True story:

The other day I was walking around the frame section over at Michael’s, the arts and crafts store, when I saw a woman holding up one of those big paper targets people use for practice at the shooting range.

She was trying to see if it fit in a 24×36 frame.

It had a hand-drawn picture of a guy holding a gun, and there were exactly three frayed holes where the bullets had struck: One was in the right eye. The other two were right through the heart…

Gotta wonder about the rest of her decor.

But it made me think about the fact you don’t have to go very far to see a lot of strange stuff … Read more...

The big problem with photography has nothing to do with photography.

It has to do with validation.

Vali-fucking-dation.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But there is.

Because it’s making our lives shit…

The other night, I was “chatting” with a friend in FB through comments. She posted a comment. I posted back. Pretty soon, we were having a full on conversation.

And whenever she liked my comments, that stupid red balloon would pop up, giving me a notification. And even though I knew that it was just notifying me about the conversation I was having at that very moment, I still kept clicking on it.

Facebook has turned me into a sheep.

I am now the dog in … Read more...

My prints were strewn across the table. One of them teetered on the edge, almost ready to fall. The hushed silence was more than I could bear.

I squinted and turned away.

I must have been a ghostly white, standing there, wringing my hands, waiting. Say something,” I thought…anything…

It was 2008. For most people, it was beautiful spring day in Toronto. For me, it was terror unspooling. It was my first day in a workshop with Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson. And I was up for review.

He reached for a print and ran his fingers over the surface…

“There’s something there. There’s something in this scene. You see something. But it’s not there. You haven’t found it yet.”

For … Read more...

I’m feeling a little crispy and fried from the constant barrage of news and uncertainty and guessing that’s been my feed for the past six months. Too much unproductive anxiety, too little actual life.

I’m guessing some of you might be, too.

I was originally going to talk about my product launch today, but instead, I’m going to share the most important bit of sales advice I know.

I’ve been reading a lot about universes lately.

The blue universe. The red universe. One side. The other. And how the two don’t meet. And maybe they don’t. Maybe they do. More likely, sometimes they don’t and sometimes they do. But as business owners and humans, really, the notion of two universes … Read more...

A common question that comes up:

How do I find my voice?

But it’s really the wrong question.

Voice may not come fast, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you just have to embrace one essential truth, and the rest takes care of itself. Not to mention it makes for some damn fine business, too.

Picture this:

You wake up. You’re hungry. It’s 10,902 B.C.

The first trace of light cuts deep into your cave, as the night chill fades. Your stomach growls, and you spot a big, juicy apple dangling from a tree in the distance. “Mmmm….apple, good,” you think to yourself.

You peer out to see if any big, nasty predators are lurking. You’re in … Read more...