Oct 11

My Biggest Failure: The Long Overdue Story I was Too Ashamed to Tell

Turn back your mental clock to April of 2012, when Facebook acquired Instagram for the eye-popping price of $1 billion. It was a big story, with headlines all over not just the tech press but mainstream outlets like CNN, Newsweek and the nightly news-- who could have imagined a company with barely over a dozen employees commanding a 10-figure valuation?! Like most of you, I watched the story unfold like some kind of tech fairy... read more ›
Oct 08

The Impossible Cool: Stunning Portraits of Bad-ass Tastemakers from the Past 100 Years

What do Tom Waits, David Lynch, Debbie Harry, and Mark Twain all have in common? They're all...ahem...impossibly cool. And they've all been featured on The Impossible Cool, a must-follow Tumblr account that offers gorgeous, mostly black-and-white, amazing portraits of some of the most bad-ass tastemakers of the last couple centuries. Ranging from politicians to celebs to writers to musicians, The... read more ›
Sep 08

Drone Photography? How About Drone SURFING Instead

I've always loved drones. Been flying them and using them in photo + film projects before the term "drone" was used to describe the thing... way back in fact when my friend Tabb Firschau built them from scratch just to fly his (and my) cameras around. Here's some shots, and here's a few others. Sort of sophomoric work on my part (5-10 years ago) relative to what's happening now, but cool nonetheless given the time... read more ›
Aug 27

Canon 5D Mark IV: First Impressions + Hands On Video

Canon FINALLY announces the long awaited Canon 5D Mark IV. And you're like WAIT! Don't you shoot Nikon? And to that, I retort, I shoot em all my friends, whatever is the best camera for any given job. Truth be told, I like Nikon for stills and Canon for video...which means that I've been waiting for this camera for a while...for an update to my video kit. Yes, it's true, for years I've been rocking... read more ›
Jul 18

For the Love of Photography

Seems like the more I listen, the more I hear people talking about the gear, the business of photography, the widgets. Let us not forget the simple love of photography. I understand why there’s so much rhetoric in our industry about the business of photography and the gear and the gadgets. There is the common stereotype that most creative people aren’t good business people. There is fear. Gear is easier to talk about than vision.... read more ›
Jun 30

Creative Marketing Genius Seth Godin: What It Means to Matter

Seth Godin is an incredible human. He’s an author of 18, yes that's right, 18 best selling books. He is an entrepreneur, a guru in marketing, and writes a post every day on his blog which has been noted as one of the top marketing blogs on the internet. Seth's most current focus is his course called the altMBA focused on developing high-powered thinkers and leaders. One of the things I like best about Seth... read more ›
Jun 29

Mark Cuban: Business is the Ultimate Sport

(Note: A similar post originally appeared as part of our podcast launch announcement. To enable everyone to find Mark Cuban's show notes, I've decided to include a separate post here as well.) Mark sold his first company at age 29, his second one at age 39 for $5.7 Billion, he is the outspoken owner of Dallas Mavericks, he owns Magnolia Pictures, and is the star of ABC’s Shark Tank. In this episode, Mark shares some stories... read more ›
Jun 27

30 Days of Genius Now in PODCAST (+ more exciting new guests)

Hi Friends! Over the past 60 days, I've received SO SO MANY requests - literally hundreds of tweets, snaps, comments, emails etc requesting a podcast version of the #cjLIVE interviews we did for 30 Days Of Genius series... So today I’m very happy to announce - it's here. Yes, as of TODAY - you can on subscribe here on iTunes and get one episode every week. UPDATE: We are featured in New & Noteworthy on iTunes.... read more ›
Apr 22

Is Snapchat still good for creative pros? The honest review…

I was very bullish on Snapchat back in 2016 (thanks to the urging of friend Gary Vaynerchuk aka Gary Vee who was - as always - very ahead of the curve on Snapchat). But the landscape has changed quite a bit since then, with Instagram adding stories and TikTok dominating the "For You" feed among other things. So the question is, is Snapchat still relevant for creative pros? I'm not sure I'd make it my... read more ›
Mar 18

My Guy Knows His Sh*t: The #AskGaryVee Book Review is HERE

You guys know, if I share something -- a product, a service, an idea, a CAMERA -- it's sure to be something I believe in. Hell, I've even been been paid lots of money to represent brands and gear before but I've only considered things I ACTUALLY USE AND BELIEVE IN. I've spent a decade or more building your trust - and that's too valuable for me to gamble with in an instant. This episode... read more ›