PixelatedImage Blog

Once in a while I get a notion to stir things up. I do so first for myself, usually only later does it occur to me to share the idea. But this is not that time. I’m too busy with doing other things and sadly it’s a reality that being a working photographer often means more work and less photographering. Right now it’s one of those times. I am in Ontario right now and I’ve shot 12 frames – all of the family cat. These are not my proudest hours.

Months ago I published TEN, Ten Ways To Improve Your Craft, None of Them Involve Buying Gear. It was, and still is a best-seller. But I should have done two things. 1. I should have come up with a shorter subtitle. 2. I should have prefaced it with an even shorter eBook. I here present the proposed content.

Proposed Title: ONE, One Way To Improve Your Craft Without Buying Gear.

Proposed Content: Stop buying gear.

That’s it. And as I don’t know anyone willing to shell out $5 for this advice, I’m just giving it away. Want more? Here’s the expanded content:

The single best thing you can do for your photography in the broadest strokes, is to stop buying gear.

Stop it. Stop looking at the catalogs. Stop reading the reviews.

Just, for the love of Diane Arbus, stop it.

Now grab the nearest camera. And the lens that’s on it. And go make some photographs. Now do it again. And again. And again. Do this for a month, a year if you can manage to stay away from the addiction that long. Do it so long that you don’t even know – or care – about the specs of the newest offering from Canon or Nikon. Do it so long that you no longer care that a faster lens would be sexier and convince your friends that you’re serious about your craft. Do it so long that you care more for the image than you do for the chatter about gear. Do it so long that you fall in love with photographing, not just the gear.

Then, if you must, pick up the catalogs again, and re-subscribe to your favourite magazines. The gear is good, so lest anyone comment about me hating gear or being gearophobic (hey, some of my best friends are gear!) let me re-iterate that there’s nothing wrong with the gear. Nothing wrong with poppies either but an opium addiction will probably sideline you pretty good. Hear me on this rare soapbox (rare because it’s shortish, not because it’s a soapbox): all the new gear and fancy tutorials, all the books and exotic workshops, all of it can be helpful. But it can also be a counterfeit for the real deal; the act of going out and making image after image after image, for the love of it, and with a critical eye and teachable spirit. Getting discouraged? Chuck it all and go make some photographs. Purge the voices from your head, close the magazines, and go make some photographs. Just you, one camera, one lens, and your muse. Don’t show it to others, don’t post it on Flick or blog about it. Just you. Your camera. Your muse. Once you love the images more than the feedback, and the “wow, great shot!”s and the new-gear smell, and the site of the UPS man on your porch, then you’re back where you started: in love with creating actual photographs. And I guarantee two things – you’ll enjoy your photographs more, and the images will be better.

It’s no secret I love Kathmandu. I spend time there every year and it’s rapidly becoming a second home despite my inability to say more than a few words in Nepali, and none that anyone actually seems to understand. Also Bob Seger and Cat Stevens sang iconic songs about this iconic remote place and they’re stuck in my head forever. So I’m particularily excited to tell you that Jeffrey Chapman, my friend and partner in crime for the upcoming Italy Within The Frame Workshop, has prevailed on me to spend a couple weeks in Kathmandu after Matt Brandon and I finish up with this year’s Lumen Dei tour in Kashmir and Ladakh, and we’re inviting you to come along. We originally planned to go to Laos and Cambodia but as my good friend Gavin Gough is running a fantastic workshop of his own in Laos, we decided to head to Nepal instead and leave the Laotians to Gavin and his own motley crew, for which there are still spaces available.

I won’t give you all the details on Kathmandu here, you can find those as of this morning HERE. In brief, however, it’s this – October 3-16 in the Kathmandu Valley at the best time of year. We’ll be in Bhoudanath, Pashupatinath, Swayambu, Sankhu, Bhaktapur and Bandipur. We’ll be seeing plenty but the emphasis will be on a small group going deeper, not broader. We’ll learn, we’ll do alot of shooting, and we’ll do it all in one of my favourite places on the planet. The group is limited to 8 participants. It costs $4,100 from Kathmandu, and it’s going to be amazing. Space is limited so get in fast if this is a possibility for you. The complete itinerary and details are now available HERE. If you come you will be required to sing a bar of the Bob Seger version of the song at least once. So might as well start now: K-K-K-K-K-K-KATHMANDU! THAT’S REALLY, REALLY WHERE I’M GOING TO! (C’mon, sing it with me!)

If you missed last week’s release of Andrew S. Gibson’s eBook The Magic of Black and White, Part One – Vision – be sure to get in on it before the discount codes run out for this book and others. More info HERE.

My goal for Craft & Vision, apart from providing exceptional photographic education and inspiration at ridiculous prices, was to get a new eBook out to you once a month, sometimes my own, sometimes one from a photographer I respect. I was planning my own book about black and white photography when Andrew S. Gibson suggested he do not one, but two of them. Seeing a chance to avoid writing yet another book while I have deadlines of my own to deal with I jumped at it, and I’m glad I did. Andrew’s black and white images are fantastic, full of beautiful tone I find hard to get in my own work.  We’re releasing Andrew’s book this morning and I’m really excited about it. Here’s the description from the Craft & Vision site:

Black and white photographs are a different medium than colour and require an ability to see in monochrome. Becoming aware of the differences between black and white and colour images, in both how they are seen and what makes a great black and white image, is the first step to capturing images that will work powerfully in monochrome.

The first in a planned two-volume set, Part One discusses what makes a great black and white photograph, what to look for when learning to see in monochrome, elements of a black and white image, and potential subjects for black and white photographs. Part Two will examine the means of creating the black and white image in the digital darkroom.

At 58 pages, The Magic of Black & White – Part One, Vision -  is a little longer than most of the Craft&Vision ebooks, we just didn’t want to short-change the book on great images. We’re giving you discount codes too. Past codes have been limited time only, as these two are, but they’re slightly less limited so more of you can get in on it.

Use code GIBSON4 until the end of March 2010 to get The Magic of Black and White, Part One for $4 instead of $5. Use GIBSON20 until the end of March 2010 to get 20% off all Craft&Vision books when you buy 4 or more. You can buy the book now using the buttons below or just click HERE to go to the full collection at the Craft & Vision site.

Ladakh, India, 2008. Finding images to illustrate these things ain’t always easy, so I picked something completely at random and because, well, I guess because Ladakh doesn’t suck. I dunno. Just read the post, ignore the caption.

Lest anyone think the last post about Suck-Mode was a license to celebrate mediocrity, I want to look at this all from the other angle. If this weekends post was about Everyone Needs a Place to Suck, then this one’s closer to Sucking is Not Enough.

I truly believe that our creativity thrives better without the pressure of ego or the expectation of performance. But – and it’s a big but (hee hee, he said “big but!” Ahem…) – we create better photographs when the Artist and the Geek are in balanced tension with each other. I know the Artist in some of us rejoices when we’re given permission to suck. To hell with the technical stuff right? But here’s the catch – the better your craft and your ability to use your tools, the more fully you are to express yourself. By all means, be bold about sucking. Suck with all your heart and let that freedom push you to create great work. But don’t neglect your craft because the moment you neglect your craft you put a shelf-life on that new-found creativity.

It’s all about balance. And of course there’s no reason that “work on your craft” must mean you need to learn it all. If you have no desire to learn to use multiple off-camera strobes, don’t. If you don’t want to learn to use a 4×5 camera, then don’t do that either. But for the love of Dorothea Lange make sure you are increasingly better at using your camera and lenses because they are all we have as photographers to speak the visual language. Don’t let permission to suck be become license to stagnate. Mediocrity, in any endeavour, well, it sucks. But it’s, ahem,  the bad kind of sucking, not the, uh, good..kind…of…sucking. Ok, metaphor’s falling apart.

A couple weeks ago I posted Confessions of a So-Called Pro, and it’s been easily the most popular post on this blog. I followed it with From Confession to Photographic Penance because I think we need to balance the need for encouragement with the need to move on. Same here. We really, really need to celebrate the amateur, ie.  doing this purely for the love of the craft, and that means we need to grow and learn. So, artists, find your place to suck and do it boldy, but don’t neglect the geek. Stay on it. Keep learning. Keep reading. Find photographers you respect and learn everything you can. Because embracing the fact that we all suck sometimes might be a great place from which to create, but it’s only a means to get there, not the destination.

This is the last post about sucking. For now. I’m visiting my parents in Ontario and there’s a real chance my joke about being grounded for using the word “sucks” might actually happen, so I’m back to my best behaviour the moment I hit Publish.

Me. Happily in Suck-Mode in Kenya. Man I miss Africa! The image has nothing whatsoever to do with the post so don’t go looking for deeper meanings. Sometimes a photograph is just filler, ya know?

During the Q&A time at Amazon the other day a guy in the audience asked me a question. It must have been very complicated because I’ve completely forgotten the specifics. What I can’t forget is how he prefaced the question. He began by telling me he was an amateur and “still in suck-mode.”

Made me laugh.

But as we used to say in the comedy world, it’s funny ’cause it’s true. Suck-Mode.  Baby, we’re all still in suck-mode and here’s why.

1. Your vision or intention for your images is fired by your imagination and your emotions. It’s also fueled by expectations and the desire to express yourself better than you currently do. The fact that so many talented photographers out there shoot such beautiful work in their sleep doesn’t help.

2. The technology with which we collaborate to create our photographs is always changing, always has a learning curve attached to it for which few of us have the time to to tackle, AND is profoundly limited to begin with. That’s what makes it so much fun. But what we want from our images is often several steps ahead of either the limits of our gear or the limits of our craft.

And so we often look at our own work and see it through the “this all sucks” filter. Doesn’t help that we compare ourselves to others who in turn seem to be comparing themselves to us. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t exclude the need or ability to still love our work or be confident in its creation. In comedy we used to say that “everyone needs a place to suck.” It gave us the freedom to try, to risk, to fail without repercussions. We ALL need a place to suck. It’s from that place that I suspect our best work can eventually grow.

As I said, you can still love your work, can still be confident that you are growing as a craftsman and an artist. But the place of humility that you need to acknowledge the Suck Mode to begin with can be a powerful ally in creation. Embrace it. We all suck. Now go take some risks, cause hey, if it’s going to suck anyways, what do you have to lose by trying harder, taking risks, and throwing caution to the wind? It’s when you think your work is hot sh*t, as they say, that you risk plateauing. And also people stop wanting to play with you. Embrace sucking, you’ll feel better about yourself and your work, and ironically, your work will probably suck less. That’s my hope, anyways

As an aside, I got in trouble when I was a child for saying something “sucked.” Hopefully the expression now holds a more accepted, less crude, meaning for most people that it will not offend. If it does, suck it up and refrain from leaving a comment. My mother’s got your back and I’m probably already grounded without dinner.

I spoke at Amazon yesterday in the middle of a whirlwind trip to Seattle. Had a great time, met some amazing people. To all of you who came and were so hospitable, thank you!

For those that didn’t come because, well, ahem, you weren’t invited because you don’t work at the Amazon mothership, this is what I said. Or planned to say before I spent 20 minutes just rambling instead. Use your imagination to insert 20 photographs that are almost entirely unrelated to the talk itself These are just notes, so if you’re looking for brilliant writing, move along, there is nothing to see here.

I’ve spent the last 5 years traveling the world photographing the world, its people, their culture, and issues of physical and spiritual hunger. And I’ve been writing. By the time my third book, Vision & Voice, is out I will have released 3 books in just over one year. I’m tired!

But I’ve also been learning. Photographers are by nature observers. You can’t photograph what you first can’t see or experience.

Henri-Cartier Bresson said : Photography is nothing – it’s life that interests me. I resonate strongly with that, and I think my books reflect a similar feeling – that photography is not an end in itself but a means by which we see the world, interact with it, and say to the rest of the world, “look at this!” So in the spirit of that, I offer 5 things I’ve seen over the last 5 years.

1. There is an artist and a geek in all of us. One is the heart, one is the brain, and while they exist in different ways in all of us, one can’t get along without the other. The poet or artist is the passionate, emotional place in all of us. the geek is the one obsessed with email. Or a camera. Or lines of code. And they can live without each other, we are more whole and our work is better when they find balance. As a photographer my craft is tended to by the geek, but my vision is nurtured by the artist, my heart. When both are fully engaged I not only have more to say, with greater passion and urgency, but I have greater skills with which to say it.

2. It is our mistakes that fuel our successes. Our victories are the result of failing, making mistakes, and learning from those.  No different with a camera in my hand. We love being safe. Traveling to safe places, taking safe photographs, never venturing too far from the beaten path into risk or experimentation. To grow as an artist,  a chef, a writer, a computer programmer, we must learn to listen to the voice that whispers to us – WHAT IF? and be willing to fail and make more mistakes in the pursuit of those possibilities.

3. There is a profound difference between making a living and having a life. The subtitle of VisionMongers is Making a Life and Living in Photography, and it was so-named because the point of photography for those of us that are passionate about it, is not making money, it’s to do what we are passionate about and in so-doing to make enough money to keep doing what we love. The job of the artist, of the human being, is to do what we love and with it to make this world a brighter place, and then to sustain that. For some that might be leveraging skills as a photographer to make that living, but for others it might be working at Starbucks. But make no mistake about it, making a living and making a life are often not the same thing. But they can be.

4. Life is Short, Live with Intention. People get confused when I throw the word VISION around as much as I do, so I’ve taken to switching it out and using the word INTENTION. As photographers we are responsible for every element that finds itself in the frame of our image. If it’s there it’s because you put it there or chose to exclude it. Your vision or intention for the image drives what you include or exclude from the frame. You use a different lens to crop something out, you move here, you move there, you wait for the light to change. You have precious moments in which to do so. And so it is with life. You have a frame in which to tell your story, and a brief moment which in hindsight will seem like no longer than the blink that is 1/60th of a second. You can live with intention and vision and create a story within that frame that will endure, or you can let it happen to you, taking the odd snapshot along the way.

5. Leave the place better than you found it. Much of my commercial work is for groups like World Vision and Save the Children. I got my start in Haiti. But I am not a photojournalist. I show the world as it is, but chose also to show it as I have hope that it will be. My subject is hope. I chose to capture universal human emotions at their best, because strength, joy, hope, dignity, beauty, do not happen in the so-called first-world alone, and man is not defined by the circumstances into which he is born. When I was a kid my mother made me clean up the campsite after our summer weekends camping and I had to pick up cigarette buts and bottle caps that we had not left, but I learned a valuable lesson – leave it better than when you arrived. That is the goal of my photography, and as photography is the means by which I express my deeper values, it is the goal of my life. Whether you have a camera in your hand or not, remember that 20% of the world – that’s us – hoardes more than 80% of the world’s resources and the poor are not only out there in deepest darkest Africa. They are among us, live in the alleys and outskirts of our cities, and closer to home still the poor in heart, the downcast and the broken, live next to us, live with us.  Our great poverty is not that we do not share, it’s that we often do not see them at all.

For those of you feeling a little disappointed that I didn’t fill my brief time with photographic wisdom instead of this artsy-fartsy stuff then instead of suggesting that your geek to artist ratio is wildly in need of re-alignment, I offer you this:

Be patient.

Be curious.

Know your craft.

Don’t compare yourself to others.

And don’t get so lost in the f-stops and ISO settings that you miss the point of it all – to discover and express your vision, one frame at a time.

“A better camera won’t do anything for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart” Arnold Newman

Planting Rice outside Chiang Rai, Thailand. August 2009

Good morning. I’ve got a handful of links for you this morning, some worthwhile stuff I want to point you towards.

Scott Kelby and his gang of elves that never sleep have an online show called D-Town. I watched a few episodes when it first came out but as it was geared entirely for Nikon shooters I stopped watching. Only so many hours in the day and I don’t shoot Nikon (though I’d be willing to if the good folks at Nikon are interested in talking) Anyways, D-Town is no longer a Nikon-only show and that should make it suddenly relevant to anyone other than Nikonians. Details HERE.

My friend Gavin Gough has work in this year’s Travel Photographer of the Year book, as do I, though I’d forgotten about it until reading Gavin’s post. Where Gavin and I seem to differ is that he’s willing to give one of these books away. I thought, “What a great idea!” but where others would then give a copy away I’m just going to send you to Gavin’s site and encourage you to read the rules on his simple giveaway HERE. Gavin’s work is in a current/recent edition of Vanity Fair as well, check it out HERE.

Matt Kloskowski’s got a cautionary tale regarding THE IMPORTANCE OF BACKUP and I suggest you either read the story or just skip it and go, for the love of Binary, and back up your work. Do it now! And create an offsite backup while you’re at it.

Matt Brandon’s been rocking his blog lately. Be sure to check out his post on the last lantern maker in Penang, Malaysia HERE.Also be sure to catch all his Depth of Field podcasts. Matt’s a fantastic interviewer and his glimpses into the lives of working photographers is always full of laughter and insight. Catch his latest interview with Gary S Chapman and Vivien Chapman HERE.

Finally, I want to point you to two eBooks. If you’ve been around here you know I place a high value on reading and learning, and am investing a great deal of time on creating eBooks for the photographic community. I think we offer amazing eBooks at ridiculously low prices, but we aren’t the only ones. Bruce Percy, whose work I respect tremendously, now has an eBook out on his recent work at the Taj Mahal. Bruce does incredible work and is a thinking photographer. Click here to view more details

The last eBook is a more substantial effort from the folks at Digital Photography School. It’s called Photo Nuts and Bolts and where the eBooks at Craft & Vision are more about putting your technical knowledge to use in expressing your vision, this is about the foundation of the craft itself. It’s very well illustrated and the teaching is solid. If you’ve been looking to brush up on some of the basics, perhaps get your mind around something you’ve been missing, then I recommend you take a look at Neil Creek’s Photo Nuts And Bolts. It’s on sale for $19.97 and has a 30 day money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk. There’s a reason the DPS site is one of the largest photographic communities on the planet, they do good work over there. Click here to view more details

Lastly, two housekeeping things. 1. We’re planning to release Andrew S. Gibson’s The Magic of Black and White, Vol.1 in 10 days or so. I’m very excited to have Andrew on board. Andrew is a skilled black and white photographer, a technical editor for EOS Magazine, and runs a great blog full of interesting interviews. Find his blog HERE. 2. I’ll be in Seattle tomorrow and Wednesday speaking at Amazon, which means a. road trip! and b. I won’t be around much. But I’ll be back later in the week with a report.

The monastery at Lamayuru catching the days last rays. Ladakh, 2009

There are a couple spots left – 2 each, I think – in both my tour in Tibet and the overland trip in Kashmir and Ladakh. I would love to see these spots filled with one of my readers, so if you’ve been thinking about it, these newly opened spots won’t last long.

Tibet, July 20-30, 2010
The trip to Tibet will be absolutely exhilerating. There is more information here, but the highlights are these: we’ll be partnering with some friends in Tibet and working closely with the Tibetans to see and participate in things well off the beaten path. From where we are staying there are over 60 monasteries from all for sects of Tibetan Buddhism in a 50 square mile radius. Of all of Tibet, this area has the highest percentage of actual Tibetans living there – thus also containing the best preserved culture as well. We’ll be in a nomad trading town, so nomads come in almost every day, and we’ll also be in one of the largest pilgrimage sites in all of Tibet – The Jana Mani. The Jana Mani has anywhere from 200 to 1,000 pilgrims circling it at any given time.  This is a chance to see real, and disappearing, Tibetan Culture. We’ll be at spectacular horse festival as the climax of the trip, and will not be in Lhasa – Lhasa has close to 30,000 ( yes, thirty thousand!) local and foreign tourists arriving daily in the summer. We’ll get off the path and share an exciting adventure together. This will be a small group, as small as 6-8 participants, so you’ll have more time with me that want. Seriously, you’ll be sick of me by the end.

For more information on the Tibet tour, click HERE. For photographs of the area we’ll be in, check THIS out.

Kashmir/Ladakh – Sept 12-25, 2010
The trip to Kashmir is also a once in a lifetime kind of thing, in part because traveling with both Matt Brandon and I is something no one should have to do more than once. It’s a great deal of fun and we travel in a small group of 8-9 participants. Matt and I have done tours in both Kashmir and Ladakh now, but never one that spanned both regions and the diversity of geography and culture, from verdant valleys and lakes of Kashmir, and the heavily muslim culture there, to the high altitude deserts of Ladakh and the prevalant Buddhist culure, it’ll be a trip you’ll never forget. Trekking into Lidderwat to spend time with the transhumant Gujjars was a highlight not only of my first trip to Kashmir, but of my life.

For more information on the Kashmir/Ladakh Trip, click HERE. For photographs, head to my PORTFOLIO and look at either the Ladakh or Kashmir galleries.

I have to tell you the response to Monday’s post absolutely blew me away. It clearly hit a nerve and that tells me there are a lot of photographers out there that have been told one thing in the face of a very different reality. And the truth is that the bulk of the pros I know routinely do some very dumb things, make mistakes, and in general take the messy way around to getting their images. Thankfully they are also as humble as they are talented, they learn from their mistakes and they move on. And also, they make absolutely beautiful photographs. And as far as I can tell, that’s the point. Someone please disabuse me of that notion if I’m wrong, but seriously, this isn’t math class. How you get there matters not one bit, generally speaking, so long as you end up with images that are beautiful, true, or both.

But lest anyone think that this is a celebration of mediocrity, it is not. What it is is a call to arms for photographers who deep inside that the photographs we take matter, and that the process ought to be as unique as we are, and as the desired images are. It might be a very messy process for you, but if that’s what it takes, then mess it up, because the images matter most, and any process that gets you there in the best way, is the process you must follow.

That said, it’d be a poor confessor that let us all of the hook without penance, without pointing out that our sins were not only forgivable but avoidable. So because I also believe deeply that our craft matters and the better you are at your craft and the more thoroughly you know your tools, the better your images have the potential to be, I want to encourage you to look at the long list of things you still do not know how to do, the habits that end up costing you time and money and missed opportunities. Life’s too short to get bent out of shape about most of this stuff, or to let it stand in the way of doing what we love. So be patient with yourself, and don’t beat yourself up, but be conscious of when those messy processes and habits we all love to cling to, hinder more than help, and get working on them.

Your images, your craft, and your passion for this art, deserve more than the labels we use, and the goofy expectations we carry for ourselves, but they also deserve more than a cavalier approach to things that matter. For some of us that means caving in and learning to shoot with a tripod. For some it means a more conscious effort to dial in that ISO, and for others still it means checking your pockets and for the love of Lexar stop washing your CF cards. If it affects you, your process, your images, or the gear it takes to create those images, it matters. So pick one, start small, if you must, but get to it. And in the spirit of the last post, the comments are open. What small steps are you taking to move you, your process, and your images, to the next level?

Monday’s post brought a tonne of new readers. If you’re new hear, welcome here. Feel free to poke around, leave a comment of introduction, and be sure to check out the five years of archives. If you’re looking to improve your craft then I heartily recommend you check out Within The Frame, The Journey of Photographic Vision. if you’re looking to improve your business I can’t think of a better book than VisionMongers, Making A Life and Living in Photography. I wrote both of them so if I were you I’d be very suspicious of the recommendation, but I recommend them all the same. Also check out CraftAndVision.com, the online home of my eBooks. Improve Your Craft, Buy Less Gear. And all of them for only $5 each. Welcome here.

Shot in Senegal. Long shutter speed. Dawn. Through the windshield. Moments before driver drove off the road, through the ditch and stalled in the bushes.

A while back I wrote a piece about the “I’m only an amateur” mentality. In brief it was an unashamed rally call to photographers everywhere to stop seeing themselves as merely an enthusiast, not yet in the hallowed halls of the professional, and therefore not “really” a photographer. Rubbish. But this is not that pep talk. This is the reverse, the one that, I hope will remind you that this status to which so many aspire, this notion of a higher echelon occupied by the Professional, is equally rubbish. I am an unabashed champion of the amateur, the one who does this for the love of it, and the idea of professionals being better, or creating better work, has to go. I discourage non-professionals from saying, “I’m just an amateur” but I cringe as much when I hear people throw the term “professional” around as though it means something more than it does.

So to disabuse you of the notion, let me be as transparent as possible.

I make a living as a photographer and a photography teacher. I create work I love, and work that my clients love. Sometimes I get paid well for it, sometimes I get paid nothing. That paycheque doesn’t necessarily mean my work is good, and it sure as Kodak doesn’t mean it’s necessarily better work than anything my non-professional friends create. But it gets worse, folks:

I don’t clean my sensor as much as I ought to, and I fear the times I have to. So I blow the damn thing out with canned air. It works, but I don’t recommend it.

I often leave my ISO dangerously high. I get more email about why I shot something at ISO 800 than anything else and that tells me (a) I should get my act together and (b) y’all need to lighten up on the whole ISO issue.

I rarely use lens caps, often lose filters, and am known for throwing a lens in a bag without an end cap. I have other friends who change lenses with one under the arm, another between the knees and a camera body flailing wildly about in order to catch as much dust as possible.

I have more confidence in my ability to hand-hold a shot at 1/30 than I ought to have and still have yet to learn from this. You’d think with my ridiculously high ISOs and my total unwillingness to close my aperture, I’d have plenty of latitude with this, but you’d be wrong.

I get emails about colour-calibration and printing methods and am forced to reply with a vague, “go ask Vincent Versace” because I do one of two things, I give the clients the files and their own pre-press guys do the work, or I send it to mPix (for prints) or Artistic Photo Canvas (for canvas) and they just make it look great.

People ask me about how to use their flash in two groups balanced with ambient and I stare awkwardly at them and give them Joe McNally’s email address or home phone number and beg them to (a) never tell Joe I sent them and (b) never to speak of this ever again.

I have long forgotten everything I knew about the zone system and now expose purely in reverse. Shoot first, look at the histogram, then get it right, instead of the way I learn which was the more sensible “meter twice, shoot once.”

My eyes gloss over when people start talking about channel-specific curves adjustments in Photoshop or Keywording in Lightroom. I should know this stuff. But I just want to make images, man.

I’ve never used a tilt/shift lens and while I aim to change that it seems a pro ought to be able to do that. Same for the 4×5 field camera I recently bought. Took me a day to figure out how to load the film. Then I got distracted. For now it just looks cool. Last time it was used in a shoot it was only a prop.

I carry my tripod. An expensive one at that. And while I am really get much better at using it when I ought to, I still prefer to shoot blurry images than set the darn thing up. Might as well leave it at home half the time, but a “pro” wouldn’t do that.

I love shallow depth of field. The shallower the better, even if that means losing important stuff to the blur. Of course I think about that afterwards, and then regret that 1.2 aperture, but I get greedy with my bokeh.

I hate the word bokeh. A pro ought to be able to use that word with a straight face, I just feel like I’m trying too hard. My images don’t so much have bokeh as large sections of fuzzy bits.

I still shoot twenty frames before realizing that the EV compensation I cranked up is still cranked up and I’ve hopelessly lost good images to the blinkies.

And really, a so-called pro should know better. Except we don’t and the ones that say they do are lying. Thing is, I’d rather get so distracted by the things I am shooting, and lose the odd shot to my distraction and crappy exposure, or, God forbid, a high ISO, than get distracted by the tech-stuff and those things a pro “ought” to be doing, and never see the moments, never experience the wonder. Does it have to be one or the other? Of course not, but then I’ve only been shooting for 20 years so I’m still new at this, easily distracted, still in love with images more than gear (and man, do I love my gear!). I’m still learning, and the best photographers – pro or otherwise -  are too. And more to the point, I’m making images that I love. Craft matters,  with apologies to Ansel Adams, who said there’s nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept, there is:  a fuzzy image of a fuzzy concept. Then it’s just total crap.

Folks, confession is good for the soul. Who cares if you’re a pro or not? We’re all learning, all getting better at this. As my friend Sabrina Henry wrote recently, it might just be that defining moments are more important than decisive ones.

So to the amateur out there, I’m reminding you, you aren’t “just an amateur.” To the pro, you’re still “just a photographer.” And to all of us, an invitation to let the bad air out. Got a photographic confession? The comments are open.