Why creatives stay stuck, even when the door’s wide open.

We all want freedom. Creative freedom, emotional freedom, professional freedom. But here’s the thing nobody tells you:

You can be free… and still live like you’re caged.

In this episode, I break down the three invisible cages every creative person ends up pacing:

• The Industry Cage – tribes, gear cults, status games, and the performance of “real” photographer-ness
• The Creative Cage – safety disguised as style, repetition disguised as voice, consistency as comfort
• The Personal Cage – the scariest one of all: the refusal to put yourself in the work

It starts with a pacing lioness in San Diego, makes a detour through childhood Masonic mystery, and ends in a gallery in LA with a man named Jesse and a story I still can’t shake.

If you’ve ever felt trapped by your own success, your style, your niche, or your silence… this one’s for you.

Light Leak Assignment:

Choose your cage.

Take one honest step outside it.

Before the week ends.

No excuses.

Listen if you’ve ever said:

• “I feel like I’m just doing the same thing over and over.”
• “I’m scared to change because I finally found something that works.”
• “I don’t know how to put myself in my work.”

Support the Show:

This show is 100% listener-supported, which means I’m not selling presets, funnel hacks, or “ten ways to make six figures with your camera.”

But if the episode made you feel something — if it helped you name the cage — I’d love your support.

👉 terriblephotographer.com/support

Three amazing humans have already joined. Be the fourth. Let’s get weird and honest together.

Episode Topics:

• Cult psychology and the photo industry
• The seduction of gear tribes and online identity
• Why consistency might be killing your creativity
• What we’re really afraid of when we avoid vulnerability
• The lioness who still walks her old cage
• What Jesse taught me in a room full of polite creatives

🔗 Other Mentions:

• Episode 28: The Tyranny of Okay – Why Most Creative Work is Just work (I actually listed this as Episode 27 in the episode, but it's Episode 28)
• Terror, Love, and Brainwashing by Alexandra Stein
• The Boxcar Children (yes, really)
• The real cost of not evolving

Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah… stay terrible.

A milestone. And maybe the most uncomfortable episode I've made so far.

A few weeks ago, I sent an email to thirty photographers I know. I asked them one question: What's your dirty little secret? The thing you'd never admit publicly. The thought that lives in the back of your brain at 3 AM.

I told them it would be anonymous. I just wanted the truth.

And I got a lot of responses.

This episode is about those secrets. The ones we carry alone. The ones that make us feel like frauds, or failures, or like we've made a massive mistake.

Some of these might be mine. I'm not telling you which ones.

But they're all real. And if you've thought any of them, you're not alone.

The Eight Secrets

1. The Gatekeeping - "I resent [X] photographers and think I'm better than them."
2. The Copycat - "I don't know how to make anything original."
3. The Performance - "I'm not as busy as I make it look."
4. The House of Cards - "I'm one accident away from losing everything."
5. The Golden Handcuffs - "I would walk away if I could afford it."
6. The Minimum Effort - "I'm just trying to get the work out the door."
7. The Burnout - "I don't care about photography anymore."
8. The Long Game - "I'm terrified I won't be able to retire."

Mentioned in This Episode

Leslie's Podcast: Niche to Meet You
A great show about finding your creative lane. Check it out.

Support The Show

This show costs money to make—hosting fees, software, time. If you're getting value from it and want to help keep it going, you can support the show here:

terriblephotographer.com/support

The show's free. It's staying free. But if you want to chip in, I appreciate it.

Stay Connected

📸 Instagram: @terriblephotographer
📧 Newsletter: Subscribe to PubNotes
🌐 Website: terriblephotographer.com

Credits

Music:

• Licensed through Blue Dot Sessions
• "Secret" by The Pierces

Hosted, Written, and Produced by: Patrick Fore

Your Turn

Write down one secret. One thing you've never said out loud. Not for Instagram. Not for anyone else. Just for you.

Take it out of the dark and look at it in the light.

You don't have to solve it. You just have to stop pretending it's not there.

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another creative who needs to hear it. And if you want to support the show, leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more than you know.

Have you ever had a day where you told yourself you were “busy”… but couldn’t actually remember what you did? I know I have. Hours lost to scrolling, inboxes, half-finished tasks — and somehow at the end of it, I’m exhausted but nothing’s really done.

In this episode of The Terrible Photographer Podcast, I go after the two liars in my head who keep me trapped in that fake middle ground:

• Hustle Harry — the voice that shames you into guilt if you’re not grinding nonstop.
• Lazy Laura — the voice that convinces you procrastination counts as rest.

Neither one delivers real work. Neither one delivers real rest. And both are lying to us.

Instead, I want to talk about presence — the kind my Border Collie, Loki, embodies every time he drops into that crouch and locks onto a tennis ball like it owes him money. Which leads to…

⏱️ The Light Leak (36:40): The Loki Method — a simple, one-task-at-a-time rebellion against hustle culture and procrastination. Full attention, sacred focus, and real rest are scheduled like it actually matters.

This episode is about rediscovering focus, dignity in the ordinary, and finding a way to work present instead of just working harder.

If you’ve ever felt stuck between fake productivity and fake rest, this one’s for you.

Music provided by Blue Dot Sessions

What if the most radical thing you can say about your creative work is: it’s okay?

In this episode, Patrick dives into the beige middle of creative life — the 80% of days that aren’t fireworks or disasters. He tears into LinkedIn’s toxic lobster-and-champagne highlight reel, confesses his late-night burger-level Photoshop grinds, and introduces us to Sarah, a catering coordinator who redefined what “ordinary work” can mean.

Along the way you’ll hear:

• Why “do what you love and you’ll never work a day” is weapons-grade bullshit
• The LinkedIn Lobster Problem: how performative self-promotion makes our Tuesdays feel like failure
• Sarah’s story — the quiet hero who showed Patrick what it means to find dignity in the ordinary
• Stoic wisdom on work, meaning, and why you are more than your job
• The burger vs. lobster framework for understanding creative life (and why burgers matter more than we admit)

This isn’t an episode about settling. It’s about survival, dignity, and gratitude for the work that keeps us human.

The tyranny was never that work is ordinary. The tyranny was believing ordinary wasn’t enough.

👉 Listen if: you’ve ever felt guilty for not loving every second of your “dream job,” or you’re tired of pretending passion is renewable.

👉 Stay for: a story that will make you grateful for the burger on your plate.

Resources & Mentions

• Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
• Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius, on the dignity of ordinary work
• Simone Weil, on attention as generosity

Connect with Patrick

• The Terrible Photographer Newsletter
• Instagram

Credits

• Episode photo by Amirali Mirhashemian
• Music licensed through Blue Dot Sessions

A New York–based commercial portrait photographer (big clients, covers, immaculate work) asked to talk. What came out wasn’t a portfolio review—it was a confession: he hasn’t made anything for himself in over a year, and he’s exhausted from performing passion he doesn’t feel. This episode is a permission slip for the photographers—and all creative workers—secretly pricing escape routes at 2 a.m. We talk about the unsaid epidemic of burnout, the grief under AI “efficiency,” and three practical permissions to help you stop performing and start feeling again. If you need someone to say it: you’re allowed to quit the version of creativity that’s killing you.

What you’ll hear

• The “booked and blessed” performance vs. the honest reality of burnout
• Why so many photographers feel like they’re always “rushing or dragging” (yes, that scene)
• AI grief: mourning the death of mystery without romanticizing gatekeeping
• Three permissions:

1. Quit the job that killed the artist (without quitting art)
2. Be mediocre while you remember why you started
3. Create for yourself first

• A one-week “Light Leak” experiment to rekindle curiosity—no audience allowed

Chapter guide

• 00:00 — Cold Open: The Zoom call that said the quiet part out loud
• 03:40 — Intro: Why honesty feels dangerous in our industry
• 08:10 — Act I: The Unspoken Pandemic (burnout as a system problem)
• 13:30 — Whiplash Clip: “Rushing or dragging?” (context + reflection)
• 15:10 — Act II: AI Grief (loss of mystery, craft vs. club, why cracks matter)
• 23:40 — Music Moment: Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” and the beauty in brokenness
• 26:10 — Vivian Maier: Calling vs. career; imperfect images that breathe
• 31:20 — Act III: The Three Permissions (with Campbell & practical frames)
• 39:30 — Light Leak: The 7-day private-making experiment
• 43:15 — Close: Choosing living over performing (and why the camera will wait)

The Light Leak (listener assignment)

For the next 7 days, make one thing a day that no one sees but you. No posting, no portfolio, no feedback. Just curiosity. If you want to break the rules publicly, tag #StayTerrible—but the real win is remembering what it feels like to make without an audience.

Pull quotes

• “You can quit being a photographer without quitting photography.”
• “Maybe your creative career needs to die so your creative voice can live.”
• “We’re mourning the death of mystery—and that grief is real.”
• “You were an artist before you had an audience. You still are.”

Resources & references

• Whiplash (2014) — “Rushing or dragging?” rehearsal-room clip
• Finding Vivian Maier (2013) — trailer & story
• Johnny Cash — “Hurt” (cover of Nine Inch Nails)
• Johnny Paycheck — “Take This Job and Shove It”
• Joseph Campbell — ego death/transformation arc (Hero’s Journey themes)
• Rick Rubin — strategic elimination (remove what doesn’t serve the truth)

Music & audio credit

• “Take This Job and Shove It” — Johnny Paycheck (used ~60s after intro)
• “Hurt” — Johnny Cash (used ~30s for commentary)
• Film clip: “Rushing or Dragging” from Whiplash (brief excerpt for critique)
• Trailer audio: Finding Vivian Maier (brief excerpt for commentary)
• Additional music provided and licensed through Green Dot Sessions
• All third-party audio remains the property of its respective rights holders; brief excerpts are used under fair use for commentary/critique.

Episode Photography by Filip Mroz | Unsplash

Who this episode is for

Commercial photographers, portrait shooters, freelancers, art directors, and any creative who’s tired of performing passion while running on empty—and needs permission to step off the treadmill without abandoning their voice.

Stay connected

If this hit a nerve, share it with one photographer who needs the permission too.

Newsletter & Field Notes: terriblephotographer.com

IG: @terriblephotographer • @patrickfore

Business inquiries & notes: [email protected]

One meditation. One burning question. One reminder you’re not alone. Every Wednesday in your inbox — shorter, sharper, and more honest than I could ever be in a long essay.

Subscribe to Pub Notes: terriblephotographer.com

Some days the world is too loud, too endless. You don’t need another lecture. You need a pint, a hard truth, and a line you can actually carry into tomorrow.

This week’s episode is an experiment I’m calling Pub Meditations — three acts, two meditations per act. Six in total. Each one pulled from the episodes that hit hardest this year, reimagined as something shorter, sharper, and closer to the way the Stoics wrote: notes to survive the day.

In the cold open, I borrow the first couple minutes from Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic — a podcast I can’t recommend enough. Ryan’s voice is where I first realized Stoicism wasn’t about flatlining your emotions, it was about surviving chaos with your humanity intact. Go listen, subscribe, and keep a notebook handy.

What’s inside this episode:

• Act I: Survival as strength training (Still Here · Dim, Not Done)
• Act II: The inner fight (Your Brain Is the Biggest Dick · In the Shadows)
• Act III: Defiance through beauty (The Light Hits Back · We Work, Rome Burns)

Line you carry: Survival. Shadows. Light. Beauty. The tools haven’t changed in two thousand years — keep it short, keep it sharp, keep it honest.

Credits

• Excerpt from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday — listen here
• Music throughout by Green Dot Sessions

Every kid asks their art teacher, “Is it good?”—and most of us never stop. In this episode, Patrick sits in Lucy’s middle-school art room and realizes he’s still chasing the same answer on high-stakes sets: watching client faces, parsing murmurs behind a monitor, riding the narcotic of approval.

We get into the modern authorities—clients, algorithms, mood boards—and the way we internalize them until we’re grading ourselves before anyone else can. We talk Gordon Parks, who lived the tension between immaculate Vogue spreads (noble, beautiful, necessary) and dangerous truth-telling (American Gothic, segregation, Malcolm X). We bring in Tolstoy’s blunt metric for art—sincerity that transmits feeling—and then admit the hypocrisy of needing authority to say “ignore authority.”

Finally, we bring it home with practical footholds for working photographers and every other creative human: how to hold the tension between survival and legacy, how to make room for truth without burning down your life, and what it looks like to start small, local, and personal—today.

Chapter markers (suggested)

• 00:00 — Cold open: the middle-school art room
• 03:20 — “When did we stop trusting the thing that made us create?” (Harter, Amabile)
• 06:10 — “How do we determine art’s value?” (the parent exchange)
• 012:00 — Act 1: LED volume in L.A., approval as a drug
• 17:41 — Act 2: Gordon Parks—safe vs. true, and why both matter
• 25:46 — Act 3: The new authorities—clients, algorithms, and the gatekeeper in your head
• 31:54 — Act 4: Returning to the first voice—practical ways to start
• 36:105— Closing benediction: “F*ck good. Make something true.”

Key takeaways

• Safe work isn’t the villain. It’s noble, beautiful, and necessary—it funds the life that makes true work possible.
• Truth-telling is risky by nature. It may not pay, but it’s the only work that lasts.
• Modern authority isn’t a red pen; it’s an algorithm—and the voice you internalized.
• You don’t need Tolstoy’s, your teacher’s, or Patrick’s approval. They don’t know you.
• Start where you are: one photo that feels like yours, even if no one ever sees it.

Practical prompts (do one this week)

• Wedding shooter (Denver): deliver the must-haves—then make one photograph no one asked for that tells an unglamorous, honest truth from the day.
• Parent (Dubuque): document the mess before you clean it. Title it. Date it. Keep it.
• Teacher (Phoenix): photograph the moment a student finally gets it—or doesn’t.
• Everyone: set aside 30 minutes for a “no-client walk.” One frame that’s yours.

Pull quotes

• “Safe pays the bills. Truth leaves scars.”
• “Good is the waiting-room soft pop of creativity.”
• “Don’t confuse survival with legacy.”
• “Stop chasing good. Make something true.”

References & shout-outs

• Gordon Parks — Vogue fashion work and American Gothic (Ella Watson).
• Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? — art as sincere transmission of feeling.
• Susan Harter — self-concept shift (ages ~7–8); external evaluation enters.
• Teresa Amabile — external evaluation narrows creativity and originality.
• LED volume productions mentioned: The Mandalorian, The Batman.

New listener compass

New here? This isn’t “business hacks to win in 2025.” We go deep on the real life of making honest work while paying bills—sometimes deadly serious, sometimes ridiculous. Photographers, designers, teachers, parents—if you’re trying to lead a meaningful life, solve interesting problems, and make beautiful things, you’re in the right place. Try: Ep. 5 Still Here (hopeful), Ep. 19 The Job I Hate the Least (funny), Ep. 17 The Technician (identity & reinvention).

Credits

• Host/Writer: Patrick Fore
• Music: Licensed via Blue Dot Sessions & Epidemic Sound
• Support the show: Buy me a coffee → https://buymeacoffee.com/terriblephotographer

A podcaster recently told me this show was "really dark." So today, we're leaning into that darkness—because that seemed way more fun.

This episode is about shadow work. Not the Instagram version. The real version. The kind that happens when you realize the thing limiting your creative work isn't technical skill—it's the parts of yourself you've been hiding from.

Through David Bowie's near-destruction during his Thin White Duke era and his eventual disappearance to Berlin, we explore what it actually looks like to confront the buried parts of creative identity. Plus the story of a wedding photographer who missed the most important moment of the day—not because she wasn't skilled enough, but because she wasn't emotionally ready.

This isn't comfortable. It's not content-ready. But it might be exactly what your creative work needs to become whole.

In This Episode

The Australian Podcaster's Question - What happens when someone calls your work "really dark"

Bowie's Shadow Period - Los Angeles, 1975. Red peppers, milk, mountains of cocaine, and the creation of an "emotionless Aryan superman"

The Berlin Disappearance - How the world's biggest rock star chose to vanish and why that wasn't the failure—it was the beginning

Jung's Shadow Theory - The psychological framework that explains why we hide parts of ourselves (and how it shows up in creative work)

The Wedding Photographer's Dilemma - When professional distance becomes emotional cowardice

The Five Creative Shadow Territories - Where every creative person hides parts of themselves:

• The Fear Shadow
• The Identity Shadow
• The Creative Shadow
• The Power Shadow
• The Authenticity Shadow

Personal Excavation - Why I hate shooting events (and what teenage depression has to do with adult creative limitations)

The Integration Process - Shadow dialogue, creative audits, and the difference between working around wounds versus working with them

Key Takeaways

• The shadow isn't your enemy—it's your undeveloped creative self
• What you avoid photographing reveals more than what you shoot
• Professional distance can be emotional cowardice in disguise
• Your creative limitations might be survival strategies from decades ago
• Integration isn't about fixing yourself—it's about letting buried parts speak

Mentioned in This Episode

Carl Jung - Swiss psychoanalyst who developed shadow theory David Bowie - Particularly his Thin White Duke period (1975-1976) and Berlin years Carlos Alomar - Bowie's guitarist who observed his creative process during the shadow period

Community

Share your shadow work discoveries using #TerribleShadows

Don't share the polished answers—share the parts of you you're just beginning to reclaim.

Music Credits

"Heroes" by David Bowie (approximately 1 minute used) Additional music licensed through Blue Dot Sessions

If This Episode Hit You…

• Leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
• Share it with someone who hides behind the work.
• Or drop me a note and tell me what question you can’t stop thinking about.

Follow the podcast

📸 terriblephotographer.com

📬 Subscribe to Field Notes (The Terrible Newsletter)

📷 Instagram: @terriblephotographer

A Note About This Episode

This episode deals with themes of depression, anxiety, and psychological shadow work. It's designed to be therapeutic rather than triggering, but please listen with care for your own mental health needs.

If you're doing this work and it brings up difficult emotions, consider speaking with a mental health professional who can provide proper support.

Stay haunted. Stay human. And yeah... stay terrible.

Community & Feedback

Take the Listener Survey: What kind of episodes do you want more of? Your feedback directly shapes future content. 🔗 Complete the survey here

Share Your Story: Have you experienced professional compartmentalization? The cognitive whiplash between personal crisis and work demands? Share your story—email or leave us a voicemail

What happens when you have to switch from consuming apocalyptic news to selling creative services in the span of 10 minutes? Patrick explores the cognitive whiplash we've all learned to navigate—that jarring ability to temporarily forget the world's chaos and focus on the work at hand. From photographing weddings while your own relationship crumbles to creating lifestyle campaigns while democracy feels fragile, this episode examines the emotional labor of compartmentalization and asks whether our growing skill at "professional forgetting" is survival mechanism or something more troubling.

Featuring insights from trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk on collective trauma, plus permission-giving wisdom about maintaining joy and connection during uncertain times—not despite what's happening, but because of it.

What You'll Learn

• How to navigate emotional whiplash between personal reality and professional demands
• The three layers of reality creative professionals must hold simultaneously
• Why compartmentalization isn't fake—it's selective authenticity
• The psychological research behind collective trauma and why maintaining normal life is neurological necessity
• Permission to laugh, celebrate, and live fully while staying aware of larger struggles
• Practical frameworks for moving between realities without losing your humanity

Key Takeaways

"That's the rhythm now. That whiplash. The emotional split screen. It's been the soundtrack of the last few years."

"You have permission to laugh at dinner with friends while democracy feels fragile. You have permission to celebrate your small wins while staying aware of larger struggles."

"Every time you choose connection over isolation, joy over despair, presence over paralysis—you're saying no to the forces that profit from keeping people scared, disconnected, and unable to think clearly."

Episode Timestamps

• [0:00] Cold Open: The Morning News Mistake
• [2:15] Intro & Survey Results Discussion
• [4:30] Act I: The Emotional Gear-Shift
• [8:45] The Professional Face We All Wear
• [12:20] Personal Stories: Cancer Diagnosis, BMW Client, Wedding Paradox
• [18:10] Act II: The Compartmentalization Framework
• [19:15] The Three-Layer Reality
• [22:30] Selective Authenticity vs. Professional Performance
• [26:45] Act III: The Strange Comfort of Craft
• [28:00] Why Work Matters When Nothing Makes Sense
• [31:20] NEW: The Permission to Keep Living (feat. van der Kolk research)
• [35:10] Light Leak: Your Compartmentalization Audit
• [38:45] Closing: The Choice Between Resistance and Surrender

Resources & References

Researchers & Thinkers Mentioned:

• Bessel van der Kolk - The Body Keeps the Score, collective trauma research
• Ram Dass - "Be here now," presence and consciousness teachings
• Joseph Campbell - Hero's journey, mythological wisdom
• Noam Chomsky - Systems analysis, intellectual self-defense

Audio Sources:

• Brief clip from The Daily podcast (The New York Times) used under fair use
• Music licensed through Blue Dot Sessions

For Creative Professionals

This episode applies whether you're:

• Managing teams while dealing with personal stress
• Teaching children while processing anxiety about the future
• Providing healthcare while worried about systemic collapse
• Creating art while navigating financial insecurity
• Building a business while questioning larger systems

The pattern is universal: How do you show up fully for the work in front of you while carrying awareness of everything else happening?

Connect

• Website: terriblephotographer.com
• Instagram: @terriblephotographer
• Email: [email protected]

Subscribe & Support

The Terrible Photographer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere podcasts are found. Subscribe for honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice.

Sometimes creativity has fuck-all to do with your job title.

In this episode, Patrick explores why the most dangerous creative minds often don't call themselves artists—they're teachers buying classroom supplies with grocery money, middle managers translating executive gibberish into human language, and baristas solving problems that million-dollar consultants couldn't crack with PowerPoint.

Through the story of surgeon Atul Gawande's surgical checklist revolution, we examine how creative problem-solving becomes subversive when it works too well, threatening systems that profit from keeping things broken.

What You'll Learn:

• Why pattern recognition plus intervention courage makes you dangerous to institutions
• The three stages every dangerous creative goes through (and why most people stop at stage one)
• How "strategically lazy" problem-solving threatens people who've built careers on complexity
• Why your creative solutions face resistance even when they obviously work
• The economic forces that fight back when you prove alternatives are possible

Featured Story: The tale of how a Harvard-trained surgeon nearly got blacklisted for suggesting doctors use a checklist—and how his "radical" idea of making sure surgical teams knew each other's names reduced complications by 35%.

This episode speaks directly to photographers, CEOs, therapists, teachers, stay-at-home moms, baristas, and anyone else solving problems that others ignore.

Atul Gawande TED Talk excerpt: "How do we heal medicine?"

Links:

• Leave a voicemail: terriblephotographer.com/voicemail
• Subscribe to Field Notes newsletter: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb

Music: Licensed through Blue Dot Sessions

"Creative work that actually changes things doesn't feel like art. It feels like resistance."

Episode Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy - Follow his work on Instagram