The Terrible Creative
by Patrick Fore
Latest episode
Before Episode 081
Before Episode 081
About this podcast
The Terrible Creative is a storytelling podcast for photographers, designers, and creative professionals working through the parts of the creative process no gear review or business course ever covers.
Each episode is 30 to 40 minutes. Solo. Story-driven. Built around mental health, artistic identity, and what honest work costs in a career rewarding performance over truth.
This is not a photography podcast about cameras, presets, or client strategy. This is a podcast about the inner experience of being a creative professional, made for the mid-career photographer or designer who has mastered the technical side but lost the thread.
Hosted by Patrick Fore, commercial photographer, author, and former lead photographer and brand designer for Taylor Guitars. His work has appeared globally for clients like Nike, Petco, and Verizon. He built this show because none of the podcasts he found addressed the real problem.
If you are a photographer or creative professional who feels competent on the outside and quietly lost on the inside, you are a Terrible Creative. This is your podcast.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 84 episodes
- Before Episode 081 · 13 min · Episode 81Dear Terrible Friends, This episode is going to be a little different. I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be taking a little bit of a break for a bit. I’m actually about…
- Worth - Why Great Photographers Get $600 Clients · 1 h 2 min · Episode 80Episode 80 — Worth Photographers love telling each other to “know your worth.” Okay. What’s mine? One client trusts you with a production worth tens of thousands of dollars…
- Photography - The Voice - What Do You Actually Want To Make? - Part Three · 42 min · Episode 79You can buy the camera. You can learn the lighting. You can spend years mastering the technical side of photography until the camera finally gets out of the way. Then comes the…
- Photography - The Gear, The Craft, and The Voice - Part Two · 47 min · Episode 78There is a quiet, infuriating moment every creator faces: looking at the LCD screen and realizing the image in front of you isn't even in the same conversation as the one living…
- Photography - The Gear, The Craft, and The Voice - Part One · 41 min · Episode 77Photography: The Gear, The Craft & The Voice — Part One Every photographer inherits a definition of good before they've earned one. This episode is about where that definition…
- Creep - You don't need a harder no. You need a better sentence. · 50 min · Episode 76A client says "we love these." Then they ask for more images, for the same money, and call it a collaboration. This episode is about what that word is actually doing to you, why…
- The Audit Part II - The Soul of the C-Stand - What does competence actually look like? · 49 min · Episode 75A lot of photographers assume it’s your portfolio. Your lighting. Your gear. Maybe your day rate. I’m not so sure anymore. A few weeks ago I spent three and a half days…
- Good Faith - The Small Decisions That Destroy Photography Careers · 1 h 0 min · Episode 74Every creative career begins with an invisible handshake. Before the photographs exist, before the campaign launches, before the work is delivered, someone decides to trust you…
- The Imposter Filter - What If Confidence Was Never the Requirement For Success? · 28 min · Episode 73Have you ever sat in a high-stakes room, looked around at the expensive titles and corporate validation, and quietly wondered when the actual adults were going to arrive to take…
- The Missing Map - How To Become A Commercial Photographer in 2026 · 42 min · Episode 72A friend of mine named Megan has spent more than a decade making beautiful, deeply human photographs of families. The kind of work that makes you feel something long after you’ve…
- Let's Talk Money (Again) - A Terrible Conversation with Shelly Waldman · 1 h 45 min · Episode 71This week, we are throwing a match into one of the most heavily guarded hiding places in the creative industry: financial trauma, pricing shame, and the business choices we make…
- Money Talks - Audiobook Preview: The psychology of undercharging and how financial stability creates true creative freedom. · 43 min · Episode 70We are doing something a little different this week. To give the live microphone a brief rest, we are pulling back the curtain on a project that has been built in the dark for…
- We’ll See - The quiet anxiety of marketing · 40 min · Episode 69She said two words and I haven't stopped thinking about them since. This episode started at an APA event in La Mesa, in an artist's studio, in a conversation with a commercial…
- Playing Hurt - How Professional Creatives Perform at Full Capacity When Everything Goes Wrong · 40 min · Episode 68There is a version of this job that looks incredible from the outside. The gear. The clients. The portfolio. What nobody sees is what it costs to produce it. In this episode I'm…
- Death Grip - Google AI Just Changed How Clients Find You. Here's What It Can't Replace. · 25 min · Episode 67Something shifted last week. Not dramatically. Quietly, the way things in this industry tend to change — while you're working, while you're trying to keep the phone ringing…
- Mute - You've Spent Years Getting Good. Do You Have Anything Left to Say? · 44 min · Episode 66There is a man standing in a clearing in Arkansas with a yellow guitar, singing about insulin prices to nobody in particular. Three million people found him. Not because of the…
- Clown Nose - What the Creator Economy Actually Costs a Working Creative · 44 min · Episode 65There's a composite photographer in this episode named Nate. His details have been changed. His situation has not. This episode is about the creator economy — what it actually…
- Terrible Conversations - Tom Wright - Tom Wright on Creative Work and Photography · 1 h 7 min · Episode 64Terrible Conversations w/ Tom Wright Tom Wright is a photography consultant based in Burnley, UK. He calls himself a phototherapist, and no, he's not a doctor. But photographers…
- Stop Being A Tool - Why Creatives Were Never Just Useful · 40 min · Episode 64We’ve spent a century conditioning ourselves to believe that if we aren’t "producing," we aren't "valuable." But in 2026, the machines can out-produce us all. This episode is…
- The Cost of Getting Good - The Cost of Getting Good - How Success Becomes a Creative Trap for Creatives · 31 min · Episode 63Getting good at your craft is supposed to be the goal. But for a lot of us, competence became the cage. This episode is about the feedback loop nobody warns you about: the better…
