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The Terrible Photographer is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative humans trying to stay honest in a world that rewards pretending
It’s been raining here in San Diego, overcast when it’s not raining and it’s kinda nice. I actually like it. We lived in the Pacific Northwest for a few years, we love it up there, we probably belong up there, but we’re here, in San Diego, and there are worse places to be. Like Wichita—no offence to all you listeners to Wichita.
Some of you are right now telling me to fuck off, wondering why anyone would complain about San Diego. I’m not really complaining. I just think it’s too bright here. Not enough green. Too much beige and blue.
But the tacos are way better. Infinitely better. But I miss salmon chowder and the coffee.
This episode, I didn't have planned. I usually have a Google Doc with thirty ideas, and I slowly drip thoughts, quotes, and stories into them. That’s my clunky process, and then there are the rare, urgent episodes—like number 23, ‘We Work, Rome Burns’—that just drop into my life.
This episode is different. It’s kinda random, unplanned, and I don't feel a huge sense of urgency with it either. I just felt like talking. When I sat down to write something, I just sort of started writing what was in my head, and this is what came out. So… if you like it, let me know, if you hate it, let me know that too.
If you were to ask me what this episode is about? I honestly don’t know, we’ll see I guess. Maybe you can tell me.
Okay so, I want to start with a guy named Samuel Beckett.
Now, for those of you whose literary consumption mostly stops at the stories you read to your kids or smutty adult romance fiction (you know who you are)—Beckett was this Irish playwright. He wrote things like Waiting for Godot, maybe you heard of it.
If you don't know what it is, let me fill you in: Waiting for Godot is basically a 2-hour existential joke about two guys killing time while nothing happens. That’s the point. Nothing. Happens. Two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, sit around waiting for a guy named Godot, who never shows. They waste their lives waiting for things that never arrive. Meaning, direction, permission, purpose, whatever. And we call that living.
A man after my own heart.
I like this quote from him, though:
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
I really do feel like this captures the spirit and the ethos of what Terrible Photographer is.
But I'm pretty sure good old Sam Beckett never had to worry about freelance clients in his miserable existence. And I think… look, I appreciate the persistence, Sam, but "failing better" doesn't pay the ASTRONOMICALLY HIGH CALIFORNIA electric bill. What I'm dealing with is more like, "Ever tried. Ever failed. Now I'm styling this bloody fabric at 2 AM." You’ll hear about that fiasco in a bit.
But the sentiment? The endurance? Ever tried, every failed, fail again, fail better.
Yeah, I get that. More than you know. Only Samuel Beckett can make failure sound romantic.
Because failure is mandatory, you know, but quitting is optional. Or at least, that's what I keep telling myself while the anxiety tries to pull the covers over my head.
INTRO (1 minute)
My name is Patrick Fore. This is Terrible Photographer where we have honest conversations about creativity, identity, and discovering your voice.
Like I said, this episode is going to be slightly different. No framework. No research. No mention of Roger Deakins or the Stoics. It’s more just me, processing out loud some things I've been holding onto and thinking about.
Call it a stream of consciousness. Call it a confession. Call it whatever helps you not feel alone when you're wondering what the fuck you're doing.
This episode, number 36, we've made it to number 36—I'm calling this episode, "Still Terrible."
ACT I: THE YES I SHOULDN'T HAVE SAID (6-7 minutes)
Right now—like, this week—I'm dealing with a client I can't seem to say no to.
I've taken on product styling work. Which is not what I do. It's not even in the neighborhood of what I do. I shoot people, spaces, stories. I don't style consumer goods. I really don't.
But I said yes because I needed the work, and now I'm in my garage at 2 AM trying to make fabric look "organically draped" and "elevated editorial."
There's empty diet coke cans next to my laptop. Ted Lasso is playing on the studio TV because silence makes this worse somehow, and I need the background noise to pretend I'm not completely alone in my misery. I’ve got ChatGPT open, asking it increasingly desperate questions about textile arrangement like I'm trying to get an AI to teach me origami. I’m asking things like, “How to convey luxury using a linen blend?” and ChatGPT just spits out some completely useless, abstract nonsense that makes me feel worse. The whole thing felt like some elaborate, performance-art torture, where the goal is to make a $12 piece of muslin look like a philosophy. I mean, this is it, right? This is the five-star, Michelin-level absurdity of the modern commercial photography world. You spend years honing your eye, your light, your craft—and you end up begging a robot for tips on how to make fabric look 'aspirational yet approachable.' I've eaten better things out of a dumpster than the concepts I was generating that night.
I take a shot. Appears in Capture One instantly. It looks... wrong. 85% there but fundamentally wrong in a way I can't articulate. It looks like I accidentally draped it, which is the exact opposite of the effortless look they are paying me a significant amount of money to achieve.
I take another shot. Still wrong.
The fabric is mocking me. I'm pretty sure the fabric is mocking me. It’s got that smug sheen that says, “You don’t have the eye, Patrick. You’re a hack.”
Eventually I had to call in help. Plan B was other people. Which is what I should have done from the beginning, but here we are.
$$MUSIC: Subtle ambient pad, -20dB$$
But while I'm doing this—while I'm trying to figure out if this fabric should fold left or right—there's this loop running in my head. What if I can't finish this?
What if I have to go back to the client and say "I can't do it" and return the money?
And then—the nightmare scenario—the Google Review. One star. "Photographer couldn't complete job. Unprofessional. Do not hire."
The Google Review demon lives rent-free in my head. I always feel like I'm one bad review away from ending up on the street. My business is still so new, so fragile, that one bad review could be the thing that takes it all down.
So I say yes. I call it customer service. I call it being a good guy.
But really I'm just scared.
And the irony—the thing that makes this extra stupid—is that by saying yes to protect myself, I end up in situations where I'm more likely to fail. Where I'm working outside my strengths. Where I'm styling fucking fabric at midnight because I was too afraid to say no.
Styling fabric at midnight is how I know the universe has a sense of humor, and it's dark.
That’s the risk we take, isn't it? Saying "yes" to keep the demon away, only to invite a new, slightly more absurd demon into the garage.
$$MUSIC OUT$$
ACT II: THE MISSED CALL & THE WHAT IFS (4-5 minutes)
Speaking of anxiety, this happened the other night... No, wait, let me go back a few weeks. A few weeks ago I missed a phone call.
I was in a coworking space—well, it's not really a coworking space, it's my desk at home but I'm on Discord with friends so it feels less lonely. The kind of Tuesday where you're bouncing between email and social media and trying to look busy.
My phone was right there. Six inches from my hand. Silent. Dark. On Do Not Disturb because I'd accidentally left it that way from the night before.
The call goes to voicemail. Some potential client. They had a meeting with their client and needed details from me.
I don't see it until 4 PM.
And when I do—That stomach drop. You know the one. That cold wave where your insides just... fall. "Oh shit."
Heat in my chest. That metallic taste you get when you know you fucked up.
I'm already doing the math. Thousands of dollars. Rent. Groceries. The bills that are always there, always waiting.
All because my phone was on the wrong setting.
$$MUSIC: Single sustained note, almost subliminal, -22dB$$
I call back immediately. Voice shaking a little, trying to sound casual. Leave a message.
Email. Professional. Apologetic without being pathetic.
Text. "Hey, saw I missed your call—"
Nothing.
A few days later, I follow up again. Still nothing. Ghosted.
Maybe they went with someone else for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Maybe they were never going to hire me anyway. Maybe I dodged a bullet.
But I'll never know.
And that's what keeps it circling. That's what makes me check my phone settings three times before I set it down now. That's what I have been thinking about before I fall asleep, remembering that missed call, doing the math on what it might have cost me.
The thing about that phone call? It didn't cost me the job, necessarily. It cost me the certainty.
ACT III: THE CONVERSATION THAT DIDN'T HELP (6-8 minutes)
Let me go back to that Zoom call I mentioned earlier.
It's 11 PM. I'm in my living room. I'm on a Zoom call with mostly photographers. One of these photographers is a guy I respect, he’s kind of a legend actually—magazine covers, TV show key art, the kind of work that feels like it's happening on another planet—he knows my career lore. Taylor Guitars. The burn out, the freelance leap. The 2.5 years of working for myself where I'm still not sure if I'm building something or just... flailing with purpose.
We're talking about how commercial photographers make it now. How the assisting path is basically dead. How you just take what you can get and hope it compounds into something.
There's this pause. One of those weird Zoom silences where you can hear someone's dog barking in the background and someone else typing.
And I just... say it.
"What am I doing wrong Jeff?"
Confused, he asked, “what do you mean?”
“I don’t know, with my career, with commercial photography? Have you seen anything I’m doing that is wrong or that you would question?”
I was trying to identify some blind spot in my hundreds of hours of introspection and ruthless self criticism that I might have missed.
I can hear him shift in his chair. That little creak of someone buying time to figure out what they want to say.
"You've only been doing this for 2.5 years. That's nothing. It takes people years—"
I know. I do. I swear I do.
But patience feels like a luxury item right now. Like a bottle of wine you're supposed to save for a special occasion. I don't have a special occasion. I have fucking bills.
$$MUSIC: Quiet piano, melancholic, -18dB$$
But here's what's running through my head while he's talking:
November. December. January. Last year. Zero income. Not "slow month" zero. Actual zero.
We had to postpone Christmas.
We had Christmas in March. I'm not joking. We told my daughter we'd do it later, that it would be more special that way. All the things you say when you're trying to make poverty sound like a choice. We figured it out, obviously, we always do, but the memory of having to look my ten-year-old in the eye and explain why the celebration was on indefinite hold—that memory doesn't just fade away when the next paycheck lands.
I wasn't prepared for it. Up until then, money had been... not great, but regular enough. And then it just stopped.
So when he says "give it time," what I hear is: you can't control this.
There's no strategy to find. No problem to fix. Just... wait. And hope.
And that's the worst possible answer for someone like me.
I want someone to point out the flaw. Tell me I'm not networking enough. Tell me my portfolio is wrong. Give me something I can fix.
But the uncomfortable truth—the anxiety-inducing, wake-you-up-at-3-AM truth—is that sometimes there isn't something to fix.
Sometimes it's just time. And randomness. And factors completely outside your control. The market, the economy, a pandemic, a missed phone call. That uncertainty is the gasoline on my anxiety fire.
I'm running out of runway. The burn rate is faster than the hope rate.
I have this arbitrary deadline in my head. A couple more years to figure this out. And if I don't?
I don't want to go back to graphic design. I'd rather eat drywall with Ranch Dressing to be honest. At least with drywall, you know what you’re getting. It’s got structure. It’s a known quantity. Freelancing is like getting served a beautiful, expensive plate of nothing every morning and being told to be grateful for the potential flavor profile.
I know he's right. Intellectually, I know he's right.
But it doesn't help.
What I need is acceleration. What I'm being told is: wait.
And I'm not sure I have the luxury of waiting.
$$MUSIC OUT$$
ACT IV: THE HYPOCRISY I PREACH (5-6 minutes)
This is the part of the episode that is a little awkward and confessional.
I preach all the time here about personal work. About test shoots. About using your voice and making work that matters.
And I'm... not really doing it.
I used to. Test shoots got me where I am. I know they work. They are the only true way to evolve your aesthetic outside the constraints of a client brief. But somewhere along the way, I stopped.
My taste has moved past my skill. Especially with styling.
I follow photographers like @cinestillfilmm and @alex.const and Carl Feerez. Their work is... I don't even have words for it. It's the kind of styling that makes you stop scrolling. That makes you question your entire approach.
And now that's the bar in my head. That's what I'm measuring myself against.
Which means every idea I have feels impossible. Because I know I don't have the eye. I don't have the budget to hire someone who does. And I can't seem to lower the bar back down to something achievable.
So I just... don't do anything.
I have too many ideas. They pile up. And I don't know which one to start with, so I don't start at all.
There's a shoot I've been thinking about for over a year. Gender roles. Domestic life. Sexuality in a world that's still built around straight, cisgender assumptions. I think it could be provocative. Important. The images in my head need a specific location, specific talent, highly specific styling. The wardrobe, the lighting—it all adds up to a budget I don't have. I tell myself: as soon as I have the money, I'll do it. But is that true? Or is money just a convenient excuse? The truth is, if I’m honest, I’m terrified of making the work that matters. Because what if I spend all that money, and it just comes out looking like a slightly better version of a stock photo? That's the creative ego, right there.
I have studio time available. Right now. I could just go shoot portraits. Experiment. Play.
But the ideas overwhelm me. I can't decide which one to pursue. Then there is the styling dilemma—the taste that has evolved, elevated—the standards I can’t get out of my head.
The thought of pulling an amateur model from Instagram and just showing up to make something sounds … small, risky and maybe a waste. And that tiny bit of resistance—that's enough to make me put it off.
So here I am. Writing podcast episodes about personal work. Preaching about test shoots.
While I'm stuck in analysis paralysis, doing product photography in my garage because at least that's something I know how to execute.
The other gap—the one that weighs on me constantly—is what I show people versus what I feel. I avoid posting altogether. Because unsatisfied silence feels better than unsatisfied validation.
I brand myself as someone who's figured out the balance between personal work and commercial work.
The reality? Most days I'm just doing commercial work because I'm too insecure to make my own stuff.
The gap between what I preach and what I practice is wide enough to drive a truck through. And until I close that, I’m going to keep chasing someone else’s fabric.
$$MUSIC OUT$$
ACT V: WHAT LUCY SEES (3-4 minutes)
My daughter, she sees everything. Feels everything. More than most people.
When I'm anxious, when I'm off—she knows. The way she interacts with me changes. Gets quieter. More careful.
Sometimes she looks at me like she's afraid to ask if we're okay. Kids shouldn't have to read their parents like that.
We've been through things now. Hard things. I tell myself—and I tell her—that she's watching me build something. That she gets to see what it looks like to start your own thing. To work for yourself.
That when this works out—hopefully, eventually—she'll see that the struggle was worth it. That this is just part of the story. The middle part. The hard part.
But I don't actually know if that's true.
I don't know if she'll remember this as "the time dad built something meaningful" or "the time we were always stressed about money."
I worry that I'm modeling the wrong things. That what she's learning is: work is anxiety. Success is always just out of reach. Being a creative professional means living in a constant state of low-level panic.
That's not what I want to teach her.
But it might be what I'm teaching her anyway.
I hope—I really hope—that years from now, this will all make sense. That the hard times will have been worth it.
But right now? In the middle of it?
I’m just hoping I'm not fucking up her childhood while I figure out my career.
$$MUSIC OUT$$
ACT VI: THE PRODUCTION VALUE PARADOX (3-4 minutes)
A few months ago, a prominent person in the podcasting space—someone who really knows their shit—listened to my podcast.
They thought I had a team. An editor. A writer. A designer. The whole production apparatus.
They were genuinely shocked when I told them it was just me.
In that moment? I felt seen. Like someone finally recognized the work. The hours. The obsessive attention to audio quality and music selection and pacing. I mean, it takes me almost as long to edit and mix one of these episodes as it does to shoot a commercial job. That’s how much I care about the quality.
But there's this feedback I keep getting that stings: am I trying too hard? Am I over-compensating? Does the polish make it feel performative?
I place insane value on production quality. It's not an accident. It's not casual.
Because I'm not competing with the bros in their basement with a $150 microphone and a dream. I'm competing with NPR. The New York Times. Big podcast companies with actual budgets.
That's my target.
Why? Because I never want to be an amateur at the things I take seriously. Photography. Podcasting. Design. Writing.
The bar is set high. Maybe too high.
But here's the question that keeps me up: in all that polish and production value—is my actual voice cutting through?
Am I violating the spirit of "Stay Terrible" by performing like I'm way better than I actually am?
I deleted an episode once. The content machine episode. I listened back and it made me cringe so hard I had to pull it down. It sounded like pure, unhelpful negativity. I didn't want that energy existing in the world, so I went into the hosting platform, and hit delete.
It wasn't helpful, not insightful. Just noise.
The tension is this: I care deeply about craft. About quality. About making things that are worth someone's time.
But I also need to stay human. Stay messy. Stay vulnerable.
And sometimes those two things feel like they're pulling in opposite directions.
I suppose if I have to choose, I’d rather be truly honest than perfectly produced. But I’m trying to figure out how to be both.
$$MUSIC OUT$$
CLOSING: THE CONTRADICTION (4-5 minutes)
Look, I need to be clear about something: I'm not looking for sympathy or empathy focused on me. I know sometimes these episodes can lean into the dark maybe, maybe even oversharing, I don’t know. This isn't a cry for help. I hate that kind of shit.
I'm creating the space I wish existed. For myself, yes. But more so for anyone else who needs it.
I want to create the conversations I want to be part of. The ones where we stop pretending we have it figured out. Where we admit that most days we're just making our best guess and hoping it works out.
I'm much more comfortable building a space for others than pulling focus toward myself.
I understand the irony. This is literally an episode where I talk about ME - my struggles, my fuck-ups, my anxieties.
But I'm using myself as a case study. My life, my business, my journey—it's just a way into the larger conversation. About the anxiety... The gap between what we show people and what we actually feel. The pressure to accelerate success when everyone's telling you to be patient. That feeling of being in your garage at 2 AM with a piece of fabric, wondering if the Google Review demon is coming for you next. That feeling of the pit in your stomach from the missed call. All of it is the same conversation.
I'm tired of pretending this is easy. It's not. It's not even reasonable half the time.
But it's mine.
$$MUSIC: Slight build$$
So let me circle back to that question I asked on the Zoom call, talking to that photographer, at 11 PM: "What am I doing wrong?"
I think, maybe—and this is my internal answer, the one that doesn't help me pay the bills but helps me sleep at night—maybe I’m not doing anything wrong. Maybe this is just what right looks like in the middle. Maybe this chaos, this flailing, this fear... this is the process. And it feels awful from the inside.
What do I hope you take away from this?
If you're listening to this at 2 AM while you're working on something you shouldn't have said yes to. If you're avoiding the work that actually matters because your taste has moved past your skill. If you're taking jobs you hate because rent is rent.
It's okay to have hope in all of this.
Even though a lot of what we do is bullshit and frustrating and makes you want to throw your laptop out a window.
It's hopefully leading somewhere. It's part of your story. Maybe even an interesting part.
Hard things are hard. The things worth doing are the things that make you want to give up. What we do as creatives is incredibly fucking hard. It's incredibly competitive. So many people are trying to do what we're doing. Most of them never make it as far as you already have.
We need to force ourselves—and I'm talking to myself here as much as to you—we need to stop bitching long enough to be thankful we get to do this. Even though it sucks sometimes. Even though we might have to postpone Christmas occasionally.
We get to do this.
I don't have the answers. I'm figuring this out as I go.
But I'm still here. Still showing up. Still trying.
And if you're still here too—still showing up, still trying, still terrible at this some days—then maybe that's the whole thing.
Maybe showing up terribly is better than not showing up at all.
I just want to say, thank you SO MUCH for all those that have supported Terrible Photographer by contributing on my website. And beyond that, thank you for all the kind emails and DMs, man I love that. I put them in their own folder for days when I just feel like I’m shouting into the void, I can go back and read these and know that there are those listening.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. Stay terrible.