You don’t need to be in a war zone for your images to have value. You don’t need to be documenting historical upheaval for your pictures to matter. The revolution happening in your living room, your kid learning to walk, your parent getting older, the slow accumulation of years on your own face, that’s history too. That’s the stuff that makes up a life.
What if, from time to time, we allow our intuition to lead, both in creating and experiencing art, without immediately asking to justify itself? If we are not afraid to enter unknown, unexplainable spheres in creating and receiving it, and if we hold off trying to understand the process and technique just a little longer to just focus on its effect on us? Could we, perhaps, also come to an understanding of it? Could we still know a painting even if we don’t know its intention?
In a world where explanation, verification, and optimization are increasingly necessary, perhaps art can be the space where we can develop and learn to trust our own intuition.
Advice worth remembering.
I don’t do new year resolutions, but something I’m trying to commit to in 2026: experimenting more. Trying new things out.
If 2024 and 2025 were a return to form, 2026 can be a zig zag. Not that I’m bored with my process or style, but I also want to stretch a bit. Get uncomfortable. Maybe try some more film photography.
Trust my intuition more.
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
Replace “write” with “photograph,” and it’s easy to see the appeal of capturing your everyday.
Back when I was single with no kids, taking off on a Saturday drive to take photos was easy: I just got up and did it.
Now, with a family and more responsibilities, spending time out taking photos has been harder to do. Many of my weeknight activities involve taking kids to their lessons or school functions. There are doctor appointments and musical practice. Someone has to do the dishes and mow the lawn. And my wife and I have a relationship to nurture.
So what to do? How can a busy person support a photography hobby with such a constrained schedule?
My advice: take opportunities when you can, and don’t feel bad about it.
The concept of microadventures has gained popularity in recent years, where you take a weekend, or a day, and head out into the world to do…something — anything out of the ordinary.
For photography, it could be as simple as:
This could be true of any creative project. The point is: make your own adventures whenever you can.
And for big projects? I communicate those with my family and ask for time to complete them. That may mean a few hours here and there during the week, but as long as you’re upfront about expectations and schedules, it shouldn’t be difficult.
If it’s important, find the time.
Usually, the amateur is defined as an immature state of the artist: someone who cannot — or will not — achieve the mastery of a profession. But in the field of photographic practice, it is the amateur, on the contrary, who is the assumption of the professional: for it is he who stands closer to the noeme [thoughtfulness] of Photography.
- Roland Barthes
I’m not here to sell anyone on getting a day job, and I am plenty conscious that day jobs aren’t necessarily easy to come by right now. But there’s definitely something liberating about not relying on your art to pay the rent.
My decision to hold onto a steady job while building a creative life is a structure that lets me do both things well (most of the time). It honors my creativity and my sanity.
Images, combined with words, can become greater than the sum of their parts.
– Greig Fraser, Dune cinematographer
It’s hard being a serial hobbyist. Erin’s advice and strategy are solid.
An oldie but goodie: Merlin Mann, giving the same advice on writing as Nike does for sports: just do it.
Take this advice for any hobby.
And it’s a big world out there. There’s always room for one more voice, for one more blog.
– Robert Breen (via Patrick)
The Law of Fuck Yes or No states that when you want to get involved with someone new, in whatever capacity, they must inspire you to say “Fuck Yes” in order for you to proceed with them.
Replace “someone” with “hobby” or “project,” and it becomes a pretty helpful thought exercise.
It is golden not to have any rule at all. – Henry David Thoreau
The rules? The rules do not apply.
I think the pain and frustration we feel when we’re confronted with our lack of talent and skill is also the path to overcoming our talent ceiling. The pain an athlete feels when exercising is the proof that they are getting stronger.
Shawn Blanc: Overcoming the Talent Ceiling
Bingo. I’m always thinking, “I wish I could do that.” So usually, I go out and learn how. And keep at it until I’m satisfied or move on.
Embrace the discomfort of going out alone, of putting the phone away, of talking to strangers, of existing through a time of rapid and overwhelming change. Remember that we are in a revolution, but that revolution itself is nothing new; it only manifests in new ways.
If you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, discomfort becomes the norm and is easier to process, while comfort becomes the exception to the rule. More importantly though, if you can get comfortable being uncomfortable, you can get in touch with the only thing that really matters in times of uncertainty and change: your humanity. Stay human. Talk to humans. Help humans out.
Ali’s Thoughts (Ali from One Month Two Cameras)
Let’s try this again.
After I launched my Artists In Jackson project, I also launched an email newsletter to keep my subjects and buyers updated. Over time, it became a periodic vehicle to share what I was doing, interested in, or working on.
Then, midway through the pandemic, I lost it. I couldn’t bring myself to work on it like I wanted to, and the newsletter slipped away from me. Mailchimp closed my account for inactivity, and I lost all the momentum I had built.
Now I’m relaunching my email newsletter with beehiiv, and I invite you and anyone interested to sign up (or re-sign up) and join me as I get this thing started again.
I’m shooting for monthly or bi-weekly, and I may try out a few new formatting ideas, but mostly, this newsletter will be an update, a few items I found around the internet, and some new blog posts.
Subscribe here, and talk soon:
It was a rare moment of sibling collaboration—when all the kids put aside their squabbling, grabbed their markers, and made something.
This scene used to happen more often, especially before Aiden became a teenager. Our kitchen table was the family art studio, and the kids would take on a three-marker challenge or create handmade birthday cards for friends.
Early on, we encouraged creativity. My wife is a talented musician, and I have a background in music and photography, so we made sure to give our kids a solid artistic foundation. All the kids took early childhood music classes, and we enrolled the girls in the local art school’s preschool program. Aiden is a talented musician in the middle school band, and the girls are musical theater performers.
We know it will do them good. Art for art’s sake is a perfectly fine goal to me, but there are other benefits—like civic engagement and writing skills. And the arts are social: most of Aiden’s friends come from marching band (so did mine, back in high school!). The arts, combined with a love of reading, an appreciation of the outdoors, and a bit of Midwestern kindness, are a pretty good recipe for an enjoyable childhood and a successful adulthood.
For some families, it’s all about sports and competition, or pure academic achievement.
Our kids? They were cursed with art lovers for parents. They didn’t stand a chance.
It was a constructive summer. Especially in the last few months, I’ve made a go at getting out more and more, trying to fill my photography buffer so I have plenty of material to edit and share as we move into the cold and gray months.
I feel like I’m getting back to a familiar sense of normalcy, photographically speaking. In some ways, I’m recreating my work commute from 10-12 years ago. On the weekends, I get up early, hit the road to a local town, and shoot in the morning light. A few things have helped, like:
Back into the groove. Back to normal – or at least a new normal (I say one day before the U.S. presidential election).
For now, it feels good.
So true.
Just this week, I logged into Tumblr to see where it was. The algorithm heard me and presented Yvonne’s video, as if 2014 was calling us all back.
I loved Tumblr. It was a great mix of social and blogging. It was fun, easy to use, easy to post, and for a beginner photographer like me, offered tons of ideas and inspiration as I grew in my craft. Ultimately, I gave it up because of its walled-garden nature, but using the platform was a hoot. I still miss it.
Now, it’s a ghost town – at least the blogs I followed have mostly shut down or moved on.
Yvonne’s video is a great look back at the height of Tumblr-mania and what it inspired in all of us who were there at the time.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to decide if you’re a content creator, or an artist.”
– Gozer Goodspeed
Gozer’s tweet thread (via Jeffery Saddoris) is great to think about if you Make Things – either as a content creator or artist.
I wonder all the time, watching my kids view YouTube video after YouTube video: is all this content artistic? Or is it entertainment? Is there anything wrong with either approach?
A few thoughts in reaction to Gozer’s thread:
I consider myself someone who makes and shares the things I make, at my own pace, for a very small audience. But I do it for me, not them, and I certainly don’t do it to feed a social media platform.
And then there’s the language that gets thrown around in business and entertainment and just about everywhere: do you make “content?” Or do you make photographs?
As with any hobby, you either don’t need a reason, or you make your own reason. Nothing else matters.
via James Tocchio
“A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.” – Phyllis McGinley
For those of us that embrace it, part of living the liberal arts lifestyle is you’re interested in everything. You get to know a little about a lot, which makes you great at trivia, but maybe not so great at developing a long-term skillset. “A mile wide and an inch deep,” and all those other cliches, come from a place of truth.
I have 20 different ciders and beers in my fridge because VaRiETy iS thE sPIce oF LiFe or something.
This is true for hobbies as well, and as I look back, I can see the corpses of a handful of hobbies I’ve picked up, absorbed, and then left behind. It’s had me thinking about why I do this sort of thing, and what are the downsides. Is there any relief for this sort of “serial hobby” behavior and mindset? Is there anything worth correcting?
What is a “serial hobbyist,” anyway? Here’s what The Hobbyist Girl has to say:
Serial hobbyists get fully engrossed in the hobby of the moment, learns as much as she can very quickly, can think of nothing else and does nothing else for a while, then gets bored, loses interest, and moves on to the next shiny new hobby.
I can see all of the above in myself: going from one interest to the next; going all-in on something to learn everything there is about it; all while not ever completely leaving a hobby behind.
Lately, I’ve picked up my Newton Poetry blog after a five-year absence, only to find the blog had shut down sometime in the past due to a WordPress and database error. That’s fixed, but now I’m surrounded by my old Apple Newtons and Macintoshes and reliving some past blogging glory from my previous hobby.
There is something gratifying about rediscovering a hobby, like chatting with a long-lost friend. But it can also be like going out again with an ex, and you start to remember why you left.
Giving some credit to photography – for me, it’s always been there. I’ve consistently been the shutterbug in my family and group of friends. Taking up photography was simply “getting serious” about this ever-present activity. And, it’s been my longest-term hobby, lasting more than 10 years since I picked up my first DSLR (a Canon T1i – remember those?).
Some hobbies stick around forever. I’ve always loved to write, read, spend time outside, play a Mario or Zelda video game, and I’m starting to count photography in that “always” list.
Except for regret, there’s little in terms of downsides to being a serial hobbyist. You do spend money on hobbies, but not so much that your financial wellness is in jeopardy. There are space and clutter considerations, and that became the big issue with my classic Mac collecting. When I bought my first house, I had more space to collect – but it made me stop and think, “Do I really want to fill up my new home with G3-era Macs?” So I stopped.
Photography can be an expensive hobby, but it can generate income as well. Most of my new gear was paid for by doing wedding gigs. Now, I’ve pretty much stopped collecting any new photography gear because I have everything I’d ever need. Any new acquisitions were mostly gifts from people who knew I was a photographer – in fact, that’s how I received most of my film cameras. Still, all of that photo gear still only fills two boxes next to my desk.
For me, the biggest downside is – what’s next? What is going to take over my brain and consume all of my short-term passion? Because if the past is any indication, there’s another hobby with my name on it, right around the corner.
And there, too – maybe there’s no downside at all. Maybe this is just me.
Lately, life – and especially working while at home – has been full of background music channels on YouTube.
Take this Coffee Beats channel. Or this Acid Jazz & Grooves channel. YouTube is full of these kinds of background music channels, with styles ranging from low-fi to chill to jazz to whatever your brain needs. There’s the famous lofi hip hop girl. You can even find some background video game music (just about anything with Animal Crossing works).
I’ve noticed that I’m listening less and less to my kind of music: progressive, metal, rock and roll – the kind of stuff I’d usually listen to on Spotify or my iPod.
With all that’s going on in the world, what my brain needs is something simple – something that can hang out in the background and not get in the way, yet enjoyable enough to not be annoying.
Luckily, YouTube is full of just what I need.
“I believe anyone can become a great founder, a great engineer, a great designer, a great concept artist, a great fine art painter, a great filmmaker, a great writer…
Not that everyone will, but that anyone can. And it’s getting easier every day.” – Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad.
It’s so true. We have an infinite number of possibilities – and if there isn’t a possibility for you, you can learn something new and go create it yourself.
I needed a platform to sell my books, keep customers up to date, and collect shipping information. Gumroad was that for me during Artists In Jackson, and it’s there for me again for the new project. It’s simple, reliable, and flexible.
Glad to see Gumroad doing well.
