Episodes

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 prim...

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. Gear used in podcast

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. Gear used in podcast

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...

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 g...

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 tha...

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 ...

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...

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 pre...

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. One of the hardest parts of working today is trying to find a way to keep what you are passionate about first and front in your work. Too many times,...

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. This bucket is the biggest bucket ...

In this week’s podcast, the value of routine comes front and center. A good friend of mine had recently purchased a new camera and asked me what one skill I thought was most important to photography. I sort of sidestepped the topic and picked having a good routine. 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 particul...

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. Gear used in podcast

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...

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 some...

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 s...

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 tak...

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 yo...

There is a great quote by Robert Henri about attitude. Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his [their] subject. 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...

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 profo...

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....

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 ho...

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 caus...

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 th...