The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative professionals working through the parts of the creative process no gear review or business course ever covers. Each episode is 30 to 40 minutes. Solo. Story-driven. Built around mental health, artistic identity, and what honest work costs in a career rewarding performance over truth. This is not a photography podcast about cameras, presets, or client strategy. This is a podcast about the inner experience of being a creative professional, made for the mid-career photographer or designer who has mastered the technical side but lost the thread. Hosted by Patrick Fore, commercial photographer, author, and former lead photographer and brand designer for Taylor Guitars. His work has appeared globally for clients like Nike, Petco, and Verizon. He built this show because none of the podcasts he found addressed the real problem. If you are a photographer or creative professional who feels competent on the outside and quietly lost on the inside, you are a Terrible Creative. This is your podcast.
A lot of photographers assume it’s your portfolio. Your lighting. Your gear. Maybe your day rate. I’m not so sure anymore. A few weeks ago I spent three and a half days photographing hardware products in a twelve-by-fifteen room. White seamless. Capture One. Cardboard boxes. SKU spreadsheets. The kind of commercial job nobody posts on Instagram because it isn’t glamorous enough to be interesting. On the drive home after the third day, I got rear-ended sitting on the on-ramp of Interstate 15. The next morning I still had one day left to shoot, but my back had other plans. That experience forced me to rethink something I’ve been saying for years about professionalism, leadership, pricing, and what clients are actually paying us for. This episode is the follow-up to Episode 56, The Audit . That episode asked whether our work was replaceable. This one asks a different question: Are we? Along the way we talk about Photo Jail, why I strangely love my Canon AC adapter, the hidden physical labor of commercial photography, why leadership begins with understanding the jobs you’re asking other people to do, and why the best commercial photographers don’t just know how to make photographs—they know how to make sure the job survives when reality inevitably gets in the way. I also share why I think most photographers have a distorted view of this industry, what a nine-thousand-dollar commercial assignment actually looks like once the math is finished, and why I still think there’s something valuable about loading C-stands into the back of a Subaru before sunrise. Sometimes the most important lessons in photography aren’t learned behind the camera. Sometimes they’re learned in the parking lot after the shoot is over. In this episode Why I started calling one commercial assignment “Photo Jail” The hidden, unglamorous side of professional photography Getting rear-ended during production week—and finishing the job anyway Why leadership starts with understanding the work yourself The difference between being a boss and being someone your crew trusts Why I think professionalism is really about building margin What a commercial photography budget actually looks like after the expenses Why small commercial jobs deserve more respect than they get The real meaning behind The Soul of the C-Stand Mentioned in this episode Episode 56 — The Audit The Bear (FX), Season 2 – Garrett and Richie polishing forks Capture One Canon EOS R5 Resources The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show terriblephotographer.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Email Me (Patrick Fore) Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions . Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Every creative career begins with an invisible handshake. Before the photographs exist, before the campaign launches, before the work is delivered, someone decides to trust you. In this episode, Patrick explores what happens when that trust is broken, beginning with North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s May 2026 press conference announcing the state’s lawsuit against Holly Christina Photography, a wedding photography company accused of defrauding more than 200 couples out of nearly $1 million through overbooking, undelivered work, and broken promises. Audio clips from that press conference are used throughout the episode. From there, the conversation becomes much more personal. Patrick shares the story of an early freelance assignment he never should have accepted, and how one difficult phone call in a 7-Eleven parking lot changed the way he thinks about professionalism forever. Because professionalism isn’t about never making mistakes. It’s about telling the truth before someone has to chase you for it. Key idea: Good faith isn’t believing nothing will go wrong. It’s the promise that when it does, you’ll remain reachable. Resources APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show terriblephotographer.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Email Me (Patrick Fore) Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions . Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Have you ever sat in a high-stakes room, looked around at the expensive titles and corporate validation, and quietly wondered when the actual adults were going to arrive to take over? Eventually, you realize they aren't coming. Everyone is waiting on everyone else. In this episode, Patrick Fore breaks down the messy, internal reality of managing high-stakes commercial sets when self-doubt is screaming in your ear. From a midnight operational collapse in a mildew-ridden Chicago elementary school to the quiet realization that authority isn't announced—it’s just transferred—we look at why the room doesn't actually need your internal confidence. It just needs your presence. Audio Clip Mark Watney ( The Martian ): "You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem. Then you solve the next one, and the next. And if you solve enough problems, you get to come home." What We Cover in This Episode: The Silent Room Rotation: What happens when an agency producer panics, an interpreter doesn't show up, and a room full of people quietly decides you are the grown-up in charge. What Clients Actually Buy: Why a commercial day-rate isn't an invoice for an f-stop or a camera body—it’s a premium insurance policy to absorb chaos and shield the client's timeline. The Insecurity Tyrant: How to spot the director who treats authority like a volume knob, and why micromanaging your crew forces them to let you fail. Borrowing Nervous Systems: The psychological power of co-regulation on a stressful set. Why clients don't hire cocky geniuses; they hire stable anchors. The Universal Shift: Why the Impostor Filter isn't a photography problem. How teachers, parents, and business owners all navigate the exact moment responsibility arrives long before certainty does. Deep-Dive References The Impostor Phenomenon (1978): Shifting the perspective on the foundational study by psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, and exploring why the people who feel like frauds are often the least fraudulent minds in the room. Resources APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show terriblephotographer.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Email Me (Patrick Fore) Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions . Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
A friend of mine named Megan has spent more than a decade making beautiful, deeply human photographs of families. The kind of work that makes you feel something long after you’ve put the camera down. More than once I’ve told her she should be shooting commercial lifestyle campaigns. Every time I do, she smiles and says the same thing. “I couldn’t.” Not because she lacks talent. Because somewhere along the way, she decided that world belonged to someone else. That conversation sent me down a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting. I started asking a deceptively simple question: How do you actually become a commercial photographer in 2026? The longer I looked for the answer, the stranger it became. This episode isn’t really about AI. AI simply exposed a much older problem. It’s about invisible career paths, inherited knowledge, and the possibility that commercial photography has spent decades telling origin stories without ever drawing a map. Maybe the next generation isn’t failing to find commercial photography. Maybe commercial photography is failing to find them. In This Episode Why “How do I become a commercial photographer?” is much harder to answer than it should be. Why photographers like Megan may already have the eye for commercial work without realizing it. The surprising difference between a profession built on pathways and one built on folklore. Why AI isn’t the story, it’s the stress test. A challenge to every working commercial photographer: if we care about the future of this profession, maybe it’s time we start drawing the map. Resources APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show terriblephotographer.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Email Me (Patrick Fore) Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions . Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
This week, we are throwing a match into one of the most heavily guarded hiding places in the creative industry: financial trauma, pricing shame, and the business choices we make when the market goes cold. In this special "pod swap" episode, Patrick joins forces with Shelly Waldman from the Creative Campfire podcast. This isn't a sterile lecture on spreadsheets or corporate accounting pipelines. It is a raw, trench-level interrogation into why independent creators systematically undercharge, how childhood conditioning shapes our adult business anxiety, and what it actually takes to maintain your premium pricing integrity when you are trapped in a financial desert. Meet Shelly Waldman Shelly Waldman sits at the rare, hyper-focused apex of analytical data and pure creative execution. Before launching her commercial photography business in 2009, she earned a degree in economics and spent ten years working as a corporate financial analyst for Citibank. Today, through her commercial portfolio, her podcast Creative Campfire , and her educational platform at Creative Camp , she teaches creative entrepreneurs how to strip the emotional baggage out of their pricing models, look flatly at the data, and run a business that actually builds long-term wealth. Portfolio: shellywaldman.com Education & Resources: creativecamp.pro Key Moments & Deep Dives 1. Blue-Collar Anchors vs. Corporate Expectations Patrick and Shelly dissect where our foundational money scripts are written. Patrick shares the memory of his father being laid off from a Midwestern factory job at age twelve, creating a permanent, tight-rope anxiety of living between "poor and doing okay." Shelly details growing up with stable, thirty-year career educators who couldn't fathom why their children would abandon secure office desks to chase volatile, high-risk creative fields like professional sports or freelance lifestyle photography. 2. The $7 Latte and the Illusion of Control We have all heard the exhausting, surface-level financial advice telling struggling freelancers to cut out their daily premium coffee habits to balance their books. Patrick and Shelly flip the script on this narrative. In highly volatile, economically stressful environments, that expensive drink isn't a math error—it is a cigarette. It is a deliberate, calculated hit of micro-joy and environmental control when the larger financial structures around you are completely collapsing. 3. The "Spicy Take" on Second Shooter Exploitation Patrick drops a heavy indictment on the direct-to-consumer wedding market. When a primary studio hires a second shooter for a ten-hour day, drops a five-hundred-dollar Venmo payment, and uses a one-sided contract to strip away the rookie's copyright and portfolio rights, it isn't "just business." It is photographers actively capitalizing on the ignorance of other photographers. They break down the legal realities of B2B transactions and why the industry standard day rate for second shooters has criminally stalled for over fifteen years. 4. The Ballpark Trap: Walking Away in a Money Desert Shelly breaks down a real-time contract negotiation drama from her recent work in London. A corporate charity client handed her an incredibly complex orchestra brief—complete with multiple conductors, split lightning keys, backstage portrait demands, and a requirement for perpetuity image usage across three separate companies. When they tried to slash her estimated rate completely in half, she walked away from the table—despite being in a dry market. "If you reward the screaming toddler with a cupcake, you are punishing the entire creative industry. You teach the client that whatever an independent artist quotes, it can always be sliced in half." 5. Gamifying the "No" vs. Rooting Out the Trauma When a creative professional is terrified to raise their rates, Shelly and Patrick deploy two completely different, equally necessary coaching frameworks: Shelly’s Data Method: Break down your cost of living into a hard, non-negotiable survival line. Then, increase your rates incrementally by fifty dollars on every single new inquiry until the market explicitly tells you "No." Run the 100 No Project and treat rejection like a game of Monopoly. Patrick’s Identity Method: Stop looking at the spreadsheet and look in the mirror. Identify the ghost inside your ego. Ask yourself if you are undercharging because your portfolio is weak, or because your family history has trained you to believe you don't deserve to hold capital. Surviving Another Day in 2026 Patrick shares the whiplash reality of his first few years of complete independence: bringing in $123,000 in 2024, only to watch the entire client pipeline vanish into complete silence throughout 2025, forcing him to stand on his front porch and sell his backup camera gear just to cover his California rent. The underlying consensus of this pod swap is simple: if you are operating an independent creative business in 2026, navigating the structural shifts of AI and platform manipulation, and simply managing to survive to shoot another frame—you get the gold star. Survival is a badge of honor. Connect With the Show: Patrick’s Portfolio & Archive: patrickfore.com | terriblecreative.com Grab the Audiobook: Check out Lessons From a Terrible Photographer on Audible, Apple Books, or find the direct links at terriblecreative.com/the-book . Shelly’s Podcast: Tune into Creative Campfire on all major streaming platforms. (00:00) - Intro: Money Shame & Pod Swap (00:39) - Origin Stories: Where Our Money Beliefs Come From (43:30) - Licensing, Usage & Second Shooters (01:01:14) - Practical Tactics: Getting to the Number (01:03:06) - Why Photographers Undercharge — & How to Fix It (01:31:51) - Coaching Corner: Advice for the Scared Photographer
We are doing something a little different this week. To give the live microphone a brief rest, we are pulling back the curtain on a project that has been built in the dark for months. In this episode, you are getting an exclusive, unedited listen to an entire chapter from my newly released audiobook: Chapter 14 — "Money Talks." This chapter cuts straight down to the bone of creative capitalism. It’s about the raw, visceral panic of quoting a number that makes your palms sweat, why the romanticized "starving artist" trope is an absolute lie, and how your pricing is a profound statement about your creative self-worth, not just a line item on an invoice. 🎧 THE AUDIOBOOK IS OFFICIALLY OUT IN THE WILD The wait is over. The complete audiobook version of Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is officially live and streaming onsite at Audible, Apple Books, and everywhere else you consume audio. If you want to grab your copy, listen to the rest of the book, or check out what people are saying, head directly to the link below: 👉 Get the Audiobook Here: theterriblecreative.com/the-book In This Chapter: The Starbucks Recalibration: The story of the first time I quoted a five-figure rate ($32,000) that made my hands sweat in Irvine, California—and the epiphany that followed. The Trust Fund Myth: Why the "starving artist" romance loses its appeal the exact second your electricity gets turned off, and who actually invented that narrative. The $500 Downtown LA Disaster: A painful look back at my early freelancing days on Upwork, lugging backgrounds up thirty flights of stairs, and realizing my business was just a very expensive hobby. The Discount Photographer Death Spiral: The exact self-perpetuating psychological trap that keeps talented creatives broke, resentful, and suffocated. The Intention Effect: How walking away from a corporate salary at Taylor Guitars forced my brain's Reticular Activating System to prioritize non-negotiable financial targets. The Freedom Equation: Why financial stability isn't for "sellouts"—it is the literal foundation that gives you the breathing room to take true artistic risks. 🪵 NEXT WEEK: Money Shame & Trauma with Shelly Waldman This audiobook drop is the exact intellectual foundation for where this show is heading next week. Next week, we are continuing our dive into the financial muck with a massive pod-swap conversation featuring Shelly Waldman from the Creative Campfire podcast. We are leaving the dry business strategies at the door and getting entirely real about money trauma, freelance precarity, and what happens when an empty inbox makes you feel like a failure as a human being. Go grab the audiobook, digest Chapter 14, and brace yourself for next week. Connect With the Show: Audiobook Links: theterriblecreative.com/the-book Main Website & Archive: theterriblecreative.com Email is Always Open: Send your thoughts, questions, or unfiltered hate mail directly through the link in the show notes. I read everything. Stay curious. Stay courageous. Stay terrible.
She said two words and I haven't stopped thinking about them since. This episode started at an APA event in La Mesa, in an artist's studio, in a conversation with a commercial photographer who's doing everything right. Personal work that matters, cold pitches going out every day, a real strategy executed with discipline. I asked how it was going. "We'll see." This one is about that phrase. What it actually means to operate a creative business in 2026, where the feedback loops are fast, the wins are public, and the silence feels personal even when it isn't. About confidence as a product people sell you. About the gap between effort and outcome that nobody's content calendar accounts for. And about a camera I had to sell on Facebook Marketplace, and what it felt like to hand it to a stranger on my front porch. Your marketing not working isn't a referendum on your talent. Sometimes it's just the weather. In This Episode APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show terriblephotographer.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions . Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
There is a version of this job that looks incredible from the outside. The gear. The clients. The portfolio. What nobody sees is what it costs to produce it. In this episode I'm talking about the part of the creative life nobody puts in the brochure. What it actually means to be a professional. Not the romantic version. The real one. Where you photograph a CEO with a fractured finger, shoot a full day with walking pneumonia, and drive to Los Angeles at 4am for a job you agreed to six months ago when it seemed manageable. The amateur has the luxury of the craft. The professional has the obligation of it. And nobody tells you that from the outside. This one is about divided focus, muscle memory, and the strange, specific capacity to override every biological alarm you have because there is a job to do and you are the only one who can do it. Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the show Subscribe to Pub Notes Terrible Photographer on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock and Unsplash. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Something shifted last week. Not dramatically. Quietly, the way things in this industry tend to change — while you're working, while you're trying to keep the phone ringing. Google's AI Mode is rewriting how clients find photographers. The search box that used to send people to your website now answers their question and keeps them inside Google. The content you spent years building to get found is being consumed by the machine that replaced you. So I did what I always do. Stayed up too late, rebuilt half my website for an algorithm, and unpublished pages I'd spent months on. This episode is about that night. About what it costs to hold the wrong things too tight. About a portrait subject who sat in her car for ten minutes before she could walk through my studio door — and what happened in the room after she did. And about the part of this work that no platform update, no search algorithm, no AI announcement has ever been able to touch. The ninety percent is window dressing. This episode is about the ten. Resources and Links Lessons From A Terrible Photographer (The Book) https://www.terriblephotographer.com/the-book Support the show https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb The Terrible Creative on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/ Patrick Fore on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/ Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California
There is a man standing in a clearing in Arkansas with a yellow guitar, singing about insulin prices to nobody in particular. Three million people found him. Not because of the production value. Because he was saying the thing. This episode is about the gap most professional creatives never talk about — the distance between the skills that pay your rent and the thing you actually have to say. How years of executing other people's briefs can quietly atrophy a different kind of muscle. And what happens when you finally try to use it. I talk about Jesse Welles, Oliver Anthony, a series of images I made in 2024 that landed in silence, and why Marcus Aurelius titled his most important work "To Himself." This one took a while to say out loud. In This Episode Jesse Welles — "War Isn't Murder" Watch on YouTube wellesmusic.com Jesse Welles on Bandcamp Oliver Anthony — "Rich Men North of Richmond" Watch on YouTube oliveranthonymusic.com CNN News Coverage — Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012 Watch on YouTube Used for editorial purposes. The Book Lessons From a Terrible Photographer Support the Show theterriblecreative.com/support Stay Connected Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter) The Terrible Creative on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California
There's a composite photographer in this episode named Nate. His details have been changed. His situation has not. This episode is about the creator economy — what it actually costs, who it was actually built for, and the quiet compromise most creative professionals are making every day. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in parking garages, watching the blue light of a phone, waiting for a signal that isn't coming. I talk about the Gilded Age, the algorithm, and a system so elegant it doesn't need to be cruel. I also name something I've been avoiding saying out loud for a while. If this one lands close, send it to someone who needs to hear it. Nate is a composite character. Details altered to protect identity. THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry. LINKS Website: terriblephotographer.com Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com Instagram: @terriblephotographer Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above. The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Terrible Conversations w/ Tom Wright Tom Wright is a photography consultant based in Burnley, UK. He calls himself a phototherapist, and no, he's not a doctor. But photographers that work with him tend to leave unstuck. Tom started in 2011 teaching photographers how to shoot Impossible Project instant film. From there he shot weddings for over a decade, moved into commercial photography, and eventually traded client work for consulting after discovering that helping photographers was the thing that actually got him out of bed. In this conversation, we talk about what it means to develop a style versus chasing trends, why AI is eating the bottom of the photography market, and what most photographers are missing when they look at their own work. We also spend way too long talking about British food. You're welcome. What we get into: Why Tom calls himself a phototherapist and what that actually means The difference between fashion and style in photography What bifurcation is doing to the industry right now Why the artists are still there, just quieter How Tom identifies what's already working in someone's portfolio The Polaroid workshops that started it all Why commodity photography has a shrinking runway What to do if you don't feel like you have anything interesting to say Find Tom at bytomw.com and on Instagram at @bytomw . Consultations are free. Go get unstuck. ----- THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry. LINKS Website: terriblephotographer.com Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com Instagram: @terriblephotographer Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above. The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
We’ve spent a century conditioning ourselves to believe that if we aren’t "producing," we aren't "valuable." But in 2026, the machines can out-produce us all. This episode is about The Great Decoupling —the moment we stop being high-end processors and start being the source. We dive into the "Productivist Fallacy," why Maya and Chris are grieving the loss of their utility, and why your "Why" is the only proprietary data left that the machines can't touch. It’s time to move from being a resource to being the source. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Yale Budget Lab – March 2026 Report on Creative Automation. Immanuel Kant – The distinction between Instrumental and Intrinsic Value ( Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals ). IDIBELL UB Brain Cognition Group – 2026 study in Advanced Science on human imaginative leaps. James Taylor – SuperCreativity and the concept of Centaurs vs. Cyborgs. THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry. LINKS Website: terriblephotographer.com Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com Instagram: @terriblephotographer Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above. The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Getting good at your craft is supposed to be the goal. But for a lot of us, competence became the cage. This episode is about the feedback loop nobody warns you about: the better you get, the harder it is to leave. And what we build around the good thing to protect it. Also, some honesty about why I called this show "Terrible" that I haven't said out loud before. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville (1853) The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (1915) Robert Berglas - Self-Handicapping research THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It's part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper. Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Terrible-Photographer-Photography-Probably/dp/B0GRGLYKYS/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0 LINKS Website: http://terriblephotographer.com Support the show: https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes: https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/ Patrick on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/ Email Patrick : patrick@terriblephotographer.com Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above. The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
Where does creative obsession actually come from? Not how to manufacture it. Not how to find it on a vision board. Where it actually lives. How it grows underground without your permission. And what it sounds like when it finally tries to break through. This episode is the follow up to Episode 61: Obsessed. If you haven't listened to that one yet, start there. This week I go back to a specific moment. Sixteen years old, a Mac G5, a cosmos built from scratch in a high school art room in Freeport Illinois. Two strangers from the Art Institute of Chicago who saw something I didn't. And then the long, complicated story of what happened to that signal when the framework got louder than I did. We also get into David Lynch, Jon Batiste, the 19th century psychology of monomania, and a John Updike line that I think is one of the most honest things ever said about what separates artists from entertainers. Clips used in this episode: David Lynch on his childhood memory that inspired Blue Velvet Jon Batiste on being misunderstood his first year at Juilliard WALL-E opening sequence Music: OK Go, Obsession Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here Website Support the show Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter Terrible Photographer on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram Email: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
What separates a photographer who makes important work from one who just makes good photos? It might not be talent. It might not be gear. It might be something harder to name and harder to fake. This week I walked into an APA Peer-to-Peer Photo Book Critique in San Diego with six copies of my own book, a smug attitude, and some assumptions that didn't survive the first thirty minutes. What I saw that night from two photographers, Michele Zousmer and Andrew Hertel, forced me to sit with a question I keep asking about other people's work but rarely ask about my own. Who is this for? And what drove you to make it? This episode is about obsession. What it looks like when it's real. What it costs. And what it means when you've been swimming in borrowed obsessions long enough that you stop noticing. People and work mentioned in this episode: Michele Zousmer, documentary photographer. Her Irish Travellers project is some of the most honest and important photography I've seen in years. Website: michelezousmer.com Instagram: @michelezousmerphoto Andrew Hertel, fine art nature photographer based in San Diego. His Japan book White Silence was made in a single day in Hokkaido. It shows. Website: andrewhertel.com Instagram: @andrewjameshertel This week's clip is from @dishcreates on YouTube, talking about choosing a new artistic obsession. Worth your time. Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here: https://a.co/d/0aqcL8Rq Website: terriblephotographer.com Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Terrible Photographer on Instagram: @terriblephotographer Patrick Fore on Instagram: @patrickfore Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
This is the last one. Four episodes. Four quadrants. Four different ways of asking the same question: who are you — really — when nobody's grading you? In the final episode of the Johari Window series, Patrick texts eight people the same question without defining the word first. A photographer in Texas who's bored at events but wants the money. A friend who performs down to what shoes she puts on. A pastor in Iowa who said he doesn't feel fake — and then sent a follow-up voice note from a friend's house over Long Island iced teas that changed everything. Not one person said they don't perform. Not one. The Unknown is the fourth quadrant. In the original model it was framed as a limitation — territory nobody has access to. Patrick thinks that's the wrong way to look at it. Especially for creatives. Especially for people making personal work in the gaps between the jobs that pay the rent. This episode is about the version of yourself that exists underneath all the other versions. The one that neither you nor anyone else has fully seen yet. The one that isn't always good. Isn't always safe. Isn't always received. And why you might make something from there anyway. In this episode: Eight people, one question, no definition provided. What performing actually means when you ask people who have been doing it their whole lives. The pastor who works every day to keep two versions of himself close enough to touch. The stylist Patrick hired because he fell for the full version of her on Instagram — and what the transaction cost. The irony of finding more of yourself in a podcast garage than in a building founded on the radical idea that humans should show up whole. The serial killer problem and the Pokemon Go executive — and the question neither of them can answer. Why the Johari Window isn't a self-help tool. It's a mirror. And mirrors show you everything. The 16 year old, the 21 year old, the 31 year old — and who Patrick has been making this for all along. The Johari Window — the complete series: Episode 57 — The Glass House: The Arena. Visibility versus being known. Episode 58 — The Tell: The Blind Spot. What everyone around you already knows. Episode 59 — The Facade: What you hide. What it costs. Episode 60 — The Unknown: The version of yourself that doesn't exist yet. And why you make something anyway. On Harrington: Back in episode one Patrick pushed back on the model. Said the Arena requires two people. That you can't open the door alone and expect to be known. He still believes that. But Harrington was right about the window itself. It's neutral. It's just glass. It shows you what's there. It doesn't tell you which parts are good and which are dangerous. It doesn't sort the rooms for you. What you do with what you see — that's on you. If this series landed somewhere: Email Patrick. He reads everything and responds to most of it. The emails that cost something to send are the ones he remembers longest. patrick@terriblephotographer.com Connect: Website: terriblephotographer.com The Book — Lessons From A Terrible Photographer : terriblephotographer.com/the-book Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Newsletter — Pub Notes : the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Instagram — The Terrible Creative: @terriblephotographer Instagram — Patrick Fore: @patrickfore The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock and Unsplash. Recorded from a garage in San Diego, California.
Episode 59: "The Facade" The Johari Window Series — Part Three Some weeks Patrick knows exactly why he's making this podcast. Other weeks he almost quits. This week he almost quit. In Episode 59, Patrick pulls back the frame on the third quadrant of the Johari Window — the Facade — and what it actually costs creative professionals to maintain the gap between what they show and what's driving the showing. The polished portfolio. The confident host voice. The finished frame with the 400 failed shots cropped out. This isn't an episode about lying. It's about omission. And about what happens when you build a professional identity around a creative practice that has no letter grade, no client approval, no clean signal telling you whether what you're making is landing or disappearing into silence. Patrick talks about Episode 7 — the color theory episode where he ran out of ideas and made something anyway. About the specific loneliness of having no one to call mid-crisis who has the context to help. About talking creative decisions through with AI because that's what the forest looks like sometimes. About the analytics graph that will eventually reduce this episode — this specific vulnerable, costly, self-inflicted colonoscopy of an episode — to a data point. And about why he kept walking anyway. In this episode: The almost-abandoned Johari series — what Patrick was going to make instead and what made him stay. The Facade as omission — how showing only the product accidentally creates a culture of impostors. The feedback loop problem — why the podcast is the hardest creative work Patrick has ever done to measure, and what his brain does in the absence of data. The AI collaborator admission — the specific loneliness of having context nobody else has. The difference between performed vulnerability and actual vulnerability — and why Patrick monitors that line constantly. The color theory episode — what episode 7 actually proved about whether the podcast could survive without a plan. The forest — the dim flickering light, the disappearing trail, and the thing that terrifies Patrick more than getting lost. The Johari Window — where we are: Episode 57 — The Glass House: The Arena. Visibility versus being known. Episode 58 — The Tell: The Blind Spot. What everyone around you already knows. Episode 59 — The Facade: What you hide. What it costs. Coming up — The Unknown. The three words that describe this episode: Bleeding. Silence. Walking. If this one felt uncomfortably familiar: That's the episode working. Email Patrick. He reads everything. Some weeks your email is the only signal he gets that any of this is landing. No pressure. But also — no pressure. Connect: Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Website: terriblephotographer.com The Book — Lessons From A Terrible Photographer : terriblephotographer.com/the-book Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Newsletter — Pub Notes : the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Instagram — The Terrible Creative: @terriblephotographer Instagram — Patrick Fore: @patrickfore The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock and Unsplash. Recorded from a garage in San Diego, California.
Everyone around you already knows. Your clients see it. The people who've worked alongside you see it. The people who love you have probably tried to name it — in ways you found reasons to dismiss. In Episode 58, Patrick continues the Johari Window series by moving from the Arena into the most uncomfortable quadrant: the Blind Spot. Not the things you're hiding. The things you don't know you're broadcasting. Using his own creative identity as the case study — the self-deprecation, the Terrible brand, the mid-sentence bail — Patrick traces the armor back to its origin: a three-bedroom house in Freeport, Illinois, a dinner table where the competition was already over before it started, and a crayon surrender he signed before he was old enough to know what surrender meant. This episode is about the system you built to survive. Why it made sense when you built it. And why it might be costing you more than it's protecting you now. In this episode: The specific look Alycia gives when Patrick abandons his own story mid-sentence — and what it means that he smiles instead of getting defensive. Steven Berglas and the Harvard research on self-handicapping — why capable people undermine themselves before anyone else can, and why success doesn't fix it. The sociometer — Mark Leary's theory about the internal gauge that monitors social acceptance in real time, and why most of ours are still calibrated for rooms we left twenty years ago. The two kinds of armor: lead and chrome. Why one makes you invisible and the other makes you blinding — and why both are running the same old software. Brian, the coloring book, and the crayon surrender. The Katie problem — what it means to be fully seen, how rare it actually is, and what the armor has to do with why it's so hard to find. The Johari Window — where we are: Last episode: The Arena — what you show the world, and why being visible isn't the same as being known. This episode: The Blind Spot — what everyone else can see that you can't. Coming up: The Facade, The Unknown, and the negotiation between all four. If this one landed somewhere uncomfortable: That's the episode working correctly. Email Patrick. He reads everything and responds to most of it — especially the ones that cost something to send. Connect: Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Website: terriblephotographer.com The Book — Lessons From A Terrible Photographer : terriblephotographer.com/the-book Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Newsletter — Pub Notes : the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Instagram — The Terrible Photographer: @terriblephotographer Instagram — Patrick Fore: @patrickfore The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography by Michał Parzuchowski — @m.parzuchowski Recorded from a garage in San Diego, California. Episode title and subtitle: "The Tell" The Johari Window Part Two — What Everyone Around You Already Knows
There's a difference between being visible and being known. Most of us have confused the two. In this episode, Patrick is sitting at a networking event in San Diego when a graphic designer asks him a question he wasn't ready for: "Who are you to write a book? To make a podcast?" What followed was a masterclass in what happens when radical transparency meets a closed receiver — and why no amount of clever explanation, diplomatic humor, or honest disclosure can open a door that's locked from the other side. This is Part One of a five-part series on the Johari Window — a psychological model built in the 1950s to map the gap between what we show, what we hide, what others see, and what nobody knows yet. Patrick uses it as a lens to examine what it actually means to be seen as a creative professional in an attention economy that rewards the performance of transparency without any mechanism for checking the real thing. Also in this episode: why Zach Galifianakis crying at his sister's wedding is the most honest thing in this conversation, what Jerry Seinfeld gets wrong about talent, and what it costs to make the self-deprecating joke when the room can't receive you. In this episode: The networking event that started this whole series — and the question that hasn't left Patrick alone since. The Johari Window, explained by an organizational psychologist named Erin over coffee. Why the Arena isn't just built by what you put out — and what happens when the receiver can't take it in. Zach Galifianakis, his sister's wedding, and five hundred people who thought grief was a bit. The mom joke, what it cost, and why Patrick stopped making it. The Johari Window — the four quadrants: The Arena — what you know about yourself that others know too. The Blind Spot — what others can see that you can't. The Facade — what you know but keep hidden. The Unknown — what neither you nor anyone else has figured out yet. If this episode hit something: This is Part One of five. The series continues with the Blind Spot, the Facade, the Unknown, and the negotiation between all four. Subscribe so you don't miss it. And if you've ever been in a room where no arrangement of words was going to make it land — email Patrick. He reads everything. Connect: E-Mail Me: patrick@terriblephotographer.com Website: terriblephotographer.com The Book — Lessons From A Terrible Photographer : terriblephotographer.com/the-book Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support Newsletter — Pub Notes : the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb Instagram — The Terrible Creative: @terriblephotographer Instagram — Patrick Fore: @patrickfore The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound. Episode photography from Adobe Stock. Recorded from a garage in San Diego, California.
