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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
Hey — quick thing before we dive in.
The Terrible Photographer Podcast now has a support page. It’s at terriblephotographer.com/support, and it’s basically like buying me a coffee — except instead of caffeine, you’re helping fund this strange little audio cult for emotionally unstable creatives.
And listen — three people have already joined. Three amazing, generous, probably-too-good-for-this-show humans chipped in actual money to keep this thing going. I’m so thankful. You are the founding members of whatever weird creative movement this is turning into. And honestly? That’s kind of beautiful.
If this show makes you feel seen, or at least slightly less feral in your artistic spiral, I’d love your support. terriblephotographer.com/support. No paywall. No merch drops - yet (Although maybe stickers and mugs are in the future). Just weird, honest storytelling funded by people who get it.
Okay. Speaking of pacing around in confined spaces questioning everything…
We went to the zoo because my kid wanted to see something dangerous.
It was hot. I didn’t want to be there. I’d been staring at my laptop for two days trying to write something halfway meaningful about the kind of creative work that isn’t bad enough to hate or good enough to matter. Just… okay work. The worst kind. (See: Episode 27.)
But Lucy wanted lions. And when your eleven-year-old wants apex predators and overpriced churros, you go. So there we are—Jaimi squinting at the map, me still mentally half-stuck in whatever draft I’d abandoned that morning—and Lucy’s dragging us toward the big cats because, of course, she’s obsessed with anything that could theoretically kill her.
That’s when I see her.
The lioness. Draped across a sun-warmed rock like she owned the place. She probably did. That posture—the half-lidded eyes, the casual disdain—it wasn’t indifference, it was dominance. A National Geographic centerfold for the “Don’t Fuck With Me” issue.
The light was good. Harsh, late-day sun—maybe 4 PM—but there was something warm about it. Amber, like old whiskey. Catching the edge of her fur in a way that made the whole thing feel staged. Too beautiful to be real, but it was.
Then she moved.
Thirteen steps to the left. Pivot. Thirteen steps to the right. Pivot. Thirteen steps back again. Same pace, same path, same worn line of dirt beneath her massive paws. Mechanical. Hypnotic.
Lucy noticed first.
“Dad… why’s she doing that?”
I didn’t know. So we watched.
Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Long enough for Jaimi to find the nearest snack stand and drop $12 on a bottle of water. Long enough for me to start counting.
Thirteen steps. Every time. Like a looped scene from a nature documentary directed by someone who’s seen too much prison footage.
There was a staff member nearby—khaki vest, clipboard, the kind of person who knows things. So I asked. And she told me the story.
This lioness came from a roadside zoo in Eastern Europe. One of those nightmare joints—concrete floors, rusted bars, the smell of urine and despair. Her enclosure was eight feet by eight feet. She lived in that box for seven years.
Let that sink in. Seven years. Same walls. Same air. Same view. No exit.
When the Safari Park took her in, they gave her everything: acres of land, rocks and caves, a full pride to socialize with, enrichment toys, scents to track, food puzzles to solve. They built her a goddamn lion utopia. Jungle Book meets Four Seasons.
That was three years ago.
And she still walks the cage.
Not the physical one. That’s gone. Long gone. What’s left is something else. The docent called it stereotypic behavior—a psychological groove so deep, so worn-in, that even when the world around you changes… you don’t.
She has miles to roam. But she paces the same thirteen steps.
I watched her—sweating under that cartoonishly hot San Diego sun—and I felt something I didn’t expect.
Not just sympathy. Not just sadness.
Recognition.
Because I know that walk.
[Natural transition - no formal intro section]
This is what I've been thinking about for the last three weeks. It's what I'm calling this episode—"The Cage"—because I can't think of a better word for what we do to ourselves. My name is Patrick Fore, this is The Terrible Photographer Podcast, where we have honest conversations about creativity, identity and finding your voice. And today today, I want to talk about three cages. Three levels of confinement that we build, that we pace, that we can't seem to escape even when the door's wide open.
The first cage is easy to see. The second one is harder to admit. And the third one... the third one is why I almost didn't record this episode.
The Industry Cage
Stay with me.
Okay, so I'm a little—or a lot—into cults. Not because I'm in one. Or... I mean, I don't think I'm in one? But I'm trying to understand why people join them. And I'm fascinated by them.
I love cult documentaries. I devour any new one that shows up on Netflix or HBO. Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, NXIVM, The Vow—I'll watch all of it. Twice. With a notebook.
Any group of people doing things in secret, any organization with rules that don't make sense to outsiders, any structure that promises belonging if you just follow the pattern... I've been like this since I was a kid.
In my hometown—Freeport, Illinois, which is exactly as exciting as it sounds—there was this massive Masonic Temple right in the middle of downtown. And I mean massive. Architecturally absurd for a town of 26,000 people who mostly worked at a handful of factories. This thing was neoclassical—concrete pillars lining the front, whole building in this imposing grey stone. Looked like someone dropped a Greek temple into the Midwest and just... forgot to pick it up.
And I was obsessed with it.
It was across the street from the public library, which is where I spent most of my childhood because I was a weird, nerdy kid who liked books more than people—some things don't change. And I'd sit out front of that library under this giant oak tree with whatever book I'd just checked out, and I'd stare at this temple. Just... stare. Trying to figure out what was going on inside there.
I was super into The Boxcar Children back then. You remember those books? Four orphan kids solving mysteries? Living in a boxcar? The day I'm thinking about, I probably had Mike's Mystery—that's book number five, Benny and his friend Mike get curious about a uranium mine and things get weird. I was always Benny in my head. The youngest. The one asking too many questions.
And I'd sit there reading about fictional kids solving made-up mysteries while staring at this very real building full of very real secrets that nobody would explain to me.
Because nobody would tell me what happened in there. My dad would drive past it and I'd ask "what is that?" and he'd say "Masonic Temple" like that explained anything. Which it didn't. It just gave me a name for the mystery. In retrospect, I don't think he knew either. I don't think most people knew. Which made it better, honestly. More mysterious.
Then one day—I was maybe eight or nine—I volunteered to be in this kids' choir. Not because I wanted to sing. I had zero interest in singing. But the performance was being held in the Masonic Temple. In the basement. They had a performance hall down there, apparently.
And I was like, this is it. This is my chance. I'm getting inside the secret place.
So we're down there rehearsing—and it wasn't Jesus songs, it was this mashed-up medley of all the military branch theme songs. Peak mid-'90s patriotic weirdness. Anchors Aweigh bleeding into The Air Force Song bleeding into whatever the Marines sing. I didn't care. I was inside.
And because I was a kid in the mid-'90s, and because I'd read approximately forty-seven Boxcar Children books by that point, a few of us did what eight-year-olds always do when adults aren't paying attention.
We explored. We snuck around like we were solving some kind of mystery.
Which we were. We were The Boxcar Children. Except instead of finding stolen jewels or counterfeit money, we were about to find... I didn't know what. That was the point.
We found rooms with black and white checkered floors. Like giant chessboards. Wooden thrones at the front—actual thrones, ornate, raised up on platforms like something out of a medieval castle. Vast ceiling murals that looked older than anything else in Freeport, older than the town itself maybe.
Then we walked into this one massive room. Chairs arranged three rows deep around the entire perimeter, all facing inward. Not toward a stage. Not toward a front. Just... inward. At each other. And in the dead center of the room was this lectern that looked like it belonged in a cathedral, not a basement in the Midwest.
And the whole time, you had this feeling. You know the feeling. Like something weird was happening here. Like we'd stumbled into a place we weren't supposed to be. Like we were about to uncover the mystery.
Whether or not anything actually weird was happening didn't matter. Could've been totally benign. Probably was. But our minds—eight-year-old minds raised on The Boxcar Children and Hardy Boys and every other kids' mystery series—our minds filled in the gaps.
Goat sacrifices. Pagan gods. Secret ceremonies and handshakes. Men in robes doing... something. We didn't know what. That was the whole point. That was the appeal.
I think about that a lot now. How badly I wanted to be inside that building. And then when I finally got inside, how badly I wanted to understand what it all meant. The symbols. The structure. The secret knowledge that separated the members from everyone else.
I wanted in. Not to expose it. Not to shut it down. I wanted to join. I wanted to be part of something that made sense, even if that sense was hidden from the outside world.
The Boxcar Children always solved the mystery from the outside. They were investigators. Observers. They figured it out and then they went home to their boxcar or their grandfather's house or wherever they were living in that particular book.
But I didn't want to solve it from the outside. I wanted to be on the inside. I wanted someone to hand me the secret decoder ring and teach me the handshake and tell me what it all meant.
I wanted the cage.
And that's the thing about cults, right? Or Masonic lodges, or fraternities, or any insular group with their own language and rituals. It's not what you think. People don't join because they're stupid or weak or gullible. They join because life is really fucking hard and making decisions is exhausting and having someone else tell you exactly what to do, exactly who to be, exactly what to believe... that feels like relief.
That eight-year-old version of me staring at the Masonic Temple? He wasn't afraid of it. He was drawn to it. Because it represented order. Structure. Mystery with answers. A set of rules that, if you followed them, would tell you who you were.
A pattern you could pace.
A cage that made sense.
Cults offer clarity in a chaotic world. They offer identity when you're not sure who you are. They offer community when you're lonely. They offer rules when you're overwhelmed by options.
They offer a cage. And the cage feels good.
There's this researcher—Alexandra Stein, she wrote a book called Terror, Love and Brainwashing—and she talks about how cults work by creating what she calls "disorganized attachment." Basically, the leader becomes both the source of fear and the source of comfort. You're terrified of disappointing them, but they're also the only one who can make you feel safe. So you stay. You pace the cage. Even when the door's open.
A few months ago I couldn’t stand being at my desk another minute.
You know that feeling. Emails open. Browser tabs multiplying. Cursor blinking at you like it knows you’re full of shit.
So I grabbed a book, drove to Balboa Park, and found a picnic table under a tree. Morning sun. Kids playing tag nearby. Someone’s Bluetooth speaker leaking a little Bob Marley into the air. Perfect San Diego postcard.
And I’m sitting there, reading about cults.
As one does.
And not just skimming it either — fully locked in. Total focus. While toddlers shriek and dogs chase frisbees and retirees sip their lattes like it’s the first day of the rest of their lives… I’m flipping pages about brainwashing, control, identity collapse, authoritarian bonding.
And then this question hits me. Hard.
Is the photography industry a cult?
Or… did we just quietly turn it into one?
Because let’s be honest — we’ve built the structure. The tribes. The insider language. The self-appointed prophets and the rituals of belonging. And we defend it like our identity depends on it.
Because it does.
Team Canon vs Team Sony. Digital vs film—and if you say “analog,” everyone knows you’re not new here. Wedding shooters vs commercial shooters. Natural light purists vs strobe bros. Fuji shooters who won’t shut up about film simulations vs everyone who stopped listening.
It’s all there. The dogma. The factions. The war of aesthetics disguised as personal choice.
We’ve got leaders. Gurus. YouTube personalities with microphones and merchandise. They tell us what matters. What’s professional. What’s washed. What lens you need. What color grading trend is hot. They’re the high priests. And we’re the congregation, nodding along, buying the presets.
We don’t say “blurry background.” We say “bokeh.” We don’t “take pictures.” We “make images.” You don’t run a photo business — you run a “creative studio.” That’s the handshake. That’s the coded phrase that says: I’m one of you.
And there’s a script. A whole damn script.
When someone asks, “What camera should I buy?” you already know the answer: It doesn’t matter, it’s about the photographer, not the gear. But we both know you’ll be silently judged if you show up to a Beer & Cameras meetup with a Rebel T7i and a kit lens. Unless it’s ironically, of course.
We talk about process the same way too: Vision. Intention. Connection. Never, “I liked the light and shot it without thinking.” That’s amateur hour. That’s not The Way.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth. And I hate it, because I see myself in it too.
It’s not just about craft. It’s not about community.
It’s about money and ego.
Camera companies need you to upgrade. Not because your current gear can’t handle the job. But because buying the new body earns you points in the club. You’re not just buying a tool — you’re buying a story. A new badge. A passcode that says: I’m still in this.
And the ego? That’s the real drug. The dopamine hit of being seen by the right people. The high of being followed by the right photographer on Instagram — like that validates your vision. Like shooting a big campaign makes you inherently more credible than the mom in Des Moines who captured something quietly stunning in her backyard.
We’ve made photography into a status game. A caste system with aperture rings and off-camera lighting as gatekeepers.
And the cage? It’s not just about style or consistency anymore.
It’s about belonging to the right tribe. Following the right leader. Speaking the right language. Performing the right version of “photographer” so other photographers will nod and say: Yeah, you’re one of us.
And just like I wanted into that Masonic Temple as a kid — just like I wanted someone to hand me the secret handshake and explain the rules — we want into these groups. We crave the clarity. The structure. The promise that if we just follow the pattern — buy this gear, shoot this way, talk like this, edit like that — we’ll know who we are.
We’ll belong.
We’ll be safe.
And the cage feels so damn good because it saves us from having to think. The cult tells us what’s cool. The algorithm tells us what performs. The client tells us what they want. The industry tells us what’s acceptable.
So we pace.
Thirteen steps to the left. Thirteen steps to the right. Same path. Same pivot.
The door? It’s wide open.
But we’re still walking the pattern we learned when the cage was real.
That’s the first cage.
The Industry Cage.
The tribal one. The obvious one. The easiest one to critique.
But the next one?
That one’s trickier.
Because the next one? We built it ourselves.
The Creative Cage
The Industry Cage is external. It's other people telling you who to be, what to shoot, what gear to buy. It's the status games and the tribal warfare and the guru worship.
The Creative Cage is internal. And it's worse. Because this one is on you.
I'm calling it the Creative Cage, and it's not strategic constraint—I want to be really clear about that. Strategic constraint is when you choose limitations to expand your creativity. Like shooting only with prime lenses for a year to learn composition. Or committing to one subject matter to go deep instead of wide. Or using the same camera system because you know it so completely that the tool disappears and you can focus on the work.
The Creative Cage is different. It's the limitations we place on ourselves not because they serve our work, but because we're afraid. Insecure. Lazy. Or because nobody ever gave us permission to try anything else.
It's a cage that says you have to stay inside the parameters of safety.
The walls are comfort. The bars are what's accepted by your peers, your clients, your family, your Instagram followers. And we lock ourselves inside and convince ourselves we're just "being consistent" or "building a brand" or "staying true to our style."
But really? We're just scared. Scared of failing. Scared of being judged. Scared of making something ugly or weird or different. Scared of admitting that maybe the thing we've been doing for years isn't the thing we actually want to be doing.
Let me show you what I mean.
A few months ago, I was updating my website. One of those things you put off forever because it's tedious and you'd rather be doing literally anything else. But it needed to be done. New work, retire some old projects, make sure the portfolio still makes sense.
So I'm sitting in my office, going through years of commercial work. Lifestyle shoots. Product photography. Branding campaigns. All laid out on my big stupid monitor—the one I bought because "color accuracy matters"—and I'm arranging images, building project pages, trying to present myself as a cohesive creative professional.
And I start noticing patterns.
Not intentional patterns. Not "oh, this is my signature look" patterns. Just... patterns. Repetitions. The same compositional choices showing up over and over. The same quality of light. The same camera angles. The same way of framing a person in an environment.
There's this lifestyle shoot I did for a wellness brand—beautiful location, great talent, client loved it. And I'm looking at it next to a campaign I shot for a completely different client two years later. Different industry. Different product. Different concept entirely.
Same approach. Same light. Same feeling.
I probably made sense of it in the moment. Justified each decision. "This is the right choice for this brand." "This is what the client needs." "This is what works."
But seeing them on the page together, I start questioning everything.
Is this my style? Or is this just... what I do? Is this a conscious aesthetic choice, or is this me repeating the same pattern because it's safe? Because it works? Because clients don't complain and I can execute it without thinking too hard?
I keep scrolling through the portfolio. More patterns. More repetition. All technically good. All professional. All exactly what was asked for.
All interchangeable.
You could swap out my name and put any other competent commercial photographer's name on these projects, and nobody would know the difference. There's nothing in here that couldn't have been shot by fifty other people with the same gear and the same training and the same understanding of "what works."
And that's when it hits me. I'm not looking at a portfolio. I'm looking at evidence.
Evidence that I've been pacing for years.
The worst part isn't that the work is bad. It's not. It's good. It's exactly what it's supposed to be.
The worst part is realizing I don't know if I actually see light this way, or if I just learned to light this way and never questioned it. I don't know if these are my compositional instincts or if they're just the compositional rules I absorbed from workshops and tutorials and looking at other photographers' work.
I don't know if this is my voice or if I'm just fluent in the industry's accent.
Every shoot, I make decisions. Where to place the light. How to frame the shot. What lens to use. What mood to create. And in the moment, those decisions feel intentional. Conscious. Mine.
But looking at years of work all at once, I can see the cage. The parameters I never step outside of. The approaches I default to. The safety I built around myself so I'd never have to risk making something that didn't work, didn't land, didn't meet expectations.
I built a cage out of competence. And then I paced it for so long I forgot I was inside one.
Here's what the Creative Cage looks like in practice.
It's the wedding photographer who wants to try street photography but never does because "I'm a wedding photographer, that's my thing, people know me for weddings."
It's the commercial shooter who wants to make fine art but doesn't because "nobody's going to take me seriously, and besides, I wouldn't know where to start."
It's the film photographer who's curious about digital but won't touch it because "film is my identity, if I shoot digital I'm a sellout."
It's me, using the same two-light setup for seven years because I learned it once, it worked, and now I'm too lazy or too scared or too something to try anything else.
We limit ourselves. Not because we're strategically focused. Not because we've thoughtfully chosen our constraints. But because stepping outside the pattern feels dangerous. It feels like admitting we don't know what we're doing. It feels like risking the identity we've built, the clients we've earned, the respect we've fought for.
So we stay inside. We keep doing the thing we know how to do. We tell ourselves it's "consistency" or "brand" or "professionalism."
But it's fear. It's just fear dressed up as strategy.
And here's what makes the Creative Cage so insidious: other people reinforce it. Your clients hired you because of the cage. They don't want you to experiment on their dime. Your audience followed you because of the cage. They don't want you to change—they want more of what they already liked.
There's this wedding photographer I know—I'm not gonna say her name, but she's successful, books out a year in advance, charges properly, does beautiful work. Soft light, dreamy, romantic. Instagram gold. The kind of work that makes you feel things.
About a year ago, she posted that she was exploring a different direction. Darker, moodier, more editorial. She posted one test shoot in this new style. Just one.
The comments were... not great.
"This doesn't feel like you." "I miss your old style." "Are you okay? This seems really dark." "I loved your bright and airy work, this feels off-brand."
And she never posted in that style again. Back to the soft, dreamy, romantic. Back to the cage.
Because here's what happens: the cage isn't just internal. Other people lock it from the outside. They liked you the way you were. They hired you because of who you were. Changing means risking that. Changing means potentially losing clients, followers, income, identity.
So we stay. We perform the version of ourselves that people want. We become tribute bands to our own authenticity.
And the really fucked up part? We convince ourselves this is who we are. We forget that we chose this. We forget that we built this. We forget that the cage isn't protecting us from chaos—it's protecting us from growth.
II think about that portfolio a lot now. Those patterns. Those safe choices. That competent, professional, interchangeable work.
And I wonder: what would happen if I tried something different? What if I shot the next lifestyle campaign with light I've been avoiding? What if I framed the next product shoot in a way that makes the client uncomfortable? What if I brought an approach to a branding session that doesn't fit the industry playbook?
What if I made something risky instead of safe?
Would it be better? Would it be worse? Would it be more me, or less me?
I don't know. And that's the point. I don't know because I've never tried. I've never stepped outside the pattern long enough to find out. I've never risked showing a client something that might not work. I've never experimented on someone else's dime. I've never let myself fail publicly.
Because the cage works. It pays my mortgage. It makes clients happy. It gives me an identity I can count on. It lets me wake up every morning knowing exactly what Patrick Fore the Commercial Photographer does and how he does it.
But I'm starting to realize: the cage only protects you from the terror of not knowing. It doesn't protect you from the cost.
And the cost is growth. Evolution. Becoming. The photographer you could be if you weren't so busy being the photographer you decided to be seven years ago when you first figured out what worked and then never questioned it again.
That's the second cage. The Creative Cage. The one about technique and pattern and safety. The one we build because we're afraid to experiment, afraid to fail, afraid to look incompetent. Afraid the client won't hire us again. Afraid the work won't perform. Afraid we'll discover we don't actually know what we're doing once we step outside the thing we've been doing.
But there's a third cage. And this one... this is the one I've been avoiding. The one that keeps me up at night. The one I almost didn't talk about.
Because the third cage isn't about the industry. It's not about technique. It's about why we can't put ourselves in our work.
The Personal Cage
The Personal Cage
Okay. Deep breath.
This is the hard part.
The Industry Cage is about tribes and status. The Creative Cage is about fear and pattern. But the Personal Cage... the Personal Cage is about why your work doesn't have you in it.
Not you as in your technical style or your aesthetic preferences. You. Your story. Your perspective. Your pain. Your joy. Your specific, messy, complicated human experience.
Why can't we integrate that into our work? Why do we hide behind competence and professionalism and "clean execution"? Why do we make work that's technically perfect but emotionally... absent?
Last night. Gallery show in LA. For digital techs—digitechs, the people who manage the tethering and color on commercial shoots. Someone invited me, even though I'm a photographer, not a digitech. So I was kind of crashing the party too. But I was invited-crashing. Acceptable-crashing. I knew enough people there that I could blend in, stand around with a drink, look like I belonged.
And then Jesse showed up.
I don't know how he got in. I really don't think he was invited. But there he was. Impossible to miss. Looked like The Dude from The Big Lebowski—sunglasses indoors, this casual shambling energy, completely unbothered by the fact that he clearly didn't fit the vibe of the room.
And he was carrying this big book. Like, massive. Heavy. Clearly printed, bound, a real physical object in a world where everyone else is showing you their work on an iPad or talking about their latest campaign.
He came up to me. Didn't ask permission. Didn't wait for an invitation. Just walked up and started talking.
And I'm giving him all the subtle social cues, right? The ones we use to signal "I'm not interested, I'm here for other reasons, please leave me alone." The body language. The minimal responses. The looking around for an escape route.
He ignored all of it.
He just opened this book. This big, heavy, printed book of mixed media and photography and typography. And it was... edgy. Gritty. From the outside, it didn't make sense. Chaotic. Raw. The kind of work that makes you uncomfortable because it doesn't follow any of the rules you've been taught about "good design" or "strong composition" or "cohesive aesthetic."
And then he started telling me his story.
He was in his apartment in Chicago. Middle of the night. These guys broke in. Mistaken identity—they thought it was a different apartment, thought he was someone who owed money to some very bad people. This sounds like a movie plot. It felt like a movie plot as he was telling it. But it wasn't.
They beat him. Brutally. To within an inch of his life. And at some point—I don't know when, he didn't specify—he played dead. Actually played dead. While wrapped in a garbage bag.
He told me this story while standing in a gallery in Los Angeles last night, holding this massive art book, wearing sunglasses indoors. And the way he told it was... wrong. Not wrong like he was lying. Wrong like the tone didn't match the content.
He said it casually. Almost comedically. Like it was just this thing that happened. Like getting mugged or missing a flight. Not like he nearly died in a garbage bag in his own apartment.
The incongruity was disturbing. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or offer sympathy or just... stand there. Which is what I did. I just stood there.
And then he pointed at the book. At his work. And I realized: this is all in there. The story. The trauma. The near-death. The garbage bag. It's all integrated into the art. Not as subtext. Not as subtle metaphor. As the actual subject matter.
He took the worst thing that could ever happen and wove it directly into his work.
And here's what fucked me up about the whole encounter. Jesse reminded me of my brother. Charlie.
Not physically. Not in any obvious way. But in this energy. This way of being in the world where he just did things. Made things. Lived in a way where the rules and social norms and all the things people like me follow—he just didn't care. He colored outside the lines.
Charlie was like that. A chef who didn't cook like anyone else. Who lived loud and messy and unapologetic. Who put himself—all of himself, the good and the complicated and the difficult—into everything he made.
And I've spent twelve years trying to be the opposite of that.
Here's the thing though. Last night at that gallery, I was also an outsider—a photographer at a digitech event. But I was an acceptable outsider. I knew people. I had permission, sort of. I could blend. I could perform belonging well enough that nobody questioned whether I should be there.
Jesse didn't blend. Jesse didn't perform. Jesse just... was.
And I was uncomfortable with him. I wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted him to read my social cues and respect my boundaries and understand that I wasn't interested in his weird chaotic art book or his disturbing garbage bag story.
I wanted him to pace the cage with the rest of us.
But he wouldn't. He just stood there, showing me his work, telling me his story, being completely, unapologetically himself in a room full of people performing acceptable versions of themselves.
My commercial work is good. Professional. What clients want. I understand light, composition, how to make a product or person look appealing in a photograph.
But if you looked at my portfolio, you wouldn't know anything about me. You wouldn't know I grew up in the Midwest. You wouldn't know my brother died. You wouldn't know I have ADHD. You wouldn't know I'm constantly wrestling with whether I'm actually good at this or just competent enough to fake it.
You wouldn't know me. Because I'm not in the work.
I've spent twenty years learning how to make photographs that clients will approve, that Instagram will reward, that other photographers will respect. But I haven't learned how to make photographs that reflect who I actually am.
That's the deepest cage. The one that says: your real self isn't professional enough. Your real story isn't marketable enough. Your real perspective isn't palatable enough.
So hide it. Keep it separate. Make the work that's "appropriate." Make the work that's "on brand."
Just don't make the work that's actually you.
My brother Charlie died in 2013. Twelve years ago. His death reshaped everything—my relationship to mortality, to creativity, to legacy, to what matters.
And I've never made a photograph about it.
Not one. In twelve years, I haven't made a single image that even references that experience. That loss. That grief.
Why? Because it's not professional. Because clients don't hire you to make work about your dead brother. Because Instagram doesn't reward vulnerability—it rewards aspirational aesthetics and clean, uncomplicated beauty.
Because integrating that story into my work would mean making work that doesn't fit any cage. Work that isn't "commercial photography" or "fine art photography" or any category that makes sense to anyone but me.
Work that's just... mine.
And that's terrifying. Because what if it's bad? What if nobody cares? What if the most honest work I could make is also the least successful?
What if the cage is all I have?
But Jesse. Standing there last night with his big book and his sunglasses, telling his garbage bag story like a bad comedy routine.
Jesse put his near-death into his art and bound it in a physical book and carried it to events where he wasn't invited and showed it to people who didn't ask to see it.
His work is weird. Uncomfortable. Doesn't make sense from the outside. Probably doesn't pay his rent.
But it's his. It has him in it. All of him.
I went home last night and looked at my portfolio again. All that competent, professional work. And I thought about Charlie. And the photographs I've never made. The story I've never told. The self I've never integrated into my work.
This is the cage. The Personal Cage.
It's the choice to hide. The choice to keep your real story separate from your professional work. The choice to pace the comfortable pattern instead of risking the uncomfortable truth.
Jesse doesn't pace. He colors outside the lines. He makes work that doesn't fit.
I was also an outsider at that gallery last night. But I was performing acceptable-outsider well enough to blend in.
Jesse wasn't performing anything.
And that's the cage. The choice to perform acceptable instead of risking real.
He was in his apartment in Chicago. Middle of the night. These guys broke in. Mistaken identity—they thought it was a different apartment, thought he was someone who owed money to some very bad people. This sounds like a movie plot. It felt like a movie plot as he was telling it. But it wasn't.
They beat him. Brutally. To within an inch of his life. And at some point—I don't know when, he didn't specify—he played dead. Actually played dead. While wrapped in a garbage bag.
He told me this story while standing in a well-lit event space in Los Angeles, holding this massive art book, wearing sunglasses indoors. And the way he told it was... wrong. Not wrong like he was lying. Wrong like the tone didn't match the content.
He said it casually. Almost comedically. Like it was just this thing that happened. Like getting mugged or missing a flight. Not like he nearly died in a garbage bag in his own apartment.
The incongruity was disturbing. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know if I was supposed to laugh or offer sympathy or just... stand there. Which is what I did. I just stood there.
And then he pointed at the book. At his work. And I realized: this is all in there. The story. The trauma. The near-death. The garbage bag. It's all integrated into the art. Not as subtext. Not as subtle metaphor. As the actual subject matter.
He took the worst thing that could ever happen and wove it directly into his work.
And here's what fucked me up about the whole encounter. Jesse reminded me of my brother. Charlie.
Not physically. Not in any obvious way. But in this... energy. This way of being in the world where he just did things. Made things. Lived in a certain way where the rules and social norms and all the things people like me follow—he just didn't care. He colored outside the lines. And when he walked into a room, people like me raised an eyebrow. People like me gave subtle social cues. People like me wished he would just... tone it down.
And people like him ignored us completely and made the work anyway.
Charlie was like that. A chef who didn't cook like anyone else. Who didn't present himself like anyone else. Who lived loud and messy and unapologetic. Who put himself—all of himself, the good and the complicated and the difficult—into everything he made.
And I've spent twelve years trying to be the opposite of that.
Here's what I'm realizing about my own photography. And this is the most uncomfortable thing I've said this entire episode.
My commercial work is good. It's professional. It's what clients want. I understand light, I understand composition, I understand how to make a product or a person look appealing in a photograph.
But if you looked at my portfolio, you wouldn't know anything about me. You wouldn't know I grew up in the Midwest. You wouldn't know my brother died. You wouldn't know I have ADHD and struggle with focus and consistency. You wouldn't know I'm constantly wrestling with whether I'm actually good at this or just competent enough to fake it.
You wouldn't know me. Because I'm not in the work.
I've spent twenty years learning how to make photographs that clients will approve, that Instagram will reward, that other photographers will respect. But I haven't spent twenty years learning how to make photographs that reflect who I actually am.
And that's the deepest cage. The one that says: your real self isn't professional enough. Your real story isn't marketable enough. Your real perspective isn't palatable enough.
So hide it. Keep it separate. Make the work that's "appropriate." Make the work that's "on brand." Make the work that people will pay for.
Just don't make the work that's actually you.
My brother Charlie died in 2013. Twelve years ago. He was a chef. Passionate, talented, complicated. His death reshaped everything—my relationship to mortality, to creativity, to legacy, to what matters.
And I've never made a photograph about it.
Not one. In twelve years, I haven't made a single image that even references that experience. That loss. That grief. That fundamental shift in how I see the world.
Why? Because it's not professional. Because clients don't hire you to make work about your dead brother. Because Instagram doesn't reward vulnerability—it rewards aspirational aesthetics and lifestyle content and clean, uncomplicated beauty.
Because integrating that story, that pain, that perspective into my work would mean making work that doesn't fit any cage. Work that isn't "commercial photography" or "fine art photography" or any category that makes sense to anyone but me.
Work that's just... mine.
And that's terrifying. Because what if it's bad? What if nobody cares? What if the most honest work I could make is also the least successful?
What if the thing I've been hiding—the real me, the complicated story, the messy perspective—what if that's not valuable? What if the cage is all I have?
But Jesse. Standing there in LA with his big stupid book and his sunglasses and his garbage bag story told like a bad comedy routine.
Jesse doesn't have that question. He already knows the answer. He put his near-death in a garbage bag into his art and bound it in a physical book and carried it around to industry events and showed it to people who didn't ask to see it.
And his work is weird. And uncomfortable. And doesn't make sense from the outside. And probably doesn't pay his rent. And definitely doesn't fit on Instagram.
But it's his.
It has him in it. All of him. The trauma and the story and the perspective and the specific, unrepeatable human experience of being Jesse-who-survived-a-garbage-bag-in-Chicago.
And I went home that night and looked at my portfolio again. All that competent, professional, technically-proficient commercial work. And I thought about Charlie. And I thought about the photographs I've never made. The story I've never told. The self I've never integrated into my work.
And I realized: this is the cage. The Personal Cage.
It's not about the industry. It's not about technique. It's about the choice to hide. The choice to keep your real story separate from your professional work. The choice to pace the comfortable pattern instead of risking the uncomfortable truth.
Jesse doesn't pace. He colors outside the lines. He makes work that doesn't fit.
And I've been in the cage so long I forgot that was even an option.
But here's what I keep coming back to. That lioness at the Safari Park.
The employee told me they haven't given up on her. They're still trying. New enrichment activities. Varying her environment. Positive reinforcement when she explores instead of pacing. They're not trying to force her to change—they're just consistently offering her a different possibility.
And every once in a while—not often, but sometimes—she takes it. She'll stalk a new scent. Or investigate a new cave. Or engage with the pride instead of isolating.
It's not dramatic. She doesn't suddenly transform into a wild lioness. She just... takes one step outside the pattern. One step into the acres of freedom she already has.
And then, usually, she goes back to pacing. Because the cage is familiar. The cage is safe. The cage is all she knows.
But those moments—those brief departures from the pattern—they're evidence that she remembers. Somewhere deep in her brain, underneath all the trauma and conditioning and psychological rewiring, she remembers she's a fucking lion.
I think that's what we're doing. As creatives. As humans.
We're pacing three cages:
The Industry Cage—the tribal warfare, the status games, the gear worship, the insider language, the performance of belonging.
The Creative Cage—the patterns we repeat, the techniques we never question, the experiments we're too afraid to try, the growth we're avoiding.
And the Personal Cage—the deepest one. The story we won't tell. The perspective we won't integrate. The self we won't put in the work. The vulnerability we're too scared to risk.
And every once in a while, we take one step outside. We make something different. We try a new approach. We let a little bit of our real self into the work.
And then we go back to pacing. Because change is terrifying. Because consistency pays the bills. Because the cages feel safe even when they're suffocating us.
But those moments matter. Those steps outside the pattern matter.
They're evidence that underneath the Industry Cage and the Creative Cage and the Personal Cage—underneath all the performance and fear and hiding—there's still something wild.
Still something real.
Still something worth setting free.
The Light Leak
Alright. Here's your assignment. And this time I actually am assigning it, because we're in the Light Leak now and this is where I stop theorizing and start pushing.
I want you to identify which cage you're pacing. Be honest. Is it the Industry Cage? Are you caught up in the tribal warfare, the gear obsession, the status games? Is it the Creative Cage? Are you repeating the same patterns, avoiding growth, hiding behind competence? Or is it the Personal Cage? Are you making work that's technically good but emotionally hollow because you're too afraid to put yourself in it?
You probably know which one it is. You've known the whole time you've been listening.
And then—before this week ends—I want you to take one step outside that cage.
If it's the Industry Cage: Unfollow the guru. Mute the gear group. Stop performing photographer-ness for other photographers and just... make something. Doesn't matter what camera you use. Doesn't matter if it's "professional." Just make something because you want to, not because the tribe will validate it.
If it's the Creative Cage: Make one piece of work that doesn't fit your pattern. Use the lens you never use. Try the technique you've been avoiding. Shoot something that would confuse your clients or make your audience ask "why did you make this?" Do it badly. Do it scared. Do it without knowing if it'll work. Just do it outside the thirteen steps you've been pacing for years.
If it's the Personal Cage: This is the hardest one. Make something that includes you. Not your technique. Not your style. You. Your story. Your perspective. The thing you've been hiding because it's too vulnerable or too weird or too specific.
Maybe it's a photograph about grief. Or joy. Or confusion. Or the specific way light looked on a specific day that mattered only to you.
Maybe it's a portrait that reflects how you actually see people, not how you're supposed to photograph them professionally.
Maybe it's work that has no commercial application, no Instagram potential, no audience except you and the two other weirdos in the world who might understand what you're trying to say.
Make that. Even if it's bad. Even if nobody cares. Even if it goes nowhere.
Make it because it's yours. Because it's the step outside the cage. Because it's evidence that underneath all the performance and pattern and hiding, you still remember who you are.
And if you can't do it this week? That's okay too. Not everyone can. Some of you are paralyzed by trauma, by depression, by inertia. Some of you are so deep in the cage that the door doesn't even look like a door anymore.
Just don't lie to yourself and say there's no cage. It's there. It always is.
The first step isn't escape. The first step is honesty. Admitting you're in it. Admitting you built it. Admitting you've been pacing so long you forgot what movement feels like.
Start there. Just admit it. Even if you can't do anything about it yet.
You're not just a member of a tribe. You're not just a pattern-repeating technician. You're not just a polished, professional, emotionally-sanitized content machine.
You're a human. With a story. With a perspective. With something specific and strange and irreplaceable to say.
The cages—all three of them—they keep you from saying it.
The lioness at the Safari Park might never stop pacing completely. The pattern might be too deep, the trauma too old, the cage too familiar.
But she has acres. She has options. She has freedom she hasn't explored yet.
So do you.
Just stop pacing. Even for a second. Even if the wild feels too far away.
It's still there.
And so are you.
So, until next week
Stay curious, stay courageous and yeah stay terrible.