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 …
Holiday Gift Guide
You knew I wasn’t going to be the voice telling you to go buy more stuff for the photographers in your life, right? Right about now every blog out there is starting to release their Holiday Gift Guides and you should probably go there if you are looking for something cool to buy yourself, oops, I mean to buy someone …
Steller Sea Lions
In the Salish Sea, the wild green waters of the Strait of Georgia, between British Columbia’s west coast and Vancouver Island, there’s an island that takes a couple ferries to get to. The water is full of life upon life and is the winter home to Steller Sea Lions who will winter there and feed on the spring herring …
Find The Magic
I had a moment in Italy last month as I walked down cobbled streets looking at reflections in the canals of Venice, raising my camera once in a while to my face, feeling like I was in that state of flow that most creatives feel in their souls like a drug when it comes over them. That moment was a …