Tavares Gibson

Color grading by feel is the only honest approach

If you're reaching for a preset before you've sat with the image for a few minutes, you're decorating someone else's memory. I shoot film, so half the "grading" is already baked into the stock I chose…

Thomas Heaton chasing mountain light the honest way

Thomas Heaton's patience with landscape light is something I recognize in my bones. This one is worth your time just for how he handles the wait when conditions aren't cooperating, then capitalizes wh…

Simon d'Entremont's 20 tips, and a few actually stuck

Simon d'Entremont keeps this practical in a way most tip videos don't bother with. I came in skeptical, but there's a handful of genuinely useful field tricks here that I'll probably remember the next…

Facebook or Instagram when you only have so many hours

I get maybe an hour a day to put toward social media after I'm back from shooting and done editing scans. Some days less, depending on how stubborn the light was. Most of my landscape work lives in th…

No clear niche and I'm starting to wonder if that matters

My main thing is landscape film photography, but I also shoot portraits when the light is right, I've been getting into cyanotypes, and honestly I sometimes just paint when I feel like it. None of it…

Getting search traffic to a photography portfolio site

I finally put together a proper website for my landscape work and now I'm staring at it wondering how people are actually supposed to find it. I shoot film, so my output is slow, maybe 20 to 30 pieces…

A camera that flatters you is lying to you

Most gear now is designed to hand you a pleasant image before you even think about what you wanted to say. And I think that's quietly doing more damage than bad technique ever did. I shoot film, so my…

Two shows three weeks apart, one giveaway or two?

I have back to back exhibitions coming up, about three weeks between them. Different venues, slightly different crowds. I'm trying to figure out if I should run one continuous giveaway that spans both…

Settings never saved a photograph, change my mind

I spent three years obsessing over reciprocity failure charts and zone system adjustments before I realized none of that ever made a single frame worth looking at twice. Not once. The shots I actually…

Process reels that go nowhere, what actually changed yours?

I put together a short reel last week showing the whole arc of a shoot. Hiking out before dawn, waiting for the light to settle, the film advance, the final frame at the lakefront. Felt like it captur…