In this episode, I’ll catch you up on what I’ve been doing since the last episode nine months ago
It’s been a while since the last episode of The Fine Art Photography Podcast, but after a hiatus from recording, I’m ready for a full reboot. Here we go . . .
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Full episode transcript
In this episode: the return of the Fine Art Photography Podcast
[ Intro music ]
Hey everybody, Keith Dotson here welcoming you back to another episode of the Fine Art Photography Podcast.
It’s been a while since my last episode but I’m back now and I thought I’d start by catching up on what I’ve been up to — as a photographer.
For newer listeners who may not know who I am, I’m a professional fine art photographer and I earn my income from selling prints and licensing. And wow has a lot changed since my last post in late 2024.
My photography business has been pretty slow this year — perhaps due to the economic turmoil brought about by our tempestuous new government here in the States, or perhaps unrelated. All I know is I’ll have a big month with a ton of sales, followed by a month with practically nothing.
Making a living as a photographer is tricky even in the best of times, but I persevere with optimism and confidence.
Most of my business comes from interior designers, and I think their market has been iffy since the pandemic, with a slow return to the office. But I have had a surprising surge in International Sales. I shipped prints to Abu Dhabi a few weeks ago — and the cost of shipping doubled the overall amount of the prints sold.
It helps to be flexible with what you do for incomes. I recently accepted a commission to “ageify” a photo of someone’s house in London. They emailed a digital photo, and I made it look abandoned. I know — weird right? That’s not something I’d normally do but it was kinda fun.
Late in 2024, I was invited by a production company in Sydney Australia to take part in a television show being filmed in the American South. Hosted by Welsh actor and comedian Griff Rhys Jones, the travel show featured Jones in various parts of the south doing things and meeting people, and the segment I filmed was about making photographs of abandoned places in the Mississippi Delta.
Abandoned places photography is one of my photographic specialties and I have been in Mississippi quite often, documenting the landscapes and cityscapes and abandoned places there, so this was right up my alley.
It was a fun experience. I travelled to the Delta and spent an afternoon with Griff and the crew.
And while I do have a YouTube channel, it was very odd to have a camera crew following me around as I pretended to make photos! The producer asked for some of the photos to put into the show and In reality, most of what was supplied to the show’s editors was stuff I shot earlier in the day before the crew arrived on location.
At the time I’m recording this, the show is premiering in Australia and the UK. And to this day, I have no idea if my segment was included or if it was cut. Griff told me it would probably be 8 minutes in length if included.
I also made a long road trip across the northern United States to places including Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington State, Northern California, Nevada, Colorado, and Kansas.
Needless to say that trip was epic and exhausting, but I came back with hours of video footage and thousands of photographs — which I am still editing my way through.
Earlier this year, I flew out to Arizona to visit the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff. It was mostly a vacation but I did get some photographs and it was one of the rare occasions I took an airplane rather than driving.
There’s nothing I enjoy about air travel, but sometimes it’s a necessity I suppose.
And I made a pretty major road trip across upstate New York — concentrating mainly on the Mohawk Valley and making photographs of landscapes and abandoned mills, houses, and the like. I followed backroads through the drop dead gorgeous adirondack mountains, and through small Erie Canal mill towns and farming communities.
I was stationed in upstate New York with the Air Force when I was a young guy, but I hadn’t really spent any significant time there since I ended my tour of duty way back in the 80s.
This summer, I finally acted on something I’ve been researching and thinking about for years — I’m teaching myself how to make Platinum / palladium prints. For anyone who isn’t verded in the antique photo processes, platinum printing is an old photo process — it was patented by a man named William Willis in 1873. Whereas gelatin silver prints use silver in the light sensitive emulsion, and cyanotypes use iron, platinum prints use platinum of course — although these days the costs of platinum are so high that palladium is also part of the mix as well.
Platinum / palladium prints are a form of contact printing, with a negative sandwiched over the sensitized paper under glass, and exposed to UV light.
They can be exquisitely beautiful but for me one of the real attractions is that for all intents and purposes they last forever. Some have claimed that they could last 1000 years if cared for properly.
The other thing is that as an artist who sells open edition inkjet prints for a living, platinum / palladium printing gives me a way to offer high end clients a limited edition print with real value and desirability — at least I hope so.
And one last thing before I wrap up this episode. This year marks my 20th anniversary as a serious photographer — what I mean is that I actually started learning photography in junior high and high school, but it was late in 2005 when I began to view photography as something I wanted to pursue with intent.
You see I went to art school with began working as a graphic designer, and in my free time I made artwork with pencils, watercolors — I tried a lot of media. Photography was really something I used to document the lives of my young family and occasionally I’d use a photograph as reference materials for my other art.
But in 2005 that all changed. So this year, I’ve published a 20 year retrospective book called that follows my career from 2005 until 2025. The photographs start with my earliest work and come up to my latest work, and features my favorite images, milestones for some reason, my biggest sellers, and photos that somehow made an impact.
It’s available on my website as a hardback, a paperback, and digital download and I won’t lie — I self-publish these which means they are expensive — very expensive. But the download is affordable and includes a lot of extra material that wouldn’t fit into the limited format of the book.
Check them out if you feel so inclined and thank you!
Ok yall that’s all I’ve got for this episode. I don’t normally talk about myself in this podcast, so please subscribe to hear me discuss other topics in depth as the podcast resumes!
I always post full transcripts on my blog at I catch shadows dot com, and my photographs can be seen at keith dotson dot com.
I’ll talk to you again real soon.
