The Terrible Creative

There's a composite photographer in this episode named Nate. His details have been changed. His situation has not.

This episode is about the creator economy — what it actually costs, who it was actually built for, and the quiet compromise most creative professionals are making every day. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in parking garages, watching the blue light of a phone, waiting for a signal that isn't coming.

I talk about the Gilded Age, the algorithm, and a system so elegant it doesn't need to be cruel. I also name something I've been avoiding saying out loud for a while.

If this one lands close, send it to someone who needs to hear it.

Nate is a composite character. Details altered to protect identity.

THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry.

LINKS
Website: terriblephotographer.com
Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com
Instagram: @terriblephotographer
Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore
Email Patrick: [email protected]
Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.
The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

Terrible Conversations w/ Tom Wright
Tom Wright is a photography consultant based in Burnley, UK. He calls himself a phototherapist, and no, he's not a doctor. But photographers that work with him tend to leave unstuck.
Tom started in 2011 teaching photographers how to shoot Impossible Project instant film. From there he shot weddings for over a decade, moved into commercial photography, and eventually traded client work for consulting after discovering that helping photographers was the thing that actually got him out of bed.
In this conversation, we talk about what it means to develop a style versus chasing trends, why AI is eating the bottom of the photography market, and what most photographers are missing when they look at their own work.
We also spend way too long talking about British food. You're welcome.
What we get into:
Why Tom calls himself a phototherapist and what that actually means
The difference between fashion and style in photography
What bifurcation is doing to the industry right now
Why the artists are still there, just quieter
How Tom identifies what's already working in someone's portfolio
The Polaroid workshops that started it all
Why commodity photography has a shrinking runway
What to do if you don't feel like you have anything interesting to say
Find Tom at bytomw.com and on Instagram at @bytomw. Consultations are free. Go get unstuck.
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THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry.

LINKS
Website: terriblephotographer.com
Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com
Instagram: @terriblephotographer
Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore
Email Patrick: [email protected]
Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.
The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

We’ve spent a century conditioning ourselves to believe that if we aren’t "producing," we aren't "valuable." But in 2026, the machines can out-produce us all. This episode is about The Great Decoupling—the moment we stop being high-end processors and start being the source. We dive into the "Productivist Fallacy," why Maya and Chris are grieving the loss of their utility, and why your "Why" is the only proprietary data left that the machines can't touch.
It’s time to move from being a resource to being the source.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Yale Budget Lab – March 2026 Report on Creative Automation.
Immanuel Kant – The distinction between Instrumental and Intrinsic Value (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals).
IDIBELL UB Brain Cognition Group – 2026 study in Advanced Science on human imaginative leaps.
James Taylor – SuperCreativity and the concept of Centaurs vs. Cyborgs.
THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry.

LINKS
Website: terriblephotographer.com
Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com
Instagram: @terriblephotographer
Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore
Email Patrick: [email protected]
Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.
The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

Getting good at your craft is supposed to be the goal. But for a lot of us, competence became the cage. This episode is about the feedback loop nobody warns you about: the better you get, the harder it is to leave. And what we build around the good thing to protect it.
Also, some honesty about why I called this show "Terrible" that I haven't said out loud before.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Bartleby the Scrivener - Herman Melville (1853)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (1915)
Robert Berglas - Self-Handicapping research
THE BOOK
Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It's part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Lessons-Terrible-Photographer-Photography-Probably/dp/B0GRGLYKYS/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
LINKS
Website: http://terriblephotographer.com
Support the show: https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support
Subscribe to Pub Notes: https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/
Patrick on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/
Email Patrick : [email protected]
Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.
The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.

Where does creative obsession actually come from? Not how to manufacture it. Not how to find it on a vision board. Where it actually lives. How it grows underground without your permission. And what it sounds like when it finally tries to break through.
This episode is the follow up to Episode 61: Obsessed. If you haven't listened to that one yet, start there.
This week I go back to a specific moment. Sixteen years old, a Mac G5, a cosmos built from scratch in a high school art room in Freeport Illinois. Two strangers from the Art Institute of Chicago who saw something I didn't. And then the long, complicated story of what happened to that signal when the framework got louder than I did.
We also get into David Lynch, Jon Batiste, the 19th century psychology of monomania, and a John Updike line that I think is one of the most honest things ever said about what separates artists from entertainers.
Clips used in this episode:
David Lynch on his childhood memory that inspired Blue Velvet
Jon Batiste on being misunderstood his first year at Juilliard
WALL-E opening sequence
Music: OK Go, Obsession
Lessons From A Terrible Photographer is available now on Amazon. Get your copy here
Website Support the show Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter Terrible Photographer on Instagram Patrick Fore on Instagram
Email: [email protected]
Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.