The Geometry of Indifference

Alex Coghe — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:03:01 -0400

There is a kind of photography that pretends to be neutral. Flat surfaces, clean lines, ordinary spaces. Nothing dramatic, nothing loud, nothing that asks to be looked at twice. It's often dismissed as cold, detached, even empty. But that reading is too easy. What we call indifference is rarely indifference. It is a position.

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What Photographers Can Learn From Hunter S. Thompson

Alex Coghe — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:03:02 -0400

Hunter S. Thompson is certainly one of my references — not because he ever cared about photography, but because he understood something most photographers avoid.

Thompson wasn't just a journalist. He was the fracture inside the story, the man who erased the polite distance between observer and event and replaced it with something far more unstable. Gonzo wasn't a style. It was a position. A refusal to stand outside. He didn't look at the world — he entered it and let it deform him.

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The Power of Almost Nothing: Why the Square Frame Changes Everything in Street Photography

Alex Coghe — Sat, 09 May 2026 17:03:02 -0400

There's a strange misconception in street photography: that more is more. More chaos. More layers. More subjects. More "decisive moments."

But what if the real power lies somewhere else entirely? What if the strongest images are the ones that almost don't exist? And what if the format itself is the first, decisive cut?

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I Still Shoot With an iPhone 8 in 2026 and I Don't Plan to Upgrade

Alex Coghe — Tue, 05 May 2026 12:03:02 -0400

Let's get this out of the way: this is not nostalgia.

I'm not trying to "bring back" anything, especially a smartphone. I'm not interested in retro aesthetics for the sake of it. And I'm definitely not here to argue that older technology is somehow superior.

I use an iPhone 8 because it works for me, and a smartphone for me is just a smartphone — something I use to communicate.

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Most Photographers Are Boring

Alex Coghe — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:03:01 -0400

There, I said it. Not bad. Not incompetent. Not untalented. Boring. And boring is far worse.

Bad photography can at least be entertaining. It can crash through the wall drunk at two in the morning, bleeding from the forehead, demanding another round. Boring photography arrives exactly on time, wipes its shoes at the door, and asks where you keep the coasters.

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Why 28mm, 35mm, and 50mm Shaped the Way We Photograph Cities

Alex Coghe — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 17:03:01 -0400

In photography, style is often discussed in terms of subject matter, color, or composition. Certainly important aspects to consider, but much less frequently do we talk about something equally decisive: focal length. Yet if you look closely at the history of urban landscape photography, focal length reveals itself as a kind of quiet grammar.

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Street Photography Is Dead. Smartphones Killed It and That’s a Good Thing

Alex Coghe — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:03:01 -0400

There's a sentence that keeps coming back in photography circles: street photography is dead.

Most people say it with nostalgia. Some say it with frustration. A few say it like a provocation.

They're all wrong. And right.

Street photography isn't dead because people stopped doing it. It's "dead" because everyone started.

The Real Problem Isn’t Death. It’s Saturation.

We are producing more images today than at any other point in history. Every street corner, every passing gesture, every accidental juxtaposition: it's all being photographed, constantly.

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New Topographics in the Age of Permanent Change

Alex Coghe — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 12:03:01 -0400

Look around any expanding city today. Warehouses rise where fields stood five years ago. Housing developments stretch toward dry hills. Highways carve through fragile terrain. Data centers replace factories. The landscape is no longer something we visit. It is something we continuously build, erase, and rebuild. It is progress, they say.

If photography once sought the sublime in untouched nature, our era demands something else: a sustained, critical observation of the man-altered world.

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The Face Is Not Innocent

Alex Coghe — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:03:01 -0400

Portraiture did not begin with photography. It began with control. Long before the camera, someone was already deciding how a face should be seen, remembered, and fixed in time. The portrait has always been an act of authority. Photography didn't change that; it just made the act faster and more invisible.

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The Most Important Skill in Street Photography Has Nothing to Do With Your Camera

Alex Coghe — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:09:01 -0500

Street photography is about decisions, not perfection. That’s the difference between a picture and a moment that stays alive.

The street doesn’t give you time to adjust your settings, fix your framing, or wait for better light. It gives you a fraction of a second and asks one simple question: are you ready to choose?

Every strong street photograph starts with a decision. To stop. To move. To react. To trust your instinct.

Miss that moment and it’s gone forever.

The Photograph

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Why I Went Back to DSLR After a Decade of Mirrorless

Alex Coghe — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:03:01 -0500

I was an early mirrorless adopter. Not in the “influencer early” sense, but back when using mirrorless for professional work still meant explaining yourself. Other photographers said I was crazy, that I was just betting on a passing technology.

Around 2010, I switched to mirrorless because it made sense to me: smaller cameras, lighter kits, fewer mechanical parts, and a clear direction toward the future. For years, mirrorless systems were my primary working tools. Over a decade, I have worked with cameras made by Panasonic, Olympus, Canon, Ricoh, Leica, and Fujifilm.

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Recent articles from Alex Coghe on Fstoppers.com

The Geometry of Indifference

What Photographers Can Learn From Hunter S. Thompson

The Power of Almost Nothing: Why the Square Frame Changes Everything in Street Photography

I Still Shoot With an iPhone 8 in 2026 and I Don't Plan to Upgrade

Most Photographers Are Boring

Why 28mm, 35mm, and 50mm Shaped the Way We Photograph Cities

Street Photography Is Dead. Smartphones Killed It and That’s a Good Thing

New Topographics in the Age of Permanent Change

The Face Is Not Innocent

The Most Important Skill in Street Photography Has Nothing to Do With Your Camera

Why I Went Back to DSLR After a Decade of Mirrorless