The enigmatic Cat in the Hat once told us that “there is no one alive who is you-er than you.” The less fictional Miles Davis reminds us (as I tried to do two weeks ago in this article) that this is true but that it takes some time to arrive at, that it can take a long time to play, or—as a …
Shoot Like Yourself
“Sometimes,” observed the great jazz musician Miles Davis, “you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” Sometimes? I think he was graciously understating it. For most of us, learning to shoot like ourselves is not only a long journey but a necessarily winding one. When we first begin to make photographs and take our …
What Gets Overlooked (Don’t Let it be This)
Your biggest challenges, the ones that stand in the way of your best photographs, are not technical; they are creative. I’d put money on that being true for almost everyone who reads this. Once you’ve learned the fundamentals, the challenges you have won’t be solved with your tools so much as by your thinking. When you look at the work you’re …
To Hunt or Gather?
It seems to me there are two very different approaches often taken in making photographs. The first is very ad hoc and opportunistic. You walk the streets of India (or wherever) and photograph whatever catches your eye. You wander and you photograph anything and everything that you can find at the intersection of your curiosity and great light. There’s nothing …
A Bigger View? Is An External Monitor For You?
At 50, my eyesight isn’t what it once was. I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since I was about 15, almost as long as I’ve been a photographer, and shooting with glasses has never been easy. They spend a lot of time on top of my head when the camera’s to my eye, and my diopters are constantly moving around, depending on …
Packing For An African Safari
I arrived in Kenya a couple of days ago, and after looking for rhinos for two days in Nairobi National Park, I’m now settled in on the Maasai Mara and eager to get back to work behind the camera. No clients this time—just me and my best friend and a chance to photograph our favourite place on the planet. I’ve been asked …
Stay (Alive & Awake) In The Moment
You will (I hope) be learning this craft for a very long time. The learning curve may flatten out a little and certain skills may come more easily, but after 36 years, I’ve not found myself within sight of the kind of mastery beyond which there is nothing new to learn. My 14-year-old self would be shocked to know what a …
It’s All Been Done?
Somewhere out there, right now, sits a photographer who wants to throw in the towel, discouraged because they haven’t yet found their thing, their niche. I know this because I’ve been that photographer. Some of you have told me you’ve been there, too. Many photographers are still there, frustrated by how hard it is to be original. “It’s all been …
Best For What?
For years, the article that got the most traffic on this blog was titled “The Best Travel Tripod?” Google sent people there in droves, but most of them didn’t stay long because I stubbornly refused to give an actual answer to that question: what’s the best travel tripod? Instead, I tried to encourage a particular way of thinking for readers to find …
Bodies of Work. Your Next Step?
There are, or can be, many steps on the journey of craft (and vision!). The moment we stop paying so much attention to how much light is in a scene and begin to notice its quality is one such significant step forward. Another for me was when I changed my thinking about my lenses and started choosing my focal lengths …