159: Brooks Jensen - Creating Personally Meaningful Landscape Photography

Welcome to episode 159 of the F-Stop Collaborate and Listen podcast. 

This week's amazing guest is none other than Brooks Jensen, someone I have admired for many years. Brooks Jensen is a fine-art photographer, publisher, workshop teacher, and writer. He and his wife Maureen Gallagher are the owners, co-founders, editors, and publishers of the award winning LensWork, one of today’s most respected and important periodicals in fine art photography. With subscribers in 72 countries, Brooks’ impact on fine art photography is truly world-wide. 

LensWork Publishing is also at the leading edge in multimedia and digital media publishing with LensWork Extended — a PDF based, media-rich expanded version of the magazine. Brooks' personal work can be seen in his on-going series, Kokoro, a PDF based, downloadable periodical. 

LensWork Online, a membership website, features 10 channels of content featuring Brooks’ 50-years of experience in fine art photography including:

• Audio programs — Editor’s Comments, Looking at Images, Those Who Inspire Me (and Why), and interviews with over 400 photographers.
• Video programs — our daily Here’s a Thought . . ., Feedback Reviews, Exploring the Possibilities, and Creative Labs.

Brooks is the author of ten best-selling books on photography and creativity: Looking at Images, The Creative Life in Photography, Letting Go of the Camera, the three volume set Single Exposures: Random Observations on Art, Photography and Creativity. His most recent books are Photography, Art, & Media; The Best of the LensWork Interviews, and Seeing in SIXES (four volumes published in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019). A monograph of his work was published in 2012 titled Made of Steel.

Brooks and I has a wonderful conversation about a variety of topics this week, including:

• Creating personally meaningful landscape photography work.
• His historical perspective as a landscape photographer.
• How and why landscape photography has evolved into what it is today.
• What types of images he looks for to publish in LensWork.
• ...and a lot more! 

Over on Patreon this week, Brooks and I discuss the pros and cons of doing open edition prints vs. limited edition prints - a conversation based on an article Brooks wrote which has defined my views on the subject.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

Here are the people Brooks recommended for the podcast:

1. Huntington Witherill.

2. Carl Chiarenza.

3. Dominic Rouse.

4. Cole Thompson.

Other items mentioned on the show:

1. My conversation with Ian Plant on Shuttermonkeys.