Craft
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Eye love
Only a close-up photograph gives you time and permission to admire a stranger’s eyes. The eyes are powerful magnets. They’re the center of trust, confidence, inner life. When someone really connects with the camera, you feel like they’re really seeing you. We do call them soul-windows, after all. For a long time I envied people…
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Why pay a photographer instead of an image generator?
Glad you asked! Oh yeah, and authenticity. 😉
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How to look better in pictures (at any age)
The other day I shared three hacks for managing your age in pictures. Here are three more, this time for selfies or content creation: I hope these techniques help put some light on the dark art of photography.
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How to look younger in pictures
If you’re over 40, your profile picture is a tightrope. You need to own your age… and maybe look younger… but no surprises in person. Here’s how I pull that off: These will work any time, anywhere. Happy shooting!
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What makes a great headshot
Here’s what separates a great headshot from a shitty one. The obvious: Without a genuine smile and presence in the eyes, a viewer can’t connect with you. They move on. It’s why the session pays for itself: Actors cover the shoot with their first booking; office workers get it back hundreds of times over with…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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“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.…
