LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These short 2-4 minute 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 35 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. 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. His latest books are "The Creative Life in Photography" (2013) and "Looking at Images (2014).
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 3 minutes
- Episodes
- 88
- Years Active
- 2025
HT2336 - Photography and Media
The digital divide has created a dichotomy I've never heard discussed. That dichotomy is a generational one, I think. Those of us from the previous generation found photography mostly in books, and o…
00:02:43 |
Fri 01 Aug 2025
HT2335 - Find Your Own Path
The Internet — indeed, the WORLD — is filled with creative types who all want to show you how they do it, whatever "it" is. Me included, I confess. The problem persists, however, that your path is yo…
00:02:43 |
Thu 31 Jul 2025
HT2334 - The Opposite of Selfie
We are supposedly taking trillions of pictures now according to experts who calculate such things. If we eliminate selfies from that count, I suspect the remaining images would total about six. I exa…
00:02:43 |
Wed 30 Jul 2025
HT2333 - Learning from the Work You Don't Like
I've made no secret that there are half a dozen master photographers whose work simply doesn't connect with me. Bill Brandt, Garry Winogrand, and Joel-Peter Witkin come to mind. Rather than ignore th…
00:02:43 |
Tue 29 Jul 2025
LW1464 - When Images Have a Mind of Their Own
LW1464 - When Images Have a Mind of Their Own
Every time you click the shutter you have some idea of what you hope the finished image might be. Even if you are just "gathering assets," you have some…
00:12:54 |
Mon 28 Jul 2025
HT2332 - To Tripod or Not
I'm not fond of using a tripod. For 35 years, every picture I made had to involve a tripod because I was using view cameras. I've thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of handheld photography here in the ag…
00:02:43 |
Mon 28 Jul 2025
HT2331 - The Tug-of-war Between Vision and Craft
I've spent 50 years in photography developing my sense of aesthetics. Simultaneously, I've spent 50 years developing my craft in the hopes that I can eliminate the barriers between vision and capabil…
00:02:43 |
Sun 27 Jul 2025
HT2330 - Overcoming My Prejudice Against Rain
Give me a morning of fresh snowfall and I'm in photographic heaven. Give me a morning of drizzly rain and I want to go back to bed. What is it about rain that discourages photography? In nature and l…
00:02:43 |
Sat 26 Jul 2025
HT2329 - Film, Ink, and Batteries - Our Dependence on Consumables
Cleaning out the attic the other day, I ran across my old Polaroid SX-70 camera, otherwise currently known as a boat anchor. A friend of mine fears a crisis in his photography if Epson stopped making…
00:02:43 |
Fri 25 Jul 2025
HT2328 - Thoroughly Ironic Pixels
I don't see how anyone could disagree with the notion that we are seeing more small images than ever before. Statistically speaking, I'll bet most images you see these days are smaller than 8x10" bec…
00:02:43 |
Thu 24 Jul 2025
HT2327 - The Value of Going Back
In my youth, I'd never been anywhere to photograph so all locations were new and exciting adventures. As the years passed, my inclination was to always go someplace new because the thought of going b…
00:02:43 |
Wed 23 Jul 2025
HT2326 - The Problem with Liking Artwork
What does it mean when we say we like someone's artwork? Its content agrees with our view of the world? That gets complicated because, for example, I like Picasso's Guernica, but I don't like war. Do…
00:02:43 |
Tue 22 Jul 2025
HT2325 - Two Approaches
There's an old joke that proposes that people have two distinct strategies about cooking dinner. Some decide what to eat and then go to the store to buy the ingredients. Others look in the fridge and…
00:02:43 |
Mon 21 Jul 2025
LW1463 - What Have You Learned
LW1463 - What Have You Learned
Like most of you I suspect, I have a group of close friends who are also photographers and we occasionally have a thread of conversation in our email that is both inte…
00:12:54 |
Mon 21 Jul 2025
HT2324 - Distill With a Single Word
Here's a useful exercise for before you click the shutter. Ask yourself what this picture is about. Distill your answer to a single word. Pick a word that doesn't simply name the subject, but rather …
00:02:43 |
Sun 20 Jul 2025
HT2323 - We Should Call It Grayscale Photography
It took me a decade or so in my youth to realize that the term "black and white photography" implied a mindset that had me pursuing the wrong strategies. I was so single-mindedly dedicated to achievi…
00:02:43 |
Sat 19 Jul 2025
HT2322 - After the Social Gathering
I find it common during a social gathering that the conversation winds around to a topic that motivates me to want to share some of my images or a project that pertains to the topic at hand. I've lea…
00:02:43 |
Fri 18 Jul 2025
HT2321 - Proprietary RAW vs DNG
I'm not a fan of proprietary file formats. It seems to me that they have a way of putting our content at risk. I'm not comfortable with that. Instead, I use the open source DNG format for my working …
00:02:43 |
Thu 17 Jul 2025
HT2320 - Feedback During Processing
Like all of my fellow Zone System photographers, I grew up and was trained with a foundational strategy known as pre-visualization. Since then, I've come to value the feedback available in digital pr…
00:02:43 |
Wed 16 Jul 2025
HT2319 - Adapting to the Possible
I've mentioned before that in my twenties and thirties I was an avid backpacker. Most of my landscape photography from those days is from deep in the forest, way out from civilization, in the solitud…
00:02:43 |
Tue 15 Jul 2025
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