Do you ever feel like your love for photography could be more than just a hobby? What if you could make a living doing something you're passionate about? In this episode of my podcast, we're going to talk about "going pro" Now, I know the word "monetize" can sound a bit intimidating, but hear me out. Making money from your photography doesn't have to mean selling out or compromising your artistic vision. In fact, I’m sick of the starving artist trope and about ready to burn it to the ground...

My friend, I don’t want to alarm you, but we are entering a digital dark age. No, I am not talking about our soon to be AI overlords (though I am trying to be nice to them so I’m in their good graces when they take over). I am talking about something much more relevant to us as photographers.  And that’s all those darn photos you have sitting on your harddrive, or maybe multiple harddrives, maybe the cloud, your phone, floppy disks stashed away in the abc of your closet?! (Ok I can’t help...

What if I told you that the key to success could be found in your failures? As a recovering perfectionist, that is a hard pill to swallow for me, but over the years I can see how my very “failures” have contributed to my success now. This episode is about why I want you to fail, and how you can use that failure to do better and get to your goal more quickly. If you are tired of feeling defeated every time you hit a roadblock on your path to success then it's time to see failure as the...

You can also watch the video version of this on my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=447SHDMqeKE

Astrophotography is different from any other genre of photography.  Portraits, Products, Landscapes, Food, Sports - what do they all have in common? They are photographing something that exists here on earth. And you could correctly make the argument in landscape-astrophotography (or nightscapes) that we are too. But I believe the big difference is that in our photos the inclusion of a celestial body is key. I could just take landscape photos during the day, but it’s the connection I find...

Hello Winter, shall we just stay inside and be warm under the covers? Or do we brave going out to shoot the night sky in the cold (for those of us in the north). If we do, what is there to even shoot? Well, you are in luck. Winter skies generally have less humidity in them and are clearer and you get treated to the spectacle that is Orion.  In today’s episode, you’ll learn where and when to find Orion in the sky, what gear I recommend to use, and when as well as the settings to use based on...

Welcome January, it’s nice to have you here with your cold winds, short days and long nights. Oh and resolutions, “word of the year”, goals and so on. I’m not one for resolutions, but I do use the start of a fresh calendar year to plan out my next 12 months. Which in turn gives me a bunch of mini-goalposts through the year and lets me plan pretty much everything. On my list is a brand new offering teaching photographers how to monetize their photography. My brain has been rolling over...

You can also watch the video version of this on my YouTube channel here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXsIOkLDXyc

What do you think it takes to get to the next level - in your photography, your life, your business? I can tell you when I made the leap to quit corporate creative and work in my business full time it wasn’t because I had a new business model, or because of the new marketing tactics that I learned, or even because I took a business course. All of those things happened, but they were possible because of one evening years before, when I sat on a swingset in Kenneth Walker Park throwing balls...

Welcome to the 12 days of Christmas. I’m putting on my #kristinetheenabler Santa hat and giving you my best recommendations for gear this year. Feel free to send this episode to a loved one who might be buying you gifts this year! Links for the things I mentioned in the episode are on my website!

Let’s get this out of the way. This is not an episode about New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, I don’t make any and don’t recommend you do either (though, you do you, if that’s your thing). This is an episode about this past year, and the upcoming year. Why? Because to know where we are going, we need to know where we came from. When we ignore what got us to where we are we are more likely to perpetuate things that are less than ideal. If you have photography goals for next year then you...

Have you ever had a time when you needed to get something done and you just couldn’t do it? You knew that was the next step to get you farther along, and you were excited about it, but still, you found that you were getting distracted instead.  If I’m being honest, this happens to me in busy times more than I would prefer. Like, say, the holiday season when I’m supposed to be slowing down and spending time with the kids but instead I'm juggling 20 different tasks at once. I draft titled...

Part 2 of our Editing Night Photos series and it is time to get technical. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making when they open Photoshop actually happens before they even get to the program. It’s how we actually think about Photoshop and what it can do for our images. Photoshop is not actually used to “fix” our images. And especially as night photographers where there is not a lot of room for recovery of images when there is so little light available to record in the first...

Photography is a mix of the technical and the creative, and it will come as no surprise that it is the same with editing. And so following that logic I decided to break up my first editing episodes here on the podcast into two parts. This first episode explores the creative side of editing. Night photography, and specifically Milky Way and other astrophotography is a genre in it’s own class. There are things about this type of photography that are not shared with many if any other...

Isn’t creative genius reserved for people who have something special? At least that’s what society has often made artists out to be. Take a look in popular culture and you’ll see this idea perpetuated over and over again, like there is some gatekeeper to being a good artist and creative. In reality that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Creativity and the expression of it (in our case the creation of actual photographs) comes from one place, having an idea. And anyone can have an idea....

Welcome to another story spotlight episode. In this podcast I invite you on a road trip with me, just down the way and off the highway - of all places.  I talk about 3 images I created all near a similar spot and how the one that wasn’t planned became one of the most impactful images I’ve ever created. And as it follows, one of the best sellers at my recent gallery exhibit. In this wandering, meandering journey you will see how everything brings you to this place in time and it is exactly...

Last week I did a crazy thing and live streamed a photoshoot of the Milky Way - yes in real time - in front of almost 500 students! I had no idea if I would actually be able to pull it off, but you know the saying - you can’t win the game if you don’t play it.  So I decided to go all in and do it. And it worked so well. Except the thing people didn’t see was how nervous I was leading up to it. And the best feedback I got is that people liked the little things that happened live that made...

There are a variety of reasons to listen to a podcast, but I’m making an educated guess that you are here to learn more about photography. And that is what today’s episode  is all about.  Learning something new as an adult is very different from how we learned in the traditional schooling system. There are a lot of options available to us and it can be hard to know which is the right one. And based on your background and experience level different methods will be more or less useful to you...

We are hardwired to be afraid of the dark, at least in some capacity. From an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense, given the things that preyed on humans over our evolution. But that doesn’t mean we need to let that fear run unchecked now when we spend time outside at night. I remember as a child I would be outside at night all the time, it was normal and my home so I always felt comfortable exploring outside at night. And then once I was returning home to visit as an adult, one night I...

Night photos don’t have to be lifeless and dark, in fact there is a ton of light available at night/ You just have to understand how to control or create the light and how it will influence the final image. In this episode we deep dive into light so that you will understand the best way to bring out the foreground in your images.

It starts with a chase and morphs into a life changing experience. Hear the unexpected science behind why Milky Way photography is a life changing experience.

Most new photographers spend their time mastering technical details in their images. But what if I told you that is not the best way to create work that people stop and pay attention to?

Listen to Masterclass students reflect on why they get out at night and create images of the Milky Way. How many of the responses resonate with you?

Have you ever wondered why some images you see online get lots of interactions and others seem to only have crickets- even when the images look on par with each other? People often think marketing is the secret sauce to getting photos noticed, but there is something buried deep underneath that marketing that is even more important.

Ah the age old question, is photography art and are you an artist? Oh and why in the heck should you care, because you should indeed care. Here is my take having experienced BOTH sides.