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PODCAST

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These 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 50 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. Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork

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All Episodes

2:43

HT2652 - A Grand Slam Home Run

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/13

HT2652 - A Grand Slam Home Run If you are a baseball fan like I am, you know what a thrill it is when your team hits a grand slam. A true baseball fan, however, knows that the occasional grand slam is not the reason to be a baseball fan. It just happens from time to time. The true fan loves every pitch, every swing, every hit, every subtlety of the game. I say the exact same thing about photography. The stone-cold winners are a thrill, but not the reason to be a photographer. This RSS feed

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2:43

HT2651 - Processing Delta

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/12

HT2651 - Processing DeltaIn mathematics and statistics, delta is the measure of change. Strangely enough, I find this a useful concept in processing my photographic artwork. What is the delta (change) required between the scene captured and the artwork I envision? My role as a creator changes dramatically depending on the delta between the image capture by the camera and the finished photograph. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free daily Here's a Thought… with a

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2:43

HT2650 - The Question Answered by the Caption

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/11

HT2650 - The Question Answered by the CaptionFirst, let's admit that not every photograph needs a caption. If a photograph does need a caption, it can be useful to consider the question the caption is intended to answer. For so much of landscape photography, for example, the question is Where is this? With that as the question, providing location in the caption makes sense. But, is that the most important question? Is "Where?" more important than "Why?" Show your appreciation for our free weekly

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2:43

HT2649 - Overwhelming Beauty

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/10

HT2649 - Overwhelming BeautySometimes I really struggle as a landscape photographer. When the scene is overwhelmingly beautiful, one would think that making a successful photograph would be easier. It's not. The more beautiful the scene before my camera the more difficult it is for me to make manifest my personal response. I'm reduced to using the camera as a recorder rather than as a medium of personal expression. Said another way, the more beautiful the scene the more my picture looks like

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2:43

HT2648 - One Hundred Compositions

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/09

HT2648 - One Hundred Compositions Let's say you find yourself in a fascinatingly photogenic location and decide to work it intensely. We've all had this experience at one time or another. What often happens to me is that the first dozen or so images are cliché, the easiest ones, the ones that probably copy other photographers, even if I'm unaware of their images. The next few dozen images might be my own, and are usually accompanied by a thrill. That emotion carries me downstream with enthusiasm

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2:43

HT2647 - New Work

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/08

HT2647 - New Work Here in the 21st century, the volume of creative work that is being produced leads people inexorably to over-value the new. I don't recall anyone ever asking me to see work I did 25 years ago. The question is always, "What have you done that's new?" Or perhaps, "What are you currently working on?" I can't help but think that they're asking to see my work that is yet unproven and has not survived the test of time. Why is "the new" of greater interest than our proven, previous

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2:43

HT2646 - Your Very Best

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/07

HT2646 - Your Very Best Imagine for a moment that some important personage asked to see your very best work. What would you show them? Would you show them your most popular images? Your best sellers? Would you show them your personal favorites? The latest project you've completed? Would you show them safe work or your more innovative and daring work? This RSS feed includes only the most recentseven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2600 and counting! — are available to members of

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2:43

HT2645 - Trust Your Gut

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/06

HT2645 - Trust Your GutYesterday I was discussing the 270 image captures of the rock walls of Capitol Reef that I photographed in 2012. I described how I only recently discovered a possible processing for those images. There's an interesting aspect of this story that is not obvious. In reviewing the 270 images, I found 37 that worked with this new processing idea. How do we know? What prompted me to reject the other 233? I think of Edward Weston and "the flame of recognition." This RSS feed

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2:43

HT2644 - An Entirely New Vision

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/05

HT2644 - An Entirely New VisionThe creative idea might appear in an instant, or it might also require years of gestation. I was recently looking at a large collection of images and I had photographed in 2012 in southern Utah. From nowhere I can determine, an idea about how to process these RAW captures suddenly appeared. I could not count the number of times I've looked at these RAW files with no interest at all. How, then, does a wonderfully creative idea suddenly appear? I cannot over emphasize

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2:43

HT2643 - The Problem with Canned Slide Shows

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/04

HT2643 - The Problem with Canned Slide ShowsOver the last 20 years, I've seen quite a number of photographic slide shows. The first was a multi-projector affair, with a musical sound track accompaniment in the 1980s. Recently, software has made assembling a slide show a snap. Too often, I find these presentations too metronomic, predictable, uninteresting after the first few images. Too bad, because they don't have to be. Today, a slide show is not a slide show; it's a video. It's not a sequential

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2:43

HT2642 - Compositional Sleight of Hand

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/03

HT2642 - Compositional Sleight of HandLayers are one of the most powerful tools in digital processing. An often overlooked use of layers is their abilities in composition. Want to move that car a few feet to the left? Not a problem. Cut it to a new layer, move it where you want it, then use AI to create the new background. This is a bigger deal than might be obvious because of a fundamental change that has taken place in image making Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free

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2:43

HT2641 - Longevity

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/02

HT2641 - Longevity Have we arrived at a point in the history of photography where longevity is no longer a virtue? In my youth, archival processing was an important pursuit in our mastery of craft. Now (think of Instagram), the lifespan of an image can be measured in hours, maybe days, certainly not in decades. Photography has fulfilled its prophecy by truly becoming an instantaneous art, not just in the making but also in viewing. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our free

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2:43

HT2640 - I Miss Photography

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/01

HT2640 - I Miss Photography So much of what I love about photography has been replaced by something that is, well, not the same photography I first fell in love with. A great photograph used to be rare; a great photographer used to be a kind of technological priest; before the advent of swipe left, we used to take time to view a photograph and delve into its depths; searching for a photograph used to be a holy pursuit, now it looks more like a trophy hunt. The other day I suddenly realized I missed

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12:54

LW1508 - Your Relationship with Photography

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/01

LW1508 - Your Relationship with Photography That great literary wit Dorothy Parker is reported to have said, "I hate to write but love to have written." I suspect we can all relate to that in our own chosen medium. There will always be some parts of the creative life that we enjoy more than others. Indeed, there are likely to be some parts we detest with as much passion as we enjoy with those parts we favor. All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online

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12:54

LW1509 - A Book Is More Than a Paper Thing

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/06/01

LW1509 - A Book Is More Than a Paper Thing Words mean things. In fact, words can mean several things, several things that are quite different from one another. Take the term "book." It might mean a physical thing with paper and ink. Then again, if I ask you if you've read a good book lately, isn't it obvious I'm not referring to the paper and ink but rather to the content of the story? All previous episodes of our weekly podcast are available to members of LensWork Online. 30-day Trial

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2:43

HT2639 - Paralyzing Success

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/05/31

HT2639 - Paralyzing Success Here is a problem I've never had before. In the last 18 months, I've had extraordinary success. I've captured 6,700 images of which I've identified a few dozen that have technical issues I can't resolve. Of the remaining, I've flagged a couple hundred as unsuccessful compositions. That still leaves me with over 6,000 images I could turn into single winners or images in projects. Seriously, 6000 images. I'm overwhelmed, stuck, have no idea where to begin, frustrated, and

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2:43

HT2638 - Photograph As Launch Pad

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/05/30

HT2638 - Photograph As Launch Pad It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that a photograph is a destination of a viewing process. It's as though seeing a photograph puts a period at the end of an experiential sentence. The reason I call this a trap is because it seems much better to me to consider a photograph as a launch pad for an experience, one that encourages a train of thought, a series of questions, a dialog, a search for meaning and understanding. A photograph that only provides

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2:43

HT2637 - The Transcendent Moment

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/05/29

HT2637 - The Transcendent MomentThe term "The Decisive Moment" has been an important concept in photographic circles since Cartier-Bresson first coined it with the publication of his book of that name in 1952. I've always struggled with this term because I think of the decisive moment as a time-related concept. Rather than capturing the right instant, I'm more drawn to photographers like André Kertész who give us the transcendent moment. Show your appreciation for our free weekly Podcast and our

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2:43

HT2636 - Release vs Publish, and Why

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/05/28

HT2636 - Release vs Publish, and WhyI was recently watching a YouTuber discuss the "release" of a new photograph he'd just finished. It evidently was time to go public with this new image. I was struck by his term "release" as though the image had been imprisoned until its liberation. Besides the obvious detention metaphor, I questioned whether or not this is a term used specifically with single images rather than projects with multiple images. Considering all the images we now have in our digital

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2:43

HT2635 - Money and Print Size

LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process ·

2026/05/27

HT2635 - Money and Print SizeI married young, had kids young, about the same time I decided to seriously pursue fine art landscape photography. All serious landscape photographers at the time were shooting large format view cameras which meant 4x5 or 8x10. I could afford neither, so settled for what I could afford which was a 2¼ by 3¼ monorail view camera. Little did I realize the implications of that limitation that set the direction for my entire life in photography. Worse, that hasn't changed

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