Iterations

“I used to think art with a capital ‘A’ had to be about these big ideas. I started finding work that was really playful and finding that quality in myself.”Have you ever sat down to watch something on Netflix only to spend whatever time you set aside just trying to find something to watch? It’s amazing how often I find myself in that exact situation. A few months ago, Adrianne and I were scanning though the myriad of options, and a promo for a show called Blown Away popped up. If you haven’t seen it, Blown Away is a competition show that centers around glass blowing. Ten glass artists competed for a $60,000 prize package which includes a residency at the Corning Museum of Glass. We didn’t really know what to expect but both of us were hooked from the first episode and binged the entire season in less than a week. The show is shot in a way that allows the glass to be the star and while each of the artists on the show were interesting in their own ways, there were two who really stood out for us both in skill a

A week or so ago, I was talking to my friend Gareth about how frustrated I was in not feeling like I had a clear and consistent creative voice. It’s not uncommon for me to feel overwhelmed and frankly paralyzed by the number of options I have and unable to get out of my own way to take action on any of them. “You need to talk to Vari,” he said. “Like today. Don’t put it off. I’m going to tell her you’ll be calling.” Gareth’s partner Vari Longmuir wears quite a few hats – one of them being that of creative coach, helping people just like me — and maybe you — to fail forward and to overcome the obstacles we create and get back into that flow state of making. I reached out to her and asked her if she’d be willing to talk about some of this with me and I’m so glad she said yes. It’s a terrific conversation about figuring out what living a creative life looks like to you and unapologetically striving for balance, happiness and success doing what you love.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’d love to

Are you happy? If not, why do you think that is? For a lot of people who make things and share what they make online — myself included — we have a tendency to abdicate our happiness to the fickle whim of the mob. Not enough likes, or hearts, or dollars can send us careening into a creative tailspin, questioning what we do and even who we are. If this sounds familiar to you, hopefully this conversation with Jon Wilkening will help you find your way back to making first and foremost for the joy of it, and not simply for the return.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’d love to hear from you. Email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.You can catch up with Jon on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Last week, I asked a deceptively simple question on Instagram: What are some of your fears around creativity? Dozens of responses came in ranging from fear of running out of creative gas, to being judged by an audience to not being seen or heard at all. Your responses reinforced how much I miss interacting with an engaged community around making art.I’ve been noodling around what to do about it for quite a while and I think I have something that may be interesting, but it doesn’t work without you. In a nutshell, I want to hear from you. I want to hear what interests you, what inspires you, even what you’re struggling with. Chances are, whatever you’re going through — the good or the bad — someone else out there is going through something similar and by sharing these things with one another, maybe we can help each other to become better artists and maybe even better people. By sharing something with me on this new endeavor you’re giving me permission to share it with everyone — and maybe even to reach out to y

Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with David duChemin about subject as it relates to photography — specifically, some of the differences between photographs of a subject, versus photographs about a subject. It can feel like a tricky distinction but moving from one to the other can really elevate the work that you produce.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSDaniel Rozin is an artist and professor at NYU who builds incredible mechanical mirrors out of materials like metal, wood, and even trash that respond to the viewer’s movements.This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and to mark the occasion, NASA has completely restored mission control at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to exactly how it was in 1969, down to period coffee mugs, ashtrays, rotary phones, and carpet to recreate it as accurately as possible. Johnson Space Center director Mark Geyer said “I’m thrilled this facility will be open for the public to view. It is my hope that it w

I had something else planned for this episode, but I got a little surprise in the mail and decided to go in a different direction. On Wednesday of last week, as I went to take Cooper on his ten o’ clock walk, I noticed a big padded envelope on the front porch with the words “UNSOLICITED GIFT” written on the outside. Now, I can be a little strange about gifts, even the ones I know are coming, so when one just shows up anonymously I sometimes don’t know how to react. Fortunately, Adrianne was working from home that day and was able to offer some sage advice that wasn’t as obvious as it probably should have been as I stood there staring at the package. “Well,” she said, “the only way you’re gonna know what it is is to open it.” Right. Inside, wrapped in newspaper, was the gift itself and an envelope that contained a card. I’ll get to the what in a moment, but first I want to address the why, because without the why, the what isn’t nearly as meaningful.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSHere’s

As many of you know, three weeks ago today I had surgery on my eyes to correct a muscle imbalance and while the physical recovery has been fairly uneventful, the emotional and existential healing has been incredibly profound. The condition is called Strabismus and basically what happens is that the eyes don’t focus or track together. Let me explain…In the center of the retina, there’s an area called the macula which is basically the functional center of the retina where straight ahead images are processed. Within the macula is a spot called the fovea where the cones are at their highest concentration and it’s here where the image is meant to focus at its sharpest. In most people, if the eyes are tracking together, those two sharp images are combined to create binocular vision. In my case, my right eye was off axis—it was turned in—so the image didn’t focus on the fovea and when my brain tried to combine the two images, since they didn’t match up, I didn’t have binocular vision. Think of it like this—if my lef

I’ve always tried to be honest with you about what’s been going on with me—from the deaths of my parents, to my struggles with depression, to what led me to ultimately leave California for the East Coast. Today I want to share something that I haven’t really talked about but is something that has affected me for years and in many ways been at the core of some my darkest days.You won’t find a mention of this on Instagram or Twitter, but I wanted to share it with those of you who subscribe to Everything since you have been so supportive and generous with your time and with your ears.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSMusic in this episode: The Shine (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Let’s talk about inspiration-specifically what to do when you can’t seem to find any. Generally, there seems to be two schools of thought around it. In one camp are those who more or less wait for inspiration to strike, which is sort of in line with the Greeks who believed that inspiration was basically an unconscious blast of creativity, either from the muses or directly from the Gods. To be fair, I actually know more than a few artists who insist that their particular muses drive much of their creative work. For example, my friend Gareth has his muse Melissa—and while the work he does with other models is terrific, there is just something, oh, I don’t know…special about the work he does with Melissa. Muses in one form or another have inspired art, music, film, and poetry for thousands of years, so who am I to question their validity. In the other camp are those more in line with Chuck Close who famously said “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” Now, I understand what C

Lately, I’ve been thinking about our connection to objects and how, at least for some of us, certain objects can represent a specific time in our lives or evoke a particular state of mind or, in the case of artists, inform the type of work we are able to produce. Painters often have a favorite brush or two — I still use a couple that I’ve had since 1988. Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt used the same Leica M3 for decades and in 1963 Cormac McCarthy spent $50 on a Lettera 32 Olivetti manual typewriter that he used to write The Road, No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, and seven other novels. Objects can become more than the raw materials used to create them. They are somehow imbued with hope, with possibility, and something greater than ourselves. On Monday, we were reminded just how much one object can mean to so many.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSKenneth Clark’s landmark documentary Civilisation is a thirteen part series produced in 1969 for the BBC that looks at the hist

One of my favorite photo documentaries is Darkness & Light, which is a fantastic look into the mind and work of Richard Avedon. A lot of people know Avedon from his photographs in the American West – bold monochrome portraits set against stark white backgrounds or “that poster.” You know the one – it features a nude Nastassja Kinski lying on a concrete floor entangled with a massive Burmese python. Originally shot for Vogue, the poster went on to sell millions of copies.Avedon’s career spanned six decades and his work bridged the gap between art and commerce in a way that few others managed to do – either before or since – and yet still he felt dissatisfied with all that he had accomplished as a photographer.“I’ve never been able to put all I know into a photograph,” he said. “A photograph can be an adjective, a phrase. It can even be a sentence or a paragraph, but it can never be a chapter. So it’s been a lifetime of frustration in terms of expressing myself because of the limitations of the visual image

One of the struggles in making, regardless of what it is that you make is the tendency to compare ourselves to the artists who inspire us. But what do you do when the work you produce isn’t even close to the work of your creative heroes? Some give up, while others see slight missteps and outright failures as necessary components in the creative process. Disappointment with what we make can be creative fuel. Being creatively off balance can lead us to new ideas and directions that we never could have planned. Our appreciation of the work we do in the wake is often directly proportional to effort we put into it.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’d love to hear from you. Email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.You can catch up with Jon on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I had a realization recently that the type of photography I was pursuing really didn’t hold much interest for me. I enjoy the process of making pictures, but the subject matter is leaving me feeling disconnected and frankly disappointed with the pictures I was making. I was talking about it with Jon the other day and he asked me how the work I want to create differs from the work I think I should create? It turns out that answering the question wasn’t as easy as I thought because before you decide on the what, you first need to know the why.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’d love to hear what you think of the show. Connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris or email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com.You can catch up with what Jon is up to on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ve been frustrated with my own photography for quite a while, and I think that frustration played a big part in the whole “which camera should I buy?” saga. Look, I think I am a good photographer — sometimes maybe even really good — but lately I’ve been having a hard time connecting with the photographs I make. Many of them are interesting from a technical perspective, and I love the experience of seeing the world through a viewfinder and the challenge of finding an interesting composition. But, beyond that, there’s something missing and the work just doesn’t land for me. It doesn’t grab me and I think it has to do with my connection — or specifically the current lack of it — to the subject matter that I photograph.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSHere’s an amazing behind the scenes look at the stunt driving in Mad Max Fury Road. It’s incredible to see just how much of that movie was done practically, rather than CGI.From the real to the unreal is the work of 3D artist Josef Bshara whos

The other day, a friend of mine sent me a text message asking why I haven’t set up a Patreon for my podcasts.“Why would I do that?” I asked.“Asks the person who has wondered how he can get paid for the podcast he puts out,” he replied.There were a few more exchanges after this, but you get the idea.This was being asked by one of my closest friends and I know that it was absolutely from a space of love and out of the belief that what I do has value – monetary value – and he wants to see that value acknowledged in dollars. And to be fair, he has a valid point. I do too. But it’s not a simple as if/then – as in if you produce a podcast — or any creative work for that matter — then you’ll get paid for it. There are a lot of moving parts, so to really unpack it, we have to have an honest conversation about podcasting and money.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSArnaud Sagnier is a terrific collage artist who publishes under the name @Grafikstreet. His work is a mashup of vintage and modern aesth

“With each of the studies we’ve talked about, I’ve had to have the motivation, the passion, the interest, the fascination with the subject and I’ve needed to go out and make those photographs.”My introduction to the work of Richard Beaven came via a text message from Jon Wilkening, which read simply “you need to talk to this guy” with a link to his Instagram. I think it took all of two images to realize he was right. Richard’s latest project is called All of Us. It’s a beautiful body of work — 275 portraits made over the course of a year in the town of Ghent, New York — that manages to capture not only the soul of the town but also the people who call it home. Richard’s work is centered around connection, both to his subjects and their environments. And whether he’s immersing himself in Trump Country or spending time on small family ranches in rural America, the stories Richard tells through his photographs are in many ways the stories of us all. They are about belonging and being seen for exactly what and wh

A number of you have asked why I am selling what review after review calls the best APS-C camera on the market today to buy a two-year old Micro 4/3 camera that I’ve already bought and returned once before? Well, it’s complicated, but if you’ll give me a little bit of rope, I’ll promise to try and wrap it up without hanging myself.What camera should I buy? It’s a question I get asked a lot. And I try to stay pretty consistent with my advice. If you were an On Taking Pictures listener, you know that I could answer the question for everyone but my myself. My search for a new camera became an epic saga and the butt of jokes for years on the show.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLINKSHere & Now recently posted an interview with climber Alex Honnold and adventure photographer Jimmy Chin and his wife Elizabeth on their Oscar nominated documentary Free Solo, which follows Honnold as he climbs the 3,000 plus foot sheer granite face of El Capitan without any safety ropes to catch him.Also, if you d

Kristopher Matheson is one of my favorite people to talk to. Not only is he a terrific photographer, he’s also funny as hell. We don’t talk often, but when we do, I always come away inspired and wanting to dive a little deeper into my own work. Not too long ago, Kristopher started posting images from a series he calls “Behind Glass.” I love pretty much everything Kristopher posts, but there was something about these pictures that really caught my attention. I called him up to ask where the idea came from and since Kristopher is a pretty fastidious journaler, I expected a detailed explanation citing influences and connections to other projects. Instead, he said “I have no idea.” Wait, what now?Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSIf you’ve listened to In Between before or listened to recent episodes of my other shows Iterations, and Process Driven, you’ve heard me mention my “Jeffery Saddoris: Everything” feed. Over the next several weeks, I’m going to be phasing out the individual show feeds and i

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”– William Arthur WardI have been drawing as far back as I can remember. My mom used to tell me that I could draw before I could talk. I’ve spoken on previous Iterations about my childhood love of art supply stores, which is still kind of true. All I ever wanted to be as a kid was an animator at Disney and I drew constantly. That changed a bit in high school when I was introduced to photography, but I didn’t stop drawing. In fact, I wanted to go to Art Center College of Design in Pasadena to study photography and illustration. As it happened — and this must have been my sophomore or junior year — Art Center was awarding scholarships for weekend classes, and one of them was being taught by a real Disney animator. All you had to do to be considered was submit a portfolio of your work. I told myself that I didn’t have a shot, and even if I did, there was no way we could afford the $40,000 a year

I want to give you a quick update to some of the changes I’m making to my shows over the next several weeks. If you’ve listened to any of the recent episodes of Iterations, In Between, or Process Driven, you’ve heard me mention my new Everything feed. For those of you who may have missed it, subscribing to the new feed gets you everything I do. Every Iteration, every In Between and every Process Driven. Plus, you’ll also get special one-off conversations and any new show that I happen to do all in one feed that’s available in your favorite podcast app and now also on Spotify. I’m adopting the YouTube model of “subscribe to me, not my show.” What that means is that the individual show feeds are going away as of April 1st, so if you are subscribed to one or more of the individual shows and want to keep getting it or them, please subscribe to Everything so you don’t miss anything.My goal here is consistency, both for me as a producer and for you as a listener. I want to be able to produce compelling conversation