When you’re at the bottom of a mountain and you look up, you can’t see every rock and stone or path. You see the peak, how distant it looks, and very often, an insurmountable task ahead. It may not be immediately obvious how to start climbing. It may be that you see people at the top and project your insecurities onto them, thinking about how great they must be, and how small you must look to them. What we can’t…
I awoke at 4:50am to prepare for the morning ahead. I was finally warm in my sleeping bag inside my little tent, but it was time to move. The first blue morning light was creeping in, though it was still dark enough that my eyes needed to adjust to be able to pack up my campsite. Within ten minutes we were ready to hit the road, and so we began driving to the lake that I had picked out the…
No matter how many times I fail, I still believe that I will succeed. No matter how many times I succeed, I still believe that I will never reach the top. This is the foundation on which I pursue success. I used to feel inferior if I couldn’t create an image every single day. Then I started looking at other photographer’s careers and realized that many artists limit how often they create. They don’t share a lot. They keep it…
There is one feeling that is more consistent for me than any other. It surpasses happiness, sadness, and most other emotions. It is a constant force in my life. It can be good. It can be bad. It is what pushes me to be more. It is what holds me back from being more. It is what we make it. Incomplete. Think about how much you do is spurred on by a feeling of being incomplete. For me, it is almost everything….
Getting to know your process is so key in understand how and why you create. After all, the finished picture is a representation of all the time and energy you put into creating it. It stands for more than the finished concept; it stands for your process. For me, a lot of great images are ones where the process is not wholly apparent, where you look and wonder how they achieved a certain look. Whether it is a Gregory Crewdson…