Iterations

Over the weekend, I took a workshop in encaustic painting. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically painting with hot wax and it’s a process that’s been around for literally thousands of years. The are records of the Greeks using it as far back as the 5th century BC. The process involves heating beeswax with damar resin crystals which forms what’s known as “medium.” From there, you add pigment — either oil-based or dry powder — to create whatever color you’re after. What first drew me to the idea of encaustic was how much faster it seemed than the acrylic process I currently use in my paintings. Some of my pieces are 15 or even 20 layers deep and when the gels are applied thick to create the impasto type of textures that I use, it can take hours or even days to dry between layers. So, it’s not unusual for me to take weeks to finish a piece and, if I’m being honest, there have been several instances where I was either bored with the piece or I basically forgot where I wanted to go with it. So

In my last Iteration, I was talking about social media, specifically how this year I was looking to refine or even completely redefine how I use it, personally and professionally. One of the biggest challenges for me historically has been consistency, both in terms of what I make and how I share it, and I think the bulk of the challenge comes around just how much I’m trying to do and the fact that when I look at it on paper, I end up almost feeling paralyzed by the weight of my own ideas, and as a response I don’t do anything. Sean Tucker reached out after listening to it and offered some terrific insights on how he uses social media and also some suggestions for how we can use it so it feels more like a tool and less like a distraction.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 p

Earlier this week I put up an image on Instagram with the caption “Time for a reboot.” It’s basically a “glitchy” version of my signature logo that I use as my avatar on Instagram and Twitter. I posted it because I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I use—or in some cases misuse—social media and I’ve come to the conclusion that now is a great time to redefine what I want to get from and what I want to bring to social media.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSA fantastic article was recommended to me by Hugh Brownstone from Three Blind Men and an Elephant, who I had the pleasure of speaking to recently. It’s called The Amateur Spirit by Daniel Boorstin and if you’ll just indulge me, I’d like to share a quote that goes “I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a here

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how photographs influence our memories—not just of people and places, but events in our lives. For example, I have realized that there are memories of certain aspects of my childhood that are rooted not in an actual event but rather in the photographs depicting the event. There are multiple “important” events in my life where the time surrounding the event itself is a complete blur and my “memory” of it only exists because there happens to be a photograph.So, in this conversation, we’re talking about how memory can often be influenced or even replaced entirely by photographs. We’re also wrestling a bit with a question Sean Tucker asked about whether photography is more about the end product — the image — or more about the process of making it.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSIf you’re enjoying the conversations so far and you’d like to keep listening, you can subscribe to In Between in iTunes or in your favorite podcast app or you can get it as par

Last week, we were in New Hampshire celebrating Christmas with family. Now, I’ve got to tell you that I love handmade gifts and this year my eleven-year-old niece Anya made me a gift that I absolutely love. It’s a canvas board which, for those of you who may bot know is basically a piece of mat board wrapped in canvas. This particular piece measures 3×9 inches and on it she painted the phrase “My Instrument” with a little camera in between the two words. What I found so amazing about it—besides than the fact that it was completely unexpected—was how much I love the typography, partially because it’s just so different from the way I see. I’m typically more Helvetica or Futura and this is reaching into David Carson territory.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSThe MY INStrUment painting that my niece Anya made for me.Lewis Rossignol is a terrific illustrator from Portland, Maine whose mixed media portraiture is fantastic. In addition to prints, he’s got two books available which I just ordered toda

I’ve been sitting on something for a while because I didn’t know how or even if I should share it. But, I think it’s important and while I won’t share it in its entirety, I would like to share a portion of it because as I said, I think it’s important — both for me to say and maybe for you to hear. It all centers around a conversation I had with Adrianne that was one of if not the most difficult conversations we’ve ever had. It started with a podcast I was listening to which was a terrific interview with a conflict photojournalist named Giles Penfound. I was telling Adrianne about it and told her that when I was in high school, I thought seriously about becoming a photojournalist—specifically a combat photojournalist after seeing some of the work of Larry Burrows—and that photojournalism was one of the two types of photography that I was most drawn to.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSA British sculptor known as Anna & the Willow makes beautiful large scale outdoor sculptures out of rods of

In the last episode, we talked about how I—and maybe even you—rewrote the memories of childhood so they would fit the narrative we crafted about it as an adult, and what happens when childhood photographs begin to poke holes in the story. We also talked about some of the challenges of monetizing our work to the point where we can actually make a living as an artist.In this conversation, we’re talking about the ideas of urgent vs important when it comes to the work we make and how social media tends to encourage, and often reward, one over the other.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSIf you’re enjoying the conversations so far and you’d like to keep listening, you can subscribe to In Between in iTunes or in your favorite podcast app or you can get it as part of my Everything feed, which also includes Process Driven, Iterations, and anything else I happen to put up. Just search for “Jeffery Saddoris Everything.”You can connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris or email me at talkback@j

One of the things that I enjoyed the most — and miss the most — about doing a weekly podcast like On Taking Pictures is having discussions in between episodes with friends and listeners. Sometimes we would go a little deeper on conversations that were started on the show, other times they would prompt related discussions connected to things going on in our lives. I think the in between moments are what are most interesting to me — connecting broad conversations around a topic to our actual everyday lived experiences. I’m starting to roll tape on some of these conversations and while I’m not entirely sure whether it will become a new show per se, many of you have expressed an interest in hearing more of these types of explorations. With that, here’s In Between.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSAs I said in the intro, I’m not entirely sure what this is going to be, but I’d love to hear what you thought of it, and whether or not you’d like to hear more conversations like it. Email me at ta

Iteration 37 was called The Myth of the Perfect Thing and in it I chronicled part of my years long search for a new camera to replace or at least complement my Fuji X-Pro1, ultimately leading me to the Olympus EM1 Mkii. A few days after I recorded that episode I actually bought an X-T3 and since I started posting images taken with it, I’ve gotten some emails and messages asking what happened and whether or not my feelings had changed about the Olympus. The short answer is no, but I feel like this deserves a little clarification. The main reason I chose the Olympus was how it felt in the hand, but as I mentioned mentioned in 37, it wasn’t JUST the feel — the performance of the camera is outstanding, and not outstanding for a micro 4/3 camera, just outstanding. Full stop. But something in the back of my head kept me wondering about the new Fuji. If you were ever an On Taking Pictures listener, you heard me repeatedly wax poetic about my love and borderline obsession with my X-Pro1.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Cas

I woke up the other morning thinking about The Beatles, specifically the dramatic changes their work went through over the course of their career. From what I know of them, they began doing covers of other people’s material – mostly early American rock ‘n’ roll from artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley. Learning the songs of their heroes allowed them to use that material as starting points for their own songs. The early Beatles songs were — at least to me — straight ahead rock ‘n’ roll that became the blueprint for the pop songs of the day. They were simple but catchy, and they were packaged in a way that nobody had ever seen or heard before. As they became better and better musicians, they branched out into more complex arrangements — their songs became more “experimental“ for lack of a better word. Somewhere around Revolver, things started to get really interesting.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’m loving the Martin Scorsese Masterclass. I don’t know ho

There’s a scene in the new remake of A Star is Born that’s been rattling around in my head since I saw the film. It’s the scene where Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson is talking to Lady Gaga’s character Ally about self-expression and finding her voice. Jackson says, “Look, talent comes everywhere, but having something to say and a way to say it so that people listen to it, that’s a whole other bag. And unless you get out there and you try to do it, you’ll never know. That’s just the truth. And if there’s one reason that we’re supposed to be here it’s to say something so that people want to hear it. So you gotta grab it. And you don’t apologize or worry about why they’re listening or how long they’re gonna be listening for. You just tell them what you want to say.”Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSS8 Artists on Painting is a terrific video which features interviews with artists including Michael Simpson, Cecily Brown, and David Hockney talking about painting and making art, whatever that means.

When I was a kid, there was a big department store chain called The May Company. It was sort of like a Macy’s and the one nearest our house was at an outdoor mall called the Eastland Center. In the lower level of The May Company, they had an art supply section and whenever I would go there with my mom, she would let me stay there in the art supply section while she went shopping. I still remember the smells of pencils and the oil paints and to this day, the smell of art supplies takes me right back there. They even had little pads of scratch paper so you could try out the different things. So I did. I was in heaven and I would just plop down in the middle of one of the aisles and doodle away until my mom came to get me. Sometimes, she would let me get one of the fancy drawing pencils without an eraser on the end so that I could continue my budding masterpieces at home.Subscribe: iTunes | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI read a story on TechCrunch about protections for freelancers in what they call the gig econo

“I want to love taking pictures of whatever it is. It’s making something interesting out of everyday objects that intrigues me.”Kevin Mullins never planned on being a wedding photographer – or any kind of photographer really. His daily routine was a two and a half hour tube ride each way to an IT job in central London. One one particular ride home, he flipped open a magazine someone had left on the seat to an article about wedding photography. The candid black and white photos struck a chord with Kevin and when he got home to his wife, he told her that’s what he wanted to do. I’ll let Kevin fill in the details, but over the past decade, he has shot hundreds of weddings and he has developed a terrific documentary shooting style that allows him to forget about the obvious or more traditional shot list — the rings, the cake, the dress hanging in a tree or in front of a window — and instead focus on the smaller personal stories that make up the bigger story of the day. The end results are intimate and allow us as

At the end of 1999, I bought my first new car: a 2000 Chevy Blazer Sport in black, with a dark grey interior. I had never bought a new car before and the purchase process took months. Literally. I think I test drove every car available under $30,000 — multiple times. It got to the point where sales people at several local dealerships knew me by name. As it turned out, the local Chevy dealer was owned by the father of a guy I went to high school with, who ended up making me a great deal on the Blazer — I think in part so I would stop coming in to test drive his cars. Still, I loved that car and drove it for more than a decade before trading it in. When I decided to upgrade to a new mic, I tested more than 20 different mics — condensers, dynamics, even a couple ribbon mics — before landing on the ElectroVoice RE320 that I currently use. And then there’s my search for a new camera, which was a running joke for about five of the six years of doing On Taking Pictures. The point is, I do an exhaustive amount of res

“Those villagers living on the front line — that’s the part that got me the most. Those people have nowhere else to go.”I have been fascinated by photojournalism and specifically combat or conflict photojournalism since first seeing the work of Larry Burrows when I was in high school. His photographs of Vietnam showed a side of war that I hadn’t seen before — not just the atrocities, but also the personal stories and the human cost of conflict. A few months back, Sean Tucker and I were having a conversation about conflict photography and he told me about a friend of his who had gone to Ukraine to photograph the war there after deciding that street photography wasn’t giving him the photographic experience he was looking for. His name is Ondřej Vachek, and after looking at his pictures and reading his accompanying essay called The Forgotten War, I knew I wanted to talk to him about not only the experience itself, but also about some of the back story and choices that led up to it. CONNECT WITH ONDREJWebsite: ht

“It’s not where you go that really is the point, it’s the going. It’s the person you become in the going to these places.”I first spoke to David duChemin in 2009 after reading his book Within the Frame. Since then, we’ve recorded a number of conversations together and in addition to being a fan of both his words and his pictures, I’m proud to call him a friend. We begin the conversation talking about David’s new book Pilgrims & Nomads — a body of work that has taken him nearly twelve years and multiple trips to Ethiopia and Northern Kenya to produce. As is often the case when David and I sit down, the conversation quickly seems to find its own rhythm and its own direction. CONNECT WITH DAVIDWebsite: https://davidduchemin.comTwitter: @david_duCheminInstagram: @davidducheminFacebook: @visionisbetter MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Yesterday was our first day back from a 9-day working vacation in France and Germany and I’ve got to tell you, I still haven’t fully readjusted to East Coast time, but I wanted to talk a little about the trip while it was still fresh in my mind. I spent the bulk of the day yesterday taking a first pass at photos and making notes about the some of the experiences we had and how I would like to see them affecting me moving forward. Overall, I came back incredibly inspired, both in terms of conversations I’d like to record and some new directions and techniques I would like to explore in my own work, both photographically and in my paintings.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSLegendary conflict photojournalist Don McCullin has released a beautiful new book called The Landscape.Designed in the USSR: 1950-1989 is a terrific look into the design of everyday life in the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, from toys to propaganda.The current issue of Egoïste magazine — volume 11, number 18 — f

I had a friend in college—let’s call him Michael—who was one of the most interesting people I had ever met up to that point in my life. He was the first person I’d met who had…almost an “aura” about him, for lack of a better word, along with several unique qualities that just made him fascinating to be around. He wasn’t what you would call a “goth” per se, but his appearance was striking. His hair would change often, both in color and style, he was typically clad in black, wore eyeliner, a variety of rings and bracelets, and even had black painted fingernails. I met Michael through a mutual friend in the theater department and what I found most interesting was that he didn’t seem to be playing a part or persona, this was just who he was at the time. One of the biggest influences Michael had on me was his taste in music. Michael played guitar in a band and introduced me to entire genres of music that I had never heard of before from bands like Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, and Peter Murphy.

Next month, we will have been in this house for two years and it’s taken me all of that time to finally get around to beginning the build out of the two basement spaces that will ultimately become my studios — one for podcasting and digital media and the other for painting and printing. The previous owners of the house were both makers—he was a woodworker and an engineer and she was a painter. Together, they literally built the house in 1956 and in fact one of the downstairs spaces served as a wood shop where the living room built-ins and the kitchen cabinets were made. So there’s a history of making here and I knew before we even bought the house and moved in that I wanted at least one of the spaces downstairs as a studio, and I think I even told Adrianne that I would start building it out on day one. But here we are two years later and still no studio. What happened? I think like so many creative endeavors, it has something to do with fear, or what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance.” And before I go much

In this episode, I want to talk about prints. You remember prints, right–little pieces of paper with pictures on them? Your parents probably had albums or maybe boxes of them that you would flip through on holidays or birthdays or the night before you went off to college.The act of printing photographs has changed dramatically since I bought my first camera in 1982—necessarily so. With film cameras, you had to make prints—even just contact prints—to see what you shot, unless of course you were shooting slides. But even then, if you were regularly shooting slides, chances are you had a slide projector and one of those clumsy fold up screens, or at least a favorite wall. The point is, the act of looking at photos used to be a completely separate act than that of taking photos, since film offered no way to chimp as you shot. With digital, it’s all more or less the same process: shoot, look at what you shot. If you missed it or it wasn’t quite right, you do it again and if you did get it, you move on. And once yo