"The Creative Envelope" for Photographers

Image copyright Don Komarechka. All rights reserved.

Episode 1: Creative Discovery

Click to hear Don's "Why?"

We've all heard John Burrough's expression, "Leap and the net will appear!" That's the perfect way to describe part of the foundation behind "The Creative Envelope," a new podcast series Don Komarechka and I just launched.

Here's the background - Don and I met almost four years ago when we were both involved in a live Google+ Hangout in the Panasonic booth at PPE in New York. Don was the "talking head" on the monitor with me and Bob Coates as the guests on site.  A few months later Don was my guest on Sprouting Photographer's Weekend Wisdom show.

Just recently we did an "EDU10" podcast prior to Don's free X-Rite Photo & Video webinar on resolving the challenges in printing macro images. Out of that webinar came one of the most viewed "Why?" images I've ever shared, Don's macro shot of an ant on a blade of grass.

With every project we've worked on together there's always been a lengthy old-fashioned phone conversation about some aspect of business, technology, marketing or the state of the industry. I'm fascinated by his mad-scientist approach and his constant enthusiasm to not only break the rules of imaging, but openly share new ways to push the creative envelope.

Here's a prime example - Don's book Sky Crystals was self-published and is a cross between a fine art table top book and a detailed "how-to" recipe book about photographing snowflakes. Before crowd-funding he built up a following on Google+ of over one million fans. Through their support he was able to fund a stunning book on a completely niche specialty - the macro world of snow.

In the weeks ahead we're hoping to combine the passion we share for the industry with topics on marketing, business, technique, social media and anything else that comes along. This first episode is all about NEVER compromising on quality, and the image above is the spider and UV experiment  "Dr. Don" talks about in the podcast.

Welcome to The Creative Envelope!

---