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Helping creatives find their voice in an industry that rewards conformity, trends, and bullshit.
Photographers. Designers. Filmmakers. Writers. If you’ve ever felt like you’re doing it all wrong in a creative industry obsessed with followers, hustle, and aesthetic perfection, this is for you.
Hosted by Patrick Fore, The Terrible Photographer is part therapy session, part creative survival guide. We talk about burnout (without the platitudes), making money (without selling your soul), and what it really takes to build a sustainable, honest creative life.
If you’ve ever wondered:
• How to make money as a creative without losing your voice
• How to recover from burnout and stay in the game
• Where to find clients who value the work
• Or if you’re just too honest for this business…
You’re not alone.
New episodes every Tuesday. Listen if you’re ready to build a creative career that still feels like you.
Episode 23: We Work, Rome Burns
How to Keep Creating When Everything Feels Like It's Falling Apart
HOOK
Okay so, I made the mistake of diving into the news first thing in the morning—before I finished my coffee, and before I remembered I had a client call at 9 a.m.
First it was Twitter. One headline after another, shouting like drunk neighbors at 3 a.m. Then I hit play on The Daily, the first podcast in my queue, and let it run while I tried to piece together my day. Twenty-seven minutes. That’s how long I sat there, coffee going cold in my hand, staring at nothing while the words poured in—like cheap vodka down the throat of a broke drunk. No resistance. Just straight to the bloodstream.
Federal law enforcement flooding neighborhoods—DEA, Homeland Security, FBI, Border Patrol. Stopping people on the street. Asking for IDs like it was East Berlin, only with shinier logos. Dystopia by committee.
And then—whiplash. I had to flip into charm mode for a discovery call with a yoga and activewear startup.
Good people. Sustainable fabrics. Proceeds to charity. Mood boards quoting Gwyneth Paltrow like scripture. And I sold it. Engaged, upbeat, painting the vision like I’d just come back from a weeklong meditation retreat instead of drinking the morning news straight like rotgut liquor.
Then I hung up, saw The Daily still paused on my screen, and had one of those what the fuck just happened moments. How do you pivot from “the country might be burning” to “let’s talk color palettes for breathable leggings” without feeling like you’ve lost your mind?
That's the rhythm now. That whiplash. The emotional split screen.It’s been the soundtrack of the last few years. And maybe it’s the actual job description in 2025: manufacturing authentic enthusiasm while the floorboards of your life—or the whole damn world—are on fire.
INTRO
My name is Patrick Fore. This is the Terrible Photographer Podcast - honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. Today's episode is 23: "Shooting While Rome Burns: How to Keep Creating When Everything Feels Like It's Falling Apart."
So before we get started, I wanted to thank all those that have left comments and rated. Really cool, seriously. Also, man, one thing that I love is the DMs and emails. Even though it takes me a minute to respond, I am so thankful for anyone who reaches out. It’s honestly the highlight of my week.
Along with that, I’m looking for some feedback. I’m inviting you, the listener, to help shape the future direction of The Terrible Photographer Podcast. I have a simple survey, it takes 2 minutes and it just asks questions about the kind of thing you like or don’t like hearing and your preference on podcast length and more. You know, we’re only 23 episodes in and we’re still wearing diapers - okay don’t make it weir d, you know what I mean. Anyway, I’m an idiot, yeah check the show notes for the link, your feedback is appreciated. Okay, enough with this foolishness, on with the episode.
ACT I: THE EMOTIONAL GEAR-SHIFT (10-12 minutes)
The Professional Face
Let me ask you something: When was the last time you had to put on your professional face when your personal reality was a complete shitshow?
Maybe it was taking engagement photos an hour after having a big fight with your spouce. Maybe it was photographing a luxury wedding when you were three months behind on rent. Maybe it was shooting corporate headshots the day after a family emergency.
We don't talk about this enough in creative fields. The emotional labor of compartmentalization. The way you have to perform competence and enthusiasm regardless of what's actually happening in your life.
I have a photographer friend who shot a family portrait session just two days after finding out his dad had cancer. The diagnosis wasn’t vague or “let’s wait and see” — it was the kind of news that makes the air feel heavier, that rearranges your sense of time.
The shoot itself should have been easy. Nice family, beautiful kids, golden hour light, on the beach — the kind of job he could normally do half-asleep. But that day, everything felt like moving through wet cement.
There were moments where he’d be lining up a shot and, out of nowhere, he’d think about growing up with his dad — fishing trips, late-night movie marathons, the dumb inside jokes they still shared — and he’d feel the lump rise in his throat. A tear would start to form and he’d have to swallow it back before it showed on his face.
And maybe that’s why, instead of coasting through, he worked even harder. He found himself lingering on the shots of the father with his kids, looking for those fleeting gestures of connection — the way a hand rested on a shoulder, the quiet laugh they shared. Because in real time, he was feeling how temporary it all is.
Still, he kept going. He got the kids to laugh. He cracked jokes, adjusted hair, chased the light. From the outside, he looked exactly like the photographer they’d hired. Inside, he was doing the constant math of holding it together while the ground had already started to give way beneath him.
And here’s the part that messes with your head: none of the care he gave that family was fake. He wanted them to have great photos. He was engaged, present, making good work. But layered underneath every frame was the weight of something that had nothing to do with shutter speed or composition — a private grief running parallel to the job at hand.
The BMW Moment
Last year, I had a shoot that still makes me laugh in that dark, cosmic joke kind of way. Portraits for a real estate investor — the kind of guy LinkedIn probably dreams about at night. Self-made. Talks fast. Smiles big. A Grant Cardone carbon copy. Big ego, bigger checkbook, not the kind of guy I’d grab a beer with.
He pulls up in a brand-new BMW M5 — a $120k car that’s both beautiful and ridiculous — grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. “Check it out,” he says, swinging the door open like he’s revealing a magic trick. Soft leather, perfect stitching, the faint smell of money well spent.
We burn 15 minutes as he shows me every feature, tells me how fast it goes, how smooth it rides. Then it’s onto how business is booming, new markets, big plans, public speaking gigs on the horizon.
I stand there nodding, like I’ve got last year’s model parked in my driveway and just decided to slum it in my four-year-old Subaru Forester for fun. In reality, I’m doing grocery math in my head — figuring out if I can make it to Friday without putting food on the credit card again.
The cognitive dissonance was absurd. I’m photographing a man whose financial dreams are purring ten feet away in the parking lot, while mine are being held together with duct tape, a prayer, and whatever caffeine I can afford.
And here’s the thing that should bother me but doesn’t: I didn’t hate him for it. If anything, it made me work harder. Because if he could build his thing from scratch, maybe I could too. Maybe the best shot I had was to make him look like a goddamn Fortune 500 cover story — even if my bank account looked like the aftermath of a bar fight.
The Wedding Paradox
My friend Samantha had been a wedding photographer for nearly a decade. She knew how to manage a wedding party running an hour late, how to wrangle drunk groomsmen into formation, how to shoot through a rainstorm without letting the couple see her flinch. Her calendar was booked solid for the next three months — New York, Lake Como, Napa — the kind of schedule most photographers dream about.
But the night before one of those weddings, she and her husband sat across from each other at the kitchen table and decided their marriage was over. No yelling, no slammed doors — just the quiet, exhausted acknowledgement that they couldn’t keep going.
The next morning, she did what she always did: she showed up. She packed her gear, dusted off her lenses, and stepped into someone else’s love story. Because her couples had nothing to do with her marriage ending. They had trusted her to document their day, and she wasn’t about to let them down.
During the vows, she felt the tears start before she could stop them. Not the cinematic, slow-motion kind — the kind that burn behind your eyes and threaten to spill over at the worst possible time. It was cruel, almost sadistic, to stand there documenting someone else’s “forever” less than twelve hours after ending her own.
She grieved in real time as they promised each other a life she was no longer going to have. Every word felt like it was meant for her, like the universe had decided to rub it in.
And yet… somewhere between the laughter and the trembling voices, she felt something shift. Not for them — she had no doubt they’d be fine — but for herself. It was proof that love wasn’t extinct, that the wreckage of one marriage didn’t mean the institution itself was beyond repair.
It didn’t erase the loss, but it cracked open the smallest window of belief: that maybe, someday, she could choose and be chosen again. That love could still exist for her, even if it wasn’t today.
The Historical Context
Look, this emotional whiplash isn't new. We just like to pretend it is.
During World War II, people still got married. They still had family portraits taken. During the Great Depression, during the Civil Rights Movement, during every major upheaval in human history—people kept creating, kept celebrating, kept documenting life even when life felt impossibly fragile.
Maybe especially when life felt impossibly fragile.
There's something both absurd and profound about that. The human insistence on beauty and celebration and ordinary joy even when—especially when—everything else is uncertain.
ACT II: THE COMPARTMENTALIZATION FRAMEWORK (12-15 minutes)
The Three-Layer Reality
I've been thinking about this for weeks, trying to understand how we navigate this constant emotional gear-shifting. And I think there are three layers of reality that creative professionals have to hold simultaneously:
Layer One: Personal Reality - What's actually happening in your life. The relationship stress, the financial pressure, the family drama, the existential dread about the state of the world.
Layer Two: Professional Reality - The immediate creative challenge in front of you. The light, the composition, the client's needs, the technical execution. This is the craft layer, and it's real too.
Layer Three: Performance Reality - The emotional energy you need to project to do your job effectively. Confidence, enthusiasm, creative vision, problem-solving ability.
Most people think Layer Three is fake, but that's not right. It's not fake—it's selective. You're choosing which parts of yourself to amplify in service of the work.
The Selective Authenticity Principle
When my friend was shooting that family portrait session two days after his dad’s cancer diagnosis, every ounce of care he poured into those images was real. The way he chased the light, adjusted the framing, worked to capture genuine smiles — all of it came from a true place. He wasn’t phoning it in. If anything, he worked harder, lingering on the moments between the father and his kids, because he could feel — in real time — how temporary it all is.
The fact that he didn’t tell the family what was happening in his own life? That wasn’t dishonesty. That was professionalism.
There’s wisdom in knowing that authenticity doesn’t require you to hand someone your whole story. It’s about showing up fully for what’s needed in the moment — bringing the parts of yourself that serve the work, and keeping the rest where it belongs for now.
The ER Principle
I have a friend who’s an ER nurse, and she once told me the hardest part of the job isn’t the medical work — it’s switching between the different versions of herself the job demands.
In one moment, she’s racing to keep someone alive, hyper-focused on vitals, sterile technique, and rapid decisions. In the next, she’s walking into the waiting room to calmly explain to a family what’s happened. Those are completely different modes — both real, both necessary — and you can’t do the job without being able to flip the switch instantly.
Creative work asks for the same skill. Some moments demand your problem-solving side — troubleshooting lighting, solving production issues, delivering exactly what the client asked for. Others require your human side — noticing the way a father looks at his kid or how light hits someone’s face when they’re laughing.
The real challenge is moving between those modes without losing the thread of who you are.
The Emotional Labor Cost
But let's be honest about the toll this takes. Constant compartmentalization is exhausting. Switching between "excited creative professional" and "anxious human being" multiple times a day—that shit wears you down.
I notice it most at the end of long shooting days. Not physical exhaustion, but emotional exhaustion. Like I've been performing multiple roles simultaneously and my nervous system needs time to integrate all the different versions of myself I've been throughout the day.
And there's this weird guilt that comes with it. Like, am I being genuine if I can be genuinely excited about a yoga campaign while also being genuinely worried about the state of democracy?
The answer, I think, is yes. Human beings are complex enough to hold multiple realities simultaneously. The problem isn't that we compartmentalize—the problem is that we judge ourselves for it.
ACT III: THE STRANGE COMFORT OF CRAFT (10-12 minutes)
Why the Work Matters When Nothing Else Makes Sense
There's something profoundly grounding about focusing on craft when everything else feels chaotic. Not as escapism, but as anchor.
Ram Dass, who spent his life exploring consciousness and presence, talked about this beautifully: "Be here now." Not "be here when it's convenient" or "be here when the world makes sense." Be here now, with whatever is in front of you.
When I'm in the middle of a complicated lighting setup, trying to solve the puzzle of how to make someone look their best, the external noise quiets down. Not because I'm ignoring it, but because I'm engaged in something that requires my full attention and has a clear outcome.
There's order in the chaos. Variables I can control. Problems I can actually solve.
And maybe that's not avoidance—maybe that's resistance. Maybe continuing to create beautiful, honest work when the world feels unstable is its own form of protest against despair.
Noam Chomsky, who's spent decades analyzing systems of power, reminds us that "The general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know." But creative work—real creative work—is about paying attention. About seeing clearly. About documenting what's actually happening, whether that's the light hitting someone's face or the truth of a moment between people.
Every time you frame a shot, you're betting on continuity, on connection, on the possibility that beauty and truth still matter.
The Client as Collaborator in Normalcy
Here's something I've started appreciating more: clients who hire photographers during uncertain times are also engaging in an act of faith. They're saying, "Despite everything that's happening, I still believe my wedding matters. My family photos matter. My business story matters."
And they're right. It does matter.
Not because it's more important than larger systemic issues, but because it's the scale at which most human meaning actually happens. One relationship at a time. One family at a time. One small business at a time.
The yoga wear client isn't naive for caring about sustainable fashion while democracy feels fragile. They're choosing to build something better within the systems they can actually influence. And hiring me to help tell that story? That's an act of faith in the future.
The Permission to Keep Living
Here's something I need to say directly, because I think a lot of us are carrying guilt we don't even realize we're carrying:
You have permission to laugh at dinner with friends while democracy feels fragile. You have permission to celebrate your small wins while staying aware of larger struggles. You have permission to find joy in your work, your relationships, your daily life—not despite what's happening in the world, but because of it.
Bessel van der Kolk, who spent decades studying trauma and the brain, discovered something crucial about what he calls "collective trauma"—the kind most of us are experiencing right now. We're not living through the crisis directly, but we're witnessing it constantly. Through news alerts, social media, conversations with friends who are directly affected. And van der Kolk's research shows that our nervous systems don't distinguish between trauma we experience and trauma we witness. The stress response is real either way.
When entire populations are exposed to ongoing crisis—even from a distance—our collective nervous system starts to dysregulate. We become hypervigilant, scanning for threats, unable to rest. And here's the part that matters: maintaining joy, connection, and normal life patterns isn't selfish indulgence. It's neurological necessity.
Van der Kolk found that people who deliberately engage with beauty, laughter, and social connection during times of collective stress actually help stabilize not just their own nervous systems, but their communities'. When you go out with friends, when you celebrate a work win, when you allow yourself to be fully present for good moments—you're not ignoring suffering. You're modeling resilience.
And maybe more importantly, you're refusing to let fear dictate how you engage with life. Every time you choose connection over isolation, joy over despair, presence over paralysis—you're saying no to the forces that profit from keeping people scared, disconnected, and unable to think clearly.
This isn't about toxic positivity or pretending everything is fine. It's about recognizing that your capacity to stay engaged, to keep creating, to maintain your humanity—that's exactly what the world needs from you right now.
The Integration Wisdom
Ram Dass spent years teaching about what he called "being nobody, going nowhere." The idea that you can be fully engaged with what's in front of you without needing to fix everything or be everything to everyone.
There's a profound freedom in this. You can be genuinely concerned about social justice AND genuinely excited about the success of your clients business or the smiles of the mom seeing her babies prints for the first time. You can worry about the future of democracy AND care deeply about getting the lighting right for someone's headshots. You can feel overwhelmed by global chaos AND find meaning in showing up to work and doing a good job, no matter if you’re teaching 8th graders in Ohio or working on the front lines to protect voting rights in Texas.
These aren't contradictions. They're the full range of human experience.
Joseph Campbell wrote, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." Maybe the cave we fear to enter is the one where we admit that life is complex enough to require our full attention on multiple levels simultaneously.
The world needs people who can hold complexity, who can be present for the work in front of them while remaining aware of larger contexts. That's not compartmentalization as avoidance—that's what Chomsky would call "intellectual self-defense." The ability to think clearly about what's in your sphere of influence without being paralyzed by what isn't.
The Wisdom of Focused Attention
Some days, what matters is documenting someone's most important day. Some days, what matters is staying informed about democracy under threat. Some days, what matters is both, in rapid succession, with enough grace to do justice to each.
The skill isn't choosing between them. The skill is what Ram Dass called "loving awareness"—moving between realities without losing your humanity in the process.
Campbell reminds us that "A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself." But maybe heroism for creative professionals isn't grand gestures—maybe it's the daily practice of showing up fully for whatever requires your attention, whether that's a client's vision or the state of the world.
Both matter. Both deserve your best thinking. The challenge is developing the emotional flexibility to toggle between them without losing yourself in the process.
LIGHT LEAK: ACTIVATION (5-7 minutes)
Your Compartmentalization Audit
Ask yourself these questions:
What's the most jarring emotional gear-shift you've had to make recently between personal reality and professional demands?
When has focusing on craft actually helped you process something difficult you were experiencing personally?
What permission do you need to give yourself about caring about your work even when it feels small compared to larger problems?
For Photographers Specifically:
Think about the last time you had to photograph joy while experiencing pain. How did you navigate that?
What's your strategy for being present for clients when your personal life is chaotic?
How do you honor both your craft and your humanity without sacrificing either?
Community Activation
I want to hear your stories of professional compartmentalization. Not as trauma bonding, but as recognition that this is a skill we all develop and rarely discuss.
Because once we start naming this pattern, we can get better at it. We can develop strategies for moving between realities with more grace and less guilt.
Universal Application
This applies whether you're:
Managing a team while dealing with personal stress
Teaching children while processing your own anxiety about the future
Providing healthcare while worried about systemic healthcare collapse
Creating art while navigating financial insecurity
Building a business while questioning capitalism
The pattern is always the same: How do you show up fully for the work that's in front of you while carrying awareness of everything else that's happening?
CLOSING (90 seconds)
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by another photography podcaster who asked me, "Patrick, aren't you afraid that one of your clients will hear this?"
I answered without hesitation: "Absolutely not. In fact, I want them to hear it."
I want them to understand the humanity of the people performing the work. I want them to know how much we care about the craft, how seriously we take their projects, and how much emotional labor goes into showing up fully for their vision while managing everything else that's happening in our lives.
Because here's what I've learned: The clients worth working with don't want robots. They want humans who can be professional without being fake, who can focus on their needs without pretending the rest of the world doesn't exist.
And the work we do—documenting love, building brands, creating beauty—that's not separate from engaging with larger problems. It's part of how we stay human enough to keep engaging with larger problems.
Rome has been burning in various ways throughout human history. And throughout that history, people have kept creating, kept celebrating, kept documenting what matters to them. Not because they're oblivious to the burning, but because creativity is how humans process chaos and find meaning within it.
So yes, we’ll keep photographing yoga campaigns while democracy feels fragile. We’ll keep shooting weddings while our own relationships require work. We’ll keep making images that matter to people while staying aware of everything that's happening beyond my camera frame.
Because the alternative—shutting down, checking out, waiting for the world to stabilize before caring about anything—that's not resistance. That's surrender.
And I'm not ready to surrender yet.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah... stay human.