50 Years of Photography, Travel & Conservation | Art Wolfe (EP170)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, g' day everybody and welcome back to the Camera Life podcast. It is Thursday 2nd April, 2026 here. Here, at least in Australia. However, if you are joining us live from Seattle, which is where today's guest is coming from, it's actually three in the afternoon on April Fool's Day, so anything could go wrong, anything could happen. Just be on your toes everybody. But thank you for joining us. Joining me is fellow co host Justin of Lucky Straps. [00:00:52] Speaker C: How are you, mate? [00:00:53] Speaker A: I'm great. I'm really good and I'm excited. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Indeed, so am I. I'm feeling a bit nervous now. Joining us today is a photographer who, who boasts over 50 years of experience in the industry and in the field. More importantly in the field, landscape, wildlife, conservation, people, pets, television presentations, education and workshop tours. Of course, we are talking about art. [00:01:19] Speaker C: Wolf. [00:01:19] Speaker B: G', day, Art. It is such an honor to have you on the show today. [00:01:22] Speaker C: Thank you, Greg. I'm happy to be here. [00:01:24] Speaker B: It's great to hear. Great to hear. Otherwise it would have been a very short interview. Yeah. Just before, just before we get into saying good day to the chat and unraveling your story or unpacking your story, let's, let's start off with a quick question. David, Sir David Attenborough quoted you and said. Now I can't find the quote. Here it is. Artworld's photographs. This is Sir David Attenborough. [00:01:53] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:01:54] Speaker B: Artwolf's photographs are a superb evocation of some of the most breathtaking spectacles in the world. And then of course, from Jane Goodall, you may have heard of her folks. Artwolf's brilliant and sensitive photographs is a powerful simulation for changing attitudes. I just want to ask you a question about. You've got an extensive history in working in conservation as a photographer and as an advocate. Do you believe that modern day landscape and wildlife photographers have, I guess, a sort of moral obligation to support conservation efforts wherever possible? And how should they go about that? [00:02:33] Speaker C: You know, you can start. The answer is absolutely. And it's an obligation that I think people should take seriously. A single photo thought that really affects the emotions of the viewers can be a powerful instrument for saving a patch of woods or a river or a wild animal. And so I think if we making a living from it or it's a passion for people that have a different type of job, I think giving back is just something that we should do. And I never guilt people, but I do really make strong arguments about that. [00:03:14] Speaker B: Yep, that's fair. That's fair. Now you of course have. Actually, no. Before we go into the next question, let's say g' day to the chat. Sorry, guys. [00:03:25] Speaker A: Yeah, well, they're very excited to be here. Philip Johnson was. Was first in the chat. Early, early. 10 minutes early. Good day all. Morning, Justin, Greg and Art. Lucinda's here. Pete Mellows is here. Paul's here, Jim's here. Phil Thompson. Good morning from Geelong. Matt Boyle says good morning in Australia. Good afternoon in Seattle. Well done, Matt. And east coast photography's here. Good morning, guys. And I'm sure there's more starting to pile in. If you're listening live, jump in the chat, tell us where you're from and what you would like to hear about in our conversation with art. And if you're listening back later on on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or YouTube later on. Yeah, give us a like and a follow and get involved. We do these interviews once a week and we also have a show on Monday nights which is a bit more random. But our Thursday shows are for interviews with amazing photographers like art. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, and here we are. [00:04:20] Speaker C: Art. [00:04:20] Speaker B: We always like to roll back the clock a little bit and find out where this spark of creativity initiated, what gave birth to any creative's idea that they want to pursue an artistic or a photographic career or lifestyle. You, you studied in fine art and art education, is that correct? [00:04:40] Speaker C: That's right. But I was always a school artist, you know, in grade school, junior high, high school, and then eventually in college, I became a fine art painting major, but also art education. So all of that plays into my background as a photographer. It's a different medium, but that spark of creativity and the desire to create art is true, whether it's photography art or. Or painting or whatever the discipline may be. [00:05:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:05:13] Speaker A: Was the, was the goal when you were studying fine art and teaching, was the goal to become a teacher? What was the sort of the career idea you had laid out for yourself at that point in life? [00:05:25] Speaker C: That's exactly right, because still in college I thought, well, how likely is it that I'm going to make a living having paintings in galleries? I should have a fallback. And that could be teaching art in the school district. And that's. That was the impetus. But I had a career change during the college years. You know, I started hiking and climbing in the great Pacific Northwest. Seattle's rimmed by mountains, and so I started climbing and my parents gave me an old camera to take along on the climbs. And my allegiances really rapidly shifted from painting to photography because it became so much Easier to create original photographic compositions rather than staring at a blank canvas and trying to conjure up something meaningful. Meaningful to my audience. [00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:23] Speaker C: Does that make sense to you guys? [00:06:25] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:06:26] Speaker A: It sort of. It even in like, can show how much so you're. Would you describe yourself more on, on the side of, of a documentary when it comes to photography rather than, I guess, like you say, just spawning ideas out of, out of nothing. A blank canvas. Some, some photographers that work in studios and things like that are often they like the blank canvas of a studio and then they'll piece together work, whereas you tend to go and find something that sparks your interest that you can document. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:55] Speaker C: I have one of the most famous African American artists ever to be in America. And I was so lucky to have him. And he kept on goading me on to try and experiment things that I wasn't really good at. And I took his words to heart and I hear his voice always when I'm in the field. So what that meant, Justin, is that I'm constantly challenging myself to photograph well known subjects, but possibly in a different angle of view or atmospheric conditions or something that makes it different than what everybody else is shooting. Now that's not disparaging my colleagues because they're probably all have that same point of view, but that is really the driving force behind me. But also people knew me early on in my career as a wildlife photographer, but in fact I had an interest in cultures, in landscapes, in virtually anything except for weddings and which my father was actually a wedding photographer and he taught my mother to be a photographer using old box cameras, speed graphics and crown graphics that he used during World War II in the South Pacific. So that convinced me never to want to photograph. But almost everything else is open playing field. So. [00:08:31] Speaker A: Okay, what, what convinced you? I. I was a wedding photographer professionally for about 10 years. I don't really do it anymore for many reasons. What, what convinced you that it, that it wasn't for you? What was it that you saw about that work or the images, the, the lifestyle of a wedding photographer that you thought, no, this is not for me? [00:08:53] Speaker C: Well, listen, when I was seven years old, they would come home on weekends and do three or four weddings over the course of a weekend and be exhausted and complaining about this person or that person? Well, at 7, I was lost in the woods with a little bird book, tree book, mammal book. I was memorizing and finding and discovering everything about nature. And in fact I became an expert on identifying birds and trees and ferns and everything else. So I was a Young naturalist without ever knowing the word naturalist. So I wanted to be outdoors. I didn't want to be in some church or building watching a wedding so that it was unequivocal. I was never going to be that. And fortunately, my parents never. You know, a lot of parents want their son or daughter to follow in their footsteps. My parents encouraged me towards the ark. And that's unusual. It was unusual in the 50s, 60s. It's unusual now. Parents want their offspring to get a real job and to make a lot of money. But my parents were really happy that I chose to go the way of art. [00:10:11] Speaker B: Just speaking of your parents, a. I'm interested to know whether you managed to retain their collection of images from their days as photographers. And do you go back to those, to those moments, to those. [00:10:25] Speaker C: You know, it's a great question, Greg. And the fact is that when people are born into photographer families, we have precious little photos of ourselves, you know. Yeah, you don't bring work home. And that meant we had very little photos of ourselves. And you know, speaking of four fives, we're talking about cameras that had holders that you'd slide in. You have the black cloth over your head. The image was upside down. It was black and white. It was. You had to be good at what you did to photograph weddings. And my mother would take cotton swabs and dyes and hand color black and white photos into color photos. This is the era that I grew up in. And so your question, did I ever collect their photos or see, you know, is there a collection of their photos? No. You know, and who would want total strangers getting married in their collection anyways? But yeah, meaningless to me. And no, there's not very many photos. But I do have some of the paintings of my mom and her older brother, who was well known on the east coast for painting. So I do have a couple of their paintings which mean a lot to me. [00:11:47] Speaker B: That's amazing. That's incredible. [00:11:53] Speaker C: One, one little addition to that. My mother, my father and my mother didn't have a lot of money, nor did anybody in my neighborhood. It was a post war family. So everybody was struggling at the end of that. And my parents found a school that was being offered to children of impoverished families. As long as you would show up on a Saturday morning, you had access to paper and paint and clay and all the different elements of art. And that, that served well for me because my mom trained me to take a bus downtown Seattle and then catch another bus across town. And I would put in about 10 miles on these buses at 7 years old. And you know, in today's world, my parents would have been arrested for child neglect, but back then it was okay. And what that also gave me then was to be fearless in traveling the world, to walk in some of the unsavory neighborhoods of cities around the planet looking for artwork and things like that. And when I say looking for artwork, I also have a body of work called abstract art, where I find things that look like Abstract Expressionism, but in unintended ways. But they're usually in the seedier, rundown areas of cities that haven't been gentrified. Think about that alleyway in your hometown that is covered with wall paint and how's your line? Yeah, I. You would think that that would be a treasure trove for me to photograph, but in fact I would be photographing somebody else's art. So what I'm talking about is the random unintended art that is created by time and different people scratching on a wall or putting up a poster and tearing it away. And the collective with time then becomes something that I see. I frame it differently and it becomes my own copyrighted photo. And someday that will be a book. [00:14:07] Speaker A: Wow, I love that. [00:14:09] Speaker B: Speaking of books, or did you want to jump in with a question, Jay? [00:14:12] Speaker A: Yeah, well, Maya's got a question here and it actually brought up a thought of a question I've got written down as well. Maya hall says it would be interesting to hear more detail on the crossover between art study of fine art and his photography. And I just want to, I sort of want to jump on the back of this question and say, so I, I'm a self taught photographer, learned later in life and learned mainly, you know, to, to become a wedding photographer and things like that. I've documented sports and that kind of thing. I, I don't, I didn't study art when I grew up. I was more of a maths and physics person than an art person. I didn't really understand art, so I wanted to hear more about that. And also, could you explain for, for people like me that may not know what is Abstract Expressionism? Just, just a basic explanation of that style of art. [00:15:01] Speaker C: Basically, Abstract expression started in Europe and during the run up to World War II, a lot of the best artists from Europe fled France, they fled Holland and they came to America. And by the end of World War II, New York City was the heart of the art world, which had been claimed by Paris, the Abstract Expressionism, along with the Europeans and fine American artists like Jackson Pollock. Their idea was to Create something that was non. Let's see, there is a word and I'm at 74, I struggle sometimes pulling the word out and then like Tourette's two minutes from now I'll yell it out. If you see a painting of a horse or a house or a mountain, you know what that is. It's subjective. What abstract expressionists created was non objective art. So it didn't have form, it didn't have something that you would immediately recognize. And they, Jackson Pollock famously said, my painting ends where your imagination begins. And so that was the crux of what they were trying to do is tap into the viewer's imagination and keep them tuned in and really exploring the work in front of them. And so that's what I'm trying to do as I look for abstraction around the world. So one of the things that I do, I'm working on six books at one time. I don't do a lot of things very well, but one of the things that I do think I'm pretty good at is compartmentalizing my brain when I'm in the field because at one moment I can find an abstract photo and at the same time do find men at work, which could go into a book called the World at Work and so on and so on. And so I come away with a group of photos that can be plugged into a number of different projects. [00:17:14] Speaker B: I was going to ask you about that. You know, does the, does a book idea come to you and then you go out to look for the images or is it the other way around? [00:17:25] Speaker C: Well, Greg, that's a great question and I think it's both. It's something. Well, when you have three or four photos that are related, you have the beginning of an idea. When you have 10 or 15, you basically have a magazine article. And when you have 20 plus, you have the beginning of a book. And so over time things kind of coalesce into a group and eventually it can become a book. Now I'm not proud of the fact that there's over 120 books in my collection because I've never counted my staff does. I don't really pay attention to how many days of the year I'm traveling or how many countries I've been to or how many books I've done. I it, you know, once I've done a book, I'm moving on to the next project. So I don't. It's not about numbers for me, but I'm a little embarrassed about the numbers of books because it would look like I'm just doing them randomly. But in fact, most of my books take nine years to work on. I don't ever want to bring out a book that looks like it's got a great cover and the minute you get into it, it just falls away. And so that's why, working nonstop around the world basically most of the year for the last five decades, I've got a huge collection of, of really broad spectrums of genres. [00:18:50] Speaker B: Yep. No, thank you. That, that makes perfect sense. Just on the conservation topic and, and the book topic, do you think that, do you see a resurgence in books that celebrate life on Earth, whether it be from a conservationist perspective or, you know, let's document what we have now before it becomes what was. Do you think the books play just as important a role as social media and Internet? [00:19:18] Speaker C: Yeah, well, there was several parts to your question. [00:19:22] Speaker B: Yes, sorry. [00:19:23] Speaker C: I think there is a resurgence in really well done books. You know, there was a time where books were flying off the shelves, but they were so weak. I mean, everybody became a photographer and publishers were publishing a lot of work that probably should never have seen the light of day. But I think now the publishers are much more careful on what they publish and there's less books, but they've got a really devoted audience. And I think maybe the younger generation that doesn't have the wall space to have a fine art print or a poster may have a space for a book on their table. Table. But yeah, I think that photography and conservation have a great role. I think, as I might have mentioned earlier, a salient, powerful image can replace all the words written in a book. We are visual animals, humans. And so I think we cling to powerful images. And to back that up, I mean, everybody that's got a phone, iPhone or. Yeah, iPhone, we'll just say iPhone. I'll become photographers. Now, I, I went to dinner about five miles from here along Puget Sound. And last night I saw hundreds of people lining the street along the water. And they all had lenses and binoculars. And I pulled over and asked them, what are they looking at? And they're all on this site that tells when an orca pod is coming down from the islands to the north. And I looked and I could see the dorsal fin of one orca that was five miles away. And yet there were hundreds of people hoping to see it and that. And they were all young. And so I think with the communication and the Internet and all these different sites, the young people are embracing and getting out there. And yet I do think that there's a downside to that because it's almost like a flash mob. You know, if one person photographs a particular owl and announces where it was the following day, there could be 60 people with every bit of the camera equipment that I own, if not better, and they want that photo. So it's, it's kind of an odd time right now as a photographer seeing that, but what that does to me is it makes me want to find and photograph subjects that haven't been overly done. And so that is a great challenge. And I love the word challenge because if you become complacent, if you become lazy, if I lay back and think, okay, I've done it all, now I'm just going to sit and watch tv, you know, my life will end very shortly. So I think, taking a nod from the painters that I studied, the French impressionists and so forth, they lived longer lives than the average person. In fact, Vlad Monet lived into his late 80s when the average man was living at 48 and checking out. So I think out of necessity and desire, I, the word retire is not in my vernacular. I'm going to work until I drop and have a great life doing that. But I've already had, if I die tomorrow, really, I've had a great life. That's a lovely way of looking at it, volunteering that. [00:22:59] Speaker B: And speaking of that, speaking of living your best life and being able to just keep going until you can't anymore. Do you have a regime or a process for staying photography fit at this age? [00:23:13] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, you've ever heard the term Type A, I'm that I cannot sit still. You know, this interview, once I finished this interview with me, with you guys, I'm out and moving around. I, I, I've lost weight. I never was very heavy, but at 75 or 74, I am probably as lean as I was when I was in high school. And that's just because I travel and move and constantly I cannot go to a gym. My long term travel partner, Gabriel Jacon of Romanian that now lives in Thailand, he works with me half the year and he gets up in the morning and does yoga and weightlifting and all that and I just roll over in bed and look the other way because regimented exercise. But I'm always moving and I've got a great garden that I'm working. When I'm home, I'm in the garden working on bonsai trees and things like that. [00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Oh, that sounds amazing. [00:24:23] Speaker C: Well, it's therapy is what it is, Greg. [00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:24:27] Speaker A: Speaking of Trees. Philip Johnson in the comments says if you love trees, Art's book, Trees Between Earth and Heaven is a favorite and inspirational. [00:24:37] Speaker C: Wow, What a nice comment that is. Really. [00:24:40] Speaker B: I think it was. Philip was one of the people who recommended to get you on the show today. Philip's a long time supporter of our channel and we've met him at. We go to a, an annual photography festival every year in the, what is it, Northeastern? Yeah, the Alpine region. And Philip's there every year and. Yeah, and Philip, Philip recommended getting you on the show. So thank you so much. You've done us all a great service. So 120 books, and some of those are children's books. Some of those are designed to showcase your art. Some are a little more instructional. What are you looking at ahead in terms of your books? Will that ever slow down for you or is that just going to keep six books in the works on average? [00:25:30] Speaker C: Well, you really do have good questions, Greg. I'm going to head down to San Rafael, California and meet with my publisher in May. And I basically am presenting five new book ideas and I'm going to tell him that you some of these books are perfect for you, but some might not be. And I am going to take them to other publishers because I'm generating images and I'm spending money. You know, it's not cheap traveling the world. A. In fact, in the last two weeks, you know, air passages have gone skyrocketing. But any. I'm going to tell the publisher that if you don't want to do the book, I'm going to find maybe a more specific publisher that would love to do this book. And I've never really done that before with the publisher because Inside editions, which works with me, do really nice books. You know, they, the paper, the type of printing they do, the binding, you know, when you open one of their books, it lays flat rather than swallowing up photos. These are things that I've got to think about. When you work so hard on a book, you want to make sure it actually stands up to the test of time. So, yeah, I mean, I think your original question was, are you going to do this the rest of your life? And as long as I'm physically capable of moving, I will. And if I am not, I've got an easel to my left and I've got all my paintbrushes. I'll have to replenish the paints, but I'll get back to. [00:27:09] Speaker B: Oh, that's amazing. I was going to ask whether you still dabble in, in. [00:27:13] Speaker C: Well, I did a body of work about 10 years ago called the Human Canvas. And you could bring that up if you want, Justin. It's on my website and basically I had over 100 different people, different races and genders work free for me. And we spray painted them black and white, completely naked. But if you bring it up, nobody's going to be offended because the way I painted them into the backdrops that I created, it's almost like Vanishing act, which was a book on hidden animals in nature. And so if people are offended by the human canvas, then my work is not for them. [00:27:58] Speaker B: Yep, that's fair. [00:28:00] Speaker C: How are you doing there, Justin? [00:28:01] Speaker A: I'm trying. [00:28:02] Speaker B: It's under a bound [00:28:06] Speaker C: talking anyways. But best work, the best thing about the Human Canvas were the people that volunteered. I put up notices around Seattle looking for people that were fairly well in shape and that were willing to work hard hours and be hot or dry or cold. And I have no money to pay for it. And over 100 people thought that was a great idea. So. And, and here's the inception of that idea. What came from the fact that in 2008 there was a crisis, financial crisis, and so my TV show travels the Edge ended and I wanted a project and this was the project that I came up with. And nobody saw this coming. If they thought I was a wildlife photographer, this body of work, they would think it wasn't from the same photographer. But yeah, my background in painting and art, but specifically graphic design, really helped find, formulate because all these photos like this one, it's all about texture, you know, and hidden, hiding in plain sight. So I had some of the models. This was Jeff Lewis, he's 6 foot 7, African American, a trainer. And he came in 10 years. He came to every shoot that I had. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Wow. [00:29:30] Speaker A: Really? So would he be getting paid for this stuff or was he just that invested in it that, you know, he, [00:29:39] Speaker C: he works hard on his body, He's a trainer, he works with other people on bodybuilding and all that. He was so happy to work on a project that celebrated his form, but in an artistic way. No, he never got paid. But we did give them model prints. He became a good friend. We would go out to movies and dinner at the, at the end of a shoot. Yeah. So I didn't simply have any money to pay models for what they were worth. And none of them were really models. Some were doctors, other were, others worked at hotels. You know, it was just a litany of different backgrounds that came my way. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's something beautiful in that. That these aren't. It's not like you went to a talent agency and. [00:30:29] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:30:30] Speaker B: You just had people that were invested in it, who volunteered for it and who believed in the project, which is amazing, absolutely amazing to see now. [00:30:39] Speaker C: It was one of the most gratifying bodies of work I've ever worked on. And, you know, down the road I am going to raise some money and do a book that kind of celebrates all the different genres that I've worked on over a lifetime. But also I will explain why. What was the impetus behind the photo? What was the location? Any salient information about the photo, personal point of view, I think will strike a right chord and that will be several years away because it's almost like a. What's the term when you look back over a career and. [00:31:18] Speaker B: Like a retrospective. Retrospective. [00:31:20] Speaker C: Thank you. You're going to work with more 74 year olds in the future, so as long as you can try. And I'm happy. But I don't want to call it a retrospective. But it's going to be a special book for me. And I just came up with this idea in the last week, quite honestly, and now it's like it's got a hold of me. [00:31:42] Speaker A: I'd love to hear the story of your first book. Do you recall, like what. How that idea come about and how. And was it a struggle to get your first book published? [00:31:53] Speaker C: No, and it's an interesting story. While I was in college at the University of Washington, which is a 90,000 student body, it's a huge university and they were gracious enough last year to give me a lifetime achievement award. The president of the university actually took me to the football games in the presidential box. So it was a highlight of my year. Last year at any rate, when I was in college and I, you know, I took everything from chemistry to physics to psychology and everything I failed in. But art was the one thing I looked forward to, but the other thing was cultural anthropology. So I studied a lot about the cultures of the Northwest coast during the last Ice Age. There was a lot of ice, of course, but the ocean lowered and that allowed the Central Asian people from Mongolia and Manchuria to come over 30,000 years ago into North America and spread out entirely through the Americas all the way down to the south tip of South America. And over all those years, they became very distinctly different people according to the environment. And so I was fascinated about that. And so I concentrated on the Northwest coast from the Columbia river south of Seattle all the way up to the Aleutian Islands that almost connect America with Russia. And so the first book, and I know I'm getting a little long winded on this, the first book was presented as an idea by the director of the largest hospital in Seattle and by my climbing instructor. And so who was the. He worked at the Northwest Kidney center, and the two of them knew each other. And then the subject came up about the very expensive and ancient basket collection that the director of the hospital had collected over the years. And they came to me and said, do you want to do a book? And I said, yeah, I would love to do a book. So that was my first book. And I took these beautiful baskets that were, you know, very expensive, priceless, and back to the coast of British Columbia and Alaska and Washington, placing them in appropriate locations in front of ancient villages and so forth. And that became my first book, which gave me enough money then to buy my first car. And, and, and so it went from there on. [00:34:41] Speaker A: That's cool. So what do you remember? What was that first book called? What was the title? [00:34:46] Speaker C: It was called Indian Baskets of the Northwest coast, but today it would be called first nations of the Northwest Coast. [00:34:55] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Cultures not only in modern world like Melbourne and Seattle, New York are evolving. Cultures are constantly changing. Lifestyles, clothing, food. But it's also evolving in remote communities around the world. Nobody, no humans really stay the same. They're always evolving their cultures. And this is what I've discovered over 50 years of traveling, often back to places I had been 30 years before. [00:35:29] Speaker B: On the topic of travel, where's. Where's. A couple of questions. Where's your favorite place to go with a camera in the world? [00:35:39] Speaker C: So disappoint me. That's the most obvious question. [00:35:42] Speaker B: No, I know, but I have a follow up. [00:35:44] Speaker C: Okay, well, I have a follow up too. It's usually wherever I've just been. My favorite new place, although I won't say that about Morocco simply because I just got home a week ago from Morocco and it was during Ramadan and the people were not out. And I've got a photo tour, people expecting to see people on donkeys and herning goats and, and, and yet they were gone. They were not out in the fields. And so it was not my favorite trip ever. And it was particularly cold. And so I still have a bit of a cold. If you hear me sneeze or whatever, that's because I just got back. But the real question, the real answer, Greg, is if it's wildlife, it's probably going to be South Georgia island, which is kind of Four. What is it? It's three days east of the Falkland Islands or the mountain. Fernando Venus, if you're a Argentinian. And if it's culture, it's going to be either Africa or India, because both of those places have such a variety of different cultures in a relatively small area. So I, I always love India because you. You want culture shock. You want to be surprised by the food or the customs and all that, because that spurs your imagination. If everything looks so familiar. Often you struggle at trying to find something really relevant to photograph. [00:37:22] Speaker A: It's. It's so interesting. I heard you talk about that, actually, on another interview that I was only listening to yesterday. And it's something I've been thinking about a lot very recently, about my own photography, because I am the sort of person that. My brain lights up when I go to Vietnam and get out on a scooter and ride around and I'll take tons of photos and have. Have a great time just seeing new things and experiencing new things. And it just makes me want to take the camera everywhere and take photographs of all sorts of things. And I, And I make the most creative photographs. And I'm. [00:37:58] Speaker C: It's often that first trip like you've just talked about. And speaking of Vietnam, I was just there about a month ago in North Vietnam, taking people up to the north border with China. So I've never been to South Vietnam, but North Vietnam several times. And I, I really do like to get into those remote mountain villages. You know, a lot of minority people live up on that border with China. And it's beautiful. [00:38:27] Speaker A: It's. It's just. It's so interesting how you talk about the culture shock sort of giving you inspiration to be more creative. Because I am. I. I really struggle with the opposite, which is like, you know, how some people can walk around their hometown and photograph the streets and go out every day and make amazing bodies of work. I just. I cannot. It doesn't turn my brain on the same way that a new location does. [00:38:54] Speaker C: Sorry for interrupting you. No, no, go for it. Exactly the conversation I had with Gabrielle when we go back to the same places. You know, there are some tours that we do that are very, very popular. So we do. Every couple of years we go back, and when you've been to a place five to 10 times, you do struggle for that inspiration. So we always. I always try to work in one or two really new destinations every year just to keep that. That spark alive. [00:39:27] Speaker B: And speaking of destinations and that spark, you've traveled the world extensively. What locations are still on your bucket list. [00:39:36] Speaker C: Well, if you go to my website right now, this is a call for Justin to work. [00:39:41] Speaker A: I'm on. [00:39:43] Speaker C: I went down to the office a couple hours ago to see what they're up to, and they showed me my latest tour, which is the moon, so you can bring that up the show, but it's April 1st here, not April 2nd. And so they put out this whole post about traveling with me for a photo tour to the moon. Because right now the news coverage is about a launch that's happening either last night or tonight. Going to the dark side of the moon is the first time in I don't know how many years, but so we jumped on that. Well, my staff jumped on that. And yeah, they. It's pretty elaborate. They've got experts. It's like no real work got done in my office in the morning. But they've got to have fun doing this as well. And so they're really good at keeping this website live and interesting for people. So even something like this, which is pretty goofy, it does spread the word that we have a website and we get more and more people. So, yeah, all these are their ideas. Yeah. Talking about the rooms, the food service and all this on the moon. Finally, somebody said this is a joke, right? Yeah, very much a joke. [00:41:15] Speaker A: Yeah. This is included post. Post mission image review session is included. So that's. I think that's a big bonus. It's probably worth the. What was the, what was the cost of this one? 979. 999 dollars. Which in US dollars is. You could. You could basically buy an entire city in Australia for that. [00:41:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:38] Speaker A: Well, that's awesome. Okay, so the moon. [00:41:41] Speaker C: Okay. What was your real question, Greg? [00:41:46] Speaker B: Well, no, I think that, you know, space tourism is on the up. I hear you never know what you might be invited along to do, but. Yeah. What are your top three bucket list destinations? [00:42:00] Speaker C: Well, it changes with time. I mean, it used to be Antarctica, but after 20 trips to Antarctica, it's like, okay, I. I don't need another penguin, another iceberg. I love going to Africa. I think anybody that's been on safari to Africa, they will go back. I mean, that's just almost again. So this year alone, I'll be in Africa three different times. And so it always delivers the cultures, the wildlife that even the landscapes. There's a lot there. And so that's definitely one of the highlights. And I'm not unique in that. If you ask any cultural or wildlife photographer, I'm sure they would chime in I love Australia. I mean, I've been all over Australia and from the north coast, the Kimberly coast, you know, I've driven from Alice Springs up to Darwin several times. I've been on the west coast, I've been down to Kangaroo island photographing leafy sea dragons. And so, yeah, I have been to Macquarie and Hobart. So Australia is good. It's a really because of the variety and mostly because there's animals on the continent that can kill you. Whereas New Zealand, which is beautiful. Yeah, you could be licked by a sheep and that doesn't do for me. I absolutely love to be in kind of interesting locations where there's animals like polar bears. I've got a tour later this year that sold out immediately called Walking with Polar Bears and it's the first tour I've ever done up there. But I've been up there twice and the bears come towards you and then you pick up two little rocks and you click the rocks together and the polar bears stop in their tracks. So it's a very safe thing to do. But for, for the longest time people photograph polar bears from what they call tundra buggies and you're way above them and you're looking down on them. Well, here you're at eye level with them and it's a very different experience and it's empowering. And yeah, you do have a guide that's got a rifle but in the two tours I've done and probably forty bears, he never took his rifle off his shoulder. So that would only be in really serious situations. Otherwise two rocks can do it. What's the destinations where there's big animals and potentially dangerous animals because that just keeps you on your toes and it's exciting for me. I mean I, I don't know of any other way to put it. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Yep. [00:44:37] Speaker A: What's the, what's the rest like that tour like in terms of accommodation and things? You guys camping, is it like how does that. [00:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I could tell you exactly the name of the lodge but then I'll have to fly to Melbourne and kill you. It's called the Seal River Lodge. It's a one hour flight north of Churchill. Churchill is the main place for North Americans to go to photograph polar bears if that's what they want to do. But this is a very remote, exclusive lodge. Exclusive meaning it doesn't have a lot of rooms, but there's no roads to it. The polar bears are not used to humans and that's one of the reasons they're quite safe. There's no getting so Blase around humans that they break down that natural distance between humans and wild animals. And I'm very reliant on that fact. You know, I. I lead tours up to Alaska every year with Gabrielle, and we put people rather close to grizzly bears. The largest of the grizzly bears are brown bears. And I, over the years, have become very good at reading bear behavior. And these bears are extraordinarily smart. They will literally bring their cubs up to you and put them down in front of you and then go out to the river and be gone for 15 minutes while you're babysitting the bears. And as crazy as that may sound, it's really smart on the female bears that have young cubs, because four bears will kill. Kill their cubs in order for her to be in estrus and that they would breed. I mean, it's true with lions, leopards and bears. They will kill the cubs of that are not of their own making. And so the mama bears don't want their cubs killed. And so they are so smart, they realize humans are a safety net and they'll bring their cubs right to you. [00:46:34] Speaker A: That's amazing. You would think they'd see humans as a potential threat to the cub and that. That's. So. [00:46:39] Speaker C: Yeah, this is April 1st, but this is not a joke. This is really what they do. [00:46:46] Speaker B: That's incredible. [00:46:47] Speaker A: I know so little about bears. You could easily get me with something like that. I'd be like, really? And you're like, no. Yeah, no. [00:46:53] Speaker C: You know, these brown bears, they're very charming bears because they look much like a very large dog. They have longer snouts than the bears that you would find in the Rocky Mountains of the lower 48, which are more roundish because they don't get in the water. You know, they chase down elk and other animals. Whereas the bears up in Alaska are largely fish eaters. And so they're underwater all the time. So their longer noses have evolved to accommodate their feeding habits. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Well, they do look. Yeah. You look at the images of them and you're like, they do have that sort of dog like expression and things to them. Because of that nose. Yeah. Snout. [00:47:42] Speaker C: Well, their behavior is very similar too. They're very playful. When they come out of the water, they shake water off just like a dog would do. And no, I really love them. I really love them. And I love to take people up there that may be fearful of bears. And over a day, it takes a day. And after the second day, they become much more relaxed. And they love the fact that they're near an animal that they probably feared most of their lives. And suddenly the bear is nonchalant. It's feeding the babies right in front of you. And the backstory here, and this is brief, these bears were really figured out humans long before I ever went up there, because fly fishermen would fly in, oh, probably 50, 60 years ago. So the great grandparents of the modern day bear reconciled that humans are not a threat. And so they became, you know, very comfortable with people really close to them. [00:48:44] Speaker A: Wow, they're so smart. [00:48:46] Speaker B: Yeah. That's so cool. That's so cool. [00:48:48] Speaker A: Are there any other, like any things that pop into your head about experiences with animals? Whether it's the first time you saw a particular animal that you'd been longing to, to track down or at close encounters? Anything that pops into your head, you [00:49:03] Speaker C: know, to identify one or two would, is a disservice because over 50 years I've seen almost every animal that I've ever had a desire to see, from snow leopards to great white sharks to being in water with crocodiles. And so now the smaller animals are on the list, but I don't have enough days in my life to see everything. But the most charismatic animals, like snow leopards, were almost impossible to find. But then humans figured out that if the former poachers that had figured out how to find them, they became part of environmental groups. They get more money finding a snow leopard forest than they would ever have in selling the pelt of a snow leopard. And so that's kind of the model of a lot of modern day environmental groups that there's more money in seeing a monkey peeing from a tree than cutting down the entire forest for timber. And that is becoming a very common thing. That is the groundworks for a lot of environmental groups trying to preserve this forest or this mountain range or this wetland, so forth and so on. [00:50:21] Speaker A: I've heard stories about that. Yeah, it's, it's, it seems to work really well in, I've heard about it [00:50:27] Speaker C: in Africa, especially in the Amazon, because, you know, the Amazon is at threat from cutting forest and making big grassy fields for cows, you know, and beef, though I eat beef. I don't want to be a hypocrite, but we are killing the rainforest, which affects the entire world's climate. And so, and it really depends on who is the president, current president of Brazil. The last president down there could care less about the rainforest. He wanted money. And the new one is working on behalf of the tribes that are in the Amazon and the wildlife and the climate. And so it's sad to know that one human can change the outlook of any environment depending on who's in power. We see that currently in the United States. [00:51:29] Speaker B: Indeed, indeed. [00:51:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:33] Speaker C: Okay, let's back up to a positive. [00:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we all just went a little [00:51:37] Speaker A: quiet there for a moment, thinking about the world anyway. Photography. Yeah. You got somewhere you want to go from here, Greg, or you got any [00:51:47] Speaker C: questions coming in from other folks? [00:51:51] Speaker B: Everyone's gone a bit quiet too. [00:51:52] Speaker C: They're listening, they're bored. They've left this. [00:51:55] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Justin, do you want to cruise through some of the comments before we move forward? [00:52:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, Dennis. Dennis was very inspired. Dennis Smith, he's a light painting photographer and artist. Amazing photographer. He's been on the show quite a few times. He says random unintended art created by time. Damn. So that obviously landed. Landed pretty hard with him. He'll be. He's probably already thinking of a project he can do light painting with random unattended out, created by time. But he said he had to go. And thank you so deeply for becoming a part of our community art, you [00:52:30] Speaker C: know, and thank you for reading that. The underlying reason I work so hard is the most important thing for me is to take the work that I've created and educate and inspire and affect the emotions of the people that. That look at the work. And so it's always heartfelt delight to know that somebody really gets what you're after and what you're doing and appreciates the work. And that would be true in all the humanity disciplines, whether it's a cook or a dance instructor, writing instructor. We want to affect and inspire the people that follow. And that is very much on my mind when I'm out there working. It would be kind of a hollow victory if all I was shooting was for my own enjoyment. So I love sharing the work, getting it out there, making a difference in perhaps the lives of people. And that's. That's the driving force, quite honestly. [00:53:39] Speaker B: Yep. That's very powerful. And I think, you know, it's. Photography has lost its way in that respect. I believe in that. You know, social media is so fleeting. People pour their heart and soul into these images and put them onto social media to show them to other people, and they just become part of the algorithm trash pile. People just skip through them and the art and the message of those images isn't received well. And I think that's where books and workshops and tours help you as a creative to impart that on others. And I think that's really. [00:54:20] Speaker C: I'm going to add to that, Greg, because I, I do say something that people, some somewhat challenge, whether it's true or not. But I spend really very little time looking at my own Instagram, let alone other people's collections, because I'd rather be the horse with blinders on focusing on what I want to shoot rather than seeing all the different work that's being done, which for a lot of people can be demoralizing because it's like, why would I even attempt this project when this person's got such great work? So I know out there. But I tried to avoid seeing what a lot of other people are up to simply because I don't want to lose my way. I don't want to lose my train of thought and. Or be somewhat dissuaded from going here because somebody already's got that good. So it's intentional ignorance that I'm playing with myself here. [00:55:22] Speaker A: I think it's a smart. It's a smart strategy. I actually, I went through a little period of time. It was probably the weddings that did it to me, to be honest. She never a good thing. But there was a period of time when, when I would travel to particularly to like, iconic places, I would never even bother taking my camera because I had this kind of. And it's probably an accurate perception, but I had this perception that no photo I could ever take at that place would be as good as someone who's dedicated, you know, they, that maybe they live there, it's a project for them and they've spent time going there in the perfect conditions over and over and over again to get the amazing photo. So why should I take my camera with me on some random Wednesday to this place and just, you know, whatever the sun happens to be doing that day is what it is. And then I realized that that was getting in the way of me just enjoying photography for what it was and, and taking a photo that I can create on. In that moment. And yet maybe it's not going to be the. The front cover of a book or something, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing. And it was. It's something I wrestled with for a little while. [00:56:34] Speaker C: I think that's a really fine point, Justin. I think for me, I really need to know if somebody's invested most of their lives on this body of work because I don't want to blindly come in and look like I'm plagiarizing somebody else. But I also have the attitude that regardless of how many people have been out there shooting the same subject. I will try to do something different. And that's often a good impetus to challenge yourself. Surely there's got to be other ways of seeing this subject. But I don't want to encroach on somebody else's ideas or body of work that they put a lot of time in. So there are places that I would love to go, but somebody's done it so well that what am I going to do? All I'll look like is somebody following in their footsteps. So I'd rather make the footsteps. In other words. [00:57:31] Speaker A: Yeah. By finding a different. A different subject, a different location, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. And doing it yourself. I love that. A couple extra comments come in after we. We stirred up the chat. What do we got here? Phil Thompson says, I think we're also quiet because we're in awe of what Art is doing and telling us. Yeah, exactly. Breed Love photo says great interview. New subscriber to the Camera life due to this interview. Well, thank you. [00:58:00] Speaker B: Thank you so much. [00:58:00] Speaker C: There's one person. [00:58:02] Speaker A: That's one. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Now we've got three. [00:58:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:58:04] Speaker B: One a day. [00:58:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Who else said. Phil Thompson's also said being in the. Being with the polar bears would be an incredible photographic experience. Yeah, I. I agree. [00:58:15] Speaker C: Come up next year. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Get in early, though. I think it'll sell out fast. Maybe I'll keep an eye on it. Rick Nelson says, huge respect to be able to put on blinders to others and make what you love. That is such a challenge when you see others work so much these days. [00:58:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. For sure. [00:58:33] Speaker A: And, oh, and also read Love Photos is looking forward to Art's newest book, Acts of Faith. Is it out? Is it not out yet? [00:58:41] Speaker C: It's in the final design stages. And again, it's like the human canvas. It's a book that nobody would ever expect of me. You know, I'm an environmentalist. I believe in evolution, and so I don't have any particular religion in me. And yet here I've spent the last several years in synagogues and mosques and photographing all these different religions, But I also have this huge collection of really remote tribes around the world. So what will make this book different? It's not a book about cathedral or mosques. It's about people in lost in their passion or their beliefs. So it's about human emotion rather than architecture, but it's also got voodoo and shamanism and all the different things that remote communities believe in. So I think that would be a difficult book to replicate simply because A lot of the tribes that I photographed 30 years ago, 40 years ago, are now wearing shorts and baseball hats and so forth and so on. Which leads me to one more thought about that, is that when we did a TV show called Travels to the Edge, we did go into remote cultures, but we would bring in things that they would normally eat, grains or something like that, as opposed to clothing, or there would be no signs that we had been there if anybody was to follow. Yep, because we don't want to accelerate the change of culture. Other than what I was talking about, the evolution of ideas. A lot of people go in and say, oh, this poor person's wearing skins. And so they give them old, hand me down clothes, and they just look pathetic as far as I'm concerned, wearing Western clothes when they're out in the Kalahari or in the Amazon or in the Himalaya. And so I don't want to change cultures that way. I don't want to accelerate change. And once we lose a culture, it's gone forever and the world is diminished. You know, we lose languages, we lose cultures, and the world becomes more homogenized every year. And so, yeah, we have to pay attention on how we behave around cultures that are at risk to this Western influence. [01:01:12] Speaker B: Just on that topic, can you recall or talk to us about a culture that perhaps surprised you in how they responded to you, whether it be positively or negatively, Preferably positively, where it actually, the way that that culture lived its life and brought you into their midst, took you off guard. [01:01:35] Speaker C: Yeah. We were in Northern Mongolia. Gabriel and I traveled actually into Mongolia as the Russians were leaving. So we got in there really soon. And then I went back and back a couple of more times. And then eventually with the TV show, we went on horseback up into the mountains that are separating Siberia from Mongolia. And the people are people that live up there above tree line, and they not only raise reindeer, but they ride them like horses. And so that really surprised me. The other big surprise is they were living in teepees that are identical to the Plains Indians of the Central America. Central United States, I should say. And the more I thought about it, of course they're where they're living in teepees because they originally designed that foldable home that they need to move along with the forage for their reindeer. And the plains people, the cultures of the plains in America, do the same. You know, they break their camp and they move where the buffalo were moving. So though it may be 20,000 years separating them or 30,000 years, it's the Same culture that inspired that, rather. But I have not seen any plains cultures riding buffalo. But, yeah, I got on a reindeer and was riding across the tundra in northern Mongolia, and it was really hard because the skin on a reindeer is kind of loose, and I was slight. There are no saddles. You just kind of use your thighs to kind of hold yourself on their answers, which are quite large. So that was exciting, and that was a surprise. And getting back to the other statement, or part of the statement is, over the years, I can't even remember a time where we had a negative experience. One of the reasons is we don't jump out of car and run up to them and start photographing people. We come up and we engage them. We're smiling, we show. Eventually we show them a camera. Sometimes I'll put my camera in the hands of a tribal person and show them how to take a picture of me and show them what they've just done, and it breaks down that unfamiliar thing that's in their hand. You know, modern people are exposed to a lot of things on a daily basis, but my belief is even the remotest tribes in the Amazon are still modern human beings. And so their behaviors, their emotions are not dissimilar to modern people living in big cities. And so if you treat them like that, they respond with your reverence towards them. [01:04:32] Speaker B: Yep. [01:04:33] Speaker A: I love that. [01:04:34] Speaker C: Wonderful. [01:04:36] Speaker A: I've just seen some comments popping up. I'm going to bring up a couple more comments just because we're on a roll. David Leporati says have been following art for years on Creative Live, Travels to the Edge and Tales by Light. Yeah, I was watching a. I remember some Creative Live stuff, which is good because it was almost disappearing, and it's been resurrected just recently. [01:04:59] Speaker C: It started in my gallery, in the back of my gallery in Seattle. [01:05:03] Speaker B: What? [01:05:04] Speaker C: Yeah. And I did the first couple of lectures on that. But I had created a gallery in downtown Seattle, and we created a learning center replete with desktop computers and screens and everything. And yet I wanted to travel and not be tied down teaching in Seattle. So I started traveling. But we had the space, and so Creative Alive rented it from us. And then they asked me to give a couple of early lectures, and it went from there and eventually moved out a year and a half later into a bigger facility, and then they took off, and then it got bought by a photographer that kind of. I don't know. I don't. I didn't keep track of all the history of Creative Live, even though I had come back several times over the years, I think that it changed hands and so the whole economy of it changed and I'm happy to hear that it's coming back. I was aware. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think it got bought out by a larger, a larger company and they couldn't make it financially work and they were just going to turn, they were just going to close it, just turn the website off, turn the servers off and just close it. And then I think someone sort of swooped in and, and purchased it in with the intention of keeping the entire catalog and bringing new courses back. And they've already started doing some new courses. So it's good news. [01:06:33] Speaker C: Really good to hear that. [01:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that's good news. I'm interested to know. Oh, sorry. You want to finish comments? Sorry. [01:06:39] Speaker A: Well, there's just one other question here that I missed here before from David Mascara from San Francisco. Good to see you, David. Has Art ever met or photographed with Tom Mangleson? [01:06:50] Speaker C: Tom's a good friend. He's a really good friend and I would cite him as probably the most Earth wow photographer that's dedicated to environment. He loves the bears in and around Jackson, Wyoming. So the answer is of course yes. I've traveled with him, we've traveled together to the Galapagos Islands and to Antarctica, to South Georgia Island. He's fun, he's real and he's a great, great, great guy. So, yeah, awesome. [01:07:22] Speaker B: Lovely. I've got a couple of questions, so many questions actually written down. I'm keen to know. Over the years you've transitioned in a lot of ways with your craft. You know, obviously some of the obvious ones, you, you know, you started pre Internet and then had to evolve for an Internet world, an online world. You started in film and had to evolve into digital. What do you see as the next big turning point for visual creatives? [01:07:56] Speaker C: Oh my God. That, that question is really great. But I don't have a perfect answer for that because I'm a left handed Virgo gay man. I think in terms of art, but I'm not on top of the, the next step forward. I respond to it by buying the latest technology, but no camera company will ever come to me and say, can you test this out and give us a review? There's far, far better people that are more geeky, technical guys that just love to play with technology. Where I'm the guy that finds the squirrel in the forest. I don't, my answer is I don't know where it's going. I suspect video becomes more and more part of blending in with our stills Certainly with the websites that we have, video is captivating. I still find I've been in front of the camera on three different series, so I feel comfortable in front of a video camera. But I still think the still image is challenging enough to capture one image. That implies a greater thing is still a difficult thing to do. And so that I'm going to stick with. I have recently bought the latest drone and I have not even taken it out of the box. But I'm on my way in six days to Patagonia and we are working on a book called Mountains of the World. It'll be a companion piece to the trees that was mentioned earlier. A big book on mountains I could do in my sleep. I've been in every mountain range on the planet and now with a drone, it's not the main reason, but I'm already going to Patagonia and I think the mountains down there are spectacular. I've circumnavigated them in the eight day treks. I've never shot them from a drone before. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm the people that really know how to use it. [01:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:05] Speaker A: So you've got some support for. So have you not had a drone at all before yourself or is this just a new. You've had other drones in this. [01:10:12] Speaker C: I've had drones before, but I've never flown them or even taken them out of a box. So now the drones are really quite good. They're perfectly capable of making prints from them. They're good enough for the Internet and anything else you would possibly want to use them. And so it's really interesting. It's a collision of technology and desire with rules and regulations which are necessary because people will fly them, as evidenced a couple of years ago, into the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone, which is one of the iconic natural wonders of the entire Yellowstone environment. And here somebody crashes it right into the spring, which was the impetus for the rest of the national parks to ban them completely. And also with what's going on in the Middle east, drones are not a positive thing to think about and, or, or depending on who's using them, they're the greatest thing to, to have in your arsenal. It's a, it's a kind of a minefield that you have to walk, you have to really, you know, and here's the other part of this whole thing is I've been around people when that drone's been in the air and they loathe it, they hate it, and yet they'll be the first one to turn on the blue planet and marvel at these programs that employ a lot of drones. So there's a lot of uneducated hypocrisy out there. I think the answer is use it wisely. And probably in very remote places where you're not disturbing people. But the drone I've got, once it's 100ft in the air, you cannot even hear it. And so you can photograph bigger subjects without disturbing anybody because they're not going to see it. They're not going to see it or hear it. [01:12:13] Speaker A: I can somehow hear the thousands of people that will listen to this interview screaming out, ask him what model drone he bought. Do you know what model drone you bought? [01:12:22] Speaker C: No. That's what I just said. It's the latest. What's the main drone DJI? Probably it was a DJI. It's called. Got a hospital lens, three different lenses. Yeah, I think it's a 50 megapixel or somewhere like that. So, yeah, that's what it is. Actually, it was bought in Bangkok and gotten to me because in America with the. What is it? The. What did our beloved president do? He put all these different penalties to foreign countries. What is it called? [01:13:01] Speaker A: The tariffs. The tariffs, yeah. Yeah. [01:13:05] Speaker C: If you bought the same drone here, it was over $1,000 more. And then they suddenly became really hard to get. Anyways, so I. I got mine through Bangkok. [01:13:18] Speaker A: That's actually a perfect segue for our. Our one ad read that we have to do each episode. And. And by have to, I. I mean, well, it's. It's our business as well. So we. I should just mention it because that's the whole point of doing this podcast. How I justify everything that we do for the podcast is like, oh, it's for the business. So if you're listening, Lucky camera straps is our business. We make leather camera straps here in Australia. They're beautiful, comfortable, minimal hardware designed by us photographers who actually use and travel with them and wear them all day to make your gear feel comfortable and light and just become a part of you. So go to Luckystraps.com if you need a new camera strap or you just want to see what we do. But on the subject of tariffs, we've had to navigate that situation ourselves, which is a small business, has been very tricky because we send all of our products from here in Australia to the US and all over the world. But I can say now we have figured out so you won't get hit with any tariffs on the way in. It's all included in the price, it's all taken care of. So if you do buy a strap from the US from our website, you won't have to pay any extra when it comes in. [01:14:25] Speaker C: And of course, your particular camera stra is made from the leather of koalas, right? [01:14:31] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. Drop, drop beers. [01:14:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we do koalas, we do little baby joeys. We don't do full size kangaroos. We only do the little baby joey. [01:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that, that wasn't good. And the snake ones, of course. [01:14:49] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, of course. The brown snake would be perfect. [01:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's right. No, no. All cow leather, all cow leather. All by product of the meat industry. All designed and guaranteed to last a lifetime. The whole idea when we started it was we. I wanted cameras change so fast now, you know, like there's always a new one coming out. And this, this is probably. I'm too young to really understand this, but there seem to be more of a connection with photographers and their cameras. In the film days in the 70s and 80s, they would have a camera body for 10 years maybe, you know, whereas now it's like every two years, oh, there's a new model out, here's a new model, here's a new model. So it's like at least if you have a leather camera strap that is guaranteed for a lifetime that you can swap from camera to camera to camera at least feels a little bit like you're picking up that same tool again rather than just that. [01:15:44] Speaker C: Yeah, cameras became something that. Well, I knew a lot of photographers that just love to get them, the cameras out of the box. They put them on their rug in the living room, they shine them up, they play with them, but they hardly use them. So. And now it's. It's as you say, and I agree, it's. Cameras are repurposing all of us every couple years. It's almost like they're not going after new clients. They just want us that are committed to this brand or that brand to keep buying their equipment. So they keep. And I think that's the iPhone model as well. [01:16:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely the same thing. Except the iPhone's trickier because they figure out some way to fill your storage up and then your only option is to buy a newer phone with more storage. Otherwise you're like, what am I going to do? Is this a good time to dive a little bit into gear? Because I know you're a huge tech nerd that reads every manual and obsesses over every little. [01:16:43] Speaker C: You got it. You got new tech. [01:16:46] Speaker A: I Would, I'd love to hear a little bit about your gear philosophy in terms of. I'm really interested in this because I think about this all the time. Do you have one kit that you take on almost every assignment every trip? It's just like I always know this is, I pack all of this and it comes with me. Or do you have a bigger kit and then you pick and choose sort of lenses and stuff that you want to take on each. [01:17:08] Speaker C: Now you're specifically talking about camera kits rather than if I'm going and dating, finding somebody to go date because that kid is different. That's handcuffs, tasers. [01:17:22] Speaker A: Well, I mean we could talk about that one too. I was talking about. [01:17:26] Speaker C: Okay, yeah, I, I have the one to 500. You know, I don't really, I don't even with the people that participate in my tours or my workshops. I don't even clue into what cameras they got because I don't, I don't ever want to get hear the conversation. Oh, I've got a Canon. It's so much better than a Canon or a Nikon or a Sony or, or, or. They're all great, they're all really good. So it's kind of a pointless comment but I particularly shoot with canon and a 1 to 500 is always going to be in the backpack. Then I'm wide angle, you know, probably a 24 to 70 and those are the two cameras and then I've got one, those are the two lenses and I've got one camera body which is the 1d. I am real here when I tell you I'm not technical. I am not just trying to be modest. I am that dumb. What is it? The latest canon is a 1D. This is the problem when they have [01:18:38] Speaker A: the R1 change the models. Yeah, it would be the R1 or the R5 mark 2 depending on is it pro, a pro size body with the integrated grip or is it the. Like a, like a normal sized body without the integrated grip? [01:18:56] Speaker C: You know I. Did I touch something on my computer because now I'm looking at my own head and I don't see you. [01:19:03] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:19:04] Speaker C: I hit that. Okay, I'm back. Cool. Yeah, it's the latest pro camera. It's the one R5. That's what it's called? Yeah, yeah, the latest. So but then I bring a second body that's bubble wrapped in my duffel bag and I don't take that out unless the first camera is dropped. And so that's a lightweight pack and I Think where technology is going, Greg. I know that it's just that I was talking with. But I think where technology will be going beyond the video and drones and all that is just lighter equipment for us boomers and younger people. And so I can, you know, get by with those two lenses. I can always walk closer if I need a more powerful lens or shoot it with a lower ISO and shoot it with an appropriate f stop and crop half of that image and still have a viable image for a book. So I don't need to be carrying a 1000 land a millimeter lens. If I've got a 500 and I can shoot it well, then I can crop the heart out of it. Just. And that's specifically for wildlife like snow leopards, which you. It's hard to get real close to them. It's not that they're fearful of humans. In fact, they're fairly blas about humans. It's just they're in high country and it's really hard to get to them without a lot of time. But did that answer both of your questions? [01:20:39] Speaker B: It did. [01:20:40] Speaker A: And that's a. It's a lovely, like a simple kit, like a 24 to 72.8 and then the 100 to 500. It's an. I love that you could have. I'm assuming you could probably make a phone call or whatever and get the latest big white 600 mil lens or whatever. But. And that's, I guess it's kind of what us, us normie photographers who don't go on these huge expeditions get led to believe that, that every big name wildlife photographer has got three or four $20,000 lenses that they cut around. It's so nice because I can, I haven't got it yet. I've tested it, the 100 to 500, and it's an amazing lens because I shoot Canon as well. And it's, it's on my list when I have an appropriate trip for that focal length that I'll be buying it. I'm just waiting until the moment. [01:21:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It really replaces the 80 to 200 because it's more powerful. But the difference. Or a 70 to 200. The difference between a 100 and a 70 is not that much. So you have more power on the other end. And yet it's about the same size as the 70 to 200 or the older model, I should say. Listen to me, I'm talking like a geek. [01:21:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it about technology. [01:22:01] Speaker C: And in three minutes I knew, I [01:22:04] Speaker A: knew it was hiding in there somewhere. The the gear nerd. We found him. Okay, that, that checks off my gear. Questions? What else did I have on here? Gosh, look, you should see all my notes. [01:22:15] Speaker C: I think Greg has gone to sleep. [01:22:18] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. I'm enthralled. I have a question. I'm going to jump in here. What advice do you give to photographers, new photographers or emerging photographers that want to become involved in conservation, work through their craft? What's the best piece of advice you could give them? [01:22:39] Speaker C: I think finding an organ organization within their own city that is maybe wanting to develop a. A tiny wetland, a city park or something like that, and they need help in raising the money for it from the city or, or, or there's a lot of smaller projects going on all over the place, and they're looking for people that can help them. And that gets your foot, I think, in the door. And so it's not like saving, you know, some threatened spirit as some threatened animal. By the way, I mean, I'm gonna divert that question for just a second because I got about the last book I did, and I don't want it to leave my brain as evidence. Before, I did a book called Wildlife, and it talked about the sadness of animals on the world level. The writer was a dear friend of mine and is a dear friend of mine who's actually evolving into a really fine photographer. Greg Greene is his name. But I also wanted to bring up a couple points that people don't hear on the nightly news when it is so full of negative information. Yeah. Mountain gorillas are growing by 10% a year in population. Snow leopards are holding their own and are not in danger of disappearing. There's more whales in the ocean right now than there has been since the end of whaling in the 1950s. There's good news out there. There's tigers in India are growing by 10%. So I wanted that book, Wild Lives, to also cheer people up a little bit, that not all news is negative. Not all in stories involving the climate or the Earth is negative. There's good NGOs working on behalf of wild animals. We don't hear about it because we hear about the latest strike, drone strike, or whatever it may be in the month that we're listening to it. So I think that's an important thing to never give up, to work with the environmental groups that are not going to be on the front page news, but are behind the scenes doing a lot of good work. It's almost analogous to the medical field that's always working on trying to find and cure things from cancer to other really life threatening illnesses. So we don't hear about it until they're a done deal. And most people, if they talk about tigers, they probably think, well, tigers aren't even around anymore. In fact, I did a book called the Living Wild in the late 1990s and the leading tiger biologist predicted by 2000 there may not be a tiger left. Well, they're doing very well and so people need to hear about that. [01:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah. So I guess, you know, just to follow on from that, there are causes that are still worth championing as a photographer, emerging photographers who want to get into conservation. What about undiscovered frontiers? Is there still opportunity there for new naturalist conservation photographers to explore new areas? [01:26:10] Speaker C: You know, when you think about a country that you've never been it 10 you tended to make it seem like one environment. You know, if you think about Saudi Arabia, for instance, you, you probably think of endless sand. And yet I was there for two weeks on, on behalf of the person in charge of tourism. And there is a lot of things in Saudi Arabia that I never expected. There's landscapes that look like the American Southwest. I wouldn't know the difference between Saudi Arabia and Arizona. For instance. When I was there, it snowed eight inches on the northern border with Jordan. People go to Petra and Jordan because Petra is this historic, amazing building in a very narrow slot canyon. And yet there's a hundred times that in Saudi Arabia made by the ancient Nabataeans that built these tombs out of rock. And so what I'm trying to say, Greg, is there's a lot of frontiers that we don't even know about because we haven't explored them. We meaning photographers as opposed to people that live there. And on the. We have the version of 60 Minutes in Seattle and last Sunday I happened to watch it and they discovered the world's largest cave in Vietnam. And it here's the largest cave ever discovered. And they haven't even explored the farthest reaches of this cave and yet it was only discovered, I think a year ago. And that's amazing to me that there could be something as big and dramatic as that, that we've never known. There's wild animals on this earth that we have not discovered. So there are quite a few stories out there waiting to be discovered. [01:28:10] Speaker A: It's a brilliant outlook to hear that from, from somebody that's seen so many things in so many places over decades of almost what sounds like almost constant travel is. It's very heartening because it's sometimes can feel like, everything's already been seen, and if it's. And if it exists and it's cool, you know, 100 photographers have always already been there and taken photos of it. And. And, you know, what's the point anymore? Because it's all. Now it's. Everything's just a tourist trap and a this and that. [01:28:39] Speaker C: That is really a very common belief. And so, yeah, thanks for sharing that, Justin. But in fact, there are a lot of stories yet to be told. And with video cameras now, random tourists that just happen to have a camera could document a behavior between two animals that we never even knew had any kind of relationship, and yet they're getting it on video and they don't even know what they're getting. And so there's a new frontier in understanding how animals that seemingly have no. Nothing to do with each other actually have relationships. And I'm not talking about breeding relationships, but for instance, this will give you an example of animals that have a relationship that's well known, except a lot of people don't understand that is in India, spotted deer and Langers, which are a monkey with long tail, always travel together because the Langers climb the tree and drop nuts out of the tree that the deer can't get to. So they hang out together, but it's that many more eyes looking for leopards and tigers that are hunting them. So there's a relationship that is, you know, nobody can dispute. I just did a quirky pig where I couldn't get the word I wanted, and I just. Anyway, so that could be a new frontier, finding relationships between animals and studying it. It does require time, or in the case of a tourist, luck like that. I ramble. I just go, no, no, no. [01:30:24] Speaker B: That's why we're here. That's why we're here. [01:30:28] Speaker A: We should have called it the Camera Life Ramble, because that's it. I mean, it started off. This podcast was supposed to be about an hour. This is actually our 170th episode. It was supposed to be about an hour long. And very quickly it become like we've had some episodes go for three hours, even close to four hours. Yeah. So, well, let's. [01:30:48] Speaker C: Let's not have this one go longer than. No hours only because you've got. I do want to get out of this chair and run around and bother. [01:30:58] Speaker A: We won't keep you too long. But the rambling is what we're here for. I. I actually had a question about. So teaching's obviously been a big part of your career, despite the fact that You've created this amazing body of work, but you're also trying to impart knowledge wherever you can. And you're running workshops all the time, which are experiences, but I'm sure you're also imparting a lot of knowledge during those experiences as well. [01:31:23] Speaker C: Yeah, the workshops that I teach, that I'm the most pleased with are the ones where I teach abstract experience Expressionism, because I take people into really degraded environments and I give them license to shoot something that other people would ridicule them on. And yet the work that they're coming out with is amazing. And it's all about seeing and analyzing what the potential of this could be. And when they've shot it and they've worked on it, or I critique it and I transform it, they're so proud because they're shooting something that they never thought would be a subject before and yet they're coming up with amazing images. But I have very well prepared lectures on the evolution of abstract expressionism. And then I show a series of photos that they think is a famous artist. And yet it's something I shot and I kind of disguise it by showing three or four shots of a Jackson Pollock and then I show one of my pictures and they can't tell the difference. And that's hugely rewarding to kind of light their creativity on fire and give them license to shoot what other people would maybe dismiss as, you know, not a great subject, but in fact it is. So I love that, teaching that. And people come away, really, they'll sign up for a new one. And I'm running out of destinations because so many cities now are getting gentrified. You know, people move into the low cost neighborhoods and they transform them. And then good restaurants come in and suddenly all the graffiti and all the, the decayed walls are gone and you've got really nice places to stay. So I'm trying to race ahead of that. Some of the best work I've ever done on this subject is in the Bowery of Johannesburg, South Africa. People were driving by yelling at me, you're going to get killed down there. And it's like, okay, thank you. It's. I never approach kind of a dicey neighborhood with fear. And I think people that are likely to give you harm or steal your equipment generally read people. And if you look straight in their eye, smile and walk without hesitation, they're going to pass you up. You know, they're you. People that become victims often behave like victims before they're ever approached. So that's my philosophy and so out of necessity I'm going into really degraded areas in Bangkok or Johannesburg or Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, because there's so many areas still that are degraded that you know, have kind of lost their favor for the population and then they fall into decay. And then I go in, I think Havana, Cuba is a great example of that. There's not a lot of money down in Cuba and so a lot of the historic older buildings that were once built by Americans during the forties are great subjects for going down there and finding beauty in the art and the decay of the buildings. Hard to explain. It's easier to show and it's going to be a really nice book to do because I'll have pictures of a old junkyard and then they'll see the pictures coming out of that and it's like what, what really? And so I love surprising people like that and showing the potential of any [01:35:05] Speaker A: area if, if anyone's wants to get a bit of a taste of what art's talking about. I actually watched a few YouTube videos on Arts YouTube channel the other day that there was some nice little snippets of examples of this sort of thing. I think one of them, you were walking around some old, rusty like quite old cars, pickup trucks or something like that and you were sort of. Most people would gravitate towards those traditional shots where it's the, you know, just the body of the car and then maybe up close on, on the steering wheel or something like that, but you would actually wedged your camera right up into the, the, the, the, the crack of the wind screen and the dashboard to get a really close almost macro shot of the way that that particular glass was, was decaying. And it looked almost organic rather than a man made machine. [01:35:58] Speaker C: It looked like a petri dish. I've never seen that on my, you. I haven't really watched my YouTube channel quite honestly, but I know what you're talking about. That was photographed an hour north of Atlanta in Georgia. And there's a certain vintage of trucks and cars where they used a lot of petroleum in the making of the glass. And after 50 or 60 years that glass starts to change and it starts to create all sorts of amazing shapes that you would never predict. And so it, it's quite a gold mine once you find the appropriate electricity. Old car. And I, I just love that the, the discovery of a subject that most people, as you said, and I would agree would walk by and say, oh, my uncle had a car like that. They only are thinking in terms of historically interesting Vehicles where I look at it as the Museum of Modern Art. And so a different. You know, the people that own these junkyards would never believe the work I'm coming out or the. My participants are coming out with. They, they don't even think in terms of that. They don't see what we're seeing. And that's the very essence of a creative artist is we're seeing things that most people dismiss or walk past. They're. They're looking for other things in general, [01:37:28] Speaker B: I think just on that topic, art, you know, you've had artistic training before you moved into photography. You're an educator. You run workshops and tours. Given your experience and exposure to other photographers, what do you think is missing from photography education these days? [01:37:50] Speaker C: Me personally? Well, there's a lot of really good photographers that do studio work and they are experts on lighting and all of that. I have no background like that. When I was doing the human canvas, in fact, I brought in lighting specialists because I was all about the concept. The actual hand painting of the people I did would spend four days doing 30 foot by 12 foot. I don't in meters for you. A big piece of paper that I would hand paint and I would draw from tribal designs to create these things. So I'm good at that, I believe. But I stock at lighting and strobes and all those kind of things. And yet there are a lot of photographers that. That is their specialty and the work they're doing is really remarkable. So that's a whole genre of style of photography that I'm just too old to start trying to get into. And I'm not in a race to try to do great work in that anyways. I still have a lot of challenges completing the books I'm working on. And so I think that may slightly answer your question. [01:39:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think I was leaning more towards what you see in others. [01:39:15] Speaker C: I don't expect. I'm looking at others. That's the problem. Greg. I do not spend any time on Instagram looking at all the work that is being posted every day, which is kind of why Justin gets a little distracted and demoralized when he's seeing all this good work. So I don't look. I. There's a handful of photographers I know personally, but I'm not looking at other people's work. And I know that sounds bad, but it's survival for me. It's keeping my ideas kind of pure to what I want it to be rather than being pulled into different directions by looking at other people's work. So I. I'm a really bad one for that. For answering that question. [01:40:02] Speaker B: No, that's okay. That's okay. Still a good answer. [01:40:05] Speaker C: Still. [01:40:06] Speaker A: I have a question. I have a question about editing. And. And I didn't really. There's. Maybe you can summarize it. There was something that happened quite a while ago, I think, with your work and the world of like editing and Photoshop and what. What boundaries people, different photographers decide to place on their work with respect to editing. And I'm curious about whether you have boundaries or if it depends on the. The particular series as to what you decide on. You know, like, if it's this series, I'm willing to do this, but if it's this type of series, I don't touch anything or whatever. And how do you think about that in terms of. Because mainly I want to. I'm interested about it with respect to what's coming for all photographers with. With AI enabling just more and more wild editing, with not a lot of. With. With much less effort, it's going to open that door further and further for people to kind of modify their work in ways that maybe they never had the skills to do. Priority. And so I think we're all going to have to come up with our own guardrails for what we believe is our own photographic. I don't know. I don't know what I'm trying to say. [01:41:21] Speaker C: No, I know exactly what you're trying to say, and I completely agree with you. I think AI is a frontier that we're almost staring into the light of a freight train coming our way and we don't actually know what can happen. You know, that. That funny little April Fool's joke about a tour to the moon was a lot of that was created through chat PT or whatever that's called. So that was very much using boundaries that we didn't even have at our disposal a couple of years ago. My line in the sand is, I'm not going to photograph this guy and put that sky over that mountain, because I can. I want people that have a reaction to my work in being inspired by it, not to be let down to find out that it wasn't real. That will never happen with me. But what started this whole conversation is a book called Migrations, where we were still shooting film, but we had the capacity to convert it to a digital format. And it was a book that was a lightning rod on a world scale and people condemned me for it. There were messages left on my phone that were really not very pleasant. And it was the subject of a lot of newspaper articles and magazines. The fact that we did this book really turned off some of the purists because we had the capacity. If there was a flock of 100 flamingos flying one way and yet one was flying a different way, I could flip it around and complete the pattern. And we did that in 30 of them, 100 images in the book. And we called them digital illustrations because there was no known term that actually talked about the capacity of what we were doing. This book was inspired by the work of a Dutch artist by the name of MC Escher, which was a big inspiration for me. People could not get over the fact that we did it because I was the nature photographer and purist. But my background in painting and art was creativity. So it was a collision of technology and desire and inspiration and it became a lightning rod. If it had come out this year, nobody would even talk about it. But that line in the sand is a very jagged line in the sand. Because some photographers would not digitally remove a cigarette package that's thrown out of a car that's in your foreground of a photograph. And I would hesitate if I could remove it physically, I would. Sometimes I don't even see it until the image is done and that does go away. So my line in the sand is still having a true image. They want to know that snow leopard was there on the rock. And the day that I would put it digitally there is the day I would lose any credibility as a photographer. Keeping a piece of garbage in an image because somebody's so pure they won't touch the image to me seems a little ludicrous. But that's my line in the sand. I hope I answered that to perfect. [01:44:53] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:44:53] Speaker C: But we, we all worry about where AI and if you can create an image that looks like a river, otters coming out of the water with a fish in his mouth, well, a bear's in the distance watching it. And they created that because they could type that in and I could maybe have a photo like that that I've been lucky in a fifth, five year, 50 year career. But you can create it in a matter of minutes. That, yeah, that, that's why I'm clinging to no more digital illustrations like migration, simply because that is now becoming the norm rather than unusual interest background. So it's. We have to be careful, we really have to be careful with our audience and be true to what they believe you're up to and not violate that. Now editing with altering color, you know, if it's A sunset that's. Everything's yellowish. I'll sometimes pull it the temperature through the blue side to separate color and make the image look better. I have no problem with doing that. [01:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:09] Speaker C: Because if it was a cloud that just came over, it would look just like what I'm doing. And, you know, the sun making everything yellow was always what us photographers really dreamed about, that sunset light, that golden hour. Yet there are times where you don't want the golden hour to be so dramatic as everything looks yellow. [01:46:30] Speaker B: Yep, yep. I think the biggest concern that I have within that space is that. And we're seeing this already with editing software where they're slowly introducing these AI features. And my concern is that it'll get to a point where we either have to ditch that software or just give into it because they're replacing functions with machine learning. And that's what worries me the most. [01:46:58] Speaker C: Well, and just as a side note, when I'm teaching the Abstract expressionism and in the critique in the world of art, nobody would come up to Paul Cezanne doing a painting in the French landscape and question the color of the pigment he's using. Nobody would ever ask an artist, is that truly, you know, burnt sienna, which is a very famous color, or did you change it? And so in the world of creating art from decay, I don't care if you change blue to orange or whatever, as long as the end of the experience looks good. So that is a rarity in the field of photography, where in nature you try to be extremely reverent to the cultures or to the animals or to the landscape. But in the world of art, why should photography held up to a different standard than painting or drawing or anything else? So I. I do create that. And I'm aware that in Australia in photo competitions now, there's divisions that embrace digital, you know, combinations like putting a cloud over a rock or whatever it may be. I don't know, I find that a little odd to create a whole distinction in photography where you're rewarding this tree, coming from this and that cloud, coming from that and all that. That's just a step way beyond anything I would go to. [01:48:35] Speaker B: Yep. Actually, it reminds me of a. Last year, we played around with image creation and AI on the. On our Monday night podcast to, you know, to further explore and understand what was coming. And. Yeah, it was kind of. It was funny at the time. [01:48:52] Speaker C: It was very successful and popular too. [01:48:56] Speaker A: No, what, the image it created. No, no, no. It was so funny. [01:49:01] Speaker B: We also entered it into a competition that this site this company had built a site and they were welcoming art images to be submitted and they were going to allow AI to judge the images. [01:49:15] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. That's why we did it, because we wanted to see if. [01:49:18] Speaker B: Yeah, we wanted people to accept an AI image. [01:49:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they were doing the first ever photo competition judged purely by AI. [01:49:25] Speaker C: Well, you know, that's why I brought up Australia, because I think it is entering the world of digital and creation like that with less hesitation than maybe North America. So it, it doesn't surprise me. I'm not condemning it. You know, people have every right to do what they want to do, but I think acknowledgement is the key. He just one more reflection back to Migrations and it was asked if I know Tom Mango. He bought Migrations, the book, because he liked it, but he still was one of the complainers about it. And I said, well, look at, we addressed this in the introduction. And Tom's response was nobody reads introductions. The onus was on me not to do it, otherwise people are too lazy to read introduction. So it really was a curious time. It was well over 20 years ago. And I do remember people were saying, you know, in the years ahead, people aren't going to remember the controversy, they're going to remember your name more. So I don't know if that's true or not, but you know, if you don't experiment, if you don't take chances, maybe you're never going to be discovered too. Migration. We talked about it as a office that this is, this is going to create some anger. We knew that was coming and it really did come. [01:51:00] Speaker A: That reminds me of a quote I've got written down of yours. It's a good time to bring it up. It says you said if you want to be relevant and make a living with photography, you have to be somewhat different. And I guess that's an example of you trying something different. And I'm sure you've done that many times in your career. Yeah, to be relevant and to not just fall in line and possibly fall behind the pack by just doing the same thing over and over again. [01:51:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:51:29] Speaker C: I'm going to close not this conversation, but this whole subject by something that was really remarkable. And reflecting back on Migrations again, there was a scathing article written about migrations in a very conservative scene from the east coast called the Atlantic Monthly. And this was written by the son of a really well known environmentalist who helped create the Sierra Club and publishing and all that. And he was a. And he once wrote me a nice Letter saying he really appreciated the work I was doing. And here's the son writing this scathing article. And at the end, he went and wrote, I hark back to the innocent days of Ansel Adams. And I heard from many of Ansel Adams senior students who. They themselves were fine photographers. And they say, that guy is so far off. Because if Ansel was alive today, he. He would have been all over digital because he could transform a fairly average image into something remarkable by burning and dodging and working on the image in dark room. He was not a purist by any stretch of the imagination. He was a creative artist. And for that writer to use him as an example of purity was so far off the mark. And I had to have a laugh over that. And it also speaks of yellow journalism, where people that were writing about migrations made up. If I wasn't available for an interview, which is often the case when I'm traveling as often as I do, they would make up answers and they never got it right. Like images in the book. [01:53:24] Speaker B: Which is hypocrisy in its purest form, isn't it? [01:53:26] Speaker C: Oh, it's. It was total yellow journalism. [01:53:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:30] Speaker C: And which is. For those that don't know what that means. It's fake news, which our beloved president often uses. That term. Yeah. When I say beloved, you really know what I'm saying. [01:53:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. We get an inkling. We've got an inkling anyway. [01:53:48] Speaker C: Yeah. Migration keeps popping up again and again. It's just part of my history and it's part of the creative process. If I wasn't taking a chance, it would never have happened. So. [01:54:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And great art should always invoke discussion and. [01:54:05] Speaker C: Exactly. Right. Opinion. Because I'm a big fan. I'm. You know, if there's. There's very few things that I do. I love working in my garden. I love discovering new places and traveling. But I also love really good films because it's the two hours out of my life where I'm not thinking about photography. I can. One of my favorite movies actually was filmed in the outback of Australia. It was filmed. I think it was called Wake in Fright. Yeah. Does that sound familiar? [01:54:40] Speaker B: I've never heard of that. [01:54:41] Speaker A: It's not popping into my head and [01:54:43] Speaker C: find out if that's the right title. It's either Wake and Fright. [01:54:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Would it be like 1971? Like, is it an older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:54:56] Speaker C: And one of the stars of that film was the narrator for Travel Tells by Light, which was an Australian. You know about that series, right? [01:55:05] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Really? Okay. [01:55:10] Speaker C: So, yeah, it was repurposed and brought out in revised and it's just brilliant film. It's a brilliant film. And I was going to mention earlier when you were talking about your camera straps being out of cattle and this whole takes place out in the middle of cattle country and it's just. I love film. So it shot in 70 millimeter. Haven't seen it. Find it. Look at it. It's really amazing. [01:55:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. I. Yeah, the visuals look amazing. This is 1971 psychological thriller film directed by Ted Koch, written by Evan Jones, starring Gary Bond and Donald Pleasant. [01:55:54] Speaker C: Donald Pleasant and was a young. Another actor in the film was the. Was a young actor at the time that wound up being the narrator. And he's a famous Australian actor, but at my age I forgot his name again. [01:56:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Filmed in. On location. Broken Hill and Sydney. [01:56:13] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [01:56:14] Speaker A: Yeah. I'd never heard of it. That's. Yeah. Thank you. Check it out, please. [01:56:19] Speaker C: Absolutely do. Then, you know the films I love the chat. [01:56:22] Speaker A: The chat's all over it. They're like, yeah, it was a classic Aussie movie. Paul says Waking Fright. Yeah, fairly. It's a fairly iconic film. That's it. That's their polite way of saying that we don't know anything. It's pretty iconic, guys. You should probably know. Yeah, sorry. All right, now I know we've only got a few minutes left. I had a couple of quick topics. Greg, I don't know if you've got anything. [01:56:44] Speaker B: No, you far away, boss. [01:56:46] Speaker A: There was a couple of things I want to do. First of all, you were talking before the show, and I've heard you talk about it before about your team. Like, you have a. You have a staff, a team that you work with. I'm interested one, in sort of what their main role is, how they support you, and then two, how you've been able to sort of cultivate such an amazing team over the years and. And what you do. [01:57:07] Speaker C: I have to be careful. I'm certain one or two of them may be watching this. [01:57:12] Speaker A: Okay. [01:57:13] Speaker C: Live. So I. But there's two things about that. They have a lot of responsibility and they have distinct roles, but they often have to double up and work with another person. It's a small team, but one lady, Deirdre Skillman, is. She remembers almost every photo I've ever taken. She works with the publishers and makes selections for photos. They do have the right and the capacity to negotiate contracts and sign contracts. So in many ways I can't piece pay them. Unfortunately, what they're really worth. But the freedom and the empowerment is something that's very valuable to. To them. Yeah, I micromanage ever. How could I? I'm gone so much. So I think they respect from. They respect me for my work ethic, and they work hard, and I respect them for being sticking with me for a very long time. So two women in my office have worked for me for 34 years, and one, Chris Eckhoff, she almost acts like a spouse. She does a lot of things that a wife would do in including putting my father into assisted care living and when he passed, getting him cremated. These are things that nobody that works for somebody else has that responsibility, but she jumps in and does that because I'm gone so often. And she also handles the finances and things like that. Deirdre is all about, and she works with Kyle on developing things for the Web. Then there's Libby that is booking tours and working with lodges and guides and things like that. So she's the youngest in my office, but she's been there, I think, 19 years or more, and she's a gold mine for me too. Well, they're all gold. They're all really. I can't replace them. I worry the day I hear that they want to retire. But, yeah, it's a good, solid, cohesive group, and they love it. To say goodbye you because I'm out of their hair for two weeks. [01:59:37] Speaker A: They can get work done while you're gone. [01:59:39] Speaker C: Exactly. [01:59:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:59:40] Speaker C: And I just found out this morning they have a big planning meeting when I'm gone, so maybe they're planning to hire a new photographer to take my place. [01:59:49] Speaker B: Maybe they're looking at moving you into assisted living. [01:59:53] Speaker C: Well, that's. That is a day that I really would regret. I'm gonna hope I'm like my father. My father lived to 92, and he. He looked every bit 92, but his brain was very much there. And the last words my father ever said to me was I came into his room at assisted care living, and I knew he was close, and I said, dad, you're the best father I've ever had. And he back, and I couldn't hear what he said, so he motioned my ear to his lips, and he said, son, you're so full of. So those are the last words I ever heard from my father. [02:00:38] Speaker B: Oh, that's beautiful. [02:00:40] Speaker C: Perfect. [02:00:41] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [02:00:42] Speaker B: That's amazing. [02:00:44] Speaker C: Well, it's amazing because he had a great sense of humor and he never lost his intellect. And I think that's most important thing, because people can be physically Great. But they have Alzheimer's or you know, they're, they've lost their capacity for cohesive thinking, which I'm demonstrating. So yeah, I hope I have that. And I really would like to pass while I'm working in the field rather than going through a protracted downhill slide. [02:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:18] Speaker C: And you can see I Look what, 25 to you? [02:01:21] Speaker B: Oh, 24 I was gonna say. [02:01:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Early 20s, I'm sure. Do they still ask you for ID in the States when you go to buy beer and stuff like that? Are they like. [02:01:31] Speaker C: So we'll need to have enough gray hair now. But some, some weight people still will do it out of either compliments or be they're so cautious about, you know, people sneaking alcohol. So yeah. And I do like tequila, so I'm not a purist when it comes to alcohol. I, I, I'm not a big pot user, but I absolutely do like and type A People like me do self medicate. So a shot of tequila does kind of take a little bit of the edge off. [02:02:04] Speaker A: There was a comment back here earlier about like during, I guess this was during COVID You had a great YouTube. I saw this YouTube series series when I was doing some research. Tequila and photography. So I wondered, wondered whether you're still into tequila or not. [02:02:19] Speaker C: Well, what was funny about that Justin, is that Gabrielle was stuck in Seattle. We had just done a workshop and then Thailand closed all entrance by people out of Thailand. So for two months he was stuck in Seattle. He couldn't get home and he was the one that was making margaritas from scratch and he doesn't drink at all and but he was making really powerful. And another friend of mine from just south of Mumbai in India became, was a worker, you know, kind of a marketing genius at Xbox at Microsoft, which is also located in the outskirts of Seattle. So yeah, with the most rewarding thing about that and the idea to do that was from Paramol, the Indian man. He said you don't have any direct communication with your fans. So let's do this interview once a week during COVID People are looking for something and we'll just, you can talk about anything you want. And so it was good. But I think the most rewarding thing was two different women wrote in saying that they were struggling with cancer and the tequila time with you are the highlight of their week because we were so irreverent, you know, so goofy and laughter as one does get when you're drinking margaritas made by Gabrielle. I gave a tour of my yard and I almost fell Off a stone bridge into my koi pond and I almost fell into the pond, which would have made me think. I think that would be great. [02:04:07] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm gonna have to go back and dig through these, these videos and have a laugh now. But, yeah, we better let you go. The last thing I wanted to do was bring, bring up. I was going to bring up this page from your website about your workshops that are upcoming. And, and I thought maybe if, while I scroll through, if you have it all in your brain at the moment, a quick rundown of like, what, what does the rest of your 2026 look like travel wise? It doesn't have to be super specific, but just, just to give us a bit of a ballpark. [02:04:40] Speaker C: Okay, I'm bringing out my notebook. You know, this year I started off in PNG just north of you guys and on a two week dive trip. And so that was at the beginning of January and then I went to. Since where are we? We're at the very, oh, the very first of April. I've been to Africa, Tanzania, to Morocco, to Japan and Hokkaido. Leading tour. So four major destinations including Spain. Yeah, let me just. I, I cannot memorize it. I have, I'm a paper person. Can you see me? Yeah, you can see. So I have everything. Now I'm gonna really look at my age and put on my glasses. So for the rest of the year, the big, not everything, but the big ones are. Well, it's a private trip to new to Patagonia next week. Then I come back and I have a trip to New Zealand, the South Island. Then I have an Olympic workshop which is right across the water from where I am. A beautiful mountain range and rainforest and so forth and so on. Then we have a Madagascar tour in June. Then we've got Mongolia, Mongolia, Mongolia in July. And then a Mount Rainier workshop. Local Columbia Gorge, which is the big river on the west coast south of us. Katmai Bear Tour. I have a private tour to Namibia, then a public tour to Namibia, which will be my third trip. Then we've got Borneo in September and Abstract Astoria, which is finding, you know, beauty and decay. Then there's the Seal River Lodge at the end of October, and that's the one walking with polar bears. Then I've got a Kyoto, Japan, fall tour and then Lizard island in Australia in December. [02:06:42] Speaker A: Oh, really? That one. Is that, Is that a tour or is that a, is that a trip that you're doing to create work? [02:06:48] Speaker C: That is a private tour with three friends of mine. And so in the last Seven years I got into diving and underwater housing and again, Greg, it's finding new things that challenge you. And it's not that I'm ever going to replace really good underwater photographers, but it does fit into a lot of the projects I'm working on right now. So in a demonstrate and I love doing it. I suck at swimming, but as a scuba diver you don't have to be a good swimmer. [02:07:23] Speaker A: You don't have to stay on the surface. Yeah. [02:07:27] Speaker C: You know, fins and you can stay underwater and. Yeah, yeah. [02:07:32] Speaker A: I'm actually learning to scuba dive for the first time ever in May in Bali. It's up on my planner at the moment. I'm doing a four day certification course so I'm pretty excited about that. [02:07:45] Speaker C: Well, you know, I'm a novice diver but I have always a somebody that's really paying attention to me. I'm looking for, I want to do a new book on vanishing act which is camouflage and oh my God, there's so many perfect subjects under the water. But I have a dive master that's always hovering around me reading my numbers because I don't pay attention to the gauges and I could easily die underwater. So that's not going to happen. That's watching me but that frees me up just to look for the animals. [02:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yep, yep. Yeah, I think, I think that would be a nice, a nice. Yeah. Safety net. Just knowing someone that knows what they're doing. Keeping an eye on you at all times. Can focus on your, on your work. All right, I think, I think that's all I've got. Any, anything final, Greg, before we let Art go and get outside and run around. [02:08:40] Speaker B: No, yeah, no, like you just and I are both paper people and I've gone through my, my notes so I think this is a great place to tie a bow. In today's episode of the Camera Life podcast, on behalf of us here, it's been an absolute honor and a privilege getting to unpack a little bit of your story. I mean, you know, we, we research all of our guests, we spend days reading, watching videos, getting to know who it is that we're going to talk to. But nothing ever replicates sitting down and having a conversation with a like minded peer. And for that we thank you. And you know, as I mentioned earlier, you've been a guest that we've been wanting to get on the show and we've had people recommending you and you know, I feel like I've ticked off a bucket list item on behalf of us here. So thank you so much for your time. It's been incredibly inspirational, incredibly insightful, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that will walk away from today's episode with some new thoughts about how I'm going to approach my craft moving forward. And for that, I thank you personally. [02:09:45] Speaker C: Thank you, Rick. It was a pleasure for me to chat with both of you. [02:09:49] Speaker A: Thanks so much, Art. Yeah, it really is. It's a. It's pretty crazy that the people like you will make the time to come on shows like this. Two hours is a lot for someone as busy as you. And yeah, we do very much appreciate it. [02:10:01] Speaker C: Oh, I enjoyed it completely, but. [02:10:03] Speaker B: Wonderful. [02:10:04] Speaker C: Watch that film now. [02:10:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I will. Absolutely, absolutely. [02:10:11] Speaker C: Thank you. [02:10:12] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Just before we we close up today's episode of the Camera Live podcast. If you're new here or if you're not, please give us a like. It helps out a lot. It lets other people know that we have content that is very much worth watching. And if you are new here, think about subscribing. It doesn't cost you anything. You just have to hit that subscribe button, tickle the bell icon so you get notifications of every show in your time zone. And we do this twice a week. Every Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time, we interview an amazing photographer and get to unpack some of their story. And every Monday evening, we have our random photography show where we cover industry news, product launches, we do our own unboxings. We don't mind a little bit of asmr and we, yeah, we just talk about our craft. So like I said, please, please like and please subscribe. Joe, you want to roll some music and say goodbye to some folks? [02:11:04] Speaker A: I do. Phil Thompson says, art, you are really quite an interesting inspiration and thanks, Justin and Greg for having him on the show. Breedlove photo says thank you all, especially Art, for a great interview. Paul says, thanks so much, Art. Who else? Philip Johnson. Many thanks for your time, Art, and many thanks to Justin and Greg for organizing. And there was a good comment back here from Matt Palmer. Amazing landscape photographer here in Australia, says you can do everything and anything in photography except lie about what you've done. In my opinion, I think that's. [02:11:36] Speaker B: That's a fair. Cool. So I like that. All right. I like that. [02:11:39] Speaker A: And other than that, make sure. I'm sure you guys are already following Art, but go and check him out on YouTube and Instagram and his website and check out his workshops and all that kind of stuff, and otherwise we'll catch you guys in the next episode. [02:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Art.