Jeffery Saddoris

Simon Baxter is a fantastic landscape photographer from the north of England who I was introduced to by Sean Tucker. There’s something about Simon’s photographs that goes beyond light and composition and draws the viewer into the scene, rather than simply holding us at the periphery. Simon’s passion for photography and his connection to the local woodlands where he photographs are obvious from the moment you look at his body of work. What may not be obvious, however, is the amount of pain Simon often has to endure in order to produce them, and how none of it would be possible without a labradoodle named Meg.

CONNECT WITH SIMON
Website: https://baxter.photos
YouTube: SimonBaxterPhotography
Instagram: @baxter.photos

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 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Kent Hall is tough to categorize. On one hand he’s a photographer who makes books. On the other, he’s a collage artist who makes books. But he’s also a poet—and yes, a poet who makes books. His fascination with the mundane and the detritus of modern life are the raw materials for much of what he creates and whether he’s being inspired by film or literature or simply watching the city move around him, his growing body of work gets more and more interesting with every new expression.

CONNECT WITH KENT
Website: https://www.kent.ly
Instagram: @windsorknot

MUSIC
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 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Lately I’ve been seeing, or maybe just noticing, the word “iconic” as a means for makers to describe their own work—“my name is so and so and I make iconic portraits of whatever…,” and I’ve got to tell you, I’m having a hard time with how it’s being used.

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The Atlantic posted a terrific article on how the “Nifty 50” became the goto lens for many photographers.

If you’ve ever thought about making your own photo book, you’ll want to check out this PDN article on the art and process of sequencing your images for photobooks.

If you love model trains and miniatures, here’s a fascinating documentary about two brothers who quit their jobs to create Miniatur Wunderland a massive miniature city that has become the most popular tourist attraction in Germany.

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

One of the biggest struggles as a maker, regardless of what it is that you’re making, can be finding meaning in what you make. Whether you’re a painter, or a sculptor, or a writer, or a photographer, finding meaning in a particular project is often one of the obstacles that prevents us from starting, or can be one of the challenges to overcome in order to finish. As someone who spends a great deal of time talking to creative people, I often hear about projects at the poles, either early in the planning stages, or after the work has been completed, but rarely in the middle — which can be a challenge to talk about because there are often themes and ideas that haven’t quite come together yet. Oli Kellett is a street photographer from the UK who’s 18 months into a multi year project that brings him to America several times a year to photograph cities and the people who inhabit them.
At its core, the project is about crossroads, but as you’ll hear in this conversation, Oli is still wrestling with the literal representation — those few moments before the light has changed that leave us alone with our thoughts — to the symbolism and myth of the crossroads that draws a line from the ancient Greeks to a young guitar player from Mississippi who made a deal with the devil just outside Memphis.

LINKS
PDN Photo Annual

CONNECT WITH OLI
Website: https://www.olikellett.com
Instagram: @Oli_Kellett
 

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 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

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
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 (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.

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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

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 (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

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 (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.

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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

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