On Creative Process

There's a version of creative work that looks effortless from the outside — a photograph that feels inevitable, a piece of writing that reads like it arrived whole. It never does.

The gap

Every piece of work starts as a feeling, not an idea. Something catches your attention — a quality of light, a half-formed thought, a tension you can't quite name. The work is figuring out how to translate that feeling into something someone else can actually experience.

Most of the time, the first attempt doesn't get there. That's not failure. That's the process.

What I've learned

A few things that have stuck with me after years of making things:

• The hardest part is almost never the execution. It's knowing what you're actually trying to say.
• Constraints are useful. An open-ended project with no boundaries is paralyzing. Give yourself a frame.
• Iteration looks like waste until it doesn't. The tenth version of something is where the real work lives.

Applying this here

This studio is an experiment in making that process visible. The projects are works in progress. The photography is honest. Nothing here is meant to be polished beyond recognition.

That's the point.