Looking at what other people posted on Instagram never led to my actually taking more photos… those few minutes were filling corners of the day that used to be reserved for the boredom that leads to creativity and creation. When consuming doesn’t lead to more creation, that might be a problem. But what if consumption is leading to less creativity and creation?

Want to become a better photographer? Learn to see the world like a poet. Make images that do more than record facts. Tell stories in the simplest way possible. Capture images that elevate the mundane. Choose the figurative over the literal, the quiet over the noise.

The best thing about traveling as a photographer is that everything is new. The worst thing about traveling as a photographer is that it has all been done before. Traveling will always be a balance of reconciling those two things. How do you look at a landmark that has been viewed and photographed a million times before and come home with something that is your own?

Is there irony to the fact that the digital world that made each shutter click essentially free, stole our attention before we took advantage of it?

Bring a camera. Be bored. Take pictures. Ride Cable Cars for no reason other than to see where they go.

What do you photograph when you are visiting a tourist spot, albeit one with a tremendous history? How do you take a broken-down prison and turn it into art, into a story?… What do you do with a location whose significance, whose place in the collective imagination, is bigger and more interesting than its public facade?

We spend more time looking at images than any generation before us, but I wonder if we remember to actually See those images when we spend so much time inundated by them.