I have been taking photographs for 50 years on and off as a sideline to a busy professional career. When I retired at the beginning of 2018, I was looking for a photography program that would give me a more solid grounding in basics and also exposure (so to speak) to aspects of photography I knew little about (e.g., off-camera flash and night photography). SI did that very well in a reasonable period of time, in a nice setting with a group of welcoming and enthusiastic people (instructors and students). SI also included critical reviews of photographs from an artistic point of view that went beyond technical photography and gear. For me, that was a new experience and quite useful. I'm from New York City and was not able to find a comparable program there. It was worth the trip.