Claim OwnershipLensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
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Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).
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HT2520 - Fantasy or Feedback
Here's a creative challenge that can be a lot of fun. Let's assume that every image in your Lightroom catalog was captured because you, at the time, thought it would make great photograph. That implies that you could choose any capture at random from your catalog and make a good image from it. Can you? Pick an image at random and push yourself to turn it into something interesting with aggressive or perhaps unusual processing. The goal is not to create interesting artwork, but to observe what happens within you as you work with the compromise between impulse and possibility.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2400 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2519 - Stretching the Image
What do you do if, after cropping an image, it no longer fits the aspect ratio of all the other images in your presentation? Do you let that image just be different than all the others or do you re-crop it within the aspect ratio to preserve consistency? There is a third option I've never considered, but it's recently come to my attention and I'm not sure how I feel about it. That third technique is to stretch the pixels to fit the frame, also known as non-proportional cropping.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2518 - Print-on-demand Artwork
Here's an idea that's been floating around photographic circles for the last 25 years or so. What if we were to publish our finished digital files in a way that allowed consumers to print our work on their own printers, with or without a purchase agreement to do so? What would we lose by allowing them to do so? What would we gain by allowing them to do so? I find this a scary idea, but I'm not sure why I feel that way other than the habitual assumption about intellectual property and copyrights/commerce.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2517 - Yesterday's Limitations
My first digital captures were made with an 6 megapixel camera that had a tiny sensor. They were primitive, noisy even at its base ISO, and fell far short of what I could produce with my film camera. Nonetheless, I kept those image files just in case future software improvements might make them useable. I was right to do so.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2516 - The First One to Do It
The history of photography is filled with people who didn't make the best but who did make it first. Matthew Brady wasn't the best war photographer in history but he was the first. William Henry Jackson is not the best landscape photographer ever, but he was one of the first. Other examples abound. This implies a not so subtle premise that is easy to be seduced by in our creative efforts — be first or be forgotten.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2515 - Vintage Prints
I don't understand the fuss and value that is place on original prints in photography. In fact, it seems perfectly obvious to me that an early print would be the result of less reliable instant aesthetic decisions. There is not a single example I can recall from my 50 years in photography where a later print wasn't better than an earlier one. I know more about how to print the negative or process the digital file; my artistic sensitivities have matured with age and experience. Of course my later print are better and therefore should be more desired by collectors.
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I have no doubt that I use less than 10% of what my software is capable of doing. I know there are features that I would find incredibly useful if I just knew about them. Since I don't know about them, I don't even know I should look for them! Instead, I have to rely on luck and a certain cultivated attitude of curiosity. In fact, that's not a bad idea for so many aspects of life.
HT2514 - They Are Not All Winners
Some of what we produce doesn't wear well over time. Nothing we produce connects with everyone who sees it. This is precisely why there is virtue in producing a lot of work in the nature of an anthology. It not only keeps your creative juices flowing, but also provides your audience a better chance of finding something with which they can connect deeply.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2513 - Post-publication Revisions
There's a fascinating story about revisions in the great Humphrey Bogart film noir movie The Big Sleep. This has me thinking about post-production revisions. One of the great advantages of digital publication is the ability to revise the content so easily and even instantaneously. Maybe it's a good idea for us to use version numbering like they do in software.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2400 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2512 - Vacuum Dust
A while back I shared some ideas about dealing with the dust that makes those big out of focus blobs in the sky in our images. Here's a companion idea thanks to podcast listener Rob Motta of Boulder, Colorado.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2511 - Our Inescapable Reliance on Stuff
Just as a thought experiment, what would you do if you could no longer purchase ink for your printer? What if the three big printer manufacturers (Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Cannon)suddenly decided to stop manufacturing printers. What if you could no longer purchase film, batteries, or lenses for your camera? We are so dependent on materials whose manufacturer is beyond our control.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2510 - The Extremes
Like many other human activities, photography can easily evolve into an extreme sport. Will your photographs be visibly better with that 100 megapixel camera? Or that 10 gigapixel stitch? Do you really need 60 frames per second in order to capture just that perfect instance? Can you not succeed in wildlife photography unless your lenses is long as the elephant's trunk you are photographing? What is there about extremes that become so seductive in so many walks of life?
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2509 - Where DOF Fails
A while back I did a research project looking at almost 10,000 raw captures in my Lightroom catalog. I wanted to determine what caused a failed image to fail, technologically. I did not consider aesthetics but rather the mechanics of photography. My hope was that I could eliminate or at least reduce those technical failures. Two primary failures dominated all others. The number one failure was camera movement, easily resolved with faster shutter speeds or tripods. The second most common reason for failure was related to depth of field, and in a surprising way.
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HT2508 - Mastering the Craft vs Photography
Let's talk about feelings. As I think back to all the workshops and classes that I've taken in my 50 years of photography, I can't remember a single one that centered on what I felt or wanted to express. Instead, all I can remember are endless discussions and demonstrations about the craft of photography. There is only one exception that comes to mind and that moment was a question from Bruce Barnbaum I'll never forget. What do you want to experience, and why do you want to capture it and share it with others?
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In so many ways, we have entered a new era in photography. It's getting harder and harder to be visually unique. Google is photographing everything. Now more than ever we need to find a way to use our own voice in our artwork.
HT2507 - You Must Create Your Magnum Opus TODAY
Wouldn't it be lovely if we had a switch we could throw that would turn on our creative genius at a moment's notice? Flick goes the switch and your best ever photograph is produced because you commanded it into existence. Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. Our magnum opus happens in the midst of lots of other work that, well, isn't your magnum opus. Our magnum opus is the result of plowing ahead and simply doing our best with every effort.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2506 - Allocating Our Precious Time
The most valuable commodity we have in our art life is not our gear, not our training, not our creative impulses, not our energy and drive. All those things might be important, but they are useless unless we have time. Without time all the potential we've banked by learning our craft and going out photographing will add up to naught. I know it can seem counterintuitive to schedule our creative activities, but in fact having a schedule to work on our art maybe the most important step we can take to make sure our creative endeavors aren't swallowed up by the trivialities of life.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2400 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2505 - Buried in Lightroom
One of the most dramatic impacts of digital photography is the volume of captures that now reside on all of our hard drives. It's not uncommon at all for me to hear that a photographer has tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of images in their catalog that are, essentially, inaccessible to anyone except the photographer. So much creativity buried in our hard drives just waiting for their turn on stage!
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2504 - Searching for Threads
You've set aside an hour to work on your photography and find yourself sitting at the computer looking at images. At such moments, it is so tempting to spend your precious creative time on a search for images that have potential and then processing them to the best of your abilities. That's not the only option. Alternatively, you might try using that precious time on a different search, a search for the threads that can bind a group of images into a project.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
HT2503 - Managing Results vs Managing Work
Last year I became frustrated that I wasn't getting done as many photographic projects as I had hoped to finish. My old goal-directed business training kicked in and I decided to set goals for myself. It didn't help. And then I remembered one of the earliest lessons from management training: Don't manage results, manage the work. Set another way, goals are a result, not a tactic.
Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!
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Interesting thought. Would you argue that this holds for AI generated photographs as well, so long as the artistic concepts in the prompts is relevant/innovative and the result artistic? It seems like this is the next logical step given today's technology.
Brooks Jensen has a great way of making the creative side of photography feel approachable. I’ve found a lot of the “Here’s a thought…” snippets surprisingly thought-provoking for how short they are—nice quick hits of inspiration https://karlaannephoto.com/.
Their team of professional editors is highly trained to match your style, ensuring your creative vision is always preserved. Every project, whether big or small, is handled with meticulous care, attention to detail, and a strong focus on customer satisfaction. https://cerafphotoediting.com/service
great podcasts by the way all your wanted camera updates I fully agree with, I did contact Panasonic a long time ago about implementing on screen picture review and determining focus. I suggest to them maybe they could highlight the in focus areas of the screen about like the manual focus highlighting. I thought this would save a lot of time zooming in and out.
So glad I happened across this podcast - two episodes in, I'm hooked! Thanks for the production.
I find this to be the most continually inspiring and insightful podcast on the creative process of photography and of creativity in general. Brooks has the perfect vocal style and pace for podcasting, which I think adds a good deal to it's overall success. I've heard all of them and have started over recently.
Lenswork Magazine is the finest photography magazine, bar none. It has superb photographs and thoughtful essays about photography. These podcasts are in the same tradition, thought provoking and inspiring short essays on why we photograph. I would not miss a single one. Start from the beginning if you can, they are worth it.
Brooks Jensen's random thoughts about photography are brilliant and thought provoking observations that every person with an intrest in photography should listen to. Brooks is truely a great word smith in addition to a very skilled photographer and one cannot help but be inspired by his words.