We try, of course, to do our very best with every image, with every project. We strive for perfection. Do we ever achieve it? Far more often than I care to admit, while looking back at some of my completed work I find little things that I could have so easily corrected, but missed. A misspelled word, unfortunate punctuation, the small distraction poking in from the edge of an image, an inconsistency in layout, an image I now realize needed a little tweak here or there. Not failures, but not perfect. Maybe the final step in proofing should be a purposeful review of all the little things that can go wrong.
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LW1499 - The Most Important Lesson
30.03.2026 | 12 Min.
LW1499 - The Most Important Lesson
I was recently asked, by two different people, about my 50+ years in photography. A non-photographer asked me what I had learned from my lifelong engagement with photography. Coincidentally a few days later, a photographer asked me essentially the same question. I was surprised that I had different answers depending on who asked question.
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You might also be interested in. . .
Every Picture Is a Compromise, a series at www.brooksjensenarts.com.
and...
"How to" tutorials and camera reviews are everywhere on YouTube, but if you're interested in photography and the creative life, you need to know about the incredible resources you can access as a member of LensWork Online.
HT2576 - Illumination
29.03.2026 | 2 Min.
HT2576 - Illumination
I love word play almost as much as I love photography. Has it ever occurred to you the double meaning inherent in the word illumination? We search for illuminating light to reveal the shadows. We also search for illumination in the sense of enlightenment and understanding. Photography is all about illumination, interestingly enough in both definitions of the term. Perhaps better than the term photographer we could think of ourselves as "illumination seekers" — in both senses of the word. Enlightenment, indeed.
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HT2575 - The Aspect Ratio for Publication
28.03.2026 | 2 Min.
HT2575 - The Aspect Ratio for Publication
The earliest issues of Kokoro were produced in a portrait orientation. My thinking was that the portrait orientation format would fit better when viewing on a phone or a tablet. I discovered, however, that a portrait orientation did not fit computer monitors, or laptops well at all. I knew that by changing to a landscape orientation would complicate people viewing on their the phone, but phones and tablets can easily be rotated whereas computer monitors and laptops cannot. The aspect ratio for publication gets even trickier in book design. Does this mean we should standardize our aspect ratio based on the final means of production?
This RSS feed includes only the most recent seven Here's a Thought episodes. All of them — over 2500 and counting! — are available to members of LensWork Online. Try a 30-day membership for only $10 and discover the literally terabytes of content about photography and the creative process.
HT2574 - The Difficulty with Warm-toning
27.03.2026 | 2 Min.
HT2574 - The Difficulty with Warm-toning
I learned about warm-toning in the mid-1980s. At that time, everybody created selenium-toned images that had a slight purple cast. Contrary to the popular zeitgeist of the times, I discovered Kodak Brown Toner and Kodak Polytoner and fell in love with warm-toned images. In the digital workflow, warm toning is very tricky because brown is such an odd color.
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Über LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
Random Observations on Art, Photography, and the Creative Process. These talks focus on the creative process in fine art photography. LensWork editor Brooks Jensen side-steps techno-talk and artspeak to offer a stimulating mix of ideas, experience, and observations from his 50 years as a fine art photographer, writer, and publisher. Topics include a wide range of subjects from finding subject matter to presenting your work, and building an audience.
Included in this RSS Feed are the LensWork Podcasts — posted weekly, typically 10-20 minutes exploring a topic a bit more deeply — and our almost daily Here's a thought… audios (extracted from the videos.) Here's a thought… are snippets, fragments, morsels, and tidbits from Brooks' fertile (and sometimes swiss-cheesy) brain. Usually just a minute or two. Always about photography and the art life.
Brooks Jensen is the publisher of LensWork, one of the world's most respected and award-winning photography publications, known for its museum-book quality printing and luxurious design. LensWork has subscribers in over 73 countries. He is the author of 13 books on photography and the creative life -- the latest books are The Best of the LensWork Interviews (2016), Photography, Art, and Media (2016), and the four annual volumes of Seeing in SIXES (2016-2019).
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