Adam
-
Accepting my strengths
I’m casually obsessed with Liquid Death. At first I was mildly horrified. It’s water in a can. That costs more than water in a bottle. Then I got it. They’re not selling water with world-class marketing. They’re selling world-class irony… with water inside. No matter how big they go, the message is the same. It’s…
-
Failure is the best sauce
·
Tagged
You have to live with being wrong. In my life, there’s a Before and After realizing what being wrong could do for me. It was a journey. Failure wasn’t just embarrassing, it was like a spark on a gasoline fuse. If I screw this up, I’ll never work again. (I may have had some imposter…
-
How I make photoshoot booking easy
Between school photos, the DMV, and passports, we’ve been trained. Picture time sucks. Of COURSE it does: You wait an hour to be immortalized looking—and feeling—like a pigeon just shat in your sandwich. Awesome. Here’s how I redesigned the photoshoot booking process so it’s easy as trying and buying clothes at a luxe boutique: Decide…
-
Confidence and vulnerability
Confidence is not the opposite of vulnerability. You can be both confident and willing to be wrong. In business, that combo is essential to leadership. In the arts, it’s the only way to guarantee something that works. So what is the opposite of being vulnerable? Being defensive (and cockiness, its weird, smelly twin). We can…
-
Photography is empathy
When you’re out of your comfort zone and relying on someone else, how good are they at reading your needs? Doctors, mechanics, bartenders, physical therapists, plumbers, call center reps; everyone. Do they explain the how and why? Too much or too little? Are they kind? Do they even bother? Anyone can point a camera or…
-
Complicating Gendered Lighting
We don’t think of light as gendered, but boy (see what I did there), do we gender it. Women should have every crease filled. (We call it “beauty light.”) Men are allowed rough texture and deep shadows (where our feelings live). There are obvious exceptions… but they’re exceptions. Every photographer I learned from set it…
-
I’m So Tired of Manufactured Authenticity
Why do we keep trying to manufacture authenticity? Right now everything’s BTS: “authenticity” that has to keep proving its bona fides. When someone named the “Gen Z shake” I’d seen in so many vertical videos, all I could think was “Hurray… more performative bullshit.” Stripping away production value doesn’t make you more real, any more…
-
“I hate having my picture taken”
If you’ve ever thought, “Ugh, I hate picture time,” that’s because your photographer sucked. Feeling uncomfortable is NATURAL. Humans didn’t exactly coevolve with cameras. None of us are born knowing what to do. Some people ham like they were, but even they need direction and encouragement, because they can’t see themselves. Or the photographer’s vision.…
-
Who’s the expert again?
It’s telling that the headshot generators compete on accuracy. They’re racing to engineer what a camera does naturally. AI averages everything it’s seen, matches patterns, and spits out of an image of you. Mostly. Because it doesn’t actually KNOW anything, it doesn’t know if you’re you. Sometimes it just goes rogue, for reasons not even…
-
Why we review pictures during our session
Why review images during a shoot? It slows everything down, right? Actually, those 20 minutes save you HOURS. Here’s why both clients and I love it: Like most photographers, I started out trying to maximize control: You’ll see them when I’m ready! That only slowed me down, excluded your insight, AND meant I’d have to…
-
Vulnerability is your superpower
To be trustworthy you have to be willing to be wrong. Too much polish is suspicious. Decisiveness alone doesn’t signal strength, it signals inexperience. If you can’t course-correct, you’re a liability, not an asset. The best creatives embrace being wrong. We make a lot… and kill most of it. I run you through countless variations—turn…
-
The wrong statement
AI headshots might save time… but they’ll cost you trust. We’re living in bonkers times. The job market still feels like holding your breath in space. Fake listings, fake resumes… don’t get me started on dating apps. In a sea of easy perfection, people are craving real. A great headshot doesn’t just show your face—it shows your…
