PODCAST · society
Iterations
by Jeffery Saddoris
Iterations is the audio version of my occasional journal/newsletter where I share stories, personal experiences, and ongoing questions around creativity, process, and making things that matter. Some episodes are more reflective, some are more practical, and some are just me thinking out loud and trying to make sense of things.
Episodes
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Loss and Found
I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that I’ve experienced my fair share of loss over the past 59 years, and each time the wound is reopened so it never really gets a chance to heal. I would even say that grief and loss have become recurring characters in my life, rather than just a single...
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The Write Stuff
For the better part of a year-and-a-half now, the Supernote Manta has been my daily driver when it comes to writing. Whether I’m journaling, starting a new edition of my newsletter, or simply capturing thoughts and ideas to flesh out later, the Manta is where nearly all of my writing begins....
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The Archive as a Listening Device
I’ve always thought of archives as places where things go when they’re finished. Sort of a record of the past or a cold storage collection of what mattered after the fact. But lately, I’ve started to think of an archive differently. Maybe it isn’t just a repository for things that stop being...
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A Way of Living
For most of my life, I’ve been trying to reconcile two very different ideas about success. One was rooted in practicality, achievement, and outcomes. The other was rooted in curiosity, learning, and exploration. In this episode, I look back at a question my mother asked me during my senior year…
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What Rust Remembers
"Sometimes the thing you’re skilled at needs to be broken a little before it can surprise you again." For the past several years, I’ve primarily identified as a painter, despite the fact that the most consistent work I’ve done is writing. That said, lately I’ve had the uncomfortable thought that…
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Small Is Still Significant
Lately I’ve been feeling the weight of how complicated everything seems — I even wrote a bit about it in the last Iteration. It seems that the scale of it all — the speed, the certainty, the volume — can often make even small efforts feel almost invisible. I’ve caught myself wondering whether the...
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Feed Update
I wanted to take a few minutes to explain a small but meaningful change that I’m making to this podcast feed. This change isn’t about starting over. It’s really just about clarity — for existing listeners, for new listeners, and honestly for me too. This is Iterations. CONNECT WITH ME Visit my...
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You Have to Start Making Decisions
Towards the end of last year, I started thinking about building a new website for myself. Not just another vanity site (although I’ve built plenty of those), but more of an archive of the various things I’ve done over my career and a hub where I can share stories around what I’m thinking about…
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Let Go Lightly
About 18 months ago, I started seeing a therapist. I had gotten to a place that I’ve only really been once before and Adrianne encouraged me — actually, she implored me — to talk with a therapist. She once said to me, “Every day, I’m terrified that I’m either going to come home and not find you…
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The Weight of Waiting
It took a bit to fire up, but once it did, the familiar rumble of my Dad’s 1974 Ford F100 took me right back to my childhood summers. As Art slowly backed the truck off of the trailer, Adrianne commented, “It’s smaller than I thought it would be, given how large it looms in your history.” Indeed…
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Style, Stunts, and a Tiny House
I’ve shared this story before, and regardless of whether it’s true or just the stuff of photographic legend, it’s so good that I think it bears repeating every so often. The story goes that a photographer was presenting his portfolio to the great Jay Maisel. He asked Jay how he could take more...
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Making and Money
For a long time now — years, in fact — I’ve leaned toward the belief that I deserve to be paid for the creative work I do. And to be clear, I don’t think that’s unreasonable, at least not from a certain point of view. After all, in a capitalist system that’s sort of how it works, right? You do a...
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I Buried Another Bird
Yesterday, I had a heart-wrenching experience. I was out for a morning walk with Adrianne and Cooper when I spotted a bird flailing in the grass under a tree. As I got closer, it struggled to escape, its life force fading away. When it finally stopped moving, I knelt down and tried to comfort it...
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Little Beasts and Other Pleasures
Last week, I got a text message from my friend Michelle, who works at the National Gallery of Art. “Lunch tomorrow or Thursday?” followed by “Come see the movie in Little Beasts. It starts at the top of every hour. I would love to discuss it with you.” Not only was Michelle one of the first…
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The Ballad of the Benches
Whether it’s a sheet of old plywood resting on a couple of sawhorses or a fastidiously crafted hardwood masterpiece, the workbench has long been the centerpiece of studios, workshops, garages, and maker spaces of all kinds. Of the many standout features of our house, I think I was most excited...
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It’s Still Just a Tool
The other day, I was going through my archive of work ahead of a website redesign, and I found a blog post that I wrote in 2014 that’s sort of an homage to my all-time favorite camera and how after finally acquiring one, I couldn’t bring myself to actually use it. Ten years later, I think the…
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It’s Okay to be Disappointed
I love making things, whether that means making a conversation with someone or making a piece of art or writing, and getting to do that fairly unfettered is a massive privilege and it’s not wasted on me. That said, it’s okay to be disappointed in what you make — and maybe not disappointed with…
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Going Back to Move Forward
NOTE: To see the photos that I reference in this episode, see the post on my Substack. On one of our recent morning walk and talks, a group of photographers and I were talking about how much worse Instagram has gotten over the past few years in terms of exposure and engagement. We all agreed that...
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Get Out of Your Way
Reinvention is tough. Disrupting old patterns of beliefs or behaviors is tough. Even when we finally decide to disrupt the flow of familiarity, the fear of the unknown that awaits us can be paralyzing. I know that it has been for me. But one of the things that my therapist routinely encourages me...
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Gather Ye Rosebuds
Yesterday, Adrianne and I went out to one of favorite little coffee shops to have breakfast and spend the morning working. About an hour in, I had this urge to check Instagram, which I rarely do, especially lately. In fact, I haven’t really done much online or on social media since the election —…
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A Different Kind of Perfection
I’ve held off on posting this Iteration because I just didn’t feel like it was that important in light of what’s happening in California. But after some reflection, I actually think that it is important, because art and making are still important. Hope is important. Helping people to feel just a...
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Time for Deeper Work
I don’t know about you, but this is by far my least favorite time of year. It really starts around Thanksgiving, but this stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Day is particularly brutal — and it’s not just because I spent the first 48 years of my life in Southern California and still haven’t...
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The Marrow is in the Process
A few weeks ago, I took the train down to DC to meet up with my friend Richard Boutwell to walk through a show at the National Gallery called The '70s Lens. The show features the work of a bunch of fantastic photographers, many of whom I’d never heard of, and that was one of the reasons I wanted…
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Kubrick on the Morning Zoo
Recently, I picked up a copy of Barry Lyndon on Blu-ray. It’s one of those movies that I’ve had on my watchlist forever, but for whatever reason it just kept slipping through the cracks. As I was researching some of the other Criterion movies I was thinking about picking up, I saw a story about...
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The Ritual of It All
Saturday night, Adrianne and I spent the evening at the home of our neighbors Raj and Trupti helping them, along with about 60 other friends and family members, celebrate Diwali, which is the Hindu festival of lights. It’s hard to explain how incredible it felt not just to be invited into their...
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The Other Brave Thing
On Saturday, Adrianne and I took an impromptu trip into DC after seeing an interesting post pop up in my Instagram feed. The post was about an open studio event at the 52 O Street Artist Studios, which is a four-floor building that features “50+ Artists & Creative Businesses.” I’ve loved visiting...
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When the Thing is the Thing
What you’re hearing (if you’re listening, rather than reading this) are the sounds of me unboxing a new keyboard — specifically, an Apple A1048, commonly known as simply the Apple Keyboard. What makes this keyboard especially interesting to me is the period of time in my life that it reminds me…
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How Does it Feel?
Last week, I released a video review of a new book from Prestel about Gregory Crewdson. It was significant for me, not just because Gregory is one of my photographic heroes — although yes, that is part of it — but because it was the first project I’ve done in quite a while that was really just…
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Modern Master of Mood
This is the audio track from my video review, which I encourage you to watch on YouTube or read on Substack. In a new book from Prestel, simply titled Gregory Crewdson, editor Walter Moser — the head of the department of photography at the ALBERTINA in Vienna — has curated a selection of images...
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Permission Granted
Last week, I gave myself permission to do something that was a: pretty far outside of my comfort zone and b: completely unnecessary. If you read or listened to my last Iteration, you know I’ve been wanting an Elektron Digitakt for years, but would never allow myself to get one. Well, they say…
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The Illusion of Control
Sunday was my birthday and as I begin my 58th trip around the sun, I’ve been reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned over the past half-century or so. I’m not talking about skills per se, though I have racked up a fairly impressive list. I think one of the things that has both helped the…
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It’s Time to be Self-Centered
I’ve been thinking about something for a while and I’m not sure whether or not it’ll land, but I’d like to try stringing together a few ideas. I think it’s time for us to embrace being self-centered, but not in the way that you might think. Typically, when we refer to someone as “self-centered”...
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The Joy of [Re]Discovery
Whether you call it a slump, a funk, a downturn, a slowdown, a struggle, a breakdown, a nosedive, a stall, a meltdown, a plunge, or just stagnation, I’ve been in one for a while. While I have multiple journals that are dappled with notes, sketches, and the beginnings of ideas, I haven’t actually...
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Know Thy [Creative] Self
For the past few weeks, maybe even the past month or so, I’ve been on sort of an Ethan Hawke deep dive. I like Ethan Hawke as an actor and while I haven’t seen everything he’s ever done, I really like Training Day and I would probably put Dead Poets Society and Gattaca in my top 20 — actually,...
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The Five-Pointed Star of Why
The other day I was on the phone with my friend Neale James and we were talking about a recent episode of his podcast The Photowalk, on which he was talking to our mutual friend Sean Tucker about creativity. “I invite you,” Neale begins the episode, “to imagine a five-pointed star. Now on each...
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Connection, Collaboration, and Creative Maturity
If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you probably know I’m a big Nine Inch Nails fan and have been since 1990 when I saw them open up for Peter Murphy. The other day, I was watching a terrific video with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross breaking down some of their most iconic tracks. One of the…
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Can a Podcast Change Your Life?
Last week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures. If you’re a longtime listener, you may think you’ve heard this before, and you’re right, you have. But this time it’s different. I’ll get to why in a minute, but first I need to back up. In 2008, I was teaching Photoshop at...
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Art as a Verb
The artist Richard Serra died recently, and I know he’s considered a big deal in the art world, but honestly I’ve never really gotten what all the hype is about. I suppose I can appreciate the scale and the forms of some of the work in the same way that I can appreciate the architecture of Frank...
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Can AI and Artists Coexist?
After recording last week’s episode of On Taking Pictures, Bill sent me a link to a video that’s both fascinating and deeply disturbing, called “AI vs Artists: The Biggest Art Heist in History.” The video presents some of the grim facts around how images, including the 5.85 billion uncurated…
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Tool Up!
About a week ago, I jumped back into using Photoshop for the first time since 2018 and I’ve got to tell you, it was kind of like putting on a favorite pair of jeans. Yes, the interface has changed a little and a bunch of terrific new tools have been added—especially Object Select, which I’ll come...
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Swimming in Molasses
I started this Iteration on February 29th—Leap Day—and for me it was a good day, which, frankly, I really needed. In the last Iteration, I talked about how difficult 2023 was for me and in the week or so since I shared it a lot has happened. Probably the biggest thing is that I’ve started going…
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A Sabbatical in Retrospect
I’m not going to bury the lede—2023 was not a great year for me, especially financially. In fact, I think it was one of the worst years I’ve had since I became a solo creative, and for the most part, it was nobody’s fault but mine. One of my favorite movies is High Fidelity (get the book here)…
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Another February 5th
Today is February 5th and it would have been my dad’s 83rd birthday. I normally mark the day by posting a simple message like “I miss you, Dad” on Instagram or Twitter, when Twitter was still a thing and I was still on it. Today, I want to do something a little different and tell you a story. My...
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Details, Obstacles, and Opportunities
A couple weeks ago, I finally bought a set of wireless mics. I had been wanting and maybe even needing a set for a long time as a way to record the random conversations I seem to have with people out in the world on any given day. I’d been looking at them for a while, but I saw a review that…
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Starting Out Heavy
If you’ve spent any time around me at all, you know that I have opinions—lots of them—and I have since I was a kid. Sometimes when I would offer my unsolicited thoughts on various things, my mom would respond with “Oh, there he is…my little critic.” The thing is it’s not just criticism. Not…
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Have Yourself a Holly Jolly…
Well here we are again, nearing the end of one more trip around the sun and I for one cannot wait for it to be over. Christmas used to be my favorite time of year, but that was really because of my mom. She would start decorating the house around Thanksgiving, and when I say decorating, I don’t...
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It’s Not Always an Obvious Connection
Back in the late 70s, there was a terrific documentary on the BBC called Connections. It was hosted by historian and author James Burke and now that I think about it, I don’t remember whether I watched it on PBS or I borrowed VHS copies of it from my freshman English teacher, Mrs. Copeland who…
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Remapping the Road Ahead
As we get into this Iteration, I’d like to take a minute to let you know about some changes that I’m working on that will be rolling out in the coming weeks and months. Iterations will still be weekly (mostly), but I’m going to mix up the types of posts I’ll be including and treat it more like an...
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Learn to Love the Process
Over the past few days, the photography world has been buzzing about the “global shutter” on Sony’s new flagship A9 III. I’ve listened to various YouTubers andinfluencers talk about it as if it’s the second coming. They’re saying “it’s the most remarkable camera I’ve ever used” and calling it a…
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Let It Incubate
They say that one of the best ways to solve a problem—at least a creative one—is actually not to think abut it. After all, how many times have you been doing something like taking a shower or going for a long walk and you find yourself having one of those eureka moments where suddenly the…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Iterations is the audio version of my occasional journal/newsletter where I share stories, personal experiences, and ongoing questions around creativity, process, and making things that matter. Some episodes are more reflective, some are more practical, and some are just me thinking out loud and trying to make sense of things.
HOSTED BY
Jeffery Saddoris
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Iterations have?
Iterations currently has 149 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Iterations about?
Iterations is the audio version of my occasional journal/newsletter where I share stories, personal experiences, and ongoing questions around creativity, process, and making things that matter. Some episodes are more reflective, some are more practical, and some are just me thinking out loud and...
How often does Iterations release new episodes?
Iterations publishes regularly with 149 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Iterations?
You can listen to Iterations on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Iterations?
Iterations is created and hosted by Jeffery Saddoris.
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