Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute 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 35 years…
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The LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process podcast is a must-listen for any photography enthusiast. Hosted by Brooks Jensen, this podcast offers valuable insights and inspiration for photographers of all levels. Jensen's clear, soothing voice makes it a pleasure to listen to, and his ability to speak with commonsense and reason resonates with listeners. Even those who are just casual iPhone photographers can find value in this podcast, as my wife does. Overall, I highly recommend The LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process podcast.
One of the best aspects of this podcast is Jensen's ability to make listeners think and inspire them to become better photographers. His episodes are often meditative in nature and have a way of flicking on the lightbulb above your head. Whether you're a creative in any medium or specifically interested in photography, you'll find something valuable in each episode. Jensen's advice and musings come from years of experience as a mature photographer and artist, making them truly invaluable.
While there are numerous positive aspects to The LensWork podcast, one downside is that it may not be available on certain platforms like Stitcher. This limits its potential audience, as some people solely rely on platforms other than iTunes for their podcasts. It would be beneficial if the podcast were accessible on more platforms to reach a wider range of listeners.
In conclusion, The LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process podcast is an exceptional resource for exploring photographic theory, philosophy, history, and presentation of work. Unlike gear-oriented podcasts or how-to classes, Jensen focuses on the creative process and aesthetics of photography. His passion for photography shines through his words, leaving listeners inspired rather than simply providing opinions on equipment or techniques. Overall, this podcast is well worth a listen for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of photography and enhance their own artistic vision.

HT2464 - A Most Welcome Winter Photography Tool Perhaps you've heard the advice, "There is no bad weather, there is only bad clothing." When I woke up this morning, it was -2° F outside. For reasons I assume are obvious, this has me thinking about cold weather photography. One of the most useful tools for hands and batteries are reusable hand warmers. I swear by them. 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!

HT2463 - The Responsibilities of Owning Artwork I had a water leak that dripped into a couple of portfolio cases where I housed artwork from other photographers. I lost 13 pieces of wonderful work that were completely destroyed. Forever. I feel a double sadness in this in that not only did I lose some work that was important to me, but also lost that work to any future it might have had after I'm gone. Owning artwork implies a responsibility to protect it, preserve it, care for it. This is one of the reasons I never give away my prints unsolicited. I don't want to impose that burden on anyone without their consent. 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.

HT2462 - My New Phone Has Adaptive Display My old phone finally gave up the ghost when its battery wouldn't hold a charge anymore. So off to the phone store and a new phone, and that sizable project of getting the new phone and its settings adapted to my needs. Unfortunately, with this new phone, I was unaware of an "improvement" that Android calls Adaptive Display. Now that I've turned off adaptive display, my images look so much better. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2461 - Variations on a Theme I'm a fan of Sergei Rachmaninoff's piano compositions. I was not aware, however, until last night, of a composition he wrote titled Variations on a Theme of Corelli. The backstory of this work is simple. Corelli wrote a short piece of music in which there is a central tune. That tune captured Rachmaninoff's imagination. Rachmaninoff then took this short musical theme and composed 20 variations that are different in every regard, but still identifiable because of the basic tune. As I listened last night, I couldn't help but think how we could use this idea in our creative photographic expressions. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2460 - With the Passage of Time I'm certainly not the only photographer who looks back at their earlier work and feels a sense of embarrassment. What was I thinking? Of all the negatives or digital captures I had to choose from, why did I think this one was worth printing, matting, and (God forbid) framing? Isn't it equally odd that a few images from those early years seem to have held up pretty well? Can I trust my own aesthetic judgments? Will the images I'm producing today seem ridiculous 5 or 10 years from now? Each finished artwork is a product of its time. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2459 - AI and the Ideal When we say that one photograph is better than another, how do we arrive at that conclusion? When we are processing our images, what is the criteria we use to take the next step in processing? As I've thought about this, one answer keeps reoccurring: all of the decisions we make have the intention of revealing an ideal. What do we mean by "the ideal"? Why is our goal not the truth? When did photography change from a sensitive pursuit of truth into a technological and aesthetic pursuit of a fictional ideal? Now that AI makes the ideal so accessible, will that change our aesthetic objectives? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1482 - The Importance of Momentum Borrowing a phrase from Carl Chiarenza and his book, Pictures Come from Pictures, I'd like to propose that "projects come from projects." We may not be aware of the threads that run through our creative life as we are living it, but in retrospect we can often see how one artistic effort begets another. This is precisely why preserving creative momentum is so important. But, how to do it? All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2458 - Every Capture Is a Teacher The core of artmaking is the twin fusion of learning and producing. It's easy to see that if there is no producing there is no artwork. It's not so obvious that if there is no learning there is no artwork. Learning comes from many sources, One of the most important is our past decisions. Here is a simple exercise that can amplify the importance of learning with every capture. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2457 - One of One In 1989, I commissioned a metal shop expert to create an adapter for my Arca Swiss monorail view camera that would allow me to use Polaroid 3¼ by 4¼ film packs. This led to a summer-long project that today exists as a box of matted Polaroid originals that are all unique prints. I recently found this box of prints and reviewed that 37-year-old work, completed half a life ago when I was 34. A lot of those prints are wonderful, but what do I do with them? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2456 - The Most Memorable Photographs of our Age Time has a way of filtering out the unimportant. Think back 500 years ago. We don't remember local politics, but we do remember the great art from that era. What will people, 500 years from now, look back at our era and find most remarkable? I'll guarantee you it won't be your work or my work, nor even the photographs of the masters like Ansel Adams or Edward Weston. No, they will look back at the images the astronauts captured while on the moon, the Voyager, Cassini, and Juno expeditions to the distant planets, the Hubble and Webb telescope images of distant galaxies. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2455 - To Prime or Not to Prime There is no question that prime lenses have a reputation for being superior in comparison to zoom lenses. The most expensive lenses are often the very best primes. They are often faster, sharper, and many photographers swear by them. There is a trade-off to a prime lens, however, that's not always obvious but one that persuades me convincingly against primes. Think "optical cropping." Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2454 - Decisions vs Execution Art making is the fusion of decisions and execution. It's not at all uncommon for photographers to explain that they became a photographer because they can't draw decent stick figures. That is to say, execution prevents them from being a successful pen-and-ink artist, or painter, or musician. Unlike in photography, with these media, there is a barrier that cannot be crossed with luck. With photography, however, we can both be lucky and master the execution of the craft with relative ease, especially here in the digital age. This seems to imply that the decisions we make in the process are even more weighty than in other media. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2453 - From My Distant Past Twice now in the last few months, I've received a kind-hearted compliment about one of my pictures — in both cases, however, from images I made more than 25 years ago. I'm always grateful when someone compliments my work, but it does leave me wondering about my more recent efforts. I suppose it makes sense for us to receive compliments about our ancient work with grace and humility. There is a part of me, however, that wants to bring out a few hundred examples recent work and bring them up to date. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2452 - Photographing Is Not the Same Thing As Making Art I have 200,000 digital captures in my Lightroom catalog. Does that mean I have 200,000 pieces of artwork? Of course not. So I ask you, precisely, at what point in the process does the digital capture transmogrify into artwork? When you finish processing the image? When you make a print? When you use the image in a PDF? When you say, Quod Erat Faciendum (It is finished)? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2446 - Caravaggio Ignored His Eyes Caravaggio, the Italian painter from the 16th century, is well known for his use of a technique called "foreshortening." Today we would call it " focus stacking." It's curious to me that this view of the world is impossible for the human eye. Essentially, Caravaggio had to ignore his eyes and what he saw in order to paint using this technique that seems so real. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2445 - To Increase Sharpness, Move the Sun Yes, lens sharpness, stabilization techniques, and resolution all add to build a sharp image. As a pragmatic photographer, however, I can't help but observe and admit that the most important way to increase apparent sharpness is to use the angle of incidence between the light source and the subject that maximizes visible contrast and detail. Light that strikes the subject at an extremely low angle does more to increase detail than buying a sharper lens. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1480 - Art and Story Art, as an inanimate object, doesn't do anything, Art doesn't do, it tells — it tells us about some thing, some place, some person, some moment, some feeling, some idea. Art can cause something in us to take place by simply looking at the artwork and thinking about what we see. That process of looking and thinking lays bare the fact that every piece of artwork is a launching pad for a story, or perhaps a cluster of stories. There are biographic stories, production stories, materials stories, acquisition stories, relationship stories, provenance stories. This list can be quite lengthy. To me as an artmaker, the ones that are most interesting are always about the content, which so often is tied to metaphor and meaning. This is the realm of the artmaker. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2444 - Dark Writing I've thought for years that photographers often think about tones exactly backwards. There are lots of photographic gurus who preach that we must pay special attention to the light. Early in my dark room days, it seemed obvious to me that we don't create a print by adding light to the paper, that instead we start with white paper and add shadows. Photography is supposedly "light writing" but getting the blacks right is what we actually do. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2443 - Color by the Truckload If there is a photographic aesthetic that defines the early years of the 20th century it will undoubtedly be the fine art black and white print. We are 100 years removed from that era, and it appears to me that the photographic aesthetic that defines the early years of the 21st century is MORE COLOR. Slap it on with a trowel, and crank it up to 11. Is this trend virtuous because it's a wonderful aesthetic or simply a choice we engage now that we have the capabilities to do so? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2442 - Limitations Money is limited. Time is limited. Access is limited. Equipment is limited. Techniques are limited. It's a wonder we can get anything done with all these limitations. But that's the thing about the art life, we are surrounded by limitations that conspire to interfere with our productivity. If we let these limitations inhibit our work, it's not the limitations that need to be removed, but rather our willingness to allow those limitations to intimidate us. Artmaking is always about what we can do, not about what we can't. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2441 - No One Will Ever See It The often insurmountable distance from production to consumption. Rick Beato has a YouTube channel all about contemporary music. It's surprising how many times his topics pertain perfectly to our lives as fine art photographers. Here is an example that is so spot on that I thought he was talking directly to me — art without an audience. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2440 - Bit Rot Might Be Destroying Your Backups Have you heard of a thing called bit rot? I hadn't either, but it turns out it can be slowly leading your backups to failure. And speaking of backups, it's that time of year again when it's a good idea to back up all your computerized data, images, and those 1s and 0s that are the measure of your creative life. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2439 - The Space That Supports Your Work Once I had seriously committed myself to photography in the 1970s, I didn't fully realize the implications that would govern my choices of living space over the next five decades. Whenever I found myself needing to move, the first and determining question in any place I considered was where to put the darkroom and the print finishing studio. Over the years, I've slowly come to realize how the space influences what I produce. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2438 - Fall Fog Season I know so many photographers who get excited about the fall season and all those wonderful colored hillsides of orange and yellow keaves. For me, fall is less about leafy colors than it is about fog. (Isn't it odd that we photographers put so much emphasis on the sharpness of our lenses, but love the photographic effect of fog?) Fog and snow — there is no question about it — are my two most favorite atmospheric forms of weather for photography. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1479 - Photography Lessons from Japanese Woodblock Prints I've been an admirer of Japanese woodblock prints (known as ukiyo-e) for quite some time now. Everyone is familiar, for example, with Hokusai's image The Great Wave Off Kanagawa from his project 36 Views of Mount Fuji. One of the things that's fascinating about these artists' work is how many times they did numbered series, e.g. 53 Stages of the Tokaido by Hiroshige, or one of my all-time favorites, 100 Aspects of the Moon by Yoshitoshi. There's a great deal to learn that we can adapt to photography about working in series. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2437 - What I Hope to Accomplish with These Thoughts One of the criticisms I have about a lot of workshop instructors is that their basic premise is to persuade and motivate the participants to do photography the same way the instructor does. "Here's my technique, go Thou and do likewise." That is decidedly not my purpose with Here's a Thought. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2436 - The Second and Third Layer of Comprehension How much time does it take to fully understand a photograph? Of course, there is no single answer for the simple reason that photographs are so varied and often have different purposes. That said, doesn't it seem obvious that through social media we are all being trained to see photographs at a surface level only, then swipe left and move on under the assumption that we've really seen it? But, have we? What about those deeper levels of comprehension that require effort, time, a certain amount of commitment to an image? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2435 - Processing and the Time of Day As strange as it might sound, I've noticed that how I process an image depends on when in the day I do it. Finicky details and complex processing steps are best done in the morning when my eyes are fresh and I'm most energetic. Aesthetic decisions and experiments are best done late in the day when I'm just a bit tired and my subconscious has an easier time poking through the barrier of the intellectual mind. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2434 - Anticipating the Ways a Picture Might Fail There are many ways a picture can fail. Instead of thinking about what we need to do to make a picture succeed, what if we turn that around and anticipate the ways it might fail? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2433 - 1,000 Captures When I used medium format film, I got 8 shots per roll of 120. I took 200 rolls of film with me to Japan in 1990, well over half of which came back with me unexposed. I came back from Colorado last week with 1,000 shots just of fall colors. My how times have changed. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2432 - Even 2500th Second Can Blur During the initial review of images from the trip, I was surprised to see some handheld shots that were not sharp even though they had been shot at 1/2500th of a second and used image stabilization. How does this happen? How can I fix this issue in the future? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2431 - Mean Stack Noise Reduction Repurposed Back in 2022, I created a video in our LensWork Creative Labs series in which I discussed something called Mean Stack Noise Reduction. That technique is not obsolete in light of Adobe's AI Noise Reduction, but those images have a new and thoroughly unexpected use. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1478 - The Reason We Do Photography All of us involved in photography have a reason we are so passionate about it. Knowing that reason can be helpful in directing our actions and recognizing those parts that will require discipline. What, precisely, captures your eye? When your heart skips a beat and you can't wait to pull out your camera, what is it that causes your enthusiasm? The light? The shadows? The subject? A composition? The picture you strive to make? There is no right answer to this question, but there might be a consistent answer for you. Perhaps reviewing your "best images" might give you a clue. Seems to me that knowing this aspect of your creative response to the world would be useful information. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2423 - Roads Making photographs and sharing photographs are two different things. Many of us make photographs because we can't not make them. Sharing, however, is an optional activity. As an optional aspect of our creative life, it's more likely that we'll think carefully about how much we are willing to spend on sharing. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2429 - Stuff Not Used When I get back from a big trip, one of the decompression things I like to do is review my gear use. Since I put so much time and thought into the kit I'll take with me, doesn't it make sense that I should review and see if my planning was well thought out? Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2428 - Volumes 1, 2, and 3 Large bodies of work are difficult to consume. Think War and Peace versus haiku. Novelists know the advantages of breaking their narrative into smaller parts — chapters, sections, volumes. We can do that, too, as long as we remember that each section is its own entity and doesn't repeat the previous ones. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2427 - Ruthless Editing to the Narrative I believe we have the opposite problem from the one our photographic forefathers had. Their challenge was to make a great photograph with primitive materials. Today, we can make hundreds or thousands of flawless images with ease. How do we choose which ones to show? We edit to the narrative, but first we need to determine what the narrative is. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2426 - Sensor Clean X2 I cringe every time I see those fuzzy blue circles in the sky that indicate I have dust on the sensor of the camera. I was given a suggestion by a reader about one way to deal with this and used it religiously these last two months as I was out in the dusty West photographing. I'm delighted to report that I had not a single indication of any dust on any shot. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2425 - Not Just the Most Recent Now that I'm back from two months on the road, it's time to see what I have. For me, that process most often starts with building some collections based on potential projects. I add images from the recent trip into collections and then start scouring my previous images from the last couple of decades and add any of them to the appropriate collections. This forces me to think outside the recent captures and to be sensitive to larger trends I may not be conscious I've been working towards unknowingly. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2424 - Problematic Bokeh A peculiar property of a long focal length lens is that it can render a semi-distant object ever-so-slightly outside the depth of field. Instead of looking like a nicely out of focus area from a shallow depth of field, it can look like a poor performing lens that simply can't render those objects sharply. The only answer is to stop down to increase the depth of field. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1477 - The Problem with Location-Based Projects I've returned from my 2-months on the road and am starting the long process of reviewing the 3500 RAW captures. Almost immediately I divided the images into 43 potential projects, but then realized that all of them were location-based project ideas. There is a weakness in this that is not obvious. I call these types of projects "Portrait of a Place." They are easy to unify into a project, but there are alternatives that are often better. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2423 - Roads Landscape photography is inextricably tied to roads. Even if we are hiking into rough terrain, we get to the trailhead via a road. Photographically, not all roads are equal. I've been tooling down the Interstates to get home and doing no photography along the way. For me, photography is always at its best when I'm traveling down a dirt road. If you are not familiar with them, you need to know about Delorme maps. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2422 - They All Come from Projects What most of us tend to show matted, framed, and hanging in a place of importance in our home are the very best images we've created. But where do these come from? My observation is that most of those super winners rise from the midst of a project and become super winners due to actions beyond our control. For example, Dorothea Lange made lots of pictures for the FSA, but Migrant Mother rose from the crowd to become iconic. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2421 - The Difficulty with Gray I've started to work on some of the images from my trip and in particular those from the Badlands of South Dakota. These are tricky images to process just right because of an unexpected issue. Light gray can look either alive or depressed depending on the surrounding mat board or digital background. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2420 - Things or Moments Ask a photographer what it is they make pictures of and the chances are they will answer THINGS or perhaps PEOPLE. Perhaps, but more likely than not what they capture a moment, at least in their better photographs. I always try my best to remember this when I'm out photographing, like when I was at Shiprock last week. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2419 - Bad Light Yesterday I was photographing in the South Dakota badlands and had a moment when I thought, "This is really bad light." It took me a minute to remember my own advice that there is no such thing as good light or bad light. There is, however, light that doesn't serve our preconceived ideas. "Bad light" really means that we are imposing our will on what the landscape is giving us. In other words, there is no bad light, there are only bad expectations. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2418 - Returning with a Zoom Lens In the 1980s, I made a photograph of the hills near my grandmother's home in Tensleep, Wyoming. I was never thrilled with that image and finally had the opportunity to revisit the area last week. I found the hill I had photographed and realized instantly why I was not happy with the previous effort. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2417 - Gathering Strategies I've talked on numerous occasions about my strategy of gathering assets while I'm in the field rather than pre-visualizing finished images. I've never mentioned, however, what I actually do while I'm gathering assets. Here's a quick overview of how I work in the field. Some may see this as indecision; I see it as providing options for when I'm back home making art. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

LW1476 - Minor White and the Symbolic Image Minor White (one of my all-time favorite photographers) advised us not to photography only what it is, but to photograph what else it is. A catchy quote, but what does this actually mean? One answer is to think of photography as a medium to express metaphors and symbols. This prompts three levels of thinking: photography of something, photography about something, and photography that points to something. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial Memberships are only $10. Instant access, terabytes of content, inspiration and ideas that expand daily with new content. Sign up for instant access! You might also be interested in. . . Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com. and... "How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.

HT2416 - The Most Important Thing We Need We photographers are always on the hunt for a subject, a new technique, better equipment, and more time. I've come to realize, however, that the most important thing we need is access. How many times have you driven past a gorgeous scene with beautiful light but there's no place to pull off the road to make a picture? Or there's a fence, or gate, or barrier, or a regulation that blocks us from the position we need to make the picture. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!

HT2415 - Thinking in Groups Yesterday in my Here's a Thought about Going Back, I inadvertently dropped a pretty big hint about thinking in groups. Where do we find the seeds for our projects? It all starts by thinking in groups. The most common group consists of a selection of images from a given location. Next are projects about a common subject. That's not the only way to group images into a project. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!