For the last few years I’ve been racketing up the business lessons in my photojournalism classes, adding a segment here, a guest lecturer there. This year, I went a little insane and built a whole day around the Business of Visual Journalism.

It was … awesome.

Allen Murabayashi, CEO of PhotoShelter, launched the day with a brilliant talk about SEO and marketing online. If you ever get the chance, go see him speak – it’s rare that someone can keep 60+ students engaged for an hour. We could have had him do a 30 minute encore and no one would have moved.

Stanley Leary took us into the early afternoon with a talk on the Business of Photography, walking the room through the process of building relationships and negotiating with clients. Stanley is a regular in my classroom and he stepped it way up, delivering a clear, coherent and, at times, comical presentation.

To wrap up the day, I went different – way different. Anathema-level different. I brought in two guys from a PR agency.

GASP.

And it was great, too. Ashton Staniszewski (above) and Scott Hartman (below) work for Jackson Spalding Creative in Atlanta handling photo and video work. I asked the pair to come in to talk about the relationship between freelancers and agencies and they did that and a little more, delivering a well paced talk about the public relations view of visual communication.

It was an exhausting day, part of an exhausting Career Week. And, when asked if I’ll do it again next year, the answer is, of course, yes.