Like other kids, he grew up fascinated by aircrafts. So fascinated in fact, he joined the Air Force right out of high school. However, Seantel Sanders ended up shooting completely different targets than what he first predicted.

In a lavishly air-conditioned classroom on east campus is where the 39-year-old City College instructor now teaches his students the art of photography.

“Seantel is very approachable. Very open,” said Mike Kircos, a film major at City College who’s taking Photography 209 this semester. “He takes you out of your comfort zone… and what you thought you knew about your camera.”

Sanders graduated from Brooks Institute in 1997, and have been photographing professionally for about 10 years. At 18, Sanders was stationed in Germany with dreams of becoming a pilot, but he ended up parachuting out of the Air Force to pursue a deeper passion: photography.

“When it came to the decision, that’s what everybody expected of me,” Sanders said. “Since I was 4 years old I had been saying I wanted to be a pilot.”

But he soon realized that he didn’t want to be a “career military guy,” partly because of the numerous years it would take to even get close to a cockpit. His leap over the Atlantic would however still prove to be an important one.

“It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Sanders said. “You make all this money and you don’t really have any expenses… so I went out and bought stuff.”

One of the things Sanders bought was a camera.

“It was a point-and-shoot Olympus with a nice little picture on the box,” Sanders said, and his smile grew even wider as he mimicked the picture frame between his thumbs and index fingers.

The Olympus wouldn’t serve him for very long though since he found it awfully hard to imitate the greatness of the box picture. So he went out and bought a nicer camera, but even with far more expensive equipment, the box picture was out of reach.

“It caught me off guard… and that was a little demoralizing,” he said. “But it’s almost because my first pictures were so bad I became a photographer. It became a challenge.”

Another challenge Sanders was faced with was to adapt to the European fondness for alcohol.

“I remember the drinking age in Germany was 16,” he said, expanding his undying smile as his eyes wandered off into the empty classroom.

But since Sanders wasn’t much of a drinker he started exploring other horizons, such as the endless autobahn, while his friends took advantage of being stationed in “the home of beer.”

“I would take my camera… and I would get in the car with no destination and just drive,” he said.

“And once I [found photography and] really was bit by the bug that was definitely it.”

During a leave back in the U.S, Sanders went to Brooks Institute and picked up the application paperwork. And when he graduated from the military in April of 1994, he could barely wait until May to start his new occupation.

At Brooks, Sanders met two people who would affect his life more than he knew. The first is now his wife, the second was an instructor named Linda Lowell.

As Co-Chair of the photography department at City College, Lowell offered Sanders a fulltime job after having worked a couple years as an adjunct.

“I was a little nervous,” Sanders confessed. “But within the first 30 seconds of teaching it felt as natural as anything I have ever done.”

Lowell agrees Sanders landed in the right place.

“Sean is taking advantage of every single stop in his life,” Lowell said. “He just doesn’t stop learning.”

More than 15 years after he gave up his dreams of aviation, Sanders couldn’t be more content with how it all turned out.

“I always tell my students, ‘If you want to make God laugh,'” he said, “‘tell him your plans.'”