A good teacher tells you about the world. A good mentor helps you find your way through it.

Ken Heyman, the photographer and photojournalist, was my first mentor. Luck paired us up.

I entered the Pratt Institute in the fall of 1971 on a baseball scholarship. By the following spring, I was not so interested in bats and mitts. The art and music of New York City had snagged my attention, and I just didn’t want to play ball anymore.

Pratt naturally demanded that I pay back the scholarship, and provided me with on-campus jobs: mail carrier, photo lab assistant, slide projector operator. One morning, I was alone in the photo lab, sweeping the floor, when the phone rang. A woman was looking for someone to come to Ken Heyman’s office and mount photographs to preprinted holiday cards. I went.

I must have done all right by the cards, because Ken asked me back to help organize his color archives. My tools were a loupe and a light box. I learned to be an image intermediary.

Ken was then in his early 40s. He had already published the book “Family” with Margaret Mead, the famed anthropologist; worked for Life magazine; and had his photographs exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art.

I studied Ken’s work in depth. What was intriguing was the absence of an obvious self. His images weren’t personal statements, but searches for pristine human facts. I found, through Ken, that you could add to your life by studying the lives of others, and that recording those other lives could be a serious artistic contribution.

Dr. Mead was first Ken’s teacher, then his mentor. She encouraged him to look at others. Many of his seeing strategies derived from her: when you arrive at a new place, observe what people wear on their heads and on their feet; find where they get their water; explore their markets. Even more important: know your own prejudices and don’t apply your personal values where they don’t belong. You might not see what’s there.

There were times over the following years when I saw a lot of Ken, and periods when we wouldn’t see each other at all. Our relationship meandered.

In 2009, Phil Block of the International Center of Photography asked if I would help Ken with his class at the center. He had been sick and Phil worried that the workload would slow his recovery. So Ken and I taught together, and enjoyed our time enough that we continued to meet every week.

We talked about life and politics and, of course, photography. I started filming our exchanges to share with others. I was teaching myself to use a new DSLR camera for video. Some of the results are better than others.

“Ken Heyman: Conversations With the Photographer, Part I,” produced with Anne Cronin, is arranged to follow Ken’s career chronologically, beginning with his association with Dr. Mead, then moving on to segments about Ernest Hemingway, Andy Warhol and Leonard Bernstein.