The Terrible Creative

Have you ever shared something you were excited about only to have it met with "yeah, maybe" or "how are you going to monetize that?" In this episode, I sit down with a story that's been eating at me for weeks — a conversation at a coffee shop that revealed something uncomfortable about regret, haunted creatives, and the ghosts of unmade work. This isn't about toxic positivity or hustle culture. I...

You ever buy a twenty-two-dollar airport sandwich and convinced yourself it was worth it? That’s what this week’s episode is about — except the sandwich is a photography competition. In Gold Star , Patrick unpacks his love-hate relationship with the American Photographic Artists’ Untitled competition — and what it reveals about the creative world’s obsession with approval. From spreadsheets of jud...

Why creatives stay stuck, even when the door’s wide open. We all want freedom. Creative freedom, emotional freedom, professional freedom. But here’s the thing nobody tells you: You can be free… and still live like you’re caged. In this episode, I break down the three invisible cages every creative person ends up pacing: The Industry Cage – tribes, gear cults, status games, and the performance of “...

A milestone. And maybe the most uncomfortable episode I've made so far. A few weeks ago, I sent an email to thirty photographers I know. I asked them one question: What's your dirty little secret? The thing you'd never admit publicly. The thought that lives in the back of your brain at 3 AM. I told them it would be anonymous. I just wanted the truth. And I got a lot of responses. This episode is a...

Have you ever had a day where you told yourself you were “busy” … but couldn’t actually remember what you did? I know I have. Hours lost to scrolling, inboxes, half-finished tasks — and somehow at the end of it, I’m exhausted but nothing’s really done. In this episode of The Terrible Photographer Podcast, I go after the two liars in my head who keep me trapped in that fake middle ground: Hustle Ha...

What if the most radical thing you can say about your creative work is: it’s okay ? In this episode, Patrick dives into the beige middle of creative life — the 80% of days that aren’t fireworks or disasters. He tears into LinkedIn’s toxic lobster-and-champagne highlight reel, confesses his late-night burger-level Photoshop grinds, and introduces us to Sarah, a catering coordinator who redefined wh...

A New York–based commercial portrait photographer (big clients, covers, immaculate work) asked to talk. What came out wasn’t a portfolio review—it was a confession: he hasn’t made anything for himself in over a year, and he’s exhausted from performing passion he doesn’t feel. This episode is a permission slip for the photographers—and all creative workers—secretly pricing escape routes at 2 a.m. W...

One meditation. One burning question. One reminder you’re not alone. Every Wednesday in your inbox — shorter, sharper, and more honest than I could ever be in a long essay. Subscribe to Pub Notes: terriblephotographer.com Some days the world is too loud, too endless. You don’t need another lecture. You need a pint, a hard truth, and a line you can actually carry into tomorrow. This week’s episode...

Every kid asks their art teacher, “Is it good?” —and most of us never stop. In this episode, Patrick sits in Lucy’s middle-school art room and realizes he’s still chasing the same answer on high-stakes sets: watching client faces, parsing murmurs behind a monitor, riding the narcotic of approval. We get into the modern authorities—clients, algorithms, mood boards—and the way we internalize them un...

A podcaster recently told me this show was "really dark." So today, we're leaning into that darkness—because that seemed way more fun. This episode is about shadow work. Not the Instagram version. The real version. The kind that happens when you realize the thing limiting your creative work isn't technical skill—it's the parts of yourself you've been hiding from. Through David Bowie's near-destruc...

Community & Feedback Take the Listener Survey: What kind of episodes do you want more of? Your feedback directly shapes future content. 🔗 Complete the survey here Share Your Story: Have you experienced professional compartmentalization? The cognitive whiplash between personal crisis and work demands? Share your story— email or leave us a voicemail What happens when you have to switch from con...

Sometimes creativity has fuck-all to do with your job title. In this episode, Patrick explores why the most dangerous creative minds often don't call themselves artists—they're teachers buying classroom supplies with grocery money, middle managers translating executive gibberish into human language, and baristas solving problems that million-dollar consultants couldn't crack with PowerPoint. Throu...

Every photographer needs permission to suck. And I mean that literally. In this episode, I explore the difference between accidental failure and strategic failure, and why that difference will determine whether you spend your career playing it safe or actually growing into the photographer you're meant to become. From my own lighting disaster at a corporate shoot to Jerry Seinfeld's brutal honesty...

One phone call. One late invoice. One moment of controlled but very real rage. In this episode, I unpack a recent client conflict that left me feeling powerful, anxious, vindicated—and deeply uncomfortable. It’s not about being right. It’s about what happens when your nervous system hijacks your ethics, and you end up blowing up the wrong bridge. Social psychologist Jamie Hughes joins to help me u...

There are shoots where everything clicks. The light is magic. The client is chill. The work feels effortless. This episode isn’t about those. Instead, we’re going into the plumbing. Literally. From overflowing toilets in luxury villas to Fortune 500 invoice purgatory, from last-minute gear fails to moments that remind you why you ever picked up a camera in the first place — this one’s for every ph...

What happens when the thing you made in the dark suddenly ends up in the spotlight? This week, Patrick gets personal about the strange pressure of being “featured,” and why attention might be the most creatively dangerous drug of all. From a viral photo in the dunes to the slow collapse of chasing relevance, this episode dives into the algorithm’s indifference to honesty, the myth of momentum, and...

"I thought the work would save me. I was grossly mistaken." What happens when a stranger on Clubhouse calls you a technician instead of an artist? Patrick breaks down the brutal midnight conversation that cracked open everything he thought he knew about his photography career. From the golden handcuffs of corporate work to the humbling reality of freelancing for $650, this episode is about dismant...

Everyone loves a comeback story. But what about the part where you’re just… sitting in a garage at 2 a.m., surrounded by half-charged batteries, broken gear, and a growing sense that something inside you might be cracking? This episode isn’t about triumph. It’s about that strange, quiet middle, the one nobody posts about, where you’re not broken, not healed… just angry. Angry at the industry. Angr...

What happens when you still love photography but start to wonder if there’s any place left for you in the industry? In this raw, vulnerable episode, Patrick Fore gets brutally honest about what it means to be a working photographer in 2025. From a moment of personal crisis in a cluttered garage to the soul-draining grind of cold outreach and algorithm-chasing, this episode pulls back the curtain o...

Episode Title: Why Shapes How On Intention, Execution, and the Lie of Objectivity Description: You can nail the lighting. Get the shot. Hit all the settings. But if you don’t know why you’re making the image, it’s just visual noise. In this episode of The Terrible Photographer Podcast , we dig into the lie at the heart of modern photography — that technical mastery is the pinnacle of the craft. It...

This episode wasn’t planned. But with federal troops deployed in Los Angeles, students arrested, immigrants targeted, and journalists silenced — it felt dishonest to pretend everything was normal. In this special essay-style episode, I explore the role of photography in moments of protest and power: Why the frame is never neutral How truth is shaped, and sometimes distorted, by the camera The diff...

At some point, every artist has to choose: Keep making work that gets likes. Or make work that actually says something. This is an episode about the quiet uprising. The moment you stop painting for the academy. The moment you realize you’re not burned out from doing too much,  you’re burned out from doing too much that means nothing. We start with a true (and strange) story from 1863, when fourtee...

This week, I throw out the episode I was planning and respond to an email from Carri, a baby photographer from Michigan, whose words hit like a punch in the face. We’re talking about a different kind of burnout. Not from hustle, but from creative absence. From stillness. From not getting to do the thing you love. This is for the photographers, and all creatives, who feel the slow ache when the wor...

You ever clean your entire house and still smell something rotting? This episode is about that. Except the smell is coming from your portfolio. In Episode 10, we’re talking creative decay — that slow, invisible rot that sets in when your work looks good but feels dead. From personal stories (including one involving a bathtub and a topless model reading Vogue ) to a breakdown of the 60/40 Rule for...

Some nights, what keeps you up isn't anxiety,  it’s the quiet ache of misalignment. In this episode, we dive into the emotional and economic toll of creative work: the burnout, the spirals, the slow erosion of joy when your art becomes your paycheck. Patrick opens up about nearly quitting photography, the paradox of making a living off your creativity, and what it really means to protect your spar...