Jeff Curto's Camera Position

Many people think of a wide lens as a way to get farther away from a subject, but I think of a wide lens as a way for us to get closer… a wide lens is really a close-up lens, allowing us to create a dominant subject in the frame by emphasizing the difference in … Continue reading Camera Position 203 : Your Eyes and The Lens →

Podcast listener Tracy wrote: “Photography comes from the depths of who we are. It is not only an exploration of our world, it is also an exploration of ourselves.” This episode is a “part 2” of self-exploration and its relationship to our photography, utilizing a worksheet that you can download called “Passion and Mission” to … Continue reading Camera Position 202 : Exploring The World And Ourselves →

What is your story? What are you curious about? What do you care about? How can your photographs express those interests? Making stronger photographs often depends on digging deep to determine your passion and then translating those passions into images. Play Podcast:   Links for this Episode: Morton Arboretum Photographic Society – Where I’ll be … Continue reading Camera Position 201 : Digging Deeper →

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes and art is knowing which mistakes to keep. Instead of living in fear of “getting it wrong,”  a better, more useful strategy is to keep moving – plowing through the things that don’t work and slowly refining the process to get to the things that resonate for you … Continue reading Camera Position 200 : Make Interesting Mistakes →

“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” -Miles Davis One of the most consistent questions I get from students is this one: “how do I develop my own style?” Miles Davis helps with an answer. Play Podcast:   Links for this Episode: Miles Davis Interview on YouTube … Continue reading Camera Position 199 : Playing Like Yourself →

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton How can we use the art we make with the camera to grow, learn and provide ourselves with a way of saying new things… to, as Merton says, “find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time”? I’m asking … Continue reading Camera Position 198 : Losing and Finding Ourselves →

When the subject takes precedence – when you point your camera at things that are the most interesting thing to you – you are on your way to developing a personal style – the sense that these subjects are the most important things and can only be pointed out in this way by you. “To … Continue reading Camera Position 197 : Let the Subject Take Precedence →

How do we go beyond a record of a place and begin to make photographs that convey a real sense of place? The objective is not just to show  what your destination looks like, but rather to convey, in photographs, what it felt like to be there. Play Podcast: Links for this Episode: Exhibition: WANDERLUST: … Continue reading Camera Position 196 : A Sense of Place →

This episode is a little meditation on the importance of aligning ourselves with the messages around us, using Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird as inspiration. “The Gulf Stream will flow through a straw provided the straw is aligned to the Gulf Stream, and not at cross purposes with it.” -Anne Lamott Play Podcast: Links … Continue reading Camera Position 195 : The River of a Story →

“But the art in an artwork might not be located precisely where you thought it was. Perhaps it was just as much in the damage and decay as it was in the intact original. Perhaps it was in the gaps – in contemplating and rending those insults and injuries – that we find ourselves, by … Continue reading Camera Position 194 : Our Wish To Persist →