I got back from East Africa a week ago, my hard drives groaning with over 20,000 images. Of those only about 1500 were made during my week in Lalibela, Ethiopia. Now, I shouldn’t be doing math right now, I’m jet lagged and haven’t had my coffee, but there’s something instructive in these numbers, so stick with me. Don’t like math? …
More Photographs, Less Money
Photography can be an expensive pursuit, and the cost of things (and the pressure to buy them all, buy them new, and buy them now) can get in the way of putting that money in better places. It’s not my place to tell you what to do with your money, but I do want to suggest you consider investing it …
I Feel Like I’m Faking it. You?
Among the well-worn tropes within the creative world is this: fake it till you make it. We’ve all said it. Or thought it. Particularly when we feel like we don’t belong, like we have no idea what we’re doing, when we feel like everyone else has their creative shit together and we’re staring into the void hoping no one discovers …
How to Please Your Audience Everytime.
We live in strange times. Never before has an artist of any stripe been able to put their work into the world so broadly and so quickly. Never before has an artist been able to hear every voice that cares to praise, criticize, or issue feedback with neither context nor conversation. Most often it’s just a binary reaction: a like …
Wishing for Creativity.
“I sure wish I was more creative.” Have you ever said those words either to yourself or others? Every time I hear “I wish I were more creative,” I want to put my fingers in my ears and run out of the room. La-la-la-la-la, I can’t hear you! It’s a crappy mantra. You can be more creative. Being more creative …
The Long Game of Craft
When I was a kid, new to photography, I poured over magazines lusting over the new gear advertised in their pages, and the photographs I thought that new gear would make for me. I wanted to make the kinds of photographs that would go into those magazines, and win those awards. It made a certain amount of sense to me, …
All The Light We Can Get
Years ago I wrote a letter to a woman named Jennifer. A collection of many people I know and who’ve asked me questions over the years, Jennifer was more a symbol than a real person, but my words to her couldn’t have been more true. Today I got a letter from Emily. It could have been anyone, or everyone. You, …
The One About Being “Realistic”
As we roll into 2018 with our usual expectations that this year is going to be different, or better, or the year we take things to the next level or dial things up to 11, or whatever, there will be no shortage of voices – many of them in your own brain – that are going to try to hold …
Tired of Perfection
This is a little bit all over the place, and it’s raw. But that’s the point of this whole thing. I could do with a little more raw right now. I’m tired of perfection. My morning scroll though Instagram just wears me down more every day, with image after image post-processed into plasticity, over-sharpness, and the obliteration of shadows. I’m …
Everyone’s A Photographer?
I posted this to FaceBook one year ago and now seems as good a time as ever to post this here. I was speaking last year at an event with a panel of photographers. There was a Q&A afterwards and someone asked me what I thought about this idea that “everyone is a photographer.” I told her I agreed. Everyone …