In this episode, I challenge you to check your patterns and routines. Are you dedicating time to your photography, to grow as an artist? I share a story about my effort to overcome a certain inertia with my life patterns and its impact on my photography, and how a disruption to my typical day-to-day rhythm sparked creativity and making time for per…

Non-destructive editing is the professional standard for photo editing in the digital age - and with good reason. Keeping your original image untouched is fabulous. Creating virtual copies or versions of an image to try out different looks and styles without duplicating the original file is wonderful. However, there are pitfalls, such as editing to…

The topic for this episode of the podcast was inspired by a listener question. If you have a question you’d like my thoughts on, please submit your question through the contact form on my website. Our camera is the primary tool we use to create our work and express ourselves as artists. We get attached to certain cameras, and they sometimes become …

There is no better way to grow as a photographer than to immerse yourself in photography. And there is no better way to do that than take part in a photo workshop. That rings true for me, both as an instructor and as a student. When a workshop finishes, I am always invigorated and my passion for photography rekindled. I am very excited to share wit…

In the previous episode of the podcast, I shared the photo gear I was packing for a non-photo trip, a family vacation. I have returned from that trip and am happy to say that my gear choices worked wonderfully. I successfully fit photography into this non-photo trip and have images I know I’ll be happy with. Looking back on the trip, some things ce…

Travel is a joy. Exploring a new place or revisiting an old one, as well as reconnecting with friends and family away from the routines of home. As photographers, our thoughts gravitate toward the photo opportunities our travels will present. But what to do when the purpose of a trip is not photography? You are not immersing yourself in photography…

Whether you are a seasoned photographer or just starting out, there are common photo mistakes that we all make. And we make time and time again. In this podcast, a light-hearted rundown of several rookie mistakes I’ve made in very recent history that cost me good photos. Have a listen and hear if any of these fumbles and stumbles have happened to y…

To say my visit to Cambria, California and the surrounding area did not go to plan would be putting it mildly. Mother Nature was in a sour mood and she quickly squashed my plans and pre-visualized photos. I share thoughts and takeaways from this less-than-successful photo excursion. In studio news, I have been busy with several ON1-themed projects …

This podcast is all about staying active with your photography, pacing yourself, and a little bit about World War Z. How does a 10-year old zombie apocalypse movie intersect with photography? It’s a phrase uttered in the beginning of the film … “Movemiento es vida”, movement is life. That phrase rings true for me in several ways, and certainly for …

I’m back! I know it has been a bunch of time since my last podcast. I am regretful for that, though there is no grand story to explain my absence. Life simply got busy, and the podcast was the first thing to fall “below the line” of what I could keep up with. To ease back into the podcast, how about a light-hearted chat about the tools we hold most…

Happy 2023! I use a lot of photo software for my photography - Lightroom, Photoshop, ON1 Effects, ON1 Resize, Topaz Sharpen AI, Luminar Neo, Radiant Photo… I admit it, I like software tools. I don’t use every tool every day, some are more specialized or niche than others. My core processing tools are Lightroom and ON1 Effects. These are my bread an…

I have a set of 3 questions to help me get unstuck when I’m in the field: What do I want to say? How do I effectively say it? Why is one writing technique preferred over another to deliver my message? I learned this approach to storytelling from writing. A writer asks these key questions as they work on their piece, whether it’s creative writing, a…

I carve out at least one day a week to step out into the landscape with my camera. However, of late, I’ve been skipping those outings. I’ve made excuses of one kind or another, or talked myself out of taking in a landscape shoot. I have done camera work for some family events, but not landscape photography. A couple of days ago, the conditions in S…

Photographers, myself included, hold our cameras in high regard. It is the beloved tool we use to create our photos, to express ourselves. We put a lot of time and energy into choosing our cameras to select the one that best fits our photography and personal style. Yet to our viewers, the camera doesn’t matter - at all. That is the topic for this e…

The summer heat has kept me indoors a lot these past few months. As we enter September and the temperatures drop ever-so-slightly in the Northern hemisphere, I am stepping back out in to the landscape. I have noticed I am rusty and my muscle memory is in need of some retraining. I especially noticed my after-shoot workflow was a little clunky with …

I am a photographer of an age where one foot of my photography was in film and the other is in digital. Make no mistake about it - I love digital photography and I have no intentions of going back to film. I don’t miss the darkroom, or waiting for the negatives, or wasting half a roll of film to switch to a different ASA (ISO). Yet there is one thi…

A few weeks ago I had an interesting experience that I knew I wanted to discuss on the podcast. I was working with a student who is starting a blogging business, and she wanted to improve here photography skills. She writes articles about health, well-being, and mindfulness and includes nature and landscape photos to visually enhance her content. W…

Episode 100! This is certainly a milestone for this podcast. Like our photo journey, the road to this milestone has been one step at a time, the result of continued, sustained effort. Looking back at the past 99 episodes of The Stop Down Photography Podcast, the most popular ones are the “Taught Me” episodes. In my daily life, I very often connect …

A photo journey is rarely a straight line. There are switchbacks, twists, and turns along the way. Visual artists change direction, pivot, encounter roadblocks. For me, that carries over into my project work. I don’t work linearly through a project, and many personal photo projects stall. Pressing pause on a personal photo project is totally fine -…

In early April, I headed into the Southern California desert for some astrophotography. Clear skies and a new moon were perfect conditions to capture the Milky Way. And I learned a few things during this star gazing adventure. I have 3 tips to share with you for better photos of the core of the Milky Way. I hope you enjoy the episode. Tip 1 - Plann…

Landscape photographers often seek out the untouched landscape, visions of nature that have no human presence - the pristine landscape. When I first started with landscape photography, those are the types of images I sought out. And I like those images, and I still capture those images. Yet, does including a human element in your photo make it bad?…

Highs and lows are part of any artistic pursuit and photographers are certainly not immune. I am no stranger to emotional peaks and valleys, and I’m sure you can relate as well. In this episode of the podcast, I share a story across the span of one day during which I hit both highs and the lows in my photography… in very rapid succession. I think y…

Landscape photography requires patience. Yet there are things you can do in the field to streamline your workflow and be more productive. I used these techniques last week on a visit to La Jolla, California. On this day, I knew I would not have a lot of time to linger at the beach and these 4 things made me more productive in the field. Look Around…

Waiting is both fact and reality for certain genres of photography. Landscape photographers wait for the light. Wildlife photographers wait for their oft-shy subjects to pose. Street photographers may wait for the right person to walk through their frame. However, not all waiting is created equal. I certainly find that to be true. While I am willin…

The end of the year is a natural point to take a moment and reflect on your photography for the past year. If you set photo goals for 2021, measure how you did, and look to what lies ahead in 2022. In this episode, I share how I did against my photo goals for the year and talk about the challenges 2022 is going to present for visual artists. On a p…

If you have listened to my podcast for a while, you know I am a fan of The Beatles. I’ve been enjoying the three-part documentary The Beatles: Get Back and as I’ve watched I see many lessons in there for photographers. I have 5 observations from Get Back that relate to photographers: A change of scenery is good Outside influences are good Versatili…

I have a confession - I really enjoy assassin movies. You know those movies where the protagonist is a highly-skilled, ultra-focused, near infallible villain. Maybe it’s a guilty pleasure - or an excuse to eat popcorn. On my return flights from the Oregon Coast, I rewatched some of the John Wick films. I also saw one of my favorites, The Hitman, ag…

A few weeks ago, I talked about how I was preparing for my trip to the Oregon Coast. My planning included brainstorming a few themes to explore with my camera while in Oregon. I also promised to talk about how the pre-visualization played out once in the field. It was a mixed bag. As it turns out, plans may be worthless, but planning itself is impo…

When we are at home and the weather conditions are poor, we tend to talk ourselves out of stepping outside with the camera. When you are on a photo workshop, you are more inclined to go out with the camera despite the weather. My first Oregon workshop of November 2021 had a mix of weather… and some days nature served up gray, featureless skies coup…

When I talk about photography, I tend to express ideas in terms of painting. Photography shares some characteristics with painting. Both art forms can be depictive of a tangible subject or abstract, disconnected from a physical form. Both can be personally expressive or represent the world as it is. Over the course of art history, the styles of pai…

As a person that pursues photography as an expressive art form, how do you measure your success as a photographer? Early in our photo journey, when our skills are improving by leaps and bounds, our images get better and better. Improvement is quite obvious, even within the span of a few days or weeks. We make stronger images and more of them. And w…

Preparing for a photo trip has its own level of enjoyment. Picking out the gear, thinking about locations, and the growing anticipation of photographing a new place, or even a familiar favorite, I like the build-up to the actual trip. It’s fun. In a few short weeks, I will be on the Oregon Coast for some photography. In addition to the gear choices…

In early October 2021, I hosted a group of photographers from a San Diego camera club for a sunset shoot at the beach. It was the first group outing I’ve hosted since 2019! And I gotta tell you … it was energizing! In this episode I share thoughts, observations, and feeling about this event and why the simple act of just getting out there with your…

We all start our photo journey capturing things and places. Flowers, mountains, animals, your hometown, a city you are visiting. We photograph nouns. And that’s normal and part of the process of finding out what we enjoy photographing, the subjects and scenes that make us want to pick up our camera again and again. Yet, when I look at the work of o…

After a year plus of pandemic conditions, growing accustomed the new normal of limited interaction with the world and produced a problem for photographers – inertia. After weeks or maybe months of not regularly making photographs, finding the motivation to pick up the camera and capture images. I’ve certainly been fighting inertia during the pandem…

As a content creator with a photo business, paying attention to industry news comes with the job description. A portion of my time is spent reading industry news and product announcements with a “business hat” on. This past week, as I was absorbing product announcements, I took off my business hat and put on my “artist hat.” My non-business creativ…

As photographers, we often seek out specific photos. We travel to the gorgeous, breathtaking location, or the iconic city or other famous subjects to create an image we know has a good chance of being strong. Although, there are plenty of photo opportunities all around us … all the time. We just need to be open to seeing them. In this podcast, I sh…

Every photographer and every creative knows that inspiration strikes… it is not something that an artist just turns on. There isn’t a bucket of inspiration we dip our cup into when we want to make photographs. Creativity has peaks and valleys, inspiration ebbs and flows. And that is a normal cycle in a creative life. In this episode, I talk about m…

Captain Barbosa in the film Pirates Of The Carribbean said this about the pirate code of parlay: The code is more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. That’s exactly what the “rules” of photography are. They are guidelines, helpful advice for creating and composing our photos, technical recommendations for using our cameras, and suggesti…

I took a hike in the mountains local to San Diego last weekend. I wanted to take in the sunrise in the mountains, and that meant a very early rise, an hour-plus drive to the trailhead, and then the hike itself. And it was a really great outing. Good weather, great sky, the photo accompanying this podcast is just a short distance from the summit of …

I can’t believe 2021 is already half behind us! “The days go slow and the years go fast” … as the saying goes. For us photographers, the mid-year mark is a natural point to assess our progress for the year thus far and checkpoint our photo goals. Are you on track? Have some goals been achieved? Or is a course correction needed? In today’s podcast, …

In today’s digital age, post-processing is an important part of creating our images. I’ve used many different apps over the years to create my images, and I still use several software packages today. I have not found one tool “to rule them all.” I am frequently asked which tool “is the best” or which “is my favorite” and these questions are valid, …

I tend to see the world in large sweeps. I see foreground, midground, and background as parts of a whole. That’s my natural way of seeing the world, and that influences how I see the subjects of my photos. I see subjects in context and capture how they relate to their surroundings. That’s an interesting topic … how do different photographers tend t…

Photographers are constantly managing tradeoffs. One creative choice for an image invariably comes at the cost of something else. Every frame we capture contains a compromise. Photographers learn this early on our path to mastering photography. The exposure triangle - aperture, shutter speed, ISO - teaches us this lesson. Adjust one, the others are…

For the past decade, I have exerted a lot of energy into improving my seascape photography. I’ve certainly improved, my workflow is more refined, and I am more consistently producing solid photographs of the ocean. After finishing a batch of photos from my latest visit to the San Diego coastline, I honestly felt a little unfulfilled. The photos I p…

It’s a fair statement that we photographers take more bad photos than good ones. Over time, our keeper rate will improve as we practice our craft and grow our photographic eye. But … a keeper rate over 50%? That’s crazy talk … I’d be happy with 5%. So what can we do with all those “bad” shots? Learn from them. Put yourself in the role of the casual…

While working through some photos taken a few years ago at Long Pond on Mount Desert Island in Maine, I realized how little I explored that area. The photos I have are nice, they are of good quality. Yet my repeated visits to this pond did not push me artistically. I stopped to reflect on why that was. I think it is because I didn’t give myself per…

In art forms like music, live performance, or motion pictures, the artist can take the audience on a bit of a journey. It could be a few seconds to a few minutes or longer. And at the pivotal moment, there is the crescendo. These art forms can build an audience to a climax. The process of building up the tension or anticipation or surprise is knowa…

In today’s podcast, I share a story of how our subconscious mind affects our photography. And can do so in curious and interesting ways. After a recent visit to the San Diego beach, I noticed a theme in the photos from that outing… a theme I wasn’t aware of when I was capturing the images. Workshops are back! Join me on the Oregon Coast from Novemb…

I have been stepping out more with the camera of late. And, as you might have guessed, I made several visits to the San Diego coastline. Gotta get my fill of sand, surf, and sky! As summer approaches in the Northern hemisphere and the prospect of travel seems more possible than it did a couple of months ago, you might be thinking of a coastal visit…