Jeffery Saddoris: Everything
217 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 9 ratingsI released my first podcast in 2009. I was hooked and have been recording deep-dive conversations with interesting and creative people about what they do and why they do it ever since.
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Episodes
Iteration 40: Stepping Away From What’s Familiar
November 27, 2018 01:39 - 7 minutes - 5.27 MBI woke up the other morning thinking about The Beatles, specifically the dramatic changes their work went through over the course of their career. From what I know of them, they began doing covers of other people’s material – mostly early American rock ‘n’ roll from artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley. Learning the songs of their heroes allowed them to use that material as starting points for their own songs. The early Beatles songs were — at least to me ...
Iteration 39: Just Tell Them What You Want to Say
November 10, 2018 15:35 - 7 minutes - 5.21 MBThere’s a scene in the new remake of A Star is Born that’s been rattling around in my head since I saw the film. It’s the scene where Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson is talking to Lady Gaga’s character Ally about self-expression and finding her voice. Jackson says, “Look, talent comes everywhere, but having something to say and a way to say it so that people listen to it, that’s a whole other bag. And unless you get out there and you try to do it, you’ll never know. That’s just the truth....
Iteration 38: The Eggleston of my High School
October 31, 2018 15:26 - 9 minutes - 6.51 MBWhen I was a kid, there was a big department store chain called The May Company. It was sort of like a Macy’s and the one nearest our house was at an outdoor mall called the Eastland Center. In the lower level of The May Company, they had an art supply section and whenever I would go there with my mom, she would let me stay there in the art supply section while she went shopping. I still remember the smells of pencils and the oil paints and to this day, the smell of art supplies takes me rig...
Process Driven 26: Kevin Mullins
October 27, 2018 02:27 - 1 hour - 51.8 MB“I want to love taking pictures of whatever it is. It’s making something interesting out of everyday objects that intrigues me.” Kevin Mullins never planned on being a wedding photographer – or any kind of photographer really. His daily routine was a two and a half hour tube ride each way to an IT job in central London. One one particular ride home, he flipped open a magazine someone had left on the seat to an article about wedding photography. The candid black and white photos struck a ch...
Iteration 37: The Myth of the Perfect Thing
October 22, 2018 23:01 - 7 minutes - 5.21 MBAt the end of 1999, I bought my first new car: a 2000 Chevy Blazer Sport in black, with a dark grey interior. I had never bought a new car before and the purchase process took months. Literally. I think I test drove every car available under $30,000 — multiple times. It got to the point where sales people at several local dealerships knew me by name. As it turned out, the local Chevy dealer was owned by the father of a guy I went to high school with, who ended up making me a great deal on th...
Process Driven 25: Ondřej Vachek
October 19, 2018 22:07 - 1 hour - 43.3 MB“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 personal stories and the human cost of conflict. A few months back, Sean Tucker and I were ha...
Process Driven 24: David duChemin
October 12, 2018 14:10 - 1 hour - 51.9 MB“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 about David’s new book Pilgrims & Nomads — a body of work that has taken him nearly twelve year...
Iteration 36: Let it Flow
October 02, 2018 18:58 - 11 minutes - 8.11 MBYesterday was our first day back from a 9-day working vacation in France and Germany and I’ve got to tell you, I still haven’t fully readjusted to East Coast time, but I wanted to talk a little about the trip while it was still fresh in my mind. I spent the bulk of the day yesterday taking a first pass at photos and making notes about the some of the experiences we had and how I would like to see them affecting me moving forward. Overall, I came back incredibly inspired, both in terms of con...
Iteration 35: There is Only the Trying
September 17, 2018 17:50 - 6 minutes - 4.59 MBI had a friend in college—let’s call him Michael—who was one of the most interesting people I had ever met up to that point in my life. He was the first person I’d met who had…almost an “aura” about him, for lack of a better word, along with several unique qualities that just made him fascinating to be around. He wasn’t what you would call a “goth” per se, but his appearance was striking. His hair would change often, both in color and style, he was typically clad in black, wore eyeliner, a v...
Iteration 34: The Space(s) to Fail
August 27, 2018 15:51 - 9 minutes - 6.6 MBNext month, we will have been in this house for two years and it’s taken me all of that time to finally get around to beginning the build out of the two basement spaces that will ultimately become my studios — one for podcasting and digital media and the other for painting and printing. The previous owners of the house were both makers—he was a woodworker and an engineer and she was a painter. Together, they literally built the house in 1956 and in fact one of the downstairs spaces served as...
Iteration 33: Just Add Wall
August 11, 2018 18:18 - 9 minutes - 6.48 MBIn this episode, I want to talk about prints. You remember prints, right–little pieces of paper with pictures on them? Your parents probably had albums or maybe boxes of them that you would flip through on holidays or birthdays or the night before you went off to college. The act of printing photographs has changed dramatically since I bought my first camera in 1982—necessarily so. With film cameras, you had to make prints—even just contact prints—to see what you shot, unless of course you ...
Iteration 32: Between the Emotional Guardrails
August 02, 2018 00:08 - 10 minutes - 7.08 MBA couple weeks ago, I spoke to a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in…well, longer than it should have been. It’s something I’m really trying to work on, but as you probably know, sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, during the course of our conversation catching up on what was happening in each other’s lives, he told me that my design professor and the person who was really the cornerstone of the entire technical theatre department had passed away last year. I hadn’t spoken to h...
Iteration 31: Art Doesn’t Exist in a Vacuum
July 20, 2018 18:23 - 8 minutes - 5.88 MBEarlier this week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures after more than six years of weekly episodes. While the show was ostensibly about photography, the legacy of the show is 325 episodes—about 600 hours, give or take—of conversations that ranged from why we make art to whether digital is better than film. I think we spent more time asking questions than answering them, and for me, that became the main point of being there week after week. One of my favorite quotes is by Rain...
Process Driven 23: Jude Gerard Prest
July 04, 2018 16:54 - 1 hour - 47.2 MB“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 from the east coast to pursue a career in acting. Over the next 25-plus years, his hard work and...
Iteration 30: The King, The Boss, and Me
June 29, 2018 20:41 - 9 minutes - 6.41 MBTomorrow would have been my mom’s 74th birthday and while not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, I am grateful for the life I was allowed to share with her. She was generous, compassionate, and the most unconditionally loving person I have ever met. She always encouraged me to embrace the quirky, creative side of myself and insisted that following my passion meant not holding back and always giving 100%. As a child, my mom was a dancer—she and her brother Jerry even appeared on The Jack Pa...
Iteration 29:The Catalyst to Practice
June 23, 2018 01:37 - 6 minutes - 4.79 MBE3 was last week and for those of you who may not know what that is, it’s the Electronic Entertainment Expo and if you’re a gamer, it’s like Mecca. Every year, game studios and indie developers descend on the LA convention center for the chance to show the games the’ve been working on, sometimes for years. E3 is full sensory overload—a barrage of sight and sound from the minute you walk through the doors and I love it. Like many kids who grew up in the 70s, I’ve been hooked on video games fr...
Process Driven 22: Kristopher Matheson
June 22, 2018 15:30 - 53 minutes - 37 MBKristopher 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 seen before – his composition and use of color made the photos somehow more personal and intima...
Process Driven 21: Gareth Lewis
June 13, 2018 22:23 - 1 hour - 51.1 MBThere’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. Before settling in Melbourne, he spent the first year driving over 24,000 kilometers exploring Austr...
Process Driven 20: Joshua K Jackson
June 07, 2018 23:02 - 59 minutes - 40.7 MBJoshua 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 composition to communicate mood and narrative. While he often leaves the house with any sort of...
Iteration 28: A Genuine Interest
June 06, 2018 20:19 - 9 minutes - 6.81 MBRecently, I was talking to a friend of mine about Process Driven and he asked me why I did the show. Not from the standpoint of having the conversations, but rather why release them into the world. “What do you get out of it?” he asked. As I thought about it for a bit, I really couldn’t come up with an answer—no one that was coherent anyway. I’ve been thinking about it ever since—a lot—and I think I’ve come up with an answer—at least a partial answer and that it this. Throughout my life ther...
Process Driven 19: Simon Baxter
May 30, 2018 23:39 - 1 hour - 43.2 MBSimon 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 the moment you look at his body of work. What may not be obvious, however, is the amount of pain Si...
Process Driven 18: Kent Hall
May 25, 2018 13:36 - 1 hour - 43.7 MBKent 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 him, his growing body of work gets more and more interesting with every new expression. CONNE...
Iteration 27: The Problem With Iconic
May 20, 2018 17:05 - 6 minutes - 4.53 MBLately I’ve been seeing, or maybe just noticing, the word “iconic” as a means for makers to describe their own work—“my name is so and so and I make iconic portraits of whatever…,” and I’ve got to tell you, I’m having a hard time with how it’s being used. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Overcast | RSS The Atlantic posted a terrific article on how the “Nifty 50” became the goto lens for many photographers. If you’ve ever thought about making your own photo book, you’ll want to c...
Process Driven 17: Oli Kellett
May 16, 2018 20:03 - 59 minutes - 40.8 MBOne 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 of time talking to creative people, I often hear about projects at the poles, either early in t...
Process Driven 16: Nick Mayo
May 10, 2018 22:51 - 47 minutes - 32.5 MBNick 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 artist, but also as a human being. In this conversation we discuss the value of revisiting a favorit...
Iteration 26: What We Don’t Have Is You
May 05, 2018 00:53 - 8 minutes - 5.86 MBAs much as I love artists like Rauschenberg, deKooning and even Boucher, the first artist I knew by name was Frank Frazetta. He painted worlds I had never seen before, filled with warriors being pulled by a team of polar bears, red eyed demons on horseback and beautiful scantily clad maidens. I poured over his books, meticulously copying my favorite characters. While it was great drawing practice, I wasn’t doing anything original. I had sketchbooks filled with Frazetta drawings, but not one ...
Process Driven 15: Freddy Clark
May 03, 2018 00:52 - 1 hour - 45.2 MBTrying 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 for photography, an encyclopedic knowledge of beer, and a background in IT and is steadily buil...
Process Driven 14: Maarten Rots
April 26, 2018 23:28 - 1 hour - 41.4 MBDutch 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. In his self-published magazine March & Rock, Maarten’s work takes on a different dimension when...
Iteration 25: Show Up
April 19, 2018 16:05 - 9 minutes - 6.54 MBEarlier today, Bill and I recorded episode 312 of On Taking Pictures and while I wouldn’t say it was our best show—it was a good show. I think every show is a good show for one reason or another. It was one of the more significant shows because of the number—episode 312. If you do the math, 312 marks the end of six years of doing On Taking Pictures every week and while I’ve talked in the past about what doing OTP has meant to me and what I’ve learned from it, how it has changed my life and t...
Iteration 24: A Drift
March 23, 2018 20:46“The snow itself is lonely or, if you prefer, self-sufficient. There is no other time when the whole world seems composed of...
Iteration 23: No Choice But to Wrestle
March 19, 2018 19:33Over the weekend I attended the opening of the new Sally Mann show A Thousand Crossings at the National Gallery of Art. ...
Iteration 22: Just Make
February 15, 2018 18:58A couple weeks ago, I finished my first painting of 2018. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I mean, it is accurate that...
Iteration 21: A Wider Range of Skills
January 25, 2018 03:40It’s the third day of the new year and I’m still nursing a cold that really has me in the weeds. I...
Iteration 20: Bringing Out the “It Sucks” Hammer
December 16, 2017 00:12Back in 1990, a friend invited me to come to the Roxy in Atlanta to see Peter Murphy on his A Strange Kind...
Iteration 19: Present in the Practice of Doing
November 07, 2017 22:46“Most of my advances were by mistake. You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn’t.” — Buckminster Fuller There is...
Iteration 18: You Have to be Serious About Making a Picture
October 30, 2017 04:40In 2004, Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Goodfellas) appeared in a commercial for American Express. If you’ve ever seen Scorsese in an interview,...
Iteration 17: What Stands in the Way
October 11, 2017 05:09“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius They say creativity loves obstacles,...
Iteration 16: Soft Launch
September 26, 2017 21:21The night before we left for our recent trip to New Hampshire and Maine, we soft-launched the eBook version of Photography by...
Iteration 15: The Second Act is Better
August 16, 2017 17:23Recently, I celebrated my fiftieth birthday with a house full of friends, some of whom came from as far away as Philadelphia...
Iteration 14: What’s Next?
August 03, 2017 18:24What’s next? It’s a question that has plagued anyone who has ever made anything and now it is plaguing me. In a...
Process Driven 13: Sean Tucker
May 31, 2017 23:59 - 53 minutes - 36.8 MBSean 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, insightful, and the dedication he has to the craft of photography really shines through. We begin this epi...
Iteration 13: A Galaxy Far, Far Away
May 28, 2017 18:19Forty years ago today, something happened that would change the lives of millions and usher in a new type of moviemaking: Star...
Iteration 12: Old Mills and Makers
May 12, 2017 18:18Last weekend, we all flew up to New Hampshire to see Adrianne’s sister graduate with her Master’s degree. I’d been there once...
Iteration 11: Right Here, Right Now
May 10, 2017 18:16I’ve hesitated sharing this because I didn’t think it was relevant to making or art or creativity. But the more I thought...
Iteration 10: Death of a Cabbage
April 09, 2017 18:15When I was in college, I carried half a head of purple cabbage around in a Ziplock bag in my backpack for...
Iteration 09: Better to be Doing
April 01, 2017 18:14When I was little, nothing made me happier than drawing. My mom used to say that I could draw before I could...
Iteration 08: Permission Seems to be the Hardest Word
March 25, 2017 18:13I’ve been thinking a lot about words, lately — more than usual. I love words. Always have. Not just as language, but...
Iteration 07: Stay Behind the Barricade
March 16, 2017 18:12This edition of Iterations was originally going to be about words, but at the moment, I’m pretty far down that rabbit hole...
Iteration 06: Objects in Motion
March 16, 2017 18:11Most of you are probably familiar with Newton’s first law of motion. For those who aren’t, it basically states that an object...
Iteration 05: Apology Accepted
January 05, 2017 19:10It’s New Year’s Day and I’ve been sitting here staring at the empty pages of a new notebook for about an hour...