Los Angeles & Santa Monica – December 3, 2023








Los Angeles & Santa Monica – December 2, 2023








Zombie Land LA
Santa Monica – December 1, 2023













My Competition
Is myself. I’m the biggest opponent. I compete daily with my old work.
I Suck At Editing And Sequencing
I have no ambition whatsoever to spend hours, days, weeks and months to edit and sequence a book. To practice it and try to get halfway decent at it. Design it, spend money producing it, etc… I don’t even enjoy photo books, why should I spend a significant amount of time and money making something I don’t enjoy myself. This notion that the photo book is the GOAL I think speaks more to the person saying it. It’s probably rooted in validation and insecurity. Who cares if nobody sees your photo book. I’m a believer if your photos are interesting, the work will get out there eventually. Whether you’re alive or dead.
Photos Over Books
I’d rather spend my time making photos then making a book. The idea that the photo book is the endgame is language of the boomer. Photos books are boring. I’ve bought dozens over the years. I never go back and look at them. I buy them to support the artist mainly. Maybe I’m in the minority that I’m not very inspired by photo books. If I don’t like looking at photo books from the greats, then why should I aspire to make one. I have no interest in them. I’d prefer to figure out a different approach to showing my work..if it even exists.
Journey From Raw to JPEG
I’ve gradually weened myself from shooting raw photos to only JPEGs. I initially heard about shooting small JPEGs from Eric Kim years ago, but I was too heavily influenced by basically everyone that says we should ALWAYS shoot raw. I dabbled in it a bit but never stuck with it. So now more recently I decided to dedicate myself to JPEG only. I haven’t shoot one raw photo in months and I have zero regrets. And even further, I went from large JPEGs to now only small JPEGs. At the end of every month, I transfer all my monthly photos to a hard drive. Here are the number of files and size for the last six months. September was my first full month shooting only JPEGs. And November was the first full month shooting only small JPEGs.
June 2023: 329 photos/12.23 GB
July 2023: 510 photos/10.24 GB
August 2023: 922 photos/9.33 GB
September 2023: 834 photos/5.45 GB
October 2023: 661 photos/2.8 GB
November 2023: 552 photos/ 1.05 GB
There it is, drastic difference between raw and JPEG.
Photography Works Anywhere
I can go anywhere in the world and make photos I like with my current style and workflow. I spent 20 minutes today on a bridge taking a bunch of photos feeling inspired. I pass over the bridge pretty often. No matter where you are in the world, around the corner is another 20 minutes of inspiration.