Episodes

  • The Missing Map - How To Become A Commercial Photographer in 2026

    The Missing Map - How To Become A Commercial Photographer in 2026
    Jul 7 2026

    A friend of mine named Megan has spent more than a decade making beautiful, deeply human photographs of families. The kind of work that makes you feel something long after you’ve put the camera down. More than once I’ve told her she should be shooting commercial lifestyle campaigns.

    Every time I do, she smiles and says the same thing.

    “I couldn’t.”

    Not because she lacks talent.

    Because somewhere along the way, she decided that world belonged to someone else.

    That conversation sent me down a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting. I started asking a deceptively simple question:

    How do you actually become a commercial photographer in 2026?

    The longer I looked for the answer, the stranger it became.

    This episode isn’t really about AI. AI simply exposed a much older problem. It’s about invisible career paths, inherited knowledge, and the possibility that commercial photography has spent decades telling origin stories without ever drawing a map.

    Maybe the next generation isn’t failing to find commercial photography.

    Maybe commercial photography is failing to find them.

    In This Episode

    • Why “How do I become a commercial photographer?” is much harder to answer than it should be.
    • Why photographers like Megan may already have the eye for commercial work without realizing it.
    • The surprising difference between a profession built on pathways and one built on folklore.
    • Why AI isn’t the story, it’s the stress test.
    • A challenge to every working commercial photographer: if we care about the future of this profession, maybe it’s time we start drawing the map.

    Resources

    APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org

    The Book

    Lessons From a Terrible Photographer

    Support the Show

    terriblephotographer.com/support

    Stay Connected

    Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter)

    The Terrible Creative on Instagram

    Patrick Fore on Instagram

    Email Me (Patrick Fore)

    Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore.
    Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions.
    Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
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    42 mins
  • Let's Talk Money (Again) - A Terrible Conversation with Shelly Waldman

    Let's Talk Money (Again) - A Terrible Conversation with Shelly Waldman
    Jun 30 2026
    This week, we are throwing a match into one of the most heavily guarded hiding places in the creative industry: financial trauma, pricing shame, and the business choices we make when the market goes cold. In this special "pod swap" episode, Patrick joins forces with Shelly Waldman from the Creative Campfire podcast. This isn't a sterile lecture on spreadsheets or corporate accounting pipelines. It is a raw, trench-level interrogation into why independent creators systematically undercharge, how childhood conditioning shapes our adult business anxiety, and what it actually takes to maintain your premium pricing integrity when you are trapped in a financial desert.Meet Shelly WaldmanShelly Waldman sits at the rare, hyper-focused apex of analytical data and pure creative execution. Before launching her commercial photography business in 2009, she earned a degree in economics and spent ten years working as a corporate financial analyst for Citibank. Today, through her commercial portfolio, her podcast Creative Campfire, and her educational platform at Creative Camp, she teaches creative entrepreneurs how to strip the emotional baggage out of their pricing models, look flatly at the data, and run a business that actually builds long-term wealth.Portfolio: shellywaldman.comEducation & Resources: creativecamp.proKey Moments & Deep Dives1. Blue-Collar Anchors vs. Corporate ExpectationsPatrick and Shelly dissect where our foundational money scripts are written. Patrick shares the memory of his father being laid off from a Midwestern factory job at age twelve, creating a permanent, tight-rope anxiety of living between "poor and doing okay." Shelly details growing up with stable, thirty-year career educators who couldn't fathom why their children would abandon secure office desks to chase volatile, high-risk creative fields like professional sports or freelance lifestyle photography.2. The $7 Latte and the Illusion of ControlWe have all heard the exhausting, surface-level financial advice telling struggling freelancers to cut out their daily premium coffee habits to balance their books. Patrick and Shelly flip the script on this narrative. In highly volatile, economically stressful environments, that expensive drink isn't a math error—it is a cigarette. It is a deliberate, calculated hit of micro-joy and environmental control when the larger financial structures around you are completely collapsing.3. The "Spicy Take" on Second Shooter ExploitationPatrick drops a heavy indictment on the direct-to-consumer wedding market. When a primary studio hires a second shooter for a ten-hour day, drops a five-hundred-dollar Venmo payment, and uses a one-sided contract to strip away the rookie's copyright and portfolio rights, it isn't "just business." It is photographers actively capitalizing on the ignorance of other photographers. They break down the legal realities of B2B transactions and why the industry standard day rate for second shooters has criminally stalled for over fifteen years.4. The Ballpark Trap: Walking Away in a Money DesertShelly breaks down a real-time contract negotiation drama from her recent work in London. A corporate charity client handed her an incredibly complex orchestra brief—complete with multiple conductors, split lightning keys, backstage portrait demands, and a requirement for perpetuity image usage across three separate companies. When they tried to slash her estimated rate completely in half, she walked away from the table—despite being in a dry market."If you reward the screaming toddler with a cupcake, you are punishing the entire creative industry. You teach the client that whatever an independent artist quotes, it can always be sliced in half."5. Gamifying the "No" vs. Rooting Out the TraumaWhen a creative professional is terrified to raise their rates, Shelly and Patrick deploy two completely different, equally necessary coaching frameworks:Shelly’s Data Method: Break down your cost of living into a hard, non-negotiable survival line. Then, increase your rates incrementally by fifty dollars on every single new inquiry until the market explicitly tells you "No." Run the 100 No Project and treat rejection like a game of Monopoly.Patrick’s Identity Method: Stop looking at the spreadsheet and look in the mirror. Identify the ghost inside your ego. Ask yourself if you are undercharging because your portfolio is weak, or because your family history has trained you to believe you don't deserve to hold capital.Surviving Another Day in 2026Patrick shares the whiplash reality of his first few years of complete independence: bringing in $123,000 in 2024, only to watch the entire client pipeline vanish into complete silence throughout 2025, forcing him to stand on his front porch and sell his backup camera gear just to cover his California rent.The underlying consensus of this pod swap is simple: if you are operating an independent creative business in 2026, navigating the structural ...
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    1 hr and 46 mins
  • Money Talks - Audiobook Preview: The psychology of undercharging and how financial stability creates true creative freedom.

    Money Talks - Audiobook Preview: The psychology of undercharging and how financial stability creates true creative freedom.
    Jun 23 2026

    We are doing something a little different this week. To give the live microphone a brief rest, we are pulling back the curtain on a project that has been built in the dark for months. In this episode, you are getting an exclusive, unedited listen to an entire chapter from my newly released audiobook: Chapter 14 — "Money Talks."
    This chapter cuts straight down to the bone of creative capitalism. It’s about the raw, visceral panic of quoting a number that makes your palms sweat, why the romanticized "starving artist" trope is an absolute lie, and how your pricing is a profound statement about your creative self-worth, not just a line item on an invoice.
    🎧 THE AUDIOBOOK IS OFFICIALLY OUT IN THE WILD
    The wait is over. The complete audiobook version of Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is officially live and streaming onsite at Audible, Apple Books, and everywhere else you consume audio.
    If you want to grab your copy, listen to the rest of the book, or check out what people are saying, head directly to the link below:
    👉 Get the Audiobook Here: theterriblecreative.com/the-book
    In This Chapter:

    • The Starbucks Recalibration: The story of the first time I quoted a five-figure rate ($32,000) that made my hands sweat in Irvine, California—and the epiphany that followed.
    • The Trust Fund Myth: Why the "starving artist" romance loses its appeal the exact second your electricity gets turned off, and who actually invented that narrative.
    • The $500 Downtown LA Disaster: A painful look back at my early freelancing days on Upwork, lugging backgrounds up thirty flights of stairs, and realizing my business was just a very expensive hobby.
    • The Discount Photographer Death Spiral: The exact self-perpetuating psychological trap that keeps talented creatives broke, resentful, and suffocated.
    • The Intention Effect: How walking away from a corporate salary at Taylor Guitars forced my brain's Reticular Activating System to prioritize non-negotiable financial targets.
    • The Freedom Equation: Why financial stability isn't for "sellouts"—it is the literal foundation that gives you the breathing room to take true artistic risks.

    🪵 NEXT WEEK: Money Shame & Trauma with Shelly Waldman
    This audiobook drop is the exact intellectual foundation for where this show is heading next week. Next week, we are continuing our dive into the financial muck with a massive pod-swap conversation featuring Shelly Waldman from the Creative Campfire podcast.
    We are leaving the dry business strategies at the door and getting entirely real about money trauma, freelance precarity, and what happens when an empty inbox makes you feel like a failure as a human being.
    Go grab the audiobook, digest Chapter 14, and brace yourself for next week.
    Connect With the Show:

    • Audiobook Links: theterriblecreative.com/the-book
    • Main Website & Archive: theterriblecreative.com
    • Email is Always Open: Send your thoughts, questions, or unfiltered hate mail directly through the link in the show notes. I read everything.

    Stay curious. Stay courageous. Stay terrible.
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    43 mins
  • We’ll See - The quiet anxiety of marketing

    We’ll See - The quiet anxiety of marketing
    Jun 16 2026

    She said two words and I haven't stopped thinking about them since.

    This episode started at an APA event in La Mesa, in an artist's studio, in a conversation with a commercial photographer who's doing everything right. Personal work that matters, cold pitches going out every day, a real strategy executed with discipline. I asked how it was going.

    "We'll see."

    This one is about that phrase. What it actually means to operate a creative business in 2026, where the feedback loops are fast, the wins are public, and the silence feels personal even when it isn't. About confidence as a product people sell you. About the gap between effort and outcome that nobody's content calendar accounts for. And about a camera I had to sell on Facebook Marketplace, and what it felt like to hand it to a stranger on my front porch.

    Your marketing not working isn't a referendum on your talent. Sometimes it's just the weather.

    In This Episode

    APA (Advertising Photographers of America) Find your local chapter at apanational.org

    The Book

    Lessons From a Terrible Photographer

    Support the Show

    terriblephotographer.com/support

    Stay Connected

    Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter)

    The Terrible Creative on Instagram

    Patrick Fore on Instagram

    Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
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    40 mins
  • Playing Hurt - How Professional Creatives Perform at Full Capacity When Everything Goes Wrong

    Playing Hurt - How Professional Creatives Perform at Full Capacity When Everything Goes Wrong
    Jun 9 2026

    There is a version of this job that looks incredible from the outside. The gear. The clients. The portfolio. What nobody sees is what it costs to produce it.

    In this episode I'm talking about the part of the creative life nobody puts in the brochure. What it actually means to be a professional. Not the romantic version. The real one. Where you photograph a CEO with a fractured finger, shoot a full day with walking pneumonia, and drive to Los Angeles at 4am for a job you agreed to six months ago when it seemed manageable.

    The amateur has the luxury of the craft. The professional has the obligation of it. And nobody tells you that from the outside.

    This one is about divided focus, muscle memory, and the strange, specific capacity to override every biological alarm you have because there is a job to do and you are the only one who can do it.

    Lessons From a Terrible Photographer

    Support the show

    Subscribe to Pub Notes

    Terrible Photographer on Instagram

    Patrick Fore on Instagram

    Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Episode photography from Adobe Stock and Unsplash. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
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    40 mins
  • Death Grip - Google AI Just Changed How Clients Find You. Here's What It Can't Replace.

    Death Grip - Google AI Just Changed How Clients Find You. Here's What It Can't Replace.
    Jun 2 2026

    Something shifted last week. Not dramatically. Quietly, the way things in this industry tend to change — while you're working, while you're trying to keep the phone ringing.

    Google's AI Mode is rewriting how clients find photographers. The search box that used to send people to your website now answers their question and keeps them inside Google. The content you spent years building to get found is being consumed by the machine that replaced you.

    So I did what I always do. Stayed up too late, rebuilt half my website for an algorithm, and unpublished pages I'd spent months on.

    This episode is about that night. About what it costs to hold the wrong things too tight. About a portrait subject who sat in her car for ten minutes before she could walk through my studio door — and what happened in the room after she did. And about the part of this work that no platform update, no search algorithm, no AI announcement has ever been able to touch.

    The ninety percent is window dressing. This episode is about the ten.

    Resources and Links

    Lessons From A Terrible Photographer (The Book) https://www.terriblephotographer.com/the-book

    Support the show https://www.terriblephotographer.com/support

    Subscribe to Pub Notes, the newsletter https://the-terrible-photographer.kit.com/223fe471fb

    The Terrible Creative on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/terriblephotographer/

    Patrick Fore on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/patrickfore/

    Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California
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    25 mins
  • Mute - You've Spent Years Getting Good. Do You Have Anything Left to Say?

    Mute - You've Spent Years Getting Good. Do You Have Anything Left to Say?
    May 26 2026

    There is a man standing in a clearing in Arkansas with a yellow guitar, singing about insulin prices to nobody in particular.

    Three million people found him. Not because of the production value. Because he was saying the thing.

    This episode is about the gap most professional creatives never talk about — the distance between the skills that pay your rent and the thing you actually have to say. How years of executing other people's briefs can quietly atrophy a different kind of muscle. And what happens when you finally try to use it.

    I talk about Jesse Welles, Oliver Anthony, a series of images I made in 2024 that landed in silence, and why Marcus Aurelius titled his most important work "To Himself."

    This one took a while to say out loud.


    In This Episode

    Jesse Welles — "War Isn't Murder" Watch on YouTube wellesmusic.com Jesse Welles on Bandcamp

    Oliver Anthony — "Rich Men North of Richmond" Watch on YouTube oliveranthonymusic.com

    CNN News Coverage — Sandy Hook Elementary School, December 14, 2012 Watch on YouTube Used for editorial purposes.


    The Book

    Lessons From a Terrible Photographer


    Support the Show

    theterriblecreative.com/support


    Stay Connected

    Subscribe to Pub Notes (the newsletter)

    The Terrible Creative on Instagram

    Patrick Fore on Instagram

    Podcast written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions
    Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California
    Show More Show Less
    44 mins
  • Clown Nose - What the Creator Economy Actually Costs a Working Creative

    Clown Nose - What the Creator Economy Actually Costs a Working Creative
    May 19 2026

    There's a composite photographer in this episode named Nate. His details have been changed. His situation has not.


    This episode is about the creator economy — what it actually costs, who it was actually built for, and the quiet compromise most creative professionals are making every day. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just quietly, in parking garages, watching the blue light of a phone, waiting for a signal that isn't coming.


    I talk about the Gilded Age, the algorithm, and a system so elegant it doesn't need to be cruel. I also name something I've been avoiding saying out loud for a while.


    If this one lands close, send it to someone who needs to hear it.


    Nate is a composite character. Details altered to protect identity.


    THE BOOK Lessons From a Terrible Photographer is out now. It’s part memoir, part field guide, and part honest conversation about what it actually costs to build a creative life. If this episode landed, the book goes deeper into finding the "Source" when the "Resource" runs dry.


    LINKS

    • Website: terriblephotographer.com
    • Support the show: terriblephotographer.com/support
    • Subscribe to Pub Notes: the-terrible-photographer.kit.com
    • Instagram: @terriblephotographer
    • Patrick on Instagram: @patrickfore
    • Email Patrick: patrick@terriblephotographer.com

    Email is always open. Questions, thoughts, hate mail. I respond to everything. Link above.

    The Terrible Creative is written, produced, and hosted by Patrick Fore. Images Licensed through Adobe Stock. Music licensed through Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Recorded from my garage in San Diego, California.
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    44 mins