S2.E9 – Take More Bad Photos: Joe Greer on Film, Street, and Staying a Kid in the Candy Shop

In this episode of f/22, Greg Lutze and Zach Hodges sit down with photographer Joe Greer in Nashville. As a broke college student he saved for a month to buy an iPhone 4 just to get on Instagram, then spent every free hour shooting the Pacific Northwest. A curator job at VSCO followed, ten months he still calls his art school, spent studying Alex Webb and William Eggleston and sorting tens of thousands of photographs a day. Then a Portland church cut his position right before Christmas in 2016, and going freelance meant seven months without a single reply.
New York broke it open. Armed with a Leica M6, he got hooked on street photography and kept posting it even as it cost him followers. That way of seeing became his calling card, and brands including Leica, Bandit Running, and Gatorade started hiring him for exactly it while his agent Ernesto handled the business. He walks through NYC I Love You, built from 150 undeveloped rolls when COVID emptied the streets, and India Volume 1, the 156 photos drawn from seven years of trips and designed by Mouthwash Studios. He breaks down critical focus over zone focus, why he takes far more bad photos than good ones, and why he refuses to stay in one lane. No off switch, no plan to retire, and every frame he has ever shared was edited in VSCO.
This episode explores
• Building your own photo education from books, documentaries, and the greats
• Turning personal work into the thing brands hire you for
• What a rep actually does, and why giving up 20% is worth it
• Walking onto a commercial set without a shot list
• Critical focus versus zone focus, and what a real hit rate takes
• Why bad photos and refusing to niche down keep a career alive
Follow Joe:
Instagram: instagram.com/ioegreer
Website: ioe.photography
Chapters:
00:00 A Florida Kid, an iPhone, and the Leica That Changed Everything
01:40 From Florida to shooting the Pacific Northwest on an iPhone
02:21 Discovering #VSCOcam and falling for photography
04:35 Getting hired at VSCO, his art school
06:53 How curating thousands of photos sharpened his eye
08:13 Teaching yourself from photo books and the greats
10:10 Two desert-island books, Meyerowitz and Robert Frank
11:36 Hunger, hardship, and the drive to go pro
12:47 Let go before Christmas, the leap to freelance
13:53 Moving to NYC and getting hooked on the streets
14:55 The wedding-gift Canon and buying a Leica M6
16:20 Getting repped, what a photo agent actually does
18:48 Turning a street eye into commercial work
22:02 Why he shoots without a shot list
24:49 Taking the risk when street photography wasn't cool
27:06 Books over likes, what makes a great photograph
28:44 NYC I Love You, a love letter on 150 rolls of film
29:56 India, the Google trip that started seven years of work
31:37 The XPan, black and white, and The Art of Devotion
33:01 Sequencing the book and letting go of favorites
35:23 The secret to a high hit rate, critical focus
37:51 Zone focus versus critical focus, explained
39:29 Take more bad photos
42:35 Advice, consistency, sharing, and press publish
45:13 Don't niche down, photograph what you love
47:38 No off switch, no retirement
48:44 Where to find Joe, and why it's all edited in VSCO
Big thanks to Harlowe Lights for the lighting of this episode, and Shure Mics for the audio.
#JoeGreer #StreetPhotography #FilmPhotography #LeicaM6 #35mm #PhotoBooks #IndiaPhotography #ShootFilm #F22Series #VSCO