Blog

So, this dude, online, asks me, “Jack, what’s your iPhone schtick?” “My schtick?”, I quietly thought to myself, “What the fuck is this dude talking about?” I quipped back, “My schtick is, that, I don’t have a schtick?” I think what he was attempting to ask me is if I had an angle, a gimmick,…

Winter is coming I feel it in my bones. More to the point, I feel it in my artist spirit and soul. For many animals, winter represents dormancy and conservation. It’s the season of hibernation. For many poet types, like myself, winter represents aliveness and experimentation. It’s the season of hypernation. Winter isn’t necessarily my…

I’m attracted to kindness in others. Super attracted actually. Besides the traits of humility, vulnerability, authenticity, transparency… kindness tops the list in my book. When you are kind, people notice you. They want to be around you. They listen to your wisdom. Kindness is both a mesmerizing and magnetizing trait. Kindness is not just an…

Yesterday was an inedible day. I taught a 2-hour class, on iPhone photography, at Precision Camera and Video, in Austin, Texas. Like I always do, I arrived early, to set up the room, lights, A/V, etc But, before I did all that, I wandered around the retail stacks, looking at all the eye-popping and wallet-depleting,…

Last week, on two separate occasions, I, irritatingly, watched two videos, both from respected, well-known photographers, tell their respective tribes and fans, that phone cameras were good for “causal” photography but not for “serious” photography. They both believed, at some level, that phone cameras were good but not good enough for “serious” photography or “serious”…

The second most memorable date, in my brand-spanking-new iPhone photography journey, besides, February 18, 2011, my love-at-first-site conversion, at the Crane Beach, Crane Resort, Barbados, was October 5, 2011-the day Steve Jobs died. “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s…

I suck at ending relationships. I really do. I hate it. I’m horrible at it. It’s tricky and sticky. It is so not my nature to do it well. I’m so much more comfortable and confident beginning relationships, than ending them. How do you rightly and practically, honor the memory of an old lover, yet…

I’m an artist. I live, right or wrong, squarely and firmly, on the emotional side of life. For it seems to be, only on this side, the emotional side, that I can best connect to my beating and bleeding heart and hear the very wisdom, words, and whispers of her call. The reason I roll…

Since February 18, 2011, 7.02 am, on the powder-soft, pink-sand, turquoise-waters of the famous Crane Beach, at The Crane Resort in Barbados, the oldest continually operating hotel in the Caribbean, I have, somehow, someway, much to my surprise and delight, taken over 1 million iPhone photos, on 10 different iPhone cameras, in over 50 countries…

Yesterday was a mental health day-all glorious day long. Ahhhh. I wanted to be alone, truly alone, with only my thoughts and company, with camera in hand, recording life, in fractions of a second, as she whisked by. Click. It paid off. Aloneness always pays off for me. Throughout the day, with seeming every click…

Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act-I, Scene-III, Lines 78-82 I keep wondering why so many of us, even to the point of exhaustion, work so tirelessly and feverishly, obviously and subtly, at trying to be someone other than our true selves. I don’t get it. Stop. Be yourself. Is it because at some core level, we just don’t…

You can purchase photographic hardware. You can’t purchase photographic heartware. Hardware is the machine part. Heartware is the man part. Hardware is ubiquitous. Heartware is a much rarer commodity and treasure. Hardware is something you turn off and on. Heartware is something the lives constantly in you and is always on. Hardware is a simple…