Episodes

In this Episode I have been really interested in how storytelling happens in art. For the past several months I have been looking more an more at how motion pictures and higher-value television shows construct and tell stories. Because the medium is similar to photography, the use of lighting, location, framing, and subjects are very close to how we might use them in a still image. Motion pictures have the added benefit of language, dialog and music. As I was recently watching a number of films...

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 been updating all the metadata fields it got me thinking about all that metadata and how we can use it to sort, search and learn about my work. As I was making the metadata consistent and clean, it occurred to me that it would nice to have some metadata fields that could be used for our visual literacy and language in our work, Sure,...

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 on a central theme, many of her core concepts and principles are dominate across the entire text. In this podcast, I focus on a few of the key concepts that I think most photographers could pull out of the text and find useful in understanding their work. In particular we focus on the following concepts: Everything in the world can be the ...

In this Episode In 1977, Susan Sontag release a collection of essay written between 1973 and 1977 in a book called On Photography. The book is a collection of those essays in which Sontag examines the role of photography, photographs and photographers impacts on society and art. Written more as philosophical thoughts than academic in its approach, Sontag is able to provide some real interesting insights, observations and arguments around the value and nature of photography. In this week’s podca...

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 and can advance in the tourney. I think creativity in a lot of ways is sort of like David vs Goliath, but the Goliath is leading a life outside of creativity doing what is expected vs the life that “everyone” talks about living which would be the David. As i made the transition to full-time photography, I kept hearing from my friends...

In this Episode This week I noticed a number of articles online talking about the secrets of photography. Most of them had between five and ten secrets that every photographer should know. As if there are these secrets that somehow have magic powers. At the same time I have been looking back and some journal entries from the past few years and found some interesting topics that I thought were worth sharing. I have to admit that these are not the great and grand secrets of photography, but I do ...

In this Episode With the introduction of the Kodak Brownie camera, the masses have been able to photograph pretty much anything they want. This has allowed us to have an interesting look at our history. As told from the perspective of the everyday photographer, any object could become a source of inspiration. Flash forward to today and we are creating billions of seemingly similar photographs. A search of Instagram alone for words like latte art will generate thousand upon thousands of similar ...

In this Episode Well it has been a year since I started the podcast. In this 52nd episode, I look back at a couple of key learning points from the year. As I started the podcast, I learned how hard it is to get audio recorded and sounding normal. I also was reminded that you can just as easily focus on getting new gear to record on or you can focus on learning how to make better content. Just like in my photography, keeping your eye on the final product is so much more important than focusing o...

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 process work. Having read dozens of books and watching countless hours of video, I have learned that your creative process can be informed by the process other people use, but in most cases our creative process is our own. It is something that you have to develop for yourself. It becomes as unique to our own world as a fingerprint. Road ...

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 are wanting to have the freedom and responsibilities that come with being your own boss, there are some things to consider as you get started that can really help you get off on the right foot. In most cases, people who start their own business think that they are alone, but the key to being successful in business is having great partnershi...

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 media and wanting to get our work seen as much as possible, we are often faced with some difficult decisions on when to show our photos and in what state to show our images. I break this issue down into three major areas. First is knowing when your work is done. Second is getting comfortable with only showing work that you have finished...

In this Episode This week focuses on the importance of story and storytelling in photography. Starting off as a conversation about editing (in photoshop) vs editing (for story), it occurs to me that we spend a considerable amount of time working on our photoshop skills but not a lot of time on our story telling skills. In this podcast, we look at the basic narrative structure of a story and how it can be applied to everyday photography. Storytelling Concepts Basic fictional stories normally h...

In this Episode In this week’s episode, we look at some of the key concepts and places to start your workflow from. Based on similar workflows coming out of the film production, many of the choices we made in the past are even more relevant today. When starting to think about workflow, I make sure to start by objectively reviewing the work before I make any edits. I look at point of view, compositional elements and expsoure. Where there things I could have corrected in camera. I also start to t...

Over the past several weeks the same topic has been coming up for me over and over again The question of what makes a good photograph. We talked in part about this a few weeks ago in the two-part episode about Camera Lucida (You can get part 1 here and part 2 here) and the notion of punctum from Roland Barthes. I also had a classroom critique with a student who was showing work on a new project that was technically sound but not that good of images. As I began to think about what makes for a go...

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. As I stood over the light table, I thought about Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalence work. Alfred Stieglitz Influences by Wassily Kandinsky, Stieglitz was interested in understanding how to push photography into a new realm. At the time photography was not really considered an art, and while Stieglitz worked hard to get photography elevat...

In this episode, we take a look at some of the things that you need to focus on when you aren’t sure about how to get started with organizing your images so that you can take on the edit and sequencing of a project. Much like location in real estate, the key to getting successful editing and sequencing of your project is organization, organization, and organization. Tools to Stay Organized It doesn’t matter what you use to stay organized (Lightroom, Capture One, PhotoMechanic), as long as you ...

In Part 2 of our look at Roland Barthes Camera Lucida we spend time talking about the second part of the book. While the first part focused more heavily on the coding and meaning of photography and photographs as points of basic study and banality (studium) and photographs of true interest or applied pressure (punctum), the second half of the book focuses more on how the images impact him and his search for an actual photograph. He is ultimately able to find a photograph of his mother that he c...

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 of short essays and thoughts on photography. Specifically he tries to understand why some photographs resonate more with him than others. Why do some photographs, no matter their historical or artistic significance resonate and other do not? Why do some family photographs matter more than others? Is there is system or coding system that can al...

Understanding color and how we perceive and see color can go a long way in helping understand how and why some of photographs make for stronger color images and others fail. Our understanding of color and how color relates has been studied for hundreds of years by painters, scientist, and psychologist. While each disciple is able to provide a clue to how we see and understand color, it is only by examining multiple approaches to color theory can be begin to fully understand why colors work in ou...

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 makes a good photograph. However, there are a number of key concepts about color and color theory that can help us to understand what the color and color structures are doing within an image to better help us understand the photograph...

For this weeks podcast, I am joined by Seattle based fine-art photographer Gina White. Gina has been a photographer for over 25 years working primarily in historical and analog processes. She is a a faculty member at the Photographic Center Northwest where she teaches primarily black and white analog courses along with several courses focused on alternative processes such as lith and bromoil printing. In the interview, we discuss what it means to be a photographer and to live a creative life. T...

One of the greatest things about working in modern photography is the flexibility that all our tools allow. One of those areas of flexibility is in shooting in back and white or color. When shooting film, you had to make a decision about shooting in black and white or color when you loaded the camera. This limitation forced the photographer to think about what and how they were going to create their images. Working in Black and White or Color All photography is about light and shadow. These ar...

When working on a project one of the most important aspects of that work is the editing and sequencing work. To tell a great story, you need to make sure that the images you select for the project are not just great images but also tell the best story possible. In this podcast, we take a look at the key concepts around editing and sequencing work. Focused on more of the photo essay verse a photo story, we talk about how important it is to have strong images. Focusing on composition, technique, ...

What is the most important camera setting for a good photograph? I always respond to this question with my classic f/8 at 1/125th of a second. It is what all my shots are done with. I even hold a patent on that setting. My feeble attempt at humor does have me thinking about what are the good “settings” to use for successful images. I know that a lot of time we might look to inspiration as a key setting to getting good photographs, but the reality is that inspiration is just about showing up eve...