Audience, company and things your shouldn’t do

Hello, everyone! Thanks for joining me for episode 601 of The Perceptive Photographer. Before we jump into this week’s show notes, I want to take a moment to say thanks to every one who reached out with kind messages and emails during our milestone of 600 episode and to all of those of you who are listening all these years. Your support is awesome and really makes me appreciate the wonderful community around this podcast. This week’s topic is again a smash up of a few random thoughts. The first is that recently I came across an insightful essay (they all are) by Guy Tall, where he discussed the time we dedicate to viewing others’ work verse the amount of time we wished people spent looking at our work. It really stuck with me and gave me pause about how our much of our attention we want on our work and how much we actually give to other photographers’ images. I reached out to several photographers I know, asking them to compare the time they want others to spend looking at their work with how much time they actually invest in appreciating others’ art. As usual, Guy was spot on. As I thought about it more and more, I don’t think many of us take the time to immerse ourselves in the depth of others’ work. If we did, we might learn more, connect more and might even foster a little more rapid growth and inspiration in our own work. I guess what I have been thinking is that if you’re looking to make better work, spend more time looking at other’s work. Writers read, movie people watch movies, photographers should look at photographs. Once that thought ran through it picked up on a piece of wisdom my grandmother, mom and dad and other famous people often shared: “You can tell a lot about someone by the company they keep.” It got me thinking about who we spend time with photographically, and if we are I surrounding ourselves with photographers whose, conversations and critique inspires us or does it do the opposite? When I felt I wasn’t around the right influences and it showed in my work. Not always easy to fix and give up those “friends”, but it might be something we have to do for our own growth. Finally that led me back to a good old topic of am I doing what I should be doing or what I am meant to do. The time spent on looking at work, the company we keep and what we should do can be good or it can be bad. If we find ourselves in a community that doesn’t help us with our goals, we can wonder off true path. Staying focused on what we are meant to do and not what we should do isn’t always easy but the right support goes a long way in helping. Quick note if you are in the Seattle area and you’re looking for an fun experience the weekend of November 6th – 8th (2027) I invite you to join my workshop called “Landscape as Language” at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle! We’ll dive into how our landscape photographs are intertwined with our identities and the ways we connect to the environment around us. This master class promises to be a fantastic inquiry of how we communicate through our art, and I would love for you to be a part of it! Thank you once again for tuning in and for being such a vital part of this journey. I can’t wait to jump into the mix with you all again in episode 602 next week.