Host Casey Fatchett brings an often humorous look at the photography industry, offering advice, telling stories, and interviewing working photographers - all while going on adventures with the crew of the starship Fibonacci. He's also sure to include just a little bit of useless information in every episode.
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In this nerdlet, Casey makes the case for deliberately slowing down — and why the unlimited frame rates of modern cameras and phones may be quietly working against better photography.
In this episode:
Why cheap, abundant frames change the psychology of shooting: when a missed shot costs nothing, the incentive to study each one disappears
How high-volume shooting shifts the real creative decision from the moment of capture to the moment of culling
Where burst shooting genuinely earns its place (sports, wildlife) versus where it works against you
Henri Cartier-Bresson's The Decisive Moment (1952) and what "proactive" attention to a scene actually looks like
The cognitive science angle: stimulus-driven (reactive) attention versus goal-directed (deliberate) attention, and why slow photography demands the latter
Ansel Adams' concept of pre-visualization — forming the finished image in your mind before you shoot — and Casey's two ways of using it, including prepping mentally the day before a shoot
The "film mindset": simulating the constraints of a 24 or 36-exposure roll with a digital camera, including no chimping and no in-field deletions
Homework from this episode:
Pick a hard limit — 12, 24, or 36 frames — for your next outing. No deleting in the field, no chimping, no exceptions. Before every shot, pause for a few seconds and ask what the photograph is actually about. When you review the results, pay attention not just to which images worked, but to how differently you moved, waited, and looked.
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About The Podcast
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
183 - Serendipity, Trust, and the Humanity Behind Every Photograph
Season 1 · Episode 183
Thursday, September 3, 2026 • Duration 59:09
In this episode, Casey Fatchett sits down with award-winning photographer Ari Espay, who splits his time between New York City and Santiago, Chile. Ari discusses his decade producing and teaching at National Geographic's photography workshops alongside legends like David Alan Harvey, Ed Kashi, Bob Sacha, Ira Block, and Maggie Steber; his approach to street photography and portraiture with subjects ranging from presidents to Broadway performers; his long-term humanitarian project documenting the EB (Epidermolysis Bullosa) community; and his nonprofit Statement Arts, which has run photography workshops and donated more than 100 cameras to young and at-risk photographers in Myanmar and Laos, including activists documenting human rights abuses in their own communities.
Topics Covered:
Lessons from a decade at National Geographic's photography workshops
Why "serendipity" changed how Ari approaches every shoot
Reading a scene: light, subject, and background as visual problem-solving
Building trust with strangers on the street
Studio portraiture with presidents and public figures vs. street portraiture
Photographing vulnerability: the Faces of EB project
Where to draw the line between bearing witness and intruding
Statement Arts: teaching photography and donating cameras in Myanmar and Laos
Why the people living a crisis should be the ones documenting it
You finish editing a photo you're proud of. You post it. Then you scroll — and within thirty seconds you feel like giving up. This episode explains exactly why that happens, and what to do about it.
What you'll learn:
Social comparison isn't a character flaw — it's a documented psychological mechanism first described by Leon Festinger in 1954. Human beings evaluate their own abilities by comparing themselves to others, which was a useful system for most of human history. Social media broke it by replacing your actual peer group with a globally curated highlight reel, filtered and amplified by an algorithm designed to surface the most extraordinary content because extraordinary content keeps you scrolling longer.
You are comparing your complete output — including the misfires and the experiments — to someone else's absolute best work. Your brain doesn't naturally correct for that structural unfairness. It just registers the gap and feels bad about it.
We cover Ira Glass's concept of the gap — the distance between your taste and your ability that every creative person experiences in the early and middle stages of development. The gap isn't evidence that you lack talent. It's evidence that your taste is working. The only way to close it is through volume of work, not volume of consumption.
We also get practical about curated consumption — how to use mute buttons, who to follow and who to stop following, and why replacing algorithm-driven feeds with historical photographers removes the social pressure from the equation entirely.
Key takeaways:
The algorithm surfaces extremes, not averages — you're not seeing a representative sample of photography
The gap between taste and ability is a sign your aesthetic sense is working, not that you lack talent
Curated consumption is an active practice, not a passive one — manage your inputs deliberately
This week's homework: mute five accounts that consistently leave you feeling discouraged rather than curious. Then spend twenty minutes looking at the work of one historical photographer whose images genuinely move you — without checking follower counts, reading comments, or scrolling past it. Just look.
About The Podcast
181 - Why Every Photographer Needs a Vision
Season 1 · Episode 181
Thursday, August 20, 2026 • Duration 01:04:09
What do you do when you've had two successful careers — and neither of them is the one you actually love?
For David Hendley, the answer was waking up at 4:30 in the morning to drive to the California coast before work, camera in hand, teaching himself to shoot seascapes in changing light until photography stopped feeling like a hobby and started feeling like a calling.
In this episode, David traces his journey from the NFL to the corporate boardroom to documenting the natural world — and we spend most of our time on the question that sits at the center of his work: what does it mean to have a vision as a photographer, and how do you actually develop one?
David is specific, honest, and genuinely useful on all of it. He talks about finding balance, mood, and simplicity as the three pillars of how he sees. About walking past the same lake 40 times before the image finally revealed itself. About deliberately limiting himself to five exposures on an outing to force intentionality. And about why, if you're not emotionally tied to a photograph, other people will feel that too.
He also makes a case for failure as the best teaching tool a photographer has — something he learned long before he ever picked up a camera.
In this episode: → Growing up on National Geographic and how those images never left him → How athletic discipline translated to learning photography at 5 a.m. → The three things he looks for in every image: balance, mood, and simplicity → Why vision can't be forced — and how to let it develop naturally → The five-exposure challenge and the power of intentional shooting → Failure as a growth mechanism, from the NFL to the field → Staying true to your vision when commercial pressure shows up
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180 - Backup or Bust – Building a Digital Safety Net
Season 1 · Episode 180
Thursday, August 13, 2026 • Duration 10:38
Every single hard drive you own will eventually fail. Not might fail — will fail. It is just a matter of time. The photographers who lose irreplaceable work aren't the ones who didn't care. They're the ones who meant to get a better system in place and hadn't gotten around to it yet. This episode makes sure you're not one of them.
What you'll learn:
The industry standard for data protection is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. Each component protects against a different category of failure, and skipping any one of them leaves a gap that a single event — a flood, a theft, a power surge — can exploit completely.
We cover RAID systems and the critical distinction most photographers miss: not all RAID configurations protect your data. RAID 0 actually increases your risk of loss by striping data across two drives, meaning either drive failing takes everything with it. RAID 1, which mirrors data across two drives simultaneously, is what's relevant for redundancy.
We also draw a clear line between sync services and backup services — a distinction that matters enormously. Dropbox and Google Drive are not backups. If you delete a file or a virus corrupts your data, they'll faithfully replicate that change to the cloud. True backup services maintain versioned snapshots over time specifically designed for recovery, not just access. Our recommendation for cloud backup is Backblaze - https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/personal#afc32p
Finally, we cover cold storage maintenance — why mechanical drives left idle for extended periods can seize, and why spinning them up once a year is essential — and the habit most photographers never build: actually verifying that their backups work.
Key takeaways:
The 3-2-1 rule is the baseline — three copies, two media types, one off-site
RAID 1 protects against drive failure but not deletion, corruption, or disaster
About The Podcast
179 - How to Create Portraits That Feel Raw, Honest, and Powerful
Season 1 · Episode 179
Thursday, August 6, 2026 • Duration 01:11:37
In this episode, I sit down with portrait photographer Betina LaPlante to explore the philosophy and practice behind her visceral, intimate portraiture.
Topics covered:
Why Betina puts the camera down before she ever starts shooting — and how building rapport before a session transforms the images she gets
The difference between directing a subject and witnessing one — and why she almost always chooses to witness
Her work photographing actors like Charles Dance and Christopher Lloyd, and what it means to reveal the person behind the persona
How shooting tethered (something she rarely does) became the right call for one particularly camera-shy subject
Her 35mm lens, her reliance on natural light, and why she's learning to work with continuous artificial lights
Her lifelong love of black and white — from developing film in her bathroom darkroom to converting digital portraits today
Why hands are central to her portraits: what they reveal, why they're harder to perform with, and how they carry a life's worth of character
The ethics of intimacy in portraiture — and why she has never felt the need to use discomfort as a tool
Dream subjects she'd love to photograph: Tilda Swinton, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, and more
Her advice for photographers still finding their voice: shoot what you genuinely love
You can be an exceptional photographer and still be completely invisible to the clients actively searching for someone like you. Not because your work isn't good enough, but because Google doesn't know you exist. Don't worry, though! This episode is going to make that problem go away.
SEO for photographers isn't dark magic. For a local photography business, roughly 90% of what moves the needle comes down to three things: your H1 tag, your image alt-text, and your site speed.
Your H1 is the main headline on your webpage and one of the strongest signals Google uses to understand what your page is about. "Capturing the Essence of Your Soul" is lovely — but nobody is searching for it. "Wedding Photographer in Austin" is what actually gets you found.
Alt-text is the written description attached to every image on your site. Google cannot see your photographs — it reads the label you give them. A file named "_MG_5422.jpg" tells Google nothing. A file named "golden-hour-bride-groom-portrait-austin-texas.jpg" with a matching alt-text description tells Google exactly what it needs to know.
Site speed is a documented Google ranking factor, and photographers are almost universally the worst offenders — uploading massive unoptimised files directly from Lightroom. Images destined for the web should be under 500KB. Free tools like Squoosh make this straightforward. I also recommend using a file format such as WebP to bring down file sizes.
Finally, we cover Google Business Profile — the free local listing that puts you on the map, literally, when someone searches for a photographer near them. A complete, well-reviewed profile can outperform a first-page organic ranking for local search intent.
177 - Old Palaces and Glass Towers: Street Photography in Modern Seoul
Season 1 · Episode 177
Thursday, July 23, 2026 • Duration 53:39
In this episode, Casey speaks with photographer, filmmaker, and DePaul University professor James Choi, who returned to Seoul after 46 years away and came back with the images that became Seoul Days and Nights, a new photo book from Trope. They dig into what it means to photograph a city holding ancient tradition and radical modernity in the same frame, the slow disappearance of the small family-run food shops that give neighborhoods their character, and how the Korean social concept of nunchi - the unspoken ability to read a room - shapes James's entire approach to working on the street.
In This Episode
How a six-month sabbatical in Seoul turned into a photo book
Photographing the tension between ancient palaces and glass skyscrapers - and why Seoul makes that contrast feel surprisingly at peace
The vanishing mom-and-pop food culture, and what gets lost when it goes
What nunchi is, why James's mother always said he had it, and how it cuts both ways as a street photographer
The ethical lines James draws on the street - when he holds back and why
The one image in the book that reminded him of his grandfather
What he hopes a first-time Seoul visitor takes from the book vs. what he hopes a local sees
You've probably been told you should shoot RAW. And I'm sure you've also thought - WHY? I'm just delivering a JPEG file anyway. What's inside a RAW file that makes it worth the storage space?
This episode gets into the numbers, and once you see them, the case for RAW becomes impossible to argue with. Yes, I knew it was your understanding that there would be no math, but, unfortunately, there's actually a lot of math behind what you see in digital photos.
Bit depth is exponential, not additive. A standard JPEG is 8-bit, giving you 256 brightness levels per colour channel and roughly 16.7 million possible colours total. A 14-bit RAW file gives you 16,384 levels per channel — over 4 trillion possible colours. That gap is invisible straight out of camera. It becomes very visible the moment you start editing.
We cover the staircase effect — what happens to smooth gradients in low bit-depth files when you push exposure or shadows in post. Those gaps between brightness levels stretch apart and become visible as banding: ugly, digital-looking stripes in what should be a smooth sky or a softly lit wall. In a 14-bit file, the steps are fine enough that normal editing simply can't pull them apart.
We also break down the difference between lossless and lossy RAW compression. Lossless compression reduces file size without discarding any data — think of it like a ZIP file for your image. Lossy compression makes a permanent, one-time decision to discard some sensor data at capture. For many shots you'll never notice. For scenes with subtle gradients or heavy shadow recovery, you might.
175 - Art Comes From the Soul: Analog, AI, and Authentic Portraits
Season 1 · Episode 175
Thursday, July 9, 2026 • Duration 01:27:35
Portrait photographer Craig Fleming has spent decades navigating the space between film and digital, celebrity commissions and working-class subjects, polish and truth. In this episode of The Nerdy Photographer Podcast, Craig joins us for a wide-ranging conversation about his process, his philosophy, and two ongoing personal projects — Quiet Men and Circus — that are reshaping how he thinks about legacy and the purpose of his work.
We get into what it really means to balance film and digital photography, why Craig thinks returning to medium format gave him integrity back as a photographer — and made him better at digital. We talk about his strong feelings on AI and what it's taking from photographers and creatives. Craig also shares what he believes is the single most important element of a great portrait — and it has nothing to do with your camera.
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Award-winning photographer, Ari Espay, splits his time between New York City and Santiago, Chile. Ari has shot documentary pieces, campaigns and editorial essays for magazines in the US and all over South America including; Architectural Digest, Vogue Latin America, Que Pasa, and ED. He has worked for Maybelline, Gillette, Corpbanca, Ferouch, New Man, Kohana Rum, Amazon/AWS, Australis Cruise to name a few and has shot portraits for Presidents, internationally known actors, Emmy Award winning directors, Broadway performers, politicians and high profile business people.
With numerous gallery exhibitions, Ari's recent show, "A Glimpse of Southeast Asia" was featured at the Galleria d'Arte Moderna, a museum in Cento, Italy (2018 – 2019). Other exhibitions include; 2026 "Rostros, El Mar De Cultura" Valencia Photo Festival, Spain. 2025 "FACES / VISAGES" , Art-Icon Collective Exhibition Arles, France. 2024 "Corporeality" Art-Icon Collective Exhibition - Paris, 2024 "Moments in Time" Art on the Avenue - New York City, New York, 2021 Art on the Avenue - New York City, New York "Art on the Avenue" (New York City 2021), "Mingalabar Myanmar"(Rome and Bologna, Italy - 2016) and "The Faces of EB" in New York City (2015). In 2012, he was named as Artistic Director of International Projects for Galeria64, the only gallery in Chile exhibiting photography exclusively.
Ari has won Chile's prestigious Fondart Grant, was a 2026 Finalist Lucie Foundation On The Block Street Photography, a 2026 Selected Winner American Photography AI-AP 42, a 2024 Portraiture Bronze Winner Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, Short Listed "EB" State of the World Project Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, Street Photography Honorable Mention Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3 and 4 Portraiture Honorable Mention Prix de la Photographie Paris PX3, a 2024, 2022 BIFA Budapest International Foto Award Silver winner in Book / Documentary, 2022 MIFA Moscow International Photo Award Winner for our book, 2020Unmasked, in the Documentary Book category.
He was the photo editor for "2020 Unmasked" book which won 2 Honorable Mentions at the IPA/International Photography Awards for Documentary and Self-published book.
For 10 years, he taught photography workshops for National Geographic and their legendary photographers including, Joe McNally, Bob Sacha, Ira Block, VII's agency Ed Kashi and Magnum's David Alan Harvey. He has worked and traveled in more than 40 countries.
Ari speaks 3 languages and enjoys spending time in the mountains.
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Find David's work at davidspursuit.com and @davidspursuit on Instagram.
🎙️ Subscribe for new episodes every week 🔔 Hit the bell so you don't miss what's next 📸 Follow the Nerdy Photographer: @thenerdyphoto on Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Reddit, and Blue Sky
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
04:19 – Meet David Hendley
06:24 – From the NFL to the boardroom to the wild
09:24 – National Geographic and the images that never left
10:37 – Going all in: 5 a.m. seascapes before work
13:05 – How athletic discipline translates to photography
19:48 – Why nature? The pull of the natural world
22:40 – Vision: balance, mood, and simplicity
24:35 – How his vision developed (it crept up on him)
28:18 – Advice for finding your own vision
31:40 – Staying true to yourself under pressure
35:06 – Why failure is your best teacher
36:44 – The five-exposure challenge
43:58 – Does vision narrow or open things up?
46:17 – Walking past the same lake 40 times
48:07 – Vision vs. commercial pressure
53:13 – Advice for creatives at a crossroads
57:26 – Useless information: the first televised football game
58:27 – Where to find David's work
Want to help The Nerdy Photographer Podcast? Here are a few simple (and mostly free) ways you can do that:
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Sync is not backup — you need versioned snapshots, not mirrored folders
A backup you've never tested is not a backup you can trust
This week's homework — The Audit: locate every drive you own and identify your single points of failure. If any important work exists in only one place, resolve that today. Then set a recurring calendar reminder to verify your backups every few months.
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
About My Guest
James Choi grew up a latchkey kid in Chicago. His parents immigrated from Korea when he was five and worked six days a week, so from age six and Seven he was alone taking the bus, walking the city, learning to read people and places and light. He didn't know it then, but he was already doing what he'd spend his life doing: observing. Photography and eventually filmmaking came from that.
His work has earned Awards at SXSW, Slamdance and Chicago International Film Festival. As an educator, James is also an assistant Professor at DePaul University where he founded Indie Studio, supporting students making their first independent features.
Seoul Days and Nights is in some ways a return to the beginning except this time he was walking a city that looked like him.
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
Follow along with us on social media @thenerdyphoto
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
The Nerdy Photographer Podcast is written and produced by Casey Fatchett. Casey is a professional photographer in the New York City / Northern New Jersey with more than 20 years of experience. He just wants to help people and make them laugh. You can view Casey's wedding work at https://fatchett.com or his non-wedding work at https://caseyfatchettphotography.com
If you have any questions or comments about this episode or any other episodes, OR if you would like to ask a photography related question or have ideas for a topic for a future episode, please reach out to us at https://nerdyphotographer.com/contact
