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I released my first podcast in 2009. I was hooked and have been recording deep-dive conversations with interesting and creative people about what they do and why they do it ever since. I’m taking cues from some of my interview heroes like Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, and Studs Terkel and distilling the conversations I record into one show. I’m calling it Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris and on each episode, I’ll be talking to both creatives and everyday people about their unique storie ...
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Saturday night, Adrianne and I spent the evening at the home of our neighbors Raj and Trupti helping them, along with about 60 other friends and family members, celebrate Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of lights. It’s hard to explain how incredible it felt not just to be invited into their home again, but to feel so welcomed by the other guest…
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On Saturday, Adrianne and I took an impromptu trip into DC after seeing an interesting post pop up in my Instagram feed. The post was about an open studio event at the 52 O Street Artist Studios, which is a four-floor building that features “50+ Artists & Creative Businesses.” I’ve loved visiting artists’ spaces for years. When I was still living i…
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What you’re hearing (if you’re listening, rather than reading this) are the sounds of me unboxing a new keyboard — specifically, an Apple A1048, commonly known as simply the Apple Keyboard. What makes this keyboard especially interesting to me is the period of time in my life that it reminds me of — that and the fact that this particular keyboard h…
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Last week, I released a video review of a new book from Prestel about Gregory Crewdson. It was significant for me, not just because Gregory is one of my photographic heroes — although yes, that is part of it — but because it was the first project I’ve done in quite a while that was really just for me. I’ve been on a bit of a “creative hiatus” for t…
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This is the audio track from my video review, which I encourage you to watch on YouTube or read on Substack. In a new book from Prestel, simply titled Gregory Crewdson, editor Walter Moser — the head of the department of photography at the ALBERTINA in Vienna — has curated a selection of images from all of Crewdson’s major bodies of work. Prestel w…
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Last week, I gave myself permission to do something that was a: pretty far outside of my comfort zone and b: completely unnecessary. If you read or listened to my last Iteration, you know I’ve been wanting an Elektron Digitakt for years, but would never allow myself to get one. Well, they say that fortune favors the bold, so I finally took the plun…
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Sunday was my birthday and as I begin my 58th trip around the sun, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned over the past half-century or so. I’m not talking about skills per se, though I have racked up a fairly impressive list. I think one of the things that has both helped the most while also being the most frustrating is the reali…
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I’ve been thinking about something for a while and I’m not sure whether or not it’ll land, but I’d like to try stringing together a few ideas. I think it’s time for us to embrace being self-centered, but not in the way that you might think. Typically, when we refer to someone as “self-centered” it’s not a compliment. It often refers to someone who …
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Whether you call it a slump, a funk, a downturn, a slowdown, a struggle, a breakdown, a nosedive, a stall, a meltdown, a plunge, or just stagnation, I’ve been in one for a while. While I have multiple journals that are dappled with notes, sketches, and the beginnings of ideas, I haven’t actually recorded a new show or finished a new painting in mon…
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For the past few weeks, maybe even the past month or so, I’ve been on sort of an Ethan Hawke deep dive. I like Ethan Hawke as an actor and while I haven’t seen everything he’s ever done, I really like Training Day and I would probably put Dead Poets Society and Gattaca in my top 20 — actually, maybe top 30. I know some people find him pretentious, …
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The other day I was on the phone with my friend Neale James and we were talking about a recent episode of his podcast The Photowalk, on which he was talking to our mutual friend Sean Tucker about creativity. “I invite you,” Neale begins the episode, “to imagine a five-pointed star. Now on each point of the star, I’d like you to think of a word that…
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If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you probably know I’m a big Nine Inch Nails fan and have been since 1990 when I saw them open up for Peter Murphy. The other day, I was watching a terrific video with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross breaking down some of their most iconic tracks. One of the more fascinating aspects of the video was how much Tren…
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Last week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures. If you’re a longtime listener, you may think you’ve heard this before, and you’re right, you have. But this time it’s different. I’ll get to why in a minute, but first I need to back up. In 2008, I was teaching Photoshop at Tri-Community Photo in Covina, California. One of the other ins…
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The artist Richard Serra died recently, and I know he’s considered a big deal in the art world, but honestly I’ve never really gotten what all the hype is about. I suppose I can appreciate the scale and the forms of some of the work in the same way that I can appreciate the architecture of Frank Gehry, but overall, it just never really grabbed me. …
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After recording last week’s episode of On Taking Pictures, Bill sent me a link to a video that’s both fascinating and deeply disturbing, called “AI vs Artists: The Biggest Art Heist in History.” The video presents some of the grim facts around how images, including the 5.85 billion uncurated images in the LAION-5B dataset, are being illegally scrap…
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About a week ago, I jumped back into using Photoshop for the first time since 2018 and I’ve got to tell you, it was kind of like putting on a favorite pair of jeans. Yes, the interface has changed a little and a bunch of terrific new tools have been added—especially Object Select, which I’ll come back to in a minute. But even after such a long hiat…
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I started this Iteration on February 29th—Leap Day—and for me it was a good day, which, frankly, I really needed. In the last Iteration, I talked about how difficult 2023 was for me and in the week or so since I shared it a lot has happened. Probably the biggest thing is that I’ve started going to therapy. I’ve danced around it for a long time and …
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