Guy Tal | Photographer, Author
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Please note: I am taking a (perhaps permanent) break from teaching workshops in 2025. If you would like to join Michael Gordon and me on our Visionary Death Valley workshop, don’t wait. We only have a few seats remaining in 2024. I delight in photographs I delight in words I delight in mixing both To... Continue Reading →
The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded; it is false. —Albert Camus In recent weeks, I was asked by two different people for advice on how to become a professional landscape photographer. One was an ambitious and precocious young teenager who, at age 13, had already decided that this... Continue Reading →
I could have done lots more, put in much more work and developed more pictures, but I had also a desire to say what I felt about life. —Consuelo Kanaga I’ve had several conversations recently about the topic of legacy. In hindsight, I realized, this has been one of the most consistent topics of conversation... Continue Reading →
This is an edited version of an article originally published in LensWork Magazine. I've had the great privilege of contributing to LensWork regularly for nearly a decade. I consider it the finest print magazine available today for creative photographers. I hope you consider subscribing. The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a... Continue Reading →
The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are... Continue Reading →
This article brought to you—in full and free of advertising—by the generosity of my Patreon supporters. Please consider becoming one. Away with ideals. Let each individual act spontaneously from the forever incalculable prompting of the creative wellhead within him. There is no universal law. —D.H. Lawrence Working in projects is, without a doubt, a better, more artistic,... Continue Reading →
The fine arts and the hard sciences have more in common than most people believe, because both are driven by dopamine. The poet composing lines about a hopeless lover is not so different from the physicist scribbling formulas about excited electrons. They both require the ability to look beyond the world of the senses into... Continue Reading →
Searching is everything—going beyond what you know. And the test of the search is really in the things themselves, the things you seek to understand. What is important is not what you think about them, but how they enlarge you. —Wynn Bullock Winter invites reflection. For some, such end-of-year reflection is tied with traditions or... Continue Reading →
To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverishes perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how... Continue Reading →
Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all. —Rollo May Cyril Connolly wrote, “The creative moment of... Continue Reading →