I’m here in NY at Doug Gordon’s studio for the week learning again directly from The Master himself.  If you don’t know who Doug Gordon is (and you are a photographer) then it’s perhaps time you did.

Doug is one of those guys devoted to teaching what he does and is driven to share all that he has built.  And built he has.  He gained notariaty as recipient of the Professional Photographer Leadership Award from the United Nations, then gained a level of infamy by becoming the personal photography instructor to The King of All Media, Howard Stern.  But anyone who has met or worked with Doug knows, he is the most grounded guy you’ll ever meet.  A self proclaimed failed baseball great who lives with daily regret for not fulfilling his potential due to injury, who today vows to inspire others not to make the same mistake.

So there have been many highlights over the past 4 days, but one in particular yesterday motivated me to start writing.  As photographers many of us make excuses for not getting a perfect shot because of the harsh sunlight, or the background, or this or that.  Excuses.  Picking up on that theme, Doug hand picked a setting to shoot a (mock) bride and groom to prove his point.  We as photographers need to stop making excuses and start tapping our creative artist within.

Behind his studio is a nasty, smelly, quite awful dumpster.  There was no lighting added, no reflector, nothing but camera and Doug’s determination to make a point.  The amount of photoshop time was under 20 seconds, so that was not the “secret”.

The bigger issue I interpreted from this exercise is that photography is no different than life.  We all overcomplicate at one time or another, and we all could benefit from a return to a level of simplicity to find our way forward.  You have to slow down to see where you want to go.  Translation for photographers: Stop and see the light.  Brazenly posing against a stinky dumpster yesterday, for me, was a path back to reality.