Getting good at your craft is supposed to be the goal. But for a lot of us, competence became the cage. This episode is about the feedback loop nobody warns you about: the better you get, the harder it is to leave. And what we build around the good thing to protect it.

Also, some honesty about why I called this show "Terrible" that I haven't said out loud before.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville (1853)

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (1915)

Robert Berglas - Self-Handicapping research

THE BOOK

Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It's part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper.

Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Terrible-Photographer-Photography-Probably/dp/B0GRGLYKYS/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

LINKS

Website: http://terriblephotographer.com

Support the show: https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support

Subscribe to Pub Notes: https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/

Patrick on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/
Email Patrick : patrick@terriblephotographer.com

Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.

The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

Where does creative obsession actually come from? Not how to manufacture it. Not how to find it on a vision board. Where it actually lives. How it grows underground without your permission. And what it sounds like when it finally tries to break through.

This episode is the follow up to Episode 61: Obsessed. If you haven't listened to that one yet, start there.

This week I go back to a specific moment. Sixteen years old, a Mac G5, a cosmos built from scratch in a high school art room in Freeport Illinois. Two strangers from the Art Institute of Chicago who saw something I didn't. And then the long, complicated story of what happened to that signal when the framework got louder than I did.

We also get into David Lynch, Jon Batiste, the 19th century psychology of monomania, and a John Updike line that I think is one of the most honest things ever said about what separates artists from entertainers.

Clips used in this episode:

David Lynch on his childhood memory that inspired Blue Velvet

Jon Batiste on being misunderstood his first year at Juilliard

WALL-E opening sequence

Music: OK Go, Obsession

Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here

Website Support the show Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter Terrible Photographer on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram

Email: patrick@terriblephotographer.com

Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

What separates a photographer who makes important work from one who just makes good photos? It might not be talent. It might not be gear. It might be something harder to name and harder to fake.

This week I walked into an APA Peer-to-Peer Photo Book Critique in San Diego with six copies of my own book, a smug attitude, and some assumptions that didn't survive the first thirty minutes. What I saw that night from two photographers, Michele Zousmer and Andrew Hertel, forced me to sit with a question I keep asking about other people's work but rarely ask about my own.

Who is this for? And what drove you to make it?

This episode is about obsession. What it looks like when it's real. What it costs. And what it means when you've been swimming in borrowed obsessions long enough that you stop noticing.

People and work mentioned in this episode:

Michele Zousmer, documentary photographer. Her Irish Travellers project is some of the most honest and important photography I've seen in years. Website: michelezousmer.com Instagram: @michelezousmerphoto

Andrew Hertel, fine art nature photographer based in San Diego. His Japan book White Silence was made in a single day in Hokkaido. It shows. Website: andrewhertel.com Instagram: @andrewjameshertel

This week's clip is from @dishcreates on YouTube, talking about choosing a new artistic obsession. Worth your time.

Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here: https://a.co/d/0aqcL8Rq

Website: terriblephotographer.com
Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Terrible
Photographer on Instagram: @terriblephotographer Patrick Fore on Instagram: @patrickfore

Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore.
Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions.
Episode photography from Adobe Stock
Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.