Iterations

Nick Mayo is a terrific street photographer from Grand Rapids, Michigan who is using YouTube and Instagram to build a platform centered around serving the photographic community and having an ongoing dialog discussing the challenges of making and sharing authentic work. His
Two Minute Tuesdays for example are live weekly snapshots of some of the things he’s wrestling with not only as a visual artist, but also as a human being. In this conversation we discuss the value of revisiting a favorite location again and again and how being a little outside his comfort zone, is exactly where he likes to be.

CONNECT WITH NICK
YouTube: http://youtube.com/nickexposed
Instagram: @NickExposed
Facebook: @NickExposed

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

As much as I love artists like Rauschenberg, deKooning and even Boucher, the first artist I knew by name was Frank Frazetta. He painted worlds I had never seen before, filled with warriors being pulled by a team of polar bears, red eyed demons on horseback and beautiful scantily clad maidens. I poured over his books, meticulously copying my favorite characters. While it was great drawing practice, I wasn’t doing anything original. I had sketchbooks filled with Frazetta drawings, but not one that was a Saddoris.

I’m loving the work of Canadian illustrator Terry Edward Elkins. He has a terrific style that reminds me of vintage national parks posters and some of my favorite children’s book illustrators.

Questlove is a monster. He’s the founder and drummer for the Roots, a DJ, a producer, a professor, and an author. As you’ll hear in this NPR conversation, he also has some really inspiring thoughts around creativity.

Israeli photographer Natan Dvir was the winner of the 2017 Lens Culture Emerging Talent award. His project Platforms takes viewers below the streets of New York to “investigate the interactions (or lack thereof) between the city’s commuters.”

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Trying to make a living as a professional photographer is hard, really hard. You might get into it thinking that all you’re going to do is take pictures, but it doesn’t take long to realize that time with a camera in your hands is only a small part of a what’s required day to day. It’s even harder when you’re also working a full-time job. But Freddy Clark is doing the work. He’s taking his passion for photography, an encyclopedic knowledge of beer, and a background in IT and is steadily building a new career as a food and beverage photographer, and it all started at a small rock ’n’ roll radio station in the Poconos.

CONNECT WITH FREDDY
Website: http://santephoto.com
Instagram: @santephoto
Twitter: @santephoto

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Dutch street photographer Maarten Rots makes the kind of pictures that the graphic designer in me can’t get enough of. His purposeful compositions are made up of strong lines, bold colors, and subtle overlapping textures with just enough visual ambiguity to pull me in and ask myself, “what is that?” It’s the type of work that I seldom grow tired of and often find new details the more I look at it. In his self-published magazine 
March & Rock
, Maarten’s work takes on a different dimension when it’s no longer confined to a phone or a browser and it’s exactly this project that I wanted to talk to him about.

CONNECT WITH MAARTEN
Website: http://maartenrots.nl
Instagram: @maartenrots

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Earlier today, Bill and I recorded episode 312 of On Taking Pictures and while I wouldn’t say it was our best show—it was a good show. I think every show is a good show for one reason or another. It was one of the more significant shows because of the number—episode 312. If you do the math, 312 marks the end of six years of doing On Taking Pictures every week and while I’ve talked in the past about what doing OTP has meant to me and what I’ve learned from it, how it has changed my life and the new friends I have as a result of it, those things are really byproducts of doing the work.

Christopher Burkett is a landscape photographer who uses a large format 8×10 film camera and discontinued Cibacrome paper to make stunning photographs of the natural world. Unfortunately, when Christopher runs out of paper, he will put away his camera and turn out the lights in his darkroom for the last time.

Sanderson to Brackettville is short documentary made by filmmaker Parker Hill as she followed photographer Jason Lee on a four-day stretch in West Texas as he attempted “to document residual American landscapes across Texas in early 2017 with large format color films” for his new book A Plain View.

If you are a fan of classic movies and terrific graphic design, Indiewire has you covered with this fantastic collection of every movie poster iconic graphic design Saul Bass ever created.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0