Grandma’s Gone With No Portraits To Remember Her By, Just Like in 1890.

I was talking to a woman at a yard sale last weekend and she said the reason she had so many photo frames for sale for 25-50 cents each, is because none of her children or grandchildren want the family photographs—she's moving to a smaller house and thought they'd want to have them. Wrong! She...

Reaching Out, Asking For What You Want

I was traveling through Illinois recently and stopped for the night in Champaign/Urbana. While there, I googled "photography exhibits" and one of the results was the Urbana Museum of Photography. What? There's a museum of photography right in the small mid-western town where I'm staying? And it's dedicated to analog photography? I'm so in. This...

Photographing the ‘Schmaltzy & Princie’ Hollywood Fringe Festival Poster

I was working with the writer and actor (and my partner) MaryLee Herrmann on making her poster photo for the Hollywood Fringe Festival where she will be presenting her solo show she wrote, Schmaltzy & Princie: Diary of a Not-So-Great Daddy's Girl, and will perform in June of this year. Tickets and show information available...

Starting a 2022 Large Format Portrait Project

I'm inspired by many portrait photographers. Five I can think of right off the top of my head would be Judith Joy Ross, Duane Michals, Lora Webb Nichols, Gregg Miller and the masterful August Sander. August Sander. Young Farmers. 1914 Ross, Nichols, Miller and Sander because they documented people in a way that shows them...

The Evolution of a National Photography Show Exhibition Print

Click it to see it large on a desktop monitor. This photograph (Title: Surfside Motel Pool, Seaside Heights NJ) was selected for exhibition in the Louisville Art Association 28th National Photography Show. The show opens Memorial Day weekend and runs May 27-June 5, 2022. What a photograph. I love it. I am considering it as...

My Phone is For Calls, Leave a Message

I heard a professional photographer recently talking about how great his new phone camera is and I thought, boy, I never want to have the computer techs at Apple or Google dictating what my photographs will look like. Have you ever looked at Instagram or Flickr and seen the photographs and how they all look...

Photographer Mentorship with Weekly Photo Assignments

Want to learn photography? You do it by making photographs. There is no other way, no shortcut, no special trick, no secret, no magic camera. Not even a Leica. You do the work. Want to make the work and have me evaluate it? So you can grow your vision in a significant way? Fine. Here's...

Embracing Risks, Taking Chances & Possible Failure

What if you try something new, something you're not quite sure about how to do, so much so that it even makes you uncomfortable? Good! See, you could fail. Excellent! There's nothing great happening when we're sitting at home in our easy chair. There's no magic when we are working the familiar, the comfortable way...

Proficiency is Common. Authorship, Not So Much.

I'm sitting on a Saturday night at my favorite pub to write. I am listening to a cover band playing Van Morrison, J.J. Cale, the Rolling Stones, R.E.M., and Led Zeppelin. And the guitar player is killer good--he's playing the songs note for note. Perfect. Just like the record. To which I think, "But why?...

Listen To Me, I Know Best (And See You Better Than You See Yourself!)

I showed some wonderful film photographs to a friend and they didn't like them. They said so. Which makes me say, "Hmmm, I know how to edit your photos better than you know how to see yourself, and I assure these are strong photographs that feature you looking your best." When I get my hair...