When Ray Pfortner turned 16, his grandfather announced that he was going to take him to Europe. He’d get a car there and pay for all his expenses — but he insisted that his grandson buy a good camera to take with him. He spent three months there, initially focusing on London and Paris but then ranging widely around.

“That got me started in photography,” Pfortner said. Fifty-nine years later, Pfortner has amassed a huge body of work, and on September 21, he’ll teach a class entitled “Beeswaxing for Handmade Transfers.”

Pfortner was born and raised in New York City. He studied biology at Yale, then environmental management at Duke, and soon became a nature photographer.

He recalled that “I cut my teeth doing campfire talks for the New Jersey Parks Department,” which hired him when he was a sophomore in college. “I had to supply my own photos for these talks. So if I was asked to give a talk on deer, for example, it forced me to go out and photograph deer.”

His work took him through a wide variety of jobs. He did a stint in tropical biology in Costa Rica, where he worked primarily on hummingbirds. Various positions followed with organizations such as the National Park Service and New York Parks, and for many years he was a principal at major stock photo agencies in New York and California.

Then in 1994, he visited Vashon Island at the suggestion of a friend. Thirty years later, he’s still here.

“My wife and I were in need of a change,” he explains. “I’d always felt miscast in New York City. I need ocean, and I need mountains. The island was the perfect place.” He took a job with the renowned photographer Art Wolfe in West Seattle, which meant he could commute over from the island and walk to Wolfe’s studio.

By now, he knows Vashon intimately. “I’ve walked every beach on the island,” he said. “And I’m a sunrise photographer — I love the early morning light.”

Pfortner began teaching early on in his career, and he has taught hundreds of classes in various aspects of photography. These days, his primary teaching work is with the University of Washington and Bellevue College, where he “flits in and out,” as he put it. “I don’t like the paperwork and the bureaucracy that come with a permanent position.” On the island, he’s worked extensively with Vashon Center for the Arts, the Vashon-Maury Island Land Trust, and others.

His favorite class, these days, is what he calls “photo styling,” where students arrange whatever materials they want in creative ways and photograph them. He also loves to teach basic photo composition, as well as the “business of art” to people trying to make a living with their photography. His favorite students are middle schoolers and retirees. “Some of these people have become great photo stylers,” he said.

The upcoming “beeswaxing” class involves a process called encaustics, which was initially discovered by the ancient Greeks (it was described by the Roman scholar Pliny the Elder in the 1st century BCE, but predates that record).

The technique employs hot beeswax as a medium for transferring an image (using a simple photocopy) onto a surface; this can involve wood, stone or any non-pliable material. The wax gives a rich optical effect to the image on the photocopy, much like a hologram.

The process affords considerable versatility. “Among many other applications,” said Pfortner, “it gives new life to old family photos, especially black and whites but color, too; and it doesn’t seem to fade the way many photo prints always did.” He encourages anyone working in 2-D or even 3-D art to think about learning the technique as a new way to share — and sell — the art, going far beyond simply one original. “ After all,” he said, “we’re living in a digital era with all the opportunities that affords.”

Pfortner’s decades of dedication to photography and visual arts stems from what he calls “my lifelong love of souvenirs.” As he explains, “While everyone has memories, I make something tangible.”

Ray Pfortner’s “Beeswaxing for Handmade Transfers” class is sponsored by Swiftwater Gallery, and will be held from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, at Open Space for Arts & Community. The cost is $65 plus $15 for materials.

Details and registration are available at swiftwatergallery.com, or by calling 206-408-7414.

Ray Pfortner