A Curriculum for (Creative) Photographers Check out these essays and see if this approach to photography resonates. If so, I encourage you to take one of my workshops through the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. …

“This might not seem like nothing to you now, but it will.” — This is me: I have been a photographer for more than 40 years, a writer for fewer, a long time resident of the Bay Area, but moments away from a big move to Santa Fe, New Mexico. When I was a kid, I was a young protégé of Jerry Uelsmann…

A photo is not only an image but an object — I’ve spent the past few years evangelizing my feelings about the photograph as haiku — and the many ways those poetic forms can be aesthetically connected. I’m also a fan of kintsugi — the 15th century Japanese art form where broken ceramics are repaired with gold. Kintsugi highlights the flaws…

And it only took 3 years to get here… — “Straight-up f*king genius!!” — Doug Menuez, Photojournalist, “Fearless Genius” AVAILABLE TODAY IN BOTH COLLECTOR’S HARDBACK AND STUDENT EBOOK “So Excellent! It’s a photo class in a book!!” — Christopher Michel, Photographer; Artist-in-Residence at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine The Photograph as Haiku is a new work in photographic inspiration. This simple book describes how the aesthetic properties of many…

A Photo Travelogue, of Sorts — I’m just back from 10 days in Iceland. After years of critiquing students’ photos with respect to “haiku photography” I thought it would be useful to point that laser at my recent shooting. Before I left I had been looking at Chris Burkard’s Summer photos from his off-grid adventure in…

Family Mentoring and a Daughter’s First App — I made a deal with my kids when they were six and eight. They didn’t want to go to Sunday School and I was getting pretty fed up with the weekly weekend argument. I wasn’t going to let them stay home and watch TV so I gave them an alternative…

NSFW — Nude photos from sessions with female friends are the principle departure I make from my photographic haiku practice. Let me begin by saying I dislike most nude work by photographers. I rarely see anything I find original, and frequently it feels gimmicky. But after years of taking pictures, when I…

A brief breakdown of this idea in action — One of the aspects of photographic haiku that I’m always working on, and that gives students pause, is the balance between “moment” and “object.” While the things that catch my eye are very often cool looking (patterns, shadows, scenes), my haiku practice pushes me to capture images that are more…

After 40 years I’m starting to get good, and understand. — My photography is a practice. Like yoga, you never “get there” so much as hope to keep growing. It’s a way of seeing, obviously, but for me it’s also making a short poem out of what I see. The poems might be funny, or wistful, or arousing — they offer…