Every morning I boot up my Windows 11 laptop and am greeted with a beautiful photogenic scene from somewhere in the world. Every damned day. Is this what people think of when they think of fine art photography? Certainly artistic photography is more than saturated colors and idyllic landscapes.

William Blake said , "The fool who persists in his folly will eventually become wise." Can we apply this to our mistakes? The new Lens Blur tool in Lightroom is an example.

Whenever I find myself in a location that offers lots of different compositions, a rut that I easily fall into is what I characterize as "cataloging." This invariably leads to a shallow collection of repetitive images.

Can we all agree that not every Ansel Adams, or Edward Weston, or Wynn Bullock image is a winner? Sometimes even the great photographers would produce a questionable image. When I produce crap, I find it comforting to remember that.

There are two ways to learn — organized cramming (like in school) or an apprenticeship, where you learn by absorbing wisdom over time. Organized cramming is great for things like math, engineering, grammar, or science. Apprenticeship learning is best for the arts - - things like furniture making, cooking, and photography.

I stopped using the Ansel Adams idea of "previsualization" years ago. His idea was to mentally predict the tones you want before you expose the film. The next step was to develop the negative to achieve those tones. As far as I know, Adams never discussed previsualization relative to print size.

I love big band music. I don't love hip hop music. Similarly, I love classic landscapes of the 20th century, but I'm not crazy about New Topographics or socially aware photography that is all the rage today. By definition, that puts me out of touch with so much of contemporary photography. As I get older, I'm having a harder and harder time determining whether or not I am an old fuddy-duddy or a preserver of historic values. What should be our response to artwork we don't like?

Believe it or not, 70% of the entries to this year's Light, Glorious Light book project arrived without the photographer's copyright information in the metadata of the file.

There is a substantial difference between looking at a large print and looking at a small print. Sometimes it's best to make an image small so that it can be visually digested in a single gulp. My long-standing love affair with the 2¼ x 3¼ contact print.

Ah, those fickle beholders. They just can't be pleased all of the time. There will always be people who don't like any image you create. It is part of the process. The issue is not will you fail, but how you handle that failure that counts.