Ansel Adams used to preach that the most important tool in his dark room was the garbage can. I believe the corollary in the digital workflow is the virtual copy. I've often thought that the terms "making art" and "editing" are synonyms for the same activity. If you don't progress through at least a half a dozen drafts, I think you are fooling yourself.

HT1885 - The Most Important Tool in the Darkroom

Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience. 
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).

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HT1929 - Choose Your Mentors Wisely
We are memetic creatures. We learn by observing others and then by copying what we see. This is most visible in babies and toddlers, but is equally true of artists and photographers.

HT1929 - Choose Your Mentors Wisely


HT1928 - Photography and Philosophy
Photography may not be the best medium for philosophy, but that doesn't mean that photography isn't guided, shaped, informed, influenced by a philosophical background. Said another way, art is the marriage between images and ideas. It's easy to see that photography without an image is not art. It's much more difficult to realize that photography without an idea is not art.

HT1928 - Photography and Philosophy


HT1927 - Fame vs Merit
Have you ever noticed how difficult it is for most unknown photographers to get published? In one of those dirty little secrets of the publishing industry, most magazines choose to publish the photographs of famous photographers because they want to ride the coattails of the famous individual. Needless to say, here at LensWork we've chosen a different path and try to bring to light the best work we can based on its merit.

HT1927 - Fame vs Merit


HT1926 - Good Teachers, Better Teachers
Having been a participant in workshops for 50 years (both as a student and as an instructor), I come to recognize that there are two types of instruction that are most prevalent. There are instructors who teach how to make images like they make. Then there are instructors who help you make the images that you want to make.

HT1926 - Good Teachers, Better Teachers


HT1925 - Why Is Always More Important Than How
The technical questions of how to make a photograph dominate almost every YouTube channel, book on photography, workshop content, and much of our creative time. It has always seemed to me that the far more important question is not how, but rather why. Why do you want to make this photograph? Why do you want to share this photograph? Why do you choose to process this way rather than all the other possibilities? The art-life is asking why; our craft-life is asking how.

HT1885 - The Most Important Tool in the Darkroom

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