How to Keep Photography Fresh in a City You Know by Heart
When you know a city by heart, it’s easy to stop seeing it. Every time I return to Hong Kong, I use three simple habits to keep my photography fresh: setting a goal for the trip, mining my old photos for new project ideas, and borrowing inspiration from other photographers.
How to Edit Travel Photos Faster (and Actually Enjoy It)
After multi-week trips, my photos used to sit unedited for months. Two habits changed that. I research photo locations beforehand so I’m excited to see the results, and I import and cull in Lightroom Classic every night of the trip. By the time I’m home, I’ve already picked winners from half my photos, and the rest feels much more achievable.
Photography Is the Art of Subtraction (and Why AI Images Aren’t Photography)
Painters add to a blank canvas. Photographers start with everything in the frame and take away what doesn’t belong. That’s why photography is the art of subtraction, and why AI images aren’t photography.
Why Landscape Photography Is a Series of Disappointments (and Why We Keep Shooting)
Landscape photography is a series of disappointments. From the scene you can't fully frame, to the screen that dulls the colors, to the print that loses even more, every step falls short of what you saw. Here's why we keep shooting anyway.
Why Your Hike Photos Never Look as Good as the Real Thing
Someone on Reddit asked why their hike photos didn't look as good as the real thing. The obvious answer is "beginner" — but why did they think they already had the skill? Turns out photography has a strange reputation: we assume anyone can do it well, in a way we'd never assume about painting or writing. Here's why that's wrong, and what actually separates a snapshot from a photograph.
Nobody Cares How Hard It Was to Take That Photo
I've invested in weatherproof everything just to photograph cities in the rain and snow — and it's still miserable out there. But here's the uncomfortable part: almost none of that difficulty shows up in the final photo. So why do I keep doing it?
We're Living in a Golden Age of Photo Editing
Before digital photography, a flawed shot often stayed flawed. Today's Lightroom tools have gotten so powerful — and so easy — that it might be time to dig up those old "not quite good enough" photos and give them a second look.
What Christopher Nolan and Landscape Photographers Can Teach You About Mastering Any Craft
Christopher Nolan plans every shot months in advance to keep his budgets tight — then spends that saved money on the most ambitious shots imaginable. It's the same instinct that lets a seasoned landscape photographer capture a perfect sunrise in one trip instead of ten.
When Every Photo Is Technically Perfect, What Makes a Photographer Good?
Cameras have gotten so good at handling exposure and noise that technically perfect photos are now the baseline, not the achievement. So what separates a great photographer from an average one when anyone can nail the technicals? I trace this shift from Ansel Adams's notebook to today's ISO 10,000 shots — and land on the question every photographer should really be asking.
Stay a Bit Longer: The Simple Habit That Improves My Landscape Photography
I used to treat photography like collecting stamps — rushing through my list of locations so I could check them off. But during the culling process, I kept noticing the same thing: my best photos came from the spots where I stayed just a little longer.
What My Neon Light Photos Say About Me
I've been fascinated by neon lights ever since I started photographing them in Hong Kong. But when I began processing photos from a recent trip, I noticed something strange — shots from completely different cities had nearly identical compositions. Was I developing a personal style, or just falling back on habit under time pressure? Here's what I discovered when I looked closer.
The Paintings and Photographs That Shaped My Photography
On a recent LensWork episode, Brooks Jensen talked about images that changed his life. I'm not sure any single image changed mine — but two came close: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks and Fan Ho's street photography of Hong Kong. It took years of looking back at my own photos before I recognized how deeply both had shaped the way I compose a scene.
Do Locations Make Photographers? Or Do Photographers Make Locations Their Own?
When an Australian photographer was priced out of Japan and moved back home, his new work looked nothing like his old. It raised a question worth sitting with: are we shaped by the places we shoot, or do we shape them — even Ansel Adams left Yosemite once in a while.
How to Create a Sense of Movement in Still Photography
A photograph never actually moves — so how do the best photographers make a still image feel alive? From Ansel Adams' snowstorms to Cartier-Bresson's mid-air leap, here are three techniques for creating a sense of motion in a frozen moment.
Why My "Best" Photos Might Be Sitting in an Old Folder
If you asked me to show my best work, I'd probably pull up photos from the last year or two — but a recent podcast episode made me question that instinct. Between my seasonal shooting habits and a copyright-registration workflow that delays my Instagram posts by years, I ended up revisiting some old photos I'd nearly forgotten. What I found surprised me.
My Photo Culling Method: The 2-Pick-1 Technique
Culling photos doesn't have to mean guessing which shots you already remember liking. My 2-pick-1-and-repeat method compares every photo head-to-head, narrowing hundreds of images down to your strongest work — fast, fair, and free of bias.
Why Copying Someone Else's Style Might Be the Best Way to Find Your Own
If you spend any time in r/AskPhotography, you'll notice a recurring type of post: someone shares a photo and asks how it was made. Often, the image barely reads as a photograph at all — outside a few sharp, in-focus elements, the rest looks more like a painting. It's a small window into a bigger shift: these days, there's a growing assumption that any photo's "look" should be reproducible with a handful of simple adjustments...
Why Self-Imposed Restrictions Make You a Better Photographer
Digital cameras and lenses have gotten so good that technical restrictions barely exist anymore — yet we keep taking the same familiar photos. Here's why I impose my own creative limits, like perspective-correcting nearly every shot, to force better compositions.
Why Special Effects Can Make or Break Your Photos
What separates a great special effect from a distracting one? One iconic scene from Schindler's List gets it exactly right — and a photo on Reddit gets it exactly wrong. Here's what the difference can teach every photographer.
How I Scout Photo Spots Before Every Big Trip
In 2023, I returned to Tokyo for the first time in over a decade — and the photo scouting system I built for that trip became my blueprint for every big trip since. Here's exactly how I use Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Maps to find the best photo spots before I ever board a plane.