Jeff Curto's Camera Position

Camera Position 213 : What’s your hashtag?

15 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How do you consider yourself as a photographer in terms of the work you do? Is it important to tell your viewers how you define your work as being a p...

Camera Position 212 : Sources & Resources

17 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This episode covers some practical details. I go over the places where you can listen to Camera Position and list a number of online resources for you...

Camera Position 211 : What not to do

31 Jan 2021

Contributed by Lukas

"Whatever you do with your photography - don't ever do... "that" Our desire to learn quickly, be noticed in social media and not make any mistakes ha...

Camera Postion 210 : The Calming Camera

20 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

I can’t think of a time in my life that has been more disconcerting than this last year. The pandemic and the disruption to our daily routine. We do...

Camera Position 209 : Your Own BackYard

22 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

During this pandemic time, we have been forced to trade in the allure of travel for the allure of the backyard. As I return to the podcast after a lon...

Camera position 208 : Bringing Ourselves to the Photograph

05 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

By slowing down as we look at photographs – ours or someone else’s – we can more easily bring ourselves to the photograph, and by doing that, le...

Camera Position 207 : On Warming Up

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Musicians warm up before they make music, but what about visual artists? Do photographers need to warm up before they create photographs? I think yes,...

Camera Position 206 : The Artful Life

30 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Some thoughts on living an artful life, led off by poet Mary Oliver’s “Instructions on Living a Life” Pay attention Be Astonished Tell about it....

Camera Position 205 : Your Life Is Your Art

09 Jul 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Rather than trying to make art your life, work instead on trying to make every day of your life into art. “You just have to live and life will give ...

Camera Position 204 : Always A Reward

15 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The act of making photographs connects me to the world, to my medium and to myself. When I make photographs, there is always a reward. Play Podcast:  ...

Camera Position 203 : Your Eyes and The Lens

21 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Many people think of a wide lens as a way to get farther away from a subject, but I think of a wide lens as a way for us to get closer… a wide lens ...

Camera Position 202 : Exploring The World And Ourselves

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Podcast listener Tracy wrote: “Photography comes from the depths of who we are. It is not only an exploration of our world, it is also an exploratio...

Camera Position 201 : Digging Deeper

30 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

What is your story? What are you curious about? What do you care about? How can your photographs express those interests? Making stronger photographs ...

Camera Position 200 : Make Interesting Mistakes

16 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes and art is knowing which mistakes to keep. Instead of living in fear of “getting it wrong,”  a b...

Camera Position 199 : Playing Like Yourself

03 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” -Miles Davis One of the most consistent questions I get from students i...

Camera Position 198 : Losing and Finding Ourselves

25 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” – Thomas Merton How can we use the art we make with the camera to grow, ...

Camera Position 197 : Let the Subject Take Precedence

28 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When the subject takes precedence – when you point your camera at things that are the most interesting thing to you – you are on your way to devel...

Camera Position 196 : A Sense of Place

11 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

How do we go beyond a record of a place and begin to make photographs that convey a real sense of place? The objective is not just to show  what your...

Camera Position 195 : The River of a Story

21 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is a little meditation on the importance of aligning ourselves with the messages around us, using Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird as in...

Camera Position 194 : Our Wish To Persist

06 Mar 2017

Contributed by Lukas

“But the art in an artwork might not be located precisely where you thought it was. Perhaps it was just as much in the damage and decay as it was in...

Camera Position 193 : Is It Art?

20 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

As photographers, we know that there is a fairly wide range of options available to us that change what was to what we show the world in our images. E...

Camera Position 192 : John Berger, Looking and Seeing

06 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

An early influence on my ways of thinking about photography on a deeper level was the great writer John Berger.  A poet, novelist, artist screenwrite...

Camera Position 191 : Walt Whitman, Poetry and Photography

24 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Walt Whitman’s poems in his opus Leaves of Grass mirror the actions of the photographer by beginning with facts and transforming those facts into ...

Camera Position 190 : Watching Photographers Photograph

12 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” – Yogi Berra I like to see photographers out in the world and watch them photograph. Observing how pho...

Camera Position 189 : Cultivate The Itch, Not The Scratch

15 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

What drives and motivates photographers to do the work they do? I think that our unifying motivation is curiosity – an unrelenting, never-ending cur...

Camera Position 188 : You Are Worth The Time

28 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Do you take time to be creative each day? The creative act is worth taking the time for. It’s worth making the time for. It’s what holds us up and...

Camera Position 187 : Always Make the Photograph

11 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

If you see a picture that you think you may have photographed before, take it. Both the subject and the photographer may have changed since the last t...

Camera Position 186 : Objective and Subjective 

28 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Among the many things that make photography such an interesting pursuit are its qualities of objectivity combined with subjectivity. In the end, photo...

Camera Position 185 : God Is In The Details

06 Sep 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In addition to the phrase “Less is More,” the great architect Mies Van der Rohe also had another saying that relates to making creative work, and ...

Camera Position 184 : Look At The Path, Not The Mountain

23 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Whether it’s a stack of dishes in the sink, moving forward with your photography or climbing up a steep mountain, looking at the path that you’re ...

Camera Position 183 : Conscious Photography

09 Aug 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The difference between a conscious and an unconscious photographer is that the conscious photographer produces better work by thinking more and photog...

Camera Position 182 : The Art of the ‘Zine

26 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In a few past episodes, we’ve looked at alternate ways to get your work in front of an audience, and here’s another one: ‘Zines.  This “low-f...

Camera Position 181 : Less Is More

12 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The great architect Mies van der Rohe is famous for the phrase “Less is More” to describe his approach to simplifying his designs. That philosophy...

Camera Position 180 : Mining the Data Set

28 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

From aperture and focal length to shutter speeds and focus points, our modern photographic tools give us a wealth of information about our photographs...

Camera Position 179 : Embracing the Almost

14 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

All of us make photographs that, for some reason, don’t quite work, even though we had high hopes for them. If we embrace those photographs that al...

Camera Position 178 : Everyday Creativity

31 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When you face something you think you can’t possibly do and then go ahead and do it anyway creativity is the tool you use. Play Podcast: Links for t...

Camera Position 177 : It’s Not a Pursuit, It’s a Medium

19 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

A lot of people who are “into” photography seem to think of the “doing” of photography as the end unto itself. While the mechanical act of mak...

Camera Position 176 : 10 Rules Rules for Getting Started

26 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The American abstract expressionist painter Richard Diebenkorn (1922 –1993) is noted not only for his great work, but also for his thoughts about th...

Camera Position 175 : From One, Many

13 Apr 2016

Contributed by Lukas

There’s an old adage in photography: “inside every 8×10” print, there is a really excellent 5×7” image waiting to be found.” That old saw ...

Camera Position 174 : The Lone Tree & The Logo

29 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

A listener asked where the logo for Camera Position came from, which gave me an impetus to talk about that photograph and the concept of the Lone Tree...

Camera Position 173 : Position The Camera – Position The Viewer

15 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When we position the camera, we are ultimately positioning the viewer of our photographs. We explore this idea using a 1757 painting by the Venetian P...

Camera Position 172 : Get Your Ideas Out The Door

01 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has ideas, but many people keep those ideas hidden inside. The creative person finds a way to get those ideas out the door in a way that allo...

Camera Position 171 : Tone, Value and Mr. Bennett’s Button

16 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“Anyone can print black – just put a piece of photo paper under the enlarger, turn the enlarger light on and leave it on. But light values… ahhh...

Camera Position 170 : Camera Position Turns 10

02 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Camera Position is ten years old!  The first episode of Camera Position was published February 5, 2006 and it’s been a wonderful decade of learning...

Camera Position 169 : Black and White Revisited

19 Jan 2016

Contributed by Lukas

“How do I get started in learning black and white photography?” That was the question I got by the boatload after the podcast about B&W photograph...

Camera Position 168 : Edges

22 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Edges – The edge of the frame, the edge of the subject, the edge of the world, the edge of a moment. Regardless of how we interpret it, the assignme...

Camera Position 167 : Learn Photography With Black and White

10 Dec 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Can photography be better learned in black and white? That’s the question that I look at in this episode, as we look at line, shape, tone and textur...

Camera Position 166 : Sharing Your Story

24 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Photography is about storytelling. Sharing your images and the story that they create is one of the ultimate goals for most photographers. Fortunately...

Camera Position 165 : Forget The Gear

10 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s world of photography is so very confusing. Photographers are confronted with a barrage of advice about how to make good photographs and what...

Camera Position 164 : The Frame Is A Discipline

27 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The great photographer Ernst Haas said, “”The frame of the camera is the photographer’s discipline. It can contain as much as it withholds, cut ...

Camera Position 163 : Photographer’s Bookshelf – Diana and Nikon

13 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Using a quote from Janet Malcolm’s collections of essays about photography as a springboard, I talk about the relative truth of photographs and look...

Camera Position 162 : Driving Your Peripheral Vision

29 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

As a driver, you use your peripheral vision all the time. So, too, with photography as you need to learn how to pay attention to what’s at the edge ...

Camera Position 161 : What’s Your Hobby?

16 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

What’s your hobby? As a recently retired person, it’s the question I often get as people try to figure out what I “do” with the time I used to...

Camera Position 160 : Accept the Inner Critic

03 Sep 2015

Contributed by Lukas

With creative work, there is often a gap between our ambitions and our ability to create work that meets our expectations. Fortunately, our “inner c...

Camera Position 159 : A Sense of Humanity

18 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Human values — those emotions, beliefs, traditions, and knowledge that we understand and share as human beings are an integral part of how we come t...

Camera Position 158 : The Courage To Create

04 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Rollo May (1909 – 1994) was an American existential psychologist and author. Among his books was The Courage to Create. In it, May lays out some ide...

Camera Position 157 : The Elements and Principles of Art

21 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

One of the four steps of achieving true critique of a work of art is analysis and doing that analysis requires applying the elements and principles of...

Camera Position 156 : Critical Thinking is Creative Thinking

07 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In the last couple of episodes of Camera Position, I talked about feedback on your work and the type of feedback you typically get contrasted against ...

Camera Position 155 : Feedback Part 2 – Critique

23 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Feedback on our work usually comes in one of two forms: Reaction and Direction. Both are simple to do but don’t give us what we really want to help ...

Camera Position 154 : Feedback Part 1 – Reaction and Direction

09 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Feedback is something that photographers always want. Regardless of their level of interest or expertise, photographers always want to hear what other...

Camera Position 153 : Celebrate Your Vision

26 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The practice of photography shapes the way we view the world. No matter what level of involvement you have with the medium, seeing the world as a phot...

Camera Position 152 : The Shape of Content

12 May 2015

Contributed by Lukas

The book The Shape of Content, by Ben Shahn, is a collection of essays based on a series of six lectures given by Shahn, an important 20th century pai...

Camera Position 151 : The Way of Zen

28 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

In his book The Way of Zen,  Alan Watts explains two different, mutually important, ways of using our minds and therefore our creativity, which helps...

Camera Position 150 : You Are Not The Viewer

14 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

You’re the photographer, not the viewer of the photographs you make. Between the making of the image and the time that the image is put out into the...

Camera Position 149 : The Roots of Ideas

16 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Every new idea is just a restatement of old ideas, or sometimes it’s several old ideas combined into a new one. Collecting ideas as you go along is ...

Camera Position 148 : Snowshoes and Photography

02 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

My first experience using snowshoes to explore the winter landscape gave me some insight into the process of learning new things and slowing down the ...

Camera Position 147 : A Personal Style

16 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Each year, I take small groups of students to Italy for an intense week of photography and learning. Some destinations vary, but a constant is the wor...

Camera Position 146 : Escape Velocity

02 Feb 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Watching a group of students just getting started in photography reminded me about how we reach “escape velocity” in photography. Their positive e...

Camera Position 145 : Leave Home, Part 2

19 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Leaving home can not only allow you to view your personal environment with new eyes, but the new experiences you find when you’re away can also help...

Camera Position 144 : Leave Home

08 Jan 2015

Contributed by Lukas

As a kid, returning from my summer vacation showed me my home in a different way. Trees were bigger and the house smelled both familiar and new. Leavi...

Camera Position 143 : Sport Cooking

02 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Years ago, I had a friend who was a professional chef. Sometimes, on his days off, he would come to my house and practice what he called “sport cook...

Camera Position 142 : Dolce far Niente, or Put The Camera Down

19 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Be in the moment. In this episode, I encourage you to put your camera down, disconnect yourself from your devices and other distractions and embrace t...

Camera Position 141 : The Medium Is Not The Message

05 Aug 2014

Contributed by Lukas

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symb...

Camera Position 140 : Editing & Sequencing

22 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Content, sequence and structure matter. This episode looks at editing down your photographs to a cogent and clear set that tells your story most effec...

Camera Position 139 : The Story Spine

08 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

The Story Spine is a wonderful method of conceptualizing a story. Initially conceived by playwright Kenn Adams, it’s a great tool for anyone who wan...

Camera Position 138 : Telling a Story with Pictures

01 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Photography excels at storytelling. While a single image can tell a story, we can tell much more complex stories with sets or series of images. If we ...

Camera Position 137 : An Update

23 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

While Camera Position has been quiet for a while, a whole lot has been going on in my life as a photographer, a teacher and a traveler. This episode i...

Camera Position 136 : Persistence of Vision – Olivia Parker and 40 Years of Moving Forward

14 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Photographer Olivia Parker has been an influential and prolific photographer for more than 40 years. We look at Parker’s work, her background, her p...

Camera Position 135 : Off The Wall #3 – The Digital Story

03 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we take a third look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by creating digital stories. Using iMovie, Final Cut Pro, ProShow ...

Camera Position 134 : Off The Wall #2 – iBooks

25 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

This episode offers a second look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by creating ebooks using iBooks Author to get our photographs under vi...

Camera Position 133 : Off The Wall #1 – MagCloud

11 Nov 2013

Contributed by Lukas

As photographers, we translate our ideas into objects. In this episode, we look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by using the print on de...

Camera Position 132 : I am a Translator

24 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Learning photography is like learning a language. As we assimilate photographic vocabulary, nuance and the like, we wind up being interpreters or tran...

Camera Position 131 : The Hammer and The Nail

10 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is a phrase attributed to  psychologist Abraham Maslow, but I’ve always thought it ...

Camera Position 130 : Babies, Pointing and Photography

18 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Not long ago, I saw an article by Nicholas Day on Slate.com about babies and pointing. The article discussed how babies point at things to help them c...

Camera Position 129 : Finding Meaning in Details

04 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

I’ve long loved the detail image; the photograph that shows just a snippet of the larger world. In this episode, I look at an image of mine that has...

Camera Position 128 : Carol Golemboski’s Psychometry App

29 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Photographer Carol Golemboski has taken the idea of an electronic book – or any sort of electronic presentation of photography, farther than any I’...

Camera Position 127 : Monochrome Followup

20 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

I had lots and lots of great ideas from podcast listeners about Camera Position 125, “Thinking in Monochrome.” Several listeners suggested a digit...

Camera Position 126 : Arno Says “Stay On The Bus”

06 Mar 2013

Contributed by Lukas

We all try to spend time with photographs by photographers whose work we admire. We spend time trying to figure out how to emulate their work, then pr...

Camera Position 125 : Thinking in Monochrome

11 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

I grew up making black and white photographs. It’s what I love the most about photography and the way I have long thought about the photographic ima...

Camera Position 124 : Light and Shadow

04 Feb 2013

Contributed by Lukas

The word “photography” comes from a combination of two Greek words; “photos” (light) and “graphos” (writing or marking). So, “photograph...

Camera Position 123 : Print The Small Stuff

21 Jan 2013

Contributed by Lukas

When’s the last time you printed a photograph of your best friend, your child or your parents? Now that the holiday season is concluded, we all like...

Camera Position 122 : Craft Is Not Content

14 Jan 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said something like, “while you can memorize the dictionary, it doesn’t mean you have anything to say afterwards....

Camera Position 121 : The Raw and The (over)Cooked?

28 Dec 2012

Contributed by Lukas

At what point do photographers manipulate their images? Does it happen when we choose a camera, lens and field of view or does it happen afterwards, i...

Camera Position 120 : Visual Acoustics

21 Dec 2012

Contributed by Lukas

As the greatest photographer of Modernist architecture, Julius  Shulman’s images stand as icons of the  architectural boom in mid-20th Century Ame...

Camera Position 119 : The Power of the Single Photograph

17 Dec 2012

Contributed by Lukas

A photographic project is a wonderful thing, but a single image is powerful too in a wide variety of ways. Single photographs can be fulfilling all by...

Camera Position 118 : (Back)Story Matters

09 Dec 2012

Contributed by Lukas

How much do you know about the subjects you photograph? Granted, you may just be encountering them for the first time when you first make pictures, bu...

Camera Position 117 : Photographer’s Bookshelf – “The Color Of Hay”

29 Oct 2012

Contributed by Lukas

In their book The Color of Hay, photographer Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin and her author husband H. Woods McLaughlin take us to a little known part of t...

Camera Position 116 : Turn It Upside-Down!

08 Oct 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Turn it upside-down! Turning your photographs upside-down is a great way to help you evaluate the composition of your photographs by helping to remove...

Camera Position 115 : The Self-Assignment

24 Sep 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Although I have been giving assignments to students for years and years, I sometimes forget that I can give myself an assignment, too. So, this summer...

Camera Position 114 : Feed Your Eyes

17 Sep 2012

Contributed by Lukas

Feeding yourself with as many photographs as you can possibly see is one of the great ways to stay fresh in photography. The more you see, the more fu...