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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
She was topless, reading a vintage copy of Vogue, perched sideways on the lid of a sage green toilet. One leg on the sink, leaning back against the cream colored wall . I was crouched in a bathtub with a 28-70mm f/2 lens, acting like this was a normal Tuesday afternoon.
And in that moment, framing her through beautiful refracted window light and a kind of beautiful defiance, I thought:
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
But we’ll come back to that.
There’s a moment, maybe you’ve had it too, where you open your own website, scroll through your “Overview gallery, and think,
“God. Who the fuck took these?”
Because it couldn’t have been you.
Not you now. Not the you who’s seen some shit.
What’s staring back is sterile. Soulless. Designed for approval.
A perfectly safe prison built out of softboxes, moodboards, and mid-tier commercial polish.
You used to chase light, not because you wanted to, but because you didn’t have that Profoto kit you do now.
Now you chase invoices.
You used to break the rules - because you didn’t know any better.
But now you teach them.
You used to shoot with your gut.
Now you shoot with a brief, three rounds of revisions, and a gnawing fear you might lose the client if you get a little too you.
And here’s the real mindfuck:
It worked.
You got the gigs.
You nailed the shot list.
You were a good little content machine.
And somewhere in that success —
Your voice crawled into a corner and died.
My name is Patrick and this is the Terrible Photographer Podcast. Today’s episode is called ‘Stinky Dead Mouse’.
SEGMENT 2: STYLE AS STRAITJACKET (6:00–11:00)
Let’s talk about style.
At first, it’s a revelation, a second skin.
A miracle that someone finally sees your work and says, “I knew that was you.”
But eventually, that skin doesn’t breathe.
It hardens.
Cracks.
Becomes armor. And then a cage.
You made something that worked once —
And now you're stuck selling photocopies of it to people who don’t give a shit about the original.
And if you dare break out of it?
If you show up with new work that’s raw, experimental, maybe even god forbid ugly?
You’ll confuse your audience.
You’ll irritate your website editor or agent.
You’ll lose out on jobs and end up on the street eating someone else's left-over Chili’s Potato Skins and wondering how it all went sideways.
But here’s the deal:
If your work starts boring the hell out of you,
then it’s already dead.
And you’re just Weekend-at-Bernie-ing it until the client signs off.
And look, maybe you’ve never taken that kind of leap. Maybe no one ever gave you permission to.
Maybe you were told it wouldn’t be profitable, or practical, or worth your time.
That was me.
A few years back, I was deep in my corporate photography role, bored to death. Smiling people holding guitars. Executives in J.Crew jackets stepping out of Teslas. It was all clean, polished, harmless, and I was dying inside.
So I did what we all do when we’re looking to get inspired, I went to Pinterest. Then when that didn’t work, I went to my library and and sat in the isles, and flipped pages of musty photography books that seemed like they haven’t been opened in 20 years.
I must admit, my ADHD was in hyper-drive, a little manic even, cramming like I had a Poly-Sci final that I forgot about.
Through my random and arbitrary pursuit of something, I became Alice, and I chased that fucking rabbit down it’s hole all the to Russian/Eastern European fashion work. This weird glam/fashion hybrid — like Helmut Newton met post-Soviet chaos and lit it all with cigarette smoke.
I found images of women in lingerie on cold balconies. Not sexy for men. Sexy for themselves. Defiant. Self-possessed. Women who looked like they lit the cigarette with your rules and didn’t even inhale.
Everything I’d seen before, the tits-and-ass beach shoots, the fake boudoir empowerment stuff — it all felt like cosplay for validation. But this? This was raw. This was power without apology.
So I took the leap. I put out a call. Grabbed a model friend. Booked a stylist. A makeup artist. We ended up in this vintage feeling San Diego apartment. Chevron wooden covered floors, canvas wrapped books on hand stained shelves, a bedroom that looked like my grandmother picked out from a 1950s Sears catalog. The bathroom naturally lit like a French film. Sage green tile. Not a modern fixure in sight.
She was topless, reading Vogue, perched sideways on a toilet with one leg on the sink. I was crouched in the bathtub with a 28-70mm lens, shooting like this is normal, like I’ve done this 1000 times before. But in that moment, framing her through cracked light and and with all her attitude, I had this overwhelming sense:
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
And no, It wasn’t about nudity. It wasn’t about rebellion. It was about making something that felt free.
That felt human.
And maybe that’s what creativity is. Not polish. Not perfection. Not even planned. Just the audacity to make something real — without asking for permission first.
That shoot was a pivotal moment for me, it fundamentally changed my relationship with the craft of photography. The part that had quietly been dying under layers of art director briefs, product pages and visual style guides. I’d been living in the world of Target campaigns where all the kids were happy wearing color coordinating sweaters and the diverse and attractive parents laughed and looked on at how perfect their life was.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t Patrick the Clean Commercial Photographer. I was just someone making work he actually had control over.
And the truth? I got some subtle (and no subtle) and passive (and not so passive) DMs from people that I knew about this new direction. My mom called me one day and asked if I shoot naked women now in the most judgmental tone that only a disappointed mother can.
Some however, loved it, they were encouraging and said that I should pursue it more. There was a french fashion photographer that reached out to me out of the blue and said it was compelling and interesting and I should make more of that.
Most people though didn’t care. But I did.
And that was enough.
SEGMENT 3: THE 60/40 RULE — A WAY OUT (11:00–14:30)
So how do you fix it?
How do you fix the boredom.
How do you fix the lame portfolio.
How do you remove the stinky dead mouse thats behind the drywall of your work.
You cheat the system.
You make the work that pays the bills — the polished, predictable stuff. 60% of your portfolio, your feed, your website… that’s for them. For the client who needs to show their boss you're reliable. For the producer who just wants someone who won’t blow the timeline.
You give them what they’re asking for. The clean, digestible, brand-safe shit.
But the other 40%?
That’s your rebellion.
That’s where the blood returns to your fingers.
Thats the bass notes in your work.
Great art needs contrast.
Portfolios are no different.
Work that’s the strange, cinematic, emotionally reckless, beautifully impractical work that no one asked for — and that you desperately need to survive.
Make the work that’s too weird for the grid.
Too raw for LinkedIn.
Too honest for the agency brief.
Shoot portraits that don’t make sense.
Light things wrong on purpose.
Pick up a camera you don’t know how to use.
Make fake campaigns for fake brands that feel more you than anything you’ve done for a real client.
Write your own brief. Build a visual world that only you could’ve made. Let it be messy, inconsistent, even a little unhinged.
Because that 40%? That’s not the bonus round. That’s your life support.
It’s the part you’ll come back to when the client work dries up, or the algorithm tanks, or the well of easy inspiration runs dry. It’s the work you’ll be proud of in five years. The work that reminds you why you picked up a camera in the first place.
Want to make it practical?
Start by blocking off one shoot per month that has no point.
No goal. No pitch deck. Just curiosity.
Keep a folder on your desktop called “I Don’t Know What This Is.”
Put the weird shit in there. The misfires. The color grades you’d never show a client. The ideas that make no strategic sense.
And once in a while? Post one.
Watch who responds. Not likes. Not shares. Responses.
That’s your people talking back.
Because clients may hire you for the work they’ve seen —
But the right clients hire you for what they never would’ve asked for in the first place.
Not to replicate.
Not to echo.
But to lead.
SEGMENT 4: BRAND ISN’T A STRAITJACKET — IT’S A FREQUENCY (14:30–18:00)
Let’s talk about brand.
Not the buzzword crap. Not the cookie-cutter template from Canva that every other soccer-mom photographer is sporting these days.
I’m talking about your actual Brand — the real brand — is the connective tissue between wildly different things that still feel like you.
Brand isn’t your logo, it’s who you are, it’s how you present yourself to the world. It’s how you talk to people, its the thing that people feel when they are around you, it’s the clothes you wear to the shoot, and yes it’s the photography that makes up your portfolio.
There are a lot of people, maybe you’re one of them that never even think about their brand. They “are who they are” and don’t give a shit about being intentional.
Hats off to those brave souls, but thats not who I’m talking to.
I’m talking to you nerds who have developed such a riddget and immoveable set of rules about your business, you would rather die than to show something on your instagram feed that doesn’t fall within a color pallet. Or you over think your demographic so much you think they can’t handle the occasional selfie from you without 2-hours of makeup.
Or if you’re like me, for a long time thought I should only shoot what is sellable what is safe and what won’t offend anyone.
Too many people treat brand like a set of rules instead of a personality.
Their brand might look nice and put together, but it has no soul.
“If I shoot something different, it’ll confuse people.”
“If I experiment, I’ll lose the following I’ve built.”
That’s not a brand. That’s creative Stockholm syndrome.
I do want to say something from the jump. I haven’t figured this out. I too am still oppressive and nervous about posting new things or trying new things. I am not immune from this thinking.
I am in the trenches with you. I am not standing from the mountain top saying I’ve made it, I’m walking along with you, whispering that there has to be a better way to the top.
If you’re a portrait shooter and tomorrow you start posting muddy, poorly framed high school baseball shots because your neighbor begged you to — that’s not risk. That’s a lapse in judgment.
But if you shoot still life with the same soul you shoot faces with?
Same shadows, same storytelling, same color temperature and care? That’s not off-brand. That’s range.
Seth Godin nails this.
He says, “If Nike opened a hotel, I think we would be able to guess pretty accurately what it would be like. If Hyatt made sneakers, we'd have no clue.”
You can picture the Nike hotel: bold colors, sleek design, a state-of-the-art gym, and staff uniforms that echo the brand's athletic ethos. It's unmistakably Nike.
But if Marriott tried to launch a sneaker?
Nobody knows what that would look like. Because Marriott doesn’t mean anything to people. They’re a commodity, not a character.
Your brand is not what you shoot.
It’s how you shoot.
It’s how you see.
And when you evolve that point of view, you’re not breaking anything — you’re building something stronger.
Look at Picasso. Blue Period. Rose Period. Cubism. Surrealism. Completely different visual languages — yet unmistakably him every single time.
Or Bowie — Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, the suited elder icon. Each reinvention made his brand bigger, not broken.
This isn’t deviation. This is individuation — what Jung called the merging of conscious and unconscious identity. Evolution that keeps the soul intact.
The art world celebrates that. Commerce punishes it.
So maybe your next body of work looks nothing like the last — good. Maybe it scares you a little — even better. That might not be "off-brand." That might be the first honest thing you’ve made in years.
CLOSING THOUGHTS (18:00–20:00)
So, yeah. We’re back in that bathroom now.
Alison’s reading Vogue. I’m crouched in a bathtub like a feral raccoon with a camera. And I’m realizing I don’t want to go back to “normal.”
Because this — this unplanned, unbranded, unapproved moment — feels more true than anything I’ve made in years.
And no, it wasn’t just because there was a topless woman in front of me. It was because for the first time in a long time, I was making something without fear. Without asking permission. Without caring whether it fit the algorithm or made a mood board or checked a box.
I was making something that made me feel alive.
So if you’re stuck in the loop — making work that’s technically perfect but emotionally empty — maybe it’s time to climb into your own metaphorical bathtub.
Make something weird. Make something that scares you a little. Make something that doesn’t make sense — until it does.
Because maybe the problem isn’t that your work is bad. Maybe it’s just that it’s safe.
And safe never changed anyone’s life.
So fuck the mood boards. Fuck the script. Light the thing wrong. Break your own rules. And make something that feels like you.
Even if no one claps.
Especially if no one claps.