Yesterday I was discussing the 270 image captures of the rock walls of Capitol Reef that I photographed in 2012. I described how I only recently discovered a possible processing for those images. There's an interesting aspect of this story that is not obvious. In reviewing the 270 images, I found 37 that worked with this new processing idea. How do we know? What prompted me to reject the other 233? I think of Edward Weston and "the flame of recognition."
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.
HT2644 - An Entirely New Vision
05/06/2026 | 2 mins.
HT2644 - An Entirely New Vision
The creative idea might appear in an instant, or it might also require years of gestation. I was recently looking at a large collection of images and I had photographed in 2012 in southern Utah. From nowhere I can determine, an idea about how to process these RAW captures suddenly appeared. I could not count the number of times I've looked at these RAW files with no interest at all. How, then, does a wonderfully creative idea suddenly appear? I cannot over emphasize the value of working our image archives so long-dormant ideas have an opportunity to emerge.
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HT2643 - The Problem with Canned Slide Shows
04/06/2026 | 2 mins.
HT2643 - The Problem with Canned Slide Shows
Over the last 20 years, I've seen quite a number of photographic slide shows. The first was a multi-projector affair, with a musical sound track accompaniment in the 1980s. Recently, software has made assembling a slide show a snap. Too often, I find these presentations too metronomic, predictable, uninteresting after the first few images. Too bad, because they don't have to be. Today, a slide show is not a slide show; it's a video. It's not a sequential presentation of still images, it's a living, breathing visual experience.
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HT2642 - Compositional Sleight of Hand
03/06/2026 | 2 mins.
HT2642 - Compositional Sleight of Hand
Layers are one of the most powerful tools in digital processing. An often overlooked use of layers is their abilities in composition. Want to move that car a few feet to the left? Not a problem. Cut it to a new layer, move it where you want it, then use AI to create the new background. This is a bigger deal than might be obvious because of a fundamental change that has taken place in image making
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HT2641 - Longevity
02/06/2026 | 2 mins.
HT2641 - Longevity
Have we arrived at a point in the history of photography where longevity is no longer a virtue? In my youth, archival processing was an important pursuit in our mastery of craft. Now (think of Instagram), the lifespan of an image can be measured in hours, maybe days, certainly not in decades. Photography has fulfilled its prophecy by truly becoming an instantaneous art, not just in the making but also in viewing.
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About LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
About LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process
About 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).
New Zealand