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Times are approximate—use them as chapters in your host.
The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative professionals working through the parts of the creative process no gear review or business course ever covers.
Each episode is 30 to 40 minutes. Solo. Story-driven. Built around mental health, artistic identity, and what honest work costs in a career rewarding performance over truth.
This is not a photography podcast about cameras, presets, or client strategy. This is a podcast about the inner experience of being a creative professional, made for the mid-career photographer or designer who has mastered the technical side but lost the thread.
Hosted by Patrick Fore, commercial photographer, author, and former lead photographer and brand designer for Taylor Guitars. His work has appeared globally for clients like Nike, Petco, and Verizon. He built this show because none of the podcasts he found addressed the real problem.
If you are a photographer or creative professional who feels competent on the outside and quietly lost on the inside, you are a Terrible Creative. This is your podcast.
Episode 27 - Permission to Quit
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a listener. East Coast. Commercial portrait photographer. Pretty Big clients. Magazine covers. Decedent Campaigns. A portfolio so clean and beautiful the line between commercial work and art was blurred beyond the point of distinction.
We'd never met. Truthfully I had never heard of him. He had shot campaigns that I had seen though. And surprisingly enough he had been following the podcast for about a month or so.
The email started out normal, thanking me for the podcast, saying how much he liked it - stuff I don’t like reading and I usually skip past. I caught the lines near the end where he wondered if I had some time to talk, how he just wanted to talk through some stuff.
That's something you don’t really say no to you know? I had no idea what would happen or what I could even offer, but I was game. Always want to support and be there for this weird little community and rebellion we’re forming.
So we set up a Zoom call.
He appeared on my screen like a still life: a Yankees coffee mug steaming, matching Yankees baseball cap casting shadows, sitting in what used to be a garage but now is a studio/archive complete with tan flat files and matted prints leaning against the wall.
Beautiful work. Perfect even. Perfect lighting. Perfect death.
That stool. You know the one. The black pleather seat, chrome legs... I can see some cracks on the black top from years of use. But now, it sits behind him as a background prop. Nobody sits on it. It just... gathers dust and performs.
And honestly, he looks like the kind of man who'd figured it all out. Trustworthy. He knew his shit and he didn’t have to perform it. He looks like the guy that i should be coming to for mentorship and advice. I think thats why I felt a little uneasy, like the dynamic was backwards.
But his eyes though, they don't lie.
And his eyes looked like someone who'd been holding his breath underwater for so long he'd forgotten what air felt like.
"To be honest Patrick, I haven't made anything for myself in over a year," he said, and the words fell between us like stones into still water. "Not a damn thing."
"And I listen to your podcast sometimes and honestly… I have to turn it off. Not because it's bad. Because it reminds me of who I used to be. And that person feels extinct."
I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat and listened, just a human listening to another human. Photographer to photographer you know. And it’s funny, even though I can write these podcasts and drone on in on about all kinds of things into a microphone. Sometimes when it counts, I lack the words.
So I just sat, nodded, sipped my own coffee and muttered the occasional empathetic, “I understand” or “I get it”.
What came next was less conversation and more like confession. Like watching someone finally stop pretending the dam wasn't cracking. He sat up in his chair and seemed to get more agitated, like he was about to perform something he had been rehearsing in his head for a long time.
He talked about AI eating the margins of his livelihood. About rates falling like autumn leaves. About clients who ghost like teenagers. About younger photographers flooding the market with work that felt more like personal branding than serious work.
He painted a picture of an industry in slow-motion collapse, where everyone was running harder and harder just to stay exactly where they were.
But then, he got quiet, looked off camera and after a few moments he said something that made the air in the room change:
"I'm just tired of performing passion I don't feel anymore. This used to be oxygen. Now it's... theater - I hate that I have to preform like I care about whatever the client is asking for."
"I wake up every morning and put on the costume of someone who still believes. I do the dance, say the lines, and to be really honest, And I'm just fucking exhausted."
The silence that followed felt like a church. He sipped his coffee, sat back in his chair like he just let go of some weight.
Then, barely audible:
"You know, my brother-in-law sells commercial real estate upstate. He says its decent money. Normal hours. He jokes that I should come work with him."
A pause. I think he was even surprised he said this. It came out so casually, like it was out of nowhere.
"I used to laugh about it, it used to be a joke with my wife” he said. “Like I would have a hard day and my wife would joke that I could always go sell with my brother.”
He paused again, not knowing whether he should proceed.
“I haven’t told anyone this, not even my wife, but last month I actually googled the cost of living in Albany - that I am actually seriously thinking about it. Maybe I could sell some gear and shoot for fun again, who knows.”
He didn't say this with shame. He said it like someone finally breathing. When he said that last line, I could see a little bit of life return to his soul.
And sitting there, watching this man I'd never met confess to considering a life that would have horrified his younger self, I realized something:
This conversation is happening in studios and coffee shops and converted garages across the country.
Creatives quietly calculating escape routes. Artists wondering if the thing they love still loves them back. Makers asking the question that used to be unthinkable:
What if I just... stopped?
Not failed. Not quit in anger or defeat. Just... stopped. Like a river changing course The way water finds its level.. Natural. Inevitable. Maybe even necessary.
If you're listening to this and something in your chest just clenched— If you've been Googling job postings at 2 AM— If you've been performing passion while feeling empty— If the fire that used to sustain you now feels like it's consuming you—
Then this episode is your permission slip.
Because maybe it's time we said the thing nobody wants to say:
You're allowed to grieve what this used to feel like. You're allowed to walk away from the version of creativity that's killing you. You're allowed to stop pretending the costume still fits.
Not forever. But long enough to remember who you were before all of this became a performance.
NTRO TRANSITION
[Brief musical signature - 3-4 seconds of contemplative acoustic guitar]
My name is Patrick Fore. This is the Terrible Photographer Podcast—honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. Today's episode is number 27: ‘Permission to Quit.'
[Music fades to silence]
ACT I: THE UNSPOKEN PANDEMIC
So here's what I didn't tell you about that conversation.
After I ended that Zoom call, I sat in my own garage studio—my own carefully curated backdrop of creative success—and felt something I hadn't felt in years. Relief.
(2-second pause)
Not because his story was tragic. But because it was honest.
And honesty, in our world, has become a fucking luxury we can't afford.
(2-second pause)
I think we work in an industry where admitting you’re creatively exhausted feels like betrayal. Like a failure you know?
We've been conditioned to believe that saying it out loud makes it real. So we just... keep quiet.
Instead, we perform.
We smile through the shoot. We post the behind-the-scenes reel. We say we’re “booked and blessed” when what we really are is bone-tired and bored.
We push through the burnout, the existential dread, the endless edits—all while pretending we’re still hungry.
And when you stop feeling it?
You fake it.
It’s a rhythm you get used to. A tempo that gets faster and faster until you don't even know if you're rushing or dragging. You're just trying not to get hit by a flying cymbal.
—--
[INSERT CLIP – ~15 sec from Whiplash]
Fletcher: “Were you rushing or were you dragging?”
Andrew: “I don’t know.”
Fletcher: “Start counting.” (followed by escalating tension or snare slap)
—----
That’s what it feels like.
Just trying to keep up with a career that no longer feeds you.
But here’s what the gatekeepers, the clients, the algorithms—don't want you to know:
(2-second pause)
Research finds that seven out of ten creative professionals reported burnout in the past year. Seven out of ten! The problem isn't a lack of resilience; it's a broken system. Think of it like a car engine. You wouldn't blame the engine for failing if you ran it at redline 24/7 without changing the oil. The burnout we're seeing in creative fields isn't an individual failure. It's the inevitable result of an industry that treats passion as an endless, renewable resource. For photographers specifically, the numbers are even worse, with 58% reporting creative burnout annually. The photographers in the trenches—the ones keeping the lights on—are seeing even higher rates. This isn't about working harder. It's about a fundamental flaw in how the industry operates.
This is about an entire industry that's been strip-mined of meaning and sold back to us as "opportunity."
(2-second pause)
I know because I’ve been there. That moment when you pick up your camera and feel... nothing. When the thing that used to feel like breathing starts feeling like drowning.
When you realize you're not creating anymore—you're just feeding the machine that's wearing your face.
We’re not on a hero’s journey anymore. We're on a treadmill to nowhere.
(3-second pause)
Because that's what nobody talks about in all this AI anxiety and industry disruption. The real crisis isn't about robots taking our jobs.
It's about something much more brutal.
ACT II: THE AI GRIEF NOBODY'S PROCESSING
(8-10 minutes)
[Subtle ambient pad underneath, barely audible]
Picture this: It's 1995. You're in a darkroom.
Red light. Chemical smell. Time moving different here—slower, thicker, like honey.
You slip the paper into the developer and watch. Nothing. Nothing. Then—like magic—an image starts to emerge from nothing.
A face. A moment. Something that didn't exist five seconds ago now exists forever.
You never knew exactly what you'd get. Every photograph was an act of faith.
There was mystery. Ritual. The kind of deep craft that required not just skill, but almost surrender.
[Pause]
Now? Auto-levels in Lightroom. One click. Perfect exposure. Perfect everything.
The mystery is gone.
And for some of us, the mystery was the whole point.
And I'll be honest - there's a bitter part of me that misses the exclusivity. When you had to understand f-stops and film stocks and chemistry just to get a decent shot. When not everyone could do this.
That sounds terrible to say out loud. But it's true.
There was identity in being one of the few who understood light. Pride in technical mastery. A secret society of people who spoke in focal lengths and shutter speeds.
Now your nephew can take a portrait with his iPhone that's technically better than what I was shooting ten years ago.
And the bitter part of me wants to say: 'But does he understand why it works?'
But here's the thing I'm learning to swallow: Maybe that's not his job.
Maybe the real question isn't 'Did you earn the right to make this?' but 'Does this move someone?'
Maybe the democratization of tools isn't the death of artistry - it's just the death of technical gatekeeping masquerading as artistry.
The darkroom ritual I'm mourning? Half of it was genuine craft. The other half was just... elitism with a red lightbulb.
And separating those two things - the craft from the club - that's the work we have to do."
[Cultural reference - brief audio clip potential]
Johnny Cash didn't need flawless pitch to make "Hurt" a monument of sorrow. His voice, a landscape of cracks and worn edges, tells a story no clean note ever could. The soul of his sound lives not in perfection, but in the echoes of its brokenness.
And Van Gogh's masterpieces weren't painted with a steady hand or "correct" technique, but with a wild current of emotion. And Leonard Cohen didn't sing—he whispered secrets with a throat of gravel and moonlight, proving that true beauty often carries the weight of its own ruin.
The cracks in the voice, the tremor in the hand—that's where the light gets in.
[Building the real fear]
But we're being sold a world where the cracks get automatically filled. Where the struggle gets optimized away. Where being human becomes a bug, not a feature.
It's not just that AI can make a photo. It's that it can make it without ever caring. And for some of us, that strips the magic out entirely.
This is grief. Real grief.
We're mourning the death of difficulty. The death of the unknown. The death of the thing that made us feel special for learning how to see.
Rick Rubin talks about "strategic elimination"—removing everything that doesn't serve the essential truth. But what happens when the elimination removes the human?
What happens when efficiency kills the wonderful, the fantastic, the moment thats to great to describe in words.
You're allowed to grieve this. You're allowed to miss the version of creativity that required faith.
You're allowed to feel like something sacred is being lost, even if you can't quite name what it is.
Because here's the thing about grief: it's not logical. It's not rational. It's not something you can optimize your way out of.
It just is.
And maybe that's exactly what we need to remember.
Which brings me to the three permissions nobody's giving you...
ACT III: THE THREE PERMISSIONS
Permission Number One: Quit the Version of Creativity That's Killing You
Michael Ernest Sweet, a street photographer, said this after his artistic crisis: "There is nothing more liberating than being an artist that isn't producing—being an artist in name only." Artistic Identity Crisis: "I Had Planned To Burn It All"
That line used to horrify me. Now it feels like salvation.
Because here's what I learned: You can quit being a photographer without quitting photography.
You can quit being a "creative professional" without quitting being creative.
You can fire the version of yourself that's performing passion and hire back the version that actually feels it.
The photographer in that garage, the one considering real estate? He's not quitting art. He's quitting the job that killed the artist.
There's a big giant chasm of a difference.
[Campbell integration]
Campbell said every hero's journey includes death. Not literal death—ego death. The death of who you thought you had to be.
Maybe your creative career needs to die so your creative voice can live.
Permission Number Two: Be Mediocre While You Remember Why You Started
[Slowing down, getting more intimate]
Let's talk about the worst of the best, a woman who proved that an artist's soul has nothing to do with a gallery wall or a portfolio. She was a goddamn nanny. A nanny from Chicago named Vivian Maier.
She walked the streets, a quiet observer with a Rolleiflex camera—that boxy, twin-lens thing you hold at your stomach like a pregnant belly. She shot everything: street kids, lonely drifters, a fur coat on a hook in a dry cleaner's. A hundred thousand negatives, a lifetime of looking, and she never showed a single one of them. Not to a gallery, not to a friend, probably not even to the kids she was paid to watch. She was a ghost with a camera, a secret agent in plain sight.
Then, the final punchline. A storage locker auction in 2007. The contents of her life—boxes of film, undeveloped rolls, her whole artistic legacy—sold to a nobody for a few hundred bucks. The man who found her work, John Maloof, saw what he had and the world promptly lost its collective mind. Here was this amateur, this nanny from the suburbs, who had been documenting the American experiment with the eye of a poet and the ruthlessness of a hunter.
And her photos? They're a glorious mess. The kind of work that would get you kicked out of any photography school. Horizons are tilted, a subject’s head is cut clean out of the frame, she’s too close to some faces, too far from others. All the rules the establishment had meticulously built up over decades—the ones about composition, about light, about the "decisive moment"—she shattered them with a child-like disregard.
But that's where the truth lived. Her images are not perfect; they're alive. They breathe with a messy, undeniable humanity that most street photography, with its perfect angles and polished light, can't touch. She didn't work for clients or for fame. She didn't give a damn about what the gatekeepers thought. She simply saw things, felt them, and captured them for herself. She was a creator in its purest form you know, unburdened by the need to perform.
While the photography world was busy deciding what art looked like, a woman with a Rolleiflex was busy making it. And that, my friends, is the difference between a job and a calling.
Rick Bebbington, recovering from his own burnout, adopted what he called the "80% rule"—focusing on completing projects well without obsessing over perfection. 92 million jobs will be lost by 2030… What does AI mean for your photography career? | Digital Camera World
Eighty percent. Not perfect. Just... human.
Campbell said the hero must die to be reborn. Sometimes your mediocre work has to kill your perfect work.
And maybe that's not tragedy. Maybe that's resurrection.
Permission Number Three: Create for Yourself First
[Music becomes more contemplative]
Before you had followers, you had fascination.
Before you had clients, you had wonder.
Before you had a brand, you had a voice.
That voice is still there. Buried under metrics and market research and the pressure to perform relevance.
But it's there.
I think about when I first picked up a camera. Not the first time professionally - the first time, period. I wasn't thinking about portfolio pieces or client needs or what would get engagement.
I was just... curious. About light hitting a wall weird. About the way someone's face changed when they laughed. About shadows that looked like something else entirely.
There was no strategy. No target audience. Just this pure impulse: 'I want to capture that.'
When was the last time you felt that?
When was the last time you made something just because it wanted to exist, not because it served a purpose?
Most of us can't remember. Because somewhere along the way, we traded curiosity for career. Wonder for workflow. Voice for views.
And I get it. Bills don't pay themselves. But maybe - maybe - we've overcorrected.
Maybe the path back isn't through better marketing or more efficient workflows or the latest AI tool.
Maybe it's through remembering what it felt like to create before we knew anyone was watching.
The question isn't 'What would my audience like?'
The question is 'What wants to be made through me today?'
The difference between those two questions is the difference between content and art.
Between performance and presence.
Between surviving and actually living.
And I know that sounds precious. I know it sounds like luxury thinking when you've got rent to pay and clients to please.
But here's what I've learned: The work that comes from authentic curiosity - even if it's imperfect, even if it's uncommercial - that's the work that eventually finds its audience.
That's the work that sustains you.
That's the work that reminds you why you started this in the first place.
Which brings me to your assignment..."
LIGHT LEAK: THE PERMISSION EXPERIMENT
(3-4 minutes)
[Music builds with gentle percussion, hopeful but not manipulative]
For the next seven days, I want you to create one thing daily that nobody will see but you.
Not "nobody will see it until I decide it's good enough." Nobody will see it. Period.
Take a blurry selfie in terrible lighting. Write three sentences about your coffee. Photograph your unmade bed. Sketch something that makes no sense. Sing into your phone. Move your body in ways that feel good.
One thing. Every day. For you.
No Instagram. No portfolio. No feedback. No metrics.
Just the pure, forgotten pleasure of making something because it wants to exist.
If you're feeling rebellious—if you want to break the rules publicly—tag it #StayTerrible and let the world see your beautiful mediocrity.
But the real experiment isn't about posting.
It's about remembering.
Can you create without an audience? Can you make something terrible and love it anyway? Can you remember what it felt like before the metrics mattered?
This applies whether you're holding a camera, a paintbrush, a pen, or just your own human beating heart.
[Universal application]
Writers: Write badly. Let the sentences be ugly. Designers: Make something that would never get approved. Photographers: Take pictures that serve no one but your curiosity. Musicians: Play the song that's been haunting you, even if it's just three chords.
The permission you're looking for isn't out there. It's in here.
And it's been waiting for you to come home.
CLOSE: THE MIC DROP
(1-2 minutes)
[Music fades to just acoustic guitar, building to signature outro]
Here's what that photographer on the Zoom call didn't know when he called me, voice shaking, confessing his desire to escape:
The most radical thing you can do right now isn't to hustle harder.
It's to walk away from the version of creativity that's killing you.
It's to stop performing passion you don't feel.
It's to remember this one simple truth:
You were an artist before you had an audience.
And You still fucking are.
The brother-in-law selling real estate in Albany? He might be the smartest person in this story. Because he chose a life that lets him live.
And maybe that's the permission we all need today:
To choose living over performing. To choose curiosity over career. To choose the courage over the algorithm.
[Signature outro music rises]
Look friends, the camera will be there when you get back. Thats If you want to come back. And if you don't?
That's okay too.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah...
Stay terrible.