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CJ Chilvers

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Love for 16mm

A wonderful take on why film is still very useful for motion pictures: I shot one reel of 16mm film in my life. It was Tri-X I believe. I shot it through an antique 16mm camera I bought on Ebay for $75. I developed the film myself. I do not

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My Personal Newsletter One-Year Review

It's been over a year since I made my main email newsletter a purely personal newsletter, not tied to any specific product or service. I did this after realizing whenever one of my books was getting attention somewhere, people were searching for more information by author name, not

My Personal Newsletter One-Year Review
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The Romance of Photojournalism

From Columbia Journalism Review on what freelance photographers face [https://www.cjr.org/b-roll/heres-what-freelance-photographers-face.php]: > “Places that are trying to put up a slideshow that you almost got killed for and worked on for 3 years, for $1,500, which at the end of the day it’s

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The Importance of Curators

I posted about the The Gruber Model [https://www.cjchilvers.com/the-gruber-model/] last week as a theory for how news could be made more profitable and ethical through the filter of a good “curator.” I theorized the current ad model is just a race to the bottom. I didn’t

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Trust Is Scarce

How is it that a lowly email newsletter has become one of the most trusted news outlets in America? Ask Dave Pell, the creator of NextDraft, one of the most successful newsletters on the internet [https://medium.com/thoughts-on-journalism/how-dave-pell-created-one-of-the-most-successful-newsletters-of-the-internet-2dfff4725ba7] : > "It is no surprise as to why Dave

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Day One Revisited

Back in 2011 [https://www.cjchilvers.com/day-one/], I wrote about a new journaling app called Day One [http://dayoneapp.com]. Since then, I've written something in that journal every day. For a few years I even included a daily photo. There have been some hiccups along the

Day One Revisited
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The Extraordinary Can't Exist Without the Ordinary

Most photographers and writers I know live in the suburbs, despite what stereotypes would have you believe. Most do not live in studio apartments in New York, nor could they afford it if they wanted to. They live what would probably be considered "boring" lives to an art

The Extraordinary Can't Exist Without the Ordinary
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A List of Reasons to Pick Up a Film Camera

John Crane has many reasons [http://emulsive.org/interviews/i-am-john-crane-and-this-is-why-i-shoot-film] for sticking with film during his career, but this is one of my favorites: > "I spend so much time in front of the computer that when the time comes to get away and enjoy photography – the last thing

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Content Omnivores

I wrote yesterday about not being precious with the work you release online. I followed it up with an apology on Twitter of how precious I've gotten with my work since leaving Tumblr. Tumblr was built to kill preciousness about creative work. It made posting content of any

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Let It Out

How many of us create every day in journals, on our phones, and in our photo databases? Probably all of us to some degree. How much of it do you let out? What if you publicly released just a fraction more of what you've been creating for yourself?