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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.
There's a photograph of Walter Murch in an editing bay. Black and white. Probably mid-eighties. He's holding a strip of 35mm film up to the light, squinting. Behind him, more film hangs like laundry. Thousands of feet of it.
Murch edited Apocalypse Now. The English Patient. Godfather Park II and III,
Films where a single cut changes the meaning of everything that came before it.
In that photograph, he looks tired.
Not from the work. From the knowing.
The film he's holding? That's someone's favorite take. The actor nailed it. The DP got the light perfect. The sound is clean.
And Murch, in his all his film wisdom is about to kill it, he’s going to decide it doesn't exist.
But this isn't about movies.
...
My name is Patrick Fore, and this is The Terrible Photographer—honest conversations about creativity, identity, and discovering 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... I'm calling it "Editing Is Violence."
Choice. Loss. Authority.
If this is your first episode, welcome. Feel free to jump around—they're in no particular order. As always, you can email me anytime. Questions, thoughts, hate mail—I respond to everything. Email's in the show notes.
So, with that said, let’s get into it.
...
Here's what photographers don't talk about.
The edit is where most of them drown.
Not during the shoot. Not in post-production. In the space between "I made good work" and "I chose what matters."
You shoot. You come home. You dump the cards.
First pass is easy. Delete the out-of-focus frames. The blinks. The moment someone's face did that thing where they look sixty pounds heavier.
That's triage.
The drowning starts after that.
When you're staring at three hundred images that are all... fine.
Good light. Good exposure. Good moments. Nothing wrong.
Nothing sharp enough to matter.
The model is looking left in twelve frames. Looking right in fifteen. Looking down in eight. And you have no idea which one is better because you don't hate any of them.
So you keep them all.
Wedding photographers deliver a thousand images to clients because somewhere along the way, volume started to equal value. Like showing up with a UPS truck full of files proves you worked.
You might post a carousel to Instagram. You might add one or two to your portfolio. But the client? They get everything.
Not because you're generous.
Because you're afraid to choose.
Coverage starts to feel like professionalism. Like you're giving them options. Covering your bases.
But what you're actually doing is outsourcing the decision.
You're hoping someone else will tell you which one matters.
...
Last year, I shot at the La Jolla tide pools. Blue hour. A model, a makeup artist, a stylist. One of those rare shoots where everything just... worked.
The ocean was cooperating. The light was doing that thing where it looks like it's coming from inside the rocks. The styling was on point. The model and I were completely locked in.
I wasn't shooting tethered. I was shooting to card. Just making things. Lost in it.
When I got home and ingested the files into Capture One, I saw the frame count.
1,200 images.
In two hours.
I did a first pass. Anything obviously out of focus, blinks, bad expressions. Any obvious duplicates. (When I get excited about a shot, I tend to shoot multiple, such a bad habit)
That left 300.
Second pass. Anything that felt like a near-duplicate or a safety shot I didn't need.
Third pass. Harder now. Looking for the ones that felt... necessary.
And that's where I got stuck.
Because at that point, they were all good. She's looking down in this one. Looking left in that one. Same light. Same pose. Same vibe.
I loved them both.
I had no idea which one was better.
...
There’s a thing that happens when you’re underwater too long. Divers talk about it.
Your body loses its sense of orientation.
Buoyancy cancels gravity. Your inner ear stops giving you reliable information. Visual cues lie. Bubbles drift sideways. The surface isn’t always where you think it is.
At depth, your brain gets quieter. Slower. More confident and less accurate at the same time.
Up could be above you. Or beside you. And your body honestly can’t tell the difference anymore.
That’s what the edit felt like.
I wasn’t overwhelmed.
I was disoriented.
I was too deep.
I exported selects to Dropbox and looked at them on my phone while I was waiting in the school pickup line. Different screen. Different context.
Still couldn't tell.
I printed contact sheets. Actual paper. Thought maybe seeing them small would clarify something.
Nope.
I got the edit down to 17 images.
17 images I loved.
And I had absolutely no idea what to do with them.
...
Here's the question I should have asked earlier:
"If this were the only photograph anyone ever saw from this shoot, would I be okay with that?"
...
Not "Is this a good image?"
Not "Does this show my range?"
Just: "Could this stand alone?"
...
The moment you ask it, most of your images die.
Not because they're bad. Because they're dependent.
They need context. They need alternates. They need you to explain why they matter.
Great images don't.
Great images carry weight by themselves. They don't apologize. They don't need ten versions to prove they're the right one.
They just are.
And the reason most photographers never find those images isn't because they're not in the pool.
It's because they're too afraid to let everything else drown.
...
You know what actually gets killed in the edit?
Not images.
Ego.
The fantasy that effort equals survival. That because you worked hard to get that frame, it deserves to live.
It doesn't.
The edit doesn't care how early you woke up. It doesn't care that you waited twenty minutes for the light to shift. It doesn't care that the model was tired and you coaxed one more take out of her and it came out great.
None of that earns the image a place.
Only the image earns the image a place.
You're not just cutting frames. You're cutting the story you told yourself about the work.
The story where everything mattered.
The story where you nailed it.
The story where you're the photographer who doesn't miss.
That story dies in the edit.
And most people can't handle it.
So they keep the safety shots. They keep the near-misses. They keep the frame that's almost as good as the great one, just in case.
Just in case what?
Just in case they're wrong about which one is great.
And that hesitation? That's the enemy.
Because great images don't hedge. They commit.
And if you can't commit to your own edit, no one else will.
Walter Murch has this line about editing.
He says it's like telling a joke.
If you tell it with the wrong rhythm, it dies. If you use too many words, it falls flat. If you pause in the wrong place, no one laughs.
The joke is funny. The structure killed it.
That's what most photographers don't understand about editing.
They think they're choosing the best images.
They're not.
They're choosing the rhythm.
Your portfolio isn't an inventory. It's not a catalog of everything you're capable of. It's not proof you showed up.
It's a story.
And stories need pacing.
They need silence between beats. They need contrast. They need images that let the other images breathe.
If you deliver a thousand wedding photos, you're not giving the couple a story. You're giving them homework.
If you post ten images to Instagram when one would land harder, you're not showing range. You're breaking rhythm.
Too many words. Wrong pause. Joke dies.
...
Here's the thing about rhythm: it requires space.
A great portfolio doesn't show everything you shot. It shows what needs to be shown and leaves the rest out.
That's not about perfectionism. That's about trust.
Trust that the viewer can connect the dots. Trust that one strong image carries more weight than five good ones. Trust that silence matters as much as what you say.
Most photographers can't do that.
Because leaving images out feels like leaving money on the table. Like underselling yourself. Like not proving you worked hard enough.
But the edit isn't about proof.
It's about impact.
And impact requires restraint.
...
Here's what changed for me.
Not some enlightenment moment. Just behavior.
I stopped explaining my selects.
I used to send a client thirty images with a note: "Let me know if you want to see more options."
Now I send ten. Sometimes five. No apology.
I stopped keeping safety versions of the same shot. If I'm choosing between two frames and I genuinely can't decide, I flip a coin and delete the other one.
Keeping both is a lie.
It's me pretending I don't have taste. Pretending the decision is too hard. Pretending someone else should choose.
But that's not what I'm being paid for.
I'm not being paid to make good images.
I'm being paid to know which good image matters.
...
Good images are polite.
They explain themselves. They show everything. They behave.
Great images don't.
Great images leave space. They trust you to do some of the work. They risk being misunderstood.
And that's why photographers kill them.
Because a great image feels incomplete. It feels like you didn't cover enough. It feels like you might have missed something.
That discomfort is the point.
A great image doesn't try to be everything. It tries to be one thing, completely.
And the only way to find it is to kill everything that's trying to be two things.
...
There's a version of this story where I tell you I figured it out.
Where I looked at those 17 images from La Jolla and had some moment of clarity. Some Zen realization about which two belonged in my portfolio.
That didn't happen.
You know what happened?
I sent the selects to a photo editor.
Someone who's been in the business longer than I have.
Someone with an objective eye.
I gave her about twenty images from that shoot and a few others.
And I let her make the final call.
Because I was too underwater.
I couldn't see which way was up anymore.
...
Sometimes the edit reveals something you don't want to admit:
You're too close.
The work is good. The images are strong. But you've lost the ability to know which one cuts through.
That's not failure.
That's honesty.
...
Most photographers think the problem is in the pile. Like the great image is hiding somewhere in the middle, and if they just look harder, they'll find it.
But that's not how it works.
Great images announce themselves.
Or they don't exist.
And if you can't hear them announcing themselves, it's not because you're bad at editing.
It's because you haven't given yourself permission to let the rest go.
You're still negotiating. Still hedging. Still hoping that if you keep everything, you won't have to be wrong.
But keeping everything is the same as choosing nothing.
And choosing nothing is the same as saying: "I don't know what my work is about."
...
The hardest part of editing isn't technical.
It's not Capture One versus Lightroom. It's not star ratings versus color tags. It's not about workflow.
It's about standing in front of a hundred images you love and saying: "Only this one matters."
And then watching the other ninety-nine disappear.
Not because they were bad.
Because they weren't the one.
...
Back to Walter Murch in that editing bay.
Film hanging like laundry. Thousands of feet of it. Days of work. Weeks. Months, maybe.
And he's holding one strip up to the light.
Deciding.
That's the job.
Not to honor every moment.
To choose the moment that carries the weight of all the others.
And to let the rest fall.
...
You're allowed to cut good images.
You're allowed to stand behind one photograph and let that be the answer.
And if you can't see which one it is, you're allowed to ask for help.
...
Stay curious.
Stay courageous.
Stay terrible.