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Real Photographers Do What?

In Creativity and Inspiration, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David112 Comments

Of all the prescriptive nonsense I hear about making photographs, the idea that “real photographers shoot on manual” has to be the most tiresome. As if burdening photographers with an even greater sense of obligation to the shoulds and the should-nots has ever led to greater creative freedom, less rigidity in our work, and more powerful photographs. I’ve heard similar …

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Recalculating the Creative Life

In Creativity and Inspiration, Life Is Short, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Italian Incident, The Life Creative by David28 Comments

  I recently read of a 19-year-old football player, a goalkeeper for Real Madrid, who was in a serious car accident and left unable to walk for two years. The story caught my attention because it was 14 years ago this month that I had my own accident, which shattered both my feet, cracked my pelvis, and left me unable to walk with a long road …

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Make It Different, Make it Yours.

In Creativity and Inspiration, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David7 Comments

One of the great photographic challenges is making a photograph that is different: different from what others are making and different from the images you’ve made so many times before. Taking the same photograph over and over doesn’t appeal to me. I want to go further, learn more, and get closer and closer to images that feel uniquely my own. I’m …

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My Keeper Rate is Getting Worse

In Creativity and Inspiration, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David19 Comments

I have over 400,000 photographs on my hard drives. Of those, only 2,000 images have been compelling enough over the years to consider them final photographs or “keepers.” I suspect I’d have even fewer if I went through them all now. That’s a so-called keeper rate of 0.5% or less. After almost 40 years behind a camera, only half of one percent of …

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Keep At It. Wonder Awaits.

In Creativity and Inspiration, Life Is Short, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative by David19 Comments

 It was 39 years ago on a summer day much like today when I picked up a 35mm Voigtländer rangefinder camera at a neighbour’s garage sale. That whim would change my life, drain my bank account many times over the decades that followed, and make me a different human being than I might have been if I’d bought the tennis racquet instead. …

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A Word About Art-Making

In Creativity and Inspiration, Life Is Short, Pep Talks, Rants and Sermons, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David142 Comments

One of the happy perils of posting your work online is the very real possibility of criticism. I suppose posting it anywhere exposes you, but the internet gives people both a microphone and anonymity. Things get said online that would never be said in person to another soul. The internet, especially social media, emboldens us. But it’s not only the internet. …

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The Adventure of Art

In Creativity and Inspiration, Life Is Short, Pep Talks, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David10 Comments

“Life,” said Helen Keller, “is either a daring adventure or it is nothing.” The same can be said about art and the effort to make it. Adventure is defined as ” a risky undertaking of unknown outcome, an exciting or unexpected event.” Risky. Unknown. Unexpected.  Art-making has a wildness to it, an untamed quality. I know I’ve written about this …