The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

01:05:35

187 - Turn Off Instagram: Building a Photography...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/10/01

Street and portrait photographer Tom Hoops joins us to talk about his unplanned path into photography, why he builds his portrait style around rawness instead of polish, and why he founded The Underexposed Community. In this episode: Tom's origin story: picking up a camera to shoot reference photos for paintings — and never going back to painting The early Flickr community (including photographers like Jack Davidson and Brett Walker) that shaped his eye Why he tells photographers starting out to

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08:24

186 - Intentional Failure: The Photography Skill No...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/09/24

Photography culture treats technical perfection as the goal and any deviation from it as failure. This episode argues that some of the medium's most resonant images come from exactly the opposite — and explores where the line is between a mistake worth fixing and a "failure" worth keeping. In this episode: The wedding reception story: a dead flash transmitter, a dozen unusable frames, and the one accidental low-light portrait that became a favorite Why photography's fear of technical failure is a

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01:07:12

185 - Tintypes, Roller Derby, and Rewriting...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/09/17

Host Casey Fatchett talks with alternative process photographer Britt Bradley, known professionally as Nitrate Fox, about wet plate collodion photography, the history and politics baked into a 170-year-old medium, and Bradley's self-published photo book Jamnesia, which documents the roller derby community in tintype. In this episode: Why Bradley chose a non-gender-specific artist name — and how it changed their exhibition acceptance rate Collodion's history as "a perpetual representation of the

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08:10

184 - Is Burst Mode Ruining Your Photography?

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/09/10

In this nerdlet, Casey makes the case for deliberately slowing down — and why the unlimited frame rates of modern cameras and phones may be quietly working against better photography. In this episode: Why cheap, abundant frames change the psychology of shooting: when a missed shot costs nothing, the incentive to study each one disappears How high-volume shooting shifts the real creative decision from the moment of capture to the moment of culling Where burst shooting genuinely earns its place

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59:09

183 - Serendipity, Trust, and the Humanity Behind...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/09/03

In this episode, Casey Fatchett sits down with award-winning photographer Ari Espay, who splits his time between New York City and Santiago, Chile. Ari discusses his decade producing and teaching at National Geographic's photography workshops alongside legends like David Alan Harvey, Ed Kashi, Bob Sacha, Ira Block, and Maggie Steber; his approach to street photography and portraiture with subjects ranging from presidents to Broadway performers; his long-term humanitarian project documenting the EB

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11:34

182 - The Comparison Trap in the Instagram Age

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/08/27

You finish editing a photo you're proud of. You post it. Then you scroll — and within thirty seconds you feel like giving up. This episode explains exactly why that happens, and what to do about it. What you'll learn: Social comparison isn't a character flaw — it's a documented psychological mechanism first described by Leon Festinger in 1954. Human beings evaluate their own abilities by comparing themselves to others, which was a useful system for most of human history. Social media broke it by

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01:04:09

181 - Why Every Photographer Needs a Vision

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/08/20

What do you do when you've had two successful careers — and neither of them is the one you actually love? For David Hendley, the answer was waking up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to the California coast before work, camera in hand, teaching himself to shoot seascapes in changing light until photography stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like a calling. In this episode, David traces his journey from the NFL to the corporate boardroom to documenting the natural world — and we spend

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10:38

180 - Backup or Bust – Building a Digital Safety Net

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/08/13

Every single hard drive you own will eventually fail. Not might fail — will fail. It is just a matter of time. The photographers who lose irreplaceable work aren't the ones who didn't care. They're the ones who meant to get a better system in place and hadn't gotten around to it yet. This episode makes sure you're not one of them. What you'll learn: The industry standard for data protection is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored

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01:11:37

179 - How to Create Portraits That Feel Raw, Honest,...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/08/06

In this episode, I sit down with portrait photographer Betina LaPlante to explore the philosophy and practice behind her visceral, intimate portraiture. Topics covered: Why Betina puts the camera down before she ever starts shooting — and how building rapport before a session transforms the images she gets The difference between directing a subject and witnessing one — and why she almost always chooses to witness Her work photographing actors like Charles Dance and Christopher Lloyd, and what it

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13:07

178 - The 10-Minute SEO Audit for Photographers

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/07/30

You can be an exceptional photographer and still be completely invisible to the clients actively searching for someone like you. Not because your work isn't good enough, but because Google doesn't know you exist. Don't worry, though! This episode is going to make that problem go away. SEO for photographers isn't dark magic. For a local photography business, roughly 90% of what moves the needle comes down to three things: your H1 tag, your image alt-text, and your site speed. Your H1 is the main

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53:39

177 - Old Palaces and Glass Towers: Street...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/07/23

In this episode, Casey speaks with photographer, filmmaker, and DePaul University professor James Choi, who returned to Seoul after 46 years away and came back with the images that became Seoul Days and Nights, a new photo book from Trope. They dig into what it means to photograph a city holding ancient tradition and radical modernity in the same frame, the slow disappearance of the small family-run food shops that give neighborhoods their character, and how the Korean social concept of nunchi - the

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11:15

176 - Bit Depth Demystified: The Math of Color

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/07/16

You've probably been told you should shoot RAW. And I'm sure you've also thought - WHY? I'm just delivering a JPEG file anyway. What's inside a RAW file that makes it worth the storage space? This episode gets into the numbers, and once you see them, the case for RAW becomes impossible to argue with. Yes, I knew it was your understanding that there would be no math, but, unfortunately, there's actually a lot of math behind what you see in digital photos. Bit depth is exponential, not additive. A

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01:27:35

175 - Art Comes From the Soul: Analog, AI, and...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/07/09

Portrait photographer Craig Fleming has spent decades navigating the space between film and digital, celebrity commissions and working-class subjects, polish and truth. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, Craig joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about his process, his philosophy, and two ongoing personal projects — Quiet Men and Circus — that are reshaping how he thinks about legacy and the purpose of his work. We get into what it really means to balance film and digital

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10:09

174 - The "Why" Behind Your Aperture – Beyond the Bokeh

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/07/02

Many photographers learn aperture in two steps: wide for blur, narrow for sharpness. It's a reasonable starting point, but it skips the physics that actually determines how sharp your images are, and it leads to a habit that's quietly costing you image quality. And if you know anything about me at this point, you know I'm down for a physics discussion. We start with diffraction — the optical phenomenon that makes f/22 softer than f/8, even though everything is technically "in focus." When light is

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01:12:26

173 - Building What Didn't Exist: Creating Space for...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/06/25

Nature photography is often associated with solitude, exploration, and connection to the outdoors. But for many photographers, especially Black women, entering those spaces hasn't always been welcoming - or safe. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, I sit down with wildlife and nature photographer Angela Ledyard to discuss the importance of representation in outdoor photography, building community, and creating spaces where more Black women feel encouraged to explore nature

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59:57

172 - The Power of Black & White: Your Photo Archive...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/06/11

Most photographers have thousands, or even tens of thousands, of forgotten images sitting on hard drives. But what if some of your best work is already there, waiting to be rediscovered? In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, I sit down with photographer Ian Plant to discuss the process of revisiting a massive photographic archive and selecting images to convert into black and white. What begins as a conversation about monochrome photography quickly becomes something deeper: a discussion

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38:58

Colorizing an Icon - The Danziger Gallery's Moonrise...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/06/04

Some stories in the art world land with a quiet thud and then just keep reverberating louder and louder. The decision by Danziger Gallery to display, and sell, an AI-colorized version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico at this year's AIPAD Photography Show in New York is one of those stories. It touches something raw about authorship, consent, the art market's relationship with living artists, and the particular discomfort of watching a technology reshape the legacy of someone who can

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01:44:43

171 - Why Imperfection Is Becoming the Most Powerful...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/05/28

In a time when photography is more accessible, and more polished, than ever, something unexpected is happening: imperfection is making a comeback. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, I sit down with wedding photographer Inbal Sivan to talk about the growing appeal of the imperfect aesthetic, and why what feels like a "trend" is actually a return to something much deeper and more human. But this conversation goes far beyond style. It's about voice, influence, and how

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01:16:49

170 - From the Midwest to NYC With No Degree: A...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/05/14

What does it take to completely reinvent yourself as a photographer? In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, I sit down with photographer Steve Vaccariello to explore a career path that's anything but conventional. Steve's journey spans from the highly technical world of medical photography and the storytelling demands of photojournalism in Ohio to the fast-paced, creative landscape of portrait, fashion, beauty, and dance photography in New York City. This conversation dives into what it

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01:22:38

169 - Scrolling Ourselves Numb: Photography,...

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast ·

2026/04/30

Social media has completely reshaped what it means to be a visual storyteller. Images travel faster, reach wider audiences, and generate instant feedback, but at a cost many photographers are only beginning to understand. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, we unpack the complex relationship photographers have with social media today. From chasing algorithms to questioning the value of our work through likes and shares, this conversation examines how storytelling has changed, and

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