MARSHALL BERMAN is a graduate of the University of Southern California, with a dual major in cinema and fine art. He has been a professional photographer for over 35 years, fences as a sport, and for the past 10 years has been working with steel as a sculptural medium. He teaches Beginning Lighting, photo 85-A.

"WHY I BOTHER TO TEACH:
I am always like a stranger to light; even after 35 years in the profession I still always, always enjoy exploring that elusive phenomenon that so many take for granted... Light!

My clients ask me to make "images" out of "words", to turn light and shadow into the photographic vernacular, and to create within the viewer some kind of an emotional response.

I mean how the hell do you photograph the taste of vanilla ice cream and persuade a reader to buy it, or turn philosophic prose into a visually searing piece of propaganda...and what's the difference between "hard" and "soft" light as it falls on a child's face...or a glass of beer. I do that.

Even as I work professionally and begin to visualize a new assignment, there is always a self-imposed, naivety-like attitude I try to take for fear of missing the spontaneous. The process is like observing for the first time, a radish or an onion just as it's being released from it's home in the soil.

Light and the visual image is a passion with me...The techniques, the variety, and the subtitles of light are what I try desperately to share with my students. If all goes well, it will offer them a kind of visual springboard, with which they may express their own vision.

It's what I do. It's what I teach, It's among the things I am passionate about."

PARTIAL LIST OF CLIENTS:
B of A, Northern Trust Bk. of Chicago,
Better Homes & Gardens, World Book, Chevron, American Cancer Society, Clorox Corp. Memorex, U.S. Steel, Pullman Corp. Channel 5 TV, McGraw-Hill publishing, Union Bank, Apple Computers, Sara Lee Corp., Getty Museum, American Cancer Society, Ford Motor Co., American Hospital Corp., Addison Wesley publishers, United Air Lines., Scott Foresman, Proctor & Gamble, Western Electric, Sunset Magazine..

The informal portraiture is in private collections in Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., and the U.K.