There were two photographers. Both from the same school, starting business the same year, shooting the same thing the same way: weddings in New York City.

But one had twice the bookings and twice the pay.

Why?

It sounds like one of those riddles that leaves you banging your head against the wall, because you can’t figure it out. Except it’s real life.

What makes the difference?

What a spectacularly overpriced burger tells us about value

This hamburger costs $175:

When I first heard about it, I couldn’t contain myself. “What? Who the hell pays $175 for a burger?!?!” The couple sitting at the table next to me looked over like I was a mumbling nut job.

Then I realized … Read more...

Talent is useless.

It’s a label we slap on something beyond words that suffocates that very something. As Duke Ellington often said, it’s beyond category.

Every so often, I get an email like this:

You don’t.

You just rip people off until you’re so you, no one sees it as ripping people off.

Isn’t that what learning is, after all?

And, yet, instead of ripping people off until we become different, we’re taught to rip people off until we become alike. We steal for the comfort of sameness, instead of the empowerment of difference.

That’s ass backwards.

In … Read more...

It’s that time of the year.

Again.

Back-to-back shoots. Projects left and right. Trying to get to it, barely getting through it. Gotta do more, be more, learn more, see more. How do you survive?

And why is it so hard to live a personal life, when there isn’t really any other life to have?

Of course, we all have the answer. We’ve all tasted it, held it, been there, and lived it. Somewhere, at some point, we had it, and most of us let go.

But if the task is hard, the answer is simple.

Have courage.

Find joy.

Open your heart, share your mind, and go get shit done.

No matter who you are and what you do, the … Read more...

It’s either you or them.

You’re the message or the messenger.

You’re more, or you’re less.

This is an industry with too many debates and too much chatter. Talks that do nothing but distract you from the point of it all. Questions like film or digital, DSLR or mirrorless, Canon or Nikon, presets or pure.

With rare exception, they’re red herrings.

It’s Not About What’s Right

Art’s power comes from its mutability.

It lets us explore possibility, unshackling us from conformity. The point isn’t to find the right answer. It’s to find our own answers. And suggesting that there’s one way, some way, or the way will only cripple the pursuit.

In Structural(ism) and Photography, Lew Thomas argues “every … Read more...

I have a love-hate relationship with filters and presets.

I have them. I use them. I even make my own. Love it.

On the other hand, you can’t put lipstick on a pig, and no matter how much Photoshop you do and how many presets you apply, if the raw material isn’t there, it isn’t there. Hate it.

I see it like music. Sure, interpretation matters. But lyrics are lyrics and music is music, and the ideas have to be there from the start.

In other words, the first question has to be about you, before you ask about the filter. It can’t be the other way around.

Still, one of my first jobs was in the darkroom, processing film … Read more...