Experienced photographers know that making a larger print is not just a matter of scaling it up. Larger prints look different to our eyes. A common change that is needed with larger print is an increase in contrast. This is another reason why each intended output in Lightroom or Photoshop needs its own processing variation.

After all the traveling I've done in my life and all the hotel rooms I've stayed in over the decades, I think I have discovered photographic hell in my current motel.

My advice about "rules" has always been to know them, use them when they are the right answer, ignore them when they fail to improve a photograph, and use their opposite when that is the right thing to do. That said, here are five "rules" I think are pretty good ones to live by as a creative artist.

In so many interviews I read or watch with photographers, the photographer begins by talking about their first camera. This is then followed by a long history of their evolution through technology. Why am I supposed to care about this?

Elsewhere I've mentioned that I don't use previsualization in the sense that Ansel Adams advocated. That doesn't mean, however, that I shoot without a plan. I may not know how I want the image to look like, but I often know the mood or emotion I hope to portray.

Over the Independence holiday weekend, I'm taking a break from photography. It's been an intense 14 months on the road and I need a few days to review my new images and think about the next Kokoro. Besides, the roads and beaches will be packed with holiday tourists which is a good time for me to lay low.

As the technology progresses (I'm recording this after a pretty significant update in Lightroom in June 2022), photography might seem like it is getting easier and easier. Perhaps the technical aspects of photography are, but I think the aesthetic aspects are getting harder and harder.

Years ago, I was doing a review at Photolucida where a photographer was showing me his giant prints. I asked why he made them so big. He insisted they had to be that big to have an impact. I asked why he was showing them to a magazine publisher. That ended the review.

Whenever I'm stuck and can't figure out how to proceed in a project, nine times out of ten it's because I'm trying to say too much at once. If I narrow my subject to something less ambitious, the clarity arrives and the path forward in the project becomes easier to see.

A little reverse engineering. Let's say you want to do a nice big coffee table book, say 11x13". That's a pretty big book. What size of camera will you need in order to make stunning images in a book of this size? You'd be surprised.