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 …
On Authenticity, Again.
Yesterday I wrote an article about authenticity. This is part two. Photography can be a lens through which we look at the world, and in that world find wonder and experiences we might never have without the camera. But sometimes it’s a little too easy to see our own reflection in the viewfinder. And from there a little too easy …
On Authenticity
It’s been a while since I wrote about vision and voice in the life of the photographer. Recent conversations have pulled me back into those old discussions we used to have here on this blog. One of those recent conversations was with someone wrestling with the idea of authenticity. Was her voice authentic? And how much mucking around with new …
Toward Mastery
I’m uncomfortable with the notion of mastery. It’s not that I don’t believe we can’t, in some broad way, master a craft – gain a level of comfort and expertise that the tools become an extension of ourselves and we wield them purely through muscle memory. I do. In fact if it’s that comfort that’s an indicator of our approach …
Awake Enough.
I was talking to a photographer recently who said something I’ve heard, in so many different words, from so many of us, including myself. She’s taking a trip, going somewhere epic, somewhere she’s obviously been dreaming about, a place that’s already well lodged into her heart and imagination even though she’s never been there. She said she was worried it …