Top Five Photography Podcasts That Will Make You A Better Photographer

List updated March 2022

Tired of listening to the same music at the gym or during road trips? Try a photography podcast!

These are the top photography podcasts that I listen to for inspiration.  Most of them are heavy on the philosophical & anecdotal side. While the tech is important, I ultimately believe that it’s the philosophy that will make you a better photographer. A $2,000 lens is only as good as the $50 photographer, right?

What these podcasts are not:

• Gear reviews. Listening to talk about MTF curves for 20 minutes puts me to sleep and won’t make anyone a better photographer. Yes, some of these podcasts do include the occasional gear-related episode, but for the most part, they’re not hour-long billboards.
• Chitchat and small talk. Again, there are only so many hours in the day. Most of us want to make the most of our available time.
• “Dead” podcasts. There are a number of excellent podcasts you should listen to that are no longer active. I wanted to include a lot of these, maybe I will someday in a later list, but the following podcasts are all still creating new content as of March 2022.

So without further ado, these are the top photography podcasts on my playlist

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1.  LensWork

Website | iTunes

Master photographer and educator Brooks Jensen records short, easily-digestible musings about the future of photography, philosophy on art, marketing, etc. Seriously, each episode only lasts a few minutes, but you’ll ponder the content for the rest of the day.

This podcast has been around since 2004 and claims to be the longest-running photography podcast ever. Actually, there weren’t even iPods when the first episodes came out so they were more of just mini audio blogs.

The other day he started talking about how he got in trouble with his wife for throwing away the chicken carcass as she was trying to make chicken soup, and not keeping it for the pot. Where is this going? Then he went into an anecdote about letting your photography stew to bring out maximum flavor, and it really got me thinking. He’s really helped push the creative side of my brain.

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2.  The Candid Frame

Website | iTunes

The Candid Frame is another extremely long-running photography podcast, having been around since 2006. I think this speaks to its quality.

Photographer and educator Ibarionex Perello invites both well-known and obscure photographers to this interview format. The photographers run the gamut of genres and styles, and to be honest, I do skip some episodes if the photographer is talking about things I’m not interested in.

But Ibarionex is a wonderful interviewer, able to pull some great information and insight out of these photographers. Many of them talk about their projects, how they got started, and philosophical views of humanity and art. It’s a great podcast to get ideas for your own photography and just general inspiration.

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3.  Behind the Shot

Website | iTunes

Music photographer and photography educator Steve Brazill hosts this mostly weekly podcast with some exceptionally great photographers. Although I had listened to the podcast for some time, it never occurred to me to include it on this list because of the format. But then I realized, wow, you really can learn a lot here!

This video podcast is a breakdown of photographers’ iconic photos. After a quick discussion on photography philosophy and gear, Steve and his guest talk about what it took to get the shot. This is a great time to learn the trials and techniques that successful photographers have used in order to create compelling images.

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4.  The Digital Story Photography Podcast

Website | iTunes

Derrick Story is a fun & easy photographer to listen to and is known as “the nimble photographer.” He packs light and specializes in low-footprint travel photography. Right up my alley!

Derrick features a wide range of practical tips about improving your photography. Every now and then he’ll venture into gear and current events, but overall he’ll leave you with some great ideas to ponder.

New episodes come out every week and run roughly 30 minutes in length.

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5. This Week in Photo (TWiP)

Website | iTunes

Frederick Van Johnson brings a great energy to this weekly podcast. But don’t let the name fool you, it’s not just a weekly digest of photography news and current events.

More often than not, Frederick brings on great guests with high relevance in the photography community, like executives at Adobe and other photography industry insiders. He’ll also bring on great photographers who can teach you about business and photography.

Some episodes may be completely irrelevant to you, like deep dives into a camera system or post-processing software. But for the most part, I’m glad this is in my photography podcast subscriptions. I get a lot out of the episodes that I do listen to, which are most of them, and just skip the ones that don’t apply to me.

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Honorable Mentions

Here are a few more photography podcasts that I love to listen to, and they’d be included in the above list if there was more room.

Hit the Streets with Valérie Jardin: Street photographer Valérie Jardin has a number of great guests who talk about storytelling, technique, ethics, and creativity. It’s a great source of inspiration and know-how for all photographers. And I’m not biased towards it because I was a guest 🙂

FujiLove Podcast: This is the best podcast for Fujifilm owners (I didn’t include it in my top five only to make the list more generic). There’s a new host, and you’ll find some inspiration and learn a lot about how to use your Fujifilm camera to its maximum potential.

PetaPixel Photography Podcast: Sharky James is a fun guy to listen to and runs down the latest news from the photography world and adds in some gear reviews. Entertaining and contains some useful information, but a lot of it is irrelevant to me so I skip through it. Still, I don’t miss an episode.

What are your favorite photography podcasts? Leave ’em in the comments below and I’ll check it out if I haven’t heard it.