The difference between a hobbyist and a professional is that a hobbyist practices until they get it right. A professional practices until they can't get it wrong. For some reason that advice seems to make sense for athletics, but in creative endeavors we often assume that all we need is the initial effort. This shows up particularly, I think, in travel photography. It's easy to assume that once we've visited a location and photographed it we don't need to go back and do it again. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ansel Adams wasn't lucky photographing Yosemite; he was persistent.
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HT2654 - Those Delicate Highlights
16-06-2026 | 2 Min.
HT2654 - Those Delicate Highlights
I remember a workshop instructor once suggesting that photographs live in Zone VIII. I'm not sure a definitive statement like this is universally accurate, but it definitely points in a direction I've found true more often than not. If we lose those delicate highlights, we end up with a gray smudge or an invisible blankness. I've found that the best images have, like us humans, a dependence on respiration. If a print doesn't breathe, it isn't alive. And that breath seems to reside in those delicate highlights..
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HT2653 - There Are No Bad Lenses, There Are No Perfect Lenses
14-06-2026 | 2 Min.
HT2653 - There Are No Bad Lenses, There Are No Perfect Lenses
The other day I was working on some images in Lightroom and realized that one of them was a fantastically sharp image that I had made with a notoriously bad lens. Looking more closely at the EXIF data I realized this image had been shot in the middle of the zoom range and stopped down a bit. My "bad lens" performed beautifully. Wide open at maximum zoom this lens was just crap. Do I blame the lens for making bad pictures, or do I blame myself for not knowing the lens as well as I should have?
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2600 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
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HT2652 - A Grand Slam Home Run
13-06-2026 | 2 Min.
HT2652 - A Grand Slam Home Run
If you are a baseball fan like I am, you know what a thrill it is when your team hits a grand slam. A true baseball fan, however, knows that the occasional grand slam is not the reason to be a baseball fan. It just happens from time to time. The true fan loves every pitch, every swing, every hit, every subtlety of the game. I say the exact same thing about photography. The stone-cold winners are a thrill, but not the reason to be a photographer.
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2651 - Processing Delta
12-06-2026 | 2 Min.
HT2651 - Processing Delta
In mathematics and statistics, delta is the measure of change. Strangely enough, I find this a useful concept in processing my photographic artwork. What is the delta (change) required between the scene captured and the artwork I envision? My role as a creator changes dramatically depending on the delta between the image capture by the camera and the finished photograph.
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Over LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Over LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Over LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).
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