How often do you make something that surprises you? As the great photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said, and I paraphrase – if he has any goal, it is to surprise himself. I think that is one of the most profound statements an artist can adopt. It is so difficult to surprise ourselves. After all, we are ourselves. To do something so out of our usual comfort zone that even we are surprised by what we do or the outcome of…
Read to the end for today’s free giveaway + to read my practical tips for an art business! This is a long one but it sure is juicy! Folks, I need to admit something to you. I’m not terribly organized. However, after I started sharing about my work days (on Instagram Stories) and how much I get done, I started getting messages (like, a lot of them) about how I stay organized enough to get all of those tasks crossed off…
When I began making images, it was entirely selfish. I wanted to have control over my creativity, I wanted to see how much I could learn. I enjoyed the process and soon I learned that I wanted a career. Half a year into creating, I knew that photography was becoming a much larger portion of my life than pure selfishness would allow. I wasn’t only creating for myself, I was creating for others. For all of my creative adulthood I’ve…
I declared 2018 my year of NO travel, and that will be true…after June. So far I’ve spent a month away in India, Sri Lanka, and Florida (that sounds a lot less exciting after the other two). Soon I’ll be heading to Tennessee and Wisconsin before going to Greece and Maine. That’s all by the third week of March. With that pace it is extremely difficult to keep up routines. I find myself in airports, hotels, Airbnbs, grandma’s houses. I…
Let me talk about something that is taboo: success. I have been successful in my career. Mind you, I was also saying this when I had not made any money yet, so my opinion may not be of sound mind. I remember when I got my first gallery show. I lost money, no one bought anything, and I had just quit my job with the starry-eyed belief that I was about to be wealthy from my art. Despite that not…