The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

What do you do when you've had two successful careers — and neither of them is the one you actually love?
For David Hendley, the answer was waking up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to the California coast before work, camera in hand, teaching himself to shoot seascapes in changing light until photography stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like a calling.
In this episode, David traces his journey from the NFL to the corporate boardroom to documenting the natural world — and we spend most of our time on the question that sits at the center of his work: what does it mean to have a vision as a photographer, and how do you actually develop one?
David is specific, honest, and genuinely useful on all of it. He talks about finding balance, mood, and simplicity as the three pillars of how he sees. About walking past the same lake 40 times before the image finally revealed itself. About deliberately limiting himself to five exposures on an outing to force intentionality. And about why, if you're not emotionally tied to a photograph, other people will feel that too.
He also makes a case for failure as the best teaching tool a photographer has — something he learned long before he ever picked up a camera.
Episode Promos:
StyleCloud — beautifully designed website templates for photographers: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/stylecloud | Code: nerdyphoto15 (15% off)
Luminar Neo — AI-powered photo editing software: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar | Code: nerdyphoto ($10 off)
SiteGround — web hosting with increased storage capacity: https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
In this episode: → Growing up on National Geographic and how those images never left him → How athletic discipline translated to learning photography at 5 a.m. → The three things he looks for in every image: balance, mood, and simplicity → Why vision can't be forced — and how to let it develop naturally → The five-exposure challenge and the power of intentional shooting → Failure as a growth mechanism, from the NFL to the field → Staying true to your vision when commercial pressure shows up
Find David's work at davidspursuit.com and @davidspursuit on Instagram.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
04:19 – Meet David Hendley
06:24 – From the NFL to the boardroom to the wild
09:24 – National Geographic and the images that never left
10:37 – Going all in: 5 a.m. seascapes before work
13:05 – How athletic discipline translates to photography
19:48 – Why nature? The pull of the natural world
22:40 – Vision: balance, mood, and simplicity
24:35 – How his vision developed (it crept up on him)
28:18 – Advice for finding your own vision
31:40 – Staying true to yourself under pressure
35:06 – Why failure is your best teacher
36:44 – The five-exposure challenge
43:58 – Does vision narrow or open things up?
46:17 – Walking past the same lake 40 times
48:07 – Vision vs. commercial pressure
53:13 – Advice for creatives at a crossroads
57:26 – Useless information: the first televised football game
58:27 – Where to find David's work
 
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About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

Every single hard drive you own will eventually fail. Not might fail — will fail. It is just a matter of time. The photographers who lose irreplaceable work aren't the ones who didn't care. They're the ones who meant to get a better system in place and hadn't gotten around to it yet. This episode makes sure you're not one of them.
What you'll learn:
The industry standard for data protection is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. Each component protects against a different category of failure, and skipping any one of them leaves a gap that a single event — a flood, a theft, a power surge — can exploit completely.
We cover RAID systems and the critical distinction most photographers miss: not all RAID configurations protect your data. RAID 0 actually increases your risk of loss by striping data across two drives, meaning either drive failing takes everything with it. RAID 1, which mirrors data across two drives simultaneously, is what's relevant for redundancy.
We also draw a clear line between sync services and backup services — a distinction that matters enormously. Dropbox and Google Drive are not backups. If you delete a file or a virus corrupts your data, they'll faithfully replicate that change to the cloud. True backup services maintain versioned snapshots over time specifically designed for recovery, not just access. Our recommendation for cloud backup is Backblaze - https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/personal#afc32p
Finally, we cover cold storage maintenance — why mechanical drives left idle for extended periods can seize, and why spinning them up once a year is essential — and the habit most photographers never build: actually verifying that their backups work.
Key takeaways:
The 3-2-1 rule is the baseline — three copies, two media types, one off-site
RAID 1 protects against drive failure but not deletion, corruption, or disaster
Sync is not backup — you need versioned snapshots, not mirrored folders
A backup you've never tested is not a backup you can trust
This week's homework — The Audit: locate every drive you own and identify your single points of failure. If any important work exists in only one place, resolve that today. Then set a recurring calendar reminder to verify your backups every few months.
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Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

In this episode, I sit down with portrait photographer Betina LaPlante to explore the philosophy and practice behind her visceral, intimate portraiture.
Topics covered:
Why Betina puts the camera down before she ever starts shooting — and how building rapport before a session transforms the images she gets
The difference between directing a subject and witnessing one — and why she almost always chooses to witness
Her work photographing actors like Charles Dance and Christopher Lloyd, and what it means to reveal the person behind the persona
How shooting tethered (something she rarely does) became the right call for one particularly camera-shy subject
Her 35mm lens, her reliance on natural light, and why she's learning to work with continuous artificial lights
Her lifelong love of black and white — from developing film in her bathroom darkroom to converting digital portraits today
Why hands are central to her portraits: what they reveal, why they're harder to perform with, and how they carry a life's worth of character
The ethics of intimacy in portraiture — and why she has never felt the need to use discomfort as a tool
Dream subjects she'd love to photograph: Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, and more
Her advice for photographers still finding their voice: shoot what you genuinely love
Find Betina LaPlante:
Instagram: https://instagram.com/betinatheplante
Website: https://betinaplante.com
Sponsor links:
StyleCloud — beautifully designed website templates for photographers: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/stylecloud | Code: nerdyphoto15 (15% off)
Luminar Neo — AI-powered photo editing software: https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar | Code: nerdyphoto ($10 off)
SiteGround — web hosting with increased storage capacity: https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

You can be an exceptional photographer and still be completely invisible to the clients actively searching for someone like you. Not because your work isn't good enough, but because Google doesn't know you exist. Don't worry, though! This episode is going to make that problem go away.

SEO for photographers isn't dark magic. For a local photography business, roughly 90% of what moves the needle comes down to three things: your H1 tag, your image alt-text, and your site speed.

Your H1 is the main headline on your webpage and one of the strongest signals Google uses to understand what your page is about. "Capturing the Essence of Your Soul" is lovely — but nobody is searching for it. "Wedding Photographer in Austin" is what actually gets you found.

Alt-text is the written description attached to every image on your site. Google cannot see your photographs — it reads the label you give them. A file named "_MG_5422.jpg" tells Google nothing. A file named "golden-hour-bride-groom-portrait-austin-texas.jpg" with a matching alt-text description tells Google exactly what it needs to know.

Site speed is a documented Google ranking factor, and photographers are almost universally the worst offenders — uploading massive unoptimised files directly from Lightroom. Images destined for the web should be under 500KB. Free tools like Squoosh make this straightforward. I also recommend using a file format such as WebP to bring down file sizes.

Finally, we cover Google Business Profile — the free local listing that puts you on the map, literally, when someone searches for a photographer near them. A complete, well-reviewed profile can outperform a first-page organic ranking for local search intent.
Support The Nerdy Photographer
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Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact

In this episode, Casey speaks with photographer, filmmaker, and DePaul University professor James Choi, who returned to Seoul after 46 years away and came back with the images that became Seoul Days and Nights, a new photo book from Trope. They dig into what it means to photograph a city holding ancient tradition and radical modernity in the same frame, the slow disappearance of the small family-run food shops that give neighborhoods their character, and how the Korean social concept of nunchi - the unspoken ability to read a room - shapes James's entire approach to working on the street.
In This Episode
How a six-month sabbatical in Seoul turned into a photo book
Photographing the tension between ancient palaces and glass skyscrapers - and why Seoul makes that contrast feel surprisingly at peace
The vanishing mom-and-pop food culture, and what gets lost when it goes
What nunchi is, why James's mother always said he had it, and how it cuts both ways as a street photographer
The ethical lines James draws on the street - when he holds back and why
The one image in the book that reminded him of his grandfather
What he hopes a first-time Seoul visitor takes from the book vs. what he hopes a local sees
Episode Promos
Seoul Days and Nights — https://amzn.to/4xSLRZz
StyleCloud website templates for photographers — https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/stylecloud | Code: NERDYPHOTO15 for 15% off
Luminar Neo photo editing software — https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/luminar | Code: NERDYPHOTO for $10 off
SiteGround web hosting — https://siteground.com/go/nerdy
Support The Nerdy Photographer
Sign Up for The Power Up - https://nerdyphotographer.com/newsletter
Get some artwork from the print shop - https://art.caseyfphoto.com
Buy some Nerdy Photographer Merch - https://nerdyphoto.dashery.com
Use our link to buy new gear from Adorama - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/adorama
Use our link to buy used gear from KEH - https://nerdyphotographer.com/recommends/keh
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About My Guest

James Choi grew up a latchkey kid in Chicago. His parents immigrated from Korea when he was five and worked six days a week, so from age six and Seven he was alone taking the bus, walking the city, learning to read people and places and light. He didn't know it then, but he was already doing what he'd spend his life doing: observing. Photography and eventually filmmaking came from that.

His work has earned Awards at SXSW, Slamdance and Chicago International Film Festival. As an educator, James is also an assistant Professor at DePaul University where he founded Indie Studio, supporting students making their first independent features.

Seoul Days and Nights is in some ways a return to the beginning except this time he was walking a city that looked like him.

Seoul Days and Nights is available now - you can get it on Amazon - https://amzn.to/3QTxq6R. James Choi can be found on Instagram at https://instagram.com/JCPOV.
About The Podcast

The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com 
 
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact