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"Gratitude is for gifts. It is not for labor. You don't have to be 'grateful' that the business you built with your own sweat is working."
"The higher you climb, the lonelier it gets. Not because you're broken. But because there are simply fewer people at that altitude."
"You can get 10,000 likes on a photo and still feel completely invisible. Because those people aren't witnessing you. They're consuming content."
"When you're in the Neutral Zone, you don't need a fast-moving river. You need a Still Pool."
"Sarah isn't failing. She's not depressed. She's just alone at the level she's operating."
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.
Hey friends, quick thing before we start.
I finally released the book.
For those of you who don't know, I spent the last few years writing a book called Lessons From A Terrible Photographer. And here is the pitch:
Influencers talk about cameras. This book is about the things cameras can't fix. Because the war is internal, not technical.
Now, because I apparently have no self-control when it comes to packaging, the launch is actually a Limited Collector's Box. It includes the book (signed and numbered), a signed print, a Field Notes notebook, and a hand-typed letter from me on my 1920s Corona typewriter. And more.
It is a literal artifact. It is also... $69.99.
I know. That feels weird to say out loud. But printing costs are insane and I wanted this to be special, so there are only 35 of these in existence. If you want one, the link is in the show notes. If that price sounds crazy to you, I totally get it—the standard hardback comes in January.
Okay. Let's get to it.
[THEME MUSIC PLAYS - FADES INTO AMBIENT ATMOSPHERE]
MOVEMENT 1: THE ARRIVAL
In January of 2007, a man walked into a subway station in Washington D.C. during the morning rush hour.
He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. He found a spot near a trash can, opened his violin case, and started to play.
He played six Bach pieces. He played for forty-five minutes.
In that time, over a thousand people walked past him.
That man was Joshua Bell—one of the best violinists in the world. And he wasn't playing some cheap fiddle from a pawn shop. He was playing a Stradivarius worth three and a half million dollars.
Three days earlier, he had sold out a theater in Boston where seats cost a hundred bucks a pop.
But in the subway station?
Almost nobody stopped. Only seven people paused to listen for more than a minute.
He made thirty-two dollars in change.
When he finished playing, there was no applause. No recognition. There was just the sound of shoes on tile and the rumble of the train arriving.
[PAUSE]
He was completely visible. A thousand people looked right at him. They saw the man. They heard the music—objectively, they heard it. Sound waves hit their eardrums.
But they didn't see him. And they didn't hear him.
He was a genius holding a masterpiece, standing in a subway station. But because he didn't have a witness—because no one stopped to recognize what they were experiencing—he was just background noise.
He was just a guy in a baseball cap next to a trash can.
[BEAT]
I've been thinking about that story a lot lately.
Because I think a lot of us feel like Joshua Bell in the subway right now.
We are playing our hearts out. We are holding the expensive gear. We are doing the work. We are showing up. We are creating. We are pouring everything we have into our craft.
But we feel like we are playing to an empty room. We feel like we are disappearing into the noise.
You can be the best in the world. You can be holding a Stradivarius. You can be playing Bach perfectly.
But if you are unaccompanied... or on the wrong stage, or on no stage at all, you are invisible.
[MUSIC SWELLS BRIEFLY, THEN SETTLES]
My name is Patrick Fore, and this is The Terrible Photographer—where we have honest conversations about creativity, identity, and discovering your voice.
Today is Episode 40. Holy shit. We've made it to the 40s.
This is actually the first in a four-part series I'm calling "The Long Middle."
Now, when I say "The Long Middle," I'm talking about that specific season in a creative life where you've mastered the skills, you've built the business, you've done everything "right"... but something still feels off.
It's the loneliness that comes with expertise. The isolation that happens when you get really good at something and realize fewer and fewer people can see what you're actually doing.
Over the next four weeks, we're going to talk about that loneliness—and how to find your way out of it.
Today's episode—Part 1—is called "The Island." It's about what it feels like to be a master without a witness.
If this is your first episode—welcome. These episodes are in no particular order, so feel free to jump around. And as always, you can email me anytime. Questions, thoughts, hate mail—I respond to everything. Email's in the show notes.
[PAUSE - 3 SECONDS]
MOVEMENT 2: THE MEANDERING
A few weeks ago, I received an email from a subscriber who knows exactly what that subway station feels like.
Let's call her Sarah. She's a wedding photographer in the UK. Successful. Booked solid. Making good money. By every external metric, she's crushing it.
But in her email, she wrote this line:
"The longer I do this, the more I feel like I'm disappearing into the work. Like I'm feeling less and less seen."
Not dying. Not quitting. Not burning out.
Just... fading. Becoming less herself with every shoot.
She said she spends 90% of her week alone in a dark spare bedroom, editing client photos in Lightroom. The other 10%, she's performing joy and enthusiasm for people on wedding days.
People are happy with the photos—love them, actually. The compliments keep coming. The checks keep clearing.
But for some reason, none of it feels like enough anymore. The validation isn't validating. The success isn't satisfying. All of it is like eating plain dry toast.
Everyone tells her she should be grateful. "You're making money doing what you love!"
But she told me she can't shake this feeling that with every wedding, every edit, every forced smile for a client, she's slowly erasing her own outline. Like she's becoming a ghost in her own life.
In one of the last lines of her email, she said: "I can't even talk to my partner about this anymore. She doesn't get it. And I'm tired of sounding ungrateful."
[PAUSE]
Can we just pause on that word for a second? "Ungrateful."
I think "Gratitude" has become one of the most weaponized words in the creative industry. It's used as a silencer. If you say, "I'm feeling empty," the world says, "You should be grateful you have clients."
And so we gaslight ourselves. We look at the spreadsheet that says "Success" and we tell ourselves we must be broken if we don't feel successful.
Now, look. I'm not saying you shouldn't be grateful. I think there's always a place for gratitude in life. Being thankful for the sun, for this Guinness that I'm drinking, for your breath, for connection—that is healthy. That is good for us.
But gratitude should never be used as a tool for self-deception.
There's a massive difference between Genuine Gratitude and Obligatory Gratitude. Genuine gratitude opens you up. Obligatory gratitude shuts you up. It makes you feel indebted to your own life.
And here's the truth: Gratitude is for gifts. It is not for labor.
You don't have to be "grateful" that the business you built with your own sweat is working. It's a machine. You built it. And just because the machine is working doesn't mean you have to enjoy being the operator anymore.
You are allowed to outgrow things you used to dream about. That doesn't make you ungrateful. It just makes you human.
[BEAT]
Now, Sarah isn't talking about quitting. She's not saying she wants to leave photography. That's not the problem.
The problem is simpler—and harder.
She's really, really good at what she does. And nobody around her can see it.
[PAUSE]
Here's what I think is happening. And I've experienced this too.
There's this thing that happens when you get deep into a craft. When you move from competent to proficient to expert. When you start operating at a level that most people can't perceive.
You become lonelier.
Not because you're doing anything wrong. But because the farther you climb, the fewer people can see what you're actually doing.
When you're a beginner, everyone can see your progress. You couldn't focus your camera last month, and now you can. Visible improvement. Everyone celebrates.
When you're intermediate, your peers can appreciate your work. They get it. They understand the challenges. You have a tribe.
But when you're advanced? When you're making decisions at a level most people can't perceive? When the difference between good and great is invisible to the untrained eye?
You become Joshua Bell in the subway.
You're playing a Stradivarius. You're playing Bach perfectly. But you're surrounded by people who can't tell the difference between you and the guy with a $200 violin playing "Wonderwall."
Sarah is spending 45 minutes analyzing the perfect selection of the first kiss.
She carefully fixes the distracting skinfold near the armpit.
She meticulously looks at each image, weeding out any that don’t contribute to the perfect visual story.
And nobody sees that.
They see the output. They say "beautiful photos." They pay the invoice.
But they don't see the work. They don't see the craft. They don't see the thousand micro-decisions that separate a snapshot from art.
She's not disappearing because she's failing. She's disappearing because she's succeeded to a point where most people can't witness what she's actually doing.
I experienced this exact thing when I was working at Taylor Guitars.
Taylor is an amazing place. Iconic company. Beautiful facility down in El Cajon. But I remember walking through that factory—surrounded by craftsmen, engineers, marketing people—and feeling this weird, heavy isolation.
One day, I had to shoot the robot that sprays finish onto the guitar bodies. And I had this vision in my head. I wanted to use high-speed sync to freeze the motion of the spray in mid-air. Light it so the background fell completely into shadow—just this robotic arm emerging from pure black, and this beautiful frozen mist of finish hanging in space. Every droplet sharp and perfect. Industrial art.
The setup was ridiculous.
I'm in the spray booth wearing one of those white Tyvek painter suits. Hood up. Booties on. I look like I'm handling hazardous waste at Chernobyl. My camera is wrapped in a Ziploc bag—a giant freezer bag with a hole cut out for the front element, secured with a rubber band so the overspray doesn't destroy five thousand dollars' worth of gear.
I'm shooting tethered. There's this bright red USB cable snaking across the floor, running under the spray booth door to a laptop sitting in the hallway. I've got the laptop angled toward a window so I can see the images coming through while I'm sealed inside the booth.
It's hot in that suit. I'm sweating. My glasses keep fogging up. I'm trying to dial in the sync speed—1/2000th, maybe 1/3000th—while wearing these ridiculous chemical-resistant gloves that make my hands feel like clubs. The robot arm is moving on a timer, and I have maybe a three-second window to fire when the mist is at peak density.
I miss it six times. Seven times. The spray pattern isn't consistent. The robot jerks. The light isn't quite right. I adjust the strobe. Try again. Adjust the angle. Try again.
Then, on the 11th try, I see it come through on that laptop screen in the hallway.
Perfect.
The droplets are frozen. The arm is sharp. The background is gone—just pure black. The finish mist looks like liquid mercury suspended in space.
I was buzzing. You know that feeling. That electric, full-body buzz when you pull something from your brain and make it real. When you solve the puzzle. When the thing you imagined actually exists now.
I stripped off the suit. I practically ran the images down to the marketing department. Excited. Ready to explain the lighting setup, the sync timing, the technical challenge of shooting through plastic in a goddamn hazmat suit.
I pulled up the image on my laptop. Turned it toward my boss.
He glanced at the screen. Nodded.
"Yeah. Cool shot."
Then he turned back to his email.
That was it. That was the entire response.
My art director looked over. "Can you get us a few more angles? We'll need some options for the magazine."
And then they went back to their meeting about deadlines or some shit.
[BEAT]
Ironically, the guys in the finishing department—the guys who actually ran the spray robots—they loved it. They wanted to know how I did it. How I got the light in there. How I froze the motion. They got it. They understood the craft.
But my team—the people who were supposed to be my creative peers, the people I sat with in meetings every day—they treated it like clip art. Just another asset for the website. Another instagram post that would get a few hundred likes.
And I realized in that moment: I am on an island.
Everyone else at Taylor had a tribe. They lived and breathed guitars. They would interface with the product development guys, the executives, the touring artists who'd stop by to spec out custom instruments. They'd debate tonewoods—mahogany versus rosewood—and bracing patterns and pickup windings and fretboard radius. They had a shared language. A shared obsession.
And I would sit there. Nodding. Smiling. Faking enthusiasm.
I had to emotionally inflate my interest just to belong to the conversation. I had to perform curiosity about whether the new 814ce should have a Venetian cutaway or a Florentine cutaway because I knew if I didn't, I'd be even more alone than I already was.
But inside? I was wildly envious.
I was envious because they had witnesses for their craft. They had people who understood the nuance, the struggle, the tiny decisions that made something good versus great.
And I didn't.
I had people who said, "Cool shot," and moved on.
I was Joshua Bell in the spray booth. Playing my heart out while everyone walked past to their next meeting.
And this is what Sarah is experiencing.
She's not failing. She's not depressed. She's not even necessarily in a career crisis.
She's just alone at the level she's operating.
And here's what I've learned about this specific kind of loneliness. There's actually research on this. The research breaks loneliness down into three types. And I think creative people—especially people like Sarah—experience all three simultaneously.
First, there's Unintentional Loneliness.
This is simple. You just don't have people around. You work from home. You're alone in your spare bedroom, or your garage, or your studio. Physical isolation.
Sarah has this. She's editing alone 90% of the week. Just her and Lightroom and a thousand wedding photos in a dark room.
Then there's Deliberate Loneliness.
This is where you choose to isolate because you don't want to explain yourself. You don't want to burden people. You're tired of sounding "ungrateful." You're tired of trying to articulate this specific feeling to people who don't get it.
This is Sarah not telling her partner how she really feels. This is me not telling Jaimi about the spray booth moment because I knew she wouldn't understand why it mattered so much.
We choose the loneliness because it feels safer than the vulnerability of not being understood.
But the third kind—and this is the brutal one—is Experiential Loneliness.
This is the Taylor Guitars loneliness. This is the Joshua Bell loneliness.
This is where you're surrounded by people, but you still feel like an outsider because nobody shares your experience. Nobody speaks your language. Nobody can witness the craft. Nobody understands what you're actually doing when you're "working."
You're physically present, but psychologically absent.
Sarah has all three. She's physically alone in that dark spare bedroom. She's deliberately not sharing her struggle because she's tired of being told to be grateful. And even when she's with people—at weddings, with her partner, with clients—she's experientially isolated because nobody can see the work.
They see her working. But they don't see the work.
She's Joshua Bell in the subway. Playing a Stradivarius next to a trash can.
[PAUSE]
And you know what makes this even harder?
Even with this podcast—something I pour everything into—there's only one person in my life who actually sees the work.
Her name is Leslie. Just a friend who lives 2800 miles away in Nashville who makes her own podcast, and knows what is involved.
I spend late nights writing these scripts. I obsess over sound design. I listen to a ton of music trying to find the perfect bed for a specific emotional moment. I record sections seven times because the pacing isn't quite right.
And nobody sees that. Nobody hears it.
My family sees me sitting in my garage talking into a microphone. They're supportive, but they don't understand why it takes me forty hours to produce a twenty-five minute episode.
But Leslie? She gets it. She hears the sound design. She notices when the music shifts. She understands why I spent three hours rewriting a single paragraph.
And every once in a while, I get a text from Leslie that says she loved the sound design of an episode or comments on a piece of writing. And I love that because someone noticed the things only I am thinking about.
She's one of the seven people who stopped in the subway to listen to a guy playing a violin.
And Sarah doesn't have a Leslie. When I was at Taylor, I didn't have a Leslie.
And that's the problem. It's not about ego. It's not about needing praise.
It's about needing to be seen.
[MUSIC FADES SLIGHTLY]
MOVEMENT 3: THE PIVOT
PATRICK: And here's what makes this even harder. This isn't just me speculating. There's actual research on what I'm describing.
There was a study done with C-suite executives—CEOs, CFOs, people at the very top of organizations. And they found that loneliness is what they called "a professional hazard" of senior leadership.
The research identified why: as you climb higher in your field, you experience increased social distance from your peers, lack of social support for the unique challenges you're facing, and exhaustion from the demands of the role.
But here's the part that hit me: they found that the loneliness wasn't about being alone. It was about operating at a level where fewer and fewer people could understand what you were actually dealing with.
The higher you climb, the lonelier it gets. Not because you're broken. But because there are simply fewer people at that altitude.
And this isn't just executives. There's research on creative professionals too.
Adobe did user research with designers and found that 60% of them feel misunderstood by their non-creative colleagues. One designer in the study said: "I spend hours crafting a design that feels perfect to me, only to have it dismissed in seconds. It's like speaking a language no one else understands."
That's Sarah. That's me at Taylor. That's you with your craft.
The better you get, the fewer people can see what you're actually doing.
And here's what I want you to understand: This is normal.
You're not crazy. You're not broken. You're not being dramatic.
You're experiencing what researchers call "experiential isolation at the level of expertise."
It's documented. It's studied. It's real.
Sarah sitting alone in that dark spare bedroom, feeling invisible despite her success? That's not a personal failing. That's a predictable consequence of mastery in a field where most people can't perceive the work you're doing.
The research shows that the loneliness of expertise is different from other kinds of loneliness because it exists despite success, despite skill, despite doing everything "right."
You've climbed the mountain. And when you look around for other people at this elevation... there's almost nobody there.
And the people down at base camp? They can't see you anymore. You're too far up.
That's what Sarah's experiencing. That's what I experienced at Taylor. And if you're listening to this and nodding your head... that's what you're experiencing too.
[MUSIC SHIFTS - SLIGHTLY MORE HOPEFUL]
So if that's the problem... what's the solution?
MOVEMENT 4: THE RESOLUTION
So how do we fix this?
Because the research is clear: the antidote to this kind of loneliness isn't "more work." It's not "better clients."
It's witnesses.
You need people who can see you in the work—not just the output, but the actual craft—and understand what you're doing.
You don't need applause. You need understanding.
I've been thinking a lot about why this is so hard to find right now. And I realized it’s because we have lost our Third Space.
Sociologists have this concept called the Third Space. Your First Space is your home. Your Second Space is your workplace. (Which most of us independent creatives don't even have)
But the Third Space? That’s the pub. That’s the coffee shop. The church. That’s the barber shop. That is the neutral ground where you go not to work, and not to sleep, but just to be with your people.
And for most of us—especially since 2020—really though,it's been disappearing since before we were born - we don’t have a Third Space anymore.
For Sarah, her First Space (home) and her Second Space (work) are the same room. She sleeps in the bedroom, and she edits in the spare bedroom. There is no separation. And there is definitely no pub down the street where the other photographers hang out.
We are missing our version of Cheers.
You know the old theme song? "Where everybody knows your name."
We need a place where everybody knows your craft.
We need a neighborhood pub for people like us. A place where you walk in, and you don't have to explain why the job was hard. You don't have to explain why the client was difficult. You don't have to explain why you’re exhausted.
You just sit down, and the people around you know.
They know what you do. They know how hard you work. And most importantly, they understand how brilliant you actually are.
They see the invisible work.
Joshua Bell didn't need a thousand people in that subway to stop. He didn't need a viral moment. He needed a Third Space. He needed a room full of people who understood the language he was speaking.
[PAUSE - LET IT BREATHE]
PATRICK: So here's the plan.
For the next three weeks, we are going to talk about how we build that.
We are going to talk about how we get off these islands.
We’re going to talk about The Costume. We're going to talk about the armor of "success" and "busyness" that we wear to protect ourselves, but actually keeps us invisible.
We’re going to talk about The Enemy. We’re going to look at that visceral envy that makes us view our peers as threats instead of allies—and why that scarcity mindset is keeping us lonely.
And finally, we’re going to talk about The Third Space. We’re going to look at how we actually find the people who speak our language—how we stop performing for the traffic and start building a table.
We aren't just going to talk about the problem. We’re going to map out the way back to connection.
[BEAT]
I want to leave you with this:
There's a poem by David Whyte called "Sweet Darkness" that I've been reading a lot lately. And he has these lines I think about every time I feel that urge to disappear.
He says: "You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong."
And then he says: "Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."
[PAUSE]
Sarah... if you're listening... you're not broken. You're not ungrateful. You're not failing.
You're just operating at a level where most people can't see what you're actually doing. The life you have built is just too small for the artist you have become.
And that is isolating as hell.
But you're not alone in being alone. If that makes sense.
There are seven people in every subway station who stop and listen. We just have to find each other.
So stick around. We're going to figure this out together.
If you're Joshua Bell in the subway right now—if you're doing your best work and feeling completely invisible—email me. Tell me about the work nobody sees. Tell me about the craft.
I read everything.
Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah—stay terrible.