’ve been expanding! Sensei is now in Chicago and we already have 45 people signed up for the class. I’ve also added four tours / places to explore to our tour list. We’ve got an outdoor art tour, a Southwest tour, a night photography tour, and an architectural tour. I want to use my workshops and tours as a way to show people the awesome parts of the city. I’ll also be starting a summer program this year for kids called Art Camp in the D!

What is your long-term vision?

I’d like to have Photo Sensei in every city. I want people to look for Sensei as a way to explore cities and learn how to use their cameras.