Hello son.
A combination of time, practice, introspection, and curiosity.
I think as long as you remain curious then there is a path to growing your creative thinking and your skill set in exploring that creative thinking.
I can easily get creatively bored. Experimenting and challenging myself keeps me invigorated.
I miss you buddy. See you soon. 
Hi TJ,
I really appreciate your work and your perspective. Thank you for doing this AMA!
I wanted to get some of your thoughts on how you choose your water images.
I really love photographing water, too. I like that I can’t control the final outcome. There is some element of control in getting the angle, the frame, the exposure, etc. how I want it. But then, I love the mystery of seeing exactly what comes out when I press the shutter. It’s always different, and I find that exciting.
What’s not exciting is that I often end up with many hundreds of pictures of water from one location at one outing, and I have a really hard time choosing a few and letting go of the rest.
How do you choose which water images to keep and process, especially when many of them might be similar? Or do you not take very many in one place to begin with?
Hey TJ. Thanks for making yourself available for this AMA.
You are a well-known nature photographer today with much success which is growing, but obviously you started your business and art career without it, as all of us have.
How did you find your audience that has made you who you are today?
I ask because I struggle mightily with finding my own audience, despite years of effort and work that I am confident in.
Beth in here with a meaty one. 
Well… I’m not sure I can articulate that process. Sometimes it’s a feeling, sometimes it’s obvious, and others come and go with some coming back.
So maybe breaking my current projects down and explaining might help.
• Ebb and Flow- when talking about the various challenges in life I always used the phrase, like many other people. As I realized my connection with photographing water and grew it, I was always how I referred to the work, before it was ever curated or processed, let alone put in a book. It just made sense as a title and as a “project” since I was so drawn into the process.
• Figments of Place- this was born out of a creative plateau where I felt like I was just repeating the same ideas and photos that I had been for years and wanted to bring some invigoration and play into my process. I just started referring to photos that I shot out of focus as shooting a “figment” of a leaf instead of an actual leaf. As I explored this style of shooting more, I wanted to present them together since the approach and mindset I used when I practiced this style was different from my usual approach and mindset. So the differences between approaches and the purpose that photographing in this way satisfies in my process were enough to make a distinction.
• Stroll- Stroll is my 100% removed from business project that lets me be creative without having to have a “back end”. I take the photos with my iPhone, process them on my phone, post them with my phone, and then move on. The Instagram account I have for it has the ability to comment removed. There’s no having to upload them to Lightroom, keyword, assign products, respond to comments, etc. I was explaining this weekend that Stroll is my “leak”. I am so focused on building business the last few months that I haven’t had time to do serious creative work, but I still need to do creative work. It leaks out in Stroll.
So it seems that different projects fulfill different needs in my process and are all facets of my creative self. I write many ideas down and some churn for a bit before falling away.
And lately I will be exploring different things that I’m going through via photography- memories, depression, nostalgia, and more.
Thanks for the question. It’s not something I’ve thought about a ton so my answer came off as rambling. Which I was. And still am.
Bye Beth!!
Thank you for the kind words and question Amy.
Indeed, it can be challenging. I usually go through the very quick and mark the ones that catch my eye, and then I just continue to refine my selection with quick views of the work and when I feel like I’m down enough I’ll look closer and decided based on the details in the photo, the composition, and the technical aspects of it.
And lately with how much water I’ve been photographing over the years I’ve become much more selective on photos that “make the cut” and I’m tending to go with images that look like none of the others I’ve captured.
So it’s always a struggle, but I’ve reached a point of saturation (har har!) with water photography that I am now moving toward different styles and ideas within the context of water.
Good to hear from you here, Matt.
I wish I knew haha. I think it’s a combination of really immersing myself in the nature photography community since 2013, making friends, and building connections.
It’s undoubtedly harder nowadays, to be another voice in the noise trying to exist in an attention economy and it’s something that I have always kind of struggled with. For as long as I’ve been photographing and sharing on social media, I don’t have a large following at all.
On top of that algorithms have come a really long way since then, which makes it hard to be seen and grow your audience.
If I had any advice it would be to plant seeds and water them. Meet people, connect, cultivate relationships, put yourself in the paths of opportunity, and advocate for yourself.
So many times I’ve asked for an interview or feature when I was sure I’d be ignored or laughed at and was surprised when they said yes. Some of those have been good opportunities that resulted in growth.
And for you and anyone else reading, don’t forget that social media is just one community. You could also build a community around you in your town, your church, workplace, etc. I recently spent the weekend at a friends house who is not immersed in the photography community much at all but still does very well for himself with his photography.
And building a community around me outside of the photography industry is something that I need to focus on and am having a hard time with as well.
The Three P’s: Passion. Persistence. Patience.
Hey TJ! Hope you are well, and congrats on your 13yrs!
My question is about inspiration/motivation/burnout. I know creativity for most is a process of peaks and valleys, and recently, I’ve been in one of those valleys. Feeling uninspired about my work, my surroundings, by the art of photography as a whole.
What are some tools/methods/recourses/etc that you have used in the past to get you through those times? Have you found that it is more of an internal issue, or are there actionable steps we can take to relight that creative spark?
Thanks so much,
Garrett
Thank you for that response, TJ. That all makes sense. I like the thought of multiple passes at a high level before zooming in and checking out all the details. That makes sure you choose ones that “feel” good because you like the overall composition, balance, etc.
And it also makes perfect sense that you can now cull even more quickly based on an image’s uniqueness relative to your previous photographs.
I think my main takeaway is to trust my intuition more when I’m going through my images. There are ones that stick out to me, but I don’t trust that feeling very well, so I end up keeping everything in case I missed something. The other main takeaway is that even if the details and technical aspects are spot on, it’s not worth keeping if I don’t like it when I step back and look at it as a whole.
Also, I love a good pun, so extra gold star for that one!
This topic was automatically closed after 24 hours. New replies are no longer allowed.
What’s up Garrett?
For me it usually comes down to an imbalance somewhere in my process. Of course life stresses and responsibilities can also play a role.
So I usually examine those feelings and try to find out where the friction is.
Sometimes it can be because I am drawing on all of that energy but not replacing it and charging my battery by spending enough time in nature.
Sometimes it’s because I feel lost or adrift with my work.
Sometimes it’s because I’m creatively bored and just pointing my camera at the same things, in the same way, and repeating the same things I have before.
A change in perspective and practice can help. Walking around my neighborhood at night with my iPhone has been a great casual, low effort way to inject a little practice and invigoration. I’m also shooting and developing film alongside my son as he learns that side of the process. Printing my work has helped as it’s a part of the process that I don’t often put a ton of focus into.
But then I LIVE photography and it’s a part of nearly every aspect of my life. So maybe that’s even better as I could very easily get burnt out by not having anything to focus on and the fact that I can maintain says something.
So examine your process, see what parts feel hard to do, which parts you’re not sick of, and just keep drilling down and then think of ways to put weight on the other side of the scale.
Challenge yourself. Learning something new can result in a breakthrough or realization and help you navigate this burnout. Go in your bathroom with a lens and don’t come out until you make 5 photos that don’t suggest you’re in a bathroom.
Go outside pick a random subject and photograph it in every single way you can think of (there are more ways than you think). Don’t focus on GOOD photos, just focus on the subject and seeing it deeply and connecting with it through your lens.
Try to remove any pressure on yourself from the process and just… have fun. Remember when you first started and there was an innocence about your work? You just took photos of interesting things without the care or knowledge that you’ll be sharing it on social media, or caring if it made a good photo, or any of the other things that we’ve kind of made photography into.
It can be a complicated subject and answer. But I think examining your process, learning something new so that it’s challenging, photographing in a different way, and getting back to the basics of why you picked up a camera in the first place can help you figure it out.
I hope this helps!