When you are in school and getting ready to graduate, or you are starting to look for a job, you often hear advice from people about what to do with your life. Much of that advice was summarized in the book What color is your parachute. In that book, at the core is finding something you are good at and something you have a passion for and where those intersect you can find your ideal job. 

Photography and our passion for doing work that we like often have that same interaction. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how some of the lessons in finding what we are inspired to do and can do in life can apply to your photography. We also talk about how for many of us those passions fall into a bucket list and that maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t be making a bucket list but instead doing what we really love. 

I love to travel and take pictures, and fall is my favorite season. In this week’s podcast, we talk about some of the lists that you need to make to be successful when you travel. While most people know to make a list of equipment, clothing and travel documents, I encourage everyone also to consider making a few other lists that are about your creative approach to the trip. 

If you are a photographer, the only person who cares about your camera brand is you and other photographers. People who look at photographs judge photographs not if they were taken with the “right camera.” However, in our modern day of Internet fame and quick judgment, you might think that photographers are overly obsessed with gear. We shouldn’t be. Equipment is a tool. You are the photographer. 

In this week’s podcast, I am asking for some help in getting us to change how we focus on equipment. If you are trying to learn about new equipment or old, many of the popular sites will pass judgment on equipment sight unseen. They will talk about features that don’t matter, corporate solvency and a host of other crap that has nothing to do with actual pictures. What I would like to see all of us is start to give up bullying people with their gear choices and return to a focus on the empathy and courage it takes to share meaningful work. Support, not the need to get clicks on videos by bashing someone’s gear choice, but rather to celebrate who they are. To do that, we all need to find a better way to share and to push back on those who proclaim their jealousy of fantastic photography by being angry about the tool rather than in wonder of the photograph.