"This workshop is me and it's not me. It's who I have the potential to become. It's been the fire in the water that's tested me to make me who I am," says David Lyman, 62, Maine Photographic Workshops founder and director on a recent, rain-drenched morning. Located in the postcard-perfect hamlet at land's edge in Rockport, Maine, The Workshops, as it's sometimes known, is closing in on its 30th anniversary next year.

Mention Rockport in photography and film circles around the globe and people know the place. Each year 2,500 working professionals, serious amateurs, and students journey here to study photography, film, or video, most of them in the 250 one-week workshops and master classes. Up to a third of them return for further study. In recent years, the Workshops have expanded, offering courses in Mexico, France, Italy, Cuba, and this fall, on the Maryland shore. In 1996, Rockport College was created and now grants Associate of Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees as well as a Professional Certificate Program. At one point Lyman jokes, "For a guy who didn't graduate from college, now I own one.

"I think we've had a major impact in the photography, film, and video business," says Lyman. "A lot of people don't understand who haven't been here. But anybody who has been through the school realizes that we have discovered something that no one else can define. There's no other place like this. We don't advertise this 'thing.' To do so would make people expect it."

As any good teacher knows, something powerful in learning occurs using the self-fulfilling prophecy which emerges early on when students arrive, and Lyman delivers his pep talks. The "thing" Lyman hesitates to define transcends the technical side of creation. Rather, it's tapping into psychological pathways to personal growth and self-esteem. As one of his many charts he uses to illustrate reads, it's "transiting the rapids of change to arrive at a new level of accomplishment." Lyman shifts in a blink between motivational speaker and paternal guru, dishing out his ideas about human potential. In fact, he teaches a course on the subject and hopes to write a book about it when he finds the time. But the hourglass, he knows, is emptying quickly, and now he's more attentive to how he segments out his time, especially with new family responsibilities, which he hasn't had for most of his life.

The workshop experience, according to Lyman, is transformational. "It may be a heightened understanding of the technology you're using or the attainment of better skills at handling the process and equipment. Your eye will get better. You'll be sensitized to the edge of the frame. You'll understand composition better and the quality of light.

"If you are touched by the process and realize "this is who I am," -- a storyteller, an image-maker, one who creates icons which people can understand because they touch the collective unconscious of society-- you are an artist. You may be an attorney, but you've discovered another aspect of yourself. It's not a change. It's an uncovering of who you are."

Lyman never intended to create an oasis for visual arts. He was born in Houston, Texas, but grew up in Sturbridge, Mass., where his father taught him to build boats and to sail. By the time he was a teenager he had sailed solo around Cape Cod in a rundown Swampscott dory that he restored. Since then, he's sailed between Maine and Bermuda fifteen times, most of the trips solo.

In 1973, already a honed writer and photographer, he lived in Vermont but kept his sailboat in Maine. When he searched for a spot to start a workshop, Rockport was appealing because it was "totally a ghost town" as someone in Camden described it, and the picturesque seaside setting offered natural stimulus for creative thinking as well as for opportunity for his sailing ventures. He rented space in the basement of Union Hall to start a little photography school. The first summer 150 students enrolled and he lost $1,000. But by 1975, he'd made a lot of money, and he bought Union Hall, which still is the hub of the original campus.

Today, though, the Homestead Campus a mile up the road is the hive of academic and social activity. Here are located core administrative offices, the New Imaging Center, the Ernst Haas Photographic Center, and the Ralph Rosenblum Film Production Center, which is dedicated to the distinguished film editor who died in 1996, and whose ashes, according to his wishes, are buried under the nearby maple tree. In addition, a new dormitory across the road provides up-to-date campus housing.

Detractors sometimes say Lyman is hard to work for, that he micro-manages too much. But that's because his standards are high and appear unreachable to some. "I demand the best out of everybody, and if they don't produce, they go. When people do their job, and they're on the edge, and they're growing, if they make a few mistakes, that's fine. But they don't make them two or three times. You make a mistake once, and you learn from it. I push everybody." Lyman continues to direct the film, video, and digital program at the Workshops because he can't find a qualified director.

Still, Lyman is able to attract top practitioners as faculty, many of whom return year after year. Bill Megalos, director, producer and cameraman, has come from Los Angeles for eight years to teach directing and editing. He says, "David Lyman's philosophy of teaching intuitively is very close to my way of thinking. The results that I expect from students are very close to his goals.

I like the intensity of The Workshops and throwing people in over their heads. It's extremely hard work and draining, but it's re-charging for me."

Jeff Swimmer, who teaches Directing the TV Documentary, believes The Workshops are unique. He uses words like "magical" and "terrific" to describe the learning atmosphere. "Students are highly motivated who come here, often seeking career changes. Some are dissatisfied people, Wall Street lawyers who want to change."

While Lyman is up to his neck in teaching and in managing the Workshops, he allots time to the larger box of his home state of Maine and its position in the creative world of image-making and of telling stories. But he's frustrated on many fronts. "The film industry is not looked at seriously in the state of Maine," he says regretfully. "The Maine Film Commission is very weak." A board member of the Maine Film and Video Association, he strongly believes filmmakers should be allowed the same tax breaks as other businesses get for equipment purchases, which he stretches to mean other items related to film production. "We have meetings about how we can get more tax incentives from the legislature. You can buy a $50,000 camera as a piece of equipment and not pay any taxes on it. But you can't buy anything else like paint, hardware, wallboard, lumber, and furniture for a set, and even film without being taxed.

"The guy at the tax department has been pushed on this. It could take a court case. It's an interpretation of the rules which were there primarily for the paper industry."

But the problem of tax incentives pales by comparison to a broader issue which plagues filmmakers in Maine as well as in other New England states-- the Brotherhood of Teamsters, Boston Local 25, which controls the transport of equipment, materials, and people once a film is in production. "The biggest problem in filmmaking in the state of Maine is in the Boston Local. We would be able to do probably three times the number of films if it wasn't for the Boston Teamsters. We deal with it all the time, and it's nasty," Lyman bristles. "There's been corruption, crime, intimidation, sabotaged stuff.

"We're a right to work state. We don't need those guys. We've got a good infrastructure of trained people to take care of all the lower-level crafts. We've got drivers, PAs, location scouts and managers, editors, actors, and extras. But we're stuck with the Boston Teamsters."

His view of the box widens. "We've got to do something to show that the film industry is a viable industry in the state and to find a way to set it in relation to the lobster and paper and pulp industries. Are we bigger than clam-digging and mussel-harvesting?"

He envisions a questionnaire to gather facts about just how film-friendly Maine is to filmmakers within and outside the state. Once assembled, the data could be used as leverage with the legislature. Lyman says, "We could say we're bigger than other industries here and name them. We might say, We're making a billion dollars a year, but we can grow bigger if you gave us tax breaks, do something about the Teamsters, and make it easier for filmmakers to come to the state, or at least not create impediments in the way."

Tackling the bigger film issues beyond the reaches of The Workshops just might be David Lyman's greatest challenge to date. His intuitive, sometimes gutsy approach to problem-solving surely will clash with the political realities of the labor and the legislative worlds. But maybe the "magic" he often touts in his lectures to students might work its way into radical change in the status quo, and the rabbits coming out of the hat will be a win-win for all sides.

Robert G. Pushkar is a Boston-area freelance journalist, photographer, and screenwriter. Currently, he is marketing his romantic comedy screenplay.