What about a piece of glass between you two? Or a piece of plywood or other thin, flat item that can be viewed on-end? That said, how I would stage that would probably be far too risque for these photos (hands trying to touch, leaning in and yearning)

I really like the bookshelf idea. But for the beach, some “beach stuff” that you can do together like a beach ball and I like the sand castle idea

I just use Dropbox

I write down my experimental ideas, take notes during said experiments/shoots, write all my development notes, and paste examples inside.

Depends!

I have a rule with art photography, wherein I don’t allow too many layers without flattening the image. Taught me to learn when enough was enough and to stop second guessing myself.

That said, for my professional work I did have to figure out how much was “enough”. And indeed, sometimes small things get noticed. Something I like to do on airplanes is mark up fashion magazines with a sharpie, identifying the lighting setups and other technical aspects of photography. I’ve seen plenty of technical mistakes in large ad campaigns.

Almost everything, it’s a great general purpose lens. Like a 24-70 f2.8 but giving up a stop of aperture for more zoom.

I used a Sigma Art 24-105 as my work workhorse for years (until I dropped it)

Congrats! There’s something special about seeing your work in print, especially in a publication!

The hardest magazine to get into is your first

One of the problems with social media is that the algorithms are designed, among other things, to show you more of what you’ve already seen/liked; the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.

Originality will do well as a flash-in-the-pan occasionally, only to be followed by more of the same.

This can even be an issue with independent platforms and artists that are Patreon supported. Someone I know recently lamented that all their crowd wants to see is “more and more film soup”, the other projects be damned.

Just one of many reasons why I don’t chase likes on social media (and in fact, aren’t on it).