Iterations
Iterations is the audio companion to host Jeffery Saddoris's journal and newsletter, in which he reflects on creativity, process, and the work of making things that matter. Episodes range from personal stories and experiences to practical observations, with some installments more reflective and others more hands-on. Throughout, Saddoris shares ongoing questions and thoughts about creative practice, often simply thinking out loud. The show is a quiet, conversational space for anyone interested in how ideas turn into finished work.
Episodes
Loss and Found
I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that I’ve experienced my fair share of loss over the past 59 years, and each time the wound is reopened so it never really gets a chance to heal. I would even say that grief and loss have become recurring characters in my life, rather than just a single episode walk-on in season 2 — sort of like The Smoking Man from The X-Files. I know that loss will sho
The Write Stuff
For the better part of a year-and-a-half now, the Supernote Manta has been my daily driver when it comes to writing. Whether I’m journaling, starting a new edition of my newsletter, or simply capturing thoughts and ideas to flesh out later, the Manta is where nearly all of my writing begins.CONNECT WITH MEVisit my Website: https://jefferysaddoris.comGet my Newsletter: SubscribeEmail me: talkback@j
The Archive as a Listening Device
I’ve always thought of archives as places where things go when they’re finished. Sort of a record of the past or a cold storage collection of what mattered after the fact. But lately, I’ve started to think of an archive differently. Maybe it isn’t just a repository for things that stop being useful. Maybe it’s also where they start asking new questions. A few weeks ago, I picked up a scanner, whic
A Game of Noticing
So there I was, looking through stacks of receivers, DVD players, and the odd VCR when I spotted something I didn’t recognize. It was big — big enough to cover nearly two receivers. A CD player was sitting on top of it and when I lifted it off, I think I actually gasped, which Adrianne says is a sure sign that you’ve found something good. It was a flatbed scanner made by a company called Viisan, a
An Instrument for Paying Attention
When I was a kid, the camera only came out for special occasions. A single roll of film might last months, sometimes longer. Most of the time the camera lived in a cupboard until there was a reason to bring it out. Birthdays. Christmas. Vacations. Graduations. Film wasn’t something you wasted, so every frame had to justify itself. Back then, the camera itself felt almost mysterious. My father love
The Website I Don't Need to Finish
I've built more personal websites than I care to count, starting with my first one back in 1997. For years, the goal was simple — keep it fresh, keep it updated, keep the portfolio current enough to land the next job. I picked that habit up partly from Jakob Nielsen, the usability researcher who was convinced sites needed to feel alive to repeat visitors, and I ran with it — random hero images in
A Pattern So Grand and Complex
"We're not geniuses, we're just regular guys who are interested in things." — Neil PeartOn August 1st, 2015, Rush played their final show at the Forum in LA. I was there, just as I had been for so many Rush shows over the years. That show felt different — special in a way that we weren’t really prepared for. For months leading up to it, there were rumors that this would be the last show and after
A Way of Living
For most of my life, I’ve been trying to reconcile two very different ideas about success. One was rooted in practicality, achievement, and outcomes. The other was rooted in curiosity, learning, and exploration.In this episode, I look back at a question my mother asked me during my senior year of high school, the unexpected lessons hidden in a lifetime of creative work, and why I’ve come to realiz
What Rust Remembers
"Sometimes the thing you’re skilled at needs to be broken a little before it can surprise you again."For the past several years, I’ve primarily identified as a painter, despite the fact that the most consistent work I’ve done is writing. That said, lately I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that I might not want to paint anymore — at least not the way I’ve been doing it. Not because I’ve lost inter
Small Is Still Significant
Lately I’ve been feeling the weight of how complicated everything seems — I even wrote a bit about it in the last Iteration. It seems that the scale of it all — the speed, the certainty, the volume — can often make even small efforts feel almost invisible. I’ve caught myself wondering whether the things that I make or the conversations I have matter in any “real” way, and honestly, that unsettles
You Have to Start Making Decisions
Towards the end of last year, I started thinking about building a new website for myself. Not just another vanity site (although I’ve built plenty of those), but more of an archive of the various things I’ve done over my career and a hub where I can share stories around what I’m thinking about and what I’m working on that aren’t dependent on The Algorithm. After years of inconsistent, and if I’m b
Let Go Lightly
About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you, or worse, that I will.” I’m not going to lie, that hit pretty hard. I knew I was in a dark place, but w
The Weight of Waiting
It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed, I thought. One of my earliest memories of this truck is of waking up on the bench seat at Buckskin Sta
Style, Stunts, and a Tiny House
I’ve shared this story before, and regardless of whether it’s true or just the stuff of photographic legend, it’s so good that I think it bears repeating every so often. The story goes that a photographer was presenting his portfolio to the great Jay Maisel. He asked Jay how he could take more interesting pictures, to which Jay immediately replied, “become a more interesting person.” It may sound
Making and Money
For a long time now — years, in fact — I’ve leaned toward the belief that I deserve to be paid for the creative work I do. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least not from a certain point of view. After all, in a capitalist system that’s sort of how it works, right? You do a job, you earn money, you buy things. On the other side, goods and services cost money and we generally
I Buried Another Bird
Yesterday, I had a heart-wrenching experience. I was out for a morning walk with Adrianne and Cooper when I spotted a bird flailing in the grass under a tree. As I got closer, it struggled to escape, its life force fading away. When it finally stopped moving, I knelt down and tried to comfort it with a damp leaf (Adrianne advised against touching it directly due to the bird flu). Watching it die r
Little Beasts and Other Pleasures
Last week, I got a text message from my friend Michelle, who works at the National Gallery of Art. “Lunch tomorrow or Thursday?” followed by “Come see the movie in Little Beasts. It starts at the top of every hour. I would love to discuss it with you.” Not only was Michelle one of the first people I met when I first visited DC in 2014, since then, she’s become a close friend and the National Galle
The Ballad of the Benches
Whether it’s a sheet of old plywood resting on a couple of sawhorses or a fastidiously crafted hardwood masterpiece, the workbench has long been the centerpiece of studios, workshops, garages, and maker spaces of all kinds.Of the many standout features of our house, I think I was most excited about the multiple basement spaces that I would be able to use as studios for the different things I do. T
It’s Still Just a Tool
The other day, I was going through my archive of work ahead of a website redesign, and I found a blog post that I wrote in 2014 that’s sort of an homage to my all-time favorite camera and how after finally acquiring one, I couldn’t bring myself to actually use it. Ten years later, I think the post is still relevant to how some photographers and artists have a tendency to fetishize the tools they u
It’s Okay to be Disappointed
I love making things, whether that means making a conversation with someone or making a piece of art or writing, and getting to do that fairly unfettered is a massive privilege and it’s not wasted on me. That said, it’s okay to be disappointed in what you make — and maybe not disappointed with the end product itself, but in the reception or how it gets received. It’s okay to be disappointed that o
Going Back to Move Forward
NOTE: To see the photos that I reference in this episode, see the post on my Substack.On one of our recent morning walk and talks, a group of photographers and I were talking about how much worse Instagram has gotten over the past few years in terms of exposure and engagement. We all agreed that it seems like most photographers we’ve spoken to about it have very similar feedback. Subscribers, reac
Get Out of Your Way
Reinvention is tough. Disrupting old patterns of beliefs or behaviors is tough. Even when we finally decide to disrupt the flow of familiarity, the fear of the unknown that awaits us can be paralyzing. I know that it has been for me. But one of the things that my therapist routinely encourages me to do is to sit with discomfort — to force myself to pause and breathe and stave off the instinct to m
Gather Ye Rosebuds
Yesterday, Adrianne and I went out to one of favorite little coffee shops to have breakfast and spend the morning working. About an hour in, I had this urge to check Instagram, which I rarely do, especially lately. In fact, I haven’t really done much online or on social media since the election — I actually leave my phone home more often than not — but for whatever reason, I stopped doing my Morni
A Different Kind of Perfection
I’ve held off on posting this Iteration because I just didn’t feel like it was that important in light of what’s happening in California. But after some reflection, I actually think that it is important, because art and making are still important. Hope is important. Helping people to feel just a little less alone and trying to connect with them wherever that may be is important and it’s what I try
Time for Deeper Work
I don’t know about you, but this is by far my least favorite time of year. It really starts around Thanksgiving, but this stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Day is particularly brutal — and it’s not just because I spent the first 48 years of my life in Southern California and still haven’t gotten used to the cold of the East Coast, but yes that. And it’s not just that I’ve lost both of my pa
The Marrow is in the Process
A few weeks ago, I took the train down to DC to meet up with my friend Richard Boutwell to walk through a show at the National Gallery called The '70s Lens. The show features the work of a bunch of fantastic photographers, many of whom I’d never heard of, and that was one of the reasons I wanted to go through it with him. Richard is a terrific photographer who specializes in western landscape
Kubrick on the Morning Zoo
Recently, I picked up a copy of Barry Lyndon on Blu-ray. It’s one of those movies that I’ve had on my watchlist forever, but for whatever reason it just kept slipping through the cracks. As I was researching some of the other Criterion movies I was thinking about picking up, I saw a story about Google’s new AI-integrated NotebookLM and decided to try an experiment to see what (if any) insights AI
The Ritual of It All
Saturday night, Adrianne and I spent the evening at the home of our neighbors Raj and Trupti helping them, along with about 60 other friends and family members, celebrate Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of lights. It’s hard to explain how incredible it felt not just to be invited into their home again, but to feel so welcomed by the other guests and to get the opportunity to participate in an
The Other Brave Thing
On Saturday, Adrianne and I took an impromptu trip into DC after seeing an interesting post pop up in my Instagram feed. The post was about an open studio event at the 52 O Street Artist Studios, which is a four-floor building that features “50+ Artists & Creative Businesses.” I’ve loved visiting artists’ spaces for years. When I was still living in California, I would regularly go to The Brew
When the Thing is the Thing
What you’re hearing (if you’re listening, rather than reading this) are the sounds of me unboxing a new keyboard — specifically, an Apple A1048, commonly known as simply the Apple Keyboard. What makes this keyboard especially interesting to me is the period of time in my life that it reminds me of — that and the fact that this particular keyboard has been sitting unopened and unused in a box in ce
How Does it Feel?
Last week, I released a video review of a new book from Prestel about Gregory Crewdson. It was significant for me, not just because Gregory is one of my photographic heroes — although yes, that is part of it — but because it was the first project I’ve done in quite a while that was really just for me. I’ve been on a bit of a “creative hiatus” for the better part of a year and I’ve only done a few
Permission Granted
Last week, I gave myself permission to do something that was a: pretty far outside of my comfort zone and b: completely unnecessary. If you read or listened to my last Iteration, you know I’ve been wanting an Elektron Digitakt for years, but would never allow myself to get one. Well, they say that fortune favors the bold, so I finally took the plunge and bought one. I had been lurking in the class
The Illusion of Control
Sunday was my birthday and as I begin my 58th trip around the sun, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned over the past half-century or so. I’m not talking about skills per se, though I have racked up a fairly impressive list. I think one of the things that has both helped the most while also being the most frustrating is the realization that in the vast majority of cases, control
It’s Time to be Self-Centered
I’ve been thinking about something for a while and I’m not sure whether or not it’ll land, but I’d like to try stringing together a few ideas. I think it’s time for us to embrace being self-centered, but not in the way that you might think. Typically, when we refer to someone as “self-centered” it’s not a compliment. It often refers to someone who is egotistical and only thinks about themselves or
The Joy of [Re]Discovery
Whether you call it a slump, a funk, a downturn, a slowdown, a struggle, a breakdown, a nosedive, a stall, a meltdown, a plunge, or just stagnation, I’ve been in one for a while. While I have multiple journals that are dappled with notes, sketches, and the beginnings of ideas, I haven’t actually recorded a new show or finished a new painting in months. Even this newsletter has taken a hit on consi
Know Thy [Creative] Self
For the past few weeks, maybe even the past month or so, I’ve been on sort of an Ethan Hawke deep dive. I like Ethan Hawke as an actor and while I haven’t seen everything he’s ever done, I really like Training Day and I would probably put Dead Poets Society and Gattaca in my top 20 — actually, maybe top 30. I know some people find him pretentious, but whenever I’ve seen him interviewed, he always
The Five-Pointed Star of Why
The other day I was on the phone with my friend Neale James and we were talking about a recent episode of his podcast The Photowalk, on which he was talking to our mutual friend Sean Tucker about creativity. “I invite you,” Neale begins the episode, “to imagine a five-pointed star. Now on each point of the star, I’d like you to think of a word that’s important to you in terms of creativity or your
Connection, Collaboration, and Creative Maturity
If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you probably know I’m a big Nine Inch Nails fan and have been since 1990 when I saw them open up for Peter Murphy. The other day, I was watching a terrific video with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross breaking down some of their most iconic tracks. One of the more fascinating aspects of the video was how much Trent talks about process and how important the “feel”
Can a Podcast Change Your Life?
Last week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures. If you’re a longtime listener, you may think you’ve heard this before, and you’re right, you have. But this time it’s different. I’ll get to why in a minute, but first I need to back up. In 2008, I was teaching Photoshop at Tri-Community Photo in Covina, California. One of the other instructors and I started doing photo walks with some
Art as a Verb
The artist Richard Serra died recently, and I know he’s considered a big deal in the art world, but honestly I’ve never really gotten what all the hype is about. I suppose I can appreciate the scale and the forms of some of the work in the same way that I can appreciate the architecture of Frank Gehry, but overall, it just never really grabbed me. Anyway, one of the posts that came up in my feed c
Can AI and Artists Coexist?
After recording last week’s episode of On Taking Pictures, Bill sent me a link to a video that’s both fascinating and deeply disturbing, called “AI vs Artists: The Biggest Art Heist in History.” The video presents some of the grim facts around how images, including the 5.85 billion uncurated images in the LAION-5B dataset, are being illegally scraped and used to generate derivative work. The datas
Tool Up!
About a week ago, I jumped back into using Photoshop for the first time since 2018 and I’ve got to tell you, it was kind of like putting on a favorite pair of jeans. Yes, the interface has changed a little and a bunch of terrific new tools have been added—especially Object Select, which I’ll come back to in a minute. But even after such a long hiatus, it was still so familiar that straight away it
Swimming in Molasses
I started this Iteration on February 29th—Leap Day—and for me it was a good day, which, frankly, I really needed. In the last Iteration, I talked about how difficult 2023 was for me and in the week or so since I shared it a lot has happened. Probably the biggest thing is that I’ve started going to therapy. I’ve danced around it for a long time and I think it just got to a point where I could no lo
A Sabbatical in Retrospect
I’m not going to bury the lede—2023 was not a great year for me, especially financially. In fact, I think it was one of the worst years I’ve had since I became a solo creative, and for the most part, it was nobody’s fault but mine. One of my favorite movies is High Fidelity (get the book here) and in it, there’s a scene where Rob (played by John Cusack) is going through a particularly frustrating
Another February 5th
Today is February 5th and it would have been my dad’s 83rd birthday. I normally mark the day by posting a simple message like “I miss you, Dad” on Instagram or Twitter, when Twitter was still a thing and I was still on it. Today, I want to do something a little different and tell you a story. My dad could be tough and for a big part of my adolescent life, we butted heads. A lot. At one point, it g
Details, Obstacles, and Opportunities
A couple weeks ago, I finally bought a set of wireless mics. I had been wanting and maybe even needing a set for a long time as a way to record the random conversations I seem to have with people out in the world on any given day. I’d been looking at them for a while, but I saw a review that Curtis Judd did—who was one of my favorite audio YouTubers—and I thought, “I'm just gonna get these. T
Starting Out Heavy
If you’ve spent any time around me at all, you know that I have opinions—lots of them—and I have since I was a kid. Sometimes when I would offer my unsolicited thoughts on various things, my mom would respond with “Oh, there he is…my little critic.” The thing is it’s not just criticism. Not always, anyway. More often than I generally care to admit, I find myself feeling personally offended, either
Have Yourself a Holly Jolly…
Well here we are again, nearing the end of one more trip around the sun and I for one cannot wait for it to be over. Christmas used to be my favorite time of year, but that was really because of my mom. She would start decorating the house around Thanksgiving, and when I say decorating, I don’t just mean putting up lights—our house looked and smelled like a Hallmark store. Yes, there were lights,
It’s Not Always an Obvious Connection
Back in the late 70s, there was a terrific documentary on the BBC called Connections. It was hosted by historian and author James Burke and now that I think about it, I don’t remember whether I watched it on PBS or I borrowed VHS copies of it from my freshman English teacher, Mrs. Copeland who also loaned out copies of Cosmos. And to be clear, I’m talking about the Carl Sagan version, not the Neil
Remapping the Road Ahead
As we get into this Iteration, I’d like to take a minute to let you know about some changes that I’m working on that will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months. Iterations will still be weekly (mostly), but I’m going to mix up the types of posts I’ll be including and treat it more like an old-school blog. For example, you may have noticed that the Blips have been getting more substantial i
Learn to Love the Process
Over the past few days, the photography world has been buzzing about the “global shutter” on Sony’s new flagship A9 III. I’ve listened to various YouTubers andinfluencers talk about it as if it’s the second coming. They’re saying “it’s the most remarkable camera I’ve ever used” and calling it a “a game changer,” insisting that “it will change photography forever.” But here’s the thing: for 99% of
Let It Incubate
They say that one of the best ways to solve a problem—at least a creative one—is actually not to think abut it. After all, how many times have you been doing something like taking a shower or going for a long walk and you find yourself having one of those eureka moments where suddenly the solution to a problem you’ve been wrestling with forever seems so clear? It happens to me a lot and it’s one o
Revisiting My Infrastructure
As I was working through the recent redesign of my website—which you can read about or listen to in the last Iteration—I started to look at some of the other software I was using to see whether what I was using still made sense for the projects I’ll be doing in the coming year. I think it’s sometimes easy to get into a routine of using tools that are “good enough” that we just don’t look for poten
Go Forward, Move Ahead
Last week I did a soft-launch of my newly redesigned website, which in an of itself isn’t all that unique since I’ve resigned my website dozens of times over the years. What is unique—or at least different—is the overall focus of the site and the process I went through putting it together this time around. I started by asking myself a relatively simple question: do I even need a website? The most
The Time I Designed a Dog Backpack
Next month is the tenth anniversary of my dad’s death, so naturally I’ve been thinking about him a lot. Last year, I completely forgot about it, which I tried to tell myself was actually healthy, but I just ended up feeling guilty about forgetting. If you’ve been following me for a while, or you’re an OTP listener, you know that my relationship with my dad was often difficult, to say the least. Bu
Objects in Motion
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about inertia and motion and how it applies to my creative practice. We know that Newton’s First Law of Motion says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless some sort of external force acts against it. Conversely, an object at rest will tend to stay at rest. But I would argue that the Fist Law also applies to intangibles like thoughts and ideas. For
A Bunch of Potential Somethings
Are you overwhelmed? Do you ever get overwhelmed? Man, I do. All the time. My brain is always on and processing—either trying to process existing ideas or trying to figure out where to put all of the new ones that I haven’t had time to really think about. And it doesn’t stop. It’s all day, every day. There’s always a bunch of potential somethings bouncing around my head. And let me be clear—I love
Almost Back to Normal
I’m still not quite 100% myself, but I wanted to share a quick update. Yesterday was day 12 since testing positive for COVID, and it was the first day that I finally tested negative. Both Adrianne and I had very mild cases, especially compared to some of our friends and family members who really had a it bad. I had a temperature of 100.8 for one day and, other than feeling fatigued and brain fogge
Even Unicorns Can Get COVID
I know I’m a little late on this Iteration and I apologize for that. As you can hear, my voice doesn’t sound the way it normally does and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it sounds better.In the Iteration I was going to do, I was going to talk about finding that thing you live for, that thing that you love, that thing that lights you up. But I have to postpone it because I’m just having a hell of
40 Years in a Phone Call
This Iteration was going to be about some of my recent musical explorations into things like VCV Rack and the Arturia MiniFreak (which I may actually end up selling), but instead I’d like to share a recent story with you that sort of blew my mind.CONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com Twitter: @jefferysaddoris Instagram: @jefferysaddorisMUSICMusic For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris
Fried Dough and Photographs
When I was a kid, one of the things I would look forward to every year was going to the fair. The LA County Fair was massive and in elementary school we always got free tickets—I think they were stapled to our report cards, but I could be wrong. Although I moved around a lot as a kid, it seemed like we never lived very far from the fairgrounds, which are right next to the Pomona Raceway. My dad wo
Art is Everywhere
Over the weekend, Adrianne and I watched a fantastic new documentary by Anton Corbijn called Squaring the Circle. It’s about Hipgnosis, the legendary design agency in London formed in the late 1960s by Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell, or “Po” to his friends. I knew I was going to love it before I even saw the trailer because so much of their work has been etched into my brain over the past four
I Don't Care What You Think
I’ve come to the conclusion that I can no longer care what you think about my work. And it’s not that I don’t care about you as an audience, but if I’m worried about you liking what I make while I’m still making it or even in deciding what to make, I’m not putting 100% of myself into it. By not caring what you think, I get to put 100% of my ideas, my skills, and my experience—not to mention effort
To AI or Not to AI?
I’ve hesitated to really talk much about AI, mostly because I’ve been on the fence about whether I think it’s got the potential to save us or destroy us, and depending on who and what you read, it seems like it’s 50/50 either way. It’s just too soon to tell and I think these technologies are being adopted so quickly that we haven’t given ourselves enough time to think about the ramifications or th
Finding a New Openness
I know we’re only a little over the halfway mark, but if I could recommend one book as my “must read” of 2023, it would be Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Seeing, despite the fact that I haven’t actually read it from cover to cover. Let me explain. I started to read it from the beginning but within just a few sentences, I knew it was going to be more of a reference book than a “read it onc
Summertime Stories
This is my eighth summer living on the East Coast and aside from the heat, I am still not used to the humidity. Actually, I don’t think I ever will be. I spent the first 48 years of my life living in Southern California and starting when I was about 4 until probably my freshman year in college, I spent most of my summers in Arizona, which was hot but not humid. The landscape and the people left an
In The Making
I’m going to try something different, so I really don’t know exactly where this Iteration is going to go. I thought I’d just put on some music and write whatever came to mind. At the moment, Dark Star by Crosby, Stills, and Nashis playing in the background, which I love despite not really being a CSN fan. Adrianne found the album at this little record store in DC a few weeks ago that’s across the
Starting to Write the Sequel
This has been sort of a weird week for me. Friday would have been my mom’s 79th birthday and for the past 14 years, not a day has gone by that I don’t think about her. Sometimes only a little, other times, I think about her a lot. I miss our Sunday brunches at Molly’s, though Molly sold the place years ago. I miss her smile, which I can no longer remember without looking at a photograph. Mostly, I
Beyond Broad Strokes
How do you know when it’s time to rethink or refresh your personal brand? It’s something I’ve spent a fair bit of time thinking about lately. But before we dive into that, I think we first need to answer another question and that is what does “personal brand” even mean? According to Gary Vee, “Your personal brand is your reputation.” Another way he put it was, “Your brand is about how someone fee
It’s Not About a Watch
Earlier in the week, a post came up in my Twitter feed that stopped me in my tracks before sending me down a rabbit hole that I think I may be in for a while. It was a post about a watch—or at least the possibility of a watch—by a designer named Sebastian Stapelfeldt, who publishes under the name Carl Hauser. It’s a terrific 3D render that looks like something out of one of Syd Mead’s sketchbooks,
Getting Out (Of My Head)
As an independent creative, I spend the bulk of my time alone, which means I’m typically in one of my studios in the basement of our house. I have two spaces that have been purpose-built and tweaked over the past few years to fit the different aspects of my creative practice. The analog studio is where I do all of my painting and collage work and the digital studio is where I do everything else th
It’s Just Stuff, Right?
In this Iteration, I want to talk about things, specifically the things in our lives that take on a particular significance because of what they have come to represent and how difficult it can be when we let them go, either by choice or by circumstance.A few days ago, Adrianne and I bought a new car and to say that it was a challenge would be a bit of an understatement. To be fair, the actual car
A Momentary Lapse of Perspective
I was sitting in my studio the other day, looking at some of the 100+ paintings I’ve done over the past few years and out of the blue I thought to myself, “I hate all of these.” Adrianne walked in a few minutes later and asked what was going on and I said, “I think I hate everything I’ve done.” Adrianne being Adrianne then asked, “Do you really hate it or is it something else?” I didn’t answer imm
Consistency Matters
This is Iteration number 100 and before we dive in, I want to say that this one is a big deal for me, not because it’s number 100—although, yes, that—but more because it’s about what it’s taken for me to get here and what I’ve learned about consistency and my own creative process.If you’re an artist or maker of some kind and you’re on social media, regardless of the platform, you’ve undoubtedly he
The Uncertainty of the Purchase
This Iteration was originally going to be a story that bordered on a rant about trying to buy a new mouse from Amazon that went a little sideways. I’ll share some of the details in a bit, but the short version is that it took three attempts to get it right and I’m still not totally convinced that there isn’t some shady merchandise being sold as “real” by the world’s largest retailer. The best part
Prompt. View. Repeat.
You don’t have to look far to know that AI is everywhere and it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. It’s in the news and on social media. It’s what your colleagues are talking about when you’re at work and what your friends are talking about when you’re not. And no matter what you do for a living or for recreation, it seems like AI is going to either disrupt it completely or at least affec
The Ideas Never Stop
In 2018 I released a book called Photography by the Letter. It took three years of research, writing, re-writing, designing, and re-designing, and while it wasn’t as financially successful as I had hoped, it was one of the most satisfying projects I’ve ever done. After shopping it around to a number of publishers—all of whom passed on it—we self-published a limited print run and released it simult
Rethinking My Website
A little over a year ago, after getting a very disturbing email from my then web host saying that they were closing shop—without including an end date, mind you—I decided to try an experiment with my website. Rather than simply move my existing Wordpress installation to another web host, I built a new site using a platform called Carrd (affiliate link) which, according to the website, is perfect f
Creaking Back to Life
For years I’ve wanted to do some sort of legacy project that would allow me to explore and somehow acknowledge and maybe even come to terms with my family history. As many of you know, I come from a family of railroad workers. In fact, I’m the first and to my knowledge the only male in three generations of my family not to work for the railroad. At the beginning of 2019, I started laying the groun
Finding Dots to Connect
Last month, we lost Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was an absolute monster of an artist and since hearing the news I’ve been going back and listening to a bunch of his catalog, which is not only massive, but it’s also incredibly diverse.There are certain artists whose work allows you to see the world differently. If they’re really good, they might even allow you to feel it differently. Ryuichi Sakamoto was
Recommended
McKinsey on Consumer and Retail
megahired.com
Hard Knocks Podcast
Effective Weight Loss for Moms | High protein, Strength Training, Lose Weight, Meal Planning, Fat Loss, Healthy Habits
The Human-Animal Connection - Pet Life Radio Original
Infinite Health with Dr. Arasi Maran
The Daily
World News Tonight with David Muir
The Joe Rogan Experience
English Vocabulary Help
TED Talks Daily
Learn English B1 with Daily News | English Listening Practice
