We photographers are consumed with lighting and light. It’s right up there with where to stand, where to point the camera, and when to release the shutter. In the last two days, I’ve watched two movies with unrealistic lighting – lighting so bad that it shatters the willing suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy a… [Read More]

A few months ago, woman who is starting a magazine (a courageous woman, given the state of the print publishing industry) asked me if she could run some pictures from This Green Growing Land, my series on farm workers. I asked her about context. She said that the publication, Edible Monterey Bay, was a regional… [Read More]

In the latest issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, there’s an interview with Richard Thompson. In his answer to a question about how much his songwriting is driven by knowledge and how much by experimentation, Thompson says something that photographic artists can take to heart. Just replace the musical references with photographic ones. There are many… [Read More]

Can art — as opposed to craft — be taught? I don’t think so, at least not directly, but artists can be taught things that allow them to find a path to making better art. There’s an analogy with creativity. I think the following statements are true of both creativity and artistic ability. Everybody’s got… [Read More]

At the CPA, we mentally divide workshops into categories, two of which are “craft” and “artistic development”. Most of the time, we have no difficulty placing a workshop in one category. Gum bichromate printing goes in the craft bucket. So does digital image editing. “Finding your Work” is artistic development. We recently had a discussion… [Read More]