Iterations

Sean Tucker is a photographer in London who I was introduced to by an
On Taking Pictures listener who emailed me and told me “you have to see this guy’s work. I think it’s right up your alley.” He was right. Sean’s work is terrific, but it was his YouTube channel—how he approaches and speaks about photography and creativity—that was even more up my alley. As you’ll hear, Sean is honest, insightful, and the dedication he has to the craft of photography really shines through. We begin this episode at a point in the conversation where we were talking about some of the challenges commercial photographers face working with clients, specifically when your ability as a photographer to simply shoot the brief seems more important than having the talent and creativity to go beyond it.

CONNECT WITH SEAN
Website: http://seantucker.photography/
YouTube: Sean Tucker
Instagram: @seantuck
Twitter: @seantuck

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

I was introduced to Karl Taylor in 2010 when a friend gave me one of his photography training DVDs. Karl’s energy and enthusiasm for photography along with his incredible knowledge of how to make great pictures in virtually any situation really set him as my benchmark of what photographic training should be. He also has a brilliant way of bringing a fashion style and sensibility to commercial and product photography. Karl lives in the Channel Islands between England and France, and when he came to California in 2012 for a production, I got a chance to spend some time with him and his team in Long Beach and Joshua Tree and we’ve been friends ever since. In this conversation, Karl and I discuss the business side of creativity. I began by asking him to talk about how changes in the industry nearly forced him to close the doors of his studio earlier this year.

CONNECT WITH KARL
Website: karltaylorportfolio.com
Instagram: @karltaylorphotography
Facebook: @karltaylorphotography

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

In 2015, Craft & Vision founder David duChemin invited me to host a short-run podcast. Across 12 episodes, I spoke with photographers who were each, in their own way, exploring what it means to see more clearly, create more intentionally, and develop a voice of their own.

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This will be the last episode of the Craft & Vision podcast and we are ending just as we began, with a conversation with the founder and chief creative nomad of Craft & Vision and one of my favorite people in the world to talk to, David duChemin.

CONNECT WITH DAVID
Website: https://davidduchemin.com/

There are some photographs that just stick with you — images that once you see them, you simply can’t unsee. It happens across virtually all genres of photography. A single image, a particular project or an entire body of work seeps into our being and becomes a point of reference along an internal visual continuum. When I first saw the work of Nick Brandt, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. His photographs taken in East Africa transcended any wildlife photography that I had seen before. Nick is somehow able to photograph the souls of the animals, not just their image or likeness. In his newest body of work, called Inherit the Dust, Nick returns to East Africa to show how habitat loss as a result of population explosion and urbanization are dramatically changing the landscape and threatening biodiversity and the continued existence of species that roamed the plains of Africa for thousands of years prior to the proliferation of man. It’s a fascinating conversation and an incredibly powerful body of work.

LINKS
Big Life Foundation
Amboseli Park
Fitzcarraldo
Apocalypse Now
The Godfather
Godfather, Part II
The Conversation
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

CONNECT WITH NICK
Website: nickbrandt.com

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

In 2015, Craft & Vision founder David duChemin invited me to host a short-run podcast. Across 12 episodes, I spoke with photographers who were each, in their own way, exploring what it means to see more clearly, create more intentionally, and develop a voice of their own.

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Duncan Fawkes is a former IT professional who turned layoff from his 9 to 5 into an opportunity to leap into a new career as a landscape photographer. Born and raised in Scotland, Duncan and his family now call Australia home. In this conversation, host Jeffery Saddoris talks to Duncan about staying true to your internal compass, the importance of always being willing to learn and how sometimes bad news can lead to great things.

CONNECT WITH DUNCAN
Website: https://www.instagram.com/duncan_fawkes/

When I was a junior in high school I took my first photography class and one of the things we had to do before we got to shoot with the “real” cameras — in our case, they were Pentax K1000s loaded with Tri-X — was to build a pinhole camera from one of the round Quaker Oats boxes. And I remember thinking how incredible it was to see the simplicity of what photography is: light and time. Not even a lens — just a strip of gaffer tape covering a tiny hole in some tinfoil. But there we all were, toting our oatmeal boxes around making pictures. Then we would go into the darkroom and print little positive contact prints from the paper negatives and I’ve gotta tell you, it was alchemy. For us, the pinhole camera was just a stepping stone to get to use an SLR. In this episode, I’m talking to Jon Wilkening a photographer in Philadelphia who uses pinhole as his preferred platform for communicating his creativity. For Jon, pinhole is his tool of choice for expressing his point of view. Jon calls his work “the blurry middle between photography and painting.” His pictures are terrific and it all started sort of by accident.

LINKS
Holga Pinhole Camera
David duChemin
Ernst Haas

CONNECT WITH JON
Website: jonwilkening.com
Twitter: @jonwilkening
Instagram: @jonwilkening

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