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Creative Failure: Teacher or Trap?

In Creativity and Inspiration, Life Is Short, Pep Talks, Rants and Sermons, The Craft, The Italian Incident, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory, Uncategorized by David28 Comments

In the creative life very few things go the way we expect them to, and I suspect when they do, it’s because we’re not reaching far enough beyond our comfort zone, not risking enough. First steps into any new endeavour—whether that’s learning a new technique or beginning a new body of work—are not the steps that get you to a …

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It’s All Been Done?

In Pep Talks, Rants and Sermons, The Craft, The Life Creative, Thoughts & Theory by David51 Comments

Somewhere out there, right now, sits a photographer who wants to throw in the towel, discouraged because they haven’t yet found their thing, their niche. I know this because I’ve been that photographer. Some of you have told me you’ve been there, too. Many photographers are still there, frustrated by how hard it is to be original. “It’s all been …

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Best For What?

In GEAR, Pep Talks, Rants and Sermons, The Craft, Thoughts & Theory by David23 Comments

For years, the article that got the most traffic on this blog was titled “The Best Travel Tripod?” Google sent people there in droves, but most of them didn’t stay long because I stubbornly refused to give an actual answer to that question: what’s the best travel tripod? Instead, I tried to encourage a particular way of thinking for readers to find …

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Everyone’s A F*cking Photographer

In Rants and Sermons, The Craft, The Life Creative by David

(A Labour-Day Weekend Rant for you, with apologies to those who cringe when I cuss.) Last time I was in Venice I saw a camera-ladened photographer, a huge tripod slung over his shoulder, turn to a friend and gesture to the crowds of people happily making photographs with their mobile phones, as he sneered, “now everybody thinks they’re a f*cking …

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Better Than Like

In Rants and Sermons, The Craft by David12 Comments

The making of art, and the appreciation of it, is a subjective thing. It is deeply personal, and this is one of its strengths, not a weakness. But there’s a danger in seeing art in such personal, subjective terms, and that hazard is no more clearly seen than in the oft-used word, “like.” As in, “Oh, I really like that …

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Postcards from Socorro

In Postcards From..., Rants and Sermons by David19 Comments

  We have this astonishing notion as photographers that we just have to go to a cool place, put our cameras in front of cool things, and not screw up the exposure or the focus, in order to get compelling photographs. Deep down, though, I think we all know it’s not true, at least for us. Well, it’s rarely true …