Reflecting on the Past Year

This is going to be a fairly irregular personal entry, and about as transparent as it can get when it comes to the machinations of the industry. This past year things have changed more than I could have possibly imagined and I find myself in a similar mental place, at a similar period in time yet again. April and into May is a strange time to be in Thailand, with many public holidays — especially the infamous Songkran water festival which many foreigners don’t realise is the Buddhist New Year, and life pretty much stops for the week surrounding. Once you have experienced Songrkran once, you realise that as a normal person domiciled in Thailand, it is basically the biggest nuisance and best avoided completely. Dararat will usually go home to visit the family and make merit around this time, and I end up alone for the best part of a week. As most of you probably expect who know me personally, I use this time to work and I can get a lot done in a week alone. Not only that but between the heat and the flanking holidays before and after, you may as well write-off April.

This time last year I had just spent Songkran loading up on a back-catalogue of articles for Fuji X Passion, ands we were in conversations regarding taking more responsibilities for the site. I can say with fair confidence that the sheer amount and depth of the work presented clearly changed the minds of the owners regarding this, Fuji X Passion was already beginning to look like a DRobertsPhoto personal blog, both them and I realised this. Some sweet talk regarding pivoting to YouTube and community content was made, which after a year i now see ideas I personally broached and could have implemented in the short side of a week, being used. Now, those were not traditional deal-breakers for me. We had a mutual understanding that I was helping with the site in return for the “credibility” of pitching articles to sponsors and funding my personal work. Not that any credibility was needed, having just finished a six-month serialisation for FUJILOVE and Thypoch on spec, not ad-hoc.

The straw that broke the camels back was inevitably what I believed (and have never been corrected on) was A.I descriptions for Instagram posts, and even more egregiously, the use of third-hand information on the site itself. I knew in that moment that the publication and I had irreconcilable differences. For the first time in a long time, I knew that I was out of my comfort zone. A change needed to be made, and I made it. I walked from Fuji X Passion, and despite well-wishes from the team, hardly a positive outlook with my time there, and how my connection to the publication my have irrevocably stained my reputation. I left having felt something was taken, rather than given. And a little dirty for it…

It was an even stranger feeling knowing that publicly my work with ArtraLab and FUJILOVE could not have been more public and ongoing despite having completed it the year prior. It meant that my dissatisfaction with Fuji X Passion, Fujifilm, growing resentment with my peers, and the industry at-large had to remain internal. I took Laowa, and Meike with me into independent status, and well-wishes from Viltrox and Brightin Star. Goodwill that I had yet to realise would be currency I needed to irrevocably spend to get further in what became the longest attrition I have endured since L&IT with 3rd Parachute Regiment in Catterick during December. Anyway, I am not one to stay stagnant and I began compiling articles of my own, reviews of my on right here on DRobertsPhoto, another commodity I needed to liquidate before the year was out.

I did two things in this time, I decided what it was that I was trying to do, and the answer wasn’t selling glass. Then I decided how I was going to go about it. I wrote my book Too Quiet for the Algorithm, Too Loud for Any Room, though expelled it from my body might me a more adequate description. I looked at what was on the market and realised there was only really one single person that even came close to comparable to me and that was Sabastaio Salgado, so I thought who better to understand what it is that I am doing that the house behind the man? I reached out to the iron-wall of silence and judgement that is TASCHEN, and the Head of Submissions responded within hours, and my roadmap went into full editorial review. I can only speculate, but as I was not handed to an editor and communications remained though Head of Submissions, that it was Benedikt himself who was assessing my work.

Concurrently, I was in discussions with Head of Marketing, Carl Zeiss GmbH for a collaboration with FUJILOVE for what would have been 2026 serialisation. This was all confirmed via gentleman’s handshake and verbally pencilled in. Something I realised later does not mean the same to a corporation as it does to a person like myself. When TASCHEN showed interest, things developed and escalated rapidly, what was to be a collaboration grew to partnership negotiations and exclusivity. At the time, I knew this was not a move I wanted to make, but I wanted leverage with TASCHEN and I wanted to show market feasibility, and there is no higher endorsement as a photographer than one from Carl Zeiss, though I did not stop there either. My informal mentor Stuart Isett, wrote me a recommendation which in any other time would have been an escalator to the top. I received the same from my editor at FUJILOVE, and attacked the biggest guy in the yard yet again; the World Bank Organisation and the International Monetary Fund.

Now, I can only speculate as to what actually happened in those weeks at TASCHEN, but outside of Germany the master himself passed, and Sabastiao Salgado is now no longer with us. For my submission, this meant 2025-mabey even 2030 would be dedicated to in-memoriam of TASCHEN’s (and the world’s) greatest monochrome documentarian. It was not a surprise that TASCHEN declined to proceed. It was a surprise that they did so without refuting the merit of the work presented, considering I valued DRobertsPhoto in the eight-figure range. Now, since this point I have tried to ego-check myself often, but one is lucky, two coincidence, but consistent professional recognition from the height of the industry? That is not ego, that is me figuring out exactly where DRobertsPhoto stood on the field, and I began realising with certainty how much i was undercutting my own ambitions. As if to answer that call, ZEISS demanded full exclusivity, and without TASCHEN or should i say in the hopes of re-negotiation, I took it. At the cost of my entire portfolio, and my entire industry web of connections. All bridges were burned in a single day. And then I burned the last one with ZEISS, when they began to backpedal on what was agreed. I was free, but in the words of Pyrrhus of Epirus, I could not afford another victory such as this one. In the words of what may be an even greater Roman, I adopted the motto “Festina lente” to make haste, slowly. I decided that TASCHEN was still the goal, and that 2030 was not that far, and recognition alone at thirty-tree was an anomaly. I began Discover Temples of Thailand, alone and out of pocket.

Then I wasn’t alone, Dehancer came onboard for the motion companion, Angelbird Technologies delivered on backing and logo-use, I pushed on with F-Stop Gear. But I was handicapped by my optics non-compete. I knew it was the price of disassociation, and I accepted that price despite knowing deep down I could contest it. I had moved from Fuji to Sony already to accommodate the partnership, and despite what ZEISS marketing may be in 2025, their optics were no lesser than ever before. I realised quickly thought that I could not allow for precedent that a partner can mistreat DRobertsPhoto and there be no public consequences, so yet again I reached into my own pocket and bought a 35mm G-Master with the goals of shooting 2026 on a single lens. I didn’t want to swap a blue yolk for a orange, or green one. As much as I enjoyed working with Laowa and ArtraLab, I couldn’t go back to non-EXIF chip lenses. I needed a chain of evidence that started long before the image and continues well after export. Nothing in my non-compete states I cannot use other lenses, and by purchasing it myself and refraining from editorial, I am not advertising a competitor. I respect the spirit of the partnership, even if ZEISS did not, and I want to honour it. If I jumped ship I would be no better than a whore who chooses the warmest bed.

I began Discover Temples of Thailand in earnest, and alongside this my book was picking up steam behind closed doors. I began writing my Substack, filling out my website, reusing the commissioned ZEISS pieces to bring life to what was a closed box of archived work. Then we went to war with Cambodia, encountered a large-scale rabies outbreak, had the worst season of fatal monsoons and tropical storms on-record, and my body failed me for the first time in thirty-three years. On top of this, the IMF had decided on a safer bet for the commission, despite my objective superiority to other candidates and editorial traction at the directorial level became an anonymous rejection. I realised quickly that to these institutions, my work was a wild-thing. It was the fire of a new world Prometheus, and they were scared of getting burned by it. I refused to pander, I refused to play the game, and I refused mediocrity. Fiercely. I turned my attention to what I could, and realised even without the fieldwork. this well was deeper than I had ever imagined. I also realised that entering heated debate was a far better marker of position than accepting the status quo as it is. These institutions do not respond to unwarranted threat, and they do not refuse to work with a TASCHEN-vetted thirty-three year old unless they perceive the threat is larger than the reward. I knew things were stagnant, and the rot was plain to see. My mistake was that I believed this to be an anomaly, not the end-goal of higher machinations. I explained this to Stuart, and he had no words to say. What could he say? He was an observer, I am a participant.

Now, even looking back at how this has changed in the past few months it feels like a lifetime ago. The doctor gave me the all-clear in December 2025, but I don’t think I am coming back from this. There are too many miles on this old girl, not that i won’t keep trying. In fact when I told Stuart I was still going to do the Nakasendo after a year of rehab, I got a “Ganbatte!” But I had made my mind up already. Not just me either, my friend’s business partner left their media agency, and my friend is contemplating stepping away himself. This industry was for two kinds of people, old folks patting themselves on the back for work done decades ago, and young folks burning the candle at both ends for the benefit of others. I am scared that things will never go back to how they were, and every day brings me news that this is the exact trajectory we are on. If I couldn’t spend my days in the paddy’s and outback of Isaan, then I had no USP. Being in the mud is what I did best, what can I do from an air-conditioned office? Well, sometimes we realise that we have been punching down, and the only thing stopping us from the next weight class was a couple of pounds. Did I want to stay in this class at the top of the scale or did I want to try for the Heavyweight? Was I going to let injury, war, pestilence, and cowardice alter my trajectory?

So here I am, Songkran has just passed again and somehow I am still afloat after walking away from the industry, during the middle of what will be known as the largest recession of our lifetime, in a total collapse of the technological industry due to A.I adoption, having decided to open an interactive media studio. When the pond is not big enough, jump into the ocean. When the medicine is too bitter, pour some sugar on it. I have identified as photographer at DRobertsPhoto for almost a decade now. That has been my professional identity, I gave that up. I gave that away. Now I am Creative Director for Banshee Interactive, and those are two very different people.