HeyJaredThe Creative Connection
A home for thoughtful photographers, with lessons on craft, creativity, process, tools, and history, told through Crafting A Photograph, The Creative Connection, Marks of The Maker, Tools of The Trade, and Life Through The Lens.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
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- Sep 21, 2026
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- Jul 9, 2026
Latest issues
What Makes a Photograph Good? (You're Asking the Wrong Question) (opens the original)
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You need a base of actual skill before any of this works, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise just to sound like some free spirit who thinks technique is beneath him. You need to understand light the way a line cook understands heat. ISO. F-stops. Shutter speed. Understanding the differences between lens choices and such. None of that is up for debate. Anybody telling beginners they can skip it is someone you should be very wary of.To sound like I’m beating the dead horse mercilessly. You lea
Thoughts on the L Train (opens the original)
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I am, and I confess it at the outset without any of that coyness men employ when they wish above all to be contradicted, a greater stranger to myself than to any soul I have yet had the occasion to meet. And already, observe, already, before the ink of the first sentence has dried, I must take it back, or not take it back, but turn it over, hold it up to the window like a coin of doubtful currency, because of course I know who I am. I know it perfectly! I know my beliefs. I know my morals, my et
Why Gear Is Never the Point... But It Still Matters (opens the original)
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Every art form finds incredibly dumb things to fight about, and photography, bless it, picked the little black box with all its bells and whistles, or lack thereof, to argue about. Grown adults, most of whom lack the talent or true passion of the greats, will get red in the face over sensor size the way other people get red in the face over religion or a bad Little League umpire. I’ve spent enough time around the first camp of dimwits to know their type before they’ve said a word. The sigh of a
Why You're Not Growing As A Photographer (opens the original)
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You work quietly for months. You do all the right things like studying, crafting, writing, and refining. You tell yourself you’re building something meaningful. Then one day you post something you secretly hope will hit. I’m talking really hit, you want it to land hard. You want the numbers to move in a way that justifies all the invisible labor. You really really want that single piece of work to feel like a turning point.And when it doesn’t?Something in you deflates.You start questioning the d
On Attention, Behavior, and the Photograph (opens the original)
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Most advice about photography starts exactly where the work is already over. It starts with cameras and settings, timing, and the very tired mythology of the perfectly aligned moment that drops out of the sky and rewards whoever happened to be standing in the right place with enough caffeine in their bloodstream to grab it before it disappeared. This shitty story refuses to die because it’s convenient. It lets us believe that great photographs are rare accidents rather than earned outcomes. It m
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