Seminars
Photo of Dave teaching portrait lighting.
Photo of Gina taking a photo of small white tip shark during Underwater photography class.
Photo of Gina Seminars student photographing a model on a North Shore Oahu Beach.
Seminars:
Product
Portrait
Architectual
Landscape
Dave Sanford is a natural teacher: endlessly curious, relentlessly practical, and genuinely energized by helping others get better. He doesn’t just know his craft, he knows how to explain it in a way that clicks.
His teaching career started early. In his twenties, Dave was elected Vice President of Personal Development for the Greater Flint Area Junior Chamber of Commerce, where he led five personal development classes and discovered something that would define his career: he loved guiding people from “I’m not sure I can” to “I’ve got this.”
After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Professional Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and building a successful commercial photography studio, Dave was recruited by the Dean of RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences to design and teach a new course: Reference Photography (2019-307-01). The mission was clear and marketable: give junior and senior illustration and painting students real camera competence so they could be hired to produce professional reference images for their work. Dave taught photography at RIT for three years, bringing students up to speed quickly, confidently, and with results.
Later, in Hawaii, Dave’s ability to teach expanded from the studio to the ocean. After guiding a nervous friend through his first deep dive with calm, clear instruction, the friend told him, “You’re so good at this, you should be getting paid for it. I’ll build you a website.” That moment sparked DiveWithDave.com. Over the next eight-plus years, Dave trained hundreds of new divers, earning a reputation for making complex skills feel simple, safe, and achievable.
It was also in Hawaii that Sanford Photo Seminars was born. Dave constantly found himself helping tourists and fellow divers improve their photography skills, and those impromptu lessons became a formal program built around what he does best: teach people how to capture better images, faster, with confidence.
If you’re looking for an instructor who combines real-world expertise with a gift for clear, encouraging coaching, Dave Sanford delivers. He doesn’t just teach skills, he builds capability.
Student Work
