The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

In this episode, Casey Fatchett talks with nature and landscape photographer Vicky Thompson about her journey from a teenage film photographer to a respected voice in her photography community — and about the recurring experience of being underestimated, doubted, or outright told she was in the wrong place because of what she looks like. In this episode: Vicky's start in photography at 13, using b...

This is a spooky-season re-release of episode 76. Casey welcomes back photographer Jeremy Harris to react to scary and unexplained stories submitted by photographers around the world — some paranormal, some very much not, all genuinely unsettling. Stories covered in this episode: A quiet night shoot on a bridge, and the fatal mugging that happened roughly five minutes after the photographer left S...

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...

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...

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 i...

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 f...

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...

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...

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 trace...

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...

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 ch...

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 com...

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-...

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 ac...

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...

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 pheno...

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, bui...

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....

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...

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 hu...

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...

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 valu...

In an industry often driven by trends, shot lists, and repeatable formulas, wedding photographer John Dolan has built a career by doing the opposite: showing up with an open mind, a few film cameras, and a deep respect for what actually unfolds on a wedding day. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast , John and I dig into what it really means to be "true" to a couple's experience. Rathe...

The photography industry isn't "dying." But it is changing, and it is doing so QUICKLY. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast , we talk with industry icon, Joe McNally, and take an honest look at the seismic shifts happening in photography right now: technology, AI, oversaturation, social media economics, shifting client expectations, and what it actually takes to get started today. Th...

Is photography a form of magic? In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer , we explore how art transforms the unseen into something tangible. From photographing witch-centric and paranormal businesses to using intuition, ritual, and atmosphere in the creative process, this conversation dives deep into the mystical side of photography. If you believe art is more than just technique, this episode is...