I don't say yes to every podcast. I said yes to Outspoken Artist immediately, because the conversations they host go somewhere. That's not as common as it should be.
On Community
We talked about what it means to build community as a creative, and the temptation to treat it as a strategy rather than a practice.
I've seen both. The community-as-marketing-play is easy to spot: it has a launch date, a growth metric, and a point where the organization loses interest when the ROI wasn't there. The communities that last are the ones where someone decided to just keep showing up, even when the numbers were small, because the thing itself was worth doing.
Sun Your Buns taught me that. The Facebook group in Minneapolis taught me that. The connections I've built through ASMP taught me that. You don't build community by optimizing for it. You build it by caring more about the people in the room than about the size of the room.
On Mentorship
This is where the conversation got interesting, because I think we have a fairly broken model of what mentorship is supposed to look like.
The version most people picture: experienced person gives advice, newer person receives it, relationship ends when the advice runs out. That's consulting, not mentorship. The mentorship that actually changed things for me was relational and ongoing. People who were further along treating me like a peer before I'd fully earned it.
That vote of confidence, being taken seriously before you've proven you deserve it, was worth more than any specific piece of advice.
That's what I try to do now. Not position myself as the person with all the answers, but as someone who's been in the work long enough to tell you what I actually know, including what I got wrong.
On Leaning Into the Craft
We talked about making work when you're afraid it's not good enough. The counterintuitive thing I keep coming back to:
The only way through that fear is more reps. Not more preparation. More making.
The photographers I admire most didn't get good by waiting until they felt ready. They shot constantly and let the practice do the teaching. You lean toward the work, not away from it, especially when leaning away feels more comfortable.
If you're putting together a panel, podcast, or speaking opportunity, reach out. This is the kind of conversation I want to keep having.
FAQ
What is the Outspoken Artist podcast?
A podcast focused on the creative life, the real version, including the business, the doubt, and the work of building something sustainable in the arts.
How do you build community as a creative professional?
Consistency matters more than scale. Show up for people repeatedly, without an agenda, and the community builds itself. The platforms and programming can come later, genuine connection has to come first.
What does good mentorship look like in the photography industry?
Relational rather than transactional. Honest about what's hard. Treating newer photographers as peers and showing up consistently, not just when there's a formal reason to.
Read more
/ How I Became a Commercial Photographer: From a Kodak Disposable to Shooting Global Brands
/ Sun Your Buns: What a Park Picnic Club Taught Me About Community
/ Recreating the Home Office: On-Location Product Photography for Logitech in Manhattan
/ Book Launch Photography and Corporate Headshots for Penguin Random House
/ How a TikTok Search Led to a Full Brand Shoot with Flewd Stresscare
/ Lifestyle Photography for Pacific Foods at People Inc.'s World Trade Center Office
/ On Location with Rifle Paper Co.: Photographing Travel Products in Manhattan
/ Multi-Week Shoots for Thymes and Capri Blue: Candles, Models, and Full Production
/ On Living in New York and Meeting the Most Interesting People
/ On Location with Hasbro: Photographing Play-Doh and Toys with Kids and a Video Team
/ Inside a L'Oreal Matrix Hair Shoot: Afters, Affidavits, and What It Takes
/ Shooting Dairy Queen's Social Campaign at K2 Studios: Mint Chip, Snowdrift, and Valentine's Day
/ The Outspoken Artist Podcast: What We Actually Talked About
/ Building Kaplan's Brand Asset Library: Employee Photography in Brooklyn and Fort Lauderdale
/ How TikTok Changed the Way Brands Find Photographers
/ On Location with Bissell: Lifestyle, Video, and UGC Photography for Pet Cleaning Products
/ Sparkling and Set-Styled: Social Content and GIF Photography for Waterloo Sparkling Water
/ What It Actually Takes to Run a Full Production Brand Shoot
/ On-Location Headshots for the Center for Reproductive Rights: Powerful, Real, and Human
/ On Being a Commercial Artist Who Keeps Thinking About Moving to the Woods
/ What Becoming President of ASMP New York Actually Means
/ Behind the Lens: Photographing Assouline's Archive Library in Manhattan
/ Long-Term Brand Photography for Caribou Coffee: Lifestyle, Social, and In-Store Campaigns
/ Speaking at Index Space: Creative Showcase V5
External
Sigma / Travel the Alps with SIGMA’s Lightweight 18-50mm & 10-18mm Zoom Lenses
Sigma / Behind the Scenes on a Fashion Shoot with the Sigma BF
Sigma / Why I Choose SIGMA Zoom Lenses for Studio Photography
Sigma / A Fresh Look at Berlin Through the Sigma 12mm F1.4 DC Contemporary Lens