First and Foremost

There needs to be something that is at the top of our goals list. Something that we want to do more than anything else. The biggest goal of our lives. What is it? What is yours? What is mine? I feel fortunate for having an answer. I meet a lot of people who say they...

Why Film, Really, Why Kenneth?

I always carry a Nikon DSLR and a 28mm f1.8 lens with me in case I come across a story for my Roy Stryker photo project. And I have a few lenses in in my car, the most useful is a 70-300mm f4-5.6 Nikkor Zoom that is slow, cheap ($75) and small, yet sharp as...

We Have Choices Today. I Choose the Analog. The Tangible.

Like vinyl records versus digital CDs. Tube versus solid-state guitar amplifiers. Home-cooked meals versus microwaved. Hand-written (or typed) greeting cards versus emails. Film versus digital photography. Traditional photographic prints versus NFTs. I'm in the tangible art business!~Kenneth Wajda I make film portraits using 20th-century techniques and cameras and print in a traditional darkroom. For those...

NFTs: A Sign of Desperate Times

They're Beanie Babies, not Picassos. It feels like NFTs are this generations' way of saying, "I don't care about anything real. No stuff. I don't want any family heirlooms or any 'things', I just want my computer so I can become an influencer and not have to work and I'll get rich and have a...

Putting Yourself Out There

I saw a theater piece recently as a work-in-progress table read and the performer was extremely brave, writing and acting a story about a difficult part of her life involving a parent's death, regret and grief. People in the audience commented that she was so brave, her writing so masterful and that they wouldn't be...

Go To New York

Be wary of a comfortable position. A good job. A steady paycheck. Feeling safe. It might be a trap. I look back on my life as a photojournalist for a daily newspaper in the 1980-1990s and into the early 2000s. I loved my work, my colleagues, my world. It was based in Trenton, New Jersey,...

“Digital is Much More Convenient.”

I see those words written a lot and they are often heard when I mention I shoot film photographs. To which I want to say, "Who said convenient art was the best art?" Another one is, "It's so expensive photographing on film, I don't see how you do it," while they're carrying the latest Sony...

“How Do You Avoid Getting Burned Out on Photography?”

"How do you keep the passion alive, stay interested in being creative?" I often hear these question asked to photographers, to which I want to say to the person asking, "What are you talking about? Obviously, you're not a photographer." It reminds me of the question someone asked Matt Damon on The Actor's Studio on...

Nobody Photographs Like Me

I make photographs that are uniquely my own. The kind of photographs are not like what you typically see on Instagram or Facebook. Editors have even said that my photos look different than most photos--there's an authenticity to them. They look real. There's an emotional quality to them. I'll take that, that is exactly what...

In a World of Fake Things, Give Me Something Real

Besides misinformation filling our airwaves, there are fake things filling our world nowadays. I was walking through a Costco today and I saw a box with ten "candles" for sale for $24.99 only they weren't really candles, they were battery-operated flameless candles supposed to look like real candles. They come complete with a wireless remote...