Iterations

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

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in…well, longer than it should have been. It’s something I’m really trying to work on, but as you probably know, sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, during the course of our conversation catching up on what was happening in each other’s lives, he told me that my design professor and the person who was really the cornerstone of the entire technical theatre department had passed away last year. I hadn’t spoken to him since 1989, but the news of his passing left me a little gutted. Herb Camburn was a scenic designer, a costume designer, a director, and an artist. He was one of the most talented people I had ever met, let alone had the pleasure of studying under. When explaining a particular concept, he would routinely grab a pen or pencil and begin to draw—sometimes a costume rendering, other times a scenic elevation—but regardless of what he was drawing, the execution was always impeccable. The real art, however, was that he would m

Earlier this week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures after more than six years of weekly episodes. While the show was ostensibly about photography, the legacy of the show is 325 episodes—about 600 hours, give or take—of conversations that ranged from why we make art to whether digital is better than film. I think we spent more time asking questions than answering them, and for me, that became the main point of being there week after week. One of my favorite quotes is by Rainer Maria Rilke and while I won’t share the whole thing with you now, the core of it is to “live the questions.” By living the questions, Rilke writes, “Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSHere’s a link to the full episode of On Taking Pictures the clip was taken from: Episode 43 Artistic MonkhoodLA-based artist and photographer Natalja Kent makes incredible colorful geometric large format photographs with

“I did small roles in big films and big roles in small films, but I was working constantly for the first six years and then, you know, the bottom kind of dropped out.”Jude Gerard Prest is an actor, a writer, a director, and a producer with more than 700 hours of television under his belt. He’s also one of my oldest and dearest friends. In fact, I was the second person he met after moving to LA from the east coast to pursue a career in acting. Over the next 25-plus years, his hard work and dedication to his craft behind the camera has earned him the respect and friendship of some of the biggest names in Hollywood, but he’s still looking for that one great role. He’s got more integrity that just about anyone I’ve ever met, he’s taught me about perseverance, humility, and grace and I love him like a brother. LINKSWe Can Get Them For You WholesaleIMDb: Jude Gerard Prest CONNECT WITH JUDEWebsite: https://judegp.comFacebook: judegp MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Tomorrow would have been my mom’s 74th birthday and while not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, I am grateful for the life I was allowed to share with her. She was generous, compassionate, and the most unconditionally loving person I have ever met. She always encouraged me to embrace the quirky, creative side of myself and insisted that following my passion meant not holding back and always giving 100%. As a child, my mom was a dancer—she and her brother Jerry even appeared on The Jack Parr Show together. A few years later, Jerry decided that “dancing was for sissies,” then life ultimately got in the way and my mom eventually gave it up too. While a life as a professional dancer was not to be, music was still an important part of her life. Even after I came along, our house was always filled with music—mostly Motown. I grew up on a steady musical diet of artists like Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, and the Jackson 5. But when she wasn’t grooving to the sounds coming out of Hitsville

E3 was last week and for those of you who may not know what that is, it’s the Electronic Entertainment Expo and if you’re a gamer, it’s like Mecca. Every year, game studios and indie developers descend on the LA convention center for the chance to show the games the’ve been working on, sometimes for years. E3 is full sensory overload—a barrage of sight and sound from the minute you walk through the doors and I love it. Like many kids who grew up in the 70s, I’ve been hooked on video games from the moment I unwrapped my Atari 2600 on Christmas morning in 1977. With each new console, my addiction only grew—the NES, the N64, the Gamecube, the Wii, the Xbox, all of the Playstations. My favorite console was the Dreamcast, by a long shot. I remember being at E3 in 1999 when the Dreamcast launched against the announcement of the Playstation 2. Sony had the budget (and a DVD player), but Sega had the heart. In the end, the PS2 won the battle and became the best-selling console of all time but I think for many of us,

Kristopher Matheson is a photographer living in Tokyo after leaving Canada for a teaching position that was only supposed to last six months to a year. Twelve years later, he’s still there and has made Tokyo his home, at least for now. I was introduced to him through the terrific photos he began to post in the On Taking Pictures Google+ group. His images showed a side of Tokyo that I hadn’t really seen before – his composition and use of color made the photos somehow more personal and intimate, despite the fact that people are virtually absent from them. Kristopher and I have become friends over the past several years through calls and emails that are sometimes frequent, sometimes sporadic. But regardless of how often we talk, it seems like every exchange ends up being a slice of a larger ongoing discussion, where questions are raised and sometimes answered and rabbit holes are explored, often over the course of several interactions. CONNECT WITH KRISTOPHERWebsite: https://www.krismatheson.comInstagram: @kris

There’s a saying in photography that goes “pretty light plus a pretty subject equals a pretty picture.” And if you believe that, then you might be tempted to form an opinion about who Gareth Lewis is based solely on the provocative nature of his portfolio, but you’d be wrong. After booking a one-way flight from his native London to Australia, Gareth found himself a stranger in a strange land. Before settling in Melbourne, he spent the first year driving over 24,000 kilometers exploring Australia in a “Miami White” station wagon. Along the way, he picked tomatoes, clipped mandarins, and even did a brief stint as a jackaroo before eventually finding his way to a camera. CONNECT WITH GARETHWebsite: http://www.garethlewisphotography.comInstagram: @garethlewis MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Joshua K Jackson is a terrific street photographer from London. On paper he’s relatively new to the genre, but his already stunning body of work is every bit as compelling as those by some of his photographic heroes. Though Josh is quick to point out that he still has a lot to learn, his dedication to photography as both an art and a craft is immediately evident in his use of bold color and superb composition to communicate mood and narrative. While he often leaves the house with any sort of expectation or agenda, he says that the energy and buzz of the city is like fuel to keep shooting, especially since you never know what the scene could be just around the next corner. CONNECT WITH JOSHWebsite: https://www.joshkjack.com/Instagram: @joshkjackTwitter: @joshkjack MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine about Process Driven and he asked me why I did the show. Not from the standpoint of having the conversations, but rather why release them into the world. “What do you get out of it?” he asked. As I thought about it for a bit, I really couldn’t come up with an answer—no one that was coherent anyway. I’ve been thinking about it ever since—a lot—and I think I’ve come up with an answer—at least a partial answer and that it this. Throughout my life there have been a handful of people—and I’m talking about people other than family—who have taken an interest in me that went above and beyond what was expected and as a result of that interest, either subtly or dramatically altered the trajectory of my life.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSIn addition to being an incredible film director, Stanley Kubrick was also a photographer. A new book called Through a Different Lens showcases around 300 of Kubrick’s images, many of which have never been seen publi

Simon Baxter is a fantastic landscape photographer from the north of England who I was introduced to by Sean Tucker. There’s something about Simon’s photographs that goes beyond light and composition and draws the viewer into the scene, rather than simply holding us at the periphery. Simon’s passion for photography and his connection to the local woodlands where he photographs are obvious from the moment you look at his body of work. What may not be obvious, however, is the amount of pain Simon often has to endure in order to produce them, and how none of it would be possible without a labradoodle named Meg. CONNECT WITH SIMONWebsite: https://baxter.photosYouTube: SimonBaxterPhotographyInstagram: @baxter.photos MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Kent Hall is tough to categorize. On one hand he’s a photographer who makes books. On the other, he’s a collage artist who makes books. But he’s also a poet—and yes, a poet who makes books. His fascination with the mundane and the detritus of modern life are the raw materials for much of what he creates and whether he’s being inspired by film or literature or simply watching the city move around him, his growing body of work gets more and more interesting with every new expression. CONNECT WITH KENTWebsite: https://www.kent.lyInstagram: @windsorknot MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Lately I’ve been seeing, or maybe just noticing, the word “iconic” as a means for makers to describe their own work—“my name is so and so and I make iconic portraits of whatever…,” and I’ve got to tell you, I’m having a hard time with how it’s being used.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSThe Atlantic posted a terrific article on how the “Nifty 50” became the goto lens for many photographers.If you’ve ever thought about making your own photo book, you’ll want to check out this PDN article on the art and process of sequencing your images for photobooks.If you love model trains and miniatures, here’s a fascinating documentary about two brothers who quit their jobs to create Miniatur Wunderland a massive miniature city that has become the most popular tourist attraction in Germany.Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

One of the biggest struggles as a maker, regardless of what it is that you’re making, can be finding meaning in what you make. Whether you’re a painter, or a sculptor, or a writer, or a photographer, finding meaning in a particular project is often one of the obstacles that prevents us from starting, or can be one of the challenges to overcome in order to finish. As someone who spends a great deal of time talking to creative people, I often hear about projects at the poles, either early in the planning stages, or after the work has been completed, but rarely in the middle — which can be a challenge to talk about because there are often themes and ideas that haven’t quite come together yet. Oli Kellett is a street photographer from the UK who’s 18 months into a multi year project that brings him to America several times a year to photograph cities and the people who inhabit them.At its core, the project is about crossroads, but as you’ll hear in this conversation, Oli is still wrestling with the literal repres

Nick Mayo is a terrific street photographer from Grand Rapids, Michigan who is using YouTube and Instagram to build a platform centered around serving the photographic community and having an ongoing dialog discussing the challenges of making and sharing authentic work. His Two Minute Tuesdays for example are live weekly snapshots of some of the things he’s wrestling with not only as a visual artist, but also as a human being. In this conversation we discuss the value of revisiting a favorite location again and again and how being a little outside his comfort zone, is exactly where he likes to be. CONNECT WITH NICKYouTube: http://youtube.com/nickexposedInstagram: @NickExposedFacebook: @NickExposed MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

As much as I love artists like Rauschenberg, deKooning and even Boucher, the first artist I knew by name was Frank Frazetta. He painted worlds I had never seen before, filled with warriors being pulled by a team of polar bears, red eyed demons on horseback and beautiful scantily clad maidens. I poured over his books, meticulously copying my favorite characters. While it was great drawing practice, I wasn’t doing anything original. I had sketchbooks filled with Frazetta drawings, but not one that was a Saddoris.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSSI’m loving the work of Canadian illustrator Terry Edward Elkins. He has a terrific style that reminds me of vintage national parks posters and some of my favorite children’s book illustrators.Questlove is a monster. He’s the founder and drummer for the Roots, a DJ, a producer, a professor, and an author. As you’ll hear in this NPR conversation, he also has some really inspiring thoughts around creativity.Israeli photographer Natan Dvir was the win

Trying to make a living as a professional photographer is hard, really hard. You might get into it thinking that all you’re going to do is take pictures, but it doesn’t take long to realize that time with a camera in your hands is only a small part of a what’s required day to day. It’s even harder when you’re also working a full-time job. But Freddy Clark is doing the work. He’s taking his passion for photography, an encyclopedic knowledge of beer, and a background in IT and is steadily building a new career as a food and beverage photographer, and it all started at a small rock ’n’ roll radio station in the Poconos. CONNECT WITH FREDDYWebsite: http://santephoto.comInstagram: @santephotoTwitter: @santephoto MUSICPlease Listen Carefully (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0