This image is a photograph of two black gondolas on black water. We do not see things as they are but as they look, and the brain will do whatever it can to untangle puzzles like this. So many people will walk past this scene and others like it and never see it. Not truly. They will see it at …
The End of What It Looks Like
I’m in Melbourne right now – my first time to Australia, and my 50th country. I’m speaking at the Nikon AIPP, an incredible convention filled with some wonderful people. Yesterday I gave the keynote address that opened the conference; it’s a fearful task to inspire people at 8:30am. It was a presentation I’ve been obsessing over for a couple weeks …
Cringe
I often look at the work of a younger me and cringe at his decisions. His choice of moments was hurried and impatient. His composition was simplistic. His use of colour and composition was undeveloped. My god, he barely seemed to know what he was doing. No wonder he spent so much energy trying to convince himself he wasn’t an …
A Little More Defiance, Please.
One of the most heartbreaking things I hear from photographers, when I ask why they do not share their work, is this: who am I to put my work out there? Who wants to hear what I have to say? It’s heartbreaking for so many reasons, not the least of which is how often I hear it. From photographers, from …
Lens Caps
I’m not sure whether anyone needs to hear this or I just needed to say it. But it’s starting to feel like the spirit of our current time is fear and fear often leads us to build walls around our hearts, to do what we can to protect ourselves. And the thing that was meant to protect us quickly becomes …
Cath(art)ic
What if art has always been, in some deeply human way, cathartic for us? What if we used art as a way to respond to the heartache and the fear and the thoughts and emotions we had no other way to explore or express? What if we once responded to the world in the medium that worked best for us; …
Paying Attention
Every day we draw upon limited resources for the things we want in life. We choose what we spend our time on, what we spend our money on, and what we will pay attention to. All three of these give us either greater freedom or impose stricter limits on our lives. What we spend frivolously now we will not have …
F/ The Rules
Several years ago, we were enjoying a lively dinner in Oaxaca, Mexico during the Day of the Dead festivals, a small group of us together on a workshop, when the table across from us got up, all of them photographers, all of them hung heavily with gear. They fumbled with their stuff, excited to get out to make photographs in …
The Power of Failure
I wrote this just before what I’ve come to call “The Italian Incident” 5 years ago, just after writing a different article, Choose Your Risk, which you can read here. It remains true, if not truer now than ever to me. After beginning the discussion on risk, my brain started churning through some of the responses and push-back left in …
Tell Me a Story
I just finished reading a book about the power of story. Another one. I keep coming back to this topic because I can’t escape the feeling that photographers are missing something. Sure, we acknowledge that some of the best photographs tell, or imply, a story. But it usually ends there. I think we can do better. The book, The Storytelling …