The Perceptive Photographer

When you look at an inkblot test, you might see something strange or unusual. You also are likely to see something that someone else might not see. Each of us sees something unique and different, which is why I think many of us are photographers. We find that photography helps us be able to say something about how we see the world around us.

As photographers, we are responsible for the entirety of the frame. We are responsible for what is in the frame, out of the frame, and how everything overlaps and exist in the frame. This week's podcast focuses on how we see those parts and how they make up the whole of the frame. We also talk about how to approach working on identifying those parts to make better photographs by seeing how the parts make up the frame and how the frame is also just a part of something bigger.

There are many ways that people measure success. One of the more common ones that I hear people talk about is achieving goals. Goals are milestones that we set to help us keep focused on attaining something in the future. Some goals can be very short-term, while others might last a lifetime. 

In this week's podcast, we take a look at the impact goal-setting can have on your productivity and enjoyment of your photography. While goals can be critical to helping you achieve what you want in your creative life, setting the wrong goals, or keeping the wrong goals can be a detriment to success. By taking a hard look at how, why, and when you complete a goal can tell you a lot about your creative process.

This week's podcast focuses on noise reduction in photography. Now you might be thinking that we are going to be talking about how to use the software in Lightroom, Photoshop or other tools to reduce the noise caused by higher ISO settings in digital photography but that is not the case. I am talking about the noise in our heads as we try to make new photographs or look at photographs. 

In the podcast, we will take a look at the impact of decision-making styles, interruptions, and how we make choices as ways to combat too much noise in our work. Hopefully, you will be able to find some quiet time and reconnect with your internal process for making decisions and celebrate your process as part of your creative life.

This week's podcast focuses on something that has impacted my photography and creative practice more than once--over-planning. When I am getting ready for a big trip or photographic adventure, I do a lot of research about where, when, and what to photograph. All that research can sometimes come in handy, but other times, this results in my over-planning my time costing me some photographic opportunities.

In my own process, I have found over-planning shows up and causes me some angst in five primary ways. I don't think one is worse than another, but each can cause problems. Those areas in no particular order are:

over-packing too much gear

getting too much information to process

can't react at the moment

can't respond to cool changes in the plan

disappointment.

These five things often show up when I over-plan and don't properly plan for my shoots. Do any of these show up in your process or do you have others not mentioned that happen when you over-plan an adventure?

I recently watched a group of kids make up playing a game in the park and it sparked an idea for how to better approach my own photographic practice. This week's podcast takes a look at that process and how the end result made for a new approach to my creative practice.

I get asked all the time what it takes to be a better photographer. Is there a class to take or a book to read? I always come back to the basics that photography is about seeing, telling a story, and finding your sense of self in your work. This week's podcast talks about the importance and value of taking the time to draw and sketch, reading all types of books and finally the importance of learning to observe the world around you.

In this week's podcast, we take a look at the impacts of talking about the effects of the should and would in our creative photography. So much of what we do as photographers is damaged when we focus on what we should be doing and what we would be doing rather than what we are doing in the present.  

In my own experience, should and would are indicators of living in the past or future rather than focusing on what I am doing now in the present. What I would do is future based, and what I should be doing is out of guilt from the past. As discussed in the podcast, there is a huge benefit from learning to let go of saying should and would and embracing the power of focusing on what you are doing right now.

I have several friends who are obsessed with the news. They watch it for 18 hours a day. They worry that something will happen that they might miss. Something will trend that they don't know about. In this week's podcast, we talk about how that fear of missing out can show up in three ways that could impact your creative process. 

The first topic is chasing trends. Everyone has something they love, but it is hard some times to no jump on the popular bus that everyone seems to be riding. If you give up what you love to chase a trend, what does that cost your creativity?

The second area is the importance of getting out of your head. Does the need to be in the know cause you to make us all sorts of stories that aren't true that you can't let go. Does your creativity suffer from being wrapped up inside your internal monologues? 

Finally, we talk about how fear and failure go hand in hand. The fear of missing out can lead to how you contextualize failure. If you redefine failure, does that shift your fear of missing out from a failure to know into something more productive?

I was cleaning a bookshelf in the study and came back across Mason Currey's Daily Rituals. In the book, Mason details the daily rituals that artist and creatives spend their day. As I flipped back thru the book, I got to thinking about the small things that we do and how they can make a huge difference in our approach to photography and creativity. 

In my case, something as simple as taking the cap off my favorite fountain pen tells me that something significant is happening. It doesn't mean that what I write is great, but that everything I do with that pen makes me happier than when I use a different pen. Cleaning the nozzles for each printer in the studio every Friday reminds me of the importance of printing in my work. 

As you think about your little routines, I am sure that you might find something that, when you do it, makes everything seem better or more significant to your work. This week's podcast explores some of those rituals and how we can try to find ways to improve on what we do by celebrating those small rituals by making more significant results in our work.

I recently saw a roadside coffee stand to offer 64oz lattes. That is about 1.8 liters for those of you on the metric system. It is a huge latte. It reminded me of being a kid when 7-11 introduced the Big Gulp, which is now tiny by today's drink offerings. All of those numbers got me thinking about the impact of numbers on our photography in an age of computation. 

Numbers drive so much of our photography. Shutter speeds, f/stops, star rankings, slider amounts, ISO and so many more numbers it is hard to say that numbers in the photograph don't matter. However, I would argue that we spend too much time focused on the numbers and not what matters in the photograph, which is the heart. When we look at a photograph, we should be thinking about the numbers we should be thinking about how we feel, think, and respond to the image. 

In this week's podcast, I talk about how to approach your work so that you can remove much of the distraction of the numbers game and try to focus and return to the core of your photograph that lies in your heart and soul.