LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.

Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.

Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).

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Episodes

HT2274 - A Means to Depth

HT2274 - A Means to Depth She asked, "What is so special about photography?" I see photography as a means to explore the world, and that includes exploring our deeper self. I'm not sure photography is any better than any other expressive medium, but it's at least equal to any other artistic pursuit. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!...

May 31, 2025•3 min

HT2273 - Why You Made the Photograph

HT2273 - Why You Made the Photograph Every image you finish was completed because of some purpose you had in mind. You have chosen to share something you feel is important enough to photograph and work into a finished project or framed image. Why? Doesn't it make sense that somehow that intent needs to be shared with viewers? We are all so bombarded with images these days that they are far too easily ignored unless we have a strong motivation for spending time with them. Why you made the photogr...

May 30, 2025•3 min

HT2272 - Black and White Is Almost Never Black and White

HT2272 - Black and White Is Almost Never Black and White Nothing in a photograph is quite so bothersome as when the black are crushed or the whites are blown out. I can understand in certain occasions when this is a desired aesthetic, but those are rare occasions. When we see it in a picture, it almost always seems to be a processing mistake. I find it's most often the result of bad monitor calibration. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with ...

May 29, 2025•3 min

HT2271 - Working a Location for Its Subtleties

HT2271 - Working a Location for Its Subtleties Every the time we stop our travels, get out of the car, and start looking for photographs, there will inevitably be a few that are easy, immediate, obvious, and likely cliché. I've come to accept the fact that I have to shoot those images — even though I will probably never use them — just to get them out of the way and move past them. It's only then that I can start working a location for its subtleties. Show your appreciation for our free weekly P...

May 28, 2025•3 min

HT2270 - Beyond the Circle of Our Fellow Photographers

HT2270 - Beyond the Circle of Our Fellow Photographers One of my lifelong regrets about photography has been that the audience for most fine art photography, particularly for contemporary photographers, are other photographers. Who shops in the photography section in your local bookstore? Assuming, that is, that it has a photography section. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!...

May 27, 2025•3 min

LW1455 - The Powerful Seduction of Representationalism

LW1455 - The Powerful Seduction of Representationalism The other day I spent about 40 minutes working on one of the new captures from Eastern Oregon. I converted it to a black and white, dealt with the delicate issues of balancing lights and darks, fussed and tweaked until I felt I had an interesting and artistic rendition of the scene that was an accurate vision of my response. The first comment I received from one of the family members was that she preferred the color image, before I had done ...

May 26, 2025•13 min

HT2269 - 3400 Pixels on the Long Side

HT2269 - 3400 Pixels on the Long Side There is still some confusion about file sizes that pops up from time to time. I remember magazines saying that they required a 15 megabyte file. That's a meaningless measurement that depends on the image compression. I'll occasionally get a question about what the PPI should be for submissions to LensWork. That, too, is a meaningless measurement. What counts is the pixel dimensions of the image, assuming that it hasn't been up-rezed. Show your appreciation ...

May 26, 2025•3 min

HT2268 - Our Memory is Not Always Reliable

HT2268 - Our Memory is Not Always Reliable As photographers, our memory of the place or the moment we photographed can cloud what we remember about the images or projects we made there. Getting fixated on those memories can interfere with potential projects without our even being aware of it. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a donation Thanks!...

May 25, 2025•3 min

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