This month, I’m starting a mini-podcast episode on silence in photography. What does silence look like? While we see silence as the absence of sound, it’s more about how we capture it in images. Mindful observation helps us overcome both auditory and visual noise, allowing us to create calmer compositions. Silence lives in negative space and soft light, teaching us patience and restraint. The most meaningful photographs may not be the loudest, but those that encourage us to slow down and truly see.

This week we are talking plateaus. A creative plateau is that strange phase where progress feels stagnant. You’re not getting worse, but it feels like you’re also not getting any better. It’s like hiking. There are flat stretches where you can’t see the summit, yet you’re still on your way there, just on a less steep path. so in this episode we dig into those long flat stretches that are in many ways my favorite parts of a hike.

In Episode 590 of The Perceptive Photographer, we explore those moments when something in your work feels right or wrong and you can’t explain why. Instinct isn’t mystical. it’s compressed experience, but we often drown it out with external validation and over-analysis. This episode examines how to tell healthy critique from noise, offers three practices for building trust with your own seeing, and encourages listeners to honor the quiet voice that responds before logic catches up. Mystery is part of the work, not a bug to fix.

In episode 589 of the Perceptive Photographer, we discuss how nothing is ever wasted in the creative process. Every effort, whether successful or not, contributes to growth. Mistakes and unfinished projects teach valuable lessons and enrich our artistic journey, ultimately shaping the photographer we are becoming.

Photography is something many of us do every day, yet we rarely stop to ask why. In the week’s episode 588, we dig into some of the reasons and motivations for why we make photographs.
Photography is more than documenting what we see; it is a way of noticing, remembering, understanding, and connecting with the world around us.
The images we make reveal what captures our interest and what we value. Over time, our photographs become a reflection of how we see the world and, perhaps, a reflection of ourselves. Ultimately, photography is an act of attention and awarenes

This week we share in the sadness and impact of Jeff Schewe’s passing, a major loss to photography. We offer up some congrats to Makeda Best, new photo curator at MOMA! Finally we dig into and explore how hesitation can cost us great images.

Photographers often hear that they should “shoot with intention,” and I mostly agree. But for today’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer (episode #586), I wanted to dig a little deeper. While some level of intention is always at play, we don’t always know what it is before picking up the camera. Often, we discover it later while editing, processing, or writing about our work. And importantly, intention doesn’t always start as a fully formed idea; sometimes it emerges gradually as we engage with the creative process.

In this episode of the podcast, 585, I talk about something that has come up in conversations several times over the past few weeks with different friends and colleagues: the challenge of photographing familiar places.

There’s a tendency in photography to believe the next great image exists somewhere else. So we travel to new cities, another country, or another landscape. We just want something new, but some of the most meaningful photographic work comes from returning to the same places over and over again until they begin to reveal something deeper.

In Episode 584 of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore how photography is fundamentally about creating connection. Photographs connect twice: first visually through composition, light, layering, and perspective, and then emotionally through meaning, memory, and shared experience. The strongest images are created when visual structure and emotional resonance support one another. At its best, photography becomes more than documentation; it becomes a bridge connecting the subject, the photographer, and the viewer through a shared moment of understanding.

On this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore how editing reveals the photographer behind the image. From cropping and contrast to color and mood, our processing choices shape emotional meaning and reflect personal perspective. Photography may document the world, but editing often becomes a quiet form of self-portraiture.

May the Fourth be with you. It’s Star Wars day and there is a lot of of overlap between photography and Star Wars

I often say the camera doesn’t create meaning. We do. you have to learn to “Trust your feelings” . It’s really about shifting how we see and embracing that way of seeing.

Light shapes everything. In Star Wars, Darth Vader lives in shadow while light carries hope and tension. Every frame tells a story and being present matters. Yoda tells us can’t force a photograph, but rather you have to notice it. It’s about the moment and mindfulness in front of you.

In the end, both photography and Star Wars are about learning to see and telling a meaningful story.

Welcome to episode 581 of the Perceptive Photographer. This week, I am sharing what I hope are five insightful suggestions to help you think differently about your work in your photography and deepen your creative practice. As I was digging into some new books, class prepping and thinking about some classic comedy and photographic techniques, I came up with five simple ideas for you to try out and see if it can jump start soemthnign in your work.

In this episode, I reflect on how easy it is to get lost in the technical side and why it’s so important to shift our focus back to what truly matters: our voice, our vision, and our story. I’ll talk about the value of studying our own work, learning from both successes and mistakes, and recognizing the hard and soft rules we set for ourselves in composition.

Welcome to episode 579 of the Perceptive Photographer. This week, we explore the unexpected connection between the distillation of alcohol and the art of photography. This idea came to me when I was thinking about a visit to a local distillery mean years ago. I was amazed how the process of removing impurities from spirits mirrors the photographic journey of refining images to their essential core.

Welcome to episode 578 of the Perceptive Photographer. In today’s show, I invited you to play a mental “what if” game. Specifically, what if nobody cared about what you care about in your photography? My hope is to challenge your assumptions about what really makes a photograph resonate with yourself and others.

Welcome to episode 577 of The Perceptive Photographer. Today, I’m exploring the power of composition and especially how the edges of the frame shape what we feel and see. You know me so a few quotes from the likes of Charles Traub, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank got me going on this. So I’m looking at why building a photograph from the edges inward can lead to stronger, more intentional images. I’ll touch on how light, aspect ratio, and framing choices influence perception and how paying attention to them can elevate your work.

In this episode, I talk about finding the “sweet spots” in photography from camera settings and post-processing to sequencing your photos and optimizing how you view them. I share practical tips and personal insights to help you take sharper, more balanced images and create photo collections that truly tell a story.

This week, I discuss a positive “mind game” in photography that encourages a refreshing perspective on our work. Your mindset influences what you choose to photograph—whether it’s objects, emotions, or concepts. By shifting focus from tangible things to feelings or ideas, you can create more meaningful images and deepen your engagement. This conscious approach helps uncover what truly matters in your photography, revealing that the essence of a photo often transcends its subject.

In episode 574 of The Perceptive Photographer, I dig into the idea of the emotional “entry points” that invite viewers into a photograph.
This isn’t about leading lines or the rule of thirds. It’s about whether someone who knows nothing about you or your story can still feel something when they look at your work.
It’s easy to make work that’s so personal it becomes a closed loop. It is meaningful to you, opaque to everyone else.

Hey there!  I hope you are having a great week. In this week’s podcast, I wanted to talk about some of the things that came up for me when I revisited John Berger’s essay, “Understanding a Photograph.” As I was preparing for a class, this essay got me excited for…

In the start of our 11th year, episode 572 of The Perceptive Photographer, I dive back into a often discussed topic that every photographer eventually faces: conflicting critique.

It is bound to happen to all of us. That moment when two thoughtful people look at the same photograph and see completely different things. One person calls it powerful and restrained. Another calls it distant and unresolved. Same image. Same moment. Completely different reactions.

In this episode, I dive into what really makes a great photograph, drawing on quotes from Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. We dig into how composition isn’t just about following rules, it’s about personal growth and expressing how we see the world. I encourage you to focus on your own vision and connection to your subjects, rather than trends or techniques.

In Episode 570 of The Perceptive Photographer, I found myself circling a couple of questions: Is an audience required for meaning, or just for momentum? And if no one ever sees a photograph, does it still matter? (and the difference between sees and seen)

As photographers, we’re surrounded by feedback. Images are shared, measured, ranked, and quickly replaced by the next shot. It’s easy to absorb the idea that a photograph only becomes real once it’s been seen. But when I slow down and think about why I started making photographs in the first place, the audience was originally never part of that conversation (although is sneaks in now at times).

When was the last time a photograph or moment behind the camera lens truly made you stop and catch your breath? Not just a quick “oh, that’s nice,” but a real, lingering moment of connection? Well, that is the topic for the show today, which is episode 569, btw. podcastsIf you think about the images you see every day, there are so many of them. We’re living in an age of visual overload. It can be easy to become distant and sort of numb to the images. We walk past or scroll by without really seeing. I do it all the time. 

In this week’s episode, Episode 568 of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore the tension between photographing for validation and photographing for myself. I reflect on how my work changed when I stopped trying to impress, rediscovered curiosity, and allowed more honest, meaningful photographs to emerge.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore why two photographers never see the same scene. Photography isn’t objective; it’s shaped by perception, experience, emotion, and intent. Every choice such as where we stand, what we include, and when we press the shutter reflects how we see the world. Rather than searching for the “right” photograph, this episode encourages photographers to understand their own visual awareness. By paying attention to what draws our attention and why, we can create more personal, intentional images that reflect our unique way of seeing.

In this episode, I explore how photographs are encountered rather than what they depict, focusing on two modes of looking: transitional and relational viewing. Transitional viewing moves the viewer forward, prioritizing speed, clarity, and momentum, often seen in social media, editorial work, and portfolio reviews. Relational viewing asks the viewer to stay, allowing meaning to unfold over time through return, familiarity, and duration. I argue that this distinction matters because viewing is not neutral. As photographers, we shape how our work is experienced. Episode 566 ultimately asks whether your photographs are made for movement, for staying, or somewhere in between.

Episode 565 opens 2026 with a reflection on a feeling many of us struggle to name. When our best work starts to feel boring, it is often mistaken for a lack of creativity or momentum. In this episode, I explore why that feeling usually appears when the work is becoming clearer, more consistent, and more intentional. We talk about familiarity, the loss of novelty, and the danger of overcorrecting good work just to feel excitement again. This episode is an invitation to trust restraint, allow distance, and recognize boredom as a possible sign of growth rather than failure.

In Episode 564, I explore the difference between consistency and coherence in photography. While consistency rewards repetition and recognition, coherence reflects a deeper continuity of attention. Through examples like Steven Shore, the episode argues that real voice survives change rather than resisting it.

In this episode, I explore the shift from searching for photographs to truly seeing. Searching narrows attention and demands explanation. Seeing allows uncertainty, patience, and quiet relationships to emerge. I talk about photographs that resist clarity, images that stop explaining themselves, and why those unresolved moments often hold the most lasting resonance. This episode reflects on attention, editing, and the value of staying with what does not immediately make sense.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore why making a good photograph does not automatically mean it needs to be shared. We look at the pressure to publish everything, the value of private work, and how choosing what not to show can strengthen both your photography and your relationship to seeing.

n this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I talk about book ideas for the holiday season, especially for photographers and creative folks. Thanks to a listener, David, I once again share some of my favorite reads or books for giving ranging from creative practice and photography theory to memoirs and photo books. The goal of this week’s episode (561) is to hopefully help you find meaningful books for yourself or the photographers in your life.

This episode explores the idea of working with what the photograph wants rather than forcing our intentions onto it. Once an image exists, it carries its own visual logic, weight, and rhythm. By slowing down, noticing what the photograph is already doing well, and letting accidents or imperfections remain, editing becomes a conversation instead of a correction. When we listen to the photograph’s internal voice, we discover a truer, more honest final image than the one we first imagined.

In this episode of the podcast I explore the idea of editing as translation. Rather than treating editing as technical cleanup, I look at how it becomes a way to interpret the lived moment of making a photograph. The camera captures facts but not the emotional truth, so editing bridges that gap. By shaping color, tone, and atmosphere, we translate experience into visual language and create images that feel honest, expressive, and connected to our intentions.

In this episode of the podcast, we explore the quiet tension between the solitude of making photographs and the importance of sharing the work we create. Photography often begins in private moments of deep attention, yet that same solitude can drift into loneliness and self-doubt. We talk about why showing your images to others is a vital part of the creative cycle, how feedback and connection help clarify your voice, and why your work deserves to exist beyond your own hard drive. This episode invites you to embrace both the stillness of seeing and the community that completes the photograph.

Episode 557 of The Perceptive Photographer, we explore how true creativity in photography comes from emotional connection rather than technical mastery. Inspired by Galen Rowell’s The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography, the episode reflects on passion as the fuel for creativity, intention as the guide for meaningful expression, and empathy as the bridge between photographer and subject. Daniel reminds listeners that the most powerful images reveal how we feel, not just what we see, and that authenticity, compassion, and awareness lead to a more honest photographic voice.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about burnout verse resting. Creative burnout and creative rest may look similar on the surface, but they come from very different places. Burnout is the slow unraveling of connection to your work . It shows up when the camera feels heavy, ideas feel stale, and even looking at images becomes tiring. It often shows up after long periods of constant output or comparison, when making photographs becomes more about productivity than discovery…

n episode 555 of The Perceptive Photographer, I celebrate what I like to call “magic number day” by exploring the creative power of photographing the familiar. I share some personal stories about finding inspiration close to home and talk about how so many great photographers discovered beauty in the everyday. There’s something deeply rewarding about turning the camera toward what we already know—the people, places, and routines that shape our lives. When we slow down and really see those moments, we uncover meaning, connection, and a quiet kind of magic that’s been waiting for us all along.

As the days get shorter, I find myself paying more attention to how light changes this time of year. The low angle of the sun, the long shadows, and the quiet warmth that hangs in the air all ask for a slower kind of seeing. In this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I talk about using this shift in light as an opportunity think about how we approach our work and to build a small quick body of work.

In this episode, I reflect on five simple ideas to help keep your creative life moving forward. From finishing imperfect work to embracing boredom, learning from feedback, and finding value in small, steady steps, it is a reminder that progress, not perfection, is what keeps us creating and growing.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, I explore what it means to trust your own eye. Like learning to read and write, photography requires more than technical skill. Making a photograph is not the same as understanding one. By paying attention to what draws us in, moving through doubt, and listening to our instincts, we begin to see more clearly and develop a personal, authentic way of seeing the world through the camera.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer Podcast, I chat with Ken Carlson about moving from single images to building cohesive photographic projects. We explore motivation, intent, sequencing, and the role of mentorship and community. If you’ve ever dreamed of a book, zine, or portfolio, this conversation is packed with insight, clarity, and encouragement.

n Episode 551 of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore how what I don’t know often means more than what I do in my photography. Instead of trying to control every detail or follow every rule, I’ve learned to embrace uncertainty. Leaving out elements, breaking the “rules,” and allowing space for discovery can lead to stronger images and deeper connections. Viewers bring their own stories, and that gap between intention and perception is where the magic happens. By trusting the unknown, I create work that feels more authentic, surprising, and meaningful.

In this podcast episode, the importance of silence in photography is explored. Embracing quiet helps us be present, notice details, and connect with subjects. By slowing down and inviting stillness, we can make more intentional choices and deepen our photographic practice. Where can you invite more silence in your work?

When it comes to growth in photography, it’s easy to get caught up in the wrong metrics. In this week’s episode, I dig into the idea of measuring progress in ways that might make for better growth in our photographic practice. 

We often talk about “telling a story” in photography. But when you look closer, a single image may only hold part of the story: the introduction, the climax, or maybe the resolution.
In this week’s podcast, I explore how frameworks like Freytag’s Pyramid, the Hero’s Journey, and Pixar’s methods can inspire us to think differently about our photographs and how they connect with others.

In this episode, I talk with you about finding the right balance in your photography, or what I call your creative “spice level.” Based on a trip out for Thai food, I share how important it is to challenge yourself enough to stay engaged, but not so much that you feel overwhelmed. I also touch on the value of honest self-reflection and community, and let you know about some opportunities, like my Meaningful Image Workshop and the Lightroom Virtual Summit. Thanks for being part of this community and listening in as we explore the ups and downs of the creative process together.

Photography isn’t just about making a single strong image. It’s about what happens when we put images together. In this episode, we explore the creative shift from chasing individual “keepers” to building a body of work that tells a story.
We’ll talk about what makes a sequence of photos more powerful than a single frame, and why the order of images can change their meaning entirely.
Whether you’re building a project, putting together a portfolio, or sequencing a photo book, this episode will give you tools and inspiration to move from good pictures to great stories.

In this episode of the podcast, I explore the idea of “arrows in your quiver”. You know, the skills you don’t think you’ll ever need but that can transform your photography when the moment comes. From studying artificial lighting to better understand natural light, to learning portraiture for gesture and expression, to digging into photographic history for inspiration, these extra skills expand your creative toolkit. The more arrows you carry, the more prepared you are to adapt, experiment, and grow in your work.

In this episode, I talk about that all-too-familiar moment when you look at your photos and realize they don’t quite match what you saw or felt in the moment. I explore why this disconnect happens and how being more intentional with composition, framing, and timing can help you capture what really caught your eye. I also share some updates about my upcoming Lightroom Virtual Summit classes and mention that my photography workshops are almost full. Thanks for joining me as we dig into the challenges and joys of making photographs that truly reflect your vision.

In this episode, I talk about how to look deeper into photographs and find their meaning, not just describe what’s in them. Drawing from Sylvan Barnet’s ideas on formal analysis, I explain the difference between simply listing what you see and analyzing how a photo communicates something more. I also discuss how both photographers and viewers help shape a photo’s meaning, and why it’s okay if that meaning isn’t always clear.

In this episode, I talk about why titling photographs matters. I share how titles help us organize our work, give context, and deepen both our own and the viewer’s understanding of an image. I suggest trying out different titles for the same photo to discover new meanings. I also discuss how titles can reveal themes in your work and reflect your perspective. There’s no single right way to use titles—they can be public or private.

n episode 541, I explore ideas that surface across conversations, readings, and experiences—all pointing toward the spirit of wabi sabi. It’s about embracing imperfection, time, and authenticity in photography, and how those themes invite us to see—and photograph—the world with more honesty, presence, and depth.

In this episode, I talk about how truth, wonder, and trust support my creative process in photography. Inspired by a chat and some recent reading, I reflect on balancing technical skills with staying open to new ideas. For me, creativity isn’t just about getting things right—it’s about being curious, authentic, and willing to experiment. I hope these thoughts encourage you to find your own balance in photography.

In this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I dive into a question that comes up more often than we admit: Who are we really making our work for—ourselves or our audience? It all started with a thoughtful question from longtime listener Dennis, and it led to a deeper look at motivation, ego, and the tricky dance between personal expression and external validation.

From the pull of social media likes to the sting of critique, I explore how feedback can both shape and distract us. I also talk about the importance of being your own first audience—because if your work doesn’t move you, it probably won’t move anyone else.

Whether you’re creating for clients or for yourself, this episode is a reflection on staying true to your voice while remaining open to growth.

In this episode, I talk about the idea of a “point of entry” in photography—what draws us into a photograph and how we connect with our subjects. I share some personal thoughts on creativity, reflect on what catches my eye when I’m shooting, and encourage you to slow down and notice your own reaction. My main point this week is to pay attention to what pulls you into an image, as it can shape your creative process and deepen your connection to your work.

In this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I take some time to reflect on the people who shape us, the dual nature of photography, and the internal compass that guides our creative work. Episode 537 feels especially personal as I honor my mentor, Seth…

We’ve all chased the “bucket list” shot—the iconic scenes everyone wants. But is that really where creativity lives? In this episode, I talk about letting go of trophy hunting and leaning into personal expression, being present, and making images that reflect how you see the world.

In this episode, I talk about the importance of really seeing when I’m out photographing. I also discuss a self-exploration exercise I’ve been practicing—asking myself, “What do I see?”—to help me notice more in my images.

In this week’s episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explored something that doesn’t always get the love it deserves—mundane photography. You know, the kind of work that isn’t flashy or dramatic. It’s not towering landscapes or intense street moments. It’s ferns on the forest floor. The corner of a quiet room. The way sunlight hits the sink at 3 p.m.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I dive into the relationship between form and content in photography, especially when editing and sequencing a body of work. While a photo might carry personal meaning for me, I know it doesn’t inherently hold that story for the viewer—it’s their interpretation that brings it to life. That’s why I encourage photographers to critically assess what’s included and excluded in the frame to better communicate their intent.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore the balance between the rational (exceptions) and irrational (creativity) sides of photography. Great work emerges when we combine our technical skills with personal instincts, vulnerability, and a willingness to take creative risks. Over time, this blend leads to wisdom—an ability to create images that are not only well-crafted but deeply meaningful.

In this episode, we dive into The Americans, Robert Frank’s groundbreaking photo book that reshaped the way we think about documentary and street photography. Over the course of 10,000 miles, 28,000 images he selected a core 83 images that cut through the facade of 1950s to reveal a country grappling with race, isolation, and inequality. When it was released it ultimately influenced generations of photographers to come.

In the latest episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I found myself thinking about Steve Jobs. You know that classic moment in his presentations when he’d pause, turn back, and say, “Oh, just one more thing…”? It was his signature move—something small that ended up being hugely impactful. And it got me thinking about photography.

That idea—just one more thing—has stuck with me. It’s become a way to look and critique my own work, and in this week’s podcast, I dig into how paying attention to one more detail, one more adjustment, one more question can fundamentally shift the power and clarity of a photograph. That “one more thing” doesn’t always mean doing more. Sometimes it’s about refining. Sometimes it’s about taking something away.

Moving beyond “good” or “bad” judgments, I explore how asking better questions can deepen our understanding and connection to photography.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, I dive into the fascinating topic of print sizes in photography and how they impact the way we perceive images. Even if you mostly share your work digitally, I believe it’s important to consider how print size influences the viewing experience. From the intimacy of small prints to the immersive nature of large ones, the size of a photograph plays a powerful role in how it’s received. I also share details about an upcoming print workshop and encourage you to explore making physical prints to build a deeper connection with your work. This episode is a thoughtful look at how print size shapes our experience and appreciation of photography.

In this latest episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast, I dig into a common challenge many photographers face: the transition from enjoying photography as a creative outlet to overthinking the process in pursuit of “better” photographs. This shift can often lead to a disconnect between what photographers see and what they believe they should be capturing. Let’s break down the key insights and actionable advice from this episode to help you foster a deeper connection to the act of seeing and creating.

In this episode of the podcast we dig a little into the impacts of thinking about photographs as of things or of relationships.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast, we discuss the impact of the “New Topographic—A Man-altered Landscape” exhibition on modern landscape photography.

Welcome back to another episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, as we continue our exploration of the distinctions between simplicity and minimalism in photography. If you missed the first part, I highly recommend catching up at some point with part one where…

In the podcast this week, we have part one of two on simple verses minimalism in photography. Happy B-day Bro!

In the podcast this week, we focus on the impact framing a photography can have on our creative process

In the podcast this week, we take a look at the impact of observation and changes that happen when we are observed or are observing.

In this episode of “The Perceptive Photographer,” I celebrate the podcast’s ten-year anniversary, marking its 520th episode. I reflect on the significance of milestones in my photographic journey and the evolution over the years. I emphasize the importance of…

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, I take a step back to reflect on the evolution of a photographer’s journey—your journey, my journey, and the ever-changing creative path we all walk.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore the nature of knowledge—what we know, what we don’t know, and the even more elusive realm of what we don’t know we don’t know.

In this episode of The Perceptive Photographer, I explore the idea of focus—not just in terms of sharpness or camera settings, but the deeper reasons behind why we take the photos we do.

In the latest episode of “The Perceptive Photographer,” I dip my toe back into the pool of critiquing photographs. Critique is more than just forming an opinion; it’s a structured approach to understanding and evaluating photographic work. In this episode

Welcome to another episode of “The Perceptive Photographer”. We’re diving into episode 508, which coincides with the hustle and bustle of Cyber Monday.

In this episode of “The Perceptive Photographer,” I dive into the theme of balance in both life and photography.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, I spend some time reflecting on the passing of the influential photographer Paul Caponigro.

In this episode of my podcast, the Perceptive Photographer, I dive into the concept of “layers” in photography, drawing inspiration from the movie “Shrek.”

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast, I dive into the importance of working the balance between simplicity and complexity in our photography.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, I dig into how we go about dealing with mistakes and unexpected outcomes in our creative process.

In this episode of podcast, I ponder and dig into how perception shapes our understanding of photographs

In episode 501 of “The Perceptive Photographer,” I really open up about the concept of “mailing it in” when it comes to photography and creativity.

In this special 500th episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast, I reflect back on my journey in podcasting and photography.

Hey there! I’m excited to share the latest episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast. This episode is particularly special to me as it marks the 499th episode, leading up to the big 500th milestone. In this episode, we dig into the importance of understanding the…

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer Podcast, I delve into the continuing dialog and conversations around the evolving role of generative AI in photography.

In this podcast, we look at what can happen when we ask a question that we already know the anwer to.

Tune in to this weeks episode of the Perceptive Photographer whre we dig into how theater, photography, sitcom A, B, and C narratives in epsisode can be lessons to apply to our photographs.

In this episode of the podcast, I talk about some of the challegenes we can face when we look at our photographs under the lens of thinking we knew what they were about when we really didn’t know.

In this episode of the podcast, we dig into the impacts of tension on photography. Not the tension in the frame…

In today’s podcast I’m diving deep into a debate that really got me thinking: Can anything truly be taught?

In this episode, I dive into Stephen Shore’s thought-provoking photography concept of mental models and thinking about your images based on his book, “The Nature of Photographs”.

In take 357 of episode 491 of the podcast, I dive into the impacts of forks in the road of our creative process. From the early excitement and motivation of creative processes to balancing the struggle of staying true to oneself while connecting with others. We dig in…

In this episode, I delve into the impacts of fragmentation in our photography

In this episode, I explore how the language we use—especially definite and indefinite articles—shapes our understanding and critique of photographs

In episode 487, I dig into breaking the cycle of repetitive photography habits that have you spinning your wheels.

In today’s episode, I dive deep into the impacts of acceptance in our creative practices.

This week’s podcast asks you to forget the technical jargon or future worries that you might have in your photographic practice. Instead, in episode 485, we are talking about how Edward Hoppers desire to appreciating light on a building, Cezannes seeing the…

Hey everyone, in this episode, I’m diving into two of the simple pleasures in my studio—a great cup of coffee and capturing the meaningful photograph.

Welcome to podcast 483, In this podcast, I’m diving into the world of f stops and depth of field in photography. Imagine your favorite f stop as a personality quiz—revealing the unique characteristics that define how you see and capture the world. You can of course…

Welcome to podcast 482 ! Today, we look at why we might come back and have a second look at an image, and how that can impact our determination of an image’s effectiveness or not. We know that it’s not just about technical aspects but the deeper resonance and…

In episode 481 of the Perceptive Photographer, we dig into the different sides of distractions and how they can be both a benefit sometimes and a negative other times.

In episode 480 of the Perceptive Photographer, we dig into the notion of what good customer services looks like. When thinking about your photographs and if you are in the business of making photos, what does good customer service look like in your images. As your own…

In this week’s podcast I dive into the way our photos that only we seem to love can really impact our work

In this episode, we’re diving into the topic of resistance and how it can seriously mess with our creative flow.

In this week’s podcast, we explore the elusive quest to identify the “best photograph” in a series, delving into considerations like emotional impact, composition, and our own personal bias.

It’s “Challenge Week,” in this episode of the Perceptive Photographer, so I am outlining five tasks designed to refresh and inspire your approach to your work.

In the latest episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, host Daniel Gregory revisits the evergreen question of what constitutes a good photograph.

n episode 472 of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, host Daniel Gregory emphasizes the significance of recognizing the influential photographers that shape our personal style.

In this week’s episode of the Perceptive Photographer, we try to unpack photography’s connection to symbolic meaning in images.

In this week’s podcasts, we look at the importance of making work personal and speaking about why personal matters in our work.

In this week’s podcasts, I jump into the essence the struggle between practice, inspiration and making images.

Episode 468 of the Perceptive Photographer podcast delves into the world of presets in photography not just in Lightroom but in conceptual work as well.

In episode 467 of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, we draw inspiration from the book “Art and Fear” by Ted Orland and Richard Bayless. Often in my artistic endeavors, I’m driven by a desire to produce remarkable pieces that resonate with both myself and my…

Photographers often find themselves at a crossroads, seeking to create work that resonates and has significance. The initial steps towards crafting meaningful photography can seem daunting, yet it is a journey worth embarking on.

In this episode, we explore the pivotal moment between capture and concept and how making sure we focus on the right creative process at the right time and really push our work forwards in meaningful ways.

In this episode, the perceptive photographer, we reflect on the importance of revisiting one’s own work for growth.

Dive into episode 436 of The Perceptive Photographer to explore the intertwining of camaraderie, standards, and idealism in photography. In this episode, I reflect on an owl photo adventure, revealing insights into how photographers can enhance their craft through…

In the podcast this week, we look at five bad habits that might be blocking you and your photographic process and exploration behind the camera.

Dive into the ideas of what makes a good photograph in this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast. In episode 461 we try to unlock what defines quality in a image and how our assessment of the subjective nature of good changes and evolves over time From…

As we start 2024 on the perceptive photographer, we dive into the nuances of photography in the digital age, challenging myths and embracing goals for 2024.

The latest episode of The Perspective Photographer, number 459, dives into some thought-provoking perspectives on photography from some great quotes by other photographers

Dive into our exploration of failure as a stepping stone in photography and creativity on this episode of The Perceptive Photographer.

This episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast is all about listener questions dealign with procrastination, habits, critique mistakes and more.

In this week’s podcast episode, we explore the use of 11 dynamic questions that are specifically designed to spark meaningful conversations about photography. Using these questions, you can easily discuss your work with your audience and, in turn, help them develop a…

This episode peels back the layers on how a non-linear approach to time can reshape our photographic journey and push the boundaries of our artistic process

In this perceptive photographer podcast this week, we focus on how coming up with three key goals can make a difference in your work.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer, we dive into the impacts of influences on our work. From life’s twists to jazz beats and social justice, explore the diverse elements that shape our sense of seeing. “Our influences come from a broader spectrum than just…

This week’s podcast explores the distinction between knowledge and wisdom in photography, emphasizing the importance of experience and trusting yourself.

In this episode 451 of the Perceptive Photographer this week, I discuss the significance of commitment and personal growth in photography. By focusing on our unique perspectives and experiences to create meaningful images, I believe we end up capturing the essence of…

As a photographer, I believe it’s essential to step out of our comfort zones to improve the quality of our images. In this episode, I discuss the significance of exploring new techniques, embracing uncertainty, and actively engaging with the creative process. I also…

In the podcast this week, we take a look at ten thought-provoking questions that delve into the motivations, emotions, and personal approaches of photographers

In the podcast this week, I talk about how sometimes our creative and photographic process is like getting stuck in a job that doesn’t work for us anymore and how to get out of it.

In the podcast this week, we take a look at how using metaphors and developing multiple metaphors in your photography can help you find a more exciting and consistent voice in your work.

I like to eat junk food. There are so many good cakes, pies, cookies, ice cream, funnel cakes and more. I also know that too much junk food isn’t good for me and causes all sorts of issues. I know what to do to eat healthy, but I only sometimes do it. I also have…

in this week’s podcast, we take a look at how the gear you use impacts the type and style of work you do.

This week is episode number 444 of the podcast. In honor of the episode number, we are looking at three lists of four great ways to improve, have fun and make more photographs.

This week’s podcast dives into the questions of What makes a good photograph and how you choose between two similar images when picking one to have

In this week’s podcast, I talk about the importance of kindness and how that can make a difference in someone’s life even when you might not be aware.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the importance of framing and the impacts framing has on compositions in photographs. I also make a personal plea for you to stop clicking on gear-related clickbait.

In this week’s podcast, we explore the idea of keeping things simple. The simpler, the better.

in this week’s podcast, we dive not the world of songs that won’t go away and random trivia to try and find a place where our photography can lead us in a new direction.

This week on the Perceptive Photographer, we talk about the importance of being bold about your work and how you talk about your work.

This week on the Perceptive Photographer, we are taking at look at some key considerations or questions to ask yourself about your photographic compositions.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how rushing and invoking our fight or flight responses to framing and composing our photographs can have an unintended detrimental impact on our work.

This week’s podcast is a dive into a few listener questions that have come in over the past few weeks.

In the podcast this week, I dive into the importance of understanding a couple of key elements about content and concept in analyzing your work. Most important are understanding the default bias you bring to your analysis and how to temper your analysis against your unwanted biases to find a deeper, more insightful meaning in your work.

In the podcast this week, I talk about the value of thinking of your work as projects, big and small, and how focusing on a group of images or collection of images can help you better understand your technique, vision and voice within your work.

The podcast this week is a quick review of lessons observed in my last workshop out in the Palouse.

In the podcast this week, I offer up five challenges each with 10 outcomes to try that will help push you forward as a photographer

In this week’s podcast, we dive into the topic of what to do with all those images that you think are bad and you wonder if you should do a clean and purge?

In this week’s podcast, I discuss how what you photograph and how you see the world will impact your approach using some of these new generative tools.

In this week’s podcast, we dive into the importance of details and how the small things in our photographic practice can make all the difference

In this podcast, I talk about how much faster you can achieve your goals when you start by failing and how failing is a great indicator of action.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how our approach to balance not just our images but our relationship to our work can make a difference in both how we appreciate our work but also our process of getting there.

In this week’s podcast, I tell you a little about my best bud, and the final lesson he gave to me as he journeyed to be with the rest of the pets waiting at the rainbow bridge.

This week’s podcast is all about listening to your voice and finding your way with it.

In the podcast this week, we talk about what is one piece of advice you would give yourself, knowing what you know now, when you first got started in photography.

In the podcast this week, I dive into the importance of an image having multiple meanings,

This week’s podcast is quick discussion about the impacts of nature verse nurture in our photography.

In this week’s podcast, I offer up my opinion on a couple of the most important ways we consider and think about the path to more personal and meaningful work.

In the podcast this week, we are diving into some listener questions that have come in over the past few months.

In this week’s podcast, I dive into a quick look at the book The Nature of Photographs and how the impact of focus at the descriptive level can make a huge difference in your approach to your photographs.

In the podcast this week, we take a look at five cliches that can make a difference in your photography.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how sometimes the simplest of acts can make a huge difference in the quality and meaning of our photography.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about the importance of why we photograph what we photograph and how I answer the question of why I am a landscape photographer.

In this week’s podcast, I continue to talk about the impacts on AI on photography and how it shifts our communication about photography

In this week’s podcast, we spend some time talking about how various aspects of our work and approach to photography as impacted by 10%

In this week’s podcast, I dive a little into a method for evaluating photographs.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how final images tell us about how well we prepared and what to practice when things are not what we expect.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how projects ideas develop and what is the best method for working with and dealing with projects in your photography.

In this week’s podcast, quantity is the name of the game. One of the best things you can do to improve your photography is to increase the amount of work you are creating.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how setting goals can help you keep focused and move your photography forward.

this week’s podcast talks about how to think about the variety of ways to use point of view to tell your story and engage with your own process to make your photographs.

This week’s podcast is focused on titling your photographs and why and how that can impact our perception of the image, intention and experience of the work.

Two topics for this week’s podcast. The first is the difference between explaining your work and justifying your work. For many photographers, they end up making justifications for there images when they think they are explaining what the work is about. I also talk…

As 2022 starts to draw to a close, it is a time to look back and reflect on the prior year. As photographers that means we should look back at the impact of our photography. In this week’s podcast, I toss out three areas to think about cleaning up before the start of the new year so that you can put your best foot forward for 2023.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how practicing your speaking, owning what you say and listening to others can have a major impact on your photographic process and experience.

In this week’s podcast, I share some thoughts on how to use and work with your audience so that you can share your work and find more people who are engaged with your message.

This week’s podcast looks at the role of recognition in our photography.

Today’s release is the 400th episode of the Perceptive Photographer. I started this little podcast 400 weeks ago and never thought I would be here today celebrating this milestone.

In this week’s podcast, we tackle the idea of being boxed into the notions that photographs are to be simple and concise to be good in an attempt to dispel the myth that images are best when they check the boxes when we aren’t even sure the boxes are correct.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how important it is to face the resistance and see if we can sort out the root cause of why we are so against some aspect of our work.

In this week’s podcast, I tackle two of the hardest topics for any photographer. If you follow these very simple steps, I promise that your photography will grown by leaps and bounds. So take a listen and learn how a comfortable pair of shoes and a return to the…

This week’s podcast explorers the idea of grouping photographs, not by subject or subject matter, but rather by emotional support or insight they provide.

In the podcast this week, I dive into the importance of pushing through that self-doubt and continuing to make your photographs even when at times they seem like they might be copies of other images or you’re not sure what makes your image special.

How do we get better at looking at photographs? Looking at not just a photograph but a series of photographs.

In this week’s podcast, I dive into the notion of normal in photography and making photographs in an attempt to sort of what is normal and does it matter.

In this week’s podcast, we explore a little more into the nature of time and how it impacts our photography

In this week’s podcast, I spend some time discussing the nature of what it means to make art and some considerations for when we think about approaching the meaning and context of art in photography.

This week’s podcast focuses (pun intended) on the idea that straight out of the camera is somehow better than images that are processed after being taken. While I think getting it right in camera is critical to success as a photographer, the conversation to push images as being better or more accurate and faithful because they lack processing is missing a big part of the photographic process.

In this week’s podcast, I share ten tips for making your photographic process more creative.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how your relationship with simple can drastically change your approach to your work behind the camera, staying organized, or enjoying your time more.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about how editing and selecting images for diptychs or triptychs can make for more interesting work and boost your creativity in approaching your work.

In this week’s podcast, I share some thoughts on pricing your work and selling your work as art for the wall. Rather than focusing on what to price, I’ll share with you some of the key things to consider when pricing your work and taking those first step

Normally when I get asked about film and digital, I talk about the darkroom days being less and less easy to find, changes in media, or how the industry has shifted. I might tell a story about how I used to work versus how I work today. This time I had a very quick response that could have been seen as tongue in cheek, but in the end, it seemed to be an answer that really resonated in the conversation. After all, a story is a story, and light is light.

This week’s podcast talks about my answer to this wonderful question and how I have evolved over time as a photographer to land on what I think is a great way to think about how we all deal with changes in the photographic industry.

For many photographers who are starting their printing journey, much of the joy comes from the printer making prints that sort of looking like the screen. But as your skills evolve, there comes the point where making a good print turns into a significant print. There are some criteria we can use to evaluate one print from another. We look at some criteria when judging the quality of a print or reproduction. Anyone who has ever examined their work in print and then in a magazine or book knows that print quality varies.

This week’s podcast touches on the criteria we can use to judge the quality of a photographic print and how to talk about those qualities in a meaningful way.

One of the purposes of language is used to express ideas and share observations. The visual language of photography is no different. It is about expressing the ideas and feelings behind the camera. For many photographers, this can prove to be a significant challenge.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the importance of language to express ideas and how our own constructs of what makes a photograph “good” can get in the way of making an effective image.

In this week’s podcast, the lessons of improv and focusing on using the yes AND can make a huge difference in your mental approach to taking new and more exciting images.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how always ordering your comfort food when taking a picture can result in you taking uninspired and boring images over and over again.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how forgetting can shape our approach to making more meaningful work.

Carrie Fisher has a great quote, “Instant gratification takes too long.” In this week’s podcast, we dive into the impacts of instant gratification on the making of meaningful photographs.

In the podcast this week, we focus on the importance of research in making more meaningful images.

In the podcast this week we focus on two questions from listeners.

In this podcast, I discuss the importance of making sure your conflicts, passions, and things you stand for appear in your work.

This week’s podcast is focused on the importance of conversations in our photography, and how those conversations can change the way we see and experience behind the lens.

This week’s podcast takes a look at these two quotes and how they impact our approach to our photography and our creative living.

I was rocking out to the car radio the other day. A few songs came on back-to-back. They were huge songs when I was in college. They were one-hit wonders. Does a one-hit wonder in photography mean something and if so what? That is the dive into the pool we take this week on the perceptive photographer podcast.

This week’s podcast dives into the topic of what photography is about. By looking at some of the key elements that make up a photography or concepts in a photograph, I argue that photography is actually about the life lived by the photographer and not a moment of light, gesture or gear.

Episode 371 This week’s podcast talks about the conditions that arise when we are left with too many choices and the impacts on our work If you want to participate in the Photoshop Virtual Summit 4, you can register for your free pass using the link below. Get your…

This week’s podcast talks about how sometimes an instant success to someone can seem like a long slow journey to the person making it. It is better to be a instant hit or travel the longer journey?

This week’s podcast talks about some photographic lessons learned from listening to bird watchers

In the podcast this week, the focus is, well, focus. I talk about how we approach our work and what it can do to our process when we get a handle on both camera focus and other forms of focus.

In the podcast this week, I talk about the importance of seeing and framing elements in your images to make them more interesting both at first glance and at the same time offer a more profound discovery the more you look at them.

In this week’s podcast, we dive into how blurry and sharp are both important elements to have in making successful images.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how one single change in your language can make a huge difference in the conversations you have about your work.

In this week’s podcast, in addition to talking about a little podcast history and the importance of photography in our lives, I also detail out some of the workshops I am teaching this year that you can register for up on my site at www.danieljgregory.com.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the difference it can make in your images when you do them because you are in awe of the subject.

This week on the podcast is about two big challenges for your photography work. They are both super easy to take on, but each offers up a chance to learn about your work and build a connection to your community. So take a listen to this short episode and see if you are up for the challenge to be thankful and create more than you consume in your photography.

In the podcast this week, the focus is all on how focusing on facts of your photography might be limiting your approach to your photography.

In the podcast this week, I dive into the areas where you might spend your time as it relates to your photography and photographic process in an effort to help figure out if we are spending our time the best way possible.

ne of the biggest challenges many of us face in our photography is sorting out where and who to show our work. Finding our peeps or audience can be a challenge. That challenge can be clouded by ego, confusion, and misidentification. However, once we understand who our audience is, our shared photography can reach and be appreciated by our community.

In the podcast this week, I talk about how approaching our photography by thinking about how I am and how I want to be can make a difference in the type and quality of work we create.

In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer podcast, we dive into a new way of approaching the deletion of our images. Maybe there is a better approach to deleting. Maybe we should take a moment and honor the things we get rid of or delete for what they taught up no matter how small.

With the turn of a day, it is now 2022. I hope you are having a good start to the new year. This week’s podcast is a quick chat about something that I hope we can all do in 2022 for our own work and the work of others. I don’t think it will always be easy, but I do think it can make us a better photographic community.

As we close out 2021 and look forward to 2022, we close out the podcast talking about a few listener questions that have been sent in over the past few months. As you will hear, in many cases, I think oftentimes we are asking the wrong question to begin with.

In our adventure as photographers, there are so many little twists and turns. Some of them are good and some are nothing more than a distraction. In this week’s podcast, we talk about five little things to consider as we approach the end of the year that might make a difference in our photography in 2022.

nd ours is our feelings and how they relate to the things we photograph. Doesn’t matter if we love it, hate it, or are unsure about it. Whatever it is, you better make sure you know how you feel if you want to make a meaningful photograph.

In this episode, I talk about how to approach your photographs as a group of interconnected elements focusing on not just what the object is or looks like but how it relates to everything else in the frame.

In this week’s episode, I dive into the importance of understanding your purpose when making a photograph. There are a host of reasons to take a photo, but understanding the reason you are making one will help you critique your images, organize your images and be successful behind the camera. Just like making sure you have the right lens on the camera for the images you want to make, having the understanding of your purpose can make sure the little details fall into place.

Episode 350 There are so many ways to think about grouping photographs and programs like Lightroom or Capture One can make it easier. Although those programs sort of force a method for looking at times, there are other options for grouping and associating our work. In…

In this week’s podcast, I spend a little time talking about the importance of appreciating that what we are doing when we photograph is extending the conversations, responding to discussions and generating new ideas by combining influences and ideas.

s week’s podcast, I talk a little be more about how to think about sequencing your images into an essay or story. What sort of considerations to make before, during, and after the process. I also step onto the soapbox a bit about how we view and understand this broader collection of images and how they impact our understanding not just of the series, but the individual building blocks and reactions to work.

In this week’s podcast, I talk a little about how recognizing your defining moments in photography might be more important than your decisive moments behind the camera.

We all collect stuff. In this week’s podcast, I discuss the impacts of what we collect in our photography and photographic processes. For many of us, I am sure we collect good things, but I am also sure that we collect a lot of things we wish we could or would get rid of.

In this week’s podcast, we jump into the notion of memory and how it can impact our understanding of how we view an image. I also talk about how to find a better awareness of the impact of memory in our process behind the camera so that, if we are lucky, we come home with better photographs.

Episode 344 If you haven’t taken the time to make a contact sheet, you should. They are worth their weight in gold. Many people think the contact sheet is used to select your best photograph to edit or enlarge, but I also think contacts teach you something about your…

Episode 343 Have you ever had a good glass of wine where you could taste the subtle notes of flavor? Maybe it was in a cup of coffee or something you cooked. That little sensation of blueberries, mint, rosemary, or plum. It is out there waiting to be discovered and…

Episode 342 This week’s podcast takes a look at how clarity can impact our photography from before the shutter clicks to after the print is made. As always, I hope you and yours are safe, and please remember to keep safe and wear your mask. Get your Photoshop Virtual…

Have you turned it off and on again? In this week’s podcast, I talk about how rebooting parts of your photography can help you let go of the past and issues that no longer work and focus on a better tomorrow.

Much of photography is about telling a story in our images. If we start telling a story before we know what we want to say, we might make uninteresting work. However, by listening to others tell stories and the stories we tell, we might be able to better apply the storytelling skills to our work.

Having a plan and idea of what matters, awareness behind the camera, and organizing around multiple concepts can all lead to better success in our images. In this week’s podcast, we dive into some ideas around how to increase the success rate behind the camera so that you have more images to work with on your various projects

have heard, more times than I can count, that inspiration is a magic gift from the beyond that moves and shakes up to create amazing things. I am on the other end of the spectrum where I think inspiration comes from the work. What we might think of as a eureka idea actually has been there all along we just haven’t been listening closely enough.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how the things we create and are inspired to create are often a result of the process we follow both behind the camera and in the editing.

In this week’s podcast, I take a leap off the high bar and discuss the impacts of how our language of correct or incorrect can have on our seeing, photographing and sharing of photographs. By the end of the podcast, I hope that you will give some thought to how a small change in what you say might really impact your work.

There was a game we used to play back in at a company I worked at. Several of us worked in a common open area. Work was slow at times, so we would have entire conversations that had to be movie quotes. The only rules were had to be a quote and someone had to guess the quote. Now, I didn’t say it was a good game, but it passed the time.
In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the idea that some of our photographs might just be quotable.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the notion of the metaphor to understand our work and find more meaning in the images we create, share and see from others.

is week’s podcast, I talk about how asking questions to questions, not in an arrogant annoying sort of way can help move the conversation in a more interesting direction and help everyone have a better conversation about their photography and the work of others.

are trying out a new segment for the podcast called footnotes and endnotes. This segment is a collection of small random thoughts I have in my notebooks and conversations that rather than stretch into a longer podcast where I might get a little redundant I rapidly cover each topic in a few minutes.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the ideas around success and how doing nothing might make you the most successful photographer you can be.

I have heard over the past several weeks other photographers talking about other people’s photographs. What caught my ear was how critical these photographers were of people’s subject selection, the commonness of the subject, or general bashing of the image as been there done that. This week’s podcast takes a hard look at what that conversion is about and how we can find a better way to talk about photographs.

I often hear people talk about or suggest the proper settings for your camera to make good photographs. You might also find people who are suggesting the proper methods to edit your photographs for maximum impact. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at that approach and discuss how more times than not, taking or editing a good photograph requires you to think more about your approach to the photograph than the settings in the camera or software.

Episode 329 Often timed I find myself in a rush to do something. When that happens not much good comes from it. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how rushing can often lead to less than ideal results. As always, I hope you and yours are safe, and please remember to…

We all have places we work on editing our photographs. It might be a dedicated studio or room in the house, and for others, it might be a shared desk in the kitchen. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how setting up your space to work is similar to how you might approach working on a photograph behind the camera. I also talk about how getting a space set up to reflect your personality can make all the difference in editing. So no matter how big or small, private or shared, your space is making it about your photography will be a good thing.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how the work we make is all about the small details and impacts. Like ripples in a pond you never know how big of impact something you do might be but obsessing about how big the impact is or should be can lead to a dark creative place. Much of the work we do in art isn’t about major groundshaking events, it is in the smallest moments.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the question of does our style change when we change what we photograph or is our style consistent. I was asked recently if our style changes all the time based on what we photograph. They gave the example of black and white landscapes verse color fashion photography each being of interest but having a completely different look and approach. I thought it was a great question to tackle this week.

There are times that everyone faces in their photography when you feel like things are going nowhere. Maybe you are spending more money The longer we spend on photography, the less time and energy we have to do photography. This week we take a look at how the work can get in the way of the work.

In this week’s podcast, I take a quick look at the notion of accuracy in a photograph. Each photograph has a given set of attributes that we respond to when we look at the image. In critiquing work, there is often a sense of correctness to those decisions behind the camera. In the discussion this week, I challenge the idea that there is one accurate way to create and respond to the photograph and offer suggestions on how to approach our response to images.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the duality of many of the concepts and ideas that we might face when making photographs. We look at how ideas can be both easy and hard or how expectations can be both meet and disappointing. As we face this dual nature of many aspects in our photography, how to ultimately choose to use that duality to make more interesting photographs is a question I think we all must face.

This week’s podcast takes a look at how we learn things and the language we use to describe ourselves when we don’t know something and the impact of making more positive statements.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the way to tell a better story in your photographs and how to approach storytelling in your images.

There are many ways to learn things—some things in life we pick up pretty quickly, others not so much.

In today’s podcast, I talk about how most of the time, the time we put into something offers more rewards than just the desired goal. The journey is, in fact, more important than the destination.

I got to thinking these past few weeks about what would happen if I lost my eyesight. What would that mean for my photography? What would it mean to make photographs and appreciating photographs? In this week’s podcast, I talk a little bit about not being able to see could impact our photography and also how in some cases, it might make us better photographers because of how we would have to share what a photograph means in a much more complete way since we couldn’t just rely on someone looking at it.

I have heard from several friends how every day in the pandemic seems to run together. Sort of a Groundhog Day effect. In this week’s podcast, I dive into that notion of everything and every day being the same and how that can impact our approach to talking about our photography in a meaningful way. I also talk about the challenges of shifting our focus on what we talk about to celebrate the experiences of every photograph we look at.

This week’s podcast takes a look at the impacts of how we react to events and information. When you hear someone talk about your photography, do you focus on the negative, which in turn makes everything negative, or do you focus on the positive? In the podcast, I talk about how your approach to that feedback can make all the difference in improving your work. I also talk about some strategies to help you focus on slowing down the experience so you can focus on what matters most to you.

If you ever take one of my classes or workshops, you will listen to me talk about reading the photograph. The idea of reading a photograph is just like reading a book. You have to slow down, take it in, process the work, and think about it.

This week’s podcast breaks out the dustpan and broom. It is spring cleaning week. It is important to keep yourself organized and with sufficient space to be creative. With that in mind, this week we take a look at three easy places to do some spring cleaning in your photography practice to make some room for both the new and old ideas you might have around your photographic work.

This week’s podcast is all about answering questions from podcast listeners. We tackle five questions that really got me thinking or were asked more than once. I hope you get something out of the answers and if you have any questions feel free to reach out and let me hear them.

Sometimes when we are working, it is easy to stick with what we are good at. We tend to think that we are meant to be doing it if we are good at something. However, being good at something doesn’t mean that we enjoy something or should keep doing something. In this week’s podcast, we talk about how sometimes we need to give up what we are good at in favor of doing what we’re meant to do or really want to be doing.

This week’s podcast takes a look at why we create. I believe that art, and by proxy photography, is best when it is personal. It is born out of our curiosity and desire to discover, learn, grown, process, and sort out how we fit in the world. When we make work from a place of self–understanding, it taps into a common thread across lots of people who have similar feelings and ideas. While made by a single click, our images allow us to connect as a community to more important questions we face in life about who and what we are. As you think about your work, if you find yourself doing work that does feel right or seems off, maybe you need to think about what is it about the work that is important to you. Be a little selfish in some way and appreciate that creativity and art sometimes work best when we focus first on who we are and who we are becoming.

Episode 311 Each one of us has a different level of patience when it comes to time. I think each of us has to answer how long I am willing to wait to get a great photograph? Often, I find that I might give up a little early or stay way too late in my work. The balance…

Episode 310 For many photographers I work with, one of the consistent pieces of feedback I hear is that there is never enough of something to do the work they want. There might not be time or money or gear. A lot of effort and energy goes into thinking about what is…

When we think about approaching our photography, we often put things in buckets or bins. These classifications can help us identify areas of the images to work with and projects to pursue or find meaning in our work. Over time, I have grown to think about these ideas as more of a continuum or spectrum of ideas where they overlap and push into each other. Rather than creating edges, they offer up some softer transitions to more meaningful work. This week’s podcast looks at how this approach to edges and overlaps can impact our work with voice and vision.

I work with a lot of different people on different aspects of photography. One of the big areas that I help people with is developing a deeper connection to their work and others’ work. In that process, one of the issues that comes up repeatedly is the idea of what makes a good photograph. On more than one occasion, I have found myself in the conversation about something being a bad photograph or not. As I have looked back over my notes from these conversations, I have begun to wonder if the issue is more about personal taste in art, apathy for composition, or are we just willing to live with less than ideal photographs. This week’s podcast dips its toe into the idea of what makes something good and why there is an audience for what you might consider bad art.

Throughout our lifetime, we have a lot of friends and acquaintances. Some people are around for a short time, and others might last that lifetime. I have been thinking a lot lately about friendships and how they shape and shift us. They provide support, honesty, humor, companionship, and so much more. As I started to think about photography, I wondered about friendships in photography and the impact they can have. This week’s podcast focuses on the question of who your photo buddy is and what does that mean to you and your work?

I have been working on some images in the studio recently and some start of the new year cleanup work. As I bounced back and forth between those two projects, it occurred to me that I was missing one thing oftentimes. That thing could be a screw for a tripod leg or a lens cap or an emotional feeling in a print. But as I worked on the projects, I started to wonder how many things in my photography could be fixed with just one thing. So in today’s podcast, we talk about how our approach to photography, creating images, viewing images, and talking about images could be improved by focusing on just one more or less thing in the process.

This week’s podcast is a chat about how we feel about photography and photographs. In my teaching experience, I have found that many people think a lot about their photographs, but in some ways how we feel about our photographs can matter more.

This week’s podcast is a quick chat about setting goals for the new year and the importance of looking back at the past year and celebrating what was good. In a year harder than most for people, 2020 gives us a chance to celebrate the flexibility and durability we all have to continue adapting and creating.

This week’s podcast topic came about because of some maintenance on the car. That maintenance got me thinking about how scheduled maintenance to keep a car running smoothly could be applied to photography.

This week’s podcast is about the importance of having traditions in your photography. No matter how big or small traditions are something we can look forward to each year and reflect back on the past.

This week’s podcast is all about homework. One of the areas that I think all photographers could improve is understanding what makes a good photograph or a good photograph to them. We dive deep into that topic this week with an exercise to help you better understand how and why you react to photographs the way you do and apply that knowledge to future images or discussions.

This week marks the 300th episode of the podcast. So first off, thank you to everyone who tunes in and listens to the podcast. It really means the world to me that you all tune in and check out what is going on with the podcast. As I mention about a third of the way into this week’s show, this podcast is about all the experiences that I have about how photography impacts my life both just every day and creatively. It isn’t about gear, techniques, or fads, so I know it has a niche market. I do appreciate that you come back every week to listen.

I have been asked a lot recently about what I think about some of the new tools digital photographers have at their disposal. Many programs now offer “AI or machine learning” to help edit photographs. Now with the click of a few buttons, you can replace skies, change expressions, or quickly composite images together.

In today’s podcast, we talk a little about a few issues that arise when you think about the nature of computational photography and the language and words we might consider when talking about photography moving forward.

In the end, I think we all want to make interesting photographs, and the composition and framing are so much of that experience. The more you can be aware of composing, the more interesting and accurate stories you can tell. Being aware also gives you something else that is critical to photography–repeatability. You can repeat something repeatedly because you understand what happened and not just got lucky once with an accident. At the end of a day of photographing, knowing that we’re able to get the image you wanted because you understood the composition’s impacts making the editing and selection process that much more fun.

In this week’s podcast, we look at the impacts of muscle memory on our photography. Muscle memory, or the body’s ability to do something without thinking about it, is an important aspect of working as a photographer. This memory allows us to be able to quickly and efficiently do our jobs. From settings on the camera to keyboard shortcuts in a program, being efficient can really make a difference in how we can do our work. Yet, there is a downside. Anyone who has spent too much time hunched over a desk knows that bad things can happen when muscles remember bad things. Hunched over a desk can make our backs and necks hurt for days as the muscles unwind. In our photography, bad muscle memory can reinforce bad habits or make us a little lazy in our approach to editing and working. Spending some time to sort out what is good and bad about our muscle memory habits might make us better photographers and a little less sore. 

In this week’s podcast, we look at a possible photographic approach and discuss how you approach knowing when enough is enough when creating the image. For many of us, our approach to getting an image completed is incremental. We take small steps in our approach to framing, editing, shooting, and printing. While this method works, I propose that by making more grand shifts earlier in our process, we can get to a better result faster. We can get a better image, better concept, and better experience with the work by taking big leaps of faith in our workflow and trusting that going too far sometimes and backing off can produce more interesting images.

After reading a brief snippet about how Forbes creates its top 200 most brand valuable companies, I got to thinking about what formulas do we use in our photography when we assign a photograph a star value of 1-5. This week’s podcast looks at how we approach and think about our rating systems for our images. 

Everything is connected. When you photograph a leaf, it is part of a tree. A leading line doesn’t just start and stop in your frame. It extends beyond the frame. In this week’s podcast, we look at how our approach to seeing the whole and its parts can impact how we view the world and the images we make. Small shifts in our awareness of how everything is related in an image and how those relationships extend beyond the frame can help you make more meaningful work. 

I had a conversation with a friend a while back about photography and at one point, relating to photo editing, I asked him, Why do you care what someone else does so much? There was a long, almost uncomfortably long pause. The answer that he gave didn’t really matter much to me, but that pause really got me thinking about the idea of why do we care about things the way we do.

So this week’s podcast dives into the notion of caring about your work and how it impacts you and the viewers of your work.

When I was younger, I worked for a high-tech startup that had to lay most of the company off in order to survive. They didn’t do anything but prolong their demise, but the language used during the layoffs has stuck with me. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time but recently heard someone say it when talking about photographs. The phrase used when I was laid off and in the review was This isn’t personal. It’s just business. The thing that stuck with me all these years is that it is business to the sender of the message, but nothing but personal to the receiver.  This week’s podcast examine the impact of that phrase when talking photography.

Sometimes when we look at a photograph, we just don’t get it. We move on and don’t give it another thought. However, assuming the photographer was attempting to make something meaningful with there work, the photograph does have something to say. I have grown to think that it is our job to try and understand our reactions to photographs so that we can better understand the photographer. While we may not fully appreciate the images, if we can walk a mile in their shoes we might gain some deeper understanding into who they are and how they move through the world. In turn, maybe someone will offer us the same kindness. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how spending the time to think about the experiences of someone that led to the making the image can tell us a lot about who we are and how we see the world even in someone else’s image. 

In a follow-up to last week’s podcast on the value of interviewing others and yourself about photography, this week we talk about some possible subjects or ideas to consider when planning your interview. I always recommend that you start with the work. Look closely at the images and projects someone has created to get focused. Think about what you want to know about how the work came about, what they learned from the work, and their approach. As long as your asking questions that focus more on the why and awareness of the images and projects,  you really can’t go wrong.

One of my favorite exercises I use to teach photography and learn about my own work is called the interview project. This process involves you doing enough research about a photographer you are inspired by or want to learn from and then create a set of 10 to 20 interview questions that you would want to use to interview them. In some cases, you might be lucky and be able to use those questions to interview the photographer. Still, sometimes they might no longer be alive. Either way, part of the process is to answer those questions as if you were the photographer. This will help you get some insights into how you might approach the work. You then use those same questions, slightly modified to fit your work, and then interview yourself.
The podcast this week walks you through the process and so possible insights you might be able to get with a simple little exercise that gives you big rewards in understanding your own process and work.

Sometimes it is the little things that can make all the difference. In a photograph, it might be a shift in POV or depth of frame. In our printing, it might be the right paper selection. No matter what you are working on a small change can be a big deal. However, as the days seemingly run together in this year of COVID, I got to thinking about how easy it is to miss the small changes since everything and every day seem to blend. 

This week’s podcast takes a look at how small changes can impact your photography and work. Hopefully, they can inspire you to try out the same or think about what small changes you will carry forward even when things shift out of our 2020 way of being.

I often think of photography as an active verb. It is something that we do, see, and respond.

There is, however, a whole set of photography that is created without the photographer. Video and photos are created by surveillance systems and unattended cameras. These photographs and videos are used for evidence for the most part to show the actions recorded by these cameras without the influence of a photographer.

This week’s podcast takes a look at how we define photography in the context of who and how the image was created and the responsibility of photographers to help have meaning conversations about intent and context for how images and videos are made.

Please remember to keep safe and wear your mask!

Sometimes I hear someone say something and it gets me thinking about my approach to my photography. I recently overheard someone say don’t shoot the messenger. This got me to thinking about how many times we blame the viewer for not getting our understanding of our photographs. 

This week’s podcast is all about how we can help to overcome our frustration with others when they just don’t get our work. It is easy to blame the viewer as just not getting it, but I believe there is an opportunity for each of us to step back from our work and think about our approach. Are we as clear as we can be with our story, emotion, composition, and frame? Do we know what our work is about? Do we have clarity of purpose in our work or is it still vague in our mind? We can’t really expect someone else to get it if we don’t on some level get our own work, can we?

The one exception I have to not blaming the viewer is around personal experiences.

This week’s podcast dives into how to think about your photography and ideas to approach your editing using some of the concepts and sections you find in most software release notes. This release note template gives us an opportunity to create a plan, outline, and goals for editing. They can also serve as a to-do list when we need to make new work going forward. I am sure most of you will never dive deep into software release notes. Still, I think you can get something useful from the practice that industry has adopted.

This week’s podcast dives into how we define a photograph and photography. For me there are three key aspects of a photograph. They are time-bound, indexical, and is represented by an object of some type (print, slide, etc). For you, I imagine you might have different ideas of what might be a photo. I hope that you get some aspects to consider and spend some time coming up with your own definition of a photograph. 

This week’s podcast introduces my two new long-format workshops and also an exercise, called 10×10, which will help you better understand your approach to editing and creating your photography.

There are a number of aspects of photography that fall into two camps. There are artistic decisions and technical decisions. For some people, you might think of this as left-brain (technical) and righ- brain (creative) decisions. However, to be successful, you need both sides of your brain to make a good photograph. Not only both sides but also some language around how both sides work together to make a successful photograph.

When we can talk about how our camera decisions help or hinder the experience of a photograph, we can make better photographs in the future. We can, with this enhanced language, also provide better feedback to other about there work. RAther than focusing on what f/stop, we could focus on the effects of sharpness in an image as it relates to how the image is seen. So much of photography is about learning to translate what we see in the world into the image even when what is in front of us is shifted by the camera options. When we lack the language to describe what we want, we can make decisions with the camera resulting in work that often feels empty. Learning to be able to have a language to describe what we want and how to get it with the camera makes the artistic side of our work easier. This week’s podcast is a deep dive into the important distinction of these two sides of our language and how to balance them for the greatest impact.

One of our listeners sent in a great question about distractions. Her question was a two-part approach to dealing with distractions.

The first was dealing with the distractions of editing the wrong images. The second area was dealing with distractions outside of editing.

We take a dive into both of these topics this week and look at some ideas for dealing with these distractions and approaches for when it might be ok to be distracted.

Make yourself the best photographer in the world. To do so, all you have to do is wear a mask. If you think it kills your freedom, put one and walk around and see if you can still do things. If you can, the mask hasn’t destroyed your freedom but has kept the rest of us safer.
In this week’s podcast, I reflect on how our emotional state can drive how we approach our photographs when we are out in the field. The shifts in emotions, feelings, and experiences while out with a camera can drive composition, framing, and technical decisions we make with the camera. Being aware of these shifts and changes can make a significant impact on our work. The more aware we are of this impact, the more likely we are to get images that resonate with who we are and the stories we are telling.

I get asked a lot of questions about photography. Some are good, and some are not so good. When we look at our own work and spend time behind the camera it is all about asking and answering questions. Is this the right composition? Do I have the right settings? Is my narrative on point? 

In my experience, when we ask the right question we get what we want in our photography sooner than later. So, this week’s podcast is a look at the process of asking questions and how we answer those questions in a effort to make the best picture possible. 

As COVID-19 continues to build in the USA, I thought I would use the podcast this week to share five things you can do with your stay at home time. These to-do items will work even if you aren’t stuck at home under quarantine. Still, these to-dos can help pass the time and improve your photography and photographic inspiration if you are at home.
Read and do the work in one of your photography books you bought
Inventory your camera gear for insurance and to do a keep, sell, donate, or shelf
Make a viewing wall for looking at prints
Make some new photography friends by reaching out to photographers you follow but haven’t connected with at some point
Do a 10 for 10 project. You will just have to listen to learn what this is all about.

I often get asked what the things you can do to be a better photographer are. The two that are always at the top of my list are printing and consuming other people’s work. I like to use the analogy of ice cream when discussing other people’s work. Our work is one flavor of ice cream. Different people all have their own flavor. When we look at others’ work, it is like getting to try a new flavor of ice cream. We might like it. We might not. Either way, it helps us broaden our palate and understanding of photography or ice cream. Even if we love the flavor of our ice cream, trying other flavors will help us build a deeper understanding of what makes one brand of ice cream better than another. After all, not all Rocky Road ice cream is the same.

This week’s podcast is about how seeking out and trying a more diverse consumption of photography, much like ice cream, can help you build a deeper and more meaningful connection to your work. Because of the way photography history is shared, you will have to do extra work to find them. Much of the photographers we know from our photography classes come from a single perspective. So if you break out of that model, you will have to dig a little. Here are some suggestions.

Find a history of photography for a given country or culture.
Search for all photographers from a given country by genre in the library or online
Ask friends for a list of photographers.
Find a photographer you like and research who inspires them, or they like
Search online book stores for photographers you have never heard of using the you might also like feature of shopping websites
Search by publisher (www.photoeye.com makes it easy). If the publisher has one book you like they might have more. Some publishers also focus more on certain aspects of photography making it easier.
If you live in a city, find all the photographers you can from that city regardless of genre, race, age, camera type.

We used to be able to go to the movies, one of my favorite traditions was getting something from the concessions stands. Now I know they are a rip-off, but I just love having a treat during the movie. I am always somewhat annoyed; however, by the time it takes some people to pick a type of candy while in line. Now, I have read enough research to know that given too many choices, most of us can’t make a decision. Given too few choices and we rebel against our options. That leaves most of us in the Goldilocks zone of I want to have choices but not too many choices.
In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impacts and some of the impacts of making choices and not making choices can have on our photography workflow. From capture to editing, there is no way around making choices. Luckily like most choices in life, we can change our minds after the fact. A photograph is very malleable and forgiving. The photo is always willing to grow, change, and evolve as our choices shift.

Ah, the great American past-time of complaining. Nothing beats hanging out with friends over a beer and complaining about all sorts of things in life. We love to complain about lots of things such as politics, weather, work, and even our photography. Photographers love to complain about all things photographic. Subscription fees, cameras, software, editing techniques, other people’s work are just the tip of the iceberg of topics photographers like to discuss.
In this week’s podcast, I dive into the complaint box and discuss why we complain about things, the payouts we get from complaining, and how to move forward from complaining about something all the time. Complaining is often just a symptom of something else going on. When we can get to the bottom of the issue, we can move forward with our work in a more positive direction. As you listen to this week’s episode, I hope you can think about some of your biggest complaints and maybe start down the path of letting them go so you can have more time to focus on your creative photography.

A couple of the things I hear photographs talk about all the time is hitting a wall, not getting good feedback, and fear in the face of change. In this week’s podcast, I tossed all of those issues into the Vitamix blender and hit high speed on the dial. No matter what problems you face, odds are you try to solve it by repeating the same behavior over and over. When we do that, more times than not, there is no change in the outcome.

When we need to have a change in our work, we need to try something different. Not new gear per se, but rather a new approach. If you don’t like the feedback you get, you need to find a way to ask for more meaningful feedback. If you have trouble editing images, the answer might be practicing the basics again. No matter what issue you are facing, sometimes all we need to try something different. While different can be scary, at least different has a shot of producing different results.

In her classic essay On Photography, Susan Sontag makes the statement:
Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention.
So in this week’s podcast, I thought we would take a look at that quote and discuss how photographing and the viewing of photographs can be a non-intervening act. The photographs we make that are significant to us, and some of the photographs we view have a lasting impact. These things become acts and objects of the intervention. These photographs and the act of photographing can have a lasting effect on what we do and who we are. These images can become interventions in our lives that shift how we think, what we do, and what we believe.

In this week’s podcast, we focus on two aspects of the nature of critique. The how and the why of taking a photograph. The how is the technical side of things in creating the image. The why is who you are as a photographer in the photograph. The story of the image so to speak. When we work on images, ideally, we would have both aspects in our images. The image would be our best foot forward in both technical and story. However, in my experience, this isn’t always the case. There are a lot of us photographers who only are interested in a single aspect of the work. So this week’s discussion is about how to approach getting feedback, giving feedback, and how to possibly think about moving your work forward by listening to all aspects of the feedback.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about some of the impacts that might appear in your photo editing and viewing as a result of binge-watching. While it is fun to sit down and consume a show from beginning to end as fast a possible, there is a cost to this approach. Much like eating good food, without a palate cleanser, our ability to sense subtle nuances in how we see, taste, and experience the object of our affection is lost. We need to have a way to reset our visuals and start fresh. As we dive into this subject this week, I discuss some impact binging can have on our editing and selection process. I also discuss some ideas for how to refresh our process so that we don’t fall into a bland diet of visual consistency.
While you may not think this applies to you, you might be surprised at how your consumption of social media, your own library of images, and the other visuals you watch impact how you approach your photography. Maybe, with a little bite of ginger once in a while as you work on your photos, you might find some treasures you never saw before.

This week’s podcast focuses on the impacts in our photography when the days, projects, images, and seeing seem to drag into each other over and over again. The groundhog effect, so to speak. I don’t think there is a person out there who hasn’t had a negative sense of deja vu when it comes to there photography. Maybe you are stuck working locally rather than getting to travel. Perhaps you think you are editing what seems like the same image again and again. The mundane comes in all sorts of flavors. While it can be a challenge to face the same repetitive task over and over again, there is value in meeting this pattern head-on. You might be surprised by the impacts and what you see on the other side of your photography and seeing.

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. This week’s podcast is based on a request from one of our listeners regarding a question of ethics in photography. Ethics, our sense of doing what is right and wrong, is at the core of each of us. As photographers, our understanding of right and wrong regarding what and when to photograph should be a key consideration we make..

While those ethics are different for each person and depending on your job might be different because of what you are assigned to photograph, as a community, we should be talking more and more about the ethics of making photographs. There is always an impact on taking and sharing a photo on the people and places we photograph when our choices cause side effects even when unintended.

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. This week’s podcast is a direct response to conversations I have been having with my friends and associates as they struggle to deal with their creative process during the pandemic. As the days drag on from one to another, the creative spark for many people has become less enjoyable and harder to maintain.

This week’s podcast focuses on the importance of doing a daily check-in. Really looking at how you are doing with your well-being. Not just your creativity, but your health, mental, spiritual, and emotional well-being too. With this awareness, there is much to be gained by acceptance of where you are at.

Accepting your current state doesn’t mean giving in to where you are. Instead, you build from the strength that comes from naming your experience and finding peace in that awareness. From there, we can find a path to the next steps. Rather than pushing back on our creative process or lack of creative process, we can see there is strength in truthful storytelling through our photography. No matter how that story is told.

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. I have been having some conversations with people lately about how they create their work. In the course of those discussions, I have found that a lot of people seem to focus on the next thing. However, in my experience, there is a lot of information to be gained by returning to your own photography library and looking at it with new eyes.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about a few different ways to dive deep into your older work looking for new patterns, concepts, ideas, ways of seeing and hopefully gaining some new insights into your process. There is a lot to be gained by learning to see patterns and ways of seeing even when we weren’t aware of them at the time we made the photos. Hopefully, if you take the time to do a little digging, you might be surprised at what you learn about your approach to photography.

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. As we all have been forced to make changes to our daily routines, it got me thinking about time. Time is one of those things at the foundation of photography, and I believe, defines a unique aspect of photography as a medium and form of communication. I also have begun to really realize the awareness impact of having less time everyday can have on my approach to my work. As photographers, we are bound by our sense of time and relationship to time in our work. We can extend time, compress time, slice time or shift time. In each image is some how our relationship to time.

In this week’s podcast, time takes a center stage and I talk about how our approach to time, loss, memory, and abstractions alters our thinking and approach to making photographs.

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. We recently added a new family member, Cora the dog, to the house. She is a loving, energetic ball of Aussie Shepard fur. Lori and I are working at training her to be a happy, well-adjusted, non-cat chasing member of the family. Part of that training is Lori, and I getting on the same page about the language we use when talking to her in training. After all up, down, lay, sit, stay, come, here, touch, and a ton of other words are meaningless to a puppy, yet to learn, we have to use the same words with her each time.

I also have been listening to the language around COVID-19 and the notion of social distancing being inaccurate. We need physical distance of six feet, which is no necessarily social distance. Social distancing can imply isolation and lacking contact on all levels of interaction, which isn’t entirely accurate. When you take these two things together this week, it got me thinking more and more about our language we use to talk photos. In this week’s podcast, we take a look, again, at how the subtle use of language can have a significant impact on how we think about and move forwards in our photography.

Also, if you are interested in learning about Photoshop from the safety of home. You can join me, and 19 other instructors, for a virtual Photoshop summit from April 13-17. You can register using the link below. The affiliate link, if you decided to upgrade to the VIP package will kick me back a little dollar and cents love.

https://danieljgregory.krtra.com/t/mr5y01WfKsrK

I hope that you and your family are safe during the COVID-19 outbreak. For a lot of us, we are following stay-at-home orders and not going out much. For those of you stuck in essential jobs, thank you for continuing to do your job. I have had several conversations with my photographer friends about how they are dealing with all of these changes. For many of them, while stressed about the general situation, they felt it was an opportunity to really dive into their work. While this has been true for some, for others not so much.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how important it is to remember that not only is dealing with our current crisis a long road ahead, but so is photography a long road. Along that road will be many stops, twists, turns, and changes. What matters most is that you find your center and focus on the key things you need in your life now. For some that might be going all-in on photography and for others, that creative spark might seem gone. No matter where you are, know that the journey will continue. Finding your center and focusing on what matters most, keeping your energy up, and recognizing that sometimes we need to cut ourselves some slack when we aren’t getting done all that we thought we would.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the importance of recognizing when you hit a turning point in your work. This might be technical, where you finally learn your workflow tools and feel confident editing. It might be in learning how to use some camera features that you always planned on learning. The turning point might also be more in your artistic vision as you learn to communicate more deeply what you are thinking and feeling behind the camera. No matter where you are in your process, each of these turning points furthers you on your journey and should be celebrated for what they are, a gift.

I am often amazed at how often we get caught up in the most simple of problems. It doesn’t matter if it is as simple as picking a new camera or picking out what image to edit and print. We can spin around and around trying to get a problem resolved that we have made more complicated than it needs to be. Many times, the best images, solutions and ideas have a simplicity to them. Not that they aren’t complex in composition, meaning or structure, but rather our experience of those images and ideas make them more than the sum of their parts.
In this week’s podcast, we take a look at some of the simple mistakes we can make as photographers and how to put our best foot forwards to getting what we want out of our photography.

As photographers, we should be making prints. There are a whole host of reasons why we should make prints: the materiality of it, shareability, improved seeing, longevity, or some other reason you might have. We also spend a considerable amount of our time looking at photographs that are mere reproductions of the original image. In this week’s podcast, I tackle the importance of looking at the best prints and reproductions possible. Often when we think about someone’s photographs, it is from copies we might have seen on the Internet or in a book. In many cases, those will pale by comparison to the original work (and in some cases exceed). As viewers and creators of photographs, we need to make sure that we are putting our best foot forward in our prints and also contextualizing the work of the others so that we can properly evaluate their work.

Photographers are an odd bunch. We often find our conversations drifting from one absolute to nothing be absolute. One area that I have always found interesting, and seems to fit this back and forth, is how approach and talk about composition. When you learn about photography and photographs, we talk about the rules of composition, elements of composition, and how they should be followed. Then as soon as tell people to follow them, we ask them to break the rules to be exciting or showcase examples of a photographer who has been able to make interesting photographs by not following the rules.
In this week’s podcast, I take a look at how our misguided approach to thinking about and discussing composition can be a problem. We will look at how photographs with composition and not subject are no better than images with good subjects and no composition. Ultimately, we need to understand how various elements of composition come together in a photograph to help us understand and appreciate the photograph, intention of the photographer, and possible meanings of the photograph. While composition might be all about connecting and making space and dimension in a photograph, as photographers, our ability to understand composition is central to getting work created that speaks to who we are as photographers.

It is really easy to feel overburdened when working on your photography. There is so much to learn, photograph, and share that you can quickly start to feel like you are under a tremendous amount of pressure to deliver. It might be pressure for time, expectations being met, desire, or just plain ego. No matter the cause, the notion that we are under so much pressure to produce that we get stuck might be caused by how we think about production and creating meaningful work.
When we get under too much pressure, it can result in us not having a chance to create meaningful work. We begin to think about all the things that can go wrong or breakdown in our process rather than celebrating the good. What we need are some release values to help us identify and remove some of the pressure. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how the idea that pressure and production of images are related and some techniques or release values to help us move past and get out from under this feeling.

I was having a conversation about the advances in camera technology and how at some point in the not to distant future the camera will make a perfect captured frame with exact colors, focus, infinity depth-of-field possibilities, etc. My friend was all excited about that possibility. I, in turn, asked what happens when the camera is no longer to blame for a bad photograph? And if it isn’t the camera, how is that different today.

In this week’s podcast, we dive into that question of what is really at the core of a bad photograph. Over the course of the podcast, I talk about how if we assume the great camera exists, what impacts will that have on how we critique, edit and review our work and the work of others. In the end, I realize that even with today’s amazing cameras, it might be time that we stop making excuses for not seeing as if they were rooted in the camera faults because one day, that may not be an option

A sacred place or thing historically as been often associated with the worship of a deity or god. However, something can be sacred, even outside the context of religion. There could be places, people, ideas, or things that inspire, stimulate, are worthy of honor, or hold meaning in our lives. These sacred things could be very personal or allow us to connect with something bigger than just ourselves.
In this week’s podcast, we talk about how our approach to sacred can impact our photography. In some cases, it can shine a light on what matters to us when we photograph. Other times, it might help us understand why we gravitate towards one photograph over another. Other times, it might help us not pick up a camera out of respect for someone else’s sacred place. As we discuss this notion of sacred in photography, I hope that it gives you a chance to reflect on what is important to you in your work and how your work might be able to provide you with an opportunity to honor what really matters to you.

A friend recently recanted a story to me about how, when he was in school, they were only allowed to shoot one roll (36 frames) a week for homework. No more than that one roll for any week. He talked about how each frame became more critical because of the discipline and experience you had to have to get the best of the week in those 36 frames.
As he was talking, he mentioned that each frame was more precious than he imagined when he started. That got me thinking about the notion of precious in photography. This week’s podcast takes a look at how we approach the things we photograph, places we photograph, and ideas we photography as a container for what is precious to us. Rather than focusing on what is sharable, likable or not, this week I talk about how we can shift our approach to thinking about work and creating work so that each of however many frames we take are precious little gems.

A recent trip to the store had me overhear a couple talking about how opposites attract. I couldn’t get that idea out of my head and how it might apply to photography. I eventually made a list of opposites that I could think of related to photography. As I completed the list, I realized that many of these are no opposites that attract or repel but rather work together.

This week’s podcast takes a look at how to develop a list of opposites and how diving deeper into the word pairs can lead to a shift in your approach to seeing behind the camera and appreciating your photography. It doesn’t matter what you photograph or how far along you are in your process, getting a better understanding of your mental framing and approach to your work with this exercise might lead you to some interesting insights.

Ok, maybe there isn’t really wrong research. I do think there is the research we do before a trip that can have us create work that isn’t our best. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how your approach to researching where and what to photograph at any given location can be a problem in creating your work. I think research is essential when planning for a trip or outing. However, I do believe that if we spend most of our research time looking at other’s photographs online of the same places can negatively impact our work. Those images set a tone, expectation, and “correct” way of seeing that can become an undue influence.

Rather than looking at photographs of places you plan to visit, I would encourage you to do your research by reading about the history, culture, and spirit of a place. Maybe some novels or poems that are set in the location. Perhaps you look at some travel blogs but skip digging in on the images. The more your imagination can work to help you think about what you might photograph, the better. When we spend time looking at other images, we run the risk of replication, duplication, or disappointment because of the quality of light isn’t the same. By shifting how we prepare for that trip, we might be able to find a better way to approach our photography. With that new approach, we might get more photographs that we enjoy.

This week’s podcast takes a deeper dive into the question we discussed last week about facing difficult times in your creative process.
I think everyone gets stuck sometimes and ends up in a dark place when creating.

There are times when you have to take photographs because the bills depend on them being made, but even then, those photographs can be hard to make. You have a voice in your head telling you that things are hard, can’t be done, and you just aren’t feeling it. At times you feel like you are on the road to nowhere. When that happens, what is a photographer to do?

In this episode, I try to talk about some of my feelings when this happens and what I focus on to help with the process. I also talk about how focusing on the measure of photography, reasons for photographing and the power of feeling lost in the dark has as you turn the corner on your process — learning that being nowhere can help you find what is inside your own voice and show you that you are better today because of what you did yesterday.

As we kick off 2020, I thought I would make this week’s podcast all about the five most common questions I got asked in 2019 that weren’t related to camera gear or printing. I thought each question was exciting and provided an interesting insight into the creative process.

Here are the questions I talk about in the podcast this week. I hope that you find the questions as enjoyable as I did.

1. What was the biggest lesson you learned in 2019?
2. How long does it take to become a professional photographer?
3. Do you have any good books for me to read?
4. How do you know when to work in black and white?
5. Do you ever get stuck in your process and feel like you can’t create following your process?

As we close down the year and decade, many of us start to look back and reflect on the past year or ten. I am not a huge fan of looking back at what was cool in 2015 as a part of the decade. I would much rather think about the coming year. As photographers, we are always dealing with time and issues in time. It is part of the reading of photographs and the making of photographs.
As the new year dawns, I got to thinking about how much time there is. I hear from so many people how time is lost, and there isn’t time to make the photographs they want. So in this final podcast of 2019, I talk about how your approach to giving yourself time from making empty spaces can be one of the best gifts you can give yourself to start the new year.

I’m excited to be producing my 250th episode of the podcast for this week. It is a milestone that I never imagined when I started years ago, and it has been fun thinking about all the episodes I have had the honor to create thus far. As I began to reminiscing, I realized how much my podcast, while photography and creativity focused, isn’t really about being a better photographer by using a formula, but rather more about a wandering path.

That realization got me thinking about how much we can miss in our photography and learning when we try to focus our scope of work down so small that we miss the big picture. While it might be valuable at times to have a defined sequence of events, much of our creativity isn’t driven by that method. If we get closed-minded, we can miss the boat. Maybe we solve the wrong problem. Maybe we miss out on new information. Maybe we mark an accomplishment and yet feel as if nothing was done. No matter what you might be feeling, you can shift your approach to your photography in a meaningful way by embracing a more chaotic approach to your path and consistently remind yourself that it might not be as simple as A to B to C.

I was recently helping a friend who was insistent that his camera lens needed to be adjusted because it wasn’t able to properly autofocus. I tried to tell him that it was likely a technique issue, but he was insistent. So he and I got together to test the lens, and sure enough, it was him and not the lens.

As I reflected on the experience, I got to thinking bout how many of us have a manual focus autofocus issue in our photography. In the old days, most people who missed focus would assume it was them and not the camera, but as automation comes into play with “better” technology, we seem to blame the gear quickly. In this week’s podcast, we talk about how we approach the source of a problem that can have reaching implications into our shooting and editing of our photographs. No matter what issues you face as a photographer, you will need to sort out how you will approach things when it turns out that it isn’t your camera but you that has an issue.

Most photographers, when they are learning about camera gear, learn that the lens controls the perspective. This isn’t exactly accurate; the subject to lens distance determines perspective along with the point of view. However, from a podcast a few weeks ago about fear, I was asked about perspective and meaningful photography. This week’s podcast is about how our perspective and approach to the things we photograph will be a cornerstone for what defines important personal photography.

I don’t know a photographer who sets out to make or take bad photographs. Yet, we all come home with lots and lots of bad pictures. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the value of the bad photograph. I feel too many photographers don’t take photographs for fear of the bad photo, but you have to respect the photographer that in the face of that fear is willing to pick up the camera and make photos every day. While most of us might want to avoid making them, I argue that there is value in appreciating and making bad photographs.

I have often wondered what people think is the hardest thing to photograph. When I have conversations about this, those conversations more often than not start with some technical aspects of photography. Learning how to use studio lighting, getting in a good location, or finding a unique vantage point are all topics I hear people talk about.

This week’s podcast focuses on what I feel is the hardest thing to photograph. That is the thing that causes us to feel fear or some reason. Maybe it is not photographing people for fear of rejection, or perhaps it is not figuring out what is unique about a location to you, so you end up with a cliched shot. No matter what you photograph, I would venture to say that at some point, you haven’t gotten the shot you wanted because of some fear. The challenge we all face is that in the face of that fear, can we still photograph. My guess is that when you take the risk, you end up with some fantastic photographs.

If you listen to this podcast for very long, you know that it isn’t really about camera gear, but this week I did want to focus on the five most essential pieces of gear you should always have in your camera bag.

Luckily, you can get all of these pieces of gear for little to no money, and many of you might even have them already around the house. The purpose of this equipment is not to add to your physical gear, but rather to shift your mental approach to your photography. Each one of these pieces of gear is about changing your approach to your work so that you can focus on the most favorable results, embrace any opportunity, and find motivation when things fall apart.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at two important questions that can have a significant impact on your approach to your photography.

The first question deals with our approach to failure. What would you do in your photography if there was no such thing as failure? Do you think if you took a risk, would you see the world in a new way?

The second question focuses on our notion of taking and giving in photography. If you could give one photo to someone, what would it be?

As you will hear in the podcast, most of this week’s work falls on you to think about and answer these questions. How would a failure-free, giving photographic experience look?

I was recently having a gear conversation with a friend who was asking me to validate a decision they make on a new camera purchase. They wanted me to tell them that with that new camera they were going to be able to take the photographs they always wanted. I just couldn’t do that. Anyone who has listened to this podcast for a while knows that it isn’t the gear that makes the photo.
So this week’s podcast is all about the validation of our decision-making process and how it can impact our work. I encourage you to think about when and why you ask for validation of your work and creativity. Is it because you have already made a decision and you want someone to agree with you? At times, we all need to have our work validated and supported, but that is different from the need to have a decision you already made, and believe to be true, agreed with. That isn’t validation; it is something else. This week we focus on how focusing on validation for agreement sake isn’t always the best use of our time in our photography.

I am always bothered when I hear people say that you are too optimistic, or you’re wearing rose-colored glasses. My response to them is always the same. Your damn right, I am. The outlook you have on life, and your creativity is the most significant decision you can make.

Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t worry, fret, or get stressed at times, but when that happens, I work to get back to a place where I can focus all that is good and great. I often hear photographers worry about new gear, software, techniques, or locations they would like to go. When they don’t have what they want, it is a problem for them. In this week’s podcast, we take al look at how that approach can be a huge block that leads to apathy in your work. As we dive into the topic, we talk about how a shift to positivity and excitement can do more for your creative life than any issue you imagine that you need to overcome to finally get the click you wanted.

I have several friends who like to gamble. Poker and blackjack for the most part. When they are playing, they always talk about being on a hot streak or a cold streak. When it is good, things are hot, and the universe seems to give them the cards they need. When it is bad, well, it is bad.
I think many of us approach our photography in the same way. We remove the focus, effort, energy, and vision to an external source calling it a hot streak or luck. Luck is something that we see as a way of explaining a variety of events that are good or bad, where we seem to have no choice in the outcome. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the idea of a hot streak and what it means to do meaningful work. Work that is personal and driven by our vision rather than by some hand of the universe, giving us the power to see.

I have a quote from Gary Winogrand that says all photographs make a new fact. As I looked back on that quote, it got me thinking about how much narratives and storytelling come into photography. Anyone who has been introduced into photography in the last few years have been hit with the importance of storytelling and narratives in photographs.
In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the importance of narratives in photography and discuss how direct storytelling in a photograph might not be practical or even possible. As we consider the various options for storytelling, I encourage you to go back into your work and see where you might benefit from taking a different approach to your storytelling. See if you end up with a better overall photograph when you shift your approach. You might find that even if it is just a pretty composition with the write supporting context, something more important emerges.

I love being able to drive on a roundabout. If they are well designed, they make the traffic flow so much better, but if you haven’t ever driven on one, knowing what lane to be in can be problematic and stressful. As I was recently driving through a local roundabout, it reminded me of a question I am often asked. That question is, where do I point the camera to make a good photograph?

Part of pointing the camera is knowing what you like to see and understand in the world, and part of it is knowing what subjects/subject matter have stories to tell. Photography is about both. If you are only showing your version as a photographer, you are missing the point. The best images tell a story, and I make the argument in this week’s podcast that it should first and foremost be the story of the subject/subject matter. As a photographer, it is our job to tell that story the best way we can. So light, tones, color, and all the photography things are applied to ensure that the scene in front of the camera gets to shine. If the photograph is all about the photographer, that experience for the subject and ultimately the photo will be drastically different.

As you listen to the podcast, I encourage you to think about whose story you are telling and why. I encourage you to try to think of your work with the camera as more collaborative rather than an I story you want to tell.

Episode 238

I find that it is sometimes difficult to work with a strong feeling of uncertainty. It doesn’t matter if it is technical, artistic, or just a feeling I have. I like to think that I have some clarity in my work and process. However, the reality is that I frequently don’t have a clear idea when I set out to work what might happen.

In this week’s podcast, I talk about the importance of accepting uncertainty and ambiguity in our photographic process. While it might be uncomfortable to work this way, I believe that the value of learning how to roll with the changes and finding inspiration from learning along the way is more valued than always having a hard correct interpretation.

I also think there is so much we can learn from spending time with the uncertainty of what we are working on at any given time. It is in that space of wonder that our creativity can produce the best results.

I was recently asked if I sign my photographs. I found this to be such an interesting ask because it seems so simple on the surface and yet within it holds more profound questions. Our signatures carry power. A signature can bind you to an agreement, signify acceptance, and provide a notion of who you are. From signing checks (or a screen) when purchasing something to contracts to artwork, the signature says we accept this object or agreement as outlined.

As photographers, the signature on the work indicates that the work is finished and that we accept the work is as good as we can make it at the time. It is an agreement that we put on the work. The signature says the work is good enough, says what we want, and we are happy and moving on. This, of course, doesn’t mean we can’t improve on it later, but for now, this is what we’ve done.

In the related context, the idea of something being signature-worthy and if the work I create is signature-worthy comes up for many of us. In this week’s podcast, we talk about the idea and meaning of the signature and signature worthy work.

I came into the studio early today and found a flying friend cruising around. I guess they came in the night before when I had the bigger door open. After some encouragement and strategic door opening, we were able to work together to get them on their way.
As I worked to get the little one out of the studio, I realized that they had a methodology of looking for a way out and I hadn’t freaked out about things flying by my head. Together we find a way to get someone home.
I think our creative life is a lot like this morning’s experience. There are so many ways and thoughts we each have that can get us trapped and stuck. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at some of those ways and some possible alternatives to getting ourselves unstuck and back to a creative place.

If you have ever tried to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA or have been pulling your hair out because your friend can’t give you good directions to their house, this week’s podcast is for you.

That is a challenge that I am asking you to take on this week. I want you to create some instructions for how you take a photograph and edit a picture. Then use those instructions to teach you about your process. What have you missed, skipped, repeated, or do for no reason you can figure out. Then examine what you can shift to try and find a new way to access your creative process. One of the most significant challenges we often face is understanding why we do something. By slowing way down and focusing on the smallest task, we might find some insight into why we make our work.

I was recently at an art opening that had several photographs of interesting abstractions. Images of plants, buildings, and objects all taken and presented as abstract objects. In listening to people talk about the work, I heard people discussing what they saw in the images or what they thought the actual object in the photograph was. I also observed that many people would tilt their head left or right to gain a new perspective. That tilting reminded me of working with a large-format camera which flips an image upside down and backwards.
In this week’s podcast, we talk about the advantages of using the power of flipping the perspective of an image to help us better understand the nature of seeing, editing, composing and creating more well-seen images. Sometimes to gain an insight into more meaningful work, we need to see the world differently.

There are many traps out there to keep us from making the types of photography that we want to create. Some of them are simple to see, while others are more complex in nature. As I was sitting in the studio watching my dog flip the pillows off the sofa she gets to sit on; it occurred to me that too much of something, even a pillow on a couch, might be a bad thing.
In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impact of too much of something and what that can do to your photography and creative living. The two topics of gear and processing we quickly gloss over so that we can turn our attention to the impacts of talking too much, seeing too much and having too much time for our work.
Each of those areas can be useful and helpful in our photography, but when we have too much of any of them, it can cause us to derail our work. So let’s take a look at those three areas and how we can avoid getting snared in their traps.

Episode 232 I think everyone has been to a party where politics and religious topics were not allowed, or you wish they were banned from the family holidays or summer parties. Both of these topics seem to bring out the worst in people’s conversational behaviors,…

Episode 231 At some point, we all want to quit. For a host of reasons, we might want to call it a day. Maybe we are tired, bored, fearful, or lost. No matter the cause at some point in your photography, you will want to move on. For some, it might be moving on from…

When you look at an inkblot test, you might see something strange or unusual. You also are likely to see something that someone else might not see. Each of us sees something unique and different, which is why I think many of us are photographers. We find that photography helps us be able to say something about how we see the world around us.
As photographers, we are responsible for the entirety of the frame. We are responsible for what is in the frame, out of the frame, and how everything overlaps and exist in the frame. This week’s podcast focuses on how we see those parts and how they make up the whole of the frame. We also talk about how to approach working on identifying those parts to make better photographs by seeing how the parts make up the frame and how the frame is also just a part of something bigger.

There are many ways that people measure success. One of the more common ones that I hear people talk about is achieving goals. Goals are milestones that we set to help us keep focused on attaining something in the future. Some goals can be very short-term, while others might last a lifetime. 

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impact goal-setting can have on your productivity and enjoyment of your photography. While goals can be critical to helping you achieve what you want in your creative life, setting the wrong goals, or keeping the wrong goals can be a detriment to success. By taking a hard look at how, why, and when you complete a goal can tell you a lot about your creative process.

This week’s podcast focuses on something that has impacted my photography and creative practice more than once–over-planning. When I am getting ready for a big trip or photographic adventure, I do a lot of research about where, when, and what to photograph. All that research can sometimes come in handy, but other times, this results in my over-planning my time costing me some photographic opportunities.

In my own process, I have found over-planning shows up and causes me some angst in five primary ways. I don’t think one is worse than another, but each can cause problems. Those areas in no particular order are:

over-packing too much gear

getting too much information to process

can’t react at the moment

can’t respond to cool changes in the plan

disappointment.

These five things often show up when I over-plan and don’t properly plan for my shoots. Do any of these show up in your process or do you have others not mentioned that happen when you over-plan an adventure?

I recently watched a group of kids make up playing a game in the park and it sparked an idea for how to better approach my own photographic practice. This week’s podcast takes a look at that process and how the end result made for a new approach to my creative practice. 

I get asked all the time what it takes to be a better photographer. Is there a class to take or a book to read? I always come back to the basics that photography is about seeing, telling a story, and finding your sense of self in your work. This week’s podcast talks about the importance and value of taking the time to draw and sketch, reading all types of books and finally the importance of learning to observe the world around you. 

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impacts of talking about the effects of the should and would in our creative photography. So much of what we do as photographers is damaged when we focus on what we should be doing and what we would be doing rather than what we are doing in the present.  

In my own experience, should and would are indicators of living in the past or future rather than focusing on what I am doing now in the present. What I would do is future based, and what I should be doing is out of guilt from the past. As discussed in the podcast, there is a huge benefit from learning to let go of saying should and would and embracing the power of focusing on what you are doing right now. 

I have several friends who are obsessed with the news. They watch it for 18 hours a day. They worry that something will happen that they might miss. Something will trend that they don’t know about. In this week’s podcast, we talk about how that fear of missing out can show up in three ways that could impact your creative process. 

The first topic is chasing trends. Everyone has something they love, but it is hard some times to no jump on the popular bus that everyone seems to be riding. If you give up what you love to chase a trend, what does that cost your creativity?

The second area is the importance of getting out of your head. Does the need to be in the know cause you to make us all sorts of stories that aren’t true that you can’t let go. Does your creativity suffer from being wrapped up inside your internal monologues? 

Finally, we talk about how fear and failure go hand in hand. The fear of missing out can lead to how you contextualize failure. If you redefine failure, does that shift your fear of missing out from a failure to know into something more productive? 

I was cleaning a bookshelf in the study and came back across Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals. In the book, Mason details the daily rituals that artist and creatives spend their day. As I flipped back thru the book, I got to thinking about the small things that we do and how they can make a huge difference in our approach to photography and creativity. 

In my case, something as simple as taking the cap off my favorite fountain pen tells me that something significant is happening. It doesn’t mean that what I write is great, but that everything I do with that pen makes me happier than when I use a different pen. Cleaning the nozzles for each printer in the studio every Friday reminds me of the importance of printing in my work. 

As you think about your little routines, I am sure that you might find something that, when you do it, makes everything seem better or more significant to your work. This week’s podcast explores some of those rituals and how we can try to find ways to improve on what we do by celebrating those small rituals by making more significant results in our work. 

I recently saw a roadside coffee stand to offer 64oz lattes. That is about 1.8 liters for those of you on the metric system. It is a huge latte. It reminded me of being a kid when 7-11 introduced the Big Gulp, which is now tiny by today’s drink offerings. All of those numbers got me thinking about the impact of numbers on our photography in an age of computation. 

Numbers drive so much of our photography. Shutter speeds, f/stops, star rankings, slider amounts, ISO and so many more numbers it is hard to say that numbers in the photograph don’t matter. However, I would argue that we spend too much time focused on the numbers and not what matters in the photograph, which is the heart. When we look at a photograph, we should be thinking about the numbers we should be thinking about how we feel, think, and respond to the image. 

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how to approach your work so that you can remove much of the distraction of the numbers game and try to focus and return to the core of your photograph that lies in your heart and soul. 

I recently watched a movie that felt a little too long. The overall concept was good. The action was good. The directing was good. The acting was good. The movie just felt like it was about 15 minutes too long. A little trim of some scenes here or there would have tightened up the film and made it better. I am sure if you think about your own viewing experience, you can come up with a movie or two that was the same. 

So how does that translate into our photography? Much like a movie, our editing process, behind the camera and in the darkroom, requires us to make sure we put enough information into the story to provide all the necessary context to follow along, and at the same time, remove any unnecessary parts to keep the story from wondering. It is one of the significant challenges we have in making interesting photographs. Where is the intersection point between too much and not enough? 

As you consider your approach to your photography, thinking about all the ways you try to reduce your approach with gear, language, techniques, remember that to tell the most straightforward and most compelling story that you need to be mindful of the long edit effect. 

We all spend a tremendous amount of time and energy, learning our style, voice, and vision as an artist. Unfortunately, it can become easy to fall into bad habits, quick filters, and popular trends that result in us editing our photographs to meet some other objective than our voice. In this week’s podcast, I take a look a how editing yourself out of your photographs can be easy to do, and the impact it can have on your work. I also talk about some ways you can look back at your images from previous editing sessions to spot issues, trends, or incorrectly applied techniques to identify problem areas. Once identified, you can start to edit the photos again leaning into your own process, identity, and voice to create a photograph that is more reflective of the true you rather than an arbitrary you. We are always growing and chasing who we are as a creative artist, but editing yourself out of your work, intentional or not, is a much harder road to making work that really matters to you. 

Much like Hansel and Gretel, we often need to leave ourselves a way to get back home or to our creative place. If we use bread like Hansel and Gretel, we can easily get lost finding our way home. In this week’s podcast, I talk about how important it is to find your passion in your work and how to set some breadcrumbs to help you when you get lost. 

I have been working as a photographic educator for a long time. I have noticed in working with others something that has mirrored my own education as an artist which is the approach to viewing photographs.In this podcast, we break down the basic approach someone might take to view a photograph either their own or someone else’s work. I have identified three main buckets that I think people fit into to when looking at work.
The first bucket is the how bucket.

The second bucket is why you took a photograph.

The third bucket, and most significant in my opinion is the where bucket. Not as in where were you physically standing, but where were you in your heart and soul when you clicked the shutter.

All three have value, but I think that if you spend the time to understand where you were in your life, thoughts and being when you created your images you might find a path to your best work. 

Routines can be both good and bad. Routines help us keep organized, focused and hone our skills both technical and artistic. At the same time, some routines keep us from growing and changing. While some people advocate for a particular routine, I feel that each person should find a routine that works for them. By leveraging what strengths you already have and incorporating those into your process, you may find that you already have an effective way of working. If you, on the other hand, find your process to be too haphazard and disorganized each time you go out to photograph or work on your photographs, this is a chance to reshape your focus. 

This week’s podcast is a look at the importance of justify your opinion. Is it more important that you prove that you are right or that you make amazing work.

As photographers, we are always trying to make our photos better. We might work with new camera gear, make editing enhancements in the darkroom or try out some technique in Photoshop. We are always trying to make the best photograph possible. In this week’s episode focuses on the importance of bettering not just the photograph but the subject of the photograph as well. Where is the source of your work coming from and what is its intention? Does your work come from ego alone or are you trying to make something bigger than yourself? As we work with our subjects, do we make sure that they get as much from the experience as the photographer does? As I explore this topic, we talk about how to find a real connection with your subjects and how to make sure that you aren’t just enhancing your images but also what you put in front of the lens. 

Every March in the US brings a bit of crazy to the workplace. The NCAA march madness tournament begins. This one and done competition has become a big focus of both all types of sports fans. Even people who don’t usually care about sports will fill out a bracket in their office pool. If you don’t know about the tournament, it starts with some play in games but gets set with 64 teams all trying to win the national championship for college basketball. The great part of the three weeks is that sometimes David does slay Goliath. The other big part of the season is that tons of people fill out a bracket in an attempt to figure out who will win what game and advance to the next round. Points are given, and dollars exchanged. It does bring an office together. However, as I no longer fill out a bracket and do the office thing, I did start to wonder could all the hype of the NCAA tourney be brought back into our creative practice. This week’s podcast is about how to use the craze and hype of bracketology to help us better our photograph and visual literacy.The first game is to select your 64 best images and put them into the bracket, and run images head to head to find your best. Remembering that it is a seeded tournament, so you have to break apart your one seeds from your two seeds. Upsets occur all the time to a 16 seed can beat a one seed. Second, you can list out your 64 biggest issue you have with your photography no matter how big or small and then use the bracket to help you narrow down your focus to only what needs your attention. Your final four eliminates 60 other things you think you need to focus on but can likely let go.

Ever get a song stuck in your head? One that loops or part of it loops, over and over again. It just won’t seem to go away like a never-ending punishment for some karma thing you did. It turns out that part of the reason this happens is that we can’t finish the song or remember the rest of the song. In many cases, just listening to the song will help us move past the mind-numbing loop. Our photograph can be a little like that at times. We have some aspect of our work or our process that never seems to finish. We can’t let it go either, so it loops over and over. We might try to avoid it, but we know that it will just keep coming back. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how these loops can happen in our work and in some ways they impact what we do and how to break the cycle. 

Listening to a couple at a restaurant recently, I overheard one of them say stick a fork in me I am done. After what I presume to be a big meal, they were not going to finish their meal. Over the coming days, I got to wondering about can we stick a fork in our photograph and be done? Are we ever full?

This week’s podcast examines some of the reasons why I don’t think you can stick a fork into your photography. From editing to inspiration to learning a new craft, there is so much that we are taking in from all aspects of photography that we aren’t ever really done. We might be done with a print or an edit, but even then we learn from that image as we look at it on the wall or the screen. That looking informs us of how to approach the next picture. As you look at your work and process, I am sure that there are times that feel like being done, but if you look back at your past work and imagine work in the future, I imagine that you to might realize there is no fork for photography.

Watching the bees get to work in the garden reminded me of the importance of inspiration AND the work to get inspired. Inspiration is a topic that comes up a lot among my artist friends. We talk about how we get it, find it, avoid it and respond to it. As I sit and listen to them talk, it occurred to me that inspiration is a process; not the actual inspiration, but the rituals that lead up to your inspiration. In this week’s podcast, I talk about the importance of recognizing the things that you do before you feel inspired. Maybe it is writing with a favorite pen or drinking your morning coffee in a special cup. By noticing what you do before you feel inspired can help you understand what you need to do again to feel inspired. Your challenge this week is to spend the time to recognize what happens in the days, hours and moments before your inspiration moving you to create. 

In this week’s podcast we talk about how our attitude towards our photography, subject, learning and viewing photographs can make a huge difference in our ability to view and see through the camera. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed or starting the day off great can make a huge difference in how you process the days events. My challenge to you during and after listening to the podcast is to find a way to check your attitude all the time and make sure that you really putting into your work the experience, ideas and feelings you want to have with the work. If you want sad, angry or bland work for some reason then do so with intention. Make sure that no matter what you are doing in your creative life it is with the approach and passion you want. 

This week’s podcast is a free form rant of sorts about how we talk about seeing in photography. While there are skills necessary to understand how and why a photograph might be seen as a good photograph, that doesn’t mean it was well seen. Knowing that using the rule of thirds and a blue shirt in an image makes people respond to it more doesn’t say it was well seen. Seeing a photograph is about more than having a good composition or technical skill set. It is about something more and more profound that has to come from inside each of us. So this week, I spent a lot of time thinking about how we see and view images and why is it that seeing well is so hard. Without much of an outline or script, I spent the time in front of the mic riffing on so of the randomness that comes to mind. 

If you have ever taken or seen a pole coming out of someone’s head in a photograph, you know the problem with making a 3D world appear on a 2D medium. 

When we compress three-dimensional space into two, things that should have distance between them are reduced or disappear. In some cases, they might even seem farther apart than they are. Either way, as photographers our goal is to be able to understand better how to tell the story we want in our image and use the spatial effect to our advantage. 

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how to think about and approach foreground, mid-ground and background areas of your photograph. Starting by focusing on where the subject or subject matter is in the picture and how to make sure the elements of light, tone, color, and shape all help separate the subject from the environment or place it in the environment. I also talk about how to make sure each object in the frame has the appropriate space around them so the can breathe and allow for a movement of light, tone, and texture to build depth into the image. 

Finally, I have an exercise for you to do that should hopefully help you see and separate objects and the various background and foreground objects. 

Don’t forget if you are a fan of the podcast, you can always leave a review or drop me a line with any topics you might be interested in hearing about. 

This week’s podcast is thanks and tribute to the Opportunity rover, JPL and NASA. Opportunity was designed to run for 90 days and cover 1000 meters on Mars. Rather than just meeting mission objectives, Opportunity ran for 15 years and covered more than 28 miles on the red planet. 

As I got to thinking about how Opportunity didn’t shy away from being more than a set of mission objectives, I began to wonder what lessons from Opportunity could be applied to photography and creative living. So in honor of Opportunity and the Opportunity team, I decided to think about how what Opportunity did could make a difference in my photography. 

As you think about your approach to photography, there are only a couple of factors that come into play. At its most basic level, photography is light and time. 

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how our approach to time can have huge impacts on how we create and view our photographs. Behind the camera, time is one way we bound the frame. We might limit time to fractions of a second, or we can extend it for days, weeks or months. However, what is it about time not behind that camera that causes such dramatic changes in our approach to photography. 

It doesn’t matter if you are making your art for art sake, to learn to live or some other reason. How you find ways to extend, step out of time and return to times that matter are foundational in your approach to your work. In my process, I find that how ideas are found and lost, my approach to living with a print and the speed at which I feel I need to work all have impacts on my work. I hope that in the podcast, you find a way to think about your approach to time and how to get the most out of it. 

I have been in several conversations over the past few weeks about the impacts of fear in our lives. It doesn’t matter if you are talking politics, art or families, fear can show up in many ways. 

As I got to thinking about how fear shows up in my work and what is at the root of my fear, I realized that in my creative life and photography I could work from the limits of fear or lean into abundance. This week’s podcast is about how fear can show up in our work and the value of focusing more on the wealth that comes from our creative wells. 

I was asked recently to help a friend understand how to use depth of field on a new camera. They had always been using an iPhone and just wanted to know how to use that feature of their camera. 

The idea of depth stuck in my head as a critical aspect of the photograph from the depth and illusion created by the paper to the emotional connection to the work. There are always layers and depths to a photograph. In this week’s podcast, we talk about three key elements to depth in photography.  

First, I discuss the impact of matte versus glossy papers and how they can shift our focus from the photograph as an object to the subject as a focus in print. Second, I talk about how emotional depth allows us to connect to work in a more meaningful way. Finally, I focus on how we can create more depth in our community by avoiding common critique traps and focusing on real relationships with people that can help move our work forward.  

I have been struggling lately trying to understand why so many more bad photographs are out there. Part of it is a volume game. Part of it is an education game. However, I am not focusing on the bad photographs from someone who doesn’t aspire to make great photographs. This weeks’ podcast is focused on why a photographer who wants to make great work continue to put out bad photographs. 

As I spent time reflecting on this, I realized that we spend so much time consuming bad photography that it impacts how we see behind the camera. Like eating nothing but junk food, it is hard to be healthy when nothing good is consumed. So how do we get better? We spend time looking at better work. Look at photo books, museums, and photographers we respect. Spending time with great works inspires us to do great work.

To be better at making good photography, we need to find a way to consume good photography. By removing and eliminating the terrible part of our visual diet, we can work to see better and make better photographs. Sure junk food now and then is ok, but you can’t live on cake alone.

One of the most overlooked skills to develop as a photographer is good note taking habits. Before the wealth of data provided by digital cameras, note taking was essential to understanding your exposure, subject matter and development needs.

Outside the understanding the technical aspects of photography, note taking can also help you to relate and connect with your work in the field. Note taking can help you remember the emotions, feelings, and sensory experiences you were having while taking a photograph. Because photographs lack all the senses outside of seeing, it is easy to forget that smell, texture or taste might compel us to make a photograph. By taking notes, you can help remind yourself of the experience or better yet figure out how to incorporate that experience into your photograph before you click the shutter.

In the end, we all want to make better photographs. Taking notes can help you learn more about your technical and artistic choices faster. You will have a record of why you did what you did and a solid foundation to build from when you can reference what you were thinking at the time.

This is the 200th episode of the podcast. Eva, my australian shepherd, is in the studio today like always. She wanted to remind me that it is the 1400 dogcast. Anyway, dog humor aside, this week’s podcast is about being thankful for connecting with photography. There have been so many people who have influenced my work over the years, and many of them have no idea how much impact they have had. Over the course of the week where I was thinking about those people, I got to thinking about how important photography is in connecting us. 

So as we turn into 2019, I hope that you find ways to use your photography to connect with others by sharing, talking about and viewing the work of others. Using your photography not just to work on skills and technique, but rather to find a way to build real connections to people by sharing ideas, stories and feelings in the capture of light. 

This week’s podcast starts with a quick rant against people who review photography gear, products, and methods which they haven’t ever used the product. I am amazed at how many people use a product for a few minutes, hours or never use the product and still feel qualified to write a review. If you find people who are writing or speaking about products they don’t use, it might be worth your time to find a different reviewer. 

The main topic of this week’s podcast is about the hardest thing in photography. In my work with others and more hours than I care to admit in my introspection, I feel like the hardest thing to do in photography is be authentic without reacting to our insecurities. The willingness to stick to who we are as photographers against a tidal wave of opinions telling us to do or be something else is so hard. We are inundated with people telling us to be something else, photograph something else, or try something new when really what we should be doing is focusing on how amazing the chance to see through the lens and experience more of ourselves photographing things we love. That is the essence of photography. Being amazed by the world around us and finding our connection to the places, people, subjects and emotions. Yet, there is so much noise around us telling us to be something else. The gear we need. Lessons to learn. Things to avoid because others photograph them. Learning to turn off everything that keeps us from being who we are and were meant to be might just be the hardest part of photography. 

As the end of the year draws closer, I keep hearing more and more people talk about how tired they are. The holiday season and current state of the world has so many people I know feel like they are burning a very short candle at both ends. This week’s podcast is focused on how we get to the point of exhaustion and some ways to hold, live with and move through the experience. I know in my own practice the regular everyday life events keep me busy. When you compound holidays, the loss of my brother a year ago, ever-changing software to learn, photos to take and so many other parts of my photography to keep on top of, it can be so hard to stay on top of it all. 

In rereading The Zen of Creativity again, I discovered a paragraph where he talks about how being different doesn’t make you original or unique in your creative practice. This week’s podcast dives into how we approach our photography and photographic work as it relates to originality. You often read about how important it is to be different in photography to stand out from the crowd. Yet, when you look at photographs are they really that unique or even that different. I many cases, photos often look the same even when different. So what is it that we should focus on rather than just trying to be different. Originality comes from the work origin which in turn means from the source or place where something arises or is derived. It isn’t applying something different in the darkroom or photoshop. Originality comes from a new source or place. Shouldn’t our goal be to find originality in our work rather than just trying to be different?

I get asked by family and friends this time of year what makes a good gift for a photographer. In past years, I have talked about books or gear that I think might make for a nice gift. This year I wanted to return to this idea but provide some other gift options that I think most photographers could appreciate but might not ask for.

If you are a photographer, give you photographs to family and friends. Nothing is more meaningful than a gift from the heart you created. This gift will also force you to finish your images and make some prints which is always good practice.
Give meaningful feedback about someone’s work. Take the time to send the photographer an email or take them out for coffee and really talk about what their work or one of their projects. The feedback will mean so much for than a passing like on a social media app.
Give away old cameras so that others can start their road into photography. 
Give or create a space for you to be creative. Give up on the pressure of making something, improving, selling and try to relax and remember that it was the love of photography that got you started with the camera. 
This year I am recommending books not related to photography, but to other interest, a photographer might have. It might inspire them to do more work or help them better understand a project or photograph they have undertaken. 
Tickets to a museum to see some art.

We all have a house in crazy town. As much as we like to think that our crazy thoughts, insecurities, and ideas are unique, if you spend time talking to any creative person, you will quickly find that they have crazy thoughts too. In this week’s podcast, I spend some time talking about how we live and work in crazy town. I hope that once you learn about your own sense of crazy that you might find support and friendship by sharing your own version of crazy with others. 

Sometimes when we share, we learn that we all suffer the same insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams. If we spend time only focusing on our own story and voice inside our heads, we can go crazy. By sharing and listening to the stories of others, sometimes we can break down those fears and barriers that hold us back. 

When you read content on the Internet, you will eventually run across material that falls along the lines of five easy steps to a good photograph or three easy ways to make killer portraits. There are literally thousands of these lists. I imagine I have written…

I sometimes feel bad that I don’t make better or more exciting photographs. I look at images online or in books and think I really need some help. Yet, other people can look at my images and tell me how much they love them and think they are amazing. So why do I spin…

Someone asked me recently about what is the correct distance to shoot a photograph. I was a first taken back by the question because it seemed a little strange to me. After digging a little, it was apparent that the photographer was interested in making sharp photographs. So we talked depth of field and subject distance impacts as options. However, the topic got me thinking more and more about distance as it relates to intimacy in photography. 

In my experiences, one of the most significant indicators of a great photograph is the level of intimacy between the photographer and subject/subject matter. You can feel it when you looked at a picture when the photographer was really connected to the work. As we continue to find ways to see the difference in the world, I feel that we strongly desire a connection to people and place. In our photographs, if we can find a way to make more intimate relationships to the objects on the other side of the lens, we might just see that our true intimacy comes from building real ties to those people, places, and things. Even in a fleeting moment, we can find respect and harmony and trust through the lens. So in this week’s podcast, we take a dive into what intimacy might do for our work. 

I have always been amazed by people who are willing to share their imaginations with others. The more fantastic the story, the better. For me personally, I think we all have those stories in us, but for some reason, many of us don’t share them. In this week’s podcast, we are going all in on the importance of imagination in our photography. 

This doesn’t mean that you are doing compositing or making crazy sets to photograph, but it is about really allowing your storytelling to be about the worlds you live in and imagine every day. Sharing the fantastic of what you experience. In the podcast, I talk about how imagination in my cats to kids all showcase how everyday things become amazing, but we as adults often forget how to allow that to escape. Or even worse, we treat it as crazy. At the end of the podcast, I give you a couple of ideas to help you connect with your inner imagination and hopefully find a way to let it out through the camera. 

In this week’s podcast, we focus on how at the core essence of photography is two things: light and time. Without either of those, there is no photograph. Yet, most photographers know that there is more to a photograph than those two elements. One of the most significant aspects of talking about and reading a picture that often gets overlooked is ambiguity in the photograph. This ambiguity of time, content and context are also crucial to our understanding of the photograph. 

Much like our memory, a photograph is only a fragmented representation of what happened in front of the camera. So, if we are to understand what makes a good photograph or how to create a good photograph, how do we deal with ambiguity and issues of time when looking at and creating work. 

If you read about photography and critical thinking in photography, much of that writing is about the importance of ideas and thematic concepts in art. It doesn’t matter if it essay’s from Brook Jensen’s Lenswork magazine over other year, Critical Thinking in…

To thine own self be true.

-Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

In Hamlet, Polonius provides some last words of wisdom to his son as he gets on the next boat for Paris. While this quote has been stated over and over again, I think it’s something that is still true for photographers today. At the core of the quote is how you have to take care of yourself first so that you can take care of others. Of course, if you know Hamlet, you know that even for Polonius this is easier said than done. 

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the importance of authenticity in our photography and creativity. At the end of the day, we can only create the things that are inside of our own head and experiences. To create real authentic work, we have to create work that is true to who we are. That is our genuine work. However, it is easy to avoid creating meaningful work because of fears, regrets and a host of other emotions. The challenge we all face is to work with all our feelings and reactions and find a way to create photographs that are reflective of who we are today and what beautiful worlds we see for tomorrow. In the podcast, I talk about how I look at and respond to my work and the challenges and hopefully offer up some ideas for you to use to step forward in creating your own meaningful work. 

In this week’s podcast, we examine the importance of finding the shades of grey in our black and white world. It is, in many ways, more comfortable to approach our understanding of the world when we can quickly categorize and define people, places, and events. However, in our rush to judgment, we can often misrepresent what is actually happening in our experience. As a creative individual, I personally believe that it is our job to find the subtle nuances in the world that make up our story and experiences. Then through that lens of awareness do we create our art. The artist is always searching and trying to connect to even the smallest change and shift in the way they see the world. It is in those observations do we find our own voice.

When I was growing up, I always heard the phrase: Close only counts in horseshoes, and atomic bombs. Later in my career, I had a boss who always said: “good isn’t good enough, and perfection is the enemy of done.” These two phrases have been bubbling up a lot for me in recent weeks during my photography. This week’s podcast is about how those two sayings are shaping my approach to some of my photographs.

There is a remake or reboot trend that many of my friends talk about with Hollywood movies and television shows. Sure there are some reasons to reboot or remake a movie or show. Maybe it was awful the first time, but the source material was excellent. Or, perhaps there is a modern sensibility to bring to the work. However, in many cases, it can feel like it is laziness or an unwillingness to take a risk on something new and original. 

When you look at your own photographs do you see them as something original or are you starting to do a bunch of remakes and reboots? In this week’s podcast, we talk about how to look at your photograph and examine your work so that you can get out of the rebooting loop and get back to the craft of seeing and telling your own unique stories. 

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. 

Ever feel like you are running on a treadmill and going nowhere. In my creative practice, I call these loops, and just like getting lost in the woods, I start and end at the point even though I feel like I start in a different direction. This week’s podcast talks about some of the more common loops that I face, or I see others face in their photography, and how to deal with those loops.

Ok so after a quick rant on the war and revolution that is coming in photography click bait, this week’s podcast focuses in on balance. As we have discussed many times on this podcast, balance is something that is important when thinking about images while behind the camera. However, this week, we are focusing on the importance of balance, or lack of balance, in the final image. 

Balance is about visual harmony and understanding of the frame. It is achieved several ways, but for most photographs, it is about how color, shape, form, space and design elements interact together. This week we focus on some of the central aspects of balance among those various aspects and how they can be used to move an image out of balance or into balance. 

Michael Gregory, no relation, wrote an excellent article for Aperture in 1961 about the nature of photographic style and idea for how to define and use style in photography. I was recently rereading the article and used it as the foundation for this week’s podcast. One the most common topics I hear about that is related to creating great photography is that you need to have a style, but the definition of style is both ambiguous and misapplied. This week, using the insights from this 55-year-old article, we talk about what style is and how to understand how it appears in our photography and what it matters. 

In this week’s podcast, we are talking about how to go about applying some of the basic concepts from minimalism and getting organized to make it easier to work and edit our photographs. At times it is very easy to get overwhelmed with the work required to make a good photograph. However, by learning to focus on a few key things that have been tried and tested to work in keeping organized, you might find that you can make better photographs more efficiently and faster. 

I was flipping through Netflix looking at movies and got to thinking about how many movies follow the same basic formula. For example, in most romantic comedies, the couple gets together, and something happens that drives them apart. After some conflict, they are somehow pushed together and end up happily ever after. 

In our photography, we can quickly end up following the same formula over and over again. In some cases, this might be ok, but I other cases this could cause us to fall short of our expectations and needs as a creative person. In my own work, I think that it is easy to fall into a formulaic rut. You learn what works and you just do it over and over again. The challenge this creates is that it the more you do the same thing, the more it becomes harder to change. The habit builds a deeper rut.

Sometimes our creativity is at the edges of our experiences. So finding ways to push our boundaries by doing something outside the norm is critical. Now, this doesn’t mean giving up good habits like morning pages, walks in the woods or daily images, but what I encourage you to do is to not write the exact same thing every day. The habit is not the formula. You might find that by sitting in the woods and listening to the birds, trees and wind might be better for you then just walking.

So as you approach your photography this week, I encourage you to look at what is the formula you are following that you picked up from others or isn’t working and apply a twist to the formula. What if your romantic comedy went dark or some other direction. What would it look like if your story was really your story and not the formula that we have all accepted? 

This is one of my favorite podcast topics. In this week’s podcast, we are talking about questions you all have sent in over the past few months. I really do appreciate you sending in comments and feedback about the show, and getting a chance to record an episode…

Welcome to the 175th episode of the Perceptive Photographer. This week’s episode looks at how to determine what a photograph is worth. Is a picture worth more because it has sold more copies and made a lot of money? Is a photograph worth more because it has a lot of likes or impressions on social media? Or is a photograph worth more because it shares something or says something that pulls at our heart and emotions? It is worth more because it changes the way we see the world around us?

Photos that reflect something about who we are and connect to something inside of us have fantastic power. That power to share a communicate says a lot about who we are as people and what we do to connect with others. So, as you think about what photographs you have made or will make, is the real value of those might lie in your ability to make a difference, even if just on one person, or is it about something else? 

In the end, I think you may find that your photographs that connect with others in a meaningful way no matter how few or small that number may be might be the most worthy of all photographs. 

In the 174th episode of the Perceptive Photographer, we take a look at how various methods of expanding and narrowing down the photographic process can help us make better images behind the camera. The creative process has a huge influx of ideas from both external and internal sources. If we can find ways to maximize those inputs, it can often times give us a jumpstart on our creative practice. However, at some point, we need to being to cull through those ideas and images so that we can build a cohesion to our storytelling and imagery. 

Welcome to episode 173 of the podcast!. Thanks so much for being a listener, I really do appreciate you taking time out of your day to listen to the podcast. This week’s topic is all about how important the concept of getting it right in camera is to make a successful image. Typically, when we talk about getting it right in the camera, it is all about the settings. I find that in my own process, getting it right in camera is more about the mindset to pay attention to all of the qualities that make good photograph before the shutter clicks. 

By learning to see color, color cast, composition, lines, framing and a host of other concepts that impact our experience of the frame, we put ourselves in a better position to make better and more engaging photographs. Getting it right in camera is more than just saving time in post, which it does, but it more of a mindset that I am going to go out and see the world. The camera records what is there not what is in our heart. Learning to set up the camera so that it learns to see what we see rather than the other way around is what getting it right is all about. 

This week’s podcast focuses on the importance of finding and using the simple pleasures in life to influence our photography. When our creative process is going well, rarely do we describe it as a complicated process. When things in life are not going well, we then…

Over the past eight months, I have been dealing with the loss of my little brother. And while I have amazing family and friends to offer their support, it has been a long creative rut I have been in. Rather than process my feelings with my creativity I tossed myself…

I believe that storytelling is central to humanity. From our earliest days, we have told stories. If you sit in a coffee shop and listen, all people are telling our stories–stories about family, friends, events, and work. At the core of a photograph is also a story. It is the driving element of a need to share something about how we see and understand the world. 

In this week’s podcast, I talk about how three key areas of a storytelling event are critical to the story. While not the only aspects of good storytelling, these three elements are what I think are central to helping photographers make better photographs. To really get to the heart of the process, you need to be observational, listen and find the connection to the emotions you are experiencing. 

These don’t have to be too earth-shattering notions. They can be as simple as the awe of a beautiful sunset over the beach. What drives a better experience of the photograph is your ability to use these three elements to make your photograph. By understanding your emotional reaction, observations and what you listen to (non-verbal or verbal) will go a long way into making your photographs more interesting–at least to you.

Have you ever taken a look at the names of some of your program and apps that you use to create photographs? Many of those names are all about speed-, insta-, snap- and a host of other quick action words. In Photoshop and Lightroom, we use fast presets and actions to speed up the workflow. Now while I am all for efficiency in workflow, I began to wonder if all the language around our creative tools impact how we view and see our images. 

What if Instagram was called meaningful photographs or important photographs? Would we spend more time looking at the work and engaging with the work? Would we think that our photographs are worth more to our own experiences or are they just insta swiped away? I believe that the creative act is sort of like a good wine. It takes time to develop, and once you create the wine, you should take time to enjoy the bottle. Great wine isn’t something that you drink as quickly as possible; it is something that you enjoy and notice all the subtle nuances created by the efforts the grape, barrel, and winemaker. Shouldn’t your photographs get the same appreciation?

Do you ever think about what it might take to make the perfect print? This week’s podcast is about what are some of the non-technical considerations for creating the perfect print or deciding if that is even possible. 

When we are working on a photograph one of the most significant challenges is to let go of what we know and learn to see what is in front of us. This focus has us learning to evaluate and see a given image with a more precise set of eyes not bound by our expectations of the future or regrets of the past. In allowing the photograph to be what it is, we can take a step closer to getting a better final image made. 

The second consideration is about your printer verse your image. Just like with a camera, the type of printer doesn’t make the image. There are subtle differences between printers that photographer or master printers might notice, but the average person wants to look at amazing photos. They are not concerned with microns and d-max.

The third area that influences the nature of the perfect print is if the process is easy or hard. Just because it is easy to make a really good print doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth it. Just like a tough image to print, doesn’t make it a good print. The time spent in the darkroom doesn’t determine the value of the print.

Finally, your perfect print today will likely be a bad print in the future. As you get to be a better photographer and better printer, your photographs will improve in the future. You will see more, get to do more and be better at both your art and craft. Those advances will appear as more perfect prints, but you shouldn’t judge the past with the same eye as your future. We are all doing the best we can to make the best photographs we can.

This week’s podcast comes from looking Ricahrd Zakia’s Perception and Imaging. A few podcasts ago, I talked about the Gestalt approach to learning. From that podcast, I was reminded that Richard’s book also had a full chapter on gestalt and meaning. As I returned to this book, I also found the chapter on Personality interesting. In that chapter Richard talks about a lot of methods to understand personality, but Carl Jung’s approach to personality traits sort of stood out. 

I thought it was interesting to see how Jung’s model of sensing, feeling, thinking and intuiting could be applied to how we see and understand images. So this week, we dive into how, if at all, your personality traits as defined by Jung might impact and influence your photography. Jung’s work offers more than just a right and left brain approach, the various models by which we understand certain aspects of personality can give us insights into a better understanding of how we relate to the world. 

This week’s podcast is a mash-up of topics that I was pondering as I worked on the flower beds around the studio. To extend the creative space to the outside the studio, I have been working with Lori to plant some cool plants to support the creative energy I want on the inside. 

As I was working in the garden, I got to thinking random thoughts and how they relate to photography. The first was how sports betting sets odds to determine how betting is done. The house attempts to make sure that all bets are placed evenly, so they don’t lose a bunch of money. But, it got me thinking about how to bet on my images when I take them and process them. What odds would I give every shot that it would be a good photograph?

The second thing I was pondering is what is it about the new box smell of a camera that jumpstarts our creativity.
Finally, do you think that there is a right way to order pizza? Is Chicago style or New York style the right and correct type of pizza? Is there a right or correct photograph or just a different way to arrange the ingredients? 

Don’t forget that if you like the podcast, I would love a review on iTunes or google play. Have a great week. 

Photography can be hard, and it is easy to get discouraged. It always seems like there is so much to learn and so many people out there doing amazing things with a camera. I sometimes find myself getting discouraged and struggling to make sense of my practice. I have learned that one of the most important aspects of a creative life is to celebrate your successes. 

If you spend time thinking and celebrating how far you have come in your journey from where you started rather than obsessing only about the future, you might find that you are better able to move your creative practice forward. In the celebration of our successes not only can we find the motivation to continue and the impact of happy dopamine in our brains, but we also get to stand back and appreciate how much we have grown as photographers. 

This week’s podcast is all about why you sometimes need to step back and celebrate how amazing you are, even if the journey is never over, and some ways to meaningfully celebrate your photography growth. 

How do we know that something is true or not? It is often defined by the context. When we are judging and looking at photographs the context by which we frame our feedback can make a huge difference in how we appreciate and understand the work. I think many of us at times have used our own egos as a context to judge if we could do better work than what we are looking at. Other times, we might take a less egocentric approach and dive deeper into the work in an attempt to find some meaning or higher understanding. As we critique work, be it our own or the work of others, we need to find a way to identify the context we are evaluating the work and determine if the context is appropriate or limiting our experience of the work. In the analysis of an image, any supposition we enter the conversation with will impact our relationship, but by understanding as much of the bias or context ahead of time as possible, we should be in a stronger position to provide meaningful feedback. 

In part two of our series on Gestalt psychology and its impact on photography, we examine how the law of past experience and similarity can help us to better define not only what happens behind the camera but also what happens when we are in the editing and critique process. 

I have been helping a number of photographers recently with editing and sequencing. Some of them have a similar set of photographs that reminded me of my work in one particular way. They were very chaotic images. One of the things that I like to explore in my photography is finding the point of peace or relaxation in a chaotic place. In my work, that is often finding something in nature among the trees, rocks, and waves. 

As I got to thinking about how we deal with this chaos and create meaning, I returned to some psychology books of my past. In there I re-read about the gestalt approach to psychology which was all about how we make order from chaos when we only see pieces of the scene. This research is what bore out the idea that the sum is greater than the parts. 

This week’s podcast is all about storytelling concepts. It doesn’t matter how much you work your technical skills as a photographer. Eventually, your work is about how well you connect with your audience beyond f/stops and shutter speeds. One of the most common approaches is to talk about the importance of story and storytelling in an image or body of work. No matter who you are or what level of photographer you are, your work will eventually be about storytelling. Your images will start to convey something more than just what you captured in front of the camera. 

While there are hundreds of components and subtle nuances to storytelling, in this week’s podcast I identify five big buckets that I think are important for photographers to consider when they begin to focus on important storytelling. 

In the service of others.
Emotions verse facts.
Shared meaning.
Assume your audience is smart.
Purpose.

Remember that while not every photograph has to tell a story, that when you do tell a story, you want to make sure that it is the story you want. Taking the time to understand the elements of good storytelling can really impact your work as a photographer.

This week’s podcast focuses on understanding who your audience is as a photographer. In general, there are two main groups of consumers of photography. There is the mass audience and then the art-elite audience. Both of these audiences are critical to supporting photographers, but they approach their viewing of photography and what they value is different. 

The mass audience is looking for artwork that we like and feel good at when we look at it. This is the type of work that you might find to hang on your wall because you love the place, color, composition. The standards are more along the lines of beautiful photographs that are well composed. This is a huge space to work in. Think of all the calendars, photo books, prints that you have seen. 

The art-educated group is examining work not based on beauty, composition or approachability, but rather from an examination of critical trends in contemporary art, breakthroughs in new directions of art and how current work is balanced against the prior history of the photographic medium. 

The challenge for the creator is to understand what group is looking at their work and giving them the feedback. If your feedback is coming from one group, but you are targeting another, you might find that your feedback is detrimental to your work. Neither group is more important than the other, but their approach is distinct enough that it can cause angst if you were looking for feedback of one group over another. 

The key is to do work that matters to you first and then try to get the feedback from the group you need rather than randomly hoping for critical feedback. 

In this week’s podcast, the focus is all about the process of seeing to capture. From the moment we think we see something to the point it becomes a photograph is a journey. Along the way, there are a number of steps that we take to make that happen. In my experience when we are working well, the process seems secondary, but when things are not going well, it is a challenge. As I was rearranging the studio with Lori this past week, I came across the above quote by Henri Cartier-Bresson that got me thinking about my process. 

That quote inspired me to break down my mental process into steps to see if I can figure out how to make my photographs better. I came up with see, perceive, recognize and act. At each of those stages, something important in the photographic process happens. By jumping ahead or lingering back in the process, I find myself missing some important images. So, this week I talk about how I came to be with this process and how you might consider this or a similar process to find your own method for better understanding how and why your photographs work or not. 

In this week’s episode of the Perceptive Photographer we discuss two topics that can have an impact on how we create photographs and how we share photographs. The first half of the podcast, we talk about how to learn a new task that can be applied in our photography, and the second half we focus on what a photograph should be as an object or artifact. 

Learning a new task is all about the creative practice. Learning new things can add a lot of energy and excitement to our creative process. When we are learning something new, our expectations need to be balanced between how long it really will take with how long we think it should take. Sometimes when we are learning something easy and simple, it might not take very long at all to learn the task. But, when things are more complex, it can take a lot longer to learn. Knowing the complexity of the task can help you set your expectations and also release pressure when you get frustrated when things are happening slower than you want. 

As we move into the second half of the podcast, we take a look at some of the things to consider when you are processing and outputting your photographs. Photography is a very flexible medium and figuring out how you want to share an image and how the photograph should be experienced is an important part of the process. There are a lot of factors that can impact if your images should be prints, digital, composites or used in some other way. I like to consider some of these factors when I figure out how to create the final object that becomes the photograph:

my intention
the feeling I want the person to have when they/I look at the image
longevity of the image
manipulation of the image
replication of the image
the accuracy of the image.

In the next week or two, we will be announcing the workshops happening at Silly Dog Studios so check out that information when it is released in the next podcast or two.

One of the consistent things that you see when you study working artist is that they are always working. While they may spend some time researching, reading and talking about aspects of their work, they all have their nose to the grindstone. I have learned that this is more than just a desire to create work, but it also is a step forward to understanding the work. It isn’t enough to just sit around and think about the work, at some point you have to do the work. We learn who we are as photographers by making photographs. 

We learn about our identity as an artist in the type of work we create, the meaningful photographs are not just things we create for others, but they are foundations for us to learn about how we see and create our worlds. They give us insights into the past, present, and future of the life we have and hope to have. Sharing the ideas of our vision allows us to take steps forward in work. 

In this week’s podcast, we examine the importance of how creating our photographs gives us insights into the way we use our process to help us understand out our life unfolds.

During a recent photogravure workshop, I was standing around waiting for a plate to finish and I started to again think about why we photograph. What is is about photography that compels us to make images? I think for a lot of artists, regardless of their discipline, share some common threads. I believe that an artist is not unique because of some divine intervention but rather a willingness to put in the time. It reminded me of an article by Brooks Jensen from an old Lenswork magazine where he talks about why we make art. In this week’s podcast, we return to that article expanding on some of Brook’s ideas and put a little of my own spin on his foundation. 

In this week’s podcast, we answer the top five questions I have been answering about printing or the past few months. If you listen to the podcast, you know I am a huge fan of printing, and so I am excited to be able to answer some of the common questions that I have been asked.

What is the proper rendering intent to use to print my photograph?
What is the best paper to use for my photograph?
Should I let Photoshop/Lightroom manage my print or the printer?
I have seen that Canon and Epson offer plug-ins for printing. Are the plug-ins worth printing with or not?
When you switch papers or print the same image months later,  how do you make sure that the prints are the same from day to day?
Hopefully, as you listen to the podcast, you can find the answers to some questions you might have. If you have other questions or want to follow up on something from the podcast, feel free to reach out and shoot me an email, and I’ll see if I can help out.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impacts of getting stuck in an easy rut. As we work on our photography, it is easy to find things that we are good at and stick with those techniques, subjects and concepts. However, it is important to continue to push our photography forward. One of the ways to do that is to find edges of our comfort zones and push outside of those areas. Trying new things can jumpstart new ideas, reenforce old habits and show us where we might be just a bit lazy in our approach to our photography. 

I am learning to play the guitar. It is a slow but fun process. I am still early enough in my practice that all I get to do is play some cords and learn muscle memory for the cords. I know that one day I will get to play a song. What I want to play is more blues and jazz guitar. That seems so technical, and far off, I wonder as I strum a G cord if I will get there. 

My own thought process reminded me of working with several people over the past few weeks with their photography. Over the course of some one-on-one session, I repeatedly heard about how things are just too technical. As I related that thought back to my guitar lessons, it got me thinking about what does that really mean? Most of the photographers I know are all technical on some level. As I processed my own feelings, I realized that it comes down to a couple of key areas. 

Is it important for me to know this? Is what I am learning important to me or not. If it is not important, then I should just let it go, but if it is important, then I should accept that it might be hard to learn but needed.
Is it necessary? Do I actually need to know this or not? If not, I should walk away. But, if I do really need to know this then I should keep that as my focus and motivation. 
How do I learn? It might be that you are learning the hard way. If you learn by reading. Then you should learn from a book, not a lecture. If you learn by listening, you should avoid a book. Try and find the best way to learn based on your own learning style. 
Baby steps. Remember that it takes a lot of steps to run a race. Each step is just as important as the next or prior step. 
Fear. Don’t let fear be the reason you avoid learning something. As adults, we often fear looking stupid. If you are working with someone who makes you feel that way, you should seek out other support. Having a supportive learning environment will do wonders for your work habits.
Celebrate. Don’t forget to pat yourself on the back even for the small stuff. Every success is amazing. 

It is easy to develop bad habits. They can show up in our desires for equipment or software to make our “job easier.” They might show up in the way we approach our work. Some of our bad habits are there, and we don’t even know why we are doing what we do, but we continue because that is what we think is supposed to happen. 

In this week’s podcast, I take a look at some of my habits and the type of people who surround my photography and try to figure out what I should keep and what bad habits should be kicked to the curb. I would imagine in your photographic practice that there might be a list of things you do that once removed might give you more time and energy for the good parts of your creative practice. 

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the importance of trusting your instincts. I was recently a conversation with Lori, and she was relaying how important it is to learn to listen to your internal voice to trust your instincts. We talked about how this is true for your health, mental well-being, and artistic life.

As I got to thinking more about how that applies to our photography, it hit me about how many times and how easy it is to avoid trusting your instincts when it comes to making a photograph. It doesn’t matter if you’re shooting, selecting, editing, or sharing a photograph at all those various points it becomes important to trust your instincts…

I recently was watching TV at a friends house and during the news and then talking with Lori about what I heard. There were some people in our government and in interviews talking about returning to a simpler time. I am not one, for just returning to the way it was…

In this week’s podcast, we talk about the importance of figuring out what you really need to know to be a successful photographer. When we look at a photograph, we make a lot of decisions about what we like about the image and what we don’t like about the image. As we…

One of the most important task we have when working is to find a way to stay focused on what we want to accomplish. While some days, we need to have the freedom to just figure out what the day brings. The freedom to really wonder gives us our sense of energy a chance to find its passion. 

However, it is also important that we find a way to keep our eye on the larger prizes that we have for many of our goals. In order to do that we need to find a way to keep ourselves motivated. In this week’s podcast, I talk about the importance of having a motivational sales pitch that you can use to keep you on track to accomplish what you want in your creative practice. 

As 2017 moves into the rearview window, this week’s podcast is all about setting up some new goals and ideas for 2018. One of the first steps to having a great new year is to take the time to look back into the accomplishments of 2017. If you spend some time thinking about where you were at the beginning of the year and how much you accomplished over the course of 2017, you might be surprised at how much you achieved. Often, we find ourselves spending too much time thinking about how much is still in front of us, but we get a shot of energy and confidence when we take the time to appreciate what we have learned and how much we have grown. 

I also think it is a great time to spend getting some goals set up for the coming year. I like to have a set of both soft and hard goals. Hard goals have a definitive date attached to when I want them done. Soft goals are goals that support those hard goals but are not defined in the process by date. Knowing that I have a chance to develop my skills at a reasonable pace, while still getting my more significant projects done is a rewarding experience throughout the year. Also, I have learned that by limiting my larger hard goals to just a few subjects or ideas allows me to dive deep into the process and feel like I got a chance to learn what I wanted to accomplish in a more meaningful way. 

I have really taken noticed recently that a lot of our information is provided in quick, easy soundbites. And, it seems some people prefer to get their information that way. You can hear it in conversations and see it in how we relate online. So many small statements supported with very few facts we hold to be true. I started to wonder, if consuming information in small bites with something that could impact our relationship to photography.

I have really taken noticed recently that a lot of our information is provided in quick, easy soundbites. And, it seems some people prefer to get their information that way. You can hear it in conversations and see it in how we relate online. So many small statements supported with very few facts we hold to be true. I started to wonder, if consuming information in small bites with something that could impact our relationship to photography.

As I started looking at my own images and thinking about how I work with others, I began to realize that when you only think of your photography as soundbites, you end up, in many ways, not necessarily understanding the depth and meaning of your work. Can you always understand the complexity of what you are doing with little effort, insight and understanding? In this week’s podcast, I spend some time looking at how engagement with photographs and understanding photographs develops. Sometimes to fully understand the photograph you need to spend the time to create a deeper understanding of how composition, theme, subject, visual story all relate to our abilities to fully engage with the image. Just like with our news and information, not everything should be summarized in 140 characters.

In the podcast this week we are taking a look at when you think you might need to get some new gear. One of the things that I have noticed in my practice is that I don’t ever, for the most part, think that need new equipment or skills when I am actually creating photographs our printing images.

As I spent time thinking about how I work, I realize that much of my time wanting new equipment figure out new training happened while I was not engaged in my actual photography. Those times when I wanted new things always seem to happen when I was in front of the computer, at the store, or engaged in looking at some friends new equipment.

If I’m honest with myself, I know that for the most part, I have everything I need to create the photographs that really matter. What I have to learn how to do is distinguish between want and need. As I say in the podcast, if you are actually out making photographs or printing your photographs and you need something on more than one occasion then that is likely true. But, if it is it any other time that should raise some suspicion as to the real motivation for the desire.

In the first part of this week’s podcast, we take a look at how working on a project is like running on a racetrack. Like lanes on a track, at any given time, you might be faster and ahead in one area of your project and behind in another. The key is to keep your eyes on the finish line and know that each step in each lane moved you closer to completing your project. It doesn’t matter which lane is ahead, but rather that you can keep focused on assign the feedback and language into the correct lane.

In part two of the podcast, we talk gifts. As the holiday season approaches, I have been asked by some friends and family members what makes a good gift for a photographer. While a lot of lists this season have great gear on them, I tried to come up with some things that might not make everyone’s list and focuses a little less on gear. 

As I was having a drink with a friend recently, our conversation turned to my photography. My friend asked me what would be the one skill that every photographer should have to be successful. As we talked about all the various skills that one may need, I remembered a conversation from years ago where another associate said that he succeeded because he always finished his work. 

As we talked more and more, I made finishing my answer. I think that too many times we give up our efforts without actually completing our work. That last five percent of effort makes all the difference in the world in our creativity. In looking back at my work, I realized that I failed to complete my work in a variety of areas. From putting away gear after a shoot or processing images to completion, there are a number of areas that would make a difference in my photograph if I just finished off the effort. 

I would encourage you to spend some time this week and think about all the areas of your photography that don’t get done on a regular basis and figure out how that might be holding your work back. Or at least, making the task more difficult than it needs to be. 

I was recently in line at a grocery store and overhead one of the people in line say something about doing your best. That got me thinking about all the times in my life where I was asked if I was doing my best. As if my best was something that mattered. As a child, I think I was told that so I could learn the lesson of trying hard no matter what the results. Sometimes even if you do your best, you might not get what you think you deserve, but knowing that you did your best is enough. 

As a creative person, I am not sure that my best is the measure of success. My best as judged against what standard? Sales? Size? purpose? Money? Should I setup my creative live for an arbitrary goal that is ever shifting and moving?

In this week’s podcast, I take a look at the impact of what doing our best can mean on our creative practice and examine some other possibilities for how to thing about the work we create and how we judge ourselves in our creativity. 

In an episode a few weeks ago we talked about how the smaller stories of life are just as important as the bigger stories people think about telling. For many of us, there is a paralysis of the larger story whereas with the smaller stories we can more easily pick up the camera. 

In this week’s podcast, we talk about how to take some of those smaller stories and pull them together into larger thematic bodies of work. For my own work, I have created five simple buckets

story of ideas (stories with an unknown outcome or path)
story of place (stories of very specific places)
story of identity (these are stories showing multiple layers of a person, place or thing)
story of subtext (complex ideas told through images of iconic objects or cultural references)
story of concept (stories having a known outcome or path)

When I am working with my own images, I find that some photos fit into one ore more of these buckets, but by using these buckets I am able to branch out the work and start to see how these seemingly unconnected images might start to fit into a larger project based body fo work. 

This past week my little brother, Jim, unexpectedly passed away. I have never felt the pain and sorrow that I have been living with for the past several days. My heart is truly broken. It has been a sucker punch to the gut and a 2×4 to the face times ten.

My little brother was amazing. He had a huge heart filled with joy, compassion, and friendship. He spent the majority of his career in wetland conservation helping to protect wetland environments for future generations. His generous spirit was something that impacted the thousands of people he touched in his life. He was always helping others, sharing a hug and a smile or just being present to share in a moment.

We were more than brothers. We were best of friends. While we shared different interest and paths, we were always there for each other. Although not a photographer, he knew how much photography was my life. Last year, when the new studio was just a big empty trashed up space of a garage, he came up and helped me build the analog part of the darkroom. I wouldn’t be able to make the work I create day in and day out without him and his help. I will never be able to make another photograph without thinking about him and everything he gave to me. I love you bro.

I was recently having a conversation with a friend when he said that he was worried about his art because he didn’t have anything to say or any big ideas. In my own work, I at times it had similar thoughts. The reality is, we all have something important to say. In…

I have a lecture that I’m giving later this week at the Photographic Center Northwest on visual literacy. As I’ve been preparing for that lecture, I also noticed a number of different people asking me for critiques in interesting and unusual ways. So in this week’s podcast we’re going to talk a little bit about how people go about asking for reviews, the nature of intention, and critiques and finally have a think about classifying work for more valuable critique.

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that people are asking for critiques to be brutally honest or subjectively honest or some other adjective in front of their critique. I think the reason for this, is that they want an excellent critique and I want to avoid the fluff of social media. The issue with asking for a brutal critique is it implies that the response is brutal. When what they want is just a good critique. We talk about this a little bit in this week’s podcast to help people understand what they’re looking for when they want a real valuable critique.

One other area that I’ve noticed is really interesting when working with people and critique is around the area of intention. While it is great, we will ask an artist their intention, and in many ways, you can push them to understand their work better if they think about their intention you will not always have the opportunity to work with the artist to get their intention. So, it is essential for you to be able to think about what are some possible intentions the photographer might’ve had if you do not have access to them.

Finally, in this week’s podcast, we take a look at Mina White and Walter chapels experiencing photographs content. This content is the foundation for the lecture will be given on Thursday and is at the heart of really starting to make the transition from just looking at photographs to creating a deeper meaning. One of the central tenets of this application is that photographs have different buckets or genres that they live in. And because of that, we should have different ways of analyzing and thinking about those photographs.

At the risk of repeating myself more than once in this podcast, I raise a question about the value of repetition in the photographic process. When we are working creativity is there something in the process that repetition can help with and at the same time can it hinder? As we explore this topic, I think you will quickly discover that much of what can cause problems for us photographically is an over-reliance on repetition.

Be it in how we frame and compose to setting up a new portfolio; there is something to be said about the negative impacts of been there and done that. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the places where our photographic process can become stale from repetition and some ideas to help move beyond those often repeated traps.  

I am working on a new lecture on visual literacy for later in October. As I was reviewing a number of different aspects of language in photography, I occurred to me that we often phrase questions in our creative practice that can impact our approach to our photographs and photography. 

As I spent more time thinking about this, I came up with a few phrases that in my opinion could be shifted to cause a difference in your approach to your creative practice.

What could I do to make this better? This question leads to a conversation that is more about what someone else might do rather than getting to the real root of what we want to know about an image. When we ask this question, we often know that something is off, but we aren’t sure. A more insightful question might be What do you see in this image? What do you feel when you look at this image? What do you think this image is about? All provide more context and boundaries for an answer. 
I wonder what would happen if…If you ever think this, you should go ahead and see what happens in your creative practice. It is at the edge of our wonderment of the possibilities do we discover amazing images and photographic ideas.
Is it possible? Much like, I wonder, the notion of possibility is something that shouldn’t be dismissed without investigation. The creative life and photography are all about seeing what is possible behind the camera. And, everything is impossible until it is done once. 
I’m sorry. There are a lot of reason that people apologize. Sometimes it is warranted, but in our creative practice, we should be unapologetic about our work. We have something to say and have the universal need to say whatever that is to the world. 

I am a huge science junkie, but I have never been able to handle the math necessary to make it something more than an interest. I love to read all the books that explain the science but remove the math. Books like Godel, Escher and Bach, The Elegant Universe and other have always fascinated and inspired me. 

One of my favorite stories is about Schrödinger’s cat. Erwin Schrödinger explains the nature of a quantum superposition with a cat. You place a cat, a vile of poison, and a radioactive element into a box and close the lid. In the box is a hammer and Geiger counter. If the Geiger counter detects a single radioactive decayed atom, it drops the hammer to release the poison which kills the cat. The superposition is that until we open the box, we don’t know if the cast is dead or alive, so it is both. Once we observe the cat, the superposition collapses, and the state of the cat is now the reality. 

I got to thinking about how much of our photography and creative practice is based on the duality of our work, our response to our work and the very nature of photography are a lot like Schrödinger’s cat. Much of what we struggle with in our photography are things that exist in two or more states and only until we actually commit to the work, practice and understanding do they become clear and actionable. 

I was recently having a conversation with a good friend, who also listens to the podcast. He said that he has heard me say over and over again that printing makes a shift in your work as a photographer. But, he wanted to know what other things might I recommend to someone who is feeling a little stuck in their process. Are there other things that can make dramatic shifts in our photographic practice?

So in honor of the David Letterman Top 10 list, here are my current five habits that I think every photograph could use to take their work up a notch. 

Always carry a pen a paper. It is hard to know when that next great idea will strike. You want to make sure that you can always capture the idea.
Add one minute. All it takes to make a difference is to take one additional minute on any photographic or creative task to see what happens. Stay one minute longer on a landscape shoot. Spend one more minute working with a model. Take one more minute and clean the studio for the next day’s shoot. You will be surprised what one minute can do.
Build your visual library. The more photographs you have to look at, the more you will know about how to make great photographs.
Have heart and integrity in your work. No one ever got to meaningful work by creating work that didn’t matter. You have to find your message and your voice. Then no matter what anyone tells you, you listen. The most important photographs are the ones that come from integrity and heart.
Eliminate distractions. Take 30 minutes and leave all the distractions behind. Find out what no phone, no book, and no distraction does to open your mind to seeing and hearing the world around you. Then take that principle into your images and photography. Eliminate all those distractions in an image. See what the most basic ideas and concepts look like when you peel back all the layers. Simple Simple Simple. 

In this week’s podcast, the changing of the seasons from summer to fall has me thinking about how the change of seasons causes a shift in my photographic practice. As I looked back at my photographic process, I have learned that the limited light and gray of the Pacific Northwest has me hole up in the darkroom in the winter more than I spend time out shooting. Recognizing this, I have shifted what I do in the summer and fall to be better prepared to take advantage of the darker days of winter. After some R&D this summer, I am ready to really focus on printing a number of projects this winter. 

In anticipation of printing this winter also lead me to think about how printing my images can help me think more and more about the indented audience, printing substrates and the final look and feel of a project.  

In this week’s podcast, I got interested in looking at how fraud can rear its ugly head in our creative practice. I was researching something else, and I wanted to see the exact definition of the word fraud. When I looked the word up, I found the following:

” a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.”

As I read the definition, I realize there are times when I have ascribed the word fraud to my photography and creative practice. I noticed this when I had to relearn some of the things I knew I had already learned in Photoshop. Did the fact that I had forgotten and had to look it up mean that I was a fraud? Did the fact that I thought I already knew the skill but in but couldn’t make me a fraud? If someone had asked if I knew how to do that in Photoshop and I said yes make me a fraud? I used to know it. Is forgetting something make me a fraud? I had to find a way to process those questions.

It’s about time for my yearly physical with my doctor, and it got me thinking about some of the test results you get back during your appointment. One of the things that I find interesting is that they have a standard set of bloodwork they do year-over-year. By doing the same basic test year-over-year, they have something to compare and benchmark how well we’re doing with our health. They are also able to use these test to help identify potential problems that may come up in the future.

I was wondering if we could do something similar with our creative practice or with our photography. Is there a set of test we could come up with that would tell us our overall health as a relates to our creative practice and our photography?

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at the impact of not allowing ourselves to have any alone time with our thoughts or moments of silence by filling that time with our smartphones. I believe part of the creative practice is allowing yourself to have moments with your thoughts and observations. However, recently I noticed that when I have a spare 30 seconds to a few minutes, I reach into my pocket and grab my phone. Most of the time, I don’t even know I did it. This action has become an involuntary response. I spent that time looking at social media, playing a game, or just randomly checking out various apps on my phone rather than observing, thinking and reacting to my creative ideas.

As I caught myself doing this recently, I began to wonder how much is that impacting my creativity and photographic process. A significant part of the photographic process is observation and being present and observing things in the world. I began to wonder, is my smart phone causing my creative muscles to atrophy.

A recent trip to a big-box retailer taught me something interesting about my creative process. We were standing in line, and due to a product display blocking peoples view from two different directions, the line was having to merge similar to an on-ramp at a freeway. At one point, a couple ended up cutting us off. However, they felt they were in the right spot for the line. Rather than have a conversation about what was going on, they passive-aggressively turned their backs towards the rest of us in line and had a conversation about how rude it was for people to get in their way. They continue to push on other people’s carts and make sure that everybody knew that they were next in line. What struck me as odd, was that they did not take the time actually to have a conversation with anyone. They chose to avoid the conversation rather than work to resolve any issues they may be feeling towards the rest of us.

This event made me think a lot about my creative process. I believe there are times in my process that I also become passive aggressive with what I’m doing or how I’m reacting to work. And just like the couple at the store, I frequently will avoid the conversation and rather stew in my own stories and issues around what’s going on. I think this is very detrimental to my overall crazy process and likely detrimental to a lot of people’s creative process.

Creativity is all about dealing with the unknown and uncertainty. And just like in the store sometimes lines will merge things will appear in front of us, and we have to determine how organ respond to those in a way that’s going to make us more creative and more engaged with our work. In this week’s podcast, we examine some of the roles and ideas of this passive-aggressive behavior can have towards our understanding of creativity in our creative process.

As we work our creative process we often time find ourselves stuck hitting the wall creatively. This week I was inspired by a Susan Sontag quote on the impact of making photographs of meaning and being so caught up in the act that we miss what is happening around us. Many times, in my work, I find myself struggling to find a way to get around my process behind the camera.

By understanding what can cause us to get stuck, we can hopefully find a way to scale the wall or find a way around it so that we can return to our natural creative state.

I have a couple of announcements to start this week’s podcast. The week of August 21 through the 24th this film week at creative live. I am really excited to be one of the instructors. I will be teaching a black-and-white film class on August 22, and I will be teaching a large-format photography class on August 24. I hope you can attend both sessions. You can find out more at the creative live website.

I will also be speaking at the Northwest counsel for camera clubs the weekend of November 11. At their convention a be teaching two sessions on light room. One on the development module and then one on how to organize using collections and various tools in the library module.

The main subject for this week’s podcast is creating assumptions. I have found my own creative practice that many times I make assumptions they end up costing me time, energy, and enthusiasm. while I think some assumptions are great. Such is the assumption that muscle memory will come back and help us what we need it most. Things like riding a bike or using our studio lights are examples of how muscle memory can quickly come back and allow us to perform a difficult task.

When I was growing up, and you heard something that sounded strange our weird, you had to either blindly accept it, research it at the library or test it yourself. As those stories passed from person-to-person, we eventually learned that the urban legend was something that some of us just accepted and other would challenge. The urban legend has grown up and now become clickbait and fake news. And, by fake news, I mean information that has no backing, factuality or research behind it.

A visit from some family inspired this week’s podcast. My sister-in-law’s family came to visit, and they have a little 2-year old. My brother-in-law and I were talking about being a dad, and he mentioned in passing how much advice they hear from people when it comes to raising their kid.

As we were talking, it occurred to me that much of the advice that they got was from people who didn’t have children. Those people, like me, were only able to speak from knowledge gained from others. Over the course of the conversation, he mentioned that there comes the point where you just know what will work and won’t work regardless of the advice. I realized that was wisdom when dealing with his kid.

In our creative practice, I think it is much the same. We can take in all sorts of knowledge, facts, skills, and whatnot, but in the end, if we don’t move to some level of wisdom, it will be a hard creative road. It is the wisdom of our experiences in that allows us to be the artist we want to be. When we start to apply our understanding of the information we have assimilated into something new and unique to our creative practice do we learn how to be ourselves in our creative practice.

There is nothing wrong with working hard to gain knowledge, but in my experience, at some point, you have to start to let go of all that knowledge as power and then move forward to really becoming a creative voice for your own story.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how some of the concepts that are used in cinematic storytelling can be applied to still photography.

Photography and cinema have always been joined at the hip. While one is an expanded scope for time, sound, and movement, they are still visual mediums that are about the capture of light. As I looked back at some of the movies I have seen in my life, I realized that there was a way to think about some of the storytelling elements in those movies and how they could be applied to my images.

Understanding how directors, actors and cinematographers, use light, costumes, color palettes, assumptions of viewers, and editing of the film all have an enormous impact on our experience of connecting with the story. By diving deep into a few examples, we can see how using some of those same concepts might be able to explain and jump start some of our work as photographers.

This week’s podcast is all about answer some listener’s questions that have been sent in over the past few months. I grabbed some of the more interesting and most asked questions and spend some time answering them.

The topics include finding new photographers, favorite papers to print with, challenges facing photographers, my current project work and finally how to critique a bad photograph.

Bernie De Koven is an amazing person that my partner, Lori Kane, has known for a number of years. Bernie is  all in on play and the importance and value of playing in everyday life. He has written more pages on play the pretty much anyone. He has a huge gift for sharing and helping people. I recently stole his his amazing book called the Well-Played Game from Lori. In this book Bernie talks about how we go about playing well. Focusing more on the importance of the community and players over the game, he is able to offer a number of insights into what makes a game well-played. In the end, we learn that well-played games are in many ways the same keys to a well-lived life.

Through his wonder sense of story telling and insights into play, we learn how we can build community based on purpose, safety, trust, familiarity, and conventions. So many of his insights seem like they are directly related to not just playing but also the creative process. In this week’s podcast, we examine some of the key concepts that Bernie presents in his book and then how they might be applied to the photographic and creative process.

You can learn more about Bernie over at his site. http://www.deepfun.com.

In this week’s podcast, we examine a couple of varied themes and how they all relate to a different way to examine the role of criticism in our creative process.

There is such value in doing the work. The reality of creating is that if you don’t do the work, it’s not going to happen. At the end of the day, you have to put in the effort to make sure that the work gets done. Without that effort and energy, nothing is going to change or make way for your creative process to move you forward as a creative.

Also, in a conversation with my editor, I also learned how certain phrases, while common to some, are completely without context for others. Part of the job as a writer is to try and find a way to say what we need without relying on regional or generational phrases. Something like the dog days of summer might make sense to some people, and yet remain an unknown to many others. Using these sorts of phrases makes it more of a challenge to convey meaning.

In last week’s podcast, we talked about some of the things to consider when submitting to a juried show. In this week’s podcast, I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the things to consider when selecting those images for that juried show.

Before we dived in to talk specifically about the type of images, I thought it was worth pointing out that you need to make sure that your processing your images correctly. Specifically, when working with a JPEG, you need to make sure that you don’t have any JPEG artifacts or over sharpening of the picture.

When submitting to a juried show, one of the most important things you can look at is the overall composition of your photograph. I think it is important to make sure that you avoid any distractions in the image and that you can successfully focus on the subject and subject matter. One of the best ways to do this is with a grease pen. Print off a couple of copies of your image, and use the grease pen to mark up what your eye is drawn to and how your eye travels across the image. If you find you have been distracted by something, you know you need to correct that or select a different image.

One of the questions that I get asked about a lot is entering photo competitions. With so many contests, chances to win and options out there, it is easy to spend a lot of time, energy and effort on entering these competitions.

I think that you need to be selective when you enter these for a variety of reasons. From cost to copyright, there are lots of things to consider when making the decision on if the show is even worthwhile. Other considerations include who is the juror or jury panel made up of.  What do you get out of it besides the selection processes? What do you need to do if you win?

Once you decide to enter it is important to follow the exact directions you are given, think about the story of the image or images and put your best foot forward. Because most of these are blind reviews, competitions are not a great place to have new work or work that you haven’t gotten feedback to be entered. Just because an image isn’t selected doesn’t mean a damn thing. You often don’t learn why you aren’t selected so these are critique sessions that you can use to improve your work.

Finally, there are a billion reasons you might not be selected. In many cases, your work might be better than what was selected. You have to just let all that go and move forward. It is always great to have our work acknowledged, but just because yours wasn’t this time doesn’t mean a thing, asuming of course,  you have taken the time to put out good work. And since you listen to the podcast, I know that is the case. 🙂

This week’s podcast was gonna be about selections for juried show and how you go about picking those. However, over the past several weeks, myself and some of the other instructors, I work with have noticed that there’s something strange in the creative space in the classes were teaching. Ever since the election and November, and the inauguration in January, there seems to be something for a lot of creative people that is causing them not to be able to create the kind of work they truly want to.

I think it’s important, as John Oliver would say, to remember that this is not normal. What we are dealing with is something different than most of us are used to. In some ways, it’s been great because it’s allowed us to bring to the forefront some issues that have been under the surface. Issues around gender, race, and misogyny are just some of the topics that have come to light in ways that people weren’t probably really comfortable or aware of before.

I was reading about the Hayden expedition to Yellowstone in 1871. This expedition is notable in photography because it included the photographer William Henry Jackson. On that same expedition, there was a collection of ornithologist meteorologist biologist botanist and a host of other scientists. The scientist spent a great deal of time gathering and classify all the plants, animals, vegetation, and rocks they could find. That process got me thinking a little bit about photography. I think a lot of us spend time attempting to classify photography, and yet artistic endeavors are a lot about exploration.

A lot of times, we attempt to understand our own creative process with labels on the process. But for many of us the artistic process is not about a label. In many cases, we don’t want the classification. Much of the artistic and creative process is about wandering and trying to understand elements of ourselves, society, and the way we operate between those two spaces. When we talk about our work with others they are often times looking for very simple buckets that the work can fit into so they can quickly understand what we are doing. But depending on where you are with your creative process, you may or may not have a simple bucket for the work to live in. And that’s okay. What is really important is that you spend the time with the chance to explore and understand your work without rushing to put it in a specific bucket.

This past weekend we were helping setup a booth at a local farmers market. As I was talking to a few of the local farmers who were at the market I realized how there approach to farming was something that could be applied to photography. They work hard to make sure that they are developing food in long-term sustainable ways and with a passion for doing things on a scale that keeps them, their families and the planet all happy.

As I talked with them, I realized that our creative life is much the same. We can put in processed (fast food) into our body and it will sustain us for a while but it doesn’t have a way to sustain long-term health. If we treat our photography and creative process like it was fast food, we can end up not being able to function at a level we expect. By taking the time to find a way to be creative, without depending on a constant diet of fast food, we can have a more creative life.

I was recently listening to a couple of photographs look at each other’s work. One of the photographers was showing some abstract work. The other photographer wanted to know what the image was a photograph of. The first photographer wouldn’t say because they felt that it didn’t matter to the understanding of the image.

As I listened to them talk, I got to thinking about how we create perceptions of objects and then assign our concepts to those objects. Each being limited by our own understanding of the contents of the frame and our world view. This idea leads me to think about how boredom might cause us to disconnect from work after we figure out what it is. Ultimately to be a good photographer, I believe that you need to be able to step away from the boredom and stay truly connected to the work.

After reviewing some old notes, I came across a list of things I wish I knew earlier in my photography. That old list got me thinking about what I could tell my past self-based on what I know today. Most of the list is pretty simple, but I think I would have liked to know about these things sooner than later.

You will need a lot of skills to be a photographer.
I started off a film photographer. I had no idea how much digital processing I would need to learn. I had to figure out and learn so much about digital printing, editing, and storage. I also had to know all sorts of business things to run a photographic business. Things like accounting, invoicing, and contracts are all just parts of the business side of photography that I wish I knew I needed earlier. I might have paid more attention in class and business to those areas.
Learn how to see and understand tone and color.
There is a lot to learn about how color impacts a photograph. I don’t think it is enough to know just how to correct for a color. I believe you need to be able to see and understand how color impacts our understanding. Learning to see blues, greens and magentas can make a huge difference in our ability to create work that we love verse work that is just technically accurate.
Can’t learn enough about the subject. The more you know about the thing in front of your camera, the better the photograph will be. It doesn’t matter if it is a person, place or thing. Getting to know as much as you can about the subject will let you connect in a meaningful way to the subject. That connection will make for a more meaningful photograph.
There will be days. Some days just don’t work out the way you want. The key is perseverance. Sticking with the process and the creativity will ultimately be the greatest reward.
Doing what you love will make less be more. If you are doing what you love to do, you will find that you need less stuff because the creative process is more fulfilling than having things.

I am speaking at Photoshop Week on CreativeLive in May. You can join me on Monday, May 16 and Tuesday, May 17 from 10:45-12:15. I am speaking on building a personalized workflow and creating the fine-art print. You can watch for free during the week, so if you can point your browser over to www.creativelive.com during the week of May 16, you can learn a ton about Photoshop and Lightroom from a great set of instructors.

I have been asked a number of times over the past few months if I was planning on switching camera companies. As if switching camera brands would solve anything meaningful with our work we create. As I thought about what causes switching anxiety, it came down to three things.

Problem Solving (real issue not just a substitute for a problem you don’t have)
Expectations (are you blaming your expectations on the gear because you wanted more before your even tried it out)
Vanity (you just like looking cool with the latest stuff)

After visiting some galleries recently, I got to thinking about audience and who looks at art. For photography, in particular, because we are inundated with images that on some level we are exposed to more photograph than any other form of art, and to get meaningful feedback, it is important to understand who actually is looking at our work.

This week’s podcast is all about the crossing lines in our photography. There are always lines in photography that photographers have to think about. Most photographers think about lines in composition when they are thinking about the line. From leading lines to rule of thirds, there are always lines in the frame.

After reading Mason Currey’s book Daily Rituals, I spent some time exploring my own schedule as an artist and how it impacts my own creative energy.

In this week’s podcast, we talk about how the practice of yoga and the art of photography might share a common bond in their respective approaches.

One of the biggest teaching aspects of digital photography is the importance of the non-destructive workflow.

In this week’s podcast, we take a look at some of the differences between facts and truths in art and how having an awareness of both can shift your understanding of photography.

I am excited to announce in this week’s podcast, my 2017 workshop calendar. You can learn more about the workshops here, but I am offering both in-person workshops and online workshops…

I was having coffee with a fellow photographer recently and we got to talking about how truth in a photograph exist when you photograph what you actually see

In this week’s podcast, we answer some of the more popular and interesting questions I have been asked by the listeners of the podcast over the past several months.

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Find solace in your own and the creative efforts of others. many an amazing artist as spent more than there fair share of tiem in jail prison and protest

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More Zone System Basics In last week’s podcast, we took a look at the introduction to the zone system. In this week’s podcast, we take a look at how we can…

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode In part three of this three-part series about how to take an idea to concept to photo series to completion, we take a look at some of the key steps…

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode Looking at my own work, I realize that often times I see the same thing and photograph the same thing over and over again. While the subject and…

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode I have been updating the images in my digital collection. Going back in time and updating the file names, file organization and metadata. As I have…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode   In part 2 of our podcast on Susan Sontag On Photography we take a look at some of the other key themes in the text. While each essay focuses…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode As March Madness takes hold, I got to thinking about our faction with David and Goliath. We seem to love when an underdog rises above expectations…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode As we come to an end of winter and start to move into spring, I have been thinking a lot about my creative process and what makes the creative…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode One of the questions I get asked the most is about starting a photography business. Running your own business isn’t for everyone, but if you…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In this Episode This week focuses on a couple of key questions to consider when deciding if your work is ready to be shown. With the constant pressure of social…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More In going through some older negatives this week, I found several images that were rather abstract and it was hard for me to initially remember the subject matter….

Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | RSS | More One of the classic books on critical theory in photography is Roland Barthes Camera Lucida. One of the last pieces written by Barthes, he writes as series…

In episode 38 of the podcast, I talked about seeing in color verse black and white. Since then I have had a number of conversations about what makes a good color photograph. This is a very complex question as a lot of elements come into play when talking about what…

I often times get asked about how to price a photograph for sale. When looking at basic models for pricing, you only need to know a few things. The cost of your expenses plus your required profit equals the price. If you want to break it down even further. You should…

In part 2 of this series on photographic books, I recommend a number of books that you should consider for the photography section of your bookshelf. With hundreds and thousands of books available, it is often time overwhelming knowing where to start. Even as I…

  There are so many great books out about photography, and I love to read and collect books. If given the choice between new camera gear or new photography books, I always choose books. In this podcast, I have gone into the bookcase and pulled out some books that…

I had a career change that has resulted in me doing my photography full-time now. In talking about that process, I have always said that I am going to do full-time photography, but several of my friends have said something to the effective of “Oh, so you are…

I was recently watching the Incredibles from Pixar again. In the movie Syndrome talk about how how when everyone is special no one is special. This reminded me of a quote by Robert Frank about how if every moment is captured then nothing special is captured and that…

10 Keywords In looking back at old emails I found one where I was asked to photograph a wedding. As I recalled explaining to the person that I don’t photograph weddings and not all photography is the same, I was reminded that while we as photographers do a good…

Perceptive Photographer Episode 5: Lessons in Acceptance In this episode of the Perceptive Photographer I talk about how acceptance can have an impact on your work. From acceptance of your own work, feedback from others and the subjects we photograph, acceptance is a…

the Perceptive Photographer Episode 3 In this latest version of the Perceptive Photographer I talk about why liking a photograph is not necessarily the best way to judge an image. From the misguided feedback on social media with the Like button, +1s and tweets, it is…

the Perceptive Photographer now on iTunes I finally got all my ducks in a row and you can now subscribe to my new podcast the Perceptive Photographer on iTunes. You can find the podcast by searching for it in iTunes or clicking here. If you aren’t a iTunes…