Posts by Robert Rodriguez Jr

Every time I provide feedback on images in a workshop, someone eventually asks about cropping. How much is too much? Where’s the line? How do I know when I’ve gone too far? And I always give the same answer, which is usually not the one they were hoping for: there is no line, and you’re…

There’s a simple creative practice I do every year that’s helped me understand my own work better than any amount of shooting new images. I review my portfolio and remove 10-15% of the images that no longer measure up to where I am today, then add new work that better represents my current vision. I…

In a recent Print Lab session, a member asked a thoughtful question, the kind of question I could spend a whole hour discussing. He wanted to know if I’d ever done an exercise where four or five people describe the same image, looking at the commonalities and the differences, to see what that tells us…

I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling of walking into a beautiful scene that stops you in your tracks. You consider the various compositional options, you raise the camera, and suddenly it’s busier than you first imagined. There are too many highlights on the left, a tree blocking the better tree, a foreground that was…

When I teach composition, I start with a simple observation: the rules are the easy part. You can learn the rule of thirds or the basics of leading lines in an afternoon. What takes years to internalize is what composition actually is beneath those ideas. Here’s what I’ve come to believe, after many years of teaching composition…