Jeffery Saddoris Podcast Archive

“Those villagers living on the front line — that’s the part that got me the most. Those people have nowhere else to go.” I have been fascinated by photojournalism and specifically combat or conflict photojournalism since first seeing the work of Larry Burrows when I was in high school. His photographs of Vietnam showed a side of war that I hadn’t seen before — not just the atrocities, but also the...

“It’s not where you go that really is the point, it’s the going. It’s the person you become in the going to these places.” I first spoke to David duChemin in 2009 after reading his book Within the Frame . Since then, we’ve recorded a number of conversations together and in addition to being a fan of both his words and his pictures, I’m proud to call him a friend. We begin the conversation talking...

“I did small roles in big films and big roles in small films, but I was working constantly for the first six years and then, you know, the bottom kind of dropped out.” Jude Gerard Prest is an actor, a writer, a director, and a producer with more than 700 hours of television under his belt. He’s also one of my oldest and dearest friends. In fact, I was the second person he met after moving to LA fr...

Kristopher Matheson is a photographer living in Tokyo after leaving Canada for a teaching position that was only supposed to last six months to a year. Twelve years later, he’s still there and has made Tokyo his home, at least for now. I was introduced to him through the terrific photos he began to post in the On Taking Pictures Google+ group. His images showed a side of Tokyo that I hadn’t really...

There’s a saying in photography that goes “pretty light plus a pretty subject equals a pretty picture.” And if you believe that, then you might be tempted to form an opinion about who Gareth Lewis is based solely on the provocative nature of his portfolio, but you’d be wrong. After booking a one-way flight from his native London to Australia, Gareth found himself a stranger in a strange land. Befo...

Joshua K Jackson is a terrific street photographer from London. On paper he’s relatively new to the genre, but his already stunning body of work is every bit as compelling as those by some of his photographic heroes. Though Josh is quick to point out that he still has a lot to learn, his dedication to photography as both an art and a craft is immediately evident in his use of bold color and superb...

Simon Baxter is a fantastic landscape photographer from the north of England who I was introduced to by Sean Tucker . There’s something about Simon’s photographs that goes beyond light and composition and draws the viewer into the scene, rather than simply holding us at the periphery. Simon’s passion for photography and his connection to the local woodlands where he photographs are obvious from th...

Kent Hall is tough to categorize. On one hand he’s a photographer who makes books. On the other, he’s a collage artist who makes books. But he’s also a poet—and yes, a poet who makes books. His fascination with the mundane and the detritus of modern life are the raw materials for much of what he creates and whether he’s being inspired by film or literature or simply watching the city move around h...

One of the biggest struggles as a maker, regardless of what it is that you’re making, can be finding meaning in what you make. Whether you’re a painter, or a sculptor, or a writer, or a photographer, finding meaning in a particular project is often one of the obstacles that prevents us from starting, or can be one of the challenges to overcome in order to finish. As someone who spends a great deal...

Nick Mayo is a terrific street photographer from Grand Rapids, Michigan who is using YouTube and Instagram to build a platform centered around serving the photographic community and having an ongoing dialog discussing the challenges of making and sharing authentic work. His Two Minute Tuesdays for example are live weekly snapshots of some of the things he’s wrestling with not only as a visual arti...

Trying to make a living as a professional photographer is hard, really hard. You might get into it thinking that all you’re going to do is take pictures, but it doesn’t take long to realize that time with a camera in your hands is only a small part of a what’s required day to day. It’s even harder when you’re also working a full-time job. But Freddy Clark is doing the work. He’s taking his passion...

Dutch street photographer Maarten Rots makes the kind of pictures that the graphic designer in me can’t get enough of. His purposeful compositions are made up of strong lines, bold colors, and subtle overlapping textures with just enough visual ambiguity to pull me in and ask myself, “what is that?” It’s the type of work that I seldom grow tired of and often find new details the more I look at it....

I first interviewed photographer and author, David duChemin in 2013 as one of a series of conversations I hosted for Faded & Blurred, a website and photo community that I helped build while I was teaching Photoshop at a photography school in Southern California. What followed over the next decade-plus was something I couldn’t have scripted — a friendship, a creative partnership, and more conve...

Sean Tucker is a photographer in London who I was introduced to by an On Taking Pictures listener who emailed me and told me “you have to see this guy’s work. I think it’s right up your alley.” He was right. Sean’s work is terrific, but it was his YouTube channel —how he approaches and speaks about photography and creativity—that was even more up my alley. As you’ll hear, Sean is honest, insightfu...

I first interviewed photographer and author, David duChemin in 2013 as one of a series of conversations I hosted for Faded & Blurred, a website and photo community that I helped build while I was teaching Photoshop at a photography school in Southern California. What followed over the next decade-plus was something I couldn’t have scripted — a friendship, a creative partnership, and more conve...

I was introduced to Karl Taylor in 2010 when a friend gave me one of his photography training DVDs. Karl’s energy and enthusiasm for photography along with his incredible knowledge of how to make great pictures in virtually any situation really set him as my benchmark of what photographic training should be. He also has a brilliant way of bringing a fashion style and sensibility to commercial and...

In 2015, Craft & Vision founder David duChemin invited me to host a short-run podcast. Across 12 episodes, I spoke with photographers who were each, in their own way, exploring what it means to see more clearly, create more intentionally, and develop a voice of their own. --- This will be the last episode of the Craft & Vision podcast and we are ending just as we began, with a conversation...

There are some photographs that just stick with you — images that once you see them, you simply can’t unsee. It happens across virtually all genres of photography. A single image, a particular project or an entire body of work seeps into our being and becomes a point of reference along an internal visual continuum. When I first saw the work of Nick Brandt, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. H...

In 2015, Craft & Vision founder David duChemin invited me to host a short-run podcast. Across 12 episodes, I spoke with photographers who were each, in their own way, exploring what it means to see more clearly, create more intentionally, and develop a voice of their own. --- Duncan Fawkes is a former IT professional who turned layoff from his 9 to 5 into an opportunity to leap into a new care...

When I was a junior in high school I took my first photography class and one of the things we had to do before we got to shoot with the “real” cameras — in our case, they were Pentax K1000s loaded with Tri-X — was to build a pinhole camera from one of the round Quaker Oats boxes. And I remember thinking how incredible it was to see the simplicity of what photography is: light and time. Not even a...

In the last episode, I had a conversation with Glenn D’Cruze from North Atlantic Explorers , who I was introduced to by a listener of On Taking Pictures . In this episode, my guest was recommended to me by one of my favorite photographers, John Keatley . A month or so ago I reached out to John and asked if he knew anyone who he thought would be interesting for me to talk to. He responded with two...

In this episode, I’m doing something a little different. One of the goals I’ve had for Process Driven from the beginning has been to expand the scope of the conversations I have beyond visual arts as an exploration into how and where creativity overlaps, regardless of the discipline. In this episode I’m sitting down with Glenn D’Cruze, a Canadian musician who records under the name North Atlantic...

A few months ago, I attended a talk that Dan Winters gave at the Smithsonian and one of the things that struck me straight away was the language he used to describe his relationship to his work. I’ve been a fan for years and own a few of his books, but I never had the opportunity to hear him speak before. There’s such emotion and romance in how he relates to his work, especially in the making or t...

In 1976, William Eggleston opened his first color show at MoMA, the reviews were fairly polarized. To some of the art establishment, color photography was for snapshots and not to be taken seriously and black and white was the only true photographic art form. But while one critic called the show “perfectly banal”, another called it a milestone and said that after it black and white would seem slig...

I can’t tell you what the first photograph that I ever saw by Gregory Crewdson was, but I do remember very clearly how it made me feel — how I connected to this world. Unlike any other photographer I can think of off the top of my head, this was instantly familiar to me. This world was familiar; the plights and the struggles that these characters seemed to be going through were very much my own. F...