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Note: contains explicit language.
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.
Cold Open – The Question That Never Left
A couple weeks back I’m sitting in a middle school art classroom for back-to-school night. My daughter Lucy’s first year at her new middle school. You’ve been in one of these rooms before—fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, walls plastered with student artwork that looks like it was made by kids who are probably in college or in some cases, going through their first divorce. The teacher admits as much. He shrugs and says, “Look, this is the stuff that got left behind. Nobody hangs their best work on a classroom wall. This is B-tier at best.”
And he’s right. You can see it in the pieces—some of it surprisingly good, especially when you remember an eleven- or twelve-year-old made it. Careful shading exercises, portraits built with grids, color wheels tacked up like road maps. Mixed in with charcoal drawings of Hot Cheetos bags, Fortnite characters, and anime eyes staring out from the walls. The typical weird middle school shit—half pop culture obsession, half technical exercise, all of it earnest in a way only kids can get away with.
It’s not bad, not at all. In fact, some of it is damn impressive. But it’s not the kind of work that stops you in your tracks. It’s practice, process. A gallery of stepping-stones.
The kind of place that smells faintly of acrylic paint and pencil shavings, where ambition gets taped to the wall and forgotten as soon as the bell rings.
The teacher’s a guy, maybe mid-40s, and right away you can tell he gives a damn. He’s not phoning this in. He’s laying out what the kids are going to learn this year: how to draw with a grid, how to build a face with proper proportions, how to shade an object so it actually looks like it has weight, how to use color theory without turning everything into a muddy mess. The guy’s a craftsman. A lifer. You can see the pride in his face as he talks about teaching kids the difference between slapping paint on paper and really seeing what’s in front of them.
And then, almost as an aside, he says something that stops me cold.
“The most common question I hear,” he says, “is ‘Is it good?’ Every single day, multiple times a day—‘Is my drawing good? Is my painting good? Is this good?’”
And I’m sitting there thinking: Holy shit. I’m supposed to be a seasoned professional—photographer, designer, writer, podcaster, whatever label you want to throw at me—and I’m still asking the same goddamn question.
I’ve asked it to peers, to clients, to bosses back when I had bosses. I’ve asked it to my wife—she gets it more than anyone. These days I’ve gotten more sophisticated about it, sure. I check the likes on Instagram. I scan the room when I present work. I study the flicker in a client’s face when they first see the proofs. But it’s the same desperate question that six-year-old with paint on her fingers is asking her teacher.
When did we learn to distrust the thing that made us create in the first place?
Developmental psychologists will tell you it happens right around the time the ego wakes up. A four-year-old will draw a purple sky without a second thought. They’re not performing—they’re expressing. But by seven or eight, kids realize they’re being watched, graded, compared. Developmental psychologist Susan Harter spent decades studying how kids see themselves, and she found that right around age seven or eight, something flips. She calls it the shift in self-concept — the moment we stop creating for the sheer joy of it and start creating for approval.
And once that happens, the question “Is it good?” moves in and never leaves.
Harvard researcher Teresa Amabile has shown that the more external evaluation enters the room—grades, competitions, likes—the less original the work becomes. Creativity narrows. We make safer choices. We learn that “good” isn’t what feels true. “Good” is what earns approval.
Which makes me wonder: maybe the real tragedy isn’t that we ever doubted ourselves. Maybe it’s that we were taught to measure our art by someone else’s yardstick in the first place.
And that’s the question I’ve been turning over ever since that night in Lucy’s art classroom. Not just as a dad, but as a photographer, a designer, a creative human who’s still addicted to hearing someone else say, “Yeah, that’s good.”
Intro
I’m Patrick Fore. This is The Terrible Photographer Podcast—honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. Today’s episode is number 25: “Is It Good?”
At one point that night, the teacher flips it around and asks us a question: “How do we determine art’s value?”
And of course, there’s always one. The overachieving parent in the front row, arm already in the air like he’s auditioning for extra credit. I mutter something under my breath from the back of the classroom (I always sit in the back, I was that kid), and the art teacher catches it—gives me this quick chuckle like we’re in on the same joke.
“Yes?” he says, calling on him.
“Society determines the value,” the parent says, puffed up with pride.
“You’re right,” the teacher says.
And he is right. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because when kids ask “Is it good?” what they’re really asking is “How will this be judged?” And we never stop. We just swap out the yardsticks. The gradebook becomes Instagram likes, portfolio reviews, ad agency briefs, dollar amounts on an invoice.
That’s where it gets dangerous. Because once you start assigning value, you start bending your work toward wherever you think that value comes from. You make what you know will sell. You follow the metrics. You take the projects that feel safe instead of the ones that scare you. You shave off honesty, vulnerability, risk—because those things don’t always pay.
Act 1 – The Professional Version of “Is It Good?”
The kids in Lucy’s class ask their art teacher, “Is it good?” I ask the same thing on almost every shoot, only I’m not saying it out loud.
Last year I was in L.A., shooting on an LED volume — which is basically an aircraft hangar lined wall-to-ceiling with digital panels, where reality doesn’t exist unless someone renders it first. If you’ve seen The Mandalorian, you’ve seen it. The Batman used it too. It’s the film industry’s new miracle drug: you want a desert at sunrise, a galaxy spiraling overhead, or downtown Tokyo at midnight? Load the file. No flights, no permits, no waiting on weather.
Step inside one of these places and it’s like walking into Photoshop with the opacity turned up to one hundred. The walls shimmer, the air hums, and everyone around you pretends it’s normal to work inside a $20-million video game. Complete with a craft services table with all the costco granola bars and beef sticks you could want.
That day I was crammed in the back seat of a new electric Mercedes parked dead-center in the hangar, tethered to my digitech’s station across the car. Half my brain was on the talent — directing, coaxing, keeping the rhythm. The other half was stretched thin, straining to hear every word from the gaggle of clients gathered around the glowing monitor on the other side of the glass.
I couldn’t see their faces, but I could hear the verdict in their voices. A laugh. A murmur. A sharp inhale. That’s the currency on set. The Morse code that tells you if you’re about to be the hero or the guy who just torched fifty grand of someone else’s marketing budget.
And then it came — approval. Their voices lit up. And it hit me like a narcotic. The warm rush, the tingling spine, the brain fuzz that tells you you’ve done something right. That you’re safe. For now.
This is the professional version of “Is it good?” It’s not a kid showing a crayon drawing to a teacher. It’s thousands of dollars, your reputation, your next job — all of it hanging in the balance while you sit in a fake world built out of LED panels, listening for approval like it’s oxygen.
Because in that moment, nothing else matters. Is it good? That’s the only question that counts when there are tens of thousands of dollars on the line and your reputation standing in the crosshairs.
“Good” is the bare fucking minimum. Great is nice. Phenomenal is better. But if it isn’t good, what are we even doing here?
And the death words — the ones that feel like a punch to the kidneys — are: “Yeah, they’re okay. They’ll work.”
Fuck that. Give me freedom or give me death. Five stars or nothing you know.
But here’s the reality: when you’re a professional, you don’t get to give yourself the five stars. That validation, that approval, that little “atta-boy” — it comes from the people who can sign the check, the ones who can make or break you.
That’s the professional version of the six-year-old asking the teacher, “Is it good?” It’s the same desperate question. The stakes just got a whole lot higher.
Act 2 – The Safety Prison (Gordon Parks, sharpened)
Gordon Parks came out of Kansas with nothing but a pawnshop camera and appetite. Self-taught, self-willed, no pedigree, no permission. By the 1940s, he had fought his way into Vogue, shooting fashion spreads that were immaculate. Clean lighting, elegant poses, crisp compositions. They were stunning.
And here’s the thing: that work mattered. It was noble. It was dignified. Parks was one of the first Black photographers to work for Vogue at that level, and every perfectly lit frame was a statement in itself. Safe work can be beautiful. Safe work can be important. It takes skill, discipline, and mastery of the craft.
But Parks didn’t stop there. He turned his lens toward the parts of America that didn’t want to be seen. His photograph American Gothic — Ella Watson, a Black cleaning woman in Washington D.C., mop and broom in hand, posed in front of the American flag — was a direct punch in the gut of the American dream. He photographed segregated schools, Harlem apartments, police brutality. He made portraits of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Eldridge Cleaver. Work that risked rejection. Work that made people furious. Work that told the truth.
That’s the contrast. On one side: fashion spreads, editorial polish, commercial perfection — work that proves photography can be noble, professional, even beautiful. On the other: documentary fire. Work that made enemies, stirred controversy, and changed how a nation saw itself.
And the truth is, both sides matter. Without the Vogue spreads, Parks might never have had the access or platform to make the photographs that rewrote history. Without the dangerous work, he might have been remembered as just another technically brilliant fashion photographer. It was the balance — the ability to master safe and still step into truth — that made him Gordon Parks.
Now here’s where it hits home for the rest of us. Most photographers aren’t Gordon Parks. Most of us make our living shooting weddings, commercial campaigns, family portraits, headshots. Safe work. And it’s good work. Noble work. You capture someone’s wedding day so their kids and grandkids will know what joy looked like in their family. You shoot a brand campaign that helps a business survive another quarter. You take a family photo that becomes the image on the mantle for the next thirty years. That matters.
But then there’s the other question — the itch you can’t ignore if you’ve got it. What’s the work you’d make if you weren’t chasing approval, or clients, or likes? What’s the work that might scare you, or even embarrass you, but would feel undeniably yours?
Because photography can be more than noble. More than professional. More than “good.” If you’re willing to step into that dangerous space, photography can be the thing that cracks people open. It can leave scars.
Safe is survival. Truth is legacy. And every one of us has to decide if we’re content with safe, or if we’re willing to risk stepping into something bigger.
That’s the tension every photographer I know lives inside. Safe work is noble. Safe work is necessary. But truth — the risky, vulnerable, honest kind of truth — is what makes work unforgettable.
And here’s the kicker: this isn’t a new problem. We didn’t invent this conflict with Instagram likes or client briefs. A hundred years ago, Leo Tolstoy was asking the same question in his book What Is Art?
Now, Tolstoy wasn’t some armchair critic. By the time he wrote that book, he was already Leo Freaking Tolstoy — the guy who gave us War and Peace and Anna Karenina. One of the most celebrated novelists of all time. He could have coasted on literary fame, cashing checks and sipping tea. Instead, in his later years, he went full ascetic philosopher, obsessed with the purpose of life, morality, and whether art actually mattered.
And his answer about art was brutal in its simplicity: art is good if it sincerely communicates the feelings of the artist to another person. That’s it. Not technique. Not polish. Not whether it pleased the elites or got glowing reviews.
Tolstoy wrote, “For a work to be art it must be sincere. The artist must himself feel the emotion he transmits… and the receiver must feel it too.”
If you fake it, it isn’t art. If you mean it, it is.
Think about that in light of everything we’ve already covered. The kids in Lucy’s art class asking “Is it good?” The clients murmuring behind the monitor on a soundstage in L.A. Gordon Parks walking the tightrope between stunning Vogue spreads and photographs that forced America to look at itself.
Authority tells us art is “good” when it follows the rules, when it pleases the client, when it looks like what already sells. Tolstoy said the opposite: art is only good when it transmits truth.
And when you hear that, it’s terrifying. Because suddenly “good” isn’t about approval, or metrics, or even survival. It’s about whether you actually felt something when you made it.
That was true in Tolstoy’s Russia a century ago, and it’s still the fight we’re in today.
Okay so, I need to tell you something. I recorded act 1 and then act 2 and then an act 3 and a closing and couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t do it.
Because I couldn’t help but feel like I’m kind of full of shit here a little bit.
So I’m rerecording this, and I just rewrote these words like 10 minutes ago. Fueled by whisky a client gave me and a lot of internal angst.
I mean, look, here I am, explaining this to you like I've cracked the code. Like I'm the authority on why you shouldn't trust authority. Do you hear how fucked up that is? I'm literally performing expertise about the dangers of performing for approval.
I spent twenty minutes telling you about kids asking 'Is it good?' and then built an entire episode hoping you'll think it's... what? Good. Smart. Worth sharing. I'm checking my phone right now wondering if this will get downloads, if it'll resonate, if people will think I'm insightful.
I even brought Tolstoy into this. Because apparently I still need a dead Russian novelist to validate my point about trusting your own creative instincts. Why do I need intellectual backup? Why can't I just trust that you'll recognize truth when you hear it?
You know what? Fuck Tolstoy. Not because he's wrong—he's probably right. But because I just used him as creative authority to tell you not to trust creative authority. And truth be told, because we’re all about honesty right, I only brought up Tolstoy so you’ll think i’m smart.
That's some next-level bullshit right there.
So here's what I actually know, without the Russian literature degree: I'm still asking the same question as that six-year-old in art class. I'm just better at disguising it. This whole episode? It's me asking if my insights are good enough, if my voice matters, if I'm worth listening to.
But maybe that's the point. Maybe we're all still asking. Maybe the goal isn't to stop asking—maybe it's to ask better questions. Not 'Is this good enough for them?' but 'Is this true enough for me?'
Act 3 – The New Authorities
And look, the teacher gets replaced by the client. The client gets replaced by the algorithm. The algorithm gets replaced by influencers and market trends.
Authority today isn’t a red pen. It’s a like button. It’s a mood board someone copied from someone else’s feed. It’s a Pinterest board of clichés passed around like gospel until nobody remembers where the idea started.
Authority teaches us to perform. Expression asks us to trust. And those two voices are almost never in harmony.
And maybe the cruelest twist is that we don’t even need authority to show up — we’ve internalized it. We’ve become our own gatekeepers. We scroll through our own work like a jury of one, asking: Is it good enough to post? Will anyone care? Will this make me look relevant?
We become the teacher. We become the client. We become the algorithm. Performing authority against ourselves until there’s nothing left but a polished performance.
And here’s the paradox: for working photographers, “good” isn’t just about validation — it’s about survival. Safe work buys food. It pays rent. It funds braces and back-to-school clothes and keeps the lights on. You can’t eat sincerity. You can’t pay the gas bill with punk rock truth-telling.
So what do you do with that tension? How do you live in a world where being relevant, marketable, and algorithm-approved pays your bills, but being true to yourself is the only thing that keeps you sane?
That’s the razor’s edge.
Some of us bury the itch. We double down on safe work, ride the algorithm, chase the trends, and hope it’ll be enough. And for a lot of photographers — wedding shooters, family shooters, commercial shooters — it is. That’s the noble lane, right? Serve the client. Deliver the product. Keep food on the table.
The work that might not sell, but might actually say something. The difference between a sterile corporate headshot and the portrait you'd take in a basement show - beer on the floor, smoke in the air, but real fucking humanity in the frame.
That’s the fight Tolstoy was pointing to over a century ago. He said art is only good when it transmits truth. And here we are, trying to reconcile truth with invoices, rebellion with relevance, sincerity with survival.
We live in the middle. Balancing safe with true. And the only question left is: which one are you starving — your body, or your soul?
Act 4 – Returning to the First Voice
So where does this leave us? You’ve got bills to pay. You’ve got mouths to feed. You’ve got clients who don’t give a shit about Tolstoy. They just want the files on time.
Fine. Do the safe work. Deliver the brand guidelines, the family formals, the glossy catalog spreads. Do it well. Do it professionally. That’s survival. That’s the job.
But if that’s all you do? You’re starving yourself. You’re amputating the part of you that ever wanted to make art in the first place.
This is where you go back to the first voice. Before grades. Before likes. Before clients. Before the algorithm. The voice that said: What if I try this? What if I make this because it feels like mine?
And I know what you’re thinking. I’m just a wedding photographer in Denver. I’m just a stay-at-home mom in Dubuque. I’m just a teacher in Phoenix.
Bullshit. You’re a human being with a perspective no one else has. You’ve got stories inside you no algorithm can manufacture.
The wedding photographer in Denver? Sure, nail the shot of the first kiss. But then go find the bride’s dad alone in the hallway, wiping his eyes when nobody’s looking. That’s the truth.
The mom in Dubuque? Take the photo of the toys scattered on the floor, the chaos nobody else sees. That’s the truth.
The teacher in Phoenix? Photograph the exhaustion in your students’ eyes during testing week, or the way one of them lights up when it finally clicks. That’s the truth.
Truth doesn’t require a client brief. It doesn’t require permission. It just requires you deciding to point the camera at something that feels like yours.
And no, you don’t have to burn down your career to do it. Safe work and true work can live side by side. Safe keeps you alive. True keeps you human. Gordon Parks shot Vogue one day and turned around and made American Gothic the next.
So stop asking, “Is it good?” Start asking:
Does this feel like me?
Would I make this if nobody ever saw it?
Am I saying something only I can say?
Because the truth is, nobody cares if it’s good. Good is wallpaper. Good gets forgotten the second the tab is closed.
But true? True is what lingers. True is what leaves scars. True is what makes someone stop and feel less alone.
Safe pays the bills. Truth is the only thing you’ll leave behind.
So here it is. Stop chasing good.
Good is the velvet rope that keeps you obedient. Good is the waiting-room soft pop of creativity. Good is what the algorithm spoon-feeds you when it wants you quiet, predictable, and safe.
Fuck good.
Make something true. Make something reckless. Make something so personal it scares you to show it. Make the thing that might get you laughed at, ignored, or told you’re “too much.” Because that’s the work that matters. That’s the work that will outlive you.
And let me tell you something: you don’t need Tolstoy’s approval, or your art teacher’s, or mine. They don’t know shit. Because they don’t know you. They don’t know the life you’ve lived, the bruises you’ve carried, the particular way you see the world. Only you know that. And only you can make work that carries it.
So make the safe jobs. Take the check. Pay the rent. Fund the braces. But don’t confuse survival with legacy. Don’t confuse professional polish with a pulse.
Because one day, the client emails will stop. The likes will vanish. The invoices will fade. And the only question that will matter is: Did I make something that was mine?
That’s the first voice. That’s the only voice that ever mattered.
So go back to it. Trust it. Fight for it.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. Stay terrible.
Because terrible is where truth lives.
And truth is the only thing worth leaving behind.
[beat]
That’s all you need.