26 Years In and I Am Still Learning New Things
I did the math recently, mostly by accident, and realized I've been doing this for twenty-six years.
Directing People Who Hate Being Photographed
Most clients tell me they’re “awkward on camera.” Here’s how I coax natural expressions from people who’d rather be anywhere else.
Building an Editorial Story in a Single Afternoon
A loose brief, one location, and a tight shot list — how it all turns into a cohesive editorial set before the light goes.
Reading Light in Empty Rooms
Interiors don’t pose. You have to find the moment a space looks its best — and sometimes that means waiting all day for it.
Lighting Food So It Looks Like You Want to Eat It
Food photography lives and dies on light. Get it right and a plate looks like something you'd cross a room for— the kind of photo that makes people hungry just scrolling past it.
A Day Behind the Scenes at a 2,000-Person Conference
People sometimes picture conference photography as walking around with a camera, catching a few smiling faces, and calling it a day. I wish. Covering a 2,000-person conference
What a Commercial Client Actually Pays For
Every so often a prospective client asks, politely, why a shoot costs what it costs. It's a fair question, and the honest answer tends to surprise people: the photographs are the easy part.
How I Shoot a Live Event Without Missing the Moment
I get asked some version of this question after almost every event, gala, or corporate outing I shoot: "How do you do that? How do you always seem to be in the right place?"
Find One Thing You’re Curious About
In the original post, this idea got a single short paragraph: instead of trying to photograph everything, get curious about one narrow thing for a while
Take More Bad Photos
In the original post, we snuck this in as a quick section: most of your photos are allowed to be bad. It’s one of those pieces of advice that sounds almost too simple to be useful
Your Phone Is Not a Consolation Prize
In our original post, we said this in passing: if you’re shooting on a phone, you’re not “practicing until you can afford a real camera.” That deserved more than a paragraph, so here it is in full.
Composition Rules Are Training Wheels, Not Laws
In our original post, we mentioned the rule of thirds and moved on pretty quickly. That was on purpose
Light is the Whole Game
If you’ve read our post about why your camera doesn’t matter as much as you think, you already know the one-sentence version of this: photography is just drawing with light. It’s not a metaphor — the word “photography”
Why Your Photos Are Already Good Enough (And Other Things I Wish Someone Told Me)
Let’s get one thing out of the way: you do not need a better camera. I know, I know. That’s not what the gear ads want you to believe. But some of the most striking photos ever taken were shot on equipment that would look laughably outdated today
