The Finest for Your Family: Statement Artwork, Iconic Portraits on 8×10 Film

Legacy artworks--they’re not just for the U.S. President and First Lady. Most people would say that for portraits of their family, "Eh, digital is good enough." The thing is, YOU'RE not most people. Neither am I. We're the ones who seek the finest, the best--that's who we are. We care about quality. We can't accept...

Everything Doesn’t Work Out As Planned (and That’s a Good Thing)

I was working on a photo prompt "pairs" for The Photo Game, and I was going for the obvious, photographing a pair of pears on my light table. Alright, that's fair, meets the requirements. It's a fine enough photo. Something else, what else can I do--I know, I'll try them on the window sill. Then...

Why Do People Wait, Stop Themselves?

I'm sitting at my favorite pub in my town, Bootstrap Brewing, where you can often find me on Monday nights, writing and listening to the tunes from the open mic stage. It's a good scene, the musicians talented, and the beer's good, too. I think the Paris salon days must have been like this, writers...

We’re Only Living Today, So Today Is The Time To Make It

I was thinking about art and artists and I've come to the conclusion that we are only our output. Whether we "make it" in some definition of success is out of our control, we have no ability to take our work anywhere, we only have the ability to make the work. And make more work....

What Made Photography Valuable?

Helen Levitt and Walter Rosenblum made street photographs in New York in the 1930s through the 1950s. Vivian Maier made street photographs in the 1950s through the 1970s. What made them relevant, what made their work valuable? It took a special person, a real photographic artist to go out in public and shoot film photographs...

Mr. Rogers, Mary Ellen Mark and Me

I was listening to a really good podcast today called Finding Fred, which is about the way Fred Rogers made his show back in the 1960s. And on The Candid Frame podcast, Mary Ellen Mark was interviewed by Ibarionex Perello. Both are people I can relate to because both did things the way they did...

How Has Instant Results Affected Creativity?

We all wear two hats, one as a creative and one as a marketer. In days of old, we would create a body of work, photographers would be able to work on a project and keep the creative hat on until completion. They wouldn't be stepping back and forth between worlds because they couldn't get...

A Little Art from My World

A lot of photographers have been struggling to find things to photograph in this pandemic-laden world, but I've been keeping busy with a lot of photos for my Roy Stryker photo project, now over five years old and publishing three times a week. The need for creating photos makes the photographic opportunities happen. The muse...

Happy Holidays: Buy Film, Make Art!

Happy Holidays to all my friends and family who let me photograph them (it's not an unusual occurrence!), sometimes in good light and sometimes in good shadows. To all my readers, viewers, listeners and subscribers on my various channels--here, YouTube, and my podcast--I'm thankful for all of you. Cheers to a great 2021 and as...

Do The Work For The Art, Not For Fame Or Likes

Do the work. Make your art. Not for likes. Or thumbs up. Or fame. But because you have to do it, you have no choice in the matter, the work has to exist. It's the kind of work that if you put it out and didn't get a "Like", you'd still do it. That's how...