David L Sanford landed his first job as a professional photographer 2 months after buying his first camera and has made a living with a camera ever since.

That first job, which lasted two years, was for Saginaw Valley State University’s Communications Department. His duties included photographing and printing photos of: the campus, events, sports (football and baseball) and staged photos for promotional purposes. These photos were published in college catalogs and brochures as well as the five area newspapers.

In the summer after his 4th year at SVSU Dave was hired by United Church Directories (UCD) in Galion Ohio. UCD was the largest and best Church Directory company in the U.S.. A photographer for UCD was responsible for all photographic aspects of a complete church directory. Duties included interior and exterior architectural photography of the church, as well as high quality family portraits of all the parishioners. Dave’s friendly nature combined with his experience and attention to detail, quickly propelled him to one of the top five photographers out of over 60 photographers in the company.

Dave’s goal was to get a Bachelors Degree in Professional Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology (The leading photographic school in the country at the time). United recognized what an asset Dave was so they transferred him to Rochester, NY setting up a brand new market for him. Dave worked weekends for United while going to school full time. On summer breaks UCD utilized Dave as a Trainer. A regional Manager would hire a photographer and then send Dave to train them. As a photographer/Trainer for UCD Dave worked in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

Based on the average number of days worked in a month with the average number of family’s photographed per day, a conservative estimate is that in four and a half years Dave photographed over 65,000 people.

After earning his Bachelors Degree in Professional Photography from R.I.T. Dave decided to go into commercial photography. A brief stint as a freelance photo assistant proved very beneficial. Dave worked with several top commercial photographers and was able to learn their lighting styles. Dave developed his own style by incorporating a combination of lighting techniques gleaned from these top pros.

Dave Sanford Studios was opened in 1987. The client list which includes Xerox, Chase, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb is far too long to include here. Here’s a link if you care to see it.

In 1999 The dean at The School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS) at R.I.T. recruited Dave to develop Course number 2019-307-01 Reference Photography. Reference Photography was for junior and senior painting and illustration students. The purpose was to bring all students to a level of competency with a camera so they could be hired to take reference photos to use for illustrations and paintings.

Having students that were the photographers for high school year books and students that had never used a camera before laid the ground work for Sanford Seminars. “Invariably I would get asked by students if I ever took a picture and had it come out nothing like what I expected. My answer was always, “No, that doesn’t happen to me and when you are done with this class, it won’t happen to you either.”

Dave’s first exposure to teaching came in his early twenties. Elected as the vice president of personal development for the Greater Flint Area Junior Chamber of Commerce Dave was responsible for teaching five personal development classes. He still quotes things he learned in the “Time Management” class.