The story goes like this: A student asks Jay Maisel, “How can I make more interesting photographs?” to which Jay sagely replies, “become a more interesting person.” Having never formally studied Art, my creative is process is probably a little unsophisticated: I daily try to live the most vital, engaged, and interesting (to me) life I possibly can. Intentional. Passionate. …
The Life Creative (1)
Craft can only take any of us so far. Learn all there is to know about photography and the resulting photographs themselves may get Liked on Facebook but they’re unlikely to be art. Art, to be art, has to have something of the artist within. Art uses craft to say something, to point at something, and as often as not …
THE PRINT AND THE PROCESS Released.
It’s here! The Print and The Process, my latest book, and the unofficial 5th book in the Vision Trilogy is shipping! It’s a little earlier than anticipated, but I’ve just had an email from home telling my the first books off the press are sitting on my desk. I tried to do something different with this book, which we started …
The Gift of Inspiration
Ah, Christmas time, that precious time of year once set aside to celebrate love, peace, and forgiveness. It’s also that time of year when the blogs get full to bustin’ with “official” gift guides (it’s true, they register them down at town hall.) for photographers who need more clever gimmicks and plastic crap like they need a wet tongue on …
The Voice of Fear
I tell my students at the Vancouver Gatherings that fear is the greatest barrier to creativity. I tell them to bring their fears into the light, to give their fears a chance to say their piece, then to call bullshit and move on. I tell them this because the alternative is to leave our fears muttering to us from the …
Mara Impressions I
Mara Impressions I, Kenya, 2012. Click it to see it larger as the smaller image really does it no justice. I made this in the Maasai Mara, still under the spell of my friend Wendy’s expressionist / abstract work. What struck me most about her work is the effect of motion and light to create new lines, almost brush strokes, …
Faking It.
Ice Abstract, Peggy’s Cove, NS. 2012. Every artist I know, particularly those who feel uncomfortable calling themselves artists, feels like they’re faking it. In those moments when I’m totally transparent and feeling brave, I’ll tell you it’s one of the two fears with which I wrestle daily – the first that one day I’ll wake to find my muse has …
Photographing My Father
This fall I took my girl and my camera to visit my father. We drank some wine, watched the leaves change colour, spent some time riding around the back roads in his 1949 Willys Jeep, Patches. And we went off for an hour to do a portrait project I’ve been wanting to do, more and more urgently as my father …
CREATE. SHARE. REPEAT.
A couple large prints would look great on these walls. Photographers are a funny lot. So easily distracted. I just came back from the camera store where I came within an inch of buying the new Fuji X Pro 1. I resisted and had a cupcake instead. But as I drove home I thought about it. I had been working …
Why I Print
Monument Valley, 2011 With the advent of digital photography, and even more importantly, the internet, our ability to share and experience photographs has changed dramatically. The wet darkroom, once so necessary for creating prints we could touch and feel, is much less common than it once was, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that the majority of …