PHOTOGRAPHER NOAH KALINA ON VIBE CODING, DIRECT OUTREACH, AND OWNING YOUR WORK ONLINE

Had a great conversation with photographer Noah Kalina today, about a variety of creative subjects.

We talked about his recent love for building websites to host his creative work.

“I use Claude code, but it has just been like this giant unlock for my creativity — and mostly in service of it. It’s like all of these pictures that just do not feel like they have a home anymore on the internet.

Of all of the sites we’ve been through — for me, it’s 25 years on the internet — I’m no stranger to seeing sites come and go and moving on or whatever. But now it really just feels like it’s all scattered and blown up.

There is no real one place anymore. But what does feel good is your place, your website. For me, it’s noahkalina.com, and then I’m making subdomains off of that.”

On the withering away of social media, and the return to personal sites:

“With the destruction of like social media as we know it, or at least the change in it, I think there’s nothing better now than feeling like, oh, let’s full circle back to our personal websites and like make them interesting

On reaching out, connecting directly with people:

“It is really just about individual connections and just reaching out… the amount of people who ignore these things, it’s 99% essentially, but it’s fishing and you got — in some ways you got to enjoy just being out there and being prepared to not catch anything.”

We talked work on YouTube, notably Hotline Show, and how making the work is the point, rather than trying to hit a home run with every upload.

“Just like any sort of ongoing art project, it’s evolving over time and I’m trying to change it, I’m trying to tweak it, trying to figure out what’s working or what isn’t working. It’s impossible to be good every week, every day. If I’m good once a month, once a month, I’m good.”

And I so appreciate the idea of doing it the way you want to do it. Just because you can make fancy thumbnails to get more clicks, doesn’t mean you should.

“I don’t do the traditional YouTube thumbnail where it’s a big smiley face or something and graphics and letters and something exploding in the background that makes it click-worthy. YouTube thumbnails are awful. I reject that aesthetic. If you put teeth and a smile, I think it adds 500 views to a YouTube video.”

Be sure to check out all of Noah Kalina’s amazing portraits, his archive, his newsletter – he made that last one after our pal Diana asked about making a subdomain for his newsletter!