A travel photographer who teaches.

I’mCarlton Soohoo, a travel and teaching photographer based in the Lowell / North Billerica area, just outside Boston. For more than twenty years I’ve been chasing light, across Iceland’s black-sand coasts, the canyons of the American Southwest, and, increasingly, much farther afield.

I came to it the long way around. I trained as a scientist, a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Brandeis and postdoctoral work at MIT, and spent years in research and R&D. Then I spent several years coaching founders and entrepreneurs, which taught me as much about teachingas anything I’ve done since. In 2005 I picked up a camera in earnest, and it never left my hand.

“The best part isn’t the photograph. It’s the moment it clicks for someone standing next to me.”

By 2013 I’d become the first Boston-area Google Trusted Photographer, back when 360° virtual tours were still a novelty, work that continues today at Panospin360. The gear keeps changing. The way of seeing stays the same.

These days I teach as much as I shoot. Privately and in small groups, hands-on and patient, the way I’d want to be taught. Focus stacking, composition, waterfalls, the light from sunrise to dusk, all explained in plain words and the practical moves that make a photograph work. My students have been kind enough to leave a wall of five-star reviews, and honestly, that’s the work I’m proudest of.