Oporto, Portugal, 1972, photograph by L. Ron Hubbard.

     Returning to the United States in 1976 to establish a home in Southern California, L. Ron Hubbard’s photographic career took another dimension—the training of photographers. From this instructional work, came his delineation of all vital steps the photographer must take to ensure a successful shot—including the often neglected preliminary of envisioning or preconceiving the picture. Or as an alternative, he advised photographers to learn to immediately recognize a picture. In either case—and herein lay the common denominator of all L. Ron Hubbard’s artistic work—photographers must learn “to make the picture talk.” As a part of the instruction process, all students were privileged with a personal L. Ron Hubbard review of their photographs. In addition to the more conventional points of composition and lighting, he typically continued to stress that very key matter of communication: What, if anything, did the picture say? Also from this instructional period came his highly important testing procedures for both equipment and film, and his clarification of that long-misunderstood subject, composition.