Blog Post Title Two

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Like A Fine Wine, Street Photography Needs Time

It’s silly to think that all products have the potential to get better or gain value as time passes. In fact, it’s quite often the other way around, as with anything that depreciates–be it your car that loses nearly half its value the moment you drive it off the lot or your iPhone that’s digitally “outdated” just three years after it’s been released.

Even with artwork, simply adding time doesn’t necessarily result in a more profound or meaningful piece–believe me, my childhood paintings are an embarrassingly real testament to that.

I kid you not, there is one painting that, to this day, still hangs in my childhood bedroom, and on said painting, inscribed in 2009-era acrylic oil paint are the lyrics of “If Everyone Cared”, a Nickelback song set against what one might surmise is a very poor attempt at a depiction of an otherworldly sunset. I’m still not sure whether to thank my mom for supporting my nascent artwork or for perpetuating the most embarrassing creative time in my life.

But enough about my Nickelback days, let’s get to the good stuff: fine wine and great street photography. What can the first teach us about creating the second?

If you don’t read past this part: the answer is an acceptance and appreciation of delayed gratification.

A selection of my recent street photographs (Jack Cohen, 2017 & 2018)

Still here? Great, let me explain what I mean.

When a wine is first bottled, it often doesn’t deserve to see the light of day, or rather the inside of your glass, for many years to come. The winemaker makes an educated assumption that the bottle’s accumulated value, both from a financial perspective and a general taste perspective, will only improve over time. Making great street photographs is not unlike making great wine and here’s why.

Your average city street scene is often comprised of various visuals including people, businesses, structures, waste, and much more. A present day photograph of this scene has very little artistic impact or historical value at that point in time.

But, just as a wine comes into its own over time, so too does a single street photograph.

With time…

…what was once an unassuming storefront sign, becomes a lesson in historic small business design trends.

…what was once the daily routine of a humble shoeshiner in Central Park becomes a window into the how city folk interacted with their local parks and vendors back then.

…what was once a modest car bumper or tail light becomes an representation of the era’s automotive vogue.

All of this is to say is that both great wine and great street photography are created by someone who can accept and appreciate delayed gratification.

When I used to roam the streets of Manhattan with my camera (DSLR or phone), I would always look for miraculous moments. The one in a million shot, some unusual scene, etc. And if I didn’t find any, which was often the case, I’d go home, empty-handed.

What I recently realized is that the most rewarding part of the street photograph creation is not in the immediate scene that you capture and can instantly review, but rather in what that photo can and will become and represent years from now.

Vivian Maier (1926–2009), one of my favorite photographers, exemplified this perfectly. Nowadays, she is one of the most celebrated street photographers of her time, but during her lifetime she was completely unknown, except as a humble nanny in Chicago. Unbeknownst to most, she had deep passion for capturing the streets around her through photography. She snapped *hundreds of thousands* of shots of average, daily life. The crazy part? She never developed a single photo while she was alive.

How’s that for delayed gratification?

Credit: Vivian Maier

As a brief aside, the story behind her and how her work was discovered and ultimately shared with the world is not without it’s controversies, but if you’re interested, I highly recommend watching Finding Vivian Maier on Netflix.

I mention Maier because her work has not only inspired me to get back out on the streets, but also to really appreciate that the gratification I’ll derive from my work will not come anytime soon. And I’m ok with that.

It’s a life lesson that can be extrapolated to areas outside of fine wine and street photography, especially in an era obsessed with instant gratification.

If you can become comfortable with this delay, you’ll free yourself up to do work, create art, and build things that you never would’ve considered.

See you tomorrow.

You Can Always Make It Better, But Maybe You Shouldn’t

And no, I’m not talking about better AC or faster routes in the ubiquitous ride-sharing service. Rather, I’m talking about how, as a society, we have become *obsessed* with optimizing every part of our lives constantly–sometimes down to the minute.

Optimizing our looks, our homes, our relationships, our work, our knowledge, our time, and the list goes on. In many cases, optimization really isn’t a bad thing. We’re wired to want to tinker with our lives to make them better.

Because better’s always better, right? Or is it?

I’ve recently realized that the law of diminishing returns also applies to optimization of our lives. When we start to over-optimize everything, we run the risk of not enjoying the present state of anything.

Now, I’m not arguing that we all live in a sub-state of happiness where we willingly ignore improving the aspects of our lives that we know we could improve. I’m simply saying that for the betterment of our mental health and overall enjoyment of our lives, we can and should give ourselves a break once in a while. Be okay with components of your life that aren’t perfect and maybe shouldn’t be right this second.

Lastly, I’ll share two quick examples that sparked my interest in this over-optimization theory:

The first is an article by Nicolas Cole, one of my favorite writers on Medium, that urges entrepreneurs, writers, and dreamers to stop withholding imperfect work from the public in fear that the ‘in progress’ nature of said work will hinder their overall success. In fact, he argues, the opposite is true.

The second is a piece by Tim Herrera. He recently wrote a great article in The New York Times, in which he describes the crippling Fear Of Better Options, F.O.B.O for short. It’s the “spiral we fall into when we obsessively research every possible option when faced with a decision, fearing we’ll miss out on the ‘best’ one.” Interestingly enough, Herrera also invented the term F.O.M.O, which once my mom learned, realized she definitely suffered from.

Both of those articles prompted me to start writing daily–which, gosh darnit, I hope I can keep up, if even just for a little while.

I’ll leave you with this: Today, think about what in your lives you’re unnecessarily putting pressure on yourself to optimize.

Then consider whether you can live in a world where these small imperfections are actually manageable and you can take back a few acres of mental head space to dedicate to something else that makes you happy.

See you tomorrow.

Why It’s Important To Look Up

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved taking photos. My first camera was a simple Kodak disposable at a 9th birthday party. Now, I shoot with a Nikon D850 as I’ve gathered lenses and experience throughout the years. My parents, grandparents, heck, even my great grandparents, chose photography as the medium through which they wanted to capture the lives of themselves and their loved ones.

While none of my recent ancestors or relatives were professional photographers, the images they captured (a few shared here above), have this nostalgic beauty that I was immediately drawn to as a young boy. They didn’t overthink photography as an art, but rather they simply froze these familial moments in time through a quick snap here or there. Through their dedication to nonchalant photographic documentation, my family has amassed thousands of these photos through the past few generations. I quickly fell in love with photography as *my* medium of choice for seizing the fleeting moments of life.

<Snapshots from my recent trip to Brazil taken on $4 disposable cameras>

But photography’s influence on my life has been more than just a way to capture moments, it has taught me to look at the world around me more inquisitively and may, in fact, be part of the genesis of my curiosity. Photography has taught me to look more intentionally at those places most overlook. To wait the extra second for the mosaic of a golden hour street scene to unfold. To walk even just a bit slower to appreciate the colorful chaos that jostles by me on these New York streets. To look up when everyone’s heads are down.

Photography has taught me to look more intentionally at those places most overlook.

So today, as you sit at your desk, or ride your bike home, or turn down for bed, take a pause and examine something familiar in an unfamiliar way. And who knows, maybe one time you’ll capture something–either with your eyes or with a camera–that you didn’t expect.

I’m Curious, But That’s The Problem

If nothing else, I’m curious. But therein lies the rub. As I sit here on my couch, fully-clothed for work, which begins in about 15 minutes, I’m wrestling with ~ten different ideas for what to write about in this new digital space of mine. What I should focus on.

My colleagues joke that I love everything–that they’re hard pressed to find something that I dislike. Well, except for anchovies. I really don’t like anchovies. And they’re not wrong. One of my most frustrating idiosyncrasies is that I’m absolutely, positively, insatiably curious. Some of my top interests are photography (I’ve chosen to feature one of my favorite photos above), space, science, art, and history. But it doesn’t stop there. To be honest, I don’t know where it does. One of my most frustrating idiosyncrasies is that I’m absolutely, positively, insatiably curious.

I’ve been meaning to write more to see what it’s like so I guess you could call this a first attempt to do just that. But let’s just agree, here and now, you and me, that neither of us will put too much pressure on what’s written here. Of course, I’ll try to improve with each post, but I’m using this space more as a creative canvas for which to make written doodles on than as expressions of my most eloquent thoughts.

As a final thought in this semi-ramble of an introductory post, I want to share one last thing, and this is a less wishy-washy point: I hope that through my writing, I can transpose some element of positivity and curiosity into your world.

I’m going to try to make this a daily endeavor, but stick with me if I falter.

I’ll leave you with three things that have recently inspired me:

1. This weekly newsletter by Josh Spector called For The Interested.

2. This website that focuses only on positive news called FutureCrunch.

3. This recent NYT article about The Power of Positive People.