This is it. The culmination of full time traveling in order to photograph small towns for The Small Town Photo Project.
The Small Town Photo Project era is over, and it was quite a ride. Thank you to everyone who supported it!
This is it. The culmination of full time traveling in order to photograph small towns for The Small Town Photo Project.
The Small Town Photo Project era is over, and it was quite a ride. Thank you to everyone who supported it!
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about some concerns I have with the color palette of Wes Anderson’s new movie Asteroid City, and how I’m already seeing photographers emulate it in their work.
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In this episode, I’ve made a list of 10 things you feel like you have to do as a photographer, but don’t. Maybe some of this stuff can apply to other types of artists in other fields as well.
Number 1-
You don’t have to follow trends or attempt algorithm tricks. There’s really no creativity in trends, which is obviously a problem since it makes social media all feel predictable and boring. It doesn’t tell a story, it just means that you’re motivated by this desire to go viral. The desire to get views often overshadows any other work that needs to get done and de-prioritizes all of it. Getting views or traffic may be useful in the short term, but if you’re in this for the long term this strategy totally collapses. Basically, if the motivation is views and attention and “going viral” you’re more subject to changes in how these platforms work more than anything. After a few months, you can kind of forget what you’re doing and why you’re doing it in the first place. Those who follow trends will almost always burn out, or just fade away after a while. But, in the short term it feels really good.
Number 2-
You don’t have to appeal to everyone. If I look at the top 100 podcasts or top 100 Youtube videos, it’s stuff I would personally never be interested in watching or listening to. I have my own tastes, and the expectation that we should all be pursuing a Joe Rogan level or ceiling-less growth is insane. Not only are we not all able to do that, but not all of us have the tastes that can reach those heights. Maybe we are into some weird sub-genres of photography that can only reach 5,000-10,000 followers. We need to pay attention to what our tastes are and be okay with the fact that they may not match most people.
Number 3-
You don’t have to use social media platforms all the time. The demands of being active on all social media is basically a full-time job. Pick focusing on the one that fits you best. Your content isn’t going to be good if you aren’t feeling it. There’s plenty of successful people that don’t post regularly everywhere, and that’s because, they spend more time focusing on the work itself. In fact, maybe it’s better to focus on the work itself anyway. People don’t listen as much to those that talk alot (I wouldn’t know what that’s like), but a quiet person’s words have far more impact.
Number 4-
You don’t have to chase perfection. There’s no such thing as perfect. Perfect comes from comparison. Maybe you see what other people are doing, and you see it as some definition of “perfect”, and you won’t be happy until you reach that level. Then you end up being really hard on yourself because you’re never quite able to attain your self-imposed definition of “perfection”. That’s usually what it comes down to: ingratitude or dissatisfaction with what is. The quest for perfection is very different from desire to be better. The desire to be better is attainable. Even if we don’t know it, we are getting better every single day. The quest for perfection is a chase for Bigfoot. Perfection doesn’t exist. Truthfully, no one really wants to look at “perfect” work anyway. We want to relate to other humans and see flaws, because everyone has flaws. It’s just a fact of life.
Number 5-
You don’t have to specialize. Specializing is great for a certain segment of photographers, but most photographers will shoot a general selection of stuff AND THAT’S FINE. Those photographers probably will end up being more well rounded and have more technical skills than those who focus only on one thing. The key is to just get really good at being who you are. Every time I try to focus too heavily on portrait photography, maybe I start craving landscape photography. It’s okay to be well-rounded and do different things. My tastes around what I shoot changes with the seasons. A good photographer is curious more than anything, and it’s possible to be curious about a whole range of things.
Number 6-
You don’t have to shoot a photo every day. Shooting a photo every day will make you crazy. I’ve done 9 365 projects now, and I’ll probably never do one again. It’s just not always the best way to work. Sometimes, it’s helpful to go out even if you don’t feel like it, but after doing it day in and day out, you can really start to really get burned out over it. I love photography more than anything, but I’d rather do it fresh instead of it feeling forced. Out of a daily photo project, you may have 100 photos or less that you’re actually happy with, and that’s just because we aren’t machines. I’ve always been driven by this desire to be a machine, but my best photos usually come after a long break of photo taking. Now, there is a benefit to practicing every day FOR SURE, but the need to get a photo every day AND post it isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to live. Also, letting images breathe is always good.
Number 7-
You don’t have to make money doing what you love. Since social media became a thing, I feel like everyone acts like they need a side-hustle of some kind. You don’t! It’s allowed for you to just do things for enjoyment rather than having to justify it to people. I grew up feeling the need to justify everything to everyone for whatever reason. But it’s great to spend money on doing something you love without it paying you back. Maybe I want to travel somewhere just to take photos that I want to take. Great. Money ruins everything. We are allowed to have fun and we don’t have to explain ourselves all the time.
Number 8-
You don’t have to take criticism from everyone you know. Maybe you shot a series of photos, but your family or friends think…it’s weird. Boy, we all love to hear that. We can’t take in criticism from everyone, but for some reason we think everyone we know is entitled to give us an opinion on our work. They aren’t. Make what you make and only care about the opinions of those around you who will only have valuable feedback. I only have a couple people I go to who really actually understand what I’m doing and will give me good feedback. I love being told ways I need to improve, it makes me better at what I do, but not everyone has the right to offer that. Opening my self up to opinions of people who have no idea what they are talking about is just masochism. That goes for family, friends, or people in comment sections. Have a good circle of people around where you all want to help each other grow and don’t take notes outside that.
Number 9-
You don’t have to be super invested in the photo world. In fact, photographers are observers of the world, so it’s maybe better for the work itself that you don’t live in the photo specific world constantly. It’s great to have a community of those you trust, but that’s a quality game, not quantity. I used to work in a print shop where I interacted with photographers all the time, and they all had the same photo-related insecurities because they hung out with other photographers who imposed a set of photography rules on them. There are no rules, but if you’re part of a community of people like photographers, rules for how you need to do things get made up all the time. When you don’t steep yourself in the photography world, you don’t absorb those rules, so you’re more free creatively in my view. Again, it’s great to have friends who have similar interests, but if that’s the bubble you live in exclusively, it’s going to limit the work you put out.
Number 10-
This one is more true than ever: You don’t need to buy expensive gear to take great photos. In fact, as time goes on, cheaper gear goes a lot farther. Somehow, my photography gear has gotten smaller and cheaper as time goes on because I now have a deeper understanding of what I actually need and what is total overkill. My best photos come from cameras that aren’t a distraction because they are more simple and have limited features. Less is more.
We could get more specific in this list for sure like: You don’t have to shoot RAW, you don’t have to shoot with your lens wide open, when you shoot film you don’t only have to shoot 90s cars and gas stations. But I feel like there are larger pressures in the modern day photography world that take up a lot of space in our brains that really affect the work more than anything. The other stuff is just menial details that don’t really matter in the long run.
I see people arguing about whether it’s crazy to shoot JPEGs or Nikon or whatever, and that stuff can be fun nerd stuff for a moment, but I’m more interested in larger concepts around this art form that I love so much. Photography opened up my entire way of thinking about creativity and changed how I see the world, and I’m immensely grateful for it. I just try to keep it all in perspective.
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In this week’s recommendations I want to recommend a book titled Traffic by Ben Smith. It’s kind of depressing, but it’s a great history of the age of new media we lived in from 2006 to now. Ben Smith used to work for Buzzfeed and this is basically their story of their rise and fall. Buzzfeed and Gawker and publications like it were all built on this addiction to traffic. Basically, the goal was to tailor content that piqued all of our most lizard brain curiosities. Gawker grew by posting sex tapes, Buzzfeed grew with quizzes like “Which Disney Character Are You?” And more. At the end of the day, it’s all kind of junk and wasn’t built to last.
Buzzfeed specifically, relied so heavily on Facebook driving traffic to their site that once Facebook changed the algorithm it threatened to devastate their entire business.
The blogging era was where I come from on the internet. The blog style of the early 2000s is what has informed my writing and everything I do on the internet. I remember when alot of the events in Traffic happened because I was pretty deep into all that stuff at a pretty young age. I remember this excitement about everything: a phone you didn’t need a stylus to use, that was also a browser and and iPod, a platform where you could post something and tons of people all over the world can see it, and the idea that news can just travel faster and be made quicker than ever before. But it’s 2023 now and all that stuff has reached maturity, and maybe…a lot of what we were excited about ended up being…not so great for society.
The problem with a quest for a following or numbers is that it drives a sort of nihilism, which causes them to create content, not because they believe in it, but because they believe it will drive traffic. And that gets pretty gross.
And that’s it, thanks for listening and/or watching! See you next week.
Having a huge archive of documented material is the BIGGEST money saver in all of marketing for a business. And barely anyone is doing it. And that’s great news for photographers and videographers going forward.
Back when I was mostly just a freelance photographer, I’d get paid to shoot photos for a small business, and then see that they’d never really put them to use. It was kind of frustrating, because I kept seeing it over and over, businesses spending money on a photographer or for video but never really doing anything with any of it. There’s so much waste in that. One single image can be used in a ton of different ways for a business: website, print, social media, square, black and white, with a graphic, however. And it sounds expensive to hire people to help create media around your business, ad infinitum, but a little bit can go a long way. Make a long video, cut it into clips! Shoot a bunch of photos, put them in a video, use them for all kinds of stuff.
I see a future where most major businesses or businesses that want to become major have their own in-house video and photo team. In-house marketing feels like the future. The future is about personalization, and it’s tough to outsource that to an agency of people that don’t know you or your business intimately. They can make a good ad about your business, but they can’t tell your story as well as you can.
Photography or making video, used to be a real, employed job. Now it’s basically gig economy work largely. There are almost no truly “employed” photographers left aside from remnants of the old world. But I think that could possibly change. I think it has to change as our consumption habits change.
Remember what I said in Photography is Dead? Social media content is now competing with Succession and Game of Thrones because we have a finite amount of time to spend consuming things. If you make something good and engaging, you can take eyeballs from something that has a multi-million dollar budget.
We avoid ads like the plague. We pay extra on our streaming subscriptions, we hit the skip 30 seconds button on our podcast apps, and we scroll right past ads on Instagram. We have been such an ad saturated society for so long now, that we have a sixth sense for when something is an ad or not. We stop scrolling, however, when we sense some authenticity in something, whether it looks like a lower quality video that your friend shot on your phone, or if there’s a good hook that seeks to actually offer you something in exchange for your time.
I’ve been dipping into a creative consulting of sorts since early this year, and it’s going pretty well. I have a few clients that I help to craft interesting content using my taste and technical skills. But also, I spend a ton of time with these businesses and know them very well. You know what makes that easier? When they’ve recorded their history. When they have a pile of real stuff around their business, not just pristine “ad content”. Because the stuff people want to see is real.
Every business needs their own photography or video library around what they do. Businesses that don’t get stuck using impersonal, sterile “stock” media that really has nothing to do with them and makes them blend in with everyone else.
This is good news for people who specialize in use of these “documenting tools” like photography and videography: You’re going to be super important for years to come. I believe entrepreneurs and business owners are beginning to see the importance in an archive of photos and videos about them and their business. Because it actually saves them money in the long run. Ads only get more expensive as time goes on, but if you’re putting out your story organically, momentum builds, and even if you still have ad spend, your advertising gets cheaper because you have all that organic reach.
Maybe product photography is being replaced by AI, but AI can’t really document a person’s real, actual life and experience. AI can make the documenting process easier and lower cost for sure, but those who can document aren’t going anywhere.
——
For the 15 years I’ve been a photographer, I’ve been building an archive. Now, in my videos and any project I work on, I have years and years of work to pull from. It’s crazy, actually, I can even insert flashbacks of sorts in these videos…Like back when I was traveling for the Small Town Photo Project…or even farther back when I worked at Art Warehouse.
Back when I worked at Art Warehouse, we built a “stock photography” library of our own that could be used to sell commercial prints to hospitals, hotels, and other commercial spaces. That stock image library gave us enormous power AND value.
Then when I went out on my own starting the Small Town Photo Project (insert flashback of the Small Town Photo Project), I realized that there was a ton of value in building a library of images for specific places. That was the goal: Make it easier for people to get images for their town, not just to hang in offices, but also for web and branding use. That has now transformed into Anderson Views, a website that has a growing bank of images just for my town of Anderson, SC.
Fortunately, during the Small Town Photo Project process (which was a pretty grueling time of driving miles and miles to capture photos in these growing places) I had the foresight to document much of it with a vlog. That helped people understand the story of what I was doing, but now, I can use it for stuff like this very podcast, after the fact. I can cut it all up and use it for whatever, at any time. Not only was I building a library of images to sell in various ways, but I was creating content for myself for the future.
The fact is, I could stop making things now, and I would have plenty of stuff to post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Youtube Shorts for the next few years.
——
During the early iteration of this podcast, Photography is Dead, I talked about how important it is to tell a story with our cameras in order to create value in our work and take them a step above what you see on Adobe Stock or places like that. A picture of a waterfall is cool, but why did you take a photo of a waterfall? Why were you there? What was the journey to the waterfall like? We’ve all see plenty of waterfall photos, and I can find some cool ones for free on Pexels, so why is yours valuable?
But the fact is, every business should be thinking this way as well, no matter if you have a deli, a coffee shop, or an insurance agency. One way to tell your story would be to simply show them, by documenting the process of how you got there in the first place.
I live in a small town. Small towns are often…let’s just say…behind bigger locales in a lot of ways, but eventually time catches up. Eventually, everything comes to a small town that was in a bigger city years ago. Not just products, but also, ideas. Many businesses that start are focused on the work of starting a business itself (as it should be, by the way). It’s a frenzy of chaos and stress, so it’s not on top of mind to have someone there with a camera making sure to document it all. Also, it can be expensive.
2 episodes ago I talked about how it’s about to be the golden age of photography and creativity: We are going to need photographers more than ever. BECAUSE, what’s happening now is entrepreneurs in bigger cities are making the investment of documenting the process along the way. Gary Vaynerchuk has 33 full-time employees filming him and packaging the content they film for him which is being used to get his story and message out there EVERY SINGLE DAY. Oh, and organically, I might add. He’s a client of his own business, VaynerMedia, and then his content is also helping grow his businesses. He has an enormous archive and proof of everything he does, which only helps to build tons of trust in him and value in what he’s saying.
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This strategy of just being everywhere isn’t a new one. Lawyers use this strategy all the time. Personal injury lawyers are trying to cast the absolute widest net they can, so they just make commercials, put up billboards, create radio jingles, so that they are the first name that pops into your head when you get into a car wreck or need to take legal action in some way. When you think about “entrepreneurship” you now think GaryVee and Alex Hormozi because they are carpet bombing the internet with their points of view all the time.
This is just one strategy. Honestly, probably the most maximalist strategy. These are super extreme, BUT if you’re capturing tons of photos and video of what you do and documenting, it gives you a lot of options.
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recommendations:
-Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom- I play maybe one or two video games a year, and this was the move this year. Video games are an enormous time suck, but I feel like every once in a while devoting the time to solve puzzles opens new pathways to thinking or creativity. It’s problem solving, but in a different way. Most of the problems I’m solving day to day are work related, so fun problems to solve can be quite useful. Also, this game is amazing. There’s so much to explore that it will offer tons of to do for months to come. I’m pretty addicted to this game at the moment.
-Summer movie season- We haven’t had a real summer movie season since 2019, but 2023 is popping off. I love the movies, and used to go multiple times a month in the before times, but for the past couple years there just hasn’t been that much to see. I kicked it off with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 which was great (I’ve liked it the more time goes on. I think I liked it more than the first Guardians if I’m being honest.) And there’s something worth seeing coming out now every week or two for the summer. Many of these movies may not work or may even be bad, but the spirit of summer movie season reminds me of a simpler time in my life. Highly recommend spending the summer at the movies.
That’s it for this week! Thanks for listening and/or watching, and I’ll see you next week!
The proliferation of mobile photographers has supposedly turned everyone into a photographer. But I think we’ve already had stages of this throughout the short history of photography. In Susan Sontag’s On Photography which I believe was written in the 70s, she discusses how the camera is becoming more consumer friendly even back then, and our human nature has gotten us addicted to the act of photo taking. She observes that “Travel is a strategy of accumulating photographs.” Because, “the very act of photo-taking is soothing.” How many times have you gone on vacation, seen an amazing view and didn’t really absorb it because you were too focused on making sure to get a good shot? I’d like to say I’m rare in this case, but I know I’m not. You do it too.
There’s an absolutely ridiculous scene in the remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Ben Stiller (maybe even the most ridiculous scene believe it or not). It’s the scene where Sean Penn who plays the stereotype movie photographer with leather straps on his wrist and a film camera (despite it being modern day. Well…I guess that’s realistic now. Anyway), and he journeys to the Himalayas to get a photo of an extremely rare snow leopard.
Spoiler Alert if you haven’t seen the movie.
He gets the snow leopard in view and has the chance to take the shot.
Walter Mitty : When are you going to take it?
Sean O'Connell : Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.
Walter Mitty : Stay in it?
Sean O'Connell : Yeah. Right there. Right here.
He doesn’t take the shot. Like what? You can talk philosophy at a TED Talk, but you don’t take the rare shot because you’re just feeling a little extra that day? There’s no situation where he doesn’t regret that later.
Anyway, sorry. I could go on all day about ridiculous photography stereotypes in movies. I’m waiting for a film about a photographer who is basically a Nikon Dad.
Basically, the point is, in real life Sean Penn would take the snow leopard picture, and probably repost it over and over again on all his social media channels. And we’ll scroll right past it because we have seen so many images that some cat in the snow is like, whatever.
Jeez. Wait what was I talking about?
Oh yeah. iPhone Photography.
Human nature likes to take photos. It’s an addicting practice. It calms our anxieties because we are recording that we were actually there or saw that thing. It’s proof of life.
You also get a dopamine hit more than ever now, because when you take a photo in an iPhone, it’s computational photography, so it edits it for you and makes you feel like an incredible photographer.
I actually think, in theory, every camera will have to take on the features of an iPhone. Aka the OS that allows you to edit and share images via the device itself. It’s wild that I can’t easily have Lightroom Mobile on my Fujifilm or Sony and then post on Instagram or Twitter, all in-camera. Right now, expensive cameras take fantastic images, but getting them to the finish line is still kind of a headache. We can wifi transfer them to our phones but all those apps are pretty much terrible and only work about 50% of the time.
Talk about AI, the iPhone does so much for you that editing isn’t necessary. It just knows (most of the time) how to make a photo look good. If you want to make tweaks, there’s an “edit” button right there with simple and easy to understand tools.
And despite that, the professional photography world has been growing. Maybe even with the iPhone as a gateway, but also, because the need for images has only skyrocketed in the past few years.
Photographers, I think feel a twinge of fear with each new generation of iPhones. Because we feel like soon, we will be replaced. And, well, I don’t think that’s unfounded.
But I think creating a unique voice for ourselves is an antidote to this fear. A unique voice helps us stand out from the crowd, and maybe even will get us paid more. If you’re looking to do photography for money, then I’d say, find a way to survive and break even for a while as you get the unique voice sorted out. That’s the competitive edge you really need in society today, and those who don’t have a unique voice are the ones complaining about everyone being a photographer.
Not only that, but if we have a unique voice, it can transmit across different photography tools. An iPhone camera becomes a lot more valuable in the hands of someone with a unique voice.
A unique voice has so many downstream benefits. It’s getting to the point that I’d argue, we can’t really survive the future without one.
But really, the iPhone is the best camera. From a technical standpoint it’s incredible: I have to shoot and combine like, at least 7 images with my expensive camera to get a good HDR image when the iPhone can do it instantly. My iPhone 13 Pro is a camera that has 3 built in lenses and a gimbal for stable video footage as well. Not only that, but it’s always with me, no heavy camera bag required. (I don’t even use a case, because I’m a psycho)
But the fact is that it’s an “overthink deterrent”. I think the weakness of most photographers or videographers or anyone that has deep pools of technical knowledge is that we think if one nail will work, 12 will work just fine. We have all this expensive stuff we’ve invested in so that we can accomplish any task, and yet, it can be a hinderance, more than a help. Here’s an example: I’ve been helping some small businesses in my town with some social media content lately. Basically, I’ve been helping them by batching some video and photos for them to post over a months time. At first, I was filming their short-form vertical video stuff with my Sony A7IV. Well, that just created more work for me in order to accomplish something I could have just done with my phone in half the time. I overthought it, and the gear ended up literally costing me. Not only that, but in testing recently, the less overthought, iPhone Reels and TikToks seem to be getting more views anyway.
Everyone is a photographer/videographer. Everyone has an iPhone. Therefore, iPhone photography/videography is more authentic. It doesn’t feel like an ad. Everything feels like it can be made by the common man.
In my session with my food truck client, I was more focused on making sure I got everything technically right on my A7IV that I lost sight of the narrative and the story purpose of what we were doing. This is a struggle I wouldn’t have by filming with my iPhone, because it just works.
We have reached a weird place in the photographer/creative world today. Basically, the camera has become a huge stumbling block to creativity. That is, unless our vision needs certain requirements. But we need to have a vision, and then choose what we need as far as a tool to capture it.
Small business owners ask me all the time about what entry-level camera they should get to start creating content. The simple fact is, they already have one in their pocket. The question of what camera to buy is a distraction, truly.
The marketable skill a photographer has now isn’t their camera, or even their “eye” (whatever that means), it’s vision. It’s knowledge of how to effectively create and put pieces together in order to make something interesting and good. Anyone can be technically proficient, and it’s obviously useful to be. But the photographer’s biggest problem today is the “overthink” that technical proficiency creates.
I’m a good photographer. But I’ve never been able to just stay as that one thing. To be a photographer that really goes anywhere, we are required to be somewhat multi-hyphenates. Yeah, marketing and sales yada yada, but creatively as well. Truth be told, it’s been hard enough for me to stay away from seriously doing video for as long as I have. It seems that the modern day photographer who is really successful can at least hold their own with video. I’m obsessed with podcasts, and photography has been a gateway drug into podcasting. Then of course, I also find myself writing a fair amount as well.
Don Draper is such an attractive figure because he has a job that doesn’t exist anymore. He’s a guy that goes to the movies at noon, drinks in his office, blurts out ideas to people that will do all the dirty work for him, and then makes tons of money. Don Draper now would need to be fluent in the Adobe suite and be an entire art department all on his own. Photographers, I think, are still stuck in this idea of being somewhat of a photography Don Draper, simply only needing to do that one thing. But those days are gone.
I think it has died down a little bit, but the movement of everyone calling themselves a “storyteller” is on the right track. iPhones are replacing giant camera rigs, AI is replacing copywriters, designers, and editors. The tools and our use of them is no longer our competitive edge. Everyone is on a level playing field. Everyone’s focus now should just be one thing: carry out a story and vision. Whether that’s content for a small business or big brand, or our own work and art, the job is the same. What is your goal? What are the tools that will help you get to the goal? And more often than not, in 2023, the right tool is just sitting there in your pocket.
I don’t believe confidence really comes from a series of accomplishments. Think about Mason “The Line” Dixon in Rocky Balboa, the sixth entry of the Rocky series- he was undefeated, had reached the top, but he knew in the back of his mind that he was vulnerable. He hadn’t failed enough and crawled back from that. Then a 60 year old boxer comes out of retirement and goes the distance with him. While I don’t believe Rock Balboa is the strongest movie of the franchise, it has my favorite Rocky quote of all time, “It’s not about how hard you hit, it’s how hard you can get hit, how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”
I believe confidence comes from a proven track record not of accomplishment, but of failures.
Something I’ve learned about myself through the years is that I’m obsessed with the creative process. I love seeing the process of others, and I love breaking it down to try and understand what puts us in our most creative place.
One thing I’ve that’s interesting about us as humans, is that we are always chasing a frictionless life. We want financial freedom, and the ability to live life on our own terms. Photographers, especially those who refer to themselves as artists, tend to always be yearning for the day where they have total freedom to pursue personal projects, without pain of client interaction or financial pressure.
And yet, total freedom to create may actually be the worst formula to actually being creative and making interesting work. The frictionless life is actually, kind of the enemy of creativity.
Friction keeps us having perspective. Not many humans in this life have achieved a frictionless life, and say if I’m one of the lucky ones that does, I am now in a very small minority of people. That means, suddenly, my perspective speaks to way less people. Almost no one. It’s why comedians aren’t good when they become super famous- it’s because they are no longer as connected to the rest of humanity’s experience.
I find the Oscars to be an interesting subject because this debate is incapsulated in that single event. One one side, you have people who think more “populist” movies like Top Gun Maverick should win, and on the other side, people think true art is somewhat dour, sad, and thought-provoking. I’m a movie fan, so I see both sides. I loved Top Gun Maverick, it was super fun and is endlessly rewatchable, but I also loved Banshees of Inisherin and TAR and Triangle of Sadness.
I think everyone’s problem with the Oscars is that all the movies that tend to win Oscars are kind of “same-y” they fit of template of sad and not really all that fun to watch for the masses. And I also agree that template definitely feels like it exists. Do I think Top Gun Maverick should win Best Picture? I think it would be a fun shake-up for sure, but did it bring something new to the table? I would argue that it brought something old to the table, which is why it was refreshing. But I think the Oscars should be rewarding those who took big swings and gave us something new. Something interesting and thought-provoking. And truthfully, I think that’s the overall goal of the Oscars deep down. If I were to pick a Best Picture winner that fits that bill, it’s a pretty easy decision I think- there is not a movie that exists on this earth that comes close to doing what Everything Everywhere All At Once did. I think it’s the obvious winner in my book.
Filmmakers try to make movies in the “Oscar Template” so that they get a shot at winning the most prestigious award that exists in the movie industry. The Daniels, clearly had no illusions at trying to win an award of any kind- they just had the goal of making the best thing they could make. Their movie before this was about a farting corpse played by Daniel Radcliffe, so yeah, I don’t think the Oscars was really in their heads while making Everything Everywhere All At Once.
And the Daniels had constraints. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a pretty low budget movie that definitely doesn’t feel like one.
I know, you’re like, dammit Will, how is this a photography podcast? Why do you keep doing this to us?
Well, I think all creative endeavors and mediums have the “Oscars problem”. Photography doesn’t really have any prestigious awards that I think are really all that worthwhile, and yet I think photography has the Oscars problem at an even greater scale. If the Oscars are filmmakers’ big shot at getting attention on the world stage, then social media is basically that for photographers. The motivation being that we want to be seen.
But what comes first? Getting seen so you can then finally have the freedom to make good stuff, or making good stuff so you can finally be seen?
Photographers are so freaking hungry for attention on their work. That desperation, in my mind, ensures that the focus is not on making something good at all, which is why I believe hunger for attention to be creative death.
Our motivation has to be solely to make something good. I think that’s the secret to the creativity- the goal of making something good and interesting is, I think, a selfless act. Who decides if it’s good or not? I think we know deep down. I think if we have enough self-awareness, which is in a shortage, I admit, I think we know when something is made with honest intentions or not. When it’s made with honest intentions, we aren’t desperate for attention to it, because we can trust the thing we created to do all the work for us.
Obviously, making something good is really hard. I’ve made a lot of stuff, and quite honestly, I don’t think that most of it is all that great. I only have a few images out of thousands upon thousands that I think I’m honestly proud of. This podcast is the sixth podcast I’ve made and it’s the first time I really honestly like an audio project I’ve made. Making something good takes work, and most of all, failure. And people don’t like failure, because it’s seen as a negative. And maybe it’s not fully a positive, but it is 100% essential to making anything worth anyone’s time.
I can’t get it out of my head. In photography, I like drama, and I like something “new” being created. Simple landscape photos are fine for a while, but they become somewhat unsatisfying after a while. Double Exposure can imbue a simple photo with something else, whether it just be interesting forms or, maybe even a story.
Double exposure for me started as a hack to take more interesting photos. Of course, my first attempts at it looked much like the Flickr or Pinterest True Detective opening credits style where flowers or trees were juxtaposed with human forms. In fact, that was my senior project in college, and at the time people thought it was pretty cool. Now, I think the senior project would be a big ole “shrug emoji”, since we’ve seen it all by now. (Not to mention the most embarrassing fact of the project being titled with a Latin word in order to make it feel more elevated. Pretty rough stuff to me now)
I’ve always loved double exposure, not because what I can do with it, but because of the possibilities of it. I like it for the things I haven’t done with it yet. It feels like a technique that is fertile for pushing of the limits- if you search “double exposure” on instagram or twitter, it’s often a bunch of that “heads and trees” stuff or people posting film shots with the caption “accidental double exposure. I think it turned out kind of cool!”
Beware My Fuji is an account on Instagram that I absolutely love: He is pushing the limits of double exposure, in-camera (which is where all the fun is at anyway) with his titular arsenal of Fujifilm cameras. He changes the colors and tones of each image as he goes as well, so that fluorescent color scheme he creates isn’t with some Youtuber’s preset packs, it’s all him on the spot. And he posts reels pretty often with how he does it too.
It forces you to think about shapes and colors and how things go together. It takes photography, which is often about recording what is there and makes it about creating an entirely new world.
Isn’t that interesting? Photographers aren’t often eager to dive into the surreal. You have to dig for them in order to find one that is really pursuing something like that. Photographers are often trying to capture light and data that’s already there and polish it up a bit.
Photographers are different than any other sort of artist in that most photographers I know are technical, almost more like engineers. Which would make sense why I’d be into something like “double exposures”, I’m dumb. Haha I’m joking, but really though, I’m not super technical. I like when there’s a little luck and happenstance involved. I don’t necessarily need to be in control of all the variables, and when I am, it ends up not being very good.
I’ve really enjoyed growing my Twitter because it’s definitely a more industry-facing audience. Instagram is a mix, but my Instagram followers aren’t super down with the nerd stuff as much as the Twitter audience. I don’t know about you, I don’t hear painters building entire followings based on brushes and canvases and paint, but photographers can talk about the tools all day.
The medium is the message with photography: maybe a photographer is taking an incredible landscape and doesn’t mention “the camera”, but it making a technically perfect image, aren’t they still? Isn’t the goal in the back of many photographers minds always to push the limits of the what the technology can do?
I used to say this as a critique of photographers, but I’m not sure love of the camera can be separated from the images itself. I think I’ve realized that it’s a feature, not a bug. If you are a photographer, you’re probably going to love the tools as well, and maybe, the tools are what got you into this whole circus in the first place.
I like “in-camera” double exposures because, well, I like being behind the camera rather than the computer. And I’ll admit that I had to make a resolution this year to not buy any more camera equipment for 2023 and just push the limits of what I have (which has very few limits these days). For all the critique I’ve done over the years of photographers being gear obsessed, I’m just as guilty. Being a photographer and being very into the gear I think is inseparable. Gear is a culture unto itself.
What I like and respect more however is when someone can get excited about gear because of what it allows them to do. Many gear review YouTubers take “sample photos” that are just unimpressive shots of their neighborhood or office, but that doesn’t really tell me anything about the gear itself. People like Beware my Fuji or Jeremy Cowart are photographers that actually push the technical limits of the gear they use- those are the photographers I’d want gear reviews from. Equipment has very few limits these days and I’d love to see how people take advantage of all the insane features we have now.
But really, if I’m being honest, I probably need to stop watching gear videos anyway.
“If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute.” I live by this mantra. Or at least, I used to. I used to define myself as a procrastinator, but turns out, once I starting building my life around doing what I actually wanted to do, procrastination isn’t much of a factor anymore. I used to have no respect for my time, future or present, because all that mattered was how I feel in the moment.
But then, in my 20s, I started developing real goals and things I wanted to accomplish. And I realized…there’s just not enough time in the day.
The first month of 2023 has been a battle. I have been crushed under the amount of fires to put out and things to do, and yet, I managed to get them all done and then some. If I flashback to a Will of 5 or 6 years ago, all of these tasks would have destroyed me.
The reason I like 365 projects or repeatable photo projects that require discipline is that I recognize my need for structure. If left to my own devices, I’ll spend a day doing nothing as I’m excited that the world is my oyster. Suddenly it’ll be 6pm, and I will have maybe watched a movie or two. Then I realized I spent the whole day thinking about and getting pumped about all the things I could do that day.
If I don’t stay on myself, forget running my own business, I won’t function well in life in general.
I realized that in order to run any sort of business around your artistic medium in the year of our Lord 2023, time is the most important metric to measure everything. Forget money, obviously money is important to a business, but a bank account with zero dollars can be refilled again. The amount of time we spend is irreplaceable. We don’t get that back. And sure, as creative people or artists (I’m a creative person but not an artist), we need time to do nothing. I now have to schedule that time, however.
If we are expected to be these content monkeys and keep people connected to us on social media, but also, you know, get our actual jobs done, we have to optimize our time. Social media is a cheaper way to “advertise” than in the past, but now, getting information about our business out there has become a massive time suck. It can take up all our time if we let it.
So, when I started my photography business, which was originally aimed at getting wedding gigs, I learned the power of the to-do list. I used to be really bad about knowing what to do next, and the to-do list really kept my motivation fueled up. It was a hack to gamify my business in order to get it off the ground. Every day was it’s own page in my Cambridge 8.24x11 80 sheet notebook, and boy, would I fill up these pages with tasks in order to chase the high of checking them off. (It’s been about 5 years of using these notebooks for to-do lists now, so I have an absolutely absurd stack of them that might be interesting as an artifact one day. )
The To-Do List, however, is a pit. It can get pretty dangerous if we get addicted to the dopamine hit of Xing boxes in order to relieve stress. My problem back then, was that I wasn’t using my time well, which went to me filling my time pretty fast with all my tasks. A few years passed, and I realized…I’m really busy, but my paycheck hasn’t increased proportionately. Hmm.
And that’s because the To-Do List gets us addicted to busy-ness. The most American of addictions.
If we feel busy, we feel like we are accomplishing something. And while I was accomplishing a lot of things, it was largely unfocused, but it didn’t matter, because I got that hit off punching each task in the face.
I don’t want to be busy. I certainly don’t want to be too busy. But, my original twisted thought about a business was that I needed to look like I was at least doing something…lest the foreman yell at me? Wait, I’m in charge.
Fast forward a bit. I still need a to-do list to help me remember important things, however I’m able to fit TWO DAYS of tasks on to one page now. And there’s a lot of blank space in between. There was a point where I was putting “Make Coffee” or “Eat Lunch” at specific times on my list of To-Dos. I need structure, but if it gets too rigid, rigid things easily break.
To-Do list addicts exists, but we don’t talk about it. Our addiction to busy-ness is widespread, because “being busy” is a great way to avoid things and people and all the stuff we want to avoid because “busy-ness” is a classic and universal excuse. Busy-ness, however, is just running place.
I’m a guy who has found ways to monetize my love of the camera as a business, and while I have a long way to go, I think I’ve finally cracked the best way to optimize my time without getting burned out on social media or networking or whatever I have always ended up getting burnt out by. Here’s what I’m doing in 2023:
Beginning of the week, I schedule all my social media posts for the week, as well as this podcast. I get up pretty early, so this gets done before anyone else in my house wakes up. Then suddenly, other than some fun posts in the moment throughout the week, my social media is staying active. Early in the morning the rest of the days, I write these podcast episodes. Monday and Tuesday are dedicated to eliminating as much of the mundane tasks of the week as possible, like bookkeeping or data entry or whatever else.
Wednesday and Thursday, I try to book up with meetings, networking, coffees, art installations, lunch and whatever else that involves human interaction. If I have two meetings on a Wednesday, unless I’m totally buried with other stuff, I’m done for the day after the last meeting.
On Fridays, I’m braindead. Even for most of my college career I managed to somehow avoid having class or many classes on Fridays. I see it no different here. Fridays are a creative day. Brainstorming and making content and all that. The fun stuff. So, basically I make all the stuff I want to post so it’s ready to schedule by Monday.
Obviously this doesn’t work perfectly all the time, but it’s a great road map to start. I find that I have more air time in between jobs and not just filling my day with busywork to feel like I’m doing something when I’m really not. But I’m the boss so I don’t have to adhere to some arbitrary 9 to 5 schedule, despite feeling that pressure when I started out.
If you take anything away from this episode, be warned about the toxicity of a To-Do list. If you need structure to survive, a to-do list can be a useful weapon or your greatest curse.
I love art. I’ve lived in some facet of the art world for my entire career. Maybe I’m an artist, I don’t know. I know artists who would probably laugh at the idea of me considering myself as an artist. How about this: I like making things, and photography has always been the main medium by which I make things.
Throughout this podcast, which has become very enjoyable and therapeutic to me, I’ve had an extended dialogue about how to find “value” in a thing that the world wants to tell us is value-less. And my whole view around this has been made pretty clear at this point: the world is right. Nothing has value until it’s proven to have value. I think that’s general true for the world, but I of course am looking at this through the lens of American capitalism.
So while I’m using this podcast to hopefully help others find the value in their own work, I’m at the same time, having a dialogue with myself. I am constantly trying to make sure I’m honing in on where I have the most value in all these things I’m doing. We are often so close to the fire that we forget to look around and maybe observe ourselves from the outside. I have had many wake up calls during my career where I was providing value in ways I didn’t even notice, because I was too busy focusing on things that weren’t providing value to anyone but myself.
I come from the bland stew of intellectual thought that is modern day college. I can’t escape it, I was born and bred for the purpose of going to college, I then went to college, and now, I’ve unfortunately become self-aware like a T-1000 and I’m on the loose.
When you come from the bland stew of college, you’ll find yourself sitting around, neck-drained, as you make direct eye-contact with your naval as you ask very indulgent questions of “What is Art?” And “What’s the meaning behind this or that”, then suddenly you’ll be thrust into the world where no one cares and it doesn’t matter. All you know is you need to either figure out how to be an artist for a living OR get a job that allows you to be an artist in your free time. The world becomes a lot simpler really fast.
And don’t get me wrong, I love a good, long philosophical discussion about the nature of our reality. But such discussions come from privilege in one way or another. It’s why in every movie that portrays the mega-rich elite, you see them mingling and laughing with a gimlet in hand as they discuss the nature of these things as the common folk run around murdering each other on Purge night. A discussion like “What is Art?” Is a powerful tool for a writer to use to make their characters sound extremely pretentious.
Like I said, the world is pretty simple.
The world is WWE.
I’d like to say that’s an over-exaggeration but quite literally our culture has uplifted contributors to the actual WWE. I’ll let you do your own research on that one.
What I mean, is that if you want to become a famous artist and photographer, you kind of have to adopt some WWE strategies. You have to become a character that grips people and sticks in people’s brains. To do that requires a lot of exaggeration and gimmicks.
Many artists I’ve been around or went to college with would find this idea absolutely vulgar and grotesque. Do I think the “world being the WWE” is good for culture? No, probably not, but I do think it’s human nature to some extent. I think it just kind of is what it is at this point.
TikTok has really poured gasoline on this fire as it has created a meritocracy of creativity. I’m one of these knuckle-draggers that could stare at TikTok for absurd periods of time, and it’s very good at serving up interesting things. But it also allows users to scroll very quickly if they are not amused, so in order to stop me from skipping past your video, you have to try and grab me pretty fast. It’s why TikTok is such a trend machine: you have to keep it fresh constantly.
As a marketer, that’s totally exhausting. I can’t keep up with the creation needs of a viral TikTok. I just can’t. I’m not really wired to make quick clips around a single idea, it’s just not me. I’d rather write pages and pages of my thoughts and record them to a podcast.
Every single “character” who has millions of followers and is a major cultural force is fully a WWE character. A lot of the times they exaggerate on purpose to be more outrageous (hence the problem with our politics today. Or you know, the Kardashians) , or maybe they are just super interesting and unusual people via nature (I think Joe Rogan just is who he is). Either way, you’re remembering them. They all have a brand- you can close your eyes and imagine their essence.
I’m going to say outright that I don’t have what it takes to be that way at that level, not many people do.
I believe if a person is self-aware enough and knows their strengths, they can go as far as they want. How much of the WWE are you willing to tolerate?
I’m not even saying be loud and boisterous, I just mean, how much are you willing to lean on maybe an interesting thing you do- Brandon Stanton, started taking pictures of people in the streets of New York asked them about their story. He would post these pictures to Facebook with a blurb about each person. That became his thing. He’s The Humans Of New York guy now.
As much as we all hate being defined, we unfortunately need to be kind of definable.
In my town, I’m known as the Small Town Photo Guy. Not sure I’d hold up well against Hulk Hogan, but I have a characteristic that helps people more easily spread word of mouth.
Some people see that as a gimmick, and maybe it is. But “gimmick” is defined as “a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business.” In the age of TikTok, Youtube, and WWE political leaders, to me, that definition sounds a lot like the definition of “marketing”.
So what am I saying? You have to part with a piece of your soul to help the art you love be seen? No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that based on the reality of what you do or make, create goals in line with that. Is your art the type of thing that will attract millions, or maybe, 20,000 followers? How far do you want to go?
Then the question is, how far are you willing to go?
I’m a huge Rocky fan. I cry during every single one.
A few years ago when I went to Philadelphia for a trade show, one of the first things I did was make my way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art Steps where Rocky ran to the top, and took a picture of the statue.
Just the other day, my business partner and friend Mark told me “Yeah I remember when we went to Philadelphia and thought, dang, Will’s really into Rocky.”
Growing up, I’ve always felt like I was behind everyone else. Like everyone was in on something I wasn’t. Being a late bloomer didn’t help either. So, movies about one man defeating the odds, or in Rocky’s case, “going the distance” has always appealed to me. (Die Hard is one of these too, although the message is a little different)
Spoilers for Rocky II, But in that movie, Rocky becomes the Heavyweight Champion of the World after defeating Apollo Creed. And the movies give the impression that Rocky and his opponent Apollo Creed were world famous at the time.
I think that’s kind of funny, and maybe now in 2022 a boxer would be more famous since professional fighting has taken over so much of the culture these days, but I feel like almost no one can name famous professional boxers.
The movie Creed II, a more recent Rocky spinoff about Apollo Creed’s son, Adonis Creed, actually brings this up. A fight promoter tries to sell Adonis on fighting Ivan Drago’s son, Viktor Drago and basically says that Apollo was one of the few boxers that knew how to promote himself. He asks, pointing to a crowd of people “How many World Champions do you think they can name?”
How many photographers can your dad name?
We live in a time where the monoculture (the idea that we are all into the same cultural events) is almost completely gone. How many things do we all still do as a culture? Things that we all did together, we don’t really do anymore. Network tv programs have next to no one watching them, The Oscars, the news, Jimmy Fallon has only a percentage of the viewership that a YouTuber like Mr. Beast has. And your dad wouldn’t even know who Mr. Beast is. Maybe we all watch Marvel movies together, and Top Gun Maverick, but that’s kind of it.
Everyone lives in a silo. We all have our own niches and interests, and we have people we admire within those silos. The photography world has always been that way to an extent, because it’s for enthusiasts and nerds, but your dad could probably name Ansel Adams and Richard Avedon, and Robert Mapplethorpe, William Eggleston and so on.
Who could your dad name now? Maybe Annie Leibovitz? Peter Lik maybe? He could probably more easily name local photographers in his area than nationally acclaimed ones for sure.
If you google famous photographers, there’s Annie Leibovitz, Gregory Crewdson, and then all of the classic ones like Vivian Maier (who I guess could count as more recently famous), Man Ray. And then there’s a few that are famous within their niche, like Sam Hurd, but he’s only famous to people who are deep into the photography world, and mostly the wedding photography world (I’m a big fan, but my parents haven’t heard of him)
I’m not really saying this is a good or bad thing, this is more of an observation.
Another observation I have along these lines is that there’s no “The Guy” anymore either. If you asked me who the biggest photographer is right now, I’d struggle to give you a straight answer.
When I started out, you bought Scott Kelby’s book about digital photography. That’s just what everyone did. The landscape of photography education is different now obviously, because of the internet, but I’m not sure there’s a place everyone would go now.
Which I think is kind of cool.
Like I’ve said a bunch of times in this podcast: You can’t really afford to be too general any more. You’ll go farther if you lean on your niche or style or specific photography interest. I have a friend from college who I reconnected with over the past year or two because he had gotten into photography. He lives in the hunting world, so all of his work revolves around that. He’s already gotten to work with huge brands because he very focused in that particular photography space. I’m sure there’s a “hunting photographer guy” that everyone in that niche knows about and looks up to, but I don’t live in that world. (My friend’s name is Rob Kinney go give him a follow on Instagram- I’ll put it in the show notes)
If you’re a travel photographer you have your people, if you’re into analog stuff you follow a completely different set of people. And these worlds don’t really talk to each other a ton, yet they are both photographers! It’s so wild.
When we become photographers and try to market ourselves, I think we take this big view of photography as a whole. Even in the first episode of this podcast, I mention “the photography industry”, but it doesn’t really even exist like that.
As a photographer, no one is appealing to everyone. The most effective photographers only appeal to a small group. It’s a bit like focusing on a small town: I’ve spent the past years really focusing on local. Like real local not like social media local. Because of that, I have done no work for big brands since I started going full-time, because I’ve been focusing on the small business and smaller locales. That was by design, because I just wasn’t seeing good photography in these smaller towns that are growing.
There’s so many options on where you can go and what you can do. If you’re good enough and dedicated enough, you can become as big as you want in whatever space you’re in. There’s a common language within all these groups, but they don’t really speak to each other all that much.
I’ve noticed this trend with photographers who are just starting out now, and maybe I notice it because I struggled with this too. It’s basically that you want to be a photographer, but that’s all you know. You don’t know what kind of photographer you want to be or what kind of photography you’re most interested in. Personally, I have a lot of interests, and different seasons of interests, so I understand what it’s like to be overwhelmed by choices.
Having a lot of interests isn’t a bad thing though. I think you have to have interests other than photography to make great work, actually. A camera is just a tool used to capture something, and the more interested you are in what you’re capturing, the more interested in your work the rest of us will be. That is, if we’ve even heard of you.