I get about a dozen emails or comments on social media every month asking me what to do when you wake up one day and you realize you’re bored and you feel like your photographs are boring and because the only only thing worse than making boring photographs is being bored yourself, and because I think there’s a connection, I …
Change How You Make Photographs.
Today’s the day you’ve been waiting for! For some of you it’s the day I finally stop teasing you about The Compelling Frame. For some of you it’s the day I finally stop talking about it. If you’re among the first, then you’re in luck! If you’re among the second group, I’m sorry to say you’ve got another week to …
3 Ways to Start Seeing Better
This is the final of three videos I’ve made to introduce you to the course I’m releasing next week. The Course is called The Compelling Frame and I’ll give you a sneak peek at it in this video. The video is about learning to see because while we’re exploring making stronger photographs with composition and visual design I think it …
3 Ways to Improve Your Compositions Now
Last week I put up a video about Making Images That Connect. This morning I’ve put up the second video. If the first video was about the need to make stronger images, this is about how we begin to really do that. It’s not a long video and it’s not a full-on course in composition (that’s coming!) – but doing …
Making Images that Connect
If you’ve been around here a while you know I’ve been on a bit of a tear about the importance of composition in making images that connect: images that do more than just get a like on Facebook or Instagram. And I’ve been around long enough to know that this is the big hurdle of most photographers – sure, we …
Stoke the Fire
Sometimes you lose the fire. Sometimes, after years of loving something, you can’t find the spark. I’ve had a couple photographers recently tell me they’ve lost it, that they awoke one morning to find their groove had become a rut and they felt trapped and directionless. It happens. And sometimes the answer is just pick up the camera, get out …
The Photographer’s Tools
I believe now more than ever in this beautiful craft. I love its democratic nature, I love the way it uses such elegant raw materials: light and time. I love the mechanics, and the way the cameras feel in my hands. And I adore the final print. In fact the moment I’m done writing this I’m going to run some …
Learning Mastery
Facebook did it to me again. A headline promised me I could master photography easily. It sent me (I couldn’t help it, I was curious) to an infographic about apertures and shutter speeds and focus modes and rules of thirds. I read it all. And when I was done I knew exactly what I knew when I was 15 years …
Making Photographs & Magic
When I was 14 I picked up a camera at a neighbour’s garage sale, a little Voigtlander rangefinder that changed my life. Quickly I wanted what we all want at the beginning – more control, more lenses, more gear. My mother gave me a Pentax Spotmatic and a gadget back full of stuff, acquired from a co-worker who had recently …
OverSharing?
A couple years ago I went for sushi with Chase Jarvis and as we sat across the table talking about art and commerce and life and stuff, he expressed an idea that I’ve loved and played with ever since – that the task of an artist is this: to create, and to share, and to do whatever you need to …