I always asked the question, did I go the right route or did they?

After getting a fine arts degree from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Tim Brehm chose to teach rather than practice his profession. After 17 years of teaching in Burbank, he knows he made the right choice. Brehm, 40, his wife, Priscilla, and his daughter, Roberta, live in Bell Canyon. When I first came out of Art Center, I wasn’t thinking of teaching at all. I was trained as a commercial photographer. I had been working for an internationally recognized photographer, and I was learning a lot.

I interviewed for this job at Burroughs High School, and they offered me a full-time photography position, which is a rarity in a high school. What I saw here was potential, even though there wasn’t a facility. I had to decide, “Is this what I want to do, go into high school teaching?” When you decide to become a teacher, you have to take a lot of your ego and just put it aside. People don’t perceive you as being some hotshot commercial photographer or photojournalist.

At the time that I started teaching here, I was 23 years of age. I didn’t have that much experience, but I did have a lot of enthusiasm. The very first day I walked in here, there were 25 to 30 drafting tables bolted to the floor. They had to go. There was no lighting equipment. There was a darkroom with a few enlargers, but they were completely busted up.

The principal said, here’s your budget. It was something like $600. Well 600 bucks for 150 kids for a whole year isn’t going to buy you any equipment, and it’s not even going to buy you enough supplies. From the very first day, I knew somehow we had to get some money.

We formed a photo club and did fund-raisers. Initially, we did things like an old-time photo sale where you’d come in and dress up like a cowboy or whatever and you could pose for a “tintype.” We’d take the pictures, develop them, brown-tone them for the whole student body. We’d probably get $5 apiece for those. We’d make a few hundred dollars doing something like that. I always tried to get the fund-raiser relating to photography as opposed to just selling candy bars.

I was very lucky that first year. I had several students who ended up being some of the most talented students I’ve ever had. I think that they respected the idea that I really wanted to build a program. They took some great pictures. Several of those people are now professional photographers. I’m proud of the fact that we’ve built up the photo department at John Burroughs High School.

I’m my own boss here. No one has ever told me what to teach, how to teach it, when to teach it. They just simply say, these are your classes. That is the beauty of teaching photography in a high school.

The thing that keeps my battery charged is that on weekends and summertime, I don’t hang around here like I did when I first started teaching. I’m a very avid outdoors person. I hunt, I fish, I go backpacking, I climb mountains. This summer, I climbed Mt. Ranier, Mt. Adams, couple of peaks in the High Sierra. I come back very much refreshed.

A lot of my friends who graduated from Art Center also built studios, only, of course, they own theirs. I always asked the question, did I go the right route or did they? I take my students on field trips to their studios. Incredibly impressive studios and extremely successful businesses. I ask myself, is this something I should have done? It would be nice to have the prestige, and he probably makes a helluva lot more money.

But then I also look at the fact that this is all this guy does. He shoots. A professional advertising photographer is married to his studio. He lives and works and sleeps in that studio. He doesn’t have the ability to walk away from it and do other things.

That’s why I’ve always felt that I did the right thing coming here. I do like photography, but at the same time there are a lot of things that I want to do that have nothing to with photography. Teaching is the structure that allows me to break away and enjoy the freedom of outdoors.