You Don’t Have to Smile

I often tell that to my portrait subjects--no need to smile. I'd prefer they were being themselves rather than putting on the smile mask that we all learned to wear as a kid via "Say Cheese". There's nothing wrong with a genuine smile, but asking for it, or having them turn it on, I find...

My Eternal Quest to Motivate Showing Up

I talk about this a lot. The idea that we can capture magic with our cameras, but we have to show up. Have to go out and find the photographs by getting out of our easy chair and out into the world, camera at the ready. I was lying awake a couple nights ago thinking...

Golden Age of Analog Photography

We are really living in it, a new golden age of analog photography. Sometimes we can't see something while we're in it. You can either be in the mountains, or off the mountains looking at them--they're impossible to see while you're in them. But there couldn't be a better time to be an analog photographer....

Missing: Memories in a Shoebox

David Burnett, the Newsweek photojournalist speaking on a podcast mentioned that of all the places he's traveled in his career over the last 50 years, in all the countries he's made pictures, the photos that he wishes he had are the ones of him and his friends in college, sitting around their dorm rooms and...

Taking It To The Streets

On my YouTube channel, I recently talked about how I want to get as fast with the Leica as I am with my trusty Nikons, having used them for the past 35 years. You do something for 35 years, you get pretty good at it. So, this weekend, I went out with the Leica M9...

The Wise Photo Project in Local News (Or How I’m Changing The World)

A story about The Wise Photo Project ran in today’s Longmont Leader, a local news source in Boulder County Colorado. As noted in the article, the project seeks other photographers, maybe you, to contribute to it. Support The Shows Want to support my shows? You can, just visit this link at Paypal, or go to...

BTS (Behind The Scenes) Photos

Do you enjoy seeing the behind the scenes pictures from a photo shoot? I was out on a photowalk with my friend Paul, I was using my Rolleiflex and he was shooting his Nikon F 35mm camera. I had black and white Ilford HP5 loaded, and he was shooting Kodak color film. My goal was...

Liking a “Twelver” Over a 36-Exposure Roll

I like rolls of 12. For photography, a dozen frames is a manageable number these days when I'm shooting film. Because I tend to have film loaded in multiple cameras. (As William Eggleston says, "I take the camera I feel like using on any given day.") Just today I processed a roll of 36-exposure Tri-X...

The Wise Photo Project Expands

Big news. I've had several people contact me about creating portraits for The Wise Photo Project now that I've announced I've opened it up to photographers everywhere. And today I see that just that has happened. There were two photographs made and posted on our Facebook group page by photographer Mark Smith working in Aurora...

2005: The Year Photography Changed

It's interesting to me to see how things change. When I was in school we had text books and notebooks. Students today have Macbooks and iPads. We learned penmanship and how to write and diagram sentences. Do they even learn that now? When was the last time anyone had to write a letter by hand...