In March, I published an essay by Peter Hoffman on photography and punctum. Afterward, Alys Thomas, a photographer and artist, messaged me with an essay she had written in reply to Peter’s piece. Naturally, I was delighted to see a conversation emerging, and I suggested we publish her thoughts on FlakPhoto along with a selection of her AI-generated images.

Alys is moving forward in the brave new world of AI imagemaking, exploring its creative possibilities, and I appreciate her open-minded point of view. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on her essay. Please tell us what you think in the comments.

I’ll let Alys take it from here. Enjoy! — AA

Subscribe now

Debates about AI-generated imagery encompass several distinct questions—legal, ethical, economic, and philosophical. One of the most pressing concerns today is the use of copyrighted images to train AI models, which raises difficult questions about consent, authorship, and compensation. At the same time, these legal debates should not overshadow another equally fascinating question: what, philosophically, distinguishes photography from AI-generated imagery?

In a recent essay, photographer Peter Hoffman invokes the concept of the punctum, developed by Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida, to defend the specificity of photography against AI-generated imagery. According to this argument, a synthetic image cannot convey the intimate emotional impact described by Barthes because it is not connected to a real event.

This argument deserves careful consideration because it touches on one of the fundamental questions in the history of images.

The punctum does not reside in the image, but in the viewer

For Barthes, the punctum refers to a detail within an image that unexpectedly and personally “pierces” the viewer. It is not an objectively identifiable element within the image itself, but rather a subjective experience for the viewer.

In other words, the punctum comes from the meeting between an image and the viewer’s own memories, feelings, or personal history, not from the image alone.

From this perspective, nothing suggests that this experience is limited exclusively to photographic images. Paintings, cinematic scenes, or animated images can just as easily produce this moment of emotional disruption. The history of art is full of examples in which a seemingly secondary detail becomes the focal point of a deeply personal aesthetic experience.

If an AI-generated image evokes emotion, memory, or a shift in perception for a viewer, then something akin to a punctum may already be at work. This phenomenon depends less on the image’s technical origin than on the sensitive relationship we develop with it.

Subscribe now

The strongest critique: the question of the index

There is, however, a deeper and more substantial critique of generated images—one that concerns not emotion, but the very nature of photography itself.

This critique draws on the semiotic theory of the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who distinguished between three types of signs: the icon, the symbol, and the index.

Photography has long been understood as an index — a physical trace of reality. Light reflected from an object strikes the film or sensor, leaving a material imprint. In this sense, the photographic image maintains a direct physical relationship with what once stood before the camera.

This relationship inspired Barthes’ famous formulation: photography always says

“that-has-been.”

AI-generated images, by contrast, do not rely on such a physical link. They are produced by statistical models trained on vast datasets of images. They may resemble reality, but they do not testify to a specific moment or event that occurred in the world.

This difference is crucial. It explains why photography continues to hold a unique value in fields such as reportage, archival documentation, and historical testimony.

Toward two complementary regimes of images

Recognizing this distinction does not mean that generated images are devoid of meaning or artistic value.

Rather, it suggests that they belong to a different regime of images.

Photography is still closely tied to the real world. It records people, places, and moments, and acts as a way to archive reality.

Generated images, on the other hand, seem to show something else: the visual ideas and themes that move through our cultures. They are made from large collections of human images and combine different styles, patterns, and cultural symbols.

One might say that where photography testifies to what has existed, generated images explore what could exist.

From this perspective, the two practices do not cancel each other out. They correspond to different functions of images.

Photography remains one of the most powerful tools for recording the world. Generated imagery opens a new space — not very far from illustration — in which collective imagination, visual narratives, and cultural forms can be explored in different ways.

However, in real life, people do not always see this difference so clearly.

Leave a comment

A discomfort rooted in resemblance

Part of the unease surrounding AI-generated imagery may not come from the images themselves, but from the fact that they so closely resemble photography.

AI images often adopt the visual language of photography — its lighting, framing, and textures — to the point where the distinction between the two can be difficult to perceive. This ambiguity can feel troubling, not only for photographers but for viewers more broadly, as it blurs the line between representation and construction.

In that sense, the issue is not simply whether AI images are meaningful, but how they are presented and understood.

As with many practitioners working with these tools, I believe it is important that AI-generated images are clearly identified as such, not as a limitation, but as a way of preserving clarity in our visual culture. Distinguishing between photographic and generated images allows each medium to exist on its own terms, with its own strengths, intentions, and forms of truth.

Rather than weakening images, this distinction may ultimately strengthen our relationship to them — by making visible the different ways in which images can relate to the world and to our imagination.

A reaction that goes beyond aesthetics: a sociological question

The intensity of the reactions provoked by AI-generated imagery among many photographers cannot be explained solely by aesthetic or philosophical arguments. While theoretical concepts such as the punctum, indexicality, or photographic truth often appear in these debates, they also reflect deeper transformations.

What is at stake is also sociological.

For nearly two centuries, photography occupied a particular position in visual culture. It was simultaneously an artistic medium, a documentary tool, and a technology that required a certain level of expertise and access. Producing credible images of the world demanded skills, equipment, training, and often privileged access to certain situations.

This gave photographers a specific role: that of intermediaries between the world and the images that represent it.

Digital technologies have gradually transformed this position. Smartphones already democratized image production on an unprecedented scale. Artificial intelligence represents another step: it enables the creation of complex images without the physical act of photography.

In other words, the image becomes detached from the photographic gesture.

This shift directly affects the professional and symbolic identity of photographers. In fields such as advertising, illustration, and visual communication, images can now be created without cameras, lighting, or physical scenes. It is therefore understandable that some practitioners experience this development as a challenge to their expertise.

Yet such reactions are not new in the history of images. Several technological transformations have produced similar anxieties: photography in relation to painting, cinema in relation to theater, or digital technologies in relation to analog techniques.

With time, these transformations have rarely destroyed existing media. Instead, they have redefined their roles and expanded their territories.

Subscribe now

Conclusion, a paradox: a demanding medium still waiting for its authors

There is, in fact, an interesting paradox in the current situation.

Contrary to popular belief, producing AI-generated images at a truly professional level is often complex and time-consuming. Building a coherent image, controlling its aesthetics, shaping its light, composition, and visual narrative requires extensive experimentation and a genuine understanding of visual language.

This may be why the general level of AI imagery circulating today often appears relatively weak. Many images feel repetitive, stylistically shallow, or visually incoherent.

And this is largely because very few photographers have seriously embraced these tools so far.

Accustomed to analyzing and producing images in professional contexts, photographers have a deep understanding of contemporary visual culture — its aesthetics, its trends, and its evolving iconographic codes.

If photographers begin to engage seriously with these tools, they may well be among those best positioned to reveal their artistic potential.

In that case, artificial intelligence would not mark the disappearance of photography, but perhaps an extension of its creative territory.

Leave a comment

About the author

Alys Thomas is a Franco-British photographer and director whose work contains the poetry of Paris and the humor of the UK. She has long worked with analog photography, but more recently she has been creating with AI. Across each, there’s a remarkable synergy of style, color and light. In both, she brings her wry observation, with the idiosyncrasies of life a recurrent theme.

She meticulously crafts her AI-generated images, inputting her own photography into the process. She layers her own color grading and retouching to create images that convey a distinctive human touch, making her creations uniquely her own.

Leave a comment

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work." Mary Oliver

Hey, friends, I’m celebrating a small milestone this week. On July 16, 2006, I launched the original flakphoto.com blog. Does anyone remember that?

Those early days were exciting: the blogosphere was percolating, and social media hadn’t yet rotted our brains. I got my first taste of Web 2.0 by dabbling on LiveJournal and chatting with photographers on Google Groups. One day, I had an idea to launch a photoblog featuring a new artist each day — it would be fun and creative, a way to learn about photography and the people who practice it.

Voilà! FlakPhoto was born.

Back then, it was incredibly novel to put out a line and receive emails from around the world. Kristen and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment on Rutledge Street, and I vividly remember waking up each morning to log into my Gmail and see the pictures people had emailed me from across the globe. Isn’t that quaint?

I’ve learned a lot about photography and myself over the past two decades. At first, I thought FlakPhoto was a way to get somewhere I was trying to go in the photography world. I’m not sure what I was looking for — some kind of “career success,” I suppose. But twenty years of doing this work taught me that photography is a practice of attention. Photography is good for you. Imagemaking is a journey that shouldn’t be focused on a destination. 

FlakPhoto has become a way of life for me, a way to engage with photography and photographers. Doing it feeds my creative mind a little each day. Writing for you is nourishing and feels good. It makes me happy. For that, I’m grateful.

In retrospect, FlakPhoto changed my life. I have always loved pictures and people, and this project has introduced me to more rewarding friendships than I can count. The original FlakPhoto blog died years ago. Not long after, I started writing FlakPhoto Digest, my photography newsletter. In 2022, I rebooted it on Substack, and it continues to connect me with creative people around the world.

I appreciate our photo community more than almost anything, and your images and ideas sustain and inspire me every day. Thank you, as always, for being here and for sharing your work with me. I’ll keep going if you will!

Leave a comment

I’ll leave you with this…

invited me to talk about FlakPhoto on the VII Foundation’s Curator Series last year. I feel a little funny sharing this video here, but if you are interested in hearing more about my story, you might enjoy our conversation.

Take care, friends, and have a great weekend!

Share

Can you believe it’s already July?

Summer is flying by. Life has been too busy around here, and I’m ready for the weekend. I’ve been editing another piece on AI and photography that I hoped to publish today, but life and work have been too much, so it will have to wait until next week. Still, I wanted to drop a line and share something beautiful to close the week, an image that might lift your spirits as we wind things down.

I’m looking at Robert Darch’s photography again this morning and thought you’d appreciate this picture. It’s summertime in a nutshell and the vibe I’m craving today. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream, right?

This kid’s got it figured out — bliss, if you ask me.

Make some time to explore Rob’s website when you have a moment. He’s a very talented imagemaker, and he’ll appreciate your eyes. I’ll leave you with this: Rob’s latest post about photographing storms: 

Robert Darch - Artist-Photographer

Lightning

As a child, I can remember watching intense lightning and electrical storms in the French mountains. The lightning zigzagged and arced across the sky, intermittent flashes revealing the forest below. The forks glowed white, green and purple, interspersed with deafening claps of thunder. I find lightning both terrifying and beautiful, which creates a hea…

Read more

19 days ago · 19 likes · 4 comments · Robert Darch

I’ve got to knock off a few more things today, and then I’m logging off to enjoy Fête de Marquette, one of our annual neighborhood music festivals and my favorite event of the year. Maybe I’ll see some of you there?

Take care, friends!

Leave a comment

Growing up in small-town Midwestern America, I saw the Fourth of July as a fun summer holiday with fireworks, grilled food, games, music, and celebration. I was fed the same pro-America propaganda that everybody else was. And you know what? I believed it! But over time, my faith in America has eroded. That's what happens when you study history, get educated, and learn the truth about your country.

I still believe those American ideals are possible, but it’s hard not to feel cynical as we commemorate another July 4th and the country's 250th birthday. Those American myths are largely a sham, but they aren’t impossible to realize. I'm not giving up hope, though I definitely feel low these days. It’s hard not to.

I never thought of myself as particularly patriotic, but my view of patriotism has evolved over the past ten years. Dissent is patriotic. Believing in democracy and liberal principles is patriotic. Fighting fascism is patriotic. Many of us still hold these values dear. We need to remember them in times like the ones we’re living through. I keep telling myself: this, too, shall pass.

Subscribe now

I often talk about ’s book, On Tyranny. I bought it in 2017 and have read it every July 4th to remind myself what patriotism really means: we can’t take our democracy for granted. I’m reading it again this morning and wanted to share his words with you because they’re resonating with me today:

A patriot wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well — and wishing it would do better.

We're living through dark days right now, but we need to keep the faith. I'm doing my best not to become too gloomy and to hold on to hope. The thing we need to remember is that days like today are opportunities to remind ourselves of who we are and what we value.

Leave a comment

I’ll leave you with this, Mike Sinclair’s wonderful photograph of July 4th fireworks. I was nineteen years old when Mike made this picture, and my conception of America has changed quite a bit since then. This image always reminds me of my childhood in small-town Jefferson, Wisconsin, USA. I imagine many of you can relate to it.

Take care, friends. Enjoy your holiday. Be well. Don’t let the bastards grind you down.

Share

My goodness! It is hot in Madison today — humid, too.

One of those days when most of your energy is sapped by the heat, and you can barely motivate yourself to do much at all aside from sitting still in front of a fan. But then you see a picture like this, and it reminds you why we love summer, despite the heat: watermelon simply won’t taste the same when it’s in the single digits.

Everything has its season, and I’ll be hunkered down here moving slowly until these ninety-degree days subside at the weekend. In the meantime, I figured I’d share a few photo community updates as we roll into July.

Subscribe now

My friends at PhotoMidwest are organizing their biennial juried exhibition in Madison. I teamed up with these folks to organize a series of festival programs in 2024, and I had a blast. I’m taking a break this year because there is just too much going on in my world. Still, I was delighted to see that the Museum of Contemporary Photography's Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Karen Irvine, would be serving as this year’s exhibition juror. If you live in the Midwest, consider submitting. The deadline is July 1.

Learn more

I caught up with photographer and filmmaker Keri Pickett today, and she told me about her latest project, a documentary about her uncle, figure skater-turned photographer Roy Blakey. Uncle Roy looks fantastic, and I can’t wait to see it. Keri is lining up a handful of screenings this year, and you can organize one in your town. Save the date: Uncle Roy screens at the Facets Film Forum in Chicago on August 31.

About the Film

Chloé Morrison sends word about Source Photography Magazine’s annual Prize for New Writing About Photography. If you write about pictures, this one’s for you. There is no fee to submit. The deadline is August 1.

Apply Now

This looks terrific: Nora Lalle emailed about the summer issue of Pamplemousse Magazine. Inspired by found vernacular photographs and the act of collecting them, the summer issue features a vintage photo album from the Project B collection, cover artist Cody Bratt’s family archive project, and contemporary analog projects by artists from all over the world. It all looks amazing. Print people, check this out!

Pre-Order Now

Finally, the good folks at Photographic Center Northwest are seeking a full-time Education & Programs Director to oversee PCNW’s education programming. If you’re passionate about arts education and believe in the power of photography, consider applying. I juried a show for PCNW ages ago and fell in love with the place. If I lived in Seattle, I’d probably apply myself. The application deadline is July 28.

Learn more

One more thing…

My Dad is in the hospital again — he calls himself a “frequent flyer,” and for good reason: he’s been there a lot this year. Getting old isn’t easy, and he’s learning that the hard way. Hopefully, he’ll be home soon. Please send him your good vibes.❤️

Alright, friends, that’s all for now. Take care of yourselves, and have an excellent holiday weekend!

Leave a comment

In April 2023, I published a piece about Boris Eldagsen’s controversial AI image stunt in the Sony World Photography Awards. What intrigued me about that provocation was how AI seemed to be redefining photography, or at least how we describe images that “look” like photographs. Today’s post takes that concept a step further: Zied Mnif examines current descriptions of “photography” and how various competitions define the term. 

He should know. Zied runs WinPhoto, an “honest AI critic for photo contests.” When he pitched this story, I was delighted because I have long been fascinated by photography as an evolving cultural object. I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on this essay. Let us know in the comments. Take it away, Zied! —AA

Subscribe now

The strangest photography story of 2026 isn’t a fake. It’s the speed of the verdicts.

In May, an entry in the Street category of the Hasselblad Masters was pulled after an online crowd decided it looked generated and said so loudly until the organizers acted. Weeks earlier, a dramatic owl had been named the grand-prize winner of the National Wildlife Federation’s photo contest and then quietly stripped of the title — not by a forensic lab, but by photographers on social media who suspected a composite and wouldn’t let it go. Neither image was adjudicated the old way, in a room, by a jury with time. Both were tried in public, at the speed of a quote-post, on the charge of not being real.

It is tempting to file this under “AI panic,” and some of it is. But the panic is sitting atop a much older, much quieter problem, and 2026 is the year it broke the surface. Here is the issue, stated plainly: the same photograph can be testimony at one contest and a lie at the next — and not because one jury is stricter than another. Because they are not judging the same thing.

Ask four major competitions what a photograph is, and you will get four different answers. They contradict each other. And the rulebook is where the contradiction is being fought out, one clause at a time, with the photographer’s entry fee on the table.

Leave a comment

Four answers to one question

I read the rules of twenty-four competitions for a living — it is the unglamorous, load-bearing work behind everything WinPhoto does. Strip away the legalese, and the editing line doesn’t sit on a spectrum from lenient to strict. It collapses into four positions1, and each one is a different philosophy of what you are even holding when you hold a photograph.

The photograph is a record.

World Press Photo. Wildlife Photographer of the Year. National Geographic. Ocean Photographer of the Year. Nine of the twenty-four. Here, a photograph is evidence — a sworn statement about a moment that occurred. You may develop it the way you’d develop a negative: crop, tone, convert to black and white, and clear sensor dust. You may not add, remove, move, or duplicate a single thing in the frame, because to do so is to alter testimony.

The strictness is total and patrolled: World Press Photo requires finalists to surrender the original RAW file and a sequence of frames shot before and after the entry to prove the moment was continuous and that nothing was inserted later. It bans common AI upscalers by name while permitting denoise, a border fine enough to cut yourself on. It will even refuse a smartphone frame captured in HDR or panorama mode, because the phone’s own quiet computation has already touched the record. In this church, the camera is a witness under oath, and editing is the temptation to improve the truth.

The photograph is a witness.

Nature Photographer of the Year. HIPA. Comedy Wildlife. World Nature. Seven of them. A gentler creed, and an older one. Process the light however you like — but the content must be true. The animal must have been there; the moment must have happened; nothing staged, baited, added, or removed.

This is the position that retired Marcio Cabral’s “Night Raider” in 2017: An anteater approaching a glowing termite mound, beautiful, and — five biologists on the jury concluded — the same taxidermy anteater displayed at the entrance of the park where he shot. No one needed to inspect a pixel. The posture gave it away. The witness creed doesn’t ask whether you edited the file. It asks whether the world in the file was real, and it staffs its juries with people who can tell.

The photograph is an authored image.

Sony World Photography Awards. IPA. LensCulture. Four of them. Here, the picture is openly a made thing, and the only unforgivable sin is dishonesty about your hand. Manipulate heavily if it serves the work — but the origin must be a real photograph (”computer-generated content cannot be the origin,” as Sony’s open rule puts it), and you must declare what you did. The enforcement isn’t a RAW lab; it’s the disclosure box. Overstate or understate your edits, and a strong image is recast as fraud. In this tradition, the photographer is an artist, the camera a starting point, and confession the price of freedom.

The photograph is a prompt.

PX3 Paris. Tokyo Foto Awards. Aperture. Three of them. The youngest answer, and the most radical: the image is the achievement, and the camera is optional. Generative work is welcome here — but quarantined. It competes in a dedicated AI category, against its own kind, behind a velvet rope that bars it from Photographer of the Year. Enter a generated image into the photographic categories, and it isn’t a scandal; it’s a filing error. They move it. The camera has been demoted from author to one tool among several, and the contest has built a separate room so the two definitions never have to meet.

The collision

Record. Witness. Authored image. Prompt. These are not four levels of rigor. There are four answers to the question, “What is a photograph?” and they cannot all be right at once.

Now do the thing the rulebooks never make you do until it’s too late: take one ordinary file and walk it through all four rooms.

A landscape. You brightened the sky and cloned out a hiker who wandered into the far corner — a retouch so small you’d forget you made it.

• At World Press Photo, you are disqualified. You removed an object from the record.

• At Nature Photographer of the Year, you are at serious risk. You altered the witnessed world.

• At Sony or LensCulture, you are likely fine — as long as you disclose the work and it isn’t a documentary class.

• At PX3, no one so much as blinks.

The photograph never changed. The definition of real did. There is no such thing as a “clean” edit in the abstract — only an edit that is clean for the room you carry it into. A phone shot in HDR is ineligible at one contest and unremarkable at the next. A focus-stacked landscape is routine craft for most of the field and an automatic disqualification at Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

The file is innocent. The frame around it decides everything.

Why it won’t resolve

It would be comforting to think someone will convene a committee and harmonize the rules. They won’t, and it’s worth understanding why.

For a century, the camera was the thing that made a photograph a photograph. That is over — not because of Midjourney, but because the ordinary tools quietly absorbed the magic. Your phone composes an HDR exposure from frames you never saw. Your raw converter removes noise by predicting detail. Generative fill sits one menu over from the crop tool, in the same software every professional already owns.

The camera stopped being a clean line between captured and constructed, and every competition was forced to draw its own border around the word real — and they drew them in different places, for honest reasons rooted in what each one is for. A photojournalism prize cannot afford the artist’s freedom. An art prize cannot afford the journalist’s literalism. Neither is wrong. They are no longer talking about the same object.

The 2026 pile-ons — the dethroned owl, the pulled street frame — are that schism breaking into the open. What looks like a mob is, underneath, a definitional argument with no referee: a crowd enforcing the record creed on photographs that were, in some cases, being judged by the authored image one. The accusation “that’s not a real photograph” only feels obvious because the speaker hasn’t noticed there are four meanings of real on the table, and they’ve picked one.

Where it leaves you

This is the part that matters if you are a photographer and not a philosopher, because the schism doesn’t cost the medium anything. It costs you. It costs you in retracted prizes, lifetime bans, entry fees paid into contests you were never eligible for, and — new in 2026 — your name in a thread defending a photograph you actually took.

You cannot end the argument. But you can refuse to be its casualty. The discipline that protects you is unglamorous and entirely learnable: before you submit, know which of the four photographs this contest believes it is judging. Keep your RAW and your layered file, always. Read the editing clause for every single entry, not once a year — because the same export will be a winner in one inbox and a disqualification in the next, and nothing in the picture will warn you.

A medium that cannot agree on what it is will continue to produce casualties at the border. Don’t be one because you didn’t read the sign.

Leave a comment

About the author

Zied Mnif is a photographer based in Luxembourg and the founder of WinPhoto.io, which analyzes the editing and AI rules of major photo competitions against a photographer’s image and tells them which contests they are actually eligible for — before they pay the entry fee. Follow him on Instagram @ziedmnif.

Wow, it’s been a week, alright. How’s everybody doing out there? The sun is shining in Madison after days of thunderstorms and tornado warnings. Severe weather can do a number on your nerves. It feels good to see blue skies after so much rain.

Life has been a lot lately, and I haven’t had the headspace to do my usual photography work here. I don’t feel good when I’m out of touch with my photo people. I write this newsletter because committing to a photography practice — even something as inconsequential as a blog — keeps me plugged in, inspired, and creatively fit. Losing my rhythm doesn’t feel good. I know many of you can relate.

I end up feeling hollow when I haven’t published something here, and the truth is, I simply haven’t had the bandwidth lately: home, work, life, and the admin of it all have been overwhelming in recent weeks. Mainly, I wanted to touch base and show you something beautiful today, and Kinga Owczennikow’s image lifted my spirits.

Leave a comment

We lost two amazing artists this week: Duane Michals and David Hockney, both of them legends. If you’re like me, you will appreciate reading their obituaries and reflecting on their contributions to the world. Both spent their entire lives creating, and each explored their medium until the end, which is impressive and entirely admirable. Here are some New York Times gift links when you have a few moments:

David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88

Duane Michals, Photographer With Stories to Tell, Dies at 94

Subscribe now

I’ll leave it there. We’re going hiking tomorrow, and I can’t wait to get out into the woods. I hope you do something similar. Have a great weekend, folks — take care!

Leave a comment

A handful of people have messaged me today asking if I accept submissions for FlakPhoto publication. The answer, of course, is yes! Please email me anytime.

I regularly feature the photographers, books, and projects that come across my desk here in the newsletter and on Instagram.

Keeping up with correspondence is my Achilles’ heel, but I am always looking, and I love seeing new work. If you’re making something cool, please let me know.

Email is always the best way to reach me: flakphoto@gmail.com

Speaking of submissions: I’m still looking for COLOR pictures, and I’ll be curating a new COLOR series this summer — Stay tuned.

Okay, I hope that clears things up! The sun is shining here in Madison today, and it’s gorgeous outside. Have a terrific weekend, folks. Take care!

Leave a comment

Does anyone else remember Hamburger Eyes?

Last week, I was in San Francisco on a work trip, and, as is typical for me, I spent my free time walking, looking, and making pictures. By chance, I stumbled upon a poster in a bookstore window announcing a retrospective exhibition commemorating 25 years of Hamburger Eyes. Happy accidents like this are so sweet, and as the sun set over the bay, I made my way to the San Francisco Public Library to see the show before it closed for the day.

Ray Potes was a major inspiration for me in my early days as a blogger. Like me, Ray was exploring the internet's possibilities for discovering, curating, and showcasing photography. I was fascinated with digital publishing, but Ray was always committed to the printed page, and he published Hamburger Eyes photo zines at a dizzying pace. We collaborated on a FlakPhoto feature years ago, but lost touch at some point. Such is life, right?

The Continuing Story of Life on Earth: 25 Years of Hamburger Eyes is excellent, and seeing the show was a lovely walk down memory lane. Hamburger Eyes is legendary in some photography circles, and I consider it an institution, so seeing this show in person was a genuine treat.

I managed to grab a beer with Ray on Friday afternoon, which was the first time we had ever met in person after corresponding all those years ago. He’s the real deal: passionate about photography, always creating, and dedicated to promoting the people he believes in. If you are in the Bay Area, I hope you’ll make time to see this show before it closes in September. You won’t regret it.

You can read more about Ray’s work and the exhibition in this LensCulture interview with Jim Casper. Finally, consider buying a copy of Ray’s latest publication, which doubles as the exhibition catalog and features 161 photographers featured over the years. Order HAMBURGER EYES - THE FIRST 25 YEARS.

That’s all for today, folks — thanks for looking. Congratulations, Ray!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Tell us about yourself. Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I was born in a small village in Devon, UK. I spent the last eight years living in Los Angeles, but I’ve just moved back to Europe and now live in Madrid.

Could you describe your work? What inspired you to pursue filmmaking?

I got into filmmaking because I loved cinema, was fascinated by photojournalism, and noticed that people liked sharing their stories with me. When I was younger, I didn’t feel confident in my writing, so I started making documentaries instead.

I’ve made many different types of films, and now I also write fiction features. What ties my work together is a focus on character-driven storytelling. Someone once called my work very thoughtful. They said it during a commercial shoot and maybe didn’t mean it as a compliment, but that’s how I see the world. If my work shows that, I’m happy with it.

Do you have a particular approach to imagemaking? What’s your style?

My imagemaking is always serving a bigger story. But not a story in the sense of plot — story in the sense of character and what we are feeling. What do the images say about the character and what they are living? What emotional shading can they give?

And what kind of information do the images give that allows us to connect on a deeper level? Do they reveal something the character doesn’t know? Or put them in a context that changes what we know about them? So they aren’t just illustrative, but so that they place you there IN the film.

Because my films focus on people, I think my images are an expressive extension of what it’s like to be with that person. The ideas and texture of their world are a big part of that, and I love building observational details that give us a sense of real, living space.

Subscribe now

Are you working on any projects at the moment?

I always try to have a lot of different things that I’m working on at the same time. When one project gets stuck, switching to another helps me stay excited and energized.

I’m currently in the midst of shooting a feature-length documentary about a group of people around the world trying to decipher the language of birds. It’s about the power of curiosity and empathy and dedicating your life to a state of constant wonder.

I’m writing a fiction feature film that feels more personal than anything I’ve done before, which makes it an interesting challenge. All my films reflect my view of the world, but this one is inspired by our recent move. The idea came from a conversation with a filmmaker friend about my experiences and the time I spent with my daughter processing things. She said, ‘I hope you make a film about child psychology’. It’s not literally autobiographical, but it has so much that I’ve been thinking about — so much of my grappling to stay a caring, functioning human being — that it’s drawing on my life in a very direct way. That’s new to me and both exciting and a bit scary.

Leave a comment

And I’m relaunching my series of short documentaries called Little Scraps of Paper. It’s a set of portraits of artists and where they keep their ideas. We’re shooting new films right now, but we’re still open to suggestions for artists or other creative people to feature — so if you know someone you think would be insightful and a good fit, let me know! The series has always grown from people telling me to check out someone who is special in their eyes.

Oh! We also just released a small book of photographs from my time making the film with Saul Leiter.

How do you stay inspired?

I think there’s inspiration to be found everywhere, but you have to put yourself in a position to be open to it. For me, that means actively seeking out different rhythms to my day that force me to look around.

I get a lot of inspiration from books, films, music, and art. But the more I can experience physically rather than online, the better. I find myself trapped if I spend too much time on my computer or phone — I feel stuck and need to get outside and experience the world. My solution is usually a long walk through areas I don’t necessarily know so well. If I can combine that with a museum or a bookshop, and then sit in a random café and watch people, that fills me up.

That practice of training your senses and being alert to the world around you is an important part of who I am and how I work. It’s something I take seriously in a way (while still trying to really enjoy it because it’s the most wonderful way to live).

Leave a comment

Tell us about an artist who has intrigued you recently.

Lately, I’ve been really interested in the paintings of Guim Tió. They have a lot of mystery and a strong sense of place that I find special.

Show us a picture that moved you recently. Tell us about it.

Aaron Huey recently posted an Instagram photo of a scene he captured in Iran in 1999. It shows a young woman kissing her grandmother, almost launching herself forward to do it. He wrote about how the family took him in after finding him among protesters. Beyond the obvious humanizing power of photography like this, the photo’s warmth and familiarity made me think about family, mortality, and how closely they are connected.

Do you like music? What have you been listening to lately?

​​I’m somebody who likes music on almost all the time.

This morning I woke up and put on the new Alexis Taylor album, then I wanted to listen to “Cucurrucucu” by Caetano Veloso, but I couldn’t get the INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart” out of my head, so I had to play it.

Recently, I’ve been loving The New Eves, the soundtrack to Sentimental Value, Dry Cleaning’s last album; the new De La Soul album; and the Nebraska recordings Bruce Springsteen released last year.

I collect photography books. Can you recommend a photobook that you love?

This is a tough question! I love having photography books around me—for reference, for pleasure, and for the sense of possibility they bring.

José Luis Carrillo’s Los Hijos del Ciervo is a beautiful book, with embossed text on the back. And it’s a great size and length. It has a sense of myth and magic, and a framing of the project that makes it feel much more original and authored than a pure documentation of place. It’s about a valley in Spain known as Spanish Siberia, which the Celts once populated. They worshipped the deer deity Cerunnos. And this book is, as José describes it, about “the Sons of the Deer, legitimate descendants of Cerunnos, the styled god, venerated in this region as 'the king of the forest”

The images blend daily ritual, mysticism, and a strong sense of place, which I find really captivating. I’m inspired by any art that weaves mythology into real life — not in a religious sense, but in a way that shows how our rituals, sacred sites, and stories shape who we are today.

Can I also recommend Isadora Kosofsky’s Senior Love Triangle? Such an intimate, powerful bit of storytelling. I’m in awe of how it’s laid out, and also very much inspired by the tenderness within.

Have you read any good books?

I’ve been absolutely loving On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. It’s science fiction in concept, about a woman who slips through time and wakes up to the eighteenth of November every morning.

I’ve just read the third part, and I love the depth and detail she conjures, the realism in an unreal world, and the way she draws you into the story.

She explores this central idea in a way that isn’t driven by plot, but by this deep exploration. The fact that there are seven books in the series shows her commitment to this approach. That depth made me connect with the story in a personal way.

Each book is also manageably short. I spent last summer only reading books under 150 pages, and it was very exciting and liberating.

Finally, show us something cool not related to photography. Surprise us!

I’m really into this simple, yet beautiful and complex, card game called Codex Naturalis. It’s impeccably designed — both aesthetically and as a game. You can take it with you on journeys, and the games are relatively quick. There’s something magical about picking up a game and thinking, ‘This looks incredibly complicated, it will take forever,’ and 30 seconds later, you understand it and are working out strategies.

Leave a comment

About the filmmaker

Tomas Leach is an award-winning filmmaker from the UK. His first feature documentary, In No Great Hurry, about legendary photographer Saul Leiter, was released to critical acclaim. His second, The Lure, which was executive produced by Errol Morris, explored a wild treasure hunt in the Rockies.

He has directed films with gold-winning Olympians and prison baseball teams, exhibited work in galleries around the world, and shot commercials for Adidas, NASA, Ikea, and more.

He writes the Little Scraps of Filmmaking newsletter on Substack. Follow him on Instagram @tomasleach.

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

When I think of Amanda Greene, I think of the American South. She lives in Georgia, and her images are dripping with Southern vibes. Some photographers are like that — their work is so uniquely tied to a region that it shapes how you see the place.

I first learned about Amanda’s photography years ago at my buddy Mark’s wedding in Palm Springs. Small world: It turns out she was a friend of his fiancée, Kristina, and I wanted to hear more. One thing led to another, and I ended up meeting Amanda online, like so many photography folks in the FlakPhoto universe. We’ve stayed in touch over the years, and she’s always working on something cool.

Amanda messaged me last week to announce that she was making the leap to Substack and would experiment with a newsletter as part of her MFA studies in narrative nonfiction. Photographers who write are special because they can show and tell, which isn’t always easy. 

I’ve been enjoying Amanda’s dispatches and thought you might, too. If a photographer who writes nonfiction appeals to you, you’ll dig her stuff.

Amanda Greene

Saeed Jones Takes Us To Church

When Saeed Jones walks onto the green-carpeted chancel at First Baptist Church of Decatur I think, “There’s my friend!”, then remind myself that he doesn’t know me from shit. My two oldest friends are on either side of me. Phoebe, who traveled down from Princeton for my birthday, thumbs through a Baptist hymnal, looking for any song that seems familiar…

Read more

2 months ago · 1 like · Amanda Greene

I subscribed to Amanda’s newsletter and was poking around her website again today. It’s a treasure trove of vibrant imagery, a blend of commercial, editorial, documentary, and personal work. There’s a lot to look at — her Elvis series is particularly fun. She’s on Instagram, too; you can follow her at @amandagreenephotographs. 

I’ll leave it there today. If you like what you see, please let me know in the comments. And thanks so much to the nearly six hundred readers who responded to my virtual artist talk poll yesterday. I appreciate the feedback.

Take care, friends, and have a great week!

Leave a comment

Hey, friends, just a short note today. I want to hear your opinion.

Kristen and I spent the morning discussing social media, its obvious problems, and its limitations for community connection. For many years, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now Bluesky, Threads, and Substack have provided meaningful opportunities for me to connect with photo folks around the world. But things are changing.

Since I don’t live in one of the world’s photography centers, social media is a significant community hub that connects me with my people — I know many of you can relate. These social platforms still provide some value, yet they worsen every year: clogged with video ads, less focused on photography than ever, and increasingly driven by corporate algorithms with interests of their own.

It’s a bummer, and I’m trying to find alternatives to so much scrolling that might offer the nourishing community connections I used to find on these platforms.

Lately, I’ve been revisiting the idea of organizing a virtual photography event series that brings small groups together to hear artists present their work in an online forum. During the pandemic, virtual events were abundant, but I appreciate that most of us are trying to spend less time on screens, not more.

I can’t tell: has the virtual event ship sailed?

Hosting a curated talk series would be fun for me, and I imagine photographers would appreciate the opportunity to share their work with a new audience. What do you think?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion with me. This poll isn’t a perfect science, but it will give me some sense of your enthusiasm for this idea. If you prefer, you can leave me a comment or email me directly with your feedback.

I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Cheers!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Are you familiar with Art Shay?

Like many photographers, I know Shay’s name but not much about his work. I definitely have more to learn. Luckily, there’s a new documentary about Shay coming soon, and it looks great. Ken Hanson reached out to me the other day with news about the project. Here’s some background:

This film was conceived in 2013. Director/Producer Ken Hanson was researching photographers for a music project when introduced to Art Shay on a Zoom call. “At one point, Art shared his desktop,” Hanson recalls. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I had a pretty good handle on twentieth-century photography. But I was amazed at the breadth and quality of Art’s work. I immediately thought this guy deserved to be in the pantheon of W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Gordon Parks.” That’s when Ken, Jack Davidson, and Dave Myszewski developed a friendship with Art and set out to tell his story.

You can find more about the movie on the Art Shay: An America So Real website. And if you’re near Chicago this week, there’s a special film preview at Gallery VICTOR on Thursday, May 14. The event includes a sneak peek at the film in progress, a signed print auction, and a talk with the filmmakers.

I wish I could be there! RSVP here.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to show the film in Madison when it comes out next year. I’ll leave you with this gift link: Shay’s New York Times obituary is a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with his work.

Take care, friends, and have a great week!

Leave a comment

Hey friends! Just a bit of seasonal housekeeping.

Could you please reply to let me know you’ve received this message?

Email algorithms can be unpredictable, and if you haven’t opened or replied to a FlakPhoto newsletter lately, we might lose touch.

Your response trains the email gods to deliver future updates straight to your primary inbox — and rescues FlakPhoto from the dreaded spam/promotions folder purgatory.

I’m lining up some new photography features, and I’d hate for you to miss out just because of some technical issues with AI.

Simply hit reply with a quick “Got it!” or drop me a comment below.

Thanks so much, and apologies for the interruption. I appreciate it!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Well, my allergies are back, and my nose is stuffy, which means it’s Springtime in Madison. I thought I’d do something a little different with this week’s Monday Muse and point you in the direction of a show of spring pictures I curated here a while back.

There is a LOT to look at here — forty photographers picturing the season.

I’ve become a middle-aged guy who makes pictures of flowers, so these photos really inspired me. I hope they inspire you, too. I’d love for more people to see this work, so please share the link with your friends.

See Spring Pictures

That’s all for now. Take care, enjoy the season, and have a great week!

Subscribe now

When I was nine years old, I broke my wrist and missed basketball camp, so I had to find a new summer activity. Photography class wasn’t the only option, but it was the one I chose. In that class, alongside big kids from junior high, I took pictures with my mom’s Instamatic and developed the 126 film in a real-life darkroom. Magic!

A year later, my dad let me commandeer his SLR, and my pictures improved. I was serious enough about this new hobby that Dad built a makeshift darkroom in our laundry closet. A plywood board across the washing machine held developing trays, and a shelf by the water heater held a little Bogen enlarger. I was 10, maybe 11.

Lest we get bogged down in the minutiae of my photographic journey, suffice it to say that photography has been central to my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a student of the medium — and a grad student, teacher, and working professional — forever. It’s all I’ve ever known. This peculiar medium is so intertwined with my identity that I genuinely don’t know who I’d be without it.

That long preamble was necessary so that when I tell you I’m tired of equipment and technique, you’ll know I’m not simply too lazy to learn. I’ve studied so much about photography that I find myself back where I started, when the most fun I could think of was pointing and shooting with mom’s Instamatic. After a lifetime studying equipment and technique, I would like to try a different approach to making good photographs. I think I’ve been going about it all wrong.

Subscribe now

The photoblogosphere (like the world of print publishing it replaced) revolves around gear. YouTubers and bloggers and online publications — the places that garner the eyeballs advertisers love — talk about pixel pitch and bit depth and the shape of aperture blades. And sure, those things are important. But I think we may be collectively missing the forest for the trees; I am, at least. It’s easy to get so caught up in the tools that I forget about the work. If my goal is to make something interesting rather than something sharp, I don’t think I can keep focusing on tools and techniques.

If image quality were the primary determinant for great photographs, the list of “greatest photographs ever” would be filled with pictures from this year. In fact, the most exceptional photographs in the history of photography were largely made with equipment and techniques considered rudimentary today. Steichen’s Flatiron building, Capa’s D-Day invasion, and, as I wrote recently on my own Substack, Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. It’s surely in the discussion among the greatest photographs ever, and it’s out of focus.

So if image quality isn’t the decider, what is? Hell if I know. I’ve only been studying this stuff for four decades. I’m gonna need more time.

As Andy pointed out via Peter Hoffman, maybe it’s the punctum that matters most. This is as good an answer as I can come up with. What makes a picture great might be any number of things — sometimes it is about masterful technique — but the ones that move me most possess an ethereal combination of emotion and context. I like to think of it as a distinctly human magic that happens when special things come together, impossibly, at just the right moment, and you’re there, ready, with your finger on the button.

If I’ve learned anything from the many world-class photographers I’ve interviewed,1 it’s that they tend to tackle the technical challenges of photography and then move on, focusing their attention on more essential matters. They know equipment and technique are important, but don’t consider them the most important. These things are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

Leave a comment

I recognize that my job as a commercial photographer has also contributed to this technical fatigue. After 30-some years of retouching images in Photoshop, I’ve become desensitized to refinement. I refine my work daily, which may make me less interested in overly polished pictures. When the rough edges get sanded off, I begin to lose interest. It puts some distance between me and the thing that most interests me: a straight photograph.

25 years ago, my graduate thesis was a naive rejection of photography as a documentary medium. In an effort to find a Mondrianesque type of “pure creation,” I hoped to free the medium such that viewers no longer felt the need to see a photograph and ask, “What is it?” It’s a nice idea, and it can be done well (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Christian Schad, Adam Fuss, et al.). Still, in large part, photography’s most interesting power is found in its ability to record the physical world. People love to talk about how photographs lie all the time. But they also tell the truth in a way no other medium can. There’s a reason we hire wedding photographers rather than wedding sketch artists.

Subscribe now

It used to be really difficult to make a technically excellent picture. With that mysterious black box, unforgiving film, the mathematics of bellows compensation, the chemistry of time, temperature, and agitation, making a sharp picture — much less a beautiful one — was a real achievement.

Now my phone makes beautiful, sharp pictures with very little input from me. So it’s harder for me to be impressed by a technique that no longer feels like an achievement. That’s not to say it isn’t beautiful; it just isn’t rare.

Everything’s beautiful, and I still don’t care. I gather I’d better look elsewhere if I’m going to find meaning in my photographs.

My approach to finding what matters, what moves me, is to try to eliminate all the things I’ve determined do not. I’m starting by stripping away refinement, removing even the implication of perfection, eliminating the fussiness of heavy processing and presets. Even meticulous composition can strike me as overly produced. Can’t we just raise the camera to our eye, press the button, and call it a day?

That’s what I’ve been doing on my Instagram for quite some time (inasmuch as I do anything there). The real place to see this work is on my Billstagram. It’s filled with phone photos, mostly straight off the sensor.2 It may be the kind of thing that those in search of perfection wouldn’t give a second thought. But for people like me — or is it just me? — this stuff hits the spot. It’s exactly what I’m looking for. The lightest touch. Permanent seeing.

I take my camera (er, phone) out into the world, look through it, press the button, and call it a day. Open the magic box, let the light in, keep it forever. I think I might be on to something.

Leave a comment

There’s a kind of purity in pointing and shooting. Why mess with it? Why use Photoshop or AI or even presets to “improve” these images? Why spend rent money on a lens that will make my pictures sharper if Migrant Mother is out of focus?

Of course, sharpness and dynamic range have their place. The history of photography is filled with technical achievements that help explain why some photographs have staying power. But if it means I’m spending one minute focused on things that won’t make my work more meaningful, then I don’t want to think about these things at all. I guess that means I’m done with equipment and technique. I’m throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I know. But it might be necessary — not forever, just for now — until I finally learn to make pictures that are meaningfully, lastingly, good. Not sharp, but good.

Leave a comment

About the author

Bill Sawalich is a commercial and editorial portrait photographer in St. Louis. He publishes a newsletter called Art + Math, where he writes about photography and the business of being creative. His work has appeared in publications such as Outdoor Photographer, Digital Photo Pro, and McSweeney’s, and he taught studio photography at the University of Missouri - St. Louis for 11 years. Learn more at sawalich.com.

Subscribe now

Well, no sooner had I touched down in Madison after a wonderful two weeks of hiking in Portugal than I came down with a cold. I’ve been laid up at home all weekend and am still dragging today, so this post will be brief.

Since I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, I decided to lift my spirits by looking at Adam Ekberg’s photography this morning. Do you know his work? Adam is one of my favorite artists, and his pictures always make me smile.

We tend to think about photography as documenting events in the world, but Adam’s images document things he makes happen in the world. Adam's images are whimsical, wonderful happenings. I love them.

Waltz Books published his first monograph, The Life of Small Things, in 2015. The book may be out of print; if you can find a copy, grab it. Adam’s website is a treasure trove of visual goodies — I hope you’ll make some time to explore his work this week.

I’ll leave you with this: interviewed Adam on his podcast earlier this year. You can listen to their conversation and learn more about him here:

George Laufenberg

On the Other Side of Boredom

“I loafe and invite my soul…

Read more

5 months ago · 6 likes · 3 comments · George Laufenberg

Okay, that’s all for now — it’s good to be back! Fingers crossed I’ll kick this cold in a few days. Take care of yourselves, and have a great week!

Leave a comment

Hey, friends, just checking in: How’s everybody doing out there?

I’ve been mainly offline for the past two weeks, hiking with Kristen in Portugal. We had a blast, walked more than 75 miles, and made a ton of pictures. We’re back home in Madison now, so I wanted to reconnect.

I hope you all are doing well wherever you are in the world.

Unfortunately, severe hailstorms hit our near east side neighborhood last week, so today we’re dealing with the aftermath. Oof. The vacation is definitely over!

I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled photography program, including a new Monday Muse, next week. Thanks, as always, for looking — I appreciate it!

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Sometimes it’s all about slowing down and looking closely.

I started reading Richard Quinney’s For the Time Being: Ethnography of Everyday Life on Sunday, and he caught my eye with a handful of sentences about attention, which many of you know is a hobbyhorse of mine. Richard writes:

We work, we play, we sleep, we love, we walk the streets from place to place — such an ordinary existence. But if we let the ordinary escape our attention and our care, we miss life itself. Much, in other words, depends on the mundane. Any sense of the extraordinary is grounded first of all in ordinary experience. With imagination, the mundane and the sublime are one…The meaning of our existence is in the details of being alive. For the time being is everything.

Doesn’t that about sum it up?

And what could be more mundane, more ordinary than a simple garden snail? Quinney’s insight was timely, because the other day I asked Bobby Beasley if we could show this image of his in the Monday Muse. I don’t know about you, but I find snails delightful and, to be honest, magical. Kristen and I read Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s illness memoir, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, last fall, which might have had something to do with Bobby’s image catching my eye. I asked Bobby what inspired him to make the picture, and he replied:

There is a cooking apple tree at the end of my mum and dad’s garden that grows the most gigantic fruit.

Throughout August, the fruits seem to double in size!

I’ll call past most weeks for a cuppa and if it’s sunny, a nosy round the garden.

Me and my dad will always see how the apples are coming along and earmark ones that look to be monsters in the making.

That week, I was eye-to-eye with a snail, probably doing the same thing.

It’s nice when things connect like this. Something I love about photography is how it helps us to see. I’ve learned to appreciate the quotidian details of the real world by photographing them, and I know many of you can relate. Richard’s essay and Bobby’s image spoke to me today, and I hope they resonate with you. Sometimes it’s good to notice what you notice, especially if it’s something ordinary like a garden snail.

I’m a big fan of Bobby’s work, and I hope you’ll check him out. You can explore his website and follow him on Instagram. He’s got a brilliant eye for color, and his pictures are tons of fun. Take a look when you have time this week. Cheers!

Leave a comment

It’s my birthday today — I’m 48. Time keeps moving, doesn’t it?

I’m feeling good about getting older, and I can’t complain. The world may be a mess, but life in our little corner of the universe is fine. We’re healthy and happy, surrounded by good friends. These are the things that truly matter in life.

Last year, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and my sisters and I spent a week in our Wisconsin hometown. My folks still live in the house where we grew up, and my mom occasionally sends me home with little treasures from the past.

A few months ago, she gave me a box of old stuff, and I'm reminded again how powerfully pictures connect us to our memories. I don’t remember posing for this photo, but I do remember loving the grand piano at my Grandma Adams’ house. I had forgotten all about it until I saw this image. Photography really is a time machine.

I also forgot about this: in sixth grade, we were assigned to write an autobiography, and I titled mine “The Life and Times of Andy Adams: April 1, 1978 - Present,” with this photo pasted on the cover. Even at twelve, I was writing with pictures. What a little goofball! Let me tell you, this thing is a riveting read.

At brunch last weekend, we talked about how creativity nourishes us. Publishing FlakPhoto definitely fulfills me, and I’m grateful to write for you here. I’ve been reading about purpose and longevity lately. Today, I’m reflecting on how much I enjoy doing this photo work. It’s meaningful, and it makes me happy.

So, thank you for reading FlakPhoto and sharing your images and ideas with me each week! You all inspire me more than you know, and I really appreciate our connection.

Stay well, friends. I hope you have a wonderful day — Take care!

Leave a comment