**A Letter to Aspiring Photographers: Pursue Your Passion with Purpose**

At the age of 42, I may already have missed my window for pursuing a career in photography. However, if you believe that I'm good enough and willing to take advice from someone who's not too far removed from giving up on their dreams, then I'd be more than happy to share some words of encouragement.

I understand the idea of coming back to something and dreaming of having a professional career in it. It's a common theme among many photographers, and I'm no exception. But what I want to emphasize is that having dreams and ambitions is certainly awesome, but do it for yourself first. Immerse yourself, get really good at it, and only then consider making a living out of it. If you can't find enjoyment in the process, then you're definitely not going to take it further.

I think this is especially important, as many aspiring photographers often jump straight into pursuing a career without taking the time to develop their skills or passion for photography. Instead, they try to fit themselves into someone else's mold or follow in the footsteps of others. But that's where the magic happens when you do it for yourself – you're creating something unique and authentic.

**The Power of Photography**

Photography has a way of being both cathartic and therapeutic. When I was going through a difficult time, including a divorce, photography became my escape. It allowed me to process my emotions and find solace in the world around me. And it's not just about taking pictures; it's about telling a story and capturing a moment that resonates with others.

As for your work, I think you have a great eye for composition, lighting, and color usage. The way you've captured these images is really strong, and I love the sense of wonder and curiosity that comes through in each shot. Your use of color is particularly impressive – it's like you're speaking directly to the viewer with each image.

However, there are areas where you could improve. Specifically, your street photography can benefit from a bit more work. Some of the images feel a bit too straightforward or lacking in interest. I'd love to see more experimentation and creativity in these types of shots – maybe using windows as frames, creating mystery, or taking risks that push you outside your comfort zone.

**Learning from Others**

One thing I've learned over the years is the importance of studying other photographers' work. Analyzing what makes their images tick can be incredibly inspiring and help you develop your own unique voice. Don't try to copy someone else's style directly; instead, use them as a starting point and let their work spark something new within you.

National Geographic, for example, is a great example of documentary photography at its best. Their classic era photographers like Steve McCurry and Sam Abel are masters of storytelling through images. If that's the type of work you aspire to do, I'd encourage you to study their approaches and see how they're able to capture the world in a way that resonates with people.

**Don't Be Afraid to Take Risks**

Lastly, don't be afraid to take risks and try new things. At 42, I've come to realize that age is just a number, and it's never too late to pursue your dreams. If you're passionate about photography, then go for it – even if it means starting from scratch or taking on projects that scare you.

Don't let fear hold you back from pursuing something that truly excites you. As I always say, "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." It's up to us to learn how to use this tool and create images that inspire and captivate others.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis video is brought to you by Squarespace welcome back everyone it is time once again to do some viewer mail these are all projects books Zen sent in by photographers like you I'm going to begin with this one which is a really interesting project this was sent to me by Alex Taylor who's a photographer in Yorkshire this is a project that he did with another gentleman Andrew mctom this is called end of the rle the photographs of Alice longstaff so their letter reads that Alice was a photographer based in hebden Bridge she left school at 14 taking an apprenticeship at a local photography studio in the 1920s something that many young women did not do at that time over the next 70 years she proved to be a tour to force photographing the town and surrounding areas and influencing amongst others a young Martin Parr who lived in Hedon bridge in the 1970s this is a really interesting project here and I'm paraphrasing a little bit with their note because it is rather long but she passed away in 1992 and her entire archive and collection was turned over and people were cataloging it over 65,000 images anyway I'm going to read a little this because it'll make sense when you look at these images most of the negatives inherited from Alice were from her Studio mainly of people being married or needing a passport photo however there were a number of unmarked envelopes when open contained a wonderful assortment of pictures from the town the quote unquote into the roll photographs are a unique historical resource but also an incredible photographic collection which stands as a testament to Alice's skill and talent while she's very wellknown locally she's almost unheard of outside our part of Yorkshire producing this book is a way to show off our wonderful archival collections but also to celebrate Alice's contribution to local life it's also a way to get these amazing images into the world and hopefully appreciated by others we also don't know a lot of the people who were photographed Alice didn't record who she was capturing so we largely rely on local people coming to exhibitions and telling us what they can a case in point is the print that we've included which is this one here very nicely done an image of a wonderful character we know nothing about except for the photograph was taken in 19 19 57 we sent a copy of the book one of the first 25 to be distributed in hopes that you'll enjoy it and help spread the message so I will put a link in the show description if you were interested in getting a copy of this Andrew and Alex this is absolutely fabulous I love the story here I love the title into the role and I think it's awesome because I think when the you know Echelon of professional photography that's what a lot of people ended up doing was doing work passport photos as you said weddings things like that and the whole idea of this creative act of just using up the end of the role with person work and she had a great eye there's some beautiful pictures in here some wonderful street photography I love the candid stuff the most I think she had a really interesting way of being able to blend into a scene with a crowd of people and get photographs Without Really drawing a lot of attention to the camera and being noticed you don't see a lot of people who are camera aware in these images I think this is really awesome and uh I normally don't show books that are not somebody El's work necessarily but this is such a cool project that I just couldn't resist not sharing it with you so anyway if you're interested please support this project I will put a link in the show description Andrew Alex thank you for sending all right next up is this which comes to us from our friend Matthew rig Matthew was featured on a Mail Time video about a year ago with his first book which I really liked Matthew is a YouTuber as well he's got an awesome YouTube channel he does really cool work he shoots film this is called convergence he also enclosed a little note on the back of this awesome little picture which reads Ted this is Convergence my second book which represents a sizable shift from my first Sanctuary this encompasses 5 years worth of street photography predominantly in my home city of Seattle I hope you enjoy and I want to thank you again for the kind words about Sanctuary they helped give me the confidence in my work to keep going and make this thank you for all the work you do and help Foster a positive and constructive photography Community best wishes Matthew well Matthew I call it like it is and you're doing some awesome work my friend I love your YouTube channel and I really love convergence this is awesome Matthew shoots film obviously you see that look in a lot of these images he has a really good command of both color as well is black and white and he also has a really cool sense of dramatic Lighting in natural conditions in other words just using the Sun and I love these images the way you're getting colors in here the Silhouettes fall nicely they're not images I've seen over and over again I think you're doing some really cool stuff also love the sense of geometry that you see in a lot of these images I love the way that you're setting the scene and you're allowing something to happen like you know for instance the guy in this picture who is against this big building the sense of scale and that contrast is really quite cool and if you look closely there's another guy on the phone on the left hand hand side and near the reflection of the tree very cool use of subf framing with this girl on the subway Matthew you're doing some great stuff I'm glad you're putting this together in book type projects and this is something that I want to share with everybody because I think it's really important that you know it's one thing as photographers as we tend to practice certain things or work in a specific direction or we just shoot things that we love but when you put things together in a book and I'm sure Matthew can attest to this but it is interesting because you're all of a sudden conceptualizing it as a project and you're seeing how that body of work works together how certain images have relationships in other words the sequencing of the book is very important one of the things I teach in scen workshops is when you have a spread two images facing each other on the same page how does that work and what kinds of images complement one another even make a connection with one another or even conflict with one another that you want to avoid anyway doing book projects is so important and I love people seeing doing that seeing people do that Matthew rig this is awesome go check out Matthew's Channel I will link that as well as the book below if you want to get a copy well done my friend got a couple more that I want to get to these are very different but both very unique and very cool but real quick I want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who were the always awesome folks over at Squarespace how easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes Squarespace has you covered it's dead simple head over to Squarespace hit get started you can start by using Squarespace blueprint Ai and SEO tools which will give you an impressive website in no time something unique because you know you're not like other websites sites give your site a name next you can build your homepage we'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going want to sell products like prints books maybe you make a Zen well you can feature those on your homepage create a few more sections if you want let's also give it a color palette there's a whole bunch to choose from then just get it started we can change this all later next let's select the typography choices welcome to your website everything is set up and it's all ready for you to customize squar space is built on fluid engine the next generation of website design select edit and fluid engine allows you to drag place and resize any element on the page you can snap these to a grid you can make them float on top of one another you can free form however you like you can even preview and adjust how the site looks on either desktop or mobile the layouts are independent of course you'll want a portfolio for your work creating an image gallery is as easy as dropping a folder of images on your web browser once uploaded you can drag to Resort customize the look and Squarespace writes all of the code for you everything just works and it looks fabulous want to sell your own prints books or Zen flexible payments allow you to make the checkout process absolutely seamless when you sell products or Services you can accept credit cards PayPal Apple pay and in eligible countries you can offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with afterpay and clear pay you should try Squarespace for yourself it's absolutely absolutely free no credit card required just go to squarespace.com aop sign up for that free trial if you decide Squarespace is right for you I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code aop on checkout that's right the code is aop so stop procrastinating go build your website today and I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video all right so next up is this beautiful book with this very striking color called the Giants whisper this comes to us from a gentleman named Jose Miguel Angulo Mano Jose also includes a note which reads dear Ted my name is Jose Miguel Angulo I am a Spanish photographer based in Cologne Germany I started with film photography back in the'80s shortly after I lost my vision in one eye when I was 20 I've followed your channel now for a long time and I must congratulate you for your amazing job there it is also fantastic what you do showing and sharing the work of other photographers with your a audience so here I go I am happy to share with you and your viewers of your channel my first Photography book the Giants whisper this is my BL big project which took me to the dusty Plains in Kenya at the foot of kilero I wanted to photograph the wildlife there mostly focused on elephants and tell the story behind the scenes to give some context and share my experience with the readers from the photographer and human perspectives sharing some ideas and tips with those ones that would like to experience such kind of Photography expeditions how I got the inspiration and motivation to travel there the preparation of my trips the execution and experiences in the field this book has been made 100% by me and it has been worth the effort it is dedicated to the memory of my father who I lost some years ago without the chance to say goodbye photography is brought me close to the wildlife and people living in Africa especially the Masai helping me to know better the humans and biodiversity there I am happy and thankful for the feedback received for the book so far the profits generated with the selling of the book will be donated for support of wildlife protection in Kenya and to the local Messiah Community there thank you very much again Ted for your outstanding work and best wishes to you and all the viewers of your Channel with my kindest regards Jose Miguel All right so it's hard to show you guys the text portions of this uh but I do love the fact that Jose Miguel approached this from kind of a journalistic standpoint it's a little bit of a how-to and if you're interested in his whole process of putting together this trip there's a lot of stuff in here with cameras and lenses but I think the work in here is outstanding and I want to make some comments on that Jose Miguel because uh I think your work with the elephants is particularly interesting and one thing I hope you consider is taking some of the proceeds from this book and actually reinvesting them into doing more work over there and I think you've got some bright spots of talent in here that are really exceptional and this is what I want to talk about now one of the challenges when you're shooting Wildlife against landscape especially in a place like Kenya where it is very flat is that you have you know flat Horizon there's not a whole lot of interest you can get out of the landscape so it makes a great backdrop for doing portraits of animals but what I've seen for other photographers is that there's a sameness and a monotony that starts to come out of that because you're just limited with options you've got some stuff in here and this Photograph I think is the real turning point for me uh where you've got the the dust that this elephant is shaking off and the way that you're shooting it and you get that atmospheric effect you've got several photos in here but you're starting to do stuff with your subject that is really interesting and really cool I think the other wildlife in here is incredible as well um I I think though that that is your strong point and I would love to see you focus in and just do a whole collection of elephants uh you know if you look at the work of people like Nick Brandt who did kind of a Trilogy of things uh some of the photos in here I love where you're playing with focus on here with a really shallow depth of field I just want to see more pictures that that the quotes in here are great I love the journal approach to the text in here but I really would like to see a portfolio I think your work is that strong but this is an excellent start man and uh the other thing that I want to note on here you said you did the book 100% on your own graphic design the typography the publishing everything is outstanding on here the print job uh you did a really nice job you've got a wide range in terms of skill level of what you can do and this is a really really nice Testament and that's the best compliment I can give you is I just want to see more um you never want people to say I've seen enough so that's that's a good thing but anyway man awesome work I really appreciate you sending this in and if you guys are interested I will put links to his website and all that stuff in the show description below highly suggest that you support your colleagues and uh check this out Jose Miguel awesome work my man all right our next up is a book called Romania Through My Eyes by my high pop he also enclosed this handwritten note which reads dear Ted my name is my high pop I was born in Romania I came to the USA in 1989 with my family at the age of 8 I fell in love with photography but life got in the way 6 years ago I went through a very difficult divorce in the darkness somehow I found my way back to Photography in a way it saved me 6 years later I made my first Photography book Romania Through My Lens is 6 years of what I have learned about The Art of Photography in 2023 I went back to my home country and I wanted to show Romania after the fall of Communism as a more vibrant and happier place I wanted to share this with you I found your channel on YouTube about a year ago and i' would be grateful if you could give me your honest feedback my publisher calls my book a love letter to my home country my dream career is to become a full-time photographer and work as freelance with companies such as National Geographic I understand you do not know me and honestly at the age of 42 I may already have missed my window however if you believe I'm good enough May maybe you can help me please feel free to share this book with your channel and any of this letter regards my high all right so my high very nicely done in regards to your letter I do want to say this um I understand the idea of coming back to something and then dreaming of having a professional career in it and I can't really advise you on that without being able to talk to you uh National Geographic I really don't know much about how it runs these days I know n Geo is more of a television station I don't even know if they still do the magazine I haven't seen it in a long time they night I don't know I'm just saying this out of my my league but one thing I don't want to tell you that I would tell to anyone out there and I think this is really important is that I think having dreams and Ambitions is certainly awesome but do it for yourself first immerse yourself get really good shoot all the time you can be a full-time photographer without having to make money or be professional you're doing it for you and if you can't find that enjoyment then you're definitely not going to take it further and so I just want to make sure and I think that's the case with what you're saying here is that you have the cart before the horse and I also appreciate the story about the divorce and how you came back around to this cuz photography does have that power to be quite cathartic uh when you're in a situation and even therapeutic now let me talk about your work a little bit I think that I really like a lot of what's going on here um I think you've got a really good eye for composition I think the lighting in here is interesting um and I mean that in a really good way I love your sense of color I like your sense of being able to match images up too we have color that that goes over these two it makes a really nice spread you definitely have kind of a saw lighter influence going on over here it's really good I think it's really strong now I think there is an area where you could use a little more work and I think your street photography stuff in here I like stuff where you're using a window to subframe or maybe you're creating something that's a little bit mysterious but there's a lot of images in here where it's just kind of shots of people doing things and there's not enough interest that I can't tell what it is they're doing other than standing around and so things like that I would work on polishing up just a little bit I don't want you to take this criticism too harshly but I don't think that the strength of some of the street photog photography matches the quality that you're doing with other things where where they're more thought out well composed um you know you kind of have this meat thing with the smoke and all so there's a little bit of a documentary thread that comes in here and especially if you aspire to something like National Geographic when you go look at National Geographic especially the classic era of National Geographic with photographers like Sam Abel or Steve McCurry it's documentary photography and they're going in and they have a photo essay and they're telling a story beginning middle end they're working with a writer and so that's the kind of stuff you want to start working on if that's the kind of work that you want to do maybe it's not National Geographic maybe it's somebody else but I don't want to kill off your dreams or aspirations I don't think that 42 is too old I don't think that age is as big a deal as it gets to be in our minds and believe me I do it too um but I don't want to discourage you I want to encourage you and just shoot for yourself get better at certain things go look at people I've said this is the entire Channel I've done over the last 16 years has been about this but go look at photographers that you admire analyze what it is they're doing and you don't want to copy it directly but see how that can start inspiring things to do your own Spin and have your own voice within that I think that is the most important thing you could possibly do I hope this advice helps somewhat I think you have a great start here there's some really nice moments in this book great compositions nice color usage um the only thing that didn't really do it for me is is some of the street photography I would that that's a skill I would try to work on so anyway if you guys have any questions or comments please leave them below support everybody on that sent stuff in on this video and I will see you see you guys in the next one till then laterthis video is brought to you by Squarespace welcome back everyone it is time once again to do some viewer mail these are all projects books Zen sent in by photographers like you I'm going to begin with this one which is a really interesting project this was sent to me by Alex Taylor who's a photographer in Yorkshire this is a project that he did with another gentleman Andrew mctom this is called end of the rle the photographs of Alice longstaff so their letter reads that Alice was a photographer based in hebden Bridge she left school at 14 taking an apprenticeship at a local photography studio in the 1920s something that many young women did not do at that time over the next 70 years she proved to be a tour to force photographing the town and surrounding areas and influencing amongst others a young Martin Parr who lived in Hedon bridge in the 1970s this is a really interesting project here and I'm paraphrasing a little bit with their note because it is rather long but she passed away in 1992 and her entire archive and collection was turned over and people were cataloging it over 65,000 images anyway I'm going to read a little this because it'll make sense when you look at these images most of the negatives inherited from Alice were from her Studio mainly of people being married or needing a passport photo however there were a number of unmarked envelopes when open contained a wonderful assortment of pictures from the town the quote unquote into the roll photographs are a unique historical resource but also an incredible photographic collection which stands as a testament to Alice's skill and talent while she's very wellknown locally she's almost unheard of outside our part of Yorkshire producing this book is a way to show off our wonderful archival collections but also to celebrate Alice's contribution to local life it's also a way to get these amazing images into the world and hopefully appreciated by others we also don't know a lot of the people who were photographed Alice didn't record who she was capturing so we largely rely on local people coming to exhibitions and telling us what they can a case in point is the print that we've included which is this one here very nicely done an image of a wonderful character we know nothing about except for the photograph was taken in 19 19 57 we sent a copy of the book one of the first 25 to be distributed in hopes that you'll enjoy it and help spread the message so I will put a link in the show description if you were interested in getting a copy of this Andrew and Alex this is absolutely fabulous I love the story here I love the title into the role and I think it's awesome because I think when the you know Echelon of professional photography that's what a lot of people ended up doing was doing work passport photos as you said weddings things like that and the whole idea of this creative act of just using up the end of the role with person work and she had a great eye there's some beautiful pictures in here some wonderful street photography I love the candid stuff the most I think she had a really interesting way of being able to blend into a scene with a crowd of people and get photographs Without Really drawing a lot of attention to the camera and being noticed you don't see a lot of people who are camera aware in these images I think this is really awesome and uh I normally don't show books that are not somebody El's work necessarily but this is such a cool project that I just couldn't resist not sharing it with you so anyway if you're interested please support this project I will put a link in the show description Andrew Alex thank you for sending all right next up is this which comes to us from our friend Matthew rig Matthew was featured on a Mail Time video about a year ago with his first book which I really liked Matthew is a YouTuber as well he's got an awesome YouTube channel he does really cool work he shoots film this is called convergence he also enclosed a little note on the back of this awesome little picture which reads Ted this is Convergence my second book which represents a sizable shift from my first Sanctuary this encompasses 5 years worth of street photography predominantly in my home city of Seattle I hope you enjoy and I want to thank you again for the kind words about Sanctuary they helped give me the confidence in my work to keep going and make this thank you for all the work you do and help Foster a positive and constructive photography Community best wishes Matthew well Matthew I call it like it is and you're doing some awesome work my friend I love your YouTube channel and I really love convergence this is awesome Matthew shoots film obviously you see that look in a lot of these images he has a really good command of both color as well is black and white and he also has a really cool sense of dramatic Lighting in natural conditions in other words just using the Sun and I love these images the way you're getting colors in here the Silhouettes fall nicely they're not images I've seen over and over again I think you're doing some really cool stuff also love the sense of geometry that you see in a lot of these images I love the way that you're setting the scene and you're allowing something to happen like you know for instance the guy in this picture who is against this big building the sense of scale and that contrast is really quite cool and if you look closely there's another guy on the phone on the left hand hand side and near the reflection of the tree very cool use of subf framing with this girl on the subway Matthew you're doing some great stuff I'm glad you're putting this together in book type projects and this is something that I want to share with everybody because I think it's really important that you know it's one thing as photographers as we tend to practice certain things or work in a specific direction or we just shoot things that we love but when you put things together in a book and I'm sure Matthew can attest to this but it is interesting because you're all of a sudden conceptualizing it as a project and you're seeing how that body of work works together how certain images have relationships in other words the sequencing of the book is very important one of the things I teach in scen workshops is when you have a spread two images facing each other on the same page how does that work and what kinds of images complement one another even make a connection with one another or even conflict with one another that you want to avoid anyway doing book projects is so important and I love people seeing doing that seeing people do that Matthew rig this is awesome go check out Matthew's Channel I will link that as well as the book below if you want to get a copy well done my friend got a couple more that I want to get to these are very different but both very unique and very cool but real quick I want to give a shout out to our sponsor today who were the always awesome folks over at Squarespace how easy is it to build an amazing website in a matter of minutes Squarespace has you covered it's dead simple head over to Squarespace hit get started you can start by using Squarespace blueprint Ai and SEO tools which will give you an impressive website in no time something unique because you know you're not like other websites sites give your site a name next you can build your homepage we'll start with a few preset layouts just to get us going want to sell products like prints books maybe you make a Zen well you can feature those on your homepage create a few more sections if you want let's also give it a color palette there's a whole bunch to choose from then just get it started we can change this all later next let's select the typography choices welcome to your website everything is set up and it's all ready for you to customize squar space is built on fluid engine the next generation of website design select edit and fluid engine allows you to drag place and resize any element on the page you can snap these to a grid you can make them float on top of one another you can free form however you like you can even preview and adjust how the site looks on either desktop or mobile the layouts are independent of course you'll want a portfolio for your work creating an image gallery is as easy as dropping a folder of images on your web browser once uploaded you can drag to Resort customize the look and Squarespace writes all of the code for you everything just works and it looks fabulous want to sell your own prints books or Zen flexible payments allow you to make the checkout process absolutely seamless when you sell products or Services you can accept credit cards PayPal Apple pay and in eligible countries you can offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with afterpay and clear pay you should try Squarespace for yourself it's absolutely absolutely free no credit card required just go to squarespace.com aop sign up for that free trial if you decide Squarespace is right for you I can save you an additional 10% on your order by using offer code aop on checkout that's right the code is aop so stop procrastinating go build your website today and I want to give a special shout out and thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video all right so next up is this beautiful book with this very striking color called the Giants whisper this comes to us from a gentleman named Jose Miguel Angulo Mano Jose also includes a note which reads dear Ted my name is Jose Miguel Angulo I am a Spanish photographer based in Cologne Germany I started with film photography back in the'80s shortly after I lost my vision in one eye when I was 20 I've followed your channel now for a long time and I must congratulate you for your amazing job there it is also fantastic what you do showing and sharing the work of other photographers with your a audience so here I go I am happy to share with you and your viewers of your channel my first Photography book the Giants whisper this is my BL big project which took me to the dusty Plains in Kenya at the foot of kilero I wanted to photograph the wildlife there mostly focused on elephants and tell the story behind the scenes to give some context and share my experience with the readers from the photographer and human perspectives sharing some ideas and tips with those ones that would like to experience such kind of Photography expeditions how I got the inspiration and motivation to travel there the preparation of my trips the execution and experiences in the field this book has been made 100% by me and it has been worth the effort it is dedicated to the memory of my father who I lost some years ago without the chance to say goodbye photography is brought me close to the wildlife and people living in Africa especially the Masai helping me to know better the humans and biodiversity there I am happy and thankful for the feedback received for the book so far the profits generated with the selling of the book will be donated for support of wildlife protection in Kenya and to the local Messiah Community there thank you very much again Ted for your outstanding work and best wishes to you and all the viewers of your Channel with my kindest regards Jose Miguel All right so it's hard to show you guys the text portions of this uh but I do love the fact that Jose Miguel approached this from kind of a journalistic standpoint it's a little bit of a how-to and if you're interested in his whole process of putting together this trip there's a lot of stuff in here with cameras and lenses but I think the work in here is outstanding and I want to make some comments on that Jose Miguel because uh I think your work with the elephants is particularly interesting and one thing I hope you consider is taking some of the proceeds from this book and actually reinvesting them into doing more work over there and I think you've got some bright spots of talent in here that are really exceptional and this is what I want to talk about now one of the challenges when you're shooting Wildlife against landscape especially in a place like Kenya where it is very flat is that you have you know flat Horizon there's not a whole lot of interest you can get out of the landscape so it makes a great backdrop for doing portraits of animals but what I've seen for other photographers is that there's a sameness and a monotony that starts to come out of that because you're just limited with options you've got some stuff in here and this Photograph I think is the real turning point for me uh where you've got the the dust that this elephant is shaking off and the way that you're shooting it and you get that atmospheric effect you've got several photos in here but you're starting to do stuff with your subject that is really interesting and really cool I think the other wildlife in here is incredible as well um I I think though that that is your strong point and I would love to see you focus in and just do a whole collection of elephants uh you know if you look at the work of people like Nick Brandt who did kind of a Trilogy of things uh some of the photos in here I love where you're playing with focus on here with a really shallow depth of field I just want to see more pictures that that the quotes in here are great I love the journal approach to the text in here but I really would like to see a portfolio I think your work is that strong but this is an excellent start man and uh the other thing that I want to note on here you said you did the book 100% on your own graphic design the typography the publishing everything is outstanding on here the print job uh you did a really nice job you've got a wide range in terms of skill level of what you can do and this is a really really nice Testament and that's the best compliment I can give you is I just want to see more um you never want people to say I've seen enough so that's that's a good thing but anyway man awesome work I really appreciate you sending this in and if you guys are interested I will put links to his website and all that stuff in the show description below highly suggest that you support your colleagues and uh check this out Jose Miguel awesome work my man all right our next up is a book called Romania Through My Eyes by my high pop he also enclosed this handwritten note which reads dear Ted my name is my high pop I was born in Romania I came to the USA in 1989 with my family at the age of 8 I fell in love with photography but life got in the way 6 years ago I went through a very difficult divorce in the darkness somehow I found my way back to Photography in a way it saved me 6 years later I made my first Photography book Romania Through My Lens is 6 years of what I have learned about The Art of Photography in 2023 I went back to my home country and I wanted to show Romania after the fall of Communism as a more vibrant and happier place I wanted to share this with you I found your channel on YouTube about a year ago and i' would be grateful if you could give me your honest feedback my publisher calls my book a love letter to my home country my dream career is to become a full-time photographer and work as freelance with companies such as National Geographic I understand you do not know me and honestly at the age of 42 I may already have missed my window however if you believe I'm good enough May maybe you can help me please feel free to share this book with your channel and any of this letter regards my high all right so my high very nicely done in regards to your letter I do want to say this um I understand the idea of coming back to something and then dreaming of having a professional career in it and I can't really advise you on that without being able to talk to you uh National Geographic I really don't know much about how it runs these days I know n Geo is more of a television station I don't even know if they still do the magazine I haven't seen it in a long time they night I don't know I'm just saying this out of my my league but one thing I don't want to tell you that I would tell to anyone out there and I think this is really important is that I think having dreams and Ambitions is certainly awesome but do it for yourself first immerse yourself get really good shoot all the time you can be a full-time photographer without having to make money or be professional you're doing it for you and if you can't find that enjoyment then you're definitely not going to take it further and so I just want to make sure and I think that's the case with what you're saying here is that you have the cart before the horse and I also appreciate the story about the divorce and how you came back around to this cuz photography does have that power to be quite cathartic uh when you're in a situation and even therapeutic now let me talk about your work a little bit I think that I really like a lot of what's going on here um I think you've got a really good eye for composition I think the lighting in here is interesting um and I mean that in a really good way I love your sense of color I like your sense of being able to match images up too we have color that that goes over these two it makes a really nice spread you definitely have kind of a saw lighter influence going on over here it's really good I think it's really strong now I think there is an area where you could use a little more work and I think your street photography stuff in here I like stuff where you're using a window to subframe or maybe you're creating something that's a little bit mysterious but there's a lot of images in here where it's just kind of shots of people doing things and there's not enough interest that I can't tell what it is they're doing other than standing around and so things like that I would work on polishing up just a little bit I don't want you to take this criticism too harshly but I don't think that the strength of some of the street photog photography matches the quality that you're doing with other things where where they're more thought out well composed um you know you kind of have this meat thing with the smoke and all so there's a little bit of a documentary thread that comes in here and especially if you aspire to something like National Geographic when you go look at National Geographic especially the classic era of National Geographic with photographers like Sam Abel or Steve McCurry it's documentary photography and they're going in and they have a photo essay and they're telling a story beginning middle end they're working with a writer and so that's the kind of stuff you want to start working on if that's the kind of work that you want to do maybe it's not National Geographic maybe it's somebody else but I don't want to kill off your dreams or aspirations I don't think that 42 is too old I don't think that age is as big a deal as it gets to be in our minds and believe me I do it too um but I don't want to discourage you I want to encourage you and just shoot for yourself get better at certain things go look at people I've said this is the entire Channel I've done over the last 16 years has been about this but go look at photographers that you admire analyze what it is they're doing and you don't want to copy it directly but see how that can start inspiring things to do your own Spin and have your own voice within that I think that is the most important thing you could possibly do I hope this advice helps somewhat I think you have a great start here there's some really nice moments in this book great compositions nice color usage um the only thing that didn't really do it for me is is some of the street photography I would that that's a skill I would try to work on so anyway if you guys have any questions or comments please leave them below support everybody on that sent stuff in on this video and I will see you see you guys in the next one till then later\n"