How Larry Chen, Chris Burkard, and Steve McCurry Are Changing the Way I Shoot
Most years I try to get better by taking things away. Fewer options, tighter constraints, simpler choices. This year I want to do the opposite. I want to broaden my approach. Let me explain a little bit.
In previous years I’ve often picked one theme or idea I want to photograph, or—more often—limited myself to one camera or focal length and tried to see the world through that limitation.
Recently I’ve been inspired by three photographers who approach the art and craft of photography completely differently: Larry Chen, Chris Burkard, and Steve McCurry.
Larry Chen is a self-described automotive and car culture photographer. If you’re into car culture, you’ve seen his images. He covers some of the biggest races and events in the world, and he’s photographed features of some of the best cars and designers out there. He’s a modern legend in the scene and massively inspirational to me.
Chris Burkard is an adventure photographer and has photographed climbing, cycling, surfing, and all kinds of adventure sports all over the world. His sense of moment and color is incredible. His landscapes are stunning, but the way he places human figures inside them gives the images even more impact and beauty.
Steve McCurry shouldn’t need an introduction. He’s a Magnum and National Geographic photographer who has been working for decades and has made some of the most famous images the world has ever seen. His compositions are some of the best I’ve ever seen—while still capturing moments that feel perfectly timed.
I’m not exactly sure why I’ve been drawn to these guys recently, but there are a few common threads between that have been particularly inspiring to me and things I want to strive for in the new year.
Clean color. This doesn’t mean boring, it just means they aren’t leaning on heavy post-processing to make the image impactful. They aren’t faking a film look or doing anything tricky, they’re letting the image speak for itself: light, composition, color, and subject. That doesn’t mean they aren’t editing their photos. It means they’re making strong images so they don’t have to over-edit them.
They use all the focal lengths. This is the hardest part for me, but also the most exciting. All three of these photographers aren’t just willing to use different focal lengths, they embrace it. Ultrawides, normals, portrait telephotos, extra long lenses… whatever lens gets the job done and tells the best story, that’s what they use.
The subject is the most important thing. All three of these guys are amazing technicians and masters of light and composition, but more importantly, they’re aiming their cameras at interesting things. They’re telling a story. They aren’t just pointing their cameras at nice light, they have a perspective, a view of the world, and something to say, whether that’s adventure sports, car culture and racing, or foreign cultures.
These are the photographers I’m learning from right now, and these are the skills I want to work on in 2026. I want to minimize my color editing because if it isn’t a good photo clean, it won’t be a good photo with fancy editing. I want to embrace all the focal lengths and stop pigeon-holing myself into just a normal lens. And I want to seek out more interesting things to photograph, I want to tell more stories and capture more of the interesting parts of the world around me.
If I can do those three things consistently, I think my work will change in a real way. That’s my goal this year. What’s yours? What are you working on? Who’s inspiring you?
