Last week I wrote about the crippling power of fear in the life and process of the artist. I think there are some fears that are universally felt among artists of every discipline, others unique to us as photographers. Chief among those fears, it seems, is the fear that we’ll “miss the shot.” And so we amass every piece of …
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 …
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 …
Stop Waiting.
Marshall Eagle, Kenya, 2012 Perhaps because I spend so much time with creatives I spend more time with frustrated people who feel like they were meant for something more. Perhaps if the default in this culture was to make a living in the arts, we’d be seeing plumbers that just wanted to quit their job painting so they could …
Vancouver Island
Emily in the mud. Vancouver Island. Click to enlarge. What an amazing weekend. It was Canada Day weekend here, north of the 49th parallel, and I celebrated with friends by driving 600 km up Vancouver Island, through old growth forests, logging roads, mud puddles, and coastal views. I went as the new guy on the block, signing up for membership …
A Beautiful Anarchy
Self Portrait, iPhone. There are rules for engineering bridges, and flying airplanes. There are laws about how you drive a car and file your taxes. There are no rules or laws in art. Art is a beautiful anarchy, a place wherein we express – or try to – the inexpressible, to “eff the ineffable” as author Nick Hornby once wrote. …
We Bounce
Ladakh, India, 2008. A year ago, on Easter weekend, I fell 30′ from a wall in Pisa, Italy. Most of you know that. I shattered both feet, cracked my pelvis and was told I would never walk the same again, and would “always have a limp, though you’ll limp with both feet, so it won’t look like a limp.” Whatever …
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 …
A Second Edit
Iceland, 2010 I spent part of today doing a second edit – nearly two years after the first one – on my Iceland 2010 images. These second edits are important to me, for two reasons. First, we miss images on our first edit, and the closer that edit happens to the moments of making the photographs, the more we get …