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.
Emotion is the heart of candid photography. Real emotion cannot be forced. It appears naturally when people feel comfortable.
Candid photos often show subtle feelings. A relaxed posture, a thoughtful pause, or spontaneous laughter adds depth to the image. These small details help viewers feel connected.
Because the moments are real, the emotion feels familiar. The viewer recognizes themselves in the image. That connection makes candid photography memorable.
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.
Sometimes I think travel is just a long way to remind yourself who you are. Not in a dramatic, life-changing way, but in the smaller details: what you notice, what you remember, what you feel when nothing is happening.
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
True solitude is the boredom of hearing nothing but our own voice. That’s an increasingly rare occurrence.
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.
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)
“Bad light can rob even the most incredible scenes of their visual interest, while good light can transform the most mundane subjects into a thing of beauty.” – Cameron Whitman (via Twitter)
“For me, the pictures I make are the byproduct of my explorations, not an end in themselves.” – Stephen Shore
“Your favourite writers and works already exist. You can’t be them. But conversely, nobody else can tell stories in your voice. So do that.”
“We can talk about the photographer as an author who – on the basis of facts and by means of a minimal shift in perception – creates in close proximity to reality.”
Thomas Weski, “Draft of a Presentation,” in William Eggleston’s Los Alamos.
CJ Chilvers says he was wrong about landscape photography:
Landscape photography is healthy. You hike miles. You look at gorgeous things. It feels good. It makes others looking at the results feel good too. Few things create such positive results for all involved.
Amen. As always, photography can serve as the excuse to do something you already love.
“How learning works: ‘you practice music scales so you can forget them when playing music.'” – Luke Wroblewski
Same goes for technique and photography, or color theory and design. Make the technical stuff muscle memory, then go out and do what you feel like doing.
(That’s The Neal Morse Band in Cleveland, Ohio. Great show, and great new double concept album.)
“Making decisions about art based entirely on commerce is a recipe for regret.” – CJ Chilvers
“The gateway drug is not creating art, but experiencing art.” – Christoph Niemann in Abstract: The Art of Design
Indeed. I’m lucky, working at a museum, because I experience art every day. But even before this job, I made sure to visit museums and seek out good work.
Artists’ websites, photo books, small town galleries – there’s no excuse not to surround yourself with, and absorb, art. I’d argue, given everything else, that it makes you a better artist.
“Because they can’t publish you better than you can publish yourself.” – Seth Godin
“Find the light. Find it and harness it. It’s ours.”
Justin Nicole Melville, fellow Jackson artist and photographer.
I may be old-fashioned, but I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty – a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don’t think one should have to apologize for it.
Saul Leiter (via bijan)
…and really all you need to make photos. “A search for beauty.”
We Americans are permanently fallen creatures who possess no memory of paradise, only a fantasy of it. And the fantasy, unrealized, perhaps unrealizable, turns us violent.
Photography allows you to be the light that shines onto someone so that the rest of the world can see them.
