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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 21
Per mission to Suck
(and Why You Should Embrace It)
So a few years ago, I did what any seasoned, over-caffeinated, self-important creative professional would do: I overcomplicated the hell out of a perfectly good situation.
It was a big shoot … product launch marketing assets for a telecommunications company. B2B. Serious money. We had a cast of hired talent playing executives, multiple setups across various locations all on the same floor of this sleek, modern office building in downtown San Diego.
Most of the rooms didn't even have exterior windows. The main light source? Sleek, modern overhead fixtures and the occasional drop-ceiling fluorescent lights. Nothing was consistent. Nothing was flattering. But the space looked great on a real estate listing or in person.
And then there was the glass.
Glass walls. Glass doors. Glass conference room tables. If you ever what a good challenge as a photographer, as a lighting professional, if you ever feel like you’ve masted the ability to light any scene, I challenge you to light a boardroom scene inside a crystal terrarium, I highly recommend it for your next mental breakdown.
The problem here wasn't bounce, it wasn’t power—it was glare - that fucking glare. Reflections of lights in every direction. My modifiers, the talent, crew, my own dumb face—everything showed up in the glass. Every light I added became another ghost I had to exorcise in post.
And instead of embracing the environment and supplementing with just enough fill to finesse the scene, I went full on Lighting Rambo. Six strobes. SIX. Because I was worried about color temperatures—3400ish Kelvin overheads mixing with my 5600K strobes so I decided I'd just brute-force the entire shoot. I lit everything. People, background, everything.
But in the end, I was taking background plates of every room so I could save my ass in post production. The client though? They were Thrilled. They loved it. (Because I’m a pro ofcourse) Had no idea I'd basically been arm-wrestling a mirror for eight hours.
And as I was driving home, my brain had time to relax. For the first time, I could have a clear thought. And that's when it hit me.
It hit me so hard I had to pull over into a 711 parking lot so I wouldn’t crash my car into a Nissan because I was so distracted.
Have you ever had a moment when you arrived at the solution way too late? Like you just did a thing, for hours and then stopped doing the thing and then figured out a better way of doing it.
Yeah, that was me.
As I’m banging my head on the steering wheel, I kept thinking why in the bloody hell, didn’t I just CTO gels on one or two strobes and use minimum power to balance exposure with ambient then white balance in Capture One. A literally 5 dollar solution, to a day worth of headaches and anxiety.
What in the actual hell Patrick.
Yeah, it could've been simpler. Smarter. Less masochistic.
I guess it’s true, that If you're not regularly cringing at your own decisions, you're probably not pushing yourself hard enough. But there's a difference between screwing up randomly and failing with intent—and that difference will make or break your creative growth.
[MUSIC: Acoustic guitar fingerpicking, 3 seconds, fade under voice]
INTRO (30 seconds)
"My name is Patrick Fore. This is the Terrible Photographer Podcast—honest conversations about creativity, identity, and finding your voice. Today's episode is number 21: 'Permission to Suck - incert your thats what she said joke here.
[MUSIC OUT]
This is ACT I: THE ANATOMY OF AVOIDABLE FAILURE
The Scouting Sin
"Here's what I didn't tell you about that shoot: I walked into that situation completely blind. No scout. No prep. Just a couple of iPhone photos from the client and my own arrogant assumption that I could light anything.
This is photographer hubris at its finest. I figured, 'I've got expensive gear, I know how to use it, how hard could it be?'
But here's the thing—and this is going to sound cheesy as hell—spaces want to tell you how to light them. Listen, here me out - this isn’t some Harry Potter woo-woo bull shit. Here is how it works for me, If I just show up the day before, sit in the room, and get quiet for a few minutes, solutions start to emerge. I can't explain it scientifically, but I've learned to trust the process.
I learned this from a guy named Sean, a lighting designer for feature films, trus me, you’ve seen his work. I met Sea on a job in LA a couple years previous. I was shooting stills on a motion project and during lunch, sitting across from him with our catered turkey pesto sandwiches on paper plates, I gained up the courage to ask him how he decides to light things. That watching him work, he makes it look so instinctual.
He told me everything he does is motivated by the scene and script. He uses the environment to tell him how to light. He just pushes more light into the scene so they get proper exposure. He said rarely does he start with a blank slate. There are always environmental cues you can take to help determine how to light. It made so much sense coming from him. That conversation changed EVERYTHING for me. As simplistic as it sounds, I had never heard lighting theory put so simply before.
So that's what I do now, and I find when I sit in a space, even for a few minutes, I start to see where the natural light wants to go, how the existing fixtures are already doing most of the work, where I actually need to supplement versus where I'm just being controlling.
But I skipped all of that for this shoot. It’s like I had amnesia, I walked in cold, saw problems instead of possibilities, and immediately went into combat mode instead of collaboration mode.
[MUSIC: Subtle ambient pad, 2 seconds, -20dB under voice]
The Team Disaster
"And then there's the team situation. Or lack thereof.
I should have hired a lighting assistant—someone who actually knows how to wrangle strobes and modifiers while I focus on the creative. Instead, I brought my usual assistant, who's great at everything except lighting. So I'm trying to be the photographer, the lighting technician, the digital tech, the client shmoozer and the problem-solver all at once.
This is where my brain gets spread too thin. I'm standing there trying to figure out technical problems, which means I'm not thinking about the shot. I'm not considering the narrative, the emotion, the story we're trying to tell. I'm just troubleshooting.
And that's amateur hour. That's the difference between a photographer and a technician with a camera.
When you're a photographer, you're thinking about moments, expressions, the story unfolding in front of you. When you're a lighting technician, you're thinking about ratios and reflections and whether that flag is doing its job.
You can't be both simultaneously, and expect excellence. Your attention gets fractured, and everything suffers.
The Control Illusion
"But the deeper problem was my need to control everything. I walked into that space and immediately started imposing my will on it instead of working with what was already there.
Remember those tungsten fixtures I mentioned? They were actually creating beautiful, warm, cinematic light. The kind of light that makes executives look like visionaries instead of spreadsheet warriors. But instead of adapting to work with them, I decided to overpower them.
That five-dollar gel I didn't have? That's not a gear problem—that's a planning problem. That's me choosing to fight the environment instead of collaborating with it.
This is the photographer's version of toxic masculinity—this idea that real professionals control every variable, that working with existing conditions is somehow cheating or unprofessional.
But the best photographers I know are collaborators, not dictators. They work with the light, not against it. They enhance what's already beautiful instead of trying to create beauty from scratch every time."
The Universal Pattern
"And here's where this story becomes about more than just lighting or team management or location scouting. This is about the difference between confidence and arrogance, between mastery and control.
And real mastery isn't about having an answer for every situation. It's about having the wisdom to recognize when the situation already contains the answer, and the humility to work with it instead of fighting it.
I think most of us fail not because we don't know enough, but because we don't trust what we already know. We complicate things that want to be simple. We fight battles that don't need to be fought.
The space was trying to tell me how to light it. The existing fixtures were already doing most of the work. My team structure was clearly inadequate for the complexity I was creating.
All the information was there. I just wasn't listening."
[MUSIC: Single sustained note, almost subliminal, 3 seconds]
ACT II: THE COMEDY CLUB METHOD & FRAMEWORK BUILDING (16-18 minutes)
Comedians Don't Test New Material at Madison Square Garden
Dave Chappelle would never try out completely untested punchlines at Madison Square Garden. Bill Burr wouldn't improvise entirely new bits on Stephen Colbert's show. And Ali Wong wouldn't workshop raw material during her Netflix special.
That wouldn't just be unprofessional—it would be career suicide disguised as spontaneity.
Instead, comedians test new material in small, dimly lit clubs at 1 AM, where the stakes are low, iPhone cameras have to be put away and the audience is forgiving enough to let you fail without destroying your reputation. These venues become sacred testing grounds where careers are built through strategic failure.
And trust me, comedians bomb regularly. It's part of the job description, not a bug in the system."
[AUDIO: Light comedy club ambiance, 10 seconds, -20dB]
—-------
Jerry Seinfeld's On Testing Material
"Jerry Seinfeld famously talks about testing new material in comedy clubs, and there's this brutal honesty in how he describes the relationship between comedian and audience.
[AUDIO: Seinfeld audience clip, 60-90 seconds] [Play from "Can you believe you're in charge..." through "...You wouldn't be here if you were funny"]
It's this incredible moment where he's simultaneously insulting them and acknowledging their power. He's saying, 'You have no qualifications to judge this, but your judgment is everything.'
That's the paradox every creative faces: the people who ultimately decide if your work succeeds often have no expertise in creating that work. But they have something more important—they have the honest, unfiltered reaction that tells you whether what you've made actually works.
Half-asleep audiences, drunk audiences, distracted audiences—they won't laugh at weak material just to be polite. That's exactly the environment Seinfeld needs for honest feedback. If the joke fails in front of people who have no reason to care about his feelings, it gets quietly buried. But if it lands with a room full of strangers who owe him nothing, it might just be ready for the big stage.
Think about what's happening here: Seinfeld has enough money to never work again. He could coast on his reputation, stick to his proven material, play it safe. Instead, he's choosing to be vulnerable, to risk looking foolish, to put himself in situations where failure is not just possible but likely.
Why? Because he understands something most people don't: comfort is the enemy of growth. The only way to expand your range as a comedian—or as any kind of creative person—is to deliberately put yourself in situations where you might suck."
Chris Rock's Laboratory Philosophy
"Chris Rock practices new routines obsessively, tweaking individual words and timing by fractions of seconds until he finds the version that lands the way he wants to. He'll perform the same bit dozens of times, making microscopic adjustments, testing different inflections, trying alternate punchlines.
Rock talks about comedy like a scientist talks about experiments. Every performance is data collection. Every laugh is a hypothesis confirmed. Every silence is valuable information about what doesn't work and why.
This isn't casual dabbling—this is systematic exploration with clear objectives and measurable outcomes. Rock isn't just 'trying out new material.' He's conducting controlled experiments designed to optimize specific variables in his creative process."
[MUSIC OUT]
Test Shoots: Your Creative Laboratory
"For photographers, that sacred space is the test shoot. We need our own version of late-night comedy clubs—dedicated experimental sessions designed to help us suck safely and productively.
When I say 'test shoot,' I don't mean casually grabbing your camera and hoping something magical happens. That's not testing—that's just shooting and praying. I'm talking about structured creative experiments with clear hypotheses and measurable outcomes.
When planning a test shoot, clearly identify your specific objectives with the precision of a scientist designing an experiment. Maybe you're exploring unconventional lighting setups that break traditional rules. Maybe you're experimenting with narrative techniques that push storytelling boundaries. Perhaps you're testing new post-processing approaches that might be too risky for client work.
The point isn't to accidentally stumble onto something good. The point is to methodically assess what works, what doesn't, and why the difference matters."
[MUSIC: Gentle acoustic guitar arpeggios, -18dB, for "aha moment"]
The Four Pillars of Strategic Failure
"Let me break down what you should actually be testing during these controlled failures:
First: Push your technical boundaries beyond what feels comfortable. Experiment with lighting scenarios that challenge conventional wisdom. Mix gels with abandon. Combine ambient light with artificial sources in ways that might horrify traditional photographers. Try bold, minimalistic setups that force you to do more with less. Challenge yourself with complex compositions that make your brain hurt.
If you fail spectacularly, excellent—now you know exactly where those boundaries are and why they exist.
Second: Test your narrative capabilities with the ruthlessness of a film director. Can you communicate a complete story or complex emotion through imagery alone, without relying on captions or context? Push into emotional territory that feels uncomfortable. Find ways to convey humor, melancholy, tension, or joy through purely visual means.
The goal isn't just to make pretty pictures—it's to tell stories that resonate deeply enough to make viewers stop and actually think about what they're seeing.
Third: Explore your evolving stylistic choices with the curiosity of an anthropologist. What wardrobe choices, color palettes, or locations align with your authentic artistic vision rather than what's currently trending? Use test shoots to build cohesive visual identities that represent your signature approach, not someone else's interpretation of what's popular.
Fourth: Critically examine your post-processing with the precision of a watchmaker. Are your editing choices enhancing the original vision or just showing off your Photoshop skills? Experiment boldly during test sessions, pushing techniques to their breaking point to discover your distinctive editing voice."
[MUSIC: Steady fingerpicked guitar rhythm, -20dB]
My Fitness Shoot Disaster-Turned-Discovery
"I remember the first major test shoot I did after leaving my corporate job, when I was desperate to prove I could create something distinctive. I wanted to explore this vibrant, ombre-style fitness concept that had been obsessing me for weeks—all about dynamic lighting and unexpected color combinations.
I meticulously researched color pairings using online gradient tools, spent hours creating mood boards, booked a model I found online, reserved a full day in the studio, and cleared my schedule for what I hoped would be a breakthrough session.
On the technical side, everything was dialed in perfectly. I had my lighting ratios calculated, my color temperatures matched, my camera settings optimized. But I'd focused so intensely on the technical execution that I'd completely neglected other crucial elements.
The model I'd booked had never shot fitness before, even though she was very into fitness and looked uncomfortable in every athletic pose. The styling was okay, amateur at best—I'd basically thrown together whatever looked vaguely sporty without considering how it would work with my lighting setup. The concept I'd been so excited about was crumbling in real time.
And as I was standing there behind my laptop, flipping through images in Capture One, I let out a big sigh. The lighting was so unbelievably on point, but she was not working.
The fitness concept was a complete failure. But instead of packing up and calling it a waste of time, we pivoted. I stopped trying to force the failed fitness concept and just started shooting portraits with the beautiful lighting I'd spent so much time perfecting. She put on the black hoodie and sweat pants she arrived in and for a couple hours, we created some incredibly amazing images. I let go of trying to force a square peg into a round hole and adapted.
The results weren't necessarily portfolio-worthy—but they were dope and I had fun. We had fun. She loved the images so much and I was happy. More importantly, I left with concrete knowledge about what had failed and worked and why—not just a vague sense of disappointment that would haunt future shoots.
I learned that technical preparation without holistic planning is like having a perfect engine in a car with square wheels. I learned that working with the right collaborators matters more than having the perfect lighting setup. I learned that adaptability might be more valuable than rigid adherence to a creative vision.
Most importantly, I learned that failure could be genuinely instructive if I approached it with the right mindset instead of just hoping it wouldn't happen."
[MUSIC OUT]
ACT III: THE DEAKINS BREAKTHROUGH & PSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION (12-14 minutes)
"Nobody shoots light like Roger Deakins. He's the guy behind the camera work in films like Blade Runner 2049, No Country for Old Men, The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, and 1917. Fifteen Oscar nominations, two wins. When directors like the Coen Brothers or Denis Villeneuve want their films to look extraordinary, they call Deakins.
And for one of Skyfall's most iconic scenes, this master cinematographer broke conventional Hollywood lighting practices and created cinematic magic in the process.
Picture this: Bond faces off with an assassin in a Shanghai skyscraper, surrounded by glass and bathed in light from LED billboard animations. The billboard displays these hypnotic jellyfish—pulsing, shifting colors that reflect off every surface in the room.
[AUDIO: Subtle Skyfall atmospheric sound, 10 seconds, -15dB]
Most cinematographers would approach a scene like this with established lighting techniques—maybe a three-point setup with key light, fill light, and backlight to ensure proper exposure and control. Create a controlled, predictable lighting environment where you know exactly how everything will look.
But Deakins approached it differently. He used the LED panels as his primary light source—custom-programmed to create the exact color shifts and timing he wanted. The shadows moved with the animation cycles. The faces picked up the color temperature changes as the jellyfish pulsed through different hues.
This wasn't chaos—it was jazz. Stylized naturalism, played in sync with a neon god. Deakins has always talked about lighting from sources that would realistically be in the environment. But most cinematographers would supplement heavily to maintain control. Deakins trusted the environmental source to do the storytelling.
The result was something alive and unpredictable within a carefully controlled framework. It felt spontaneous but was meticulously planned.
The scene became one of the most talked-about sequences in modern Bond history. Not because it was technically perfect, but because it was emotionally perfect. Because it trusted the environment to tell the story instead of overpowering it.
Deakins has said that when he suggested lighting that Shanghai scene with just the illumination of the LED advertising panels, he thought to himself "What have you just said?" But he pushed through because he wanted that blitz of color, that sense of everything being about reflections. He didn't light the scene to impress DPs. He lit it to haunt you."
The Paradox of Creative Rules
Okay so, this is the paradox every creative human eventually faces: the rules that got you here won't take you further. The techniques that made you competent won't make you distinctive. The safe choices that built your reputation won't push your vision forward.
And deakins understood something that most photographers don't: sometimes you have to break what works to discover what could work better. Sometimes the 'wrong' choice is the only right choice.
But here's the crucial part—Deakins didn't break those rules out of ignorance. He mastered traditional cinematography first. He knew the rules so well that he could feel exactly which ones needed to be broken and why. His rebellion was informed, strategic, purposeful.
That's the difference between professional risk-taking and amateur chaos. Deakins wasn't randomly experimenting. He was making calculated bets based on decades of understanding light, story, and mood.
Your test shoots are where you learn to make those same calculated bets. Where you develop the intuition to know which rules serve your vision and which ones are holding you back."
[Mid-Roll Ad Break]
The reason many photographers avoid test shoots isn't lack of time, money, or resources (thought they claim it is) — it's actually fear. Deep, primal fear of confronting our limitations. Fear of discovering we're not as talented as we've convinced ourselves to be. Fear of the gap between our sophisticated taste and our current abilities.
Ira Glass, the host and creator of This American Life—one of the most influential radio shows of the past thirty years—has thought deeply about this creative struggle. Glass has been crafting stories for public radio since he was nineteen, building This American Life into a show that reaches millions of listeners and has fundamentally changed how we think about audio storytelling, including podcasts like the one you’re listening to right now.
And he's described this creative gap better than anyone:
[AUDIO: Ira Glass "Gap" quote, 90 seconds, full volume]
[Insert Ira Glass quote here: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners..."]
[MUSIC: Contemplative piano building, -18dB]
I want to tell you something, though that Glass doesn't explicitly say in that quote, but that every working creative knows: that gap never fully closes. Even after decades of practice, there's still, always a distance between the vision in your head and what you can execute. The work gets better, absolutely, but your taste evolves too, always staying slightly ahead of your abilities.
This isn't a bug in the creative operating system—it's a feature. That gap is what keeps you growing, what prevents you from getting complacent, what ensures you'll never stop reaching for something better.
The test shoot is your refusal to quit disguised as systematic experimentation. It's recognition that exceptional work requires moving through failure, not around it."
The Mental Reframe: Failure as Data
When you reframe failure as data rather than personal inadequacy, everything changes. Each 'bad' image becomes specific information about what doesn't work and why. Failure transforms from something to avoid into something to leverage.
Think about how scientists approach failed experiments. They don't throw the results away and pretend it didn't happen. They analyze and document what went wrong, adjust their hypothesis, and design better experiments. Failure is just another data point in their ongoing investigation.
Photographers need that same clinical curiosity about our failures. Not the cold, emotionless detachment of a robot, but the warm, engaged curiosity of an explorer who's genuinely excited to discover what's around the next corner, even if it's not what they expected to find.
This mindset shift is profound. It transforms photography from a performance where you're always afraid of looking bad into a laboratory where every outcome teaches you something valuable."
[MUSIC: Warm string ensemble, -18dB]
LIGHT LEAK: The Practical Call to Action (4-5 minutes)
Schedule Your Failure
"So here's your assignment, and I want you to treat this with the same seriousness you'd treat a paying client: Schedule a test shoot this month. Not someday when you have more time or better gear—this month.
Pick one specific thing you want to explore. One lighting technique you're curious about. One narrative approach you're afraid to try with clients. One stylistic choice that feels risky but intriguing.
Write it down. Put it on your calendar. Treat it like the professional development it actually is.
And when you do it, give yourself permission to suck spectacularly. Because bombing in private is how you learn to shine in public."
[MUSIC: Layered acoustic elements (guitar + piano), -15dB]
The Creative Audit
"But before you go racing off to book models and rent studios, let me give you a framework for thinking about where you actually need to focus your testing energy.
Ask yourself these questions before you get started—and be brutally honest with your answers:
What's the gap between the work you admire and the work you create? Not the technical gap—the emotional gap. The storytelling gap. The 'holy shit, I need to pay attention to this' gap.
What creative choices are you making because they're safe versus because they serve your vision? What techniques are you using because you know they work versus because they're the best choice for this particular story?
When was the last time you surprised yourself with your own work? When was the last time you created something that made you think, 'Holy shit, I didn't know I could do that'?
These aren't comfortable questions. They're not supposed to be. They're designed to identify the specific areas where strategic failure could accelerate your growth."
Beyond Photography
Remember, these principles aren't limited to photography. If you're a writer, your test shoots are the stories you write for yourself, not for publication. If you're a designer, they're the passion projects that no client would ever approve. If you're a musician, they're the weird experiments you try in your bedroom studio at 2 AM.
But let's go even deeper and broader. This isn't just about creative work—this is about how you approach life itself.
What if you started treating difficult situations like data points instead of personal attacks? What if you approached conflict with curiosity instead of control?
That argument with your partner? Instead of trying to win or be right, what if you got curious about what's really happening underneath the surface tension? What if you treated it like a failed experiment that's revealing important information about communication, needs, or expectations?
That project that went sideways at work? Instead of scrambling to assign blame or cover your ass, what if you approached it like a scientist examining what variables led to this outcome? What worked, what didn't, and why?
Even that conversation or situation that left you feeling misunderstood or frustrated—what if you examined it like a medical examiner examining a body? The conversation, the situation might be dead, but you can still learn a lot about what happened. Not to beat yourself up, but to understand the dynamics at play. Were you trying to control the outcome instead of listening? Were you defending instead of discovering?
This is the hardest thing to learn: letting go of the need to control every outcome and instead approaching situations with genuine curiosity about what they might teach you.
Most of us spend our energy trying to force situations to go the way we think they should go. But what if the situation is trying to tell you something you didn't expect to learn? What if the resistance you're feeling isn't something to overcome, but something to examine?
The medium changes, but the principle remains: systematic exploration of what doesn't go according to plan—in low-stakes environments and high-stakes ones—is how you develop the courage to stay curious instead of getting defensive when life gets complicated.
The goal isn't perfection—that's impossible and ultimately boring. The goal is deliberate practice. Learning to see failure, conflict, and unexpected outcomes as feedback instead of judgment. Building a life that compounds learning over time instead of just accumulating victories.
Well. that's all I have for this week, we’ll see you next Tuesday, until then
"Stay curious. Stay courageous. And yeah... stay terrible."