Hey Everyone!
You’re listening to the TEN7
Podcast, where we get together
every fortnight, and sometimes more
often, to talk about technology,
business, and the humans in it.
I’m your host Ivan Stegic.
My guest today is Mary Jo Hoffman,
creator of STILL at stillblog.net,
a blog that posts one image daily
of gathered natural objects.
It’s been described as a place to
stop, a place to look at one thing
at a time, a place to be still.
I think this is definitely something
we need in this day and age of
tweets and snaps and tictoks.
Mary Jo used to be an aerospace
engineer at Honeywell before becoming a
full-time creative and spends her time
here in the Twin Cities of Minnesota,
but apparently also in France.
I want to know so much more.
Hi.
Hello.
Welcome to the show Mary Jo.
It’s so great to have you on the podcast.
Hello.
Thank you.
It’s a pleasure to be here.
It’s a thrill.
So, you graduated from Stanford
with a Master of Science in
Aerospace, Aeronautical and
Astronautical Engineering.
Can you tell me more about where
you grew up, and why you enrolled
in such a prestigious program?
I sure can.
It’s a typical path and an
unusual path at the same time.
I actually grew up in the Twin Cities.
I actually grew up in the same
suburb, Shoreview in which I live now.
I moved back to the place I grew
up in when I was in my forties.
But I went to undergraduate school at
the University of Wisconsin Madison.
It’s an interesting story, because
I was always good at math and
science, but it was back in the day
when nobody knew each other’s GPA.
Do you remember that era?
Yeah.
You had no idea what the GPA of your
friends were let alone your own GPA.
And so I grew up knowing that
I was good at math and science
but not having any idea of how
good at math and science I was.
All I knew is that it was fun for
me, it felt like solving puzzles, I
got my homework done quickly, usually
on the bus on the way home, and so I
could go out and play when I was done.
And so, I never thought much of it.
My parents didn’t think much of it.
And then one day in high school, a
physics teacher, and yeah, I was taking
calculus and I was taking physics
because honestly, they were more easy
for me than taking history or polisci,
which was what my friends were taking.
I feel you.
[laughing]
.
It’s interesting.
One day at physics my high school had
two physics teachers, and one of them
that didn’t even have me in his class
pulled me aside in the hall and he
said, Where are you going to school?
I said, Madison.
He said, What’re you going to study?
I said, I have no idea.
He said, Why don’t you
think about engineering?
It's a college.
It’s easier to get into.
When you enter college, and you don’t
like it you can drop out, and if you
do like it it’s easier to enter as
a freshman than trying to transfer
into it as a sophomore or junior.
So I took his advice, and I
went to Madison, I entered
the College of Engineering.
And it turns out that, in a school
the size of Madison with 40,000
students, each of my physics classes,
my chemistry classes, my math classes,
they had 500 students in them.
And you quickly found out just
exactly how good at math and science
you are [laughing] by the curve.
The bell curve of 500 students.
Suddenly you got real-time feedback
on what your chops were, and it turns
out I was quite good at math and
science, and so I stayed in engineering.
I considered all the different kinds,
and aerospace appealed to me the most.
I was never a kid that grew
up wanting to be an astronaut,
or fascinated with rockets or
satellites or anything like that.
It was really an aptitude thing.
I enjoyed the science, and I
enjoyed doing the science that was
the requirement for that field.
Does that make sense?
It does make sense.
How did it end up that you went
from Madison over to the west coast
and did the master’s at Stanford?
I was born in 1964, so it’s the
last year of the baby boomers.
I’m considered that tail or
the cusp of the baby boomers.
But if you remember that was
the Reagan era, and there was a
lot of defense spending, and so
aerospace companies were hiring.
So when I left college in 1987, I
probably had eight job offers, and
I probably had nine interviews.
Everyone was hiring.
So, the age old story, it’s
embarrassing to say, but I came back
to Minnesota because of a boyfriend.
And Honeywell was one of those
offers and I actually took it.
Now people don’t associate Honeywell
with aerospace, but one-third of
Honeywell’s business was aerospace
related, and it was Avionics.
So all of the electronics that go in
almost all of our aircraft, most of the
commercial aircraft, most of the US Air
Force aircraft, most of the satellites,
they are predominantly Honeywell.
The electronics of the guidance,
navigation and control, it’s called
Avionics, and that’s made by Honeywell.
So, Honeywell was one of those job
offers, and I came to Honeywell
right out of undergraduate, and I
was hired in the Research Center.
After working for a year with
just an undergraduate in research,
I realized I wanted more chops.
It was mostly Ph.D.’s and
stuff I was working with.
So I applied to graduate
school and got into Stanford.
I applied to only two schools, the
University of Washington in Seattle,
because that’s where Boeing is.
And then I applied to, because I thought
it’d be cool to live in California.
It was that naïve, that simple.
It was back in the era where
parents didn’t coach you.
Nobody was pushing you.
Everything was self-driven.
I just thought California sounded cool.
In the Research facility at
Honeywell a lot of my coworkers
were Ph.D’s and several of them had
come through that Stanford program.
I had that whispered in my ear, but
I really applied based on location.
There aren’t that many aerospace
programs in the country, there’s
probably only about a dozen or so.
Usually located where there’s
an aerospace industry.
There is an aerospace industry in the
Bay Area, Nassau Aims is located there.
So, Seattle, Southern California,
Texas, and then Honeywell in
Minneapolis, and some on the east coast.
Anyway, I applied to Stanford.
Again I was really good at
math in an explicable way.
I took that GRE and I got 98%
percentile in math, and I think I
tested 70th percentile in English,
and I’m a native English speaker.
[laughing] I had a spikey talent, this
one talent for applied mathematics.
It actually sounds a lot
like what happened to me.
I don’t know if you know that
I worked at Honeywell as well.
I did know that.
So, yeah, tell me your story.
Well, this is all about you, of course.
I just wanted to point out
that you may have known some of
the people that I worked with.
My first boss was Earl Benzer.
Oh, yes.
I was at Honeywell Technology
Center in Plymouth.
Is that the location you were in,
or were you in the one in Camden?
Nope, I was in the research center, the
one on the Mississippi River, off of St.
Anthony Parkway.
Oh, right, with the chimney
that has the bricks.
No, that’s the Honeywell Division.
The facility that makes
the navigation systems.
Those ring laser gyros.
No, the research center,
we had our own building.
We were considered ivory tower.
It was more like a university
research center than it was
a corporate research center.
Wow.
So, essentially the same thing that
happened to you, I assume you went
back to Honeywell after you were
done with your master’s at Stanford?
Yeah, actually, I should tell the story
of getting the masters at Stanford.
Yes, please do.
I think people would
be curious to hear it.
I put myself through undergraduate
college and came out with student loans.
In addition to doing my engineering
degree, I worked probably average 20
hours a week, at least, but sometimes 30.
I put myself through college, then got
out, went to work, I had student loans
so I had to take a well paying job.
And then I applied to graduate school
and I already had at that time $30,000
of student loans, which today would
probably be about $100,000 of student
loans, and got accepted to Stanford.
This is all very interesting.
I called Stanford and I said,
“do you give financial aid for a
masters program?” I remember it as
a chuckle, it’s hard to believe that
they did actually chuckle, but I
remember them saying, Oh, no, no, no.
If you want to come to
Stanford, you find your funding.
What I learned later was for master’s
degrees they don’t give funding, but if
you tell them you’re going in as a Ph.D.
student then they’ll find funding for you.
Interesting.
I didn’t know that game, so I told
them I was only coming for a Masters.
So I went to Honeywell and said, I got
accepted to Stanford, I can’t afford
Stanford, can you guys help me out?
And Honeywell said, No.
The policy is we pay for graduate school
if you work while you’re doing it.
And for most Honeywellers
that means you’re going to
the University of Minnesota.
So, you have to work part time and
go to school part-time and we’ll
help pay for your college tuition.
I said, Well, I want to do this program.
I’m not going to work, as you know,
pre-Zoom, you know what I mean?
Couldn’t work from California.
It was the very beginning of email
back then, and so anyway they said no.
Then I deferred a year, I deferred
my acceptance a year, and then I
asked again, and they said, No.
Then I applied for a scholarship
and I won a little scholarship.
It was this crazy scholarship
out of New York City.
It was a little bit of money, and
I went back to Honeywell, the third
time and I said, I’m going to have
to turn down this scholarship unless
you guys can help me go to Stanford.
Then my boss essentially took me aside
and said, Okay, we’re going to give
you money, but don’t you tell anyone.
[laughing] He said, The policy is
if you go to Minnesota and work
part-time you get reimbursement.
But he said, We are
going to give you money.
Don’t tell anyone.
We expect you to come back.
With, you know a handshake agreement
and he said, If anyone ever does
find out we’re going to say it
was because you were a female.
Because I was the only
female in the group.
Oh, wow.
So, then they didn’t have
to offer it to everyone.
But it took three times.
They said flat, “no” the first two times.
That’s the message I
want your folks to hear.
Gotta keep trying.
You keep trying.
They were very polite about
those no’s, but they were just
saying, We can’t, we can’t.
We can’t afford to pay for everyone
who wants to go to grad school, right.
So, eventually they found a
way and I went out and they
paid for that graduate program.
And I did come back, and I worked
for them for 15 years after that.
What were your major challenges in
transitioning back to working after
your out doing your masters and
not being on campus at Honeywell?
Well, you know, there wasn’t much.
I put myself through undergraduate
so when I went to Stanford it was the
first time, I was a full-time student.
It was the first time I ever
lived in a dorm actually.
So, that’s interesting, because when
I went to Madison, they weren’t giving
housing to out of state students
because there was a housing crunch.
So I had my first, sort of dorm,
full-time student experience
when I went to Stanford.
And then I came back, and I went back
into the same research group I’d been
with and just resumed what I’d been doing.
So there wasn’t a hard
transition coming back.
I made my friendships and my
relationships before I left, and I
just stepped right back into them.
So you were at Honeywell for
about 15 years as a woman in
engineering during, I would guess,
the eighties and nineties, right?
So, not exactly corporate culture
that’s conducive to female engineers.
It was in the nineties.
So late eighties to the
early two thousands.
You would think I have a lot to say
about it [laughing] and I don’t.
Honestly.
I should think about it, I
really should, because I should
have a lot to say about that.
I was very often the only woman in the
room, but I wasn’t that aware of it.
I was a real tomboy growing up.
I’m still a tomboy.
I’m 56 years old, and I’m still a tomboy.
I was just one of the team.
It didn’t occur to me that I was a woman.
I didn’t feel like I was
treated any differently.
There was one incident in that 15 years
where I was pulled aside and my boss gave
me a fairly sizable mid-financial cycle,
gave me a fairly sizable raise, it was
like 13% or something, I don’t remember.
I said, What’s this?
Because it wasn’t the time for
annual raises, and he said, HR just
looked at equal pay, and based on
your performance ratings you’ve been
underpaid compared to your peers.
Wow.
By 13 percent?
I don’t remember, it was sizable at the
time and I was like, Great, free money.
But then it did occur to me
like, Okay, how long have I been
underpaid compared to my peers,
because you’re not offering backpay?
But, anyway, Honeywell was great to me.
I quickly got promoted.
I moved up the engineering ranks very
fast and then very quickly in management.
By the time I left in 15 years I was
director of the lab that I was hired into.
I had a hundred employees
in three countries.
Honeywell gave me a lot of opportunity,
and they didn’t hold me back in any way.
So, the fact that maybe for five
years I’d been underpaid compared
to my peers, it’s a data point.
It’s interesting, but I made
up for that with quite a lot
of promotions and opportunity.
What was the inflection point that
led you to say, I am done with
engineering and now I’m going to take
photographs and be a creative and sell
those photographs on the internet?
That’s a good question.
As you can imagine it’s very multifaceted.
I had been promoted quite quickly,
and part of it was people that
get Ph.D.'s and do research,
they don’t want to do management.
You’ll remember a big part of the
manager’s job was to find work.
Yeah, it was like, How do
I get that DARPA funding?
Oh yeah, to go to DARPA, to go to
clients and explain to them the talents
of your group and either team with them
to bid for government contracts, or
have them hire you as a subcontractor.
So, really it was almost like a very, very
highly specific technical marketing job.
Anyway, most people that get Ph.D.’s
they want to do technical work, so
they’re very happy to not have to go
do sales to sell themselves to clients.
So the fact that I was willing to do that
on their behalf, it was very interesting,
because I became a manager of the group.
My first management position, where
I had 15 engineers in my group, I was
younger than all of them by 15 years.
I was probably 30 years old, and
they were all in their mid-forties.
But they were not in any way
resentful that they were reporting
to a woman, nor that I was so young.
Because I was willing to do a
job that none of them wanted to
do, which is go talk to clients.
What happened is, I was willing to do
it, I turned out to be really good at it,
and I got promoted, promoted, promoted.
After 15 years though I
was traveling so much.
I remember turning to my favorite
boss that I’d ever had in my years
at Honeywell, John Wayrock, and
I said, at that time I was now 35
years old and I said, I wish I had
this job at 55, because of all this
travel, and I want to start a family.
And I can’t be traveling this much.
I said, I think at 55 I would
love to be traveling this much.
So anyway, there was a convergence of
things that happened after 15 years.
I wanted to start a family.
Honeywell had just been tried to be
acquired by General Electric, which
had failed due to antitrust; and
then two years later it was then
successfully acquired by Allied Signal.
Allied Signal.
I remember that.
That was around the time
I left as well, actually.
By then I was now director of a lab,
and those years of acquisition were
really stressful on the employees.
And in a stressful work environment it
brings out the worst of people’s behaviors
and so the work environment wasn’t as fun.
It had been kind of a
golden era in the nineties.
There was lots of government
funding, we all liked each other.
Our particular group was the best
in what we did in the country, and
we knew it, and everybody knew it.
So, there was this little
golden era of research.
Then there was an attempted takeover of
Honeywell by GE, and then when we were
finally acquired by Allied Signal, the air
was just sort of let out of the balloon.
Allied Signal was a conglomerate
in a nonspecific, really wide
net industrial conglomerate.
Nothing very sexy.
[laughing] And people that
worked in Honeywell were really
proud of the work they did.
And it turned out that Allied Signal
was one of these companies that was
built on the model the only thing that
matters is earnings per share and every
quarter the earnings per share have
to go up and that’s all that matters.
When that message got delivered to
our 500 engineers in the research
center, it was just the end of an era.
We cared about the work; we didn’t
care about earnings per share.
[laughing] It was the work that mattered.
People worked incredible
amounts of overtime without pay.
It was that kind of environment.
Because they loved the work.
So, Allied Signal came along,
the environment changed, the
work was no longer fun, and I was
also needing to start a family.
So, quite honestly, we had our first
daughter by then, and I was having
trouble having another child, and
actually started working with a fertility
doctor who suggested I quit work.
She said, We can’t help you, because
there was nothing physically wrong.
She said, My last and only
suggestion is you try quitting work.
And the environment had changed,
and I said to my husband, If we
don’t try, I’ll always regret it.
So, those things converged.
But the interesting thing, one more thing.
I think it matters because this
does have to do with being a female.
I had been fast-tracked and tapped
to go into executive management.
So, when I announced I was leaving
I got called into a room with a
bunch of executives, a bunch of
presidents and vice presidents.
It was the most ridiculous meeting.
They’re all sitting in a semi-circle and
I’m in the middle of the semi-circle.
How awful.
It was ridiculous.
And it was meant to retain me,
that was the point of the meeting.
They called me into the room, and
they said, Why are you leaving?
We had plans for you.
By then it was very much about fertility.
And I sat there, and I thought
to myself, Here’s a bunch of men
[laughing] , I knew them all,
because I had interacted with them.
They were all divorced.
They were all not on good
terms with their own children.
They were all on second
or third marriages.
There were none of them role models.
I sat and I said to myself,
Do I tell them the truth?
Do I tell them it’s fertility?
What do I say?
Don’t burn your bridges,
you’ve got to come back.
This is all going through my head.
In case you need to come
back, don’t burn any bridges.
I’m just sitting there looking at , and
I don’t even remember what I said.
I think I told them we were trying
to have a child, and that this
is what the doctor recommended.
But the interesting thing is, by
the time I left I was 38 years
old, maybe, and I was on several
national boards for aerospace.
I was flying to Washington, D.C.
regularly to consult about how the
government should fund aerospace research.
My Stanford aerospace graduate
peers were now directors and vice
presidents at Boeing, at NASA.
I was well connected in the community.
We’re going to get to France, but
less to remember by the time I
left there were only two airplane
builders, Airbus and Boeing.
And Airbus is located in Toulouse, France.
And everybody knew that my husband
and I had a love affair with France.
I was perfectly steeped in this industry.
Do you know what I mean?
I’ve always felt like it was
a lack of imagination on their
part to let me walk out the door.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
They should’ve said, Go do
what you need to do but when
you want to come back call us.
Or when you want to come back in
any manner, even part-time, call us.
But they didn’t say that.
They just said, Okay.
See you later.
See you later.
I really feel honestly that it
was just a lack of imagination.
It didn’t occur to them that they
could’ve done that, they could’ve
offered that, and I think I would’ve
come back in a part-time manner.
And they would’ve had the
experience and everything that
you had previously, even better.
Cool professional network.
One of the other things that
contributed to me wanting to leave
was it’s a slow moving industry.
Thirty-year cycles of products.
It takes seven years to do flight
testing on a new piece of equipment.
Long time.
So it was one of those things that drove
me crazy because it was a slow industry.
At the same time, I’ve been out
of Honeywell now for about that
amount of time now, about 15 years,
and my colleagues are still there.
I still have a professional network
in the aerospace industry, because
it’s a slow moving industry.
And people stick around.
People stick around, and products
stick around, for 30 years.
Stability and reliability.
Yeah.
So, the fact that they let me walk
out the door with all of that and
not just say come back we’ll make it
work, I just felt like shame on them.
And the blog started after you left,
and how is it related to France?
You said that there was a love
affair with France, but you left
Honeywell, you worked on your
family, and then this blog happened.
Yes, another thing happened.
By then Allied had bought Honeywell,
and Allied Signal’s corporate
headquarters were in Morristown, NJ.
And I remember flying out to there,
I had to fly out there all the time,
and an executive HR person called
me aside and said, By the way, sort
of enjoy this position now, because
this is the last position you’ll
have where you get to call the shots.
After this you’re married to the company.
What?
They literally said that.
That’s awful.
I came home from that trip and I
said, I’m not married to Honeywell,
I’m married to you, Steve, you
know, I’m married to my husband.
I like my job, I’m a hard worker,
but I am not married to Honeywell,
I’m married to my family.
It was the wrong thing to
say to me at that moment.
So, I leave Honeywell, and they let me
leave, and I leave for good, I don’t
harbor any intention of going back.
Then just as the fertility
doctor predicted, I got pregnant
right away, and we had our son
[laughter] . Yes, she was right.
So now I’m a stay at home mom with two
kids, but used to working full-time.
My husband had been a stay at home Dad
with our third daughter, and we like to
say we high fived and switched roles,
which is what we did, but of course
that transition took over five years.
He had only been working part-time,
and then he ramped up to full-time.
It was a step back financially for me
to quit working obviously, and we didn’t
get parity for a long time after that.
But, I remember that story about, You’re
going to be married to Honeywell, I
remember thinking, No, I want a life.
I don’t want a career.
At the end of the day I want
to have had a rich life, not
necessarily just a rich career.
Again, I went into math and science
because I was good at it, not because
it was necessarily a burning passion.
What we’re both passionate
about was creativity.
He’s a writer, and I would say I’m
a visual artist, and my current
primary medium is photography.
I was more into visual arts, he was into
writing, and those were always hobbies.
But we always dreamed of early retirement
where we could do that more full-time.
The thing that we carry then that you
don’t have to stop doing someday, because
you can be a writer when you’re 80.
It’s hard to be a software
engineer when you’re 80.
So, when I quit work and became a
full-time mom, and those first years
of children are just overwhelming,
and then after three or four years, it
was when my son went into preschool,
I remember picking my head up and
saying, Okay, what do I want to do now?
I always wanted to do visual art, and what
I happened to be best at was photography.
My husband and I had actually
taken the kids to Southern France.
My son is six, and we put the kids
in school in southern France and we
went and lived there for six months.
How do you just pick up and do that?
I don’t get that.
You just do it?
How can you do that?
I just went to France.
Yeah, I am skipping out on
a lot of important details,
because I’m worried about time.
My husband's work is seasonal,
he does taxes, and it’s very,
very intense from January ‘til
May, and then it’s not intense.
And he makes 90% of his income
between January and May and 10% the
rest of the year filing extensions
for people and that kind of thing.
So, he had seasonal work, and
I wasn’t working, I was still
a full-time mom at that point.
There’s also one other big thing I
skipped over with the early college years.
I put myself through college, and I didn’t
have foresight, it just stumbled into
all this, but I really liked college.
I had fun.
I got through college, at that time I was
borrowing $6,000 a year, and that paid
tuition and living at Madison those years.
And suddenly I got out, and I think
my first job at Honeywell was like
$35,000 a year, so I was used to living
on $6,000, I was being paid $35,000
and I just kept living on $6,000.
Good for you.
That’s awesome.
It wasn’t that I was super smart
about compound interest or anything,
[laughing] you know what I mean?
Now, today on the web there’s all sorts of
groups that do financial independent stuff
and the ways to severely below your means,
so you can do a really early retirement.
I had put myself through college living
on next to nothing, and I continued to
live like that for a good 10 years after
I started making a professional income.
So, I saved a lot of money young, and as
you learn compound interest is wonderful.
So by the time we were middle age, we
actually had some financial security.
Not financial independence, but
enough financial security that we
could go to France for six months.
And that’s what led to that.
I was a foreign exchange
student in high school.
My husband had lived in Paris for a
year when he was a college junior.
We had always been travelers.
We always dreamed about
those kinds of adventures.
We both had ambitions to be creative.
But we were doing the very
traditional, suburban thing,
raising kids and working full-time.
But we always had those dreams.
Then by the time we got into our forties,
we put our kids in French Emergence
School, and then I wanted them to
go to school in France, and go from
just being conversational in French
to being actually fluent in French.
So that’s what prompted
the trips to France.
So, you’re asking about what
started the photography.
While we were in southern France,
the kids were in school, and I had
time for the first time really to
really commit myself to creative work.
And I just thought up a project,
I’m going to take one photo a day
of something in my environment.
There was inspiration for that.
I was following other creative bloggers.
They looked like they were having a blast
sharing their work online, and I just felt
like, I want to be part of this community.
These guys are having fun.
And I’m here in France for
six months, what can I do?
What am I good at?
Well, I’m good at photography.
I walk the dog every day.
We brought the dog to France.
So, I’ll just find something on my
daily walk, I’ll photograph it and share
it, and that’s what STILL came from.
So, it’s really just simply still life
nature photography, but I did it in a
very, very modern aesthetic, very graphic,
and it hit some kind of zeitgeist.
And within six months of starting,
Martha Stewart called and said,
Can we feature you in the magazine?
And it just snowballed from there.
Wow, Martha Stewart calling.
You must’ve been beside
yourself when that happened?
I was flabbergasted.
I really, truly thought five
people would look at my pictures.
One of them would be my mom
and one would be my husband.
I was doing it for myself.
It was a creative outlet.
I wanted to participate in the creative
community online and I felt like, you
know, you can kind of just go in and
follow, but I wanted to be a participant.
You know what I mean?
I’m going to share my work and
I’ll comment on other peoples work.
I wanted a place at the
table, is what I like to say.
So, I thought it was a
personal creative exercise.
It hit a nerve, and then it snowballed,
and then it got its own momentum.
And here I am eight years later,
and I’m still doing the same thing.
I’ve been making one image
a day for eight years.
One image a day for eight years.
Wow.
That’s amazing dedication.
It’s kind of like the crazy cat lady.
What does your routine look like?
You must have a routine that
manages when you take the picture,
because you have to do it every day.
Yeah, every day.
I do when I know that I’m
going to be traveling.
For example I was just
out of town for two days.
If I can I’ll bring my
laptop and a camera.
If I can’t I’ll make extra images the
days before I travel and preload them.
But I am making the equivalent
of a new image every day.
I’ve been doing it for eight years
and it’s very, very infrequent
that I actually preload.
Most images are made that day.
Like, today’s image was made
today, and I will post it tonight.
I haven’t posted it yet.
It will get posted before I go to
bed, and it’ll be tomorrow's post.
So, what’s it look like?
I find something in my environment
usually while I’m walking,
sometimes it’s when I’m driving.
I’ve been known to pull over and roadsides
are full of really interesting stuff.
[laughing]
Anywhere I find interesting things,
and I bring them home and I usually
photograph it on my kitchen floor
because I have skylights in my
kitchen and it’s all natural lighting,
and it’s on a white background.
So, I just use posterboard or tagboard.
Sometime during the day I
find something to photograph.
I bring it home, at some point in
the day I’ll photograph it which
takes another 15 to 20 minutes.
And then usually around dinnertime
I’ll edit the photos on Photoshop.
I’ll pick the one I’m going to post,
and that’s another 10 to 15 minutes.
Then right before bed I post it to the
blog so that it refreshes overnight,
and I type a little something for each
thing and that takes another 15 minutes.
It’s like 15 to 20 minutes,
three to four times a day.
And that’s the beauty of it,
is that it fits in the cracks.
I don’t have to block out an hour and
a half every day to do STILL blog.
Do you ever worry about repeating
yourself or doing something
that’s been done before?
Do you not remember?
Do you not care?
How do you feel about your past
work influencing your current work?
I don’t care.
Every spring the fiddlehead ferns come
up, and every spring I photograph them.
I remember writing this spring when
they came up, I said, I’m going to
keep photographing fiddlehead ferns
until I feel like I’ve captured
the essence of fiddlehead ferns.
I’ve done cattails every year.
I’ve done fiddlehead ferns every year.
There’s the obvious things.
You do lilacs in spring.
You do burdock in summer and
thistles in summer or whatever.
Those are obvious things.
Of course the fall leaves in fall.
The more fun challenge of doing it
now this many years is to take a
whole fall and not do any leaves.
The leaves are so obvious.
They’re so loud.
They’re so in your face.
They’re everywhere.
[laughing]
You see red, orange and yellow,
that’s what your eye goes to.
You can’t not look, right?
So the interesting challenge is capturing
fall without doing the fall leaves.
What else is going on in fall?
And then that gets fun again.
That can carry me for a while.
So, I find nature absolutely
endlessly fascinating.
I don’t see ever running out of topics.
I don’t think I will ever,
maybe capture the essence of
a fiddlehead fern unfurling.
It’s infinitely inspiring.
It sounds super cliché but it’s the truth.
How has the pandemic affected
your work and your walks and
the things that you’re doing?
The interesting thing about the
pandemic, I actually feel kind of
guilty about it is that people are
suffering, and people are suffering
physically, emotionally and financially.
And for me the pandemic
has been the opposite.
It’s even more time for walks.
It doesn’t change my financial picture.
I don’t have to worry about that.
So, in some ways it’s slowing down and
everyone’s slowing down has made even
more time for me to do this thing I love.
Because even though I’m what you call
self-employed now, when everybody’s
buzzing, everybody’s busy, you
get invitations, you’re social.
I very, very much like to
be part of a community.
As a matter of fact, when I quit working
at Honeywell, the biggest thing I missed
in the end was being part of a team.
Being part of a group of smart
people trying to solve a problem.
I really loved that.
I loved that team,
creative problem solving.
So, in creative work, being
an artist is very solitary,
it’s extremely solitary work.
Anyway, the pandemic has made it easier.
There’s more time, there’s less demands.
There’s no social demands on my time.
Really in some ways it
hasn’t changed STILL.
Doing the STILL blog creative
is kind of immune to that.
You’ve worked with such
large brands as well, right?
You’ve worked with Target and
the Scottish National Opera
in addition to Martha Stewart.
Yep, Martha Stewart, I partnered with
West Elm, I partnered with Target.
Target put my stuff on bedding.
West Elm made these cool
transparent pictures.
It really led from one thing to another.
It just got this momentum of its
own that I still can’t explain.
It’s funny, I’ve been doing it eight
years, and really if you look at
it it’s like this, what’s the deal?
It’s just some dried flowers
on a white background.
I have 17,000 followers on Instagram, so
people know my work and they recognize it.
I call it the STILL police, people
out there saying, I saw this,
and it’s not credited to you.
Is it your work?
[laughing] They’re out there making
sure I get copyright credit where
it’s due, and they’re usually right.
It is my work, and I didn’t get
credited, but often every now and then
it’s not hard to repeat what I’m doing.
Every now and then I’m
like, No, that’s not mine.
So clearly you have had relationships
with and have sold your photography to
large companies, but you also license
your photography to anyone who really
wants to purchase it from the internet.
What are the differences between dealing
with a large company and individuals?
Is there anything that you’ve learned
about dealing with big companies that
perhaps you’d wished you had known earlier
on when you first started the blog?
I guess you never really anticipated
working with large companies and you
have all this Honeywell experience.
But there must be something
that strikes you about that.
I sell my images a lot.
Probably every day I get
requests for images now.
I do sell to individuals, although I don’t
make that well known because it takes a
lot of emails back and forth just to sell
one image, and I don’t charge that much,
so it’s not a very good use of my time.
I really like working with professionals.
My favorite people to work with are other
designers, because they know exactly
what they want and they’re very decisive.
Whereas if I’m selling an image or
a grouping of images to Sarah in
Omaha, there’s a lot of, Do you think
this, or do you think that, or do
you have anything similar to this?
It’s just not a good use of my time,
whereas the designer will come and say, We
want these four images for this project.
Can you give us a price?
I just love it.
It’s efficient, and I always actually
love to see what they do with it,
because they do very interesting things.
The big corporations, so West
Elm and Target, in particular,
they were fun to work with.
I loved working with Target.
West Elm happened to come to me
the same year, so I was working
with them at the same time.
I had two bookend experiences.
Target had me do all the design
work even down to working
with the printers themselves.
West Elm kind of just more or less
asked me for the images, and then they
did all of the product design, and
just told me what they were doing.
Even though my name was on the product
they were going to brand it as STILL by
Mary Jo Hoffman, but they were really
telling me what they were going to do.
Whereas Target actually
let me do the design.
It was two bookend experiences.
I actually don’t mind either.
I don’t mind just selling the images
and letting people do what they want
with them if they’re professionals.
But I did have a lot of fun working with
Target and I really like that company.
What is exciting you right now?
What are you working on that you
can’t wait to show to the world?
That’s a good question.
In eight years you kind of go up and down.
You can’t stay in an amplified or
amped up creative mode all the time.
So, I think I’m in kind of a regrouping.
It ebbs and flows right?
Yeah, I’m in an ebb I would say right now.
But I have been approached by a book
agent to do a book, and I’ve been
thinking about that for a couple years.
It makes a lot of sense.
A coffee table book with all your images.
Boy, that would be beautiful I’m sure.
Yeah, it makes a ton of sense.
It’s an obvious fit.
The only reason I say I’m in an
ebb and the only reason I’m not
sort of like She’s ready to go.
The only reason I’m not ready to go is
that I’ve been doing this for eight years.
I now have 3,000 to 5,000 images and to
start to sort it is an overwhelming task.
I have to get over the hump somehow.
I don’t know how I’m going to do it.
I can’t even explain
why I can’t get started.
My friends, my husband, the agent,
they’re all like, “just pick your
hundred favorite images,” and I’m
like, “there’s 3,000.” The irony is
there aren't a hundred favorites.
You could maybe crowdsource some of that.
You could maybe publish the images and put
up a poll of some sort and ask people who
are following you to pick their favorites?
That’s very interesting.
I absolutely could.
But I’ve been selling images for a
year, so I know what people like.
People like rainbows.
If I do a rainbow with fall
leaves, people love it.
If I take dried flowers and arrange them,
people like gradience, they like rainbows.
There’s certain things people like but
that’s not necessarily what I like.
I could probably pick the hundred most
popular based on Instagram and Pinterest
feedback, but that wouldn’t be true to me.
That’s right.
And that’s what I’m wrestling
with is, I’m a minimalist.
The ones that are the most true to me are
the ones that have been most clear, and
they tend to be desaturated, very minimal,
very uncluttered, lots of white space.
That’s a very personal thing that I
don’t think would sell a bunch of books.
So, I’m wrestling with is
it my personal expression?
You can see where I’m struggling.
[laughing]
This is the creative process
that you’re struggling through.
This is it, right?
Right.
So, if anybody out there wants to just
come and make those decisions for me.
I want West Elm right now.
I want somebody to come in and then
just say, We’re going to look at your
portfolio, and we’ll make the decisions,
and you approve or don’t approve.
That’s probably what I’m waiting for.
I wish you luck with that,
[laughing] maybe that’ll happen.
It’s been so great to talk with you
and to spend my time with you this day.
Is there any final thought you have
for our listeners, from someone who
has experienced so much in engineering
and someone who has been so creative?
I appreciate this talk;
it’s been super fun.
It’s funny because I started the
hour by saying that I was born in
’64, which is the end of the baby
boomers, and yet in some way my
careers turned out very typical of
today’s millennials and Gen Xer’s.
I traded, sort of traditional
career security and career success
for a life, a more balanced
life, a more fulfilling life.
There was a financial cost with that
for sure, and part of the reason
I could do that is I was lucky
enough to have saved money young.
So, I had the financial security to
make those choices later in life.
That would be one
takeaway I think for that.
My husband and I about 10 years ago,
one final thought I guess is that
you’ve heard the express What if?
About 10 years ago my husband
was taking a continuing education
class, and the teacher at the class
said, Don’t ask yourself what if.
Ask yourself what would it take.
It was a funny little switch that flipped
for both of us, and suddenly instead
of, Wouldn’t it be nice to go to France
someday became, What would it take to
go to France and put the kids in school?
That’s a really subtle but important shift
and that’s made all the difference for us.
That’s a wonderful nugget of wisdom.
Like, what would it take?
It’s just so subtle, but so empowering.
Right.
It’s incredibly effective.
Suddenly you’re being very practical and
it’s amazing how quickly pieces do fall
into place once you change that mindset
from really from passive to active.
This has been a blast.
I hope people find some
takeaways and find it inspiring.
I’m sure they will.
Thank you so much for spending
your time with me today.
It’s been wonderful and a
great pleasure talking to you.
Alright.
Thanks so much guys.
Mary Jo Hoffman is creator of
STILL, a blog that posts one image
daily of gathered natural objects.
You can find her work on stillblog.net,
and you should also follow her
on Instagram @maryjohoffman.
She is on Pinterest as well.
You’ve been listening to The TEN7 Podcast.
Find us online at ten7.com/podcast.
And if you have a second,
do send us a message.
We love hearing from you.
Our email address is podcast@ten7.com.
Until next time, this is Ivan Stegic.
Thanks for listening.