photography
For the Best Ideas, Go Without
I just returned from a walk on the beach, jumping in the water, searching for shells with my son. I had nothing on me that couldn’t be underwater in the ocean — pretty much just the clothes on my back. That’s when all the ideas hit me. * The best
“Real” cameras lost.
When A Lesser Photographer [https://www.cjchilvers.com/a-lesser-photographer] was released, I caught all kinds of heat from photographers who said, “Get a real camera.” I had the controversial opinion (at the time) that you could express yourself photographically with your phone and the many other “lesser” devices available. It’
Do You "Take" Photographs or "Make" Photographs?
I use to default to writing “make” photographs, because of the endless rants I used to hear back in my darkroom days (the 90s). Of course, as photographers who took their craft seriously, we painstakingly “made” photographs, we didn’t just “take” them willy-nilly. It’s even in my book
Library Tourism: Vancouver
On the way to Alaska [https://www.cjchilvers.com/blog/alaska], we had to check out Vancouver, especially the library.

Images from Alaska
I’ve been off in Alaska for the past few weeks with the family. Cutting myself off from the internet for a while was healthy. I have a renewed love of writing and creating in general, with dozens of new ideas. I plan on concentrating a lot of energy on

Finally! A Photography 101 Course I Can Recommend
Most mainstream photography courses focus on what matters to professional photographers and ignore the 99.9% of us who are hobbyists. Their advice is misguided at best, and scammy at worst. My book and blog are an antidote to most of these courses. If you’re here, you know the
Any Imbecile
“Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, and art that excites the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.” — Nadar (1910) via Andy Adams [https://twitter.com/PhotoHistorian/status/976454128271437825]
Photo Safari
The podcast [https://www.cjchilvers.com/the-creative-bar-podcast/] I just did with Jon Wilkening brought up a lot of topics centered around photography in the 1990s. Why the 90s? I consider the 1990s the golden age of film photography. The amounts and variety of new film, film cameras, paper and chemicals
The Creative Bar Podcast
I went on Jon Wilkening's wonderful podcast The Creative Bar to talk about creativity, constraints and obscure 1990s photography topics I had bouncing around in my head. Check out the episode here [http://jonwilkening.com/blog/2017/12/7/the-creative-bar-38-cj-chilvers].
Has Photography Gone from an Introvert to Extravert Hobby?
Great observation from Guy Tal [https://guytal.com/wordpress/2017/11/20/the-traditions-of-photography/] on the mindset of analogue (or traditional) vs. digital (or modern) photographers: > “It used to be that photography was the favored avocation of introverts, allowing unquestioned solitary time in a darkroom—a private world behind a closed