If life is short, then it follows that there is more to do in our brief, beautiful days than we could ever accomplish. It is said that photography is the art of exclusion. What the photographer leaves out of the frame is as important as what he leaves in. Within the frame of the photograph every element pulls the eye, …
The Artist’s Journey
One of the great revelations of my life came when I discovered Joseph Campbell and his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. I read it while studying films and screenplays and trying to understand what makes a great story. And I read it while divorcing for the first time and not sure I was going to survive the trauma …
A Beautiful Anarchy
Colour outside the lines and make the best art of your life! To my core I believe that our lives can be lived boldly, intentionally, and as our truest work of art. I believe we are all capable of living extraordinary lives; that people like Gandhi, Picasso, or Mother Teresa, were ordinary people who chose to be fully themselves …
For Jennifer, Whomever You Are.
Jennifer is a composite of all the students who’ve asked me to look at their work online and offer some advice. My advice has changed over the years. Dear David, I’m a second-year photography student. Would you look at my work and offer me any advice? Dear Jennifer, Thank you for the invitation to spend some time with your work. …
Personal Projects
Mongolia series. 2012. Hasselblad and some old film. There’s a lot of talk among photographers about personal projects. I assume, by this, we mean projects that are not for clients, though I’ve tried very hard to never do a project that is not in some way also personal. Life’s too short. For me the key word isn’t “personal” because that’s …
Impressions & Abstracts
Next week we’re releasing my next eBook – The Visual Imagination, a book about creative techniques and ideas that focuses mostly on impressionism and abstraction. Yesterday I was doing a pre-release podcast interviews, talking to Ibarionex Perello, the amazing voice and mind of The Candid Frame, and he asked me the one question I’m so fond of asking others. Why? …
Three Things About Time
He told me I was one of the most productive people he knows. Somewhere in the same breath he used the word “lucky,” as though my “luck” was the only reason I get so much done. I think he meant it as a compliment. With all the talk lately about the brevity of life and the importance of really living …
Fill Your Canvas
My mother and I on safari this January. Photographs by Cynthia Haynes. On Friday I re-posted Life is Short. The comments and the emails I’ve had since that original post have lit me on fire in a way I can’t describe, reminding me how deeply we can live when we get intentional about it. It also reminds me of the …
Thoughts on Done
I sat earlier this week around the coffee table in my loft with three very close friends, all of them thinkers and artists and several margaritas into the evening. We talked, as photographers and storytellers do, about our art and the art of others, and the struggle we all love enough that we keep doing it. One of the things …
Follow Your Passion?
As trendy as it has been recently for people to write about doing things fueled by our passion, it looks like we’ve now swung the other way, fatigued, I suspect, by all this talk of passion, which like any hot-burning fire, takes constant fuel to feed it. No wonder we’re tiring of the word “passion”. But it would be a …