Category: Stories

I love going out with a project. A color. A thing. A theme that forces your eye to work. Today’s theme is one I almost never touch. Slow shutter speed panning. I’m in Happy Holler, Knoxville’s little bohemian pocket, during the Happy Holler-roo, and there is a soapbox derby whipping down the street asking to…

Half frame digital was probably inevitable. Half frame and I go way back. This is the original Olympus Pen FT. My father bought it in 1967. Here is the thing nobody mentions. The problem with half frame film is the same problem half frame digital will have. Seventy-two shots on a 36 exposure roll took…

If I hear one more person call the Canon R8 an entry-level camera, I am driving to somebody’s house. This is not an entry-level camera, and you should not be ashamed to buy it because the internet told you it was one. The internals are the same internals as the R6 Mark II. Same full-frame…

Oh my God, what have I done? I bought a Canon. A Canon mirrorless. And the worst part is I want to go on YouTube and watch people review Canon cameras and RF lenses, and I had forgotten whose neighborhood that is. Every other tutorial. Every other review. FroKnowsPhoto dot com. I bought Fujifilm just…

I may have played myself. I have gone on and on on this channel about long lens street photography. Don’t have to get close to people. Capture more moments, because capturing moments is what street photography is. Then I bought the Canon R8 with a 35mm lens. And today, walking up on people to get…

I need some G.A.S. relief. If you’re here, you know G.A.S. Gear Acquisition Syndrome. The inventory. Five Fujifilm cameras, the X-E2, X-Pro2, X-T4, X100VI, X-H2, and all the lenses. A Leica Q. A Leica M6. Hordes of digicams. Every form of camera I could want. I need maybe one or two of them. And yet…

I have calmed down since the last video. Mostly. A commenter asked a fair question. I made a typing gesture and said prompting is not creative, and he asked, are writers never creative? Bestselling authors type too. Was I insulting an entire creative process? Here is my answer, at normal volume. A prompt is the…

I was told the title of my last video, “Light, Color, and Weirdos,” was rude. That I should choose a different term for these people. What makes you any less weird than them, they asked. It takes one to know one, I said. But fine. Today is the Rossini Festival in Knoxville, a celebration of…

Somebody with a platform sat there and said we should embrace AI as creatives. That creating a prompt and letting AI formulate the image is what creativity is now. Hang on. Creatives are people who create from nothing. Putting your eyes to a camera and finding the shot that works. That is creating. Typing a…