Studio Sessions

83. Not Everything's Worth Optimizing

Alex spent years feeling he was wasting his time, and now thinks he was filling a bucket that’s finally pouring out. One of the things pouring out is an acting workshop,

82. Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't: Give Yourself a Year

Once a week, a cozy bar in Omaha has jazz, and on certain nights the room feels like magic. One of us wants to make a concert film there in the spirit of Jazz on a Summer

81. Creative Momentum and Obstacles As The Path

At a yard sale in Malvern, Iowa, one of us asked the woman running it about old cameras, and her husband climbed into the rafters of his barn and came down with a dusty 8

80. What Happens To Your Ideas When Algorithms Leave?

madebyalex.online Last episode of "season" 3! One of us has a Squarespace site he means to redo, and watching the other build madebyalex.online with Claude has him tink

79. We've Been Sold Enough Chairs - Thoughts on The Future of Ai

One of us is convinced the next big change in computing is an operating system you talk to, one that writes whatever you need on the spot, down to a VHS effect for the vi

78. Waiting to Talk - Conversational Narcissism, the Ego Myth, and Reading a Room

We start with the show. Owning our own feed means no platform can switch it off, and when we finally have guests, we'd rather hear how someone thinks over a long con

77. The Camera Opens Doors

One of us pulled over to photograph an old pickup and a beat-up basketball hoop, and 30 seconds later the owner was walking him through his garage. The man, in his 80s, h

76. Matt Went to the Movies

One of us stayed out for a 9 o'clock showing of Backrooms and came out more excited about a new movie than he'd been in years. It reminded him of Primer, a chea

75. Leave Room for the Accident

One of us is back from a family week in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, and like every trip, it makes Omaha look better. He counts trips like that as a form

74. Proof of Work or How the Floor Gets Raised

Daniel Arnold's new book from Loose Joints has no text beyond its title, only pictures sequenced by an editor at the publisher and a few blank pages we puzzle over.

73. That's a Pretty Good Tree

One of us came out of an Omaha used bookstore with a $25 book on Henri Cartier-Bresson, after passing up a $75 Martin Parr on the display. Reading about a photographer wh

72. The Critic Problem: Why Great Art Resists Easy Explanations

In 1903 Rainer Maria Rilke answered a young poet who had sent him verses to judge, and began by saying that criticism is the thing least able to reach a work of art. Then

71. What If Success Is The Unmeasurable Part?

One of us watched a video of a woman of 93 still repairing oil pump valves and teaching a man in his 40s the job, and saw his own future in it. He studied fine arts and e

70. You Output What You Input

We switched off the bright light because it wasn't the mood, and let the cameras suffer for it. That starts a talk about living with things of quality, which isn&apo

69. What If Your Best Work Needs Less Sharing

If making the work is water, content is food coloring, and once it's in there's no getting it back out. One of us never expected what his video channels would b

68. Protect The Work At All Costs

We start on a worry that making videos about photography turns the pictures into content. Good work takes time: photographs one of us shared, taken over three and a half

67. Leica Luck

More of a fun for us one here. One of us opened Facebook Marketplace to find a Leica M11 and a Leica Q2 for sale, listed by a woman selling her father's cameras. He

66. Back to Square One

One of us sold an old Nikon lens on eBay for $425 to a buyer in Switzerland. Then a stranger on TikTok pointed out it was a rare early version, with a very low serial num

65. Attempting A Low-Stakes Space For Photography And Conversation: PART 2

We still don't have a name for the space. An hour of brainstorming with ChatGPT, until one of us hit the usage limit, turned up mostly pretentious ideas like the Gre

64. Attempting A Low-Stakes Space For Photography And Conversation: PART 1

A friend who deals in antiques and vintage in Omaha's Old Market has a bigger space sitting free for a few months, and we can sublease it cheaply. We've wanted