Nick Fancher 4/3/20 Nick Fancher 4/3/20

What I Learned During My Year Off Social Media

Last month, I returned to social media exactly one year to the day after leaving behind 60,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I made my exit for a number of reasons, with anxiety playing the largest role. I didn’t know where the feeling originated, or much less why, but living with it wasn’t worth what social media was offering me in exchange. After I left, many people (myself included) wondered if my photography business could survive the departure. It turns out that not only did I survive, I also learned how to thrive both personally and professionally in the process…

Nick Fancher 2/17/20 Nick Fancher 2/17/20

Living an Un-curated Life

Today marks the one-year mark of me leaving social media. To say that this past year has been transformative for me would be putting it mildly. I’ve grown more mentally, emotionally, physically, and creatively in the past year than any other time of my life. I’ve come to learn that there was a significant amount of trauma in my past that needed to be addressed and worked through and through the process learned to separate my sense of worth from what I can create or do for others. I’ve learned to appreciate those who have loved me and supported me unconditionally through the years. I began the process of tearing down walls within myself, letting past pains and fears intermingle with current hopes and aspirations. This process, which I refer to as the un-curation of my life, has brought me to a level of peace and self-acceptance that I hadn’t before known and I feel ready to engage the world in a new way.

Nick Fancher 12/17/19 Nick Fancher 12/17/19

Gettin' Weird with Jade

Jade and I have collaborated a bunch of times over the years, most notably on the Beartooth album, Disease. My favorite things about working with her are her punctuality, her professionalism, and most of all her willingness to get weird. This shoot proved to be more of the same…

Nick Fancher 10/29/19 Nick Fancher 10/29/19

His and Hers

This was a fun one. Chyna and I have fallen into a nice rhythm with our shoots, as we have been collaborating every 2-3 months. It goes like this: she shows up with several outfits that she cobbled together from her closet or the thrift store; I look over what she brought and quickly brainstorm how to best light/shoot the looks; we play…

Nick Fancher 9/23/19 Nick Fancher 9/23/19

Opting Out

I’ve had plenty of time to think about my journey as a photographer these past six months since I left social media. I’ve considered how much I’ve grown in the 21 years since I took my first photography course in high school; I’ve taken inventory of my what my journey as a freelancer these past twelve years has entailed; and I’ve spent an especially long time thinking about when and why my anxiety began to spike, ultimately leading me to delete all of my accounts.

Nick Fancher 8/23/19 Nick Fancher 8/23/19

The Ghost of Her

I recently scheduled a personal shoot with model Mallory Landis and hair/makeup artist Andi Summer. As usual I went in the shoot with little to no idea of how I would light/shoot it, and unsurprisingly I went with ghosty, hazy images as I’ve been frequently exploring these past few months. The hazy, semi-solarized duotone shots that I came away with made me quite happy. I haven’t made anything quite like it before and am excited to explore it further.

Nick Fancher 8/8/19 Nick Fancher 8/8/19

Monster Christ

If you’ve been following my blog for much time at all you’ve no doubt seen me mention Sara Lando’s online photography course, The Support Group for Lazy Photographers. As the final assignment in her 12-week course we were given the challenge of recreating an iconic photo but in a way that’s unique to our way of seeing/shooting. I chose to recreate Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ.

Nick Fancher 6/7/19 Nick Fancher 6/7/19

Life on the Other Side

It’s been nearly four months since I deleted my social media accounts. By “delete” I don’t mean that I simply removed the apps from my phone. I mean that I closed the accounts, resulting in the loss of nearly 60,000 followers (if you’re interested in reading my original statement on this, visit my blog post). In my post I list a number of reasons for leaving social media, such as follower engagement overly influencing the ways in which I create; an increase in anxiety, brought on my social media; the investment of hundreds of hours per year on with little quantifiable pay-off.

Nick Fancher 5/1/19 Nick Fancher 5/1/19

Strata I

This past month I have begun working on a new series, the working title being Strata. I am dealing with obscuring my subject by shooting through a range of different materials. Though I am still early on in the exploration and not sure how exactly it will evolve, my goal is to capture the nature of humans at a spirit level, rather than make portraits of a specific person.

Nick Fancher 3/15/19 Nick Fancher 3/15/19

Yin & Yang

Nick Fancher 3/6/19 Nick Fancher 3/6/19

Surrender

As of late, my need to explore studio lighting has waned. I still have the drive to create, but I find myself at a place where I am uncertain how to proceed. Light exploration no longer alone satiates my creative needs. There’s no more mystery in the discovery for me. It’s time to push my limits again. I need to get outside my head and my go-to techniques. But how does one simply pull themselves up by their artistic bootstraps? I need something to force my creative hand.