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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
42 - Bonus - Framing
So you might have recently have seen that Vanity Fair published a profile of Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, and paired it with a photographic portfolio of what they describe as Trump's inner circle. The photographs were made by Christopher Anderson.
If you don’t know him, you should. He’s a Magnum photographer—a member of the most prestigious agency in the world—but he didn’t get there by being polite.
He got there by documenting the Haitian refugee crisis from a sinking boat. He got there by being a war correspondent. He’s spent his life in the 'uncomfortable' places.
So when he walks into the White House, he isn’t starstruck. He’s looking for the same thing he looked for in the middle of the ocean: the reality of the human condition under pressure. He’s not there to take a picture of a politician; he’s there to document a weight
The story opens in the Oval Office. Wiles is meeting with the president and what she calls her "core team": Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff.
They're discussing things that don't fit neatly into headlines. Structural things. Power in its adult form. The filibuster. Foreign leaders. Consequences.
At one point, Wiles stands up and starts to leave.
The president looks at her and asks if it's an emergency.
She replies, "It's an emergency. It doesn't involve you."
And then you look at the photographs.
There's a group portrait. A long table dominates the foreground, heavy and reflective, like architecture. The kind of table that doesn't move unless someone dies. The people around it look calm. Measured. Not heroic. Not chaotic. Just... present.
Wiles sits centered. Hands folded. Upright. She looks like the only person in the room who isn't in a hurry.
There's a close portrait of her face. Dead center. No flattering light. No soft diffusion. Skin texture intact. Time visible. Eyes open and unblinking.
There are portraits where the camera is too close. Uncomfortably close. Where context disappears and all that's left is texture. Skin. Fatigue. Mouths that don't resolve into smiles.
There's a black-and-white portrait of Stephen Miller that isolates him from the rest of the set, draining the present tense out of the image.
But this isn't about politics.
And it's not about portraiture technique.
This is about what happens when a photographer refuses to make power look comfortable.
This episode is about why most photographers—myself included—stopped being authors and became decorators. And why framing is the only thing that can make us dangerous again.
THE HANDSHAKE
My name is Patrick Fore, and this is The Terrible Photographer, honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice.
This is a bonus episode. Part of a loose series I've been calling Basics Deconstructed.
The idea is simple: take the most basic concepts in photography—the words we throw around like we understand them—and pull them apart. Not to teach you how to use them. But to remind you what they actually are.
Today is Episode 42. I'm calling it "Framing."
Today we’re talking about Authority. Distance. Power. (and how as photographers, we often give our power away)
If this is your first episode, welcome. Feel free to jump around. They're in no particular order. And as always, you can email me anytime. Questions, thoughts, hate mail—I respond to everything. Email's in the show notes.
WHAT WE THINK FRAMING IS
Let me start with what we were all taught.
Framing is composition.
It's the rule of thirds. Leading lines. Headroom and nose room. Negative space. The decision to shoot wide or tight. Horizontal or vertical. Where you place the horizon line.
It's geometry.
And if you go to photography school, or watch YouTube tutorials, or scroll through educational Instagram posts, that's what framing is reduced to. A technical decision about where to put things in the rectangle.
Shoot a portrait? Put the eyes on the top third.
Shoot a landscape? Don't split the frame in half.
Shoot a product? Center it. Or don't. Depends on the trend this month.
And listen, I'm not saying composition doesn't matter. It does.
But calling composition "framing" is like calling a hammer "carpentry."
The hammer is the tool.
Carpentry is what you build.
WHAT FRAMING ACTUALLY IS
I want to tell you something that makes me uncomfortable.
If I walked into that room—the West Wing, Susie Wiles, that table—I'm not sure I could do what Christopher Anderson did.
If I’m really, fucking honest,
I think I'd cower.
I think I'd cower to the moment, the people, the room.
I think I'd make them look like heroes.
Because that's what I've been trained to do. That's what my hands know how to do before my brain even makes a decision.
I photographed a founder yesterday. CEO of a SaaS company. Downtown hotel. Portrait session. I didn't know him. Didn't know his company. Didn't know what he'd built or what he'd burned down to get there.
And instinctively, I tried to make him look better than he was.
Flattering light.
Slight up-angle. Hero energy.
Styling conversations about "on brand but approachable but still a leader."
Everything was about making him look good.
Thats me doing what I do. What I’m good at. What they paid me for.
What Christopher Anderson did here—refusing to flatter, refusing to smooth, refusing to make power look comfortable—that takes courage I'm not sure I have.
It takes experience.
It takes an almost superhuman ability to read a room and decide: I'm not here to make you look better. I'm here to show what power actually costs.
And I don't know if I could do that.
But I want to understand why.
THE DIFFERENCE
Here's what I'm learning.
Composition is where the chair goes.
Framing is who gets to sit in it.
Composition is technical.
Framing is authorship.
Framing decides:
What gets context.
What gets distance.
What gets normalized.
What gets treated as inevitable.
Framing answers the question: "How should this feel before anyone decides what it means?"
And that's power.
THE GRIT IS THE POINT
Look at the Stephen Miller portrait in the Vanity Fair set.
It's so close it's almost rude.
He looks older than you expect. Tired. Like being the villain he is taks a toll.
And that same treatment runs through the entire portfolio.
On the women, you can see makeup as makeup.
Unflattering skin lines. Texture. Smudges. The little things that usually get sanded down because we've been taught that "professional" means "smooth."
On the men, the same thing.
JD Vance has dryness has dryness and skinflakes the lips. Texture around the eyes. Stress baked into skin.
Nothing is cleaned up.
If I shot this, I'd retouch it. I would.
I'd open Capture One, grab the heal tool, and start erasing humanity like it's a liability.
But here, the humanity stays.
That's not a technical decision.
That's framing.
Because it changes what power feels like.
Not cinematic.
Not glamorous.
Human. Tired. Mortal.
SCALE AS A STATEMENT
Then there's scale.
These people are photographed as small in the room.
The room wins.
The chairs feel oversized.
The tables feel permanent.
The walls feel like they've absorbed decades of decisions.
In the group portrait, JD Vance doesn't dominate the frame. He almost blends in. He's one of the smallest people in the image. He fades into the team.
The system becomes the subject, not the personality.
That's a choice.
Power here doesn't look like a man on a balcony.
It looks like a meeting.
A committee.
A room that will still exist when the people inside it are gone.
THE LIGHT SWITCH
There's a portrait of JD Vance framed next to a light switch.
And I know why that sticks out.
Because I would never leave that in.
I'd shift left.
Clean the wall.
Make it timeless.
But Anderson left it.
The light switch is the metaphor for the entire administration.
THE PIVOT
I used to think this was about technical skill.
How to light. How to frame. How to direct.
But it's not.
It's about deciding whether you're going to make someone comfortable or make them visible.
And those are not the same thing.
Most photographers—most of us—stopped thinking this deeply about framing years ago.
I did.
I started thinking about client expectations instead.
I started framing for:
Pinterest boards.
Trends.
Algorithms.
What already worked last month.
And slowly, the frame stopped being mine.
I didn't lose my voice.
I outsourced it.
THE COST
Here's the brutal irony.
Photographers are some of the only people on earth with the tools to shape meaning.
And we spend most of our time using those tools to make images that look like someone else's mood board.
We have a weapon.
And we use it to make beige.
I don't say that to shit on wedding photographers or brand shooters or portrait artists.
Every photograph frames something.
A senior portrait frames adulthood.
A wedding photo frames love and tradition.
A brand image frames authority and trust.
You're doing this whether you acknowledge it or not.
The danger isn't client work.
The danger is autopilot.
Autopilot is just someone else's framing running your camera.
THE LIE WE BELIEVED
There's a lie that keeps photographers trapped.
It sounds reasonable.
"My job is to give people what they want."
No.
Your job is to frame what you see.
Clients don't respond to compliance. They respond to clarity.
Audiences don't respond to trends. They respond to intention.
Your voice is not your subject matter.
Your voice is your decisions.
Distance.
Stillness.
Chaos.
Restraint.
Silence.
Two photographers can shoot the same subject in the same room and tell completely different truths.
That's not gear.
That's framing.
Framing isn't about control.
Framing is about responsibility.
You're responsible for what an image makes feel normal.
You're responsible for what an image makes feel inevitable.
And you're responsible for whether the world enters your frame as a trend or as a truth.
Your voice is not your subject matter. Your voice is your decisions.
When I shot that CEO yesterday, I made success look effortless.
I made leadership look comfortable.
I made power look good.
And maybe that's what he needed.
Maybe that's what the brand needed.
But I also wonder what I didn't show.
The cost.
The doubt.
The toll.
The humanity.
Christopher Anderson showed that.
Not because he's cruel.
But because he's honest.
And honesty in a photograph is fucking rare.
THE RESTORATION
Here's what I'm realizing.
The power was never in the camera.
It was never in the edit.
It was never in the algorithm.
It was in the frame.
And it still is.
When you start authoring again—when you start framing for truth instead of comfort—something strange happens.
Your work gets quieter.
Your edits get simpler.
Your choices get cleaner.
And people start feeling something again.
Not because you shouted.
Because you finally meant it.
You're allowed to disappoint Pinterest.
You're allowed to ignore the trend cycle.
You're allowed to frame things the way they feel to you, not the way they're supposed to look.
That's not arrogance.
That's authorship.
And when photographers remember that—when we remember that framing is a decision about what deserves to be seen and how it deserves to be seen—we stop being decorators.
We become dangerous again.
You know, at the end of every episode, I tell you to 'Stay curious. Stay courageous.'
It’s easy to say. It looks great on a t-shirt. But Christopher Anderson’s work in the West Wing is what that motto looks like in its purest, most terrifying form.
Curiosity is walking into the most powerful room in the world and instead of looking for the 'official' shot, you look at the texture of a man’s skin. You look at the way a light switch breaks the perfection of a wall. You ask: 'What is actually here?'
Courage is the harder part.
Courage is having the Vice President of the United States in your frame and refusing to cower. It’s the courage to not 'fix' it. To not flatter. To not perform. It’s the courage to rise to the occasion by being exactly who you are, rather than who they expect you to be.
He didn't shoot what the White House wanted. He didn't even shoot what Vanity Fair expected.
He shot what HE saw. The way HE saw it.
That is the leap from being a technician to being an author. And that leap is always, always made of courage.
THE LIGHT LEAK
Listen, I don't know if I could walk into that room and do what Christopher Anderson did.
But the truth is, most of us will never be asked to photograph the White House Chief of Staff. We won’t be asked to frame the architects of a nation.
Our "West Wings" are much smaller.
It’s a kitchen table where a marriage is quietly fraying. It’s a studio where a high school senior is terrified of the future. It’s a street corner where a stranger is just trying to exist.
And in those moments, we have a choice.
We can use our cameras to "smooth" the world. We can use the heal tool to erase the fatigue, the fear, and the truth of what it costs to be alive right now. We can keep making "beige."
Or, we can be brave enough to leave the light switch in.
We can be brave enough to let the room be bigger than the person.
Maybe that’s what being a 'Terrible Photographer' really is.
It’s being 'terrible' at following the rules. It’s being 'terrible' at giving the powerful the PR they want. It’s being 'terrible' at making the world look beige and comfortable.
If you can do that—if you can frame the truth instead of the trend—then you’re doing the work.
So, as you head into your next shoot, remember the table. Remember the light switch.
Don’t just move the chair. Decide who gets to sit in it.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah... stay terrible.