A conversation with Aaron Walker (EP208)

[00:00:25] Speaker A: Well, g' day, everybody, and welcome back to the Camera Live podcast. It is Thursday 13th August, and being a Thursday morning, we have once again an amazing photographer to chat with and unpack their journey, their inspirations, their creativity and, and see what they're up to lately. But before we get into that, of course, I'm Greg, and joining me today is Justin. Yes, he's back, in case you didn't pick up on Monday. He is back. [00:00:49] Speaker B: I'm back. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Good to have you, boss. [00:00:50] Speaker B: And I've got a puppy. Hey, hey. Just really quickly before we do anything. Happy birthday, Greg. [00:00:57] Speaker A: Oh, thanks, boss. [00:00:58] Speaker C: For yesterday, but still yesterday. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Happy birthday. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Thank you very much. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Did you have a good day? [00:01:04] Speaker A: I had a phenomenal day. Got presents in the morning from the kids and they went to school and then as soon as they left the door, Sash and I ordered bagels to be delivered for breakfast. That was a sneaky little treat. I built a Lego set as I like to do. Yeah, we, Sash and I made burgers last night. We watched Mario Galaxy movie. Just had a really fun chill day on the couch. It was really nice. Thank you. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Okay, sorry I derailed that. Now we should, you know, we have a guest. We should, we should, we should talk. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Of course. Now today, folks, we are joined by a specialist in movement and creative storytelling, a beef up instructor, and someone who quite literally ran away to join the circus. We are joined, of course, by Aaron Walker. G', day, mate. How are you? Good day. [00:01:53] Speaker C: Good. Thanks for the intro and happy birthday. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Thanks, buddy. [00:01:56] Speaker A: Thank you very much, Aaron. Great to have you here. And we're going to unpack as much of your story as we can fit into this time slot. But, you know, first off, we'd like to just get the creative movement flowing. Let's. Let's ask you a question. You know, on your bio on your site, it talks about how you quite literally ran away to join the circus. And ever since I imagine your time as a young person, you've had a fascination for the. For the arts, visual arts, movement arts, creative arts. Tell us a little bit about that, that step in going and joining a circus. What was involved there? What inspired you to do that? And what was that like for you to begin with? [00:02:42] Speaker C: Okay. All right, we need to wind back a little bit to the first couple of years. I was in Australia actually. So I came out. I came out to Australia in mid-90s. I was with a partner at the time and she was turning 30 and it was her last chance to get a working holiday visa. I really wanted to go to India and explore Asia. And she really had her heart set on Australia. So we thought, okay, we'll go to Australia first. So spend a bit of time in Australia and then move on to Asia. So we flew to Australia and I just loved it here. Long story cut pretty short, but I ended up in Byron Bay, partner went back to uk, we separated and I stayed in Byron Bay and I was working in a juice bar. And it was great. I had heaps of friends and I was really happy there. But I was also thinking I should. I should do this career thing. Everyone talks about this career thing, and I should kind of do some of it. And I really didn't know where or what I should be doing. Anyway, time went by and my neighbor, I had a new neighbor, and she was moving in and big old timber, a frame house with a massive porch near the beach. And she started hanging up trapezes. And I thought, wow, trapezes, that's interesting. And I got chatting with her and I realized that she was from the circus and she'd been touring for a while and she moved back home and she was running workshops. And so a couple of friends of mine, we got together and we started doing workshops at my neighbor's place on trapeze. And then I met some acrobats who were touring with circus Oz and rock and roll circus. I don't know if you remember rock and roll circus. It was before it basically evolved into a circa, the contemporary circus. What's, you know, up and coming now. But yeah, before then it was rock and roll. And so I met a lot of acrobats and circus artists, carnies, and realized that I connected. I connected really well with these people. You know, like, I found. I felt like I found my tribe, I found my people. So I just wanted to kind of immerse myself in the circus world from that moment on. So, yeah, lots of workshops, lots of classes, lots of socializing, lots of going to see shows. And then I had to leave Australia because my visa was up. And so when I went back to uk, I based myself in Bristol. And I found a small circus training center in Bristol called The Albany, in St. Paul's actually. And there I met a lot of circus folk. And somebody recommended me to a traveling circus, a traditional circus company, really small, small company. And so I jumped on board with a small, traditional circus company and we toured around the east part of England. And, you know, everyone's putting out the big top and banging in the stakes and driving the trucks and putting in the Bleachers, and then you have a quick change, then you go on stage, do your act, do another act, help someone else, and then you start taking the tent down, and then you pack it away, and then you drive the truck another few hours down the road and then you do it all over again. So traditional circus is really hard graft, but so much along the way. So, yeah, that's how I kind of cut my teeth in the circus world was traditional circus. And then there was a course that came up, a degree course in London at the circus space, which is now the national center of Circus Arts. And they were offering a bachelor in Circus Arts and Theater Practice. And it was the first of its kind in the uk, And I was eligible to apply for funding to get my fees covered. So that's what I did. And I auditioned and I got in, and then I did three years of hardcore training at the circus space to become a circus artist. So, yeah, that's how it started. [00:06:58] Speaker B: I didn't even know they had a course for that. Like, I thought. Yeah, I thought, is there really just around the corner where it's just you learn off someone? You know, like someone says, I'll teach you in my backyard. I thought that's how people would learn, not. Not do a degree in it or something. That's crazy. [00:07:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Justin. It's like some people take the kind of institutional education pathway and some people take the learn in the backyard pathway. [00:07:29] Speaker B: Learn by. Learn by doing. [00:07:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's the way circus has always been, but now it's like, been structured into this kind of academic, kind of a program where you can actually go through and get a degree. I mean, how valuable is that piece of paper? It's interesting question because, I mean, people say, you know, it's just, you know, what are you going to do with that qualification? But I actually got my residency through that degree. [00:07:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:59] Speaker C: Yeah. So I was actually teaching at nyca, the school that Greg mentioned. It's a circus school in Prahran, and they sponsored me. And because I had a degree in circus, it gave me a lot of points. And then I had a sponsorship from a circus school, and that also gave me lots of points, and I managed to get my residency. But so it does hold a bit of weight depending on how you use it. [00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:08:21] Speaker C: What? [00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:23] Speaker B: All right, let's not. This whole podcast isn't going to be about the circus, I promise people. This is a photography podcast. [00:08:28] Speaker A: It is fascinating. [00:08:29] Speaker B: It's fascinating. So just Quickly. But while we're, While we're on topic, I want to know how long did it take you from, like, doing your first lesson, your first workshop before you performed in front of a crowd in that circus in the uk? Like, what was that time period? [00:08:44] Speaker C: Oh, that's a great question. I was pretty bad at the start, actually. And I was. I was late to the circus. I was, I was old. I was like 25. That's really old. So I had a lot to learn. I had to learn quickly. And my body was just like, I was so sore all the time. I used to, like, dread waking up and walking down the stairs because my legs would be so sore. But. Yeah, okay, so I reckon. I reckon within. Well, I was performing before I went to the degree course in that traditional circus company I mentioned. So I reckon it took about, I'm going to say, six months of, like, dedicated training to be able to perform something. Something on stage, you know? Yeah. [00:09:32] Speaker A: And it was. [00:09:32] Speaker B: And it was trapeze. [00:09:33] Speaker A: So you. [00:09:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what. [00:09:36] Speaker A: So. [00:09:36] Speaker B: And is that. Is that like, are you the rock stars of the circus? You know, like, there's the. There's the clowns, there's the. There's the strong guy that lifts up stuff or whatever. And. And he also has to bang in the stakes, I'm guessing, for the whole. Has to erect in Titan. [00:09:52] Speaker A: That's what all the movies tell us. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Is the trapeze the hardest? Is it like the hardest job to get? And the most rock star job has. What's the pecking order? [00:10:03] Speaker C: Well, it's so funny because trapeze artist is. Is an aerialist, right? And an aerialist is any performer that does movement in the air. It could be on the rope, it could be on the tissue, it could be flying trapeze, Washington, trapeze straps, chains, you know, aerial ring. We're all kind of aerialists. And it's funny because aerialists, I think secretly we do consider ourselves royalty, but I don't know if that's ever an official label. But we all often think, oh, yeah, we're like, we're the most hardcore because we're up there in the air doing our thing. But I'm sure everyone has their own take on that. [00:10:41] Speaker B: But what you see, the guy juggling chainsaws probably also thinks that he's pretty cool. [00:10:47] Speaker C: We all think we're pretty cool in our own right. I guess aerial discipline is. I mean, it's pretty demanding on the body like a lot of other circus disciplines. I mean, being a tumbler, being A floor acrobat. That's really hard on your joints. You know, if you're tumbling on the stage, like, night after night, that's pretty hardcore, too. And they all have their pros and cons, so to speak. But I guess aerialists, that there's a certain amount of kind of spectacle to an aerial show because you're not on stage or above stage. Stage or you're above the audience. So in a way, it kind of elevates it, like, visually, too. Yeah, but, yeah, it's. Yeah. Trapeze, flying trapeze, swinging trapeze. I did all of those and loved them all. And then I settled on rope. Actually, I was mainly a rope artist because I had shoulder injuries. I tore both my shoulders trying to do these big tricks that I was convinced would work. I was just, like, making tricks up. But looking back, maybe I shouldn't have been doing that. But, yeah, I injured my shoulders as rehab. I was climbing ropes a lot, and I just developed a rope act and then somebody foolishly put me forward for a gig, and I didn't even have an act ready. So I had two weeks to throw something together, and then I just started working as a rope artist for a long time after that. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:12:10] Speaker A: That's amazing. It's very, very, very cool. [00:12:12] Speaker B: It's so interesting. It's a life that we've just, you know, you see, you see when you go to the circus or you see movies and stuff about a circus and what, you know, what it might be like, but I'm sure the reality is different and maybe a little bit the same. You know, some of the stereotypes are true. [00:12:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's interesting what happens around the shows, not just in the shows itself. And. And, yeah, and people think people only see you for five, six minutes on stage. Yeah. That's the length of the actual. But often they have no idea just how many years it took you of hard work to get to that. Five, six minutes. And I remember one day I was just waiting in line for a coffee or something, and this guy asked me what I did for a job, and I said, I'm a circus artist. And at the time I was touring the world. I had months and months and months of contracts. Yeah, I was just living out of a suitcase for years. And he said, oh, but what's your real job? And I'm like, no, that is my real job. [00:13:24] Speaker B: It's someone's job. It is so cool. What do you reckon, Greg? Should we check in with the chat quickly before we. [00:13:32] Speaker A: Let's check in with some folks. Yeah. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Keep this train rolling now. [00:13:35] Speaker A: Let's check in with some people and see what's going on. [00:13:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Philip Johnson was here first, as always. Almost always. Good morning, Philip. Good morning, Lucinda. And Julie Powell says morning can't stay long. We'll watch the rest on replay. We can. That's the cool thing about this podcast. You can watch it on YouTube anytime later or on Spotify, Apple podcasts, all those things. You can pop it in your earbuds and take your dog for a walk with my little new puppy that I take for a walk sometimes. He's asleep in a crate at the moment. He's very unhappy because Elaine is gone and I'm on this and he'd be barking at me, so. Morning, Rodney Nicholson. Dave Mascaro. Lucinda says happy birthday. [00:14:15] Speaker A: Thanks, kiddo. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Stuart Lyle says morning from Sunny Hobart. Oh, wait, Cloudy Hobart. Hang on. Wendy Hobart. Make that rainy Hobart. Wait, Sunny again. Sounds like Melbourne and Bendigo. Roy Bixby is here. East Coast Photography says good morning team from Foster, which I pronounce Foster, but, you know, whatever. Lisa Leach. Good morning. Sounds like the perfect, perfect birthday, Greg. Happy belated birthday. [00:14:43] Speaker A: Thank you. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Same from Stuart Lyle. Rodney Nicholson, everybody. And Roy Bixby says our podcast is more amusing at two times speed. Well, that's fun for you, Roy. Enjoy. Enjoy that. Us sounding like chipmunks. One last thing before we get back to the interview. The Camera Life podcast is brought to you by Lucky Straps Luckystraps.com. that's us. Check out our camera straps. They're awesome. That's about it. That's all I've got for you today. Just a short. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Greg. [00:15:13] Speaker B: Greg, go check him out. You'll know if you like them. That's all? [00:15:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. That's it. Thanks for the ad read. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Yep. [00:15:20] Speaker A: It's a bit like cluster, but, you know, it's your company, so whatever. Aaron, I'm really. It's so tempting to just keep asking you questions about your performing life, but maybe I can intertwine some photography questions in there somewhere. [00:15:36] Speaker C: Yeah, we can pepper it with photography. It's okay. [00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's roll back quite a bit and talk about, you know, your earliest inspirations as a. As a photographer. Where did that spark come from? It? Was it a mentor? Was it a family member? Was it a teacher? And you talked a little bit about how, you know, you grew up going to the cinema a lot, being involved in that. Tell us a little bit about those early days for you. [00:16:00] Speaker C: Sure. Okay. So my first Job as a kiddo was selling candy in the little sweet shop of my family's cinema in Bath. It's called the Little Theater cinema. It's been running for 90 years. Yeah. So it opened in 19. I'm doing my math here in the 20s. 26. Yeah, it's, it's. It just celebrated its 90th birthday actually. I flew over in May and we had a bit of a celebration and it was a full house and we played archive footage from the 20s and 30s. It was quite beautiful. So it used to be a theater became a cinema. I was selling candy and I was, you know, I'm showing my age now, but in between the, the reels we had an interval, you know, we had to change over the film reel. So I'd be the person with the little tray who goes down the aisle selling the cornettos to the audience. And it was in the days where on the left side you could smoke and on the right side you couldn't smoke. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Oh, I love that. That's so good. So, yeah, yeah. A cloudy haze on one side and just perfectly crisp, clean air on the other side. [00:17:20] Speaker C: Yeah. So I got to watch. I got to watch all the movies, you know, like, so I would always miss the first five minutes of the start and miss the first five minutes of the end because I had to be in the sweet store selling, selling stuff. But yeah, I got to learn the movies really well. And I, I got really inspired by film. Like, I think I. In my head I probably thought that maybe I'll like work in the movies one day. And my, my great great grandmother started the cinema and she had a women's theater company, so she would tour England with this theater company. And my, my grandfather was an actor and my sister did some acting. And so now my great aunt runs the cinema and everyone's gone through it, like aunts and uncles and cousins. We've all worked there in some shape or form. So I think that was a big influence on me, just being surrounded by cinema and by movies at a young age. And then, I mean, I think it happens a lot. You're you. At some point someone gives you a camera. Yeah. And my neighbor at the time, I remember, he gave me this Fuji film camera and I started shooting on film. Just holiday snaps mainly. And then I started traveling a bit more. My. My parents have always taken me overseas. We always kind of had adventures in Europe. So I always took a camera and did, you know, holiday snaps with family and really enjoyed. I enjoyed the social interactivity of photography. How you could use it to connect with people and take people's photographs and portraits and. Not that I was like professionally doing it back then, but looking back, I think I used it as a social tool as well and also a way to, like, just help remember what I'd done and who I was with at the time, you know, as. As a kind of memory prompt. And then I. I really wanted to be a National Geographic photographer because, you know, as a kid I had National Geographic subscriptions, as I think most of us did. I remember, like piles of these magazines in the corner of my room. [00:19:41] Speaker A: The Yellow Stones, just. [00:19:43] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. I've got a couple on my coffee table just over there. And so I always kind of had these kind of dreams of being a photographer, but I never thought I could be one because we weren't the wealthiest family at all, quite working class. And I never thought I could afford it. You know, I always used to look at the gear and think, I can never afford to be a photographer. That's not something that I can realistically pursue. So I kind of shelved that ambition, thinking it was completely out of my reach and I needed to choose something or choose a path in life that was more realistic or more affordable. It always felt like it was this kind of elite profession that I could never become a part of. Ironically, I'm sitting here, I'm surrounded by six cameras and so much gear. Yeah, [00:20:42] Speaker B: that's what a career in the circus will do for you, I assume. It's also a very lucrative world. Yeah. [00:20:50] Speaker C: Right. Well, we. [00:20:52] Speaker B: I'm going to write that down later on. We're going to find out about all six of those cameras. Six cameras, [00:20:59] Speaker C: okay. [00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:21:01] Speaker B: So how. When did the shift. Was. When was there a shift at any point? Or did you. Or did photography just kind of bubble away in the background as something that you. That you did on holidays and for fun? Like, did you kind of push it away as that could ever be something? [00:21:15] Speaker C: Yeah, it bubbled away a bit. I think it kind of started to creep in a lot more when I was touring full time. So I would have. As I started to get more and more work as a circus artist, I started to travel more because in the uk, let's just say we have quite a small circus industry in the UK compared to other major circus hubs like Montreal and Europe. So I started getting more work in Europe, mainly Germany, Spain, some gigs in France, Andorra, Switzerland, sometimes the Middle East. I'd have some big gigs over there. So I was visiting some interesting places and I wanted to photograph these places. And also when you're touring as a circus artist, it's not like you're doing shows all day. Usually it's in the evening and sometimes matinees at the weekend. So apart from, you know, the training aspect, you have to keep up your training, you have to keep physically fit. So you'd go into the theater earlier, you'd have a training session, you might run your act, and then you're kind of done until the evening. So you have like the whole day in a city you don't know, and you probably don't know anyone in that city at all. You might not even know your crew who you're working with, because you're touring. So suddenly you're in a new theater, you've got a new show to do, new cast members to meet. So a lot of the time you're on your own. And I started just wandering around the city with a camera because I felt like it helped me observe my surroundings. Like I could really start looking more keenly and more intensely at where I was going and what I was doing. And it was just nice to pass the time taking photos in a different city and a different culture and different people. And so I. I started ticking over, like, I guess you could call it travel and street photography. And then I think somebody, somebody I was working with wanted some photos of their. They had like a breakdance group. It was an act with three breakdancers, and they wanted me to shoot the act. And my act was on towards the end of the show, and their act was at the start of the show. So I started just going into the auditorium and photographing live acts. And then word got around that I was taking some good photos of live acts. And more and more artists I worked with wanted some promo shoots that I was doing. If I could make it work, I could make it work within the schedule of the show. And then we started using the stage after hours. We set up some lights, some stage lighting, and we started to do like some more directed setup shots of artists that way. And I really enjoyed it, but I didn't really consider it to be the start of a career. I just thought it was a nice add on to my touring lifestyle, you know. Your real job? Yeah, my real job, exactly. I was doing my real job. And, you know, photography was just like this hobby on the side, which was ridiculous to think that could be a real job at all ever. And I think the shift really happened. [00:24:43] Speaker B: I. [00:24:44] Speaker C: When I started working at nika, the National Institute of Circus Arts, I was A full time coach, aerial coach to all the aerial students. And I started studying at the photography studies college in Southbank because I, I realized that I needed to know more about lighting. I didn't really know how to light things that well. I was just kind of guessing half the time. And I kept thinking, man, I could do a better job with this. And it just lends itself to taking portraits and live action shots of fellow circus performers. If I know better lighting, I can do a better job. And I had a steady job for once in my life. I've always been a freelancer. And suddenly I had the steady job at the school and study. Money was coming in and I'd finally got my residency in Australia so things were a lot more stable. And I thought, oh, you know, I could take on a course, I could study photography because I love doing it. And so that's when the scale started to slowly turn. I was at this stage where I was a bit too, I felt like I was a bit too old to like tour all the time. And to be honest, I didn't really want to go back into touring full time. I wanted to have a spot I could call home and I wanted to stay in Australia. So it made sense to kind of teach full time. But then in my spare time I would commission students to collaborate with me and we would do some really good fun shoots, like after hours in the school or at the studio or on location or I would shoot their live shows. So they started building up a portfolio. Because the PSC Photography school, every time I got an exercise to do or an assignment to do, I would just rope in some students and we would just work together and they would get some promo material out of it and I would get some material to submit to class. But also that was going towards my portfolio. So that slowly built up in the background over a period of two years. And then they came a point where I think every full time teacher can relate to this. You kind of hit this burnout period where you realize that you just, you're just exhausted and you feel like you can't regenerate enough. So you need to either take a break or you need to like cut down your hours. So I cut down my hours quite drastically. The idea was if I cut my hours down a lot, I would have to then find photography work to fill that vacuum. Yeah, and I found, I found a commercial photographer who was looking for a second shooter because he was very overbooked with a lot of commercial work. So I showed him my portfolio that I've been building over these last two years of studies and working with circus artists and he was quite impressed with the Folio and he took me on board and I did like three years of work with him full time. So I was doing four to five shoots a week, year round, mostly commercial corporate clients. So I was shooting for him. Yeah, he would, he would just send me the, the shoot details. So I'd go out and do the shoot and give him all the edits and then go out to the next one. And then while I was doing that, I was also doing my own thing, shooting my own clients from the arts industry and you know, keeping that alive as well. Shooting live shows and shooting promotional portraits for circus artists who I knew. Yeah, so it was a busy time. But that's when it, that's when it, to answer your question, Justin, that's when it really shifted from being immersed in completely in a circus world to then taking a step sideways to coaching in the circus world. And then from there from the coaching it just slid into full time photography. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got a question for you about that. Sorry, Jay, do you want, do you want to go first? [00:28:39] Speaker B: No, I only just want to find out, just for context, roughly how long ago was that or what, like what year was that in where you kind of made that, that shift? Just so I've got a bit of a pin to put in that time? [00:28:49] Speaker C: It was 2018. [00:28:52] Speaker A: Okay, all right, cool. [00:28:54] Speaker B: Sorry. Go Greg. [00:28:55] Speaker A: No, no, it's okay. I'm really curious about the second shooter gigs. We often, you know, we talk to people and they've been, you know, they started off as a, you know, an assistant for someone, you know, barely barely allowed to take to carry the photographers camera bags, let alone, you know, take on jobs. How valuable do you think that experience was for you? And also do you think it's something that's still worth pursuing for new photographers today to find mentors to find their first shooter so they can be a second? [00:29:23] Speaker C: That's a great question. I think it's an invaluable learning experience, particularly because I know I'm the type of student or type of learner who needs to be doing. I need to physically apply that knowledge just like a circus artist. Like I understand the theory, but it can't just stay in my head. I need to apply that knowledge over and over and over again until it just becomes instinctual. And the opportunity that being a second shooter gave me was that I would always be going to the shoot not knowing exactly what is going to go on like, it's an unknown area. It's an unknown environment. Yes. I have a shot list and I have a run sheet, and I've spoken a little bit with the clients, but, you know, you turn up and you're like, okay, so how do I get all these shots? You know, so you're really thinking on your. Really thinking on your feet. Yes, I know the camera settings, I know the techniques, but I keep telling my students as well, because I'm teaching photography. It's like, all the knowledge is great, but it's worthless unless you can keep applying it and not just apply it once or twice, but just always. You're always applying it, you know, because there's always going to be something you learn. I did. I've done hundreds of headshots and I've done hundreds of event photography shoots. But there's always something. There's always something in those shoots that I come away from and go, oh, I learned. I learned how to do this, so I learned how to do that. There's always something that you pick up along the way when you're involved with the job, which you cannot predict at the time. You've got no idea that that is actually going to happen. Yeah. So, yeah, to answer your question, it's. I had so much knowledge from psc, but when I was working for Kit, I could apply all that knowledge. And also, Kit was, like, filling in the gaps for me as well. He could see I kind of knew how to do that, but. But not in the way he would like. And so he would mentor me through those three years and pull me up on things like, you know, why did you take that shot? All I can see is, like, backs of heads. And I'm like, well, they're looking. It's because they're looking at the. The keynote speaker, and he's like, yeah, but I don't want to see backs of heads. Like, that's, you know, or why someone. Why did you shoot someone touching their face? It's really distracting. And I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, that's the thing. Okay. Like, you know, you start to pick up on these smaller things that really make a difference, but you don't know that at the time. You're kind of digging deeper. It's. It's that learning curve where you dig a little bit deeper and you realize you think you knew how to do something, and then when you're doing it, you're like, oh, this is how you're meant to do it. Okay, I get it. So it's another Level. It's another level of learning. [00:32:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:32:23] Speaker C: What's that? [00:32:24] Speaker B: That thing called? That where it's like you, like, obviously you only know what you know, so you don't. You're not even aware of the things that you. You might think you're an expert. You don't. Not even aware of the stuff that you don't know yet. You're not even. You know what I mean? You're still uncovering that. You're not even aware that it exists to know exactly. Know how to do it, you know? [00:32:45] Speaker C: Y. Yeah. [00:32:46] Speaker B: And I think just. Just quickly that. That point. I didn't. Didn't really have a mentor like that, but I was lucky enough to start working with. With Jim. And even though we were kind of similar, he'd been a photographer longer than me, so he definitely could help with some of that sort of stuff. But even just us referencing each other's photos, because sometimes when you're looking at your own work, you're sort of focused on what you tried to achieve in that moment for that photo. And then a fresh pair of eyes looking over your shoulder goes, why'd you crop their feet off? And you're like, you know, like you hadn't even, you know, you're not supposed to, but you hadn't even seen it because you were so focused on the lighting technique or the thing that you were trying to do or whatever. And. And then like we had our computers sitting next to each other for years editing weddings and just so we could. I could see his screen all day if I wanted to, and he could see mine. And we were just constantly pepper each other with a, why did you do that kind of thing? And it was. It definitely makes you better, for sure. [00:33:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That feedback's invaluable. Like, I had an amazing tutor, Neil Stanier, at psc, and every week we would have to show work, like, regardless of whether you'd improved upon your project or not. And it was kind of terrifying and exciting at the same time. You'd be like, I have to stand up in front of the whole class and. And put my print up and talk about it. You know, so it really motivated you to do your homework, but also just to be ready for feedback, to receive feedback and, you know, you can do what you want with it, really. But it's. It's such a good exercise to allow other people to comment on your work because you will see things that you just had not noticed before. Like you were saying, Justin, and it can only make you better, right? It can only make you better. I think, I think there's too many, I think there's too many, too many opportunities that go wasted where we could actually be feed. We could do some constructive feedback with each other's work. People could take that on and it could really improve your work in so many ways. I think too often it's like, oh, I've done a job, just, let's just post it on social media and move on to the next one. And then a lot of people are going, yeah, cool, that's lovely. And it's like, yeah, I get the compliments. I mean we all, we all love compliments. But I kind of want someone to like seriously critique my work as well. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Yeah, wow. It's interesting. [00:35:11] Speaker B: Like a social media, like a masked bandit that just floated around the Internet commenting on people's photos. But like with really insightful criticism. Like never like three fire emojis. Always just something that's just like straight to the point. Yeah, you could have done this later or something like that. Imagine that'd be cool. [00:35:35] Speaker C: Because otherwise we just, we just. I think as a photographer, too often I work in a silo. Like, you know, I, I get, I get the job sent to me. I'm like, okay, I pack all my gear up, I'm ready and I go off, I do the gig, I come home, I do the edits and it's like, wow, I did all that. I'm just literally on my own. Like, it's a one man band. Yes, I'm dealing with people, I'm photographing subjects, but I'm not working with them in terms of like collaborating. Like, I'm, I'm with a team of people who can also keep me in check and go, oh, Aaron, did you really want to light it like that? And I'll be like, actually, maybe I should change. You know, no one's doing that. So I feel like we're kind of soloists a lot of the time and I get a bit tired of that, to be honest. Like, because in the circus, yes, I was a solo artist most of the time, but you're surrounded by other artists who are watching your show and everyone's giving each other feedback. So everyone's wanting to support each other in that way. But with photography, I think that's why beef up is such a great thing too. The festival up in Bright as well as I teach at Collarts and I make a point of connecting with my other photographer friends and colleagues because I feel like without that community we tend to just kind of become Isolated. And I don't see much growth happening from an isolated career. I see like a lot of just treading water happening. So if I'm surrounding myself with other photographers and other visual artists, I feel like that is putting me in a good position to be able to grow. [00:37:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that's really valuable. [00:37:20] Speaker B: Definitely agree. Bruce says Bruce. Well, says editor Bruce hates cameraman Bruce, you are always wanting better captures. Yeah, that's one way to do it is develop multiple personalities. [00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:32] Speaker B: It could be a way to get feedback on your own work when you, when you work for yourself. [00:37:36] Speaker C: I wonder if Bruce changes outfits when he's an editor. [00:37:39] Speaker A: I'm sure he does. I'm sure he wears a cape. [00:37:44] Speaker B: Damn you, Bruce. [00:37:47] Speaker A: And this is a question for you, Aaron, but also for you Justin, because you've both worked, you know, professionally in different arms of the photography industry. But do you think that, that, you know, that solo, that silo effect that you talked about, about being a lone wolf and not really having that. I think this intersect, blissful ignorance, you know, about, you don't know what you don't know. Do you think that that has slipped in recent years that new photographers aren't seeking the support of their peer group or the, perhaps even mentors? [00:38:21] Speaker C: It's a good point actually. Yeah, I, I, I guess I can speak from like I've been a, I've been a freelance artist and photographer and a coach and now I'm a, like I'm, I'm freelancing 90% of the time and teaching 10% of the time photography. So I guess I've kind of seen it from different viewpoints, but I, for me it always comes down to like when you're, when you're learning in an education program, you're acquiring knowledge, but then when you're collaborating with a fellow photographer or being mentored by another photographer or you know, on some kind of program where you're like an assistant in a studio, for example. I think that's the fun part where you're connecting your knowledge with your practice. And I think practice gets overlooked a lot. Like it's my photography practice, as in I'm still not there yet. I've still got a long way to go. It's a never ending process of succeeding and failing, succeeding and failing, you know, over and over again until we feel like we've got a bit of a handle on it. But I'm never, I'm never going to get there. I'm always going to be going there. And I think that's the, for me, that's the joy of photography and it was the joy of circus as well. For me, it's like you've never fully mastered it. You're always striving for perfection. Like, striving for, like, being better. Like Bruce was telling, you know, his photographer from his editor. Multiple personality. Yeah. And I think we, I, I do see a lot of, I do see a lot of soloists, especially coming out of, like, educational institutions, photography schools. It's convenient, it's cheap, it's, you know, you're on your own, you've got your camera, you've got your little studio carved out at home and it suddenly becomes this kind of solo pursuit. And I, I kind of always want to encourage people not to kind of go down that solo route too much because there's so much to learn from other people. Like, if we can only just collaborate a little bit more with, like, fellow artists. You just get so much more out of it. But yeah, I don't see. It's interesting, like in Europe, it's always been this way. Like coming from Ukraine, we often look with envy at Europe in, in the circus world anyway, because. And, and Montreal too, because the, the government has set up arts funding in such a better way. I mean, don't get me started on the arts funding in Australia, but it's, it's, it's a priority, you know, like, like even in Germany, when you're a circus artist, it's like you are not a fringe artist. You're not considered a fringe artist, you're considered a proper artist and you're given hotel accommodation and you're given a decent wage and you have this status, which is, the status is not. You're some kind of fringe reprobate. You're actually a mature, full, professional, serious artist, you know, and the same with, in French culture, in Canadian culture, it's like the arts are much more. I mean, yes, they could be doing better, but they're much more supportive than they are in the UK and Australia. And that tends to generate a community. And so more people are able to connect with each other and to have spaces, like studio spaces that can be used like, like cooperatives, you know, shared space. Yeah. So because there are more resources, then it's more viable for people to start sharing these resources rather than. It's just me on my own, it's just me, I can afford my camera, okay, I need a job and get that job on my own, I go and do my gig on my own. It's very blinkered. Whereas with a Bit more support in the arts, you can actually expand that experience and bring people into your own career experience and share resources and share equipment and share work. So I see a lot of difference between cultures and funding because of that too. [00:42:49] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:50] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know about Finding mentors has always seemed difficult and I think the only way to do it is to just ask. Just find people and ask. And don't, don't put too much on them. You just gotta, even if you, you know, just say, hey, what, what about, do you have time for just like one half hour phone call with me? You know, don't, don't say, I want you to be my mentor for the next 10 years and, and take me to, you know, new heights. [00:43:16] Speaker A: Is a schedule for all our meetings. [00:43:18] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But just start with a phone call and then see what value you can give them back as well. But I was just thinking, you know, it's not really on the same thread, but it just popped into my head. So when I started the wedding photography business and then Jim was shooting as a photojournalist and then he did some second shooting for me, even though he was a more experienced photographer because he was trained at university and then worked as a paper, as a photojournalist. I was just some dude that picked up a camera and learned myself. So he started second shooting for me a bit and then he decided he didn't want to work for the paper anymore. He wanted to work for himself because it looked like fun because I was doing it and I was like, all right, let's do it. And you know, the advice that we got from, from two people that were successful in the wedding photography industry at the time, do not go into partnership, it won't work. And I sort of look back at that and I think, yeah, so they were kind of advocating the stay in your silo, it's safer. And, and they'd seen, they said they'd both seen partnerships just fail because someone works harder, someone doesn't work as hard or whatever, you know, just mismatch on, on what they wanted the business to be. And yeah, I don't know. I think that was, was obviously the advice that they had based on their experience, but it would have been bad advice if we hadn't done that. I think it was, yeah, the right choice for us was to partner up and, and do it the way that we did because we got way better at photography really fast and just from work, bouncing off each other and working together and, and you learn, you just constantly learning and motivated to learn because I didn't want Jim taking. We used to play games. We'd. We'd. We'd see who more of. We do it. We started doing sneak peeks on. On Facebook. It was sort of pretty new to the wedding industry. And then that. That became our biggest marketing driver. We'd put within a day or two of the wedding, we'd put what started off as 12 photos, ended as 50 from a wedding up within a day, and everyone would. From the wedding, would comment on them and tag everybody, and it would just go crazy. But we used to. We'd do it and we'd ruthlessly cull it down to what we thought was a concise image set. It was still too many, but then after we did that, we'd go into Lightroom and see whose photos they were. So whoever had more photos into that final. If we shot the wedding together into that final set was the winner. And that became a fun game. So, yeah, there's so much of that that you miss out on if you just work by yourself. And. [00:45:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, you could. [00:46:00] Speaker B: You could get a little bit of it by doing what you were saying, which just find other artists to collaborate with on. Even just on one project or something. Just a fun project. [00:46:09] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Weddings. Yeah, that's a particularly. Particularly intense shoots. I've shot a few weddings, but I think, God, having someone else there, like as a second shooter and as a partner in your business, I guess one of the biggest advantages is when the dust settles after every shoot, you can just kind of check in with each other and actually have a debrief about the shoot. It's like, hey, how do you think we went? Because I come home and I'm like, I did this shoot yesterday. It's a lifestyle shoot down in Windsor with Beck Judd influencer. And I got home and I'm like, I always do this. I get home and I make a cup of tea or, you know, have a snack or something, and I sit down and I'm unpacking and I'm charging batteries and I'm wrangling, dangling my files into my laptop and backing up, etc, and I say, oh, how did I. How did. How did that go? Like, how could I have done that better? And I think for, you know, I think for 10 minutes, then I'm like, oh, what's on TV? And I'm like. And I'm like, man, if I was in a partnership, I would. That would be like a long conversation, you know, be like, okay, let's look at the images. Let's let's break it down. It would be more thoroughly investigated, but because I'm on my own, I'm tired, I'm. I'm hungry, I'm at home, and I'm like, you know, I get distracted and just like, yeah, I'll. I'll look at that another time. And I will. When I. When I'm looking through the edits in particular, then I start to, like. Like Bruce. I start to question, like, my God, who shot these? [00:47:47] Speaker B: You know, he's terrible. [00:47:51] Speaker C: But then you start to reflect and you can have a conversation in your head about it. But I would love that in person with an actual real partner in business and go, hey, how did we do? Or we aced it. You can celebrate the wins and you can talk and reflect on the losses as well. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good point. [00:48:08] Speaker A: A partnership is like any relationship. It takes effort, it takes compromise. But the key factor is amazing communication skills. And I worry that the photographers that we're seeing moving into the pro world now, you know, they've been doing it for a decade and they're finally ready to sort of stop being influencers and start being photographers, so to speak. Whether they are unaware, it's that blissful ignorance again. Are they unaware that actually having. Having a mentee or having a small community of people I can, you know, debrief with, touch base with, you know, even if it's once a month, do you think that people are missing that? Because we feel, you know, we feel that we're so overly connected through social media, but even then, a lot of those interactions aren't meaningful. You know, are we losing sight of the importance of community and teamwork? [00:48:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I've had. I've had some people come out on shoots with me. I had a shoot with Circus Oz maybe, maybe a year ago now, maybe eight months ago. It was for their latest show. And as expected, it was hilarious. It was just such a good experience. We were in Circus Center Melbourne, like, which is. Which was the old Circus Auspace on Perry street in Collingwood. And all the cast were there. And I brought on a student. He was really keen on learning. And I said, well, why don't you just come with me and be an assistant? I just need you to wrangle some lights. Because we were shooting aerialists and acrobats and clowns, and I knew there was a lot of ideas we had to get through with the director. And so which meant that I would have to be moving lights around a lot between takes and sometimes having them really high up, like in the roof or low down on the floor or whatever. I'll be up on a step ladder shooting high up to get on level with the aerialists or low down. So I said, oh, I really need an assistant. And he was. It was really. He was really cool. His English wasn't great. He's from Thailand. But he knew enough to get through the shoots. And it was really interesting. At the end of the shoot, he was like. He was just really. He was really surprised at how much work was involved of, like, shifting things around and setting things up and then getting a shot. And then lots of talking. Talking director, stylist, makeup, cast. Back to the director, back to the cast. Try an idea. Light it. No, that doesn't work. Okay, wait. You know, and, you know, you stumble along and you kind of get there in the end along this windy route of a shoot. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:50] Speaker C: But you could see he was just taking it all in like a sponge, like, oh, this is what. This is what you do. Okay. So, you know, put this light here. And. And I keep explaining to him, okay, I need that light here, because this is why this light is here. Like, just not just move that there. And he doesn't know what he's doing. It's like, I need a backlight. So can you put that light over there? But it's too soft, so put this reflector on it, you know? And then I would show him in the camera. This is. This is what I'm getting from that light. And he's like, okay. So he's. I can see these light bulbs going off in his head as the dots were connected. [00:51:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:24] Speaker C: And, you know, I remember in class about the camera setting. I'm doing that right now, you know, and it's like, ah, right. Yeah, it's happening. [00:51:33] Speaker A: I bet the rest of the class are jealous. [00:51:35] Speaker C: Yeah. Another time, he. He came with me to. It was an award ceremony. There was a Para Olympian and she was giving out awards. And it was pretty busy. It was at 200 people there, and it was a quite fast event. There was a lot happening. So I was just trying to get all over it with two cameras and shooting, shooting. And. And then we had, like a video vox pop in the corner somewhere, so I had to switch to video. And then we came back to. And at the end of the shoot, he was like, you shoot so much. You take so many photos. I'm like, dude, this is nothing. Like, you have to take a lot. Like, you have to get good coverage. You know, he didn't really have a concept of like how many hundreds of photos you would take in half a day shoot. So it's almost like the reality starts to kick in when you are shadowing a photographer because you get to see in real time what's happening, what's difficult and what's easy and what are the challenges of the shoot and just the sheer volume of shots you're going through and how many times you change lenses and why you're using your light in that way and what to do when the client is really vague and you're just like, okay, I'm making your decisions for you. I'm just going to go over there now. Things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's good. It's always, it's always an eye opener for people who just shadow you. [00:53:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I bet. And we'll jump to a couple of comments in a moment because there's a few comments about that. But, you know, it almost makes me wonder if there's space in the industry for an agency that helps pairs students with working photographers, you know, the second shooter kind of network, you know, whether there's something in that, that, that some bright spark could make work. Yeah. Let's have a look at a couple of comments in here. What have we got? Oh, Paul's joined a little bit late. G', day, mate. Thanks for the birthday wishes. Nathan said. Morning. A teacher told us in class once, if you couldn't receive feedback for your, for your work, you were really going to struggle as a photographer because everyone will have a different opinion. I think that's a really good point. And I remember when we interviewed Mika and she was working up in Catherine, I think, as a teacher, but she was doing photography in her spare time to build up her skill set. She was using competitions as her. Because there weren't many local photographers in that where she was, she was working in remote communities. And so she was submitting images constantly into competitions. Not, not to necessarily claim accolade, but to get that feedback constantly. [00:54:24] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's really a really smart idea because of the culture around competitions, because you already, you're already appealing to people who are really articulate with their feedback. Because that's what you do at competition level, right? You, you, you don't just say that's cool, you unpack it. You know, it's always, it's always unpacked. There's always some visual analysis happening. Also to. I used to enter competitions and they were like pre, pre competition. So you'd go in and you'd show your work and they would give you feedback about how this work might be improved to then submit that work. And that was really interesting. Yeah, everyone would. Everyone would have something to say about it. And, you know, it was about the print quality as well, because I used to print a lot of my work and that was good. They'd have the image under, like a natural light setup and could really see, like, how the colors were holding and the tone and the choice of stock paper you were using and. Yeah, and some really well educated, experienced photographers who have been in, you know, the competition culture for a while. We're giving great feedback and I always used to come out with some. With some good information. So that's. That's really smart. I used to. I used to get feedback early days when I was touring with the circus and I was sending through, like, travel shots, I used to get feedback on this Flickr group. Do you remember Flickr? [00:55:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it's still going. [00:55:54] Speaker C: Yeah. It's amazing, right? I used to send stuff to this Flickr group. It was ran by this guy in the uk. It's actually Greg Someone. And he would give feedback on everyone's images. It was amazing. So he would take you through how to capture the image and how to work with it in post. And every week he would start with an image that he photographed and he would kind of unpack how he photographed it and why he was making certain technical and creative choices and then show us in Photoshop what he did with it. I think it was pre Lightroom, even. Maybe Lightroom was just like. Just started. But yeah, I used to get feedback from that group because we were all there to give and receive feedback. Feedback. So there was an incentive as well. [00:56:35] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very cool. [00:56:36] Speaker A: That is very cool. [00:56:38] Speaker B: Bruce. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Bruce. [00:56:40] Speaker B: That. It's super hard being isolated. I deal with it constantly and need things like the bright festival of photography, NZIPP app and friends I've made from those events to connect and try to get advice or just a sanity check. [00:56:56] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:56:58] Speaker A: And there was a comment there from Lucinda. This is why I love working in festival teams. I have a few people around me that we can chat about what we collectively did because we have shot the same event, which is. Yeah, that's another great point. [00:57:12] Speaker B: Shooting live music for anyone that doesn't know who Lucinda is. So she's shooting live music festivals with a crew. You know, there'll be, I'm sure, tons of photographers in some of the pits for the same band. So, yeah, being able to go back to the media room and. And be like, oh, what did you get? And debris a bit. Yeah, yeah. Debrief a little bit and just see what, what, you know, they might have pushed the creative boundaries a little bit and you learn from it. Or, or you go, yeah, mine are way better. [00:57:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's shift gear and talk a little bit about your, you know, your current body of work that you do, you know, throughout the year. Where does the mix kind of land for you? You know, you're shooting brand shooting corporate, you're shooting live events or performance events, you're shooting editorial portraits and, you know, and images of performers. Where does, where does that all sort of fall into place for you? Like, is it, you know, you're spending half your time working in the arts and the other half working for brands and corporate and commercial clients or where does that mix fall for you? [00:58:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. Well, it fluctuates quite a bit, as you can imagine. I'd love to be doing 50 50, but as I mentioned before, the support of the arts industry isn't that great here in Australia. So I don't have, you know, artists are struggling and they're trying to get funding, they're trying to put shows together, they're trying to tour, they're trying to break into international circuits as well. Probably the last thing they want to do is shell out a whole bunch of money to get me on board to shoot promo for their show or for their act. I do actually cut my fee in half for artists because I, I know how hard it is to get your work out there and I also really love to support the art. So I do that because I feel like it's important to do that. So, yeah, I just, I just cut my fees right down. So it's. I become affordable on that level rather than charging through the nose corporate rates, you know, which is a drop in the ocean for a lot of corporate budgets. So, yeah, not 50, 50. I mean, depends on the time of year as well. Like, you know, building towards Melbourne Fringe Festival or Edinburgh Fringe or Adelaide Fringe is on or Comedy Festival. You know, I've got a commission. I think it's next week with a director who's got quite a new show called Dance along and she's hoping to tour that show. It's in its early days, so we're going to jump into the studio next week with hair, makeup stylists, a couple of circus artists and put some ideas together which will help to promote the show. So I'm excited about that and I will put a lot of time and energy into that because I want that to be as good as possible. And I do for every job. But it's like, it's a bit special for me when I have arts industry clients. It kind of matters more, I guess, on an emotional level. It matters more to me because it's closer to my heart than shooting for a sportswear company, for example, you know. Yeah, I'm a little bit disconnected from that world because it's. It's retail. Like, it's. I don't connect with it in much other ways, but for circus arts and arts in general, it's like, yes, that's the sweet spot for me, and I will go above and beyond to. To get that right and to do a really good job with that. And often I. I know one or two people. It's a small circle, you know, we. We kind of stay connected with each other, and it's nice to. It's always nice to cross paths with people you've worked with before, you know, and you can build on that relationship as well. But, yeah, I look, I do. I guess I do like 80, 20 at the moment. So 80% commercial, 20% arts industry. And it's, you know, I talk to a lot of artists and it's getting harder. It's getting harder to mount shows, to get into rehearsal spaces, to make shows. It's getting much harder to tour. It's expensive. It's. Shows are expensive to. Not only to run, but to make in the first place, you know, so, yeah, there's a lot of struggle down happening there, and I will do what I can to help to promote and to create these promotional pieces for these artists as much as I can. And at the same time, well, if I have a big commission, let's say I get five days of work from New Balance shooting activation for Australian Open, I will do that, and that pays all the rent and the bills, and then it frees me up to then go very, very cheap for an artist or a company that needs promoting. So that's. That's how I balance it out. Yeah. [01:02:13] Speaker A: And. [01:02:13] Speaker B: And, you know, balance it out. [01:02:15] Speaker A: You balance it out. [01:02:16] Speaker B: I couldn't. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Well played. You're the king of dad jokes for not being a dad. But, you know, how much does one style of photography. Let's focus on the arts in an ideal world, maybe, because we know that cost of living is putting a lot of pressure on small businesses and people in the entertainment industry. How much does one opportunity lead to others for you when you're photographing that industry? So maybe you're doing editorial portraits, or maybe you go and shoot a live production. How does. Does that feed into artists then seeking you for some personal work? For. I need some new headshots because I want to apply for, you know, new entertainment or new. New events and things like that. [01:03:01] Speaker C: Is. [01:03:01] Speaker A: Is. Do you find that that flows quite smoothly? [01:03:04] Speaker C: It does. It does flow through, but not as predictably as you'd think. It's not like, let's say I shoot an editorial portrait of a performer, and it's like really heavily saturated colors, and it's really dynamic. It's not like the next week I'm going to get a call and it's a client who wants that. That look. It might be a year later and they see something on my website or my Instagram or just call and say, hey, someone said you're good with colors. Can you do something for us? And I'll be like, sure. Like, what were you thinking? And I've got all these examples, you know. So it does flow through in random ways. Yes. Yeah. With movement or color? A bit of both. Or just people wanting to get a photographer in who's good with bodies, you know, like athletic bodies or models. Any kind of physical look that they want is kind of in my wheelhouse because I understand. I just understand how bodies look and work and move. Being a circus artist for a long time and then coaching as a circus artist for a long time, that. That experience starts to add up. So. So when we're in a room together and there's movement, I can predict and see the. The lines and the aesthetic that you need or that the director wants to capture. So I'm kind of steps ahead in that way. And I can. I kind of have the language to help direct the bodies and the people, too. So that's an advantage I have Just. Just from doing it all the time. Yeah, yeah. Flow through. I will shoot personal projects as much as I can. I just did one recently, actually last week with a makeup artist and a singer. Darcy. Beautiful woman. And we. We got into the studio and we had some. I had some lighting ideas, and we played with some ideas, and they came out really well. And, you know, I know that at some point I will use those looks again professionally with a commission. I don't know when, but. Yeah, yeah, that one exactly. So, you know, I'm just kind of throwing ideas out there because it's something like, I love to work. I could do that. I could do this all day. [01:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:25] Speaker C: But to have a client to commission me to do it is even Better, you know, so at some stage, I'm going to come across an inquiry and a client's going to want something high contrast, but we want to show skin, but we want it punchy and colorful. And I'll be like, hey, something like this? And they'd be like, yes, great. And the. The advantage that I have now is that I've done that look, and I know how to work with that look. And I've recorded that look because I'm a real geek when it comes to lighting. Like, I will photograph every lighting setup and record it so that I can just pull it out of my bag of tricks and I can set that up in 20 minutes, you know. [01:06:10] Speaker A: Well, that's really cool. That's a really clever idea. Just to, you know, almost like, create a floor plan of where you put each light, what light it was, and understanding how. What the effect, what the end result was. I think that's really clever. [01:06:23] Speaker C: Well, I don't want to. I don't want to forget either, because sometimes I've been caught up with this where a client has asked me to redo a lighting design that I had, and I'm like, I can't remember how I did that. That was years ago. And so I spent like an hour and a half, like, really trying. And I said, why didn't I write this down? So, yeah, I just record everything now, and it's so helpful. [01:06:49] Speaker B: Let's. Let's talk lighting a little bit, because that really does seem to be one of the things. Obviously, you've got a very varied body of work that you do, but lighting and color definitely seems to be at the forefront of it. Setting yourself apart from other commercial photographers. First of all, what, like, where do you think some of the inspiration to dig into this came from? Was it from working in productions and seeing stage lighting and how that was used to make a performance more interesting to the viewer? [01:07:29] Speaker C: Totally. Yeah, totally. So, you know, when I would perform, we would do safety checks on the stage. So I'd run my act and make sure that everything is safe on stage. And then we do lighting checks to see whether the lights are going in my eyes or not, because it's quite dangerous if I'm getting blinded by light and I'm doing a trick, maybe a release move or a trick that's quite high up or quite complicated. The last thing I want is to be blinded and I can't see what I'm doing. So you run through lighting checks, but. But because you have lighting checks, you have a lighting plan and you usually have like, favored colors that go with the mood of your act and complement the soundtrack that you're using. Yeah. So it's. You're thinking about the visuals, think about the lighting, thinking about the choreography, thinking about the music. They all kind of come together into your act. So the lighting becomes quite important, quite integral to your, to your kind of look and feel of your act. And then you're always watching other people's acts and seeing how they like themselves. And then because I was photographing a lot of artists and photographing years and years of live shows, you know, the, the good shoots are when the lighting is good. The bad shoots are when the lighting is bad. And I realized, ah, the lighting is actually making or breaking my shoot. Yeah, you can't, you can't, you can't Photoshop or improve upon bad lighting. You know, on a stage, you know, it's too dark, like always too dark. Then the good lighting is like, wow, all my shots look amazing, you know, and the performers look amazing and they lit beautifully and the lights just sculpturing around them, you know, so that becomes. It was really influential for me. And so when I, When I think about bodies moving in space and portraits of artists, I always think, well, stage lighting, stage lighting, it's production lighting. It's like they're live on stage. It's within the environment which they perform within. [01:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. [01:09:33] Speaker B: Okay, now let's dig in a little bit deeper. What do you use for, like, what's your lighting kit look like? How extensive is it? Because I, and I'd ultimately like to work back to, if people want to get started with some of, like, play around with this style a little bit. What's the minimum kit that you could kind of get away with to play around with this? But let's start with what, what you actually use now. Like, what do you take to a shoot when you're like, I want all of my creative tools at my disposal? What, what do you bring? [01:10:06] Speaker C: I just fill the car with everything I have. Like, like, like driving to befop. I got a photo of my car. I've got a small, sporty little car and it's like jam packed full of gear. Yeah. And I'm like, why did I, why did I tell Matt and Nick that I'd run these types of workshops? I can barely fit in my car. [01:10:26] Speaker B: Why didn't you do a natural light workshop? One camera, one lens? Yeah. [01:10:31] Speaker C: Questioning my life choices. No, I have. So my first lighting kit was Ellen Chrome. Actually. I bought two little Ellen chromes. I think they were like 100 watts. I bought them second hand from somewhere and I remember buying them. I was like, wow, I've got my own lighting kit. This is so cool. And then quickly realized the limitations of 100 watts. But I could do a lot with them and I was, I was learning a lot. Just single light setups, two light setups, that's all I was working with. And gels, I was always working with gels. Yeah, lots, lots of gel lighting. And working out like how to not wash out color, how to maintain that saturation in the color. And speed lights because speed lights are very portable and affordable. And also you can hide speed lights everywhere, which is what I love about a little speed lights. You can tuck it behind things, tuck it behind people. You know, you can just like wedge it onto a pole somewhere, clamp it somewhere. So yeah. [01:11:37] Speaker B: Do you remember the website? The Strobist? [01:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was my go to. Yeah. [01:11:43] Speaker B: Yes. [01:11:44] Speaker C: I'd be like, how the hell do I like this? And just, I just go through the exercises on strobus101 and, and all the little. [01:11:50] Speaker B: There'd be links. Greg, do you know that you ever remember that website? Did you ever look? No, it's. So it was sort of earlier on when, when before triggers like for speed lights were. Well now you don't even need. Now you just buy any speed light will connect to everything and it all just works. Whereas back then you had to like find a trigger and try and make it work. And pocket wizards were super expensive so you'd try and find a cheap trigger and they didn't work properly or whatever. You had to use the optical triggering so that you had to be able to see the cable, the cable, the cable or whatever. But they had all these little things on Strobist or links to places that sold them. Little things like it'd be a little, little gel holder that just, just suits a speed light. And it was. Someone had made them out of like clear plastic and you could slide a little, a little gel in there and just. Yeah, it was, it was a really fun world. [01:12:41] Speaker A: I do remember a site years ago I lead to pros who I worked with. When I first started doing blogs professionally we, we wrote an ebook for Moment the. The camera and kind of lifestyle store Moment Shop Moment. And we were doing a big article. The ebook was about Godox lighting. And there was a site we found and it's not in my bookmarks. I don't know what I've done with it. But you could map out floor plans with lighting and where you would put your subject and where you would put. So it's like a top down view and they had like little icons for different types of lights that you would put and you could label them and it was really clever, really cool. Just sort of map it out. What made me think of that was you saying how you record each lighting setup so that you know the next time you want this. Look, this is where I start. And then I fine tune here. [01:13:31] Speaker C: Yeah, I actually, actually just use old school paper and pen. I've got like a little pad with all my lighting ideas in and I just scribble. I mean no one can decipher them. It's just crazy scribbles and jots and. But it works for me. And then I photograph everything. But lighting wise. Yeah. I started with Alan Crom and Speedlights and then worked from there. I've got gox. I really, really enjoy Godox actually. They, they're so consistent for me. Like they hardly ever misfire. I find the, the color temperature stays really consistent. So I've got a couple of ad. I want to say six hundreds. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah, they just, they just brought out an 800. Did you see that? [01:14:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. [01:14:18] Speaker B: It is interesting. [01:14:18] Speaker C: And I've got a couple of Amarans. I've got Amaran's on now actually 300 Cs. They're RGB LEDs. So I've always worked with Flash. And then just recently, I say recently, maybe two years ago, I started getting more interested in continuous lighting because it's gotten so much better now and so much more powerful. Like these 300 watt RGBs really kick it out and I like the convenience because faffing around with gels is so fiddly. Sometimes you're trying to fit a gel inside a modifier or you split your gel and you have to buy another one or. And you're quite limited in a way to how many hues you've got at your disposal on a shoot versus the RGB LEDs. I've got a million I can choose from and all I need to do on the app, the Amaran app, is just change the hue. Change saturation instantly from my. I literally tether my laptop having my lights set up and I just change all the settings of the lights in my laptop as I'm tethering and shooting. So it becomes like part of the workflow and it's very convenient and very quick. And I like that about continuous lighting. What I don't like about continuous lighting is it's hard to get that real punch, that real pop of color. You can do it, but it just takes a little bit more balancing. But the flash with the gel and that kind of high powered pop of light, it's hard to replicate. So I'm using both. To answer your question, Justin, it's like I actually mix a lot of gelled flashlighting with continuous lighting. And I've gotten into the habit now of just bringing both my Dodox lighting set up and my Amaran setup and just choosing what I want to use where, like sometimes the background light, it's better if I use flashlighting on the background because it's like, it's much deeper, highly saturated color. But then I like a nice blue wash with the RGB lights. Or maybe I'm working with a model and it's quite a tight close up portrait and I want the light super soft, so I want them quite close. I decide to use constants because I don't want the flash. Flash in her face all the time. So it depends on the proximity of the lights to the subject as well. Sometimes I just won't bother with the flashes and just use constants because they're a lot more comfortable for the model as well. [01:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting. Yeah. I'm not sure whether that. Because I've got a constant light for this podcast and it gets quite fatiguing. Whereas the flash is so fast. I don't know. I've always kind of thought that I don't mind flash because it's so quick and you don't. Whereas when you sort of get used to this thing, you know, constantly like the sun just pointing at you, I wonder whether it changes my expression. Whereas the flash happens so fast, you don't, you, you don't realize till afterwards and then maybe you flinch or something. So I don't know. I'd be interested to talk to models about it. Like actual people that, you know, do that do it. What, what their preference is. Have you had them say that? You know, people say they have a preference for one or the other. [01:17:38] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some, some are visibly getting fatigued because it's like a dark studio and it's like pop, pop, pop. Yes, it's a lot. And especially if they're not that used to it. It's like, okay, so I'm just gonna dial back the flashing and I'll just switch to a constant. Yeah. And then it's kind of a bit quieter in the studio and a bit more relaxed. Yeah. But I, I use color, I use color harmonies a lot, as you know, Justin, because you went to one of my workshops. [01:18:04] Speaker B: I do. I need to. So we talked about it on a couple of little bebop podcasts that we do. Bright Festival of Photography. We say it all the time. Sorry. To our regular listeners that are nowhere near bright and you're somewhere in the States and you can't come. But it's a great festival. But I'll, I'll say it again now. I, in, I went to Aaron's workshop and I understood, I thought I understood what people were talking about when they're talking about color theory, but I didn't. [01:18:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:32] Speaker B: And then the way Aaron explained it with Color Wheel and how simple and different color harmonies can work and how you can experiment with it. Whereas I, I didn't know how to experiment with it other than just, I'll try that color, see what that looks like. Whereas having an idea of where to head by using the color wheel to choose some colors to play with that are going to work together in certain ways, my mind just exploded. And apparently I guess that's what happens when you are self taught instead of going to school. Can you, can you give the, can you give the quick explanation of, of like how you see color theory and, and colors and things? [01:19:13] Speaker C: I think there's, there's a certain framework that's advantageous to work within. I guess you can liken it to food in a way. It's like there's certain flavors and textures that you just don't want to mix, you know? [01:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:30] Speaker C: And other flavors that work so well together you don't even question it. You're just like, oh my God, this tastes amazing. You know, this sweet with the sour. It's amazing. This sweet with this sweet is disgusting. And I feel the same with colors. It's like sometimes it can just look garbage because there's just colors splashing all over the place and there's not much thought or design with the color. It's just like, hey, let's make this colorful. I think you can make a more effective image, especially around portraiture, because you're looking at mood as well and you're looking at character. And you're like, okay, so how can I showcase this person? How can I separate them from the background? But the background needs to connect with the foreground. And I want to create something that looks inviting and cozy and warm and kind of has a slight kind of luxury feel to it. So I will then start thinking about certain colors I could use then I say, okay, so maybe I want to use some, like, reds and oranges. Yeah. And it's like, okay, so. But then I need, like, maybe I need a bluish background then to complement, and it's complementary to the oranges. Yeah. So I'm drawing on established color theory to help me create an effective color setup, not just a loud, splashy color setup. And sometimes these color harmonies can be restrained. Like, you can use analogous color harmony, where, for example, it's like lots of greens and blues. Yeah. So the hues aren't jarring. They're actually just sitting side by side. So it's quite a calm image. Yeah. And. Or you can use complementary or split. Complementary, which is quite a loud image because the colors are kind of butting up against each other and you're deliberately wanting to, like, shout. Shout quite loudly with your. With your color choice, or you want to kind of whisper something with your color choice. So I use that to guide me especially around the personality of the subject, to like, maybe the person is really loud and vivacious. So I would choose complementary. Or maybe the person is quite quiet and contained. And I will use analogous. Like, that will help me decide what could suit the person or what they're promoting. Maybe it's the show that they're promoting. Maybe the show is all about disco. So I'll think about golds and pinks. You know, maybe they have a show about water. So I'll use water, blues, and greens, or. So I'll try and link it in with what they do or what they're about as well. [01:22:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. [01:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty cool. And certainly worth investing some time in as a visual creator. [01:22:09] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. And also, I think when you're creative, I work best when I have limitations. I have a framework to work within. Instead of having, like, a thousand choices, I've now got 20 choices, and that's much more efficient for me to work within. So if I have color theory as a limitation, as a framework, it's like, okay, I want complementary. So I really want to use a blue. So that means I have to use an orange or something around an orange. Look. Okay. So I like those rules to work within because I feel I can actually be more creative within that framework. [01:22:47] Speaker B: It's. It's certainly because, you know, you were talking about RGB lights like, that you've got infinite options almost, and that. That can feel overwhelming. And. And, you know, you're like, okay, I want to use blue. What should I use with it? I have every option under the sun. On my RGB light. Where do I start? And you just start playing with stuff and that. That can be paralyzing a little bit on a shadow. Yeah, yeah. When you've got talent waiting there for you and they expect you to just be able to just, you know, make this happen because you're a professional and things. So I love that idea as well, of putting a bit of a constraint around it. [01:23:24] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:23:24] Speaker B: And, you know, it works. [01:23:26] Speaker C: Exactly. And being really technical, you can actually dial in the exact hue. So let's say your model is wearing a red dress. There's lots of different types of reds. Right. So you can just get a color sample. Like, you can literally take a shot of her, get a color sample of the red, dial it into your Amaran software, and you've got the exact red light for the dress. Like, within two minutes, you've done that. You don't have to get a red gel, which is kind of that red, but not. And then in post, you have to shift it, and it's like, no, I'm just going to light it with the exact red right now. Boom. Done. [01:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:24:04] Speaker B: So to put you on the spot, what would you. What's the sort of thing that you would recommend? The sort of kit you'd recommend to someone who wants to play with this stuff? For lighting, what's kind of. What could you get away with? I know there's a million ways to skin a cat. You could do a couple of continuous lights, or you could do, like, what. What do you have a gut feeling on what you would tell someone that just says, I want to do some. Some portraits using color. What do I need? [01:24:30] Speaker C: Okay, so, yeah, it's a great question. I would start small. I would start small, and I'd either go, yeah, I'd go with, well, Godox or Amaran. They're both quite affordable, actually. The amaranths are great as continuous lights. But I actually think you have a bit more versatility if you start with flash and then. And then move on to continuous, because. Why do I say that? Continuous lighting, it's like ambient lighting. Right. It's. It's constantly on. It's like you're shooting with ambient light, but it's colorful. So there's not a big leap between shooting with daylight and shooting with a light that is emulating daylight. Yeah, it's quite similar. It's a similar skill set. I'm recommending flash because it's a whole other skill set which is quite exciting to dig into. And then you realize, oh, there's this thing called flash sync speed. And there's flash duration, and there's flash and blur, and there's lots of other things you can do with Flash. So it's a broader toolkit. It's a harder learning curve. Yeah, it's a harder learning curve, but it's a broader toolkit to use. And you can get way more visual results from Flash. And I guess the reason I say start small is you can just buy like a Godox 200 ad. They're like these little brick lights. They're like. I guess, like, they're like a little bit bigger than this lens, and they're so versatile. The battery life is insanely good. I've shot like all day on them and not rinsed the battery at all. So battery life is amazing. Portability is amazing. They've got really good, robust build. And you can just stick them in a bracket which allows you to stick modifiers onto them. And it's a Bowens mount the bracket. So you can stick any modifier or elinchrom or profile, whatever modifiers you want to use. And you can just buy a bunch of gels and start experimenting with color and that won't break the bank. And, you know, these little Godox 200-00, you can have like a kit of three in a little case that you bring to a shoot. Super portable, great value for money. You can buy them at KL in Melbourne. There's a plug for kl. Yeah. [01:26:58] Speaker B: Not to do an ad for Godox because they certainly don't sponsor the podcast if they'd like to. That'd be amazing. But the cool thing about these as well is you can get round heads for them, bulb heads, so that they fill out a modifier in the desired way. Yeah. And then I haven't got them here, but you can also get like a. Is it. How do you print. How do you say Fresnel? [01:27:22] Speaker C: Fresnel for now. [01:27:24] Speaker B: Fresnel. Fresnel. A Fresnel head. That's. That's my. My Bendigo, you know, from the sticks. We get a Fresnel head on the front of the AD 200 and. And they'll give you a little bit more, essentially, a little bit more throw [01:27:38] Speaker C: a little bit more power and a very compact head. [01:27:41] Speaker B: But the. The round heads, they're actually great for the Godox. Little modifiers that you can. So you can. You can throw a little dome grid, barn doors, and they all just magnet on. They've built out a really cool and relatively affordable. Like these aren't. These aren't Cheap. Cheap lights. But in the world of lighting, they are. Yeah, but I think they're still five or six hundred dollars for an AD200 and then a bit more for. If you want multiple heads and stuff like that. But compared to what? Yeah, compared to what that would have cost. [01:28:21] Speaker C: Oh, my God. Yeah. [01:28:22] Speaker B: 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Something with that power. [01:28:26] Speaker C: They're my favorite. It's actually my favorite light, like, because they're so universal. Like, it kicks out a lot of power for such a small unit. And it's really lightweight. So if I want to stick a light in the roof somewhere, or I want to stick a light on a C stand and boomer over a model with a big, big modifier, I will generally use a 200 because it's really lightweight. And I know with the Fresnel head in particular, not Fresnel, so the bare bulb, I can fill most modifiers with that. And I don't have to, like, get a heavy. I've got a heavy, you know, AD 600 Godox, which is a big unit, but it's. It's bloody heavy. And to lug that onto a C stand and sandbag it, and it's a lot of hassle sometimes. So the two hundreds are super universal. I would highly recommend, if anyone wants to start out, is to grab one of those kits. [01:29:19] Speaker B: Last, last Godox. Question. What's your favorite trigger? Because I'm. I'm having some trigger problems at the moment. [01:29:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not trigger happy. It's not. [01:29:32] Speaker B: I don't like the. I don't like the touch screen. I got the fancy. [01:29:35] Speaker C: The X. I don't like those either. [01:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't like the touchscreen. [01:29:39] Speaker C: So I bought the tiny. [01:29:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. And it's a bit. Little bit sort of laggy. And there's no really fast way to turn. I really. I didn't realize I did it so much, but if I'm doing multiple lighting setups, I switch lights off really regularly to see what one light's doing, and it's slow to do that. You've got to swipe and then hit a thing and then swipe, and it's just. Whereas the other one had dedicated buttons, I didn't realize how often I use them to just turn the buttons on and off. [01:30:05] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I'm in the same camp. I tried a couple of times. I've tried the fancy touchscreen ones and I can see they're quite elegant and they look smaller, which is great. They look cool. But I find them Too fiddly. And because I just recently wearing wear glasses too, I'm long sided. And the bigger triggers, I know where all the buttons are so I can fumble around in the dark and still know how to turn the modding light on or off or switch from group A to group B without having to really see what I'm doing. I can feel my way with the buttons and I actually like that. And as you say, yeah, I like to have an overview of like what each light is doing and then just turn things on or off quickly and easily. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I'm with you. The X Pro triggers my fave. Yeah. What I don't like though is I hate how when you mount, when you mount your trigger on your camera, it's always a fixed angle. [01:31:06] Speaker A: Yes. [01:31:07] Speaker C: If my camera's up here, it's a total nightmare because I can't, I can't see what's going on either. If I want to take a look at what's happening. I wish the triggers could hinge. Like the electronics has triggers that can they hinge from the hot shoe. So you can hinge them down or up depending on your angle. [01:31:27] Speaker B: What do they cost though? [01:31:28] Speaker C: Pet peeve of mine. Yeah. I don't know how much they cost actually. But I say, you know the, the LCD screens on the back of your camera, the swivel ones, it's like, yep, they're a whole thing now. You know, everyone loves those and say, yeah, but why don't you do them for triggers as well? Because yeah, I have my cameras on all different angles. Sometimes you're really low down or really high up. [01:31:51] Speaker B: That's a great point. That's a really great point. I think there might be, there might be some sort of app integration with that new trigger though maybe that new touchscreen trigger. I'd have to check. So Godox might even would say to that question, potentially you can control everything in the app maybe. [01:32:08] Speaker C: Which would obviously give you from your, from your smartwatch or your probably from a drone throwing your light on your watch. [01:32:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think I'm going to go. I've got one of the button ones, the new One X Pro Mark 2 for my Leica. I think I'll end up getting one for the Canon too. What, what, what camera system are you shooting with? [01:32:35] Speaker C: I'm, I'm shooting on Nikon. I just actually upgraded to the Nikon Z6 Mark III, which is pretty exciting. And I feel like I've been working my D750s really hard for the last 12 years I realized I've thrashed them. They've gone way over the shut account. Yeah, it's like. Like driving a kind to the ground and it just won't die. So my two seven hundred and fifties are still going, but I thought, oh, it's about time I upgraded, actually, because one of them, One of my 750s is getting a little bit tired and the autofocus is not as consistent as I want it to be. So I switched to the mirrorless system. But I've already got. I've got a mirrorless system. I've got the Fuji XT4S. So I've got an X T4 and an X T2. So I use my Fujis for a lot of my travel photography because they're very lightweight and all the lenses are lightweight. So the last thing I want to do is lug loads of gear around. So I find the Fuji is really good for that and for video and for stills. But the Z series is pretty exciting for me because it's like I've suddenly got a new car after driving a banger for years. And you're like, okay, that's what new cameras can do. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. [01:33:55] Speaker B: Get in a coward. [01:33:56] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Crazy. So I've been enjoying that. And also, like, it's frustrating because it's exciting and frustrating because you're just like, where is everything? Because the buttons in a slightly different place. I'm so used to just having the button there, but now it's over there instead. So the last few shoots I've been doing, I've been like fumbling around and I'm getting the shots, but it's taking me like a few more seconds longer. It's like, where's the ISO button again? What's up there? Okay. Yeah. So it's been fun. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Oh, that's cool. Okay, so Z63. That's. That's it. [01:34:29] Speaker C: That's that. Yeah. [01:34:31] Speaker B: Any. [01:34:32] Speaker A: And how are you finding it? [01:34:33] Speaker B: Well, yeah, good. Good question. [01:34:35] Speaker A: How are you finding it? Comparing it? [01:34:36] Speaker C: Really good. Yeah, the focusing is really good. What I love about it is because I've got a few manual prime lenses and it has focus peaking on the Z6. And the 750s have no peaking. So I can. I could get switch to manual focusing. I can dial in on the manual dial. I can see on the peaking that it's in shot. And also what's wild is you can put your Z camera onto face detection when you're in manual mode. Manual focusing mode. And it will show you where the face is. And then it's up to you to dial in the focus on the ring. But it's already, it's already worked out where the face is. So I'm shooting portraits and it's, the box is over the face already. So I'm just like tweaking the focus and then so it makes manual focus quite quick or quicker than on my 750s, that's for sure. Yeah. And tethering is great. Colors are great, contrast is great with the RAW files. The adapter you get for the Z series to fit your F series lenses is amazing too. You, you just can't tell you you've got an adapter on it, you know, loss of quality at all. [01:35:51] Speaker B: I was gonna ask about that. So are you mainly running your F series lenses? Have you bought any Z lenses for the new camera or are you just sort of sticking with the lenses you, you know? For now? [01:36:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm sticking with the lenses. I know for now I'm, I'm saving up from some Z lenses. Yeah, they're, they're eye wateringly expensive. But yeah, I, I'm a big, I'm a big condoner of secondhand gear. So I'm looking a lot at like secondhand market and seeing what Z lenses are on offer and also looking at reviews and working out okay, so what. Z lenses are the best Z lenses because I don't want to replace my F lenses which could be just as good. Yeah, you know, we're talking like legendary lenses. Like you know, the 70 to 202.8, the 24 to 70 mm 2.8. I mean they're like workhorse lenses. It's going to be hard to really, really improve upon those in a big step up. But I'm a lover of prime lenses so I've got my eyes on some said primes. [01:36:56] Speaker A: Which, what's it, what's at the top of your list? [01:36:58] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. Which ones, which ones I love. [01:37:02] Speaker C: I'm such a, I'm such a fan of the 85 mil. Yeah, it's just, I feel like it's just perfect because you're, I'm close enough to the subject without being too far back. And the, the, the, the sharpness is insane on, on the 85. I was doing a shoot yet again yesterday and I switched from a 2470 to an 85 because I needed to get the product in the shot as well as the subject. And I was frustrated because the product branding wasn't as sharp as the subject's eyes. And they were on the same, almost the same focal plane, but the product was towards the edge of the frame down here. And it was getting this weird, slight chromatic aberration. I was like, that's really annoying. And I switched to my 85 and it was pin sharp, like across the whole frame. And I'm like, okay, that's what I'm talking about. [01:37:56] Speaker B: Now I haven't shot with it. So this is based 100% on online reviews, so do your own research, people. But the word on the street is that the Z2470 is insanely sharp and great. [01:38:10] Speaker A: The new one, the mark two, the new. [01:38:13] Speaker B: The new Nikon 24 to 72.2.8 is apparently, I think, even the Mach one. I think it was just. They just did a weight reduction. I don't, I don't know if it necessarily got a lot sharper or anything like that in the Mark ii. I'd have to double check that. But I think just the Z24-70s were, were quite a step up. And you might find that you don't have that, that issue of sort of different levels of sharpness across the field. Wide open. [01:38:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:38:40] Speaker B: Or even stop down. So if that's a workhorse lens, it could. Yeah, it could be worth investigating. But, yeah, you'd want to double check it. Surely you can get a loner from somebody. [01:38:51] Speaker C: Surely I can get a loan from somebody. [01:38:53] Speaker A: If only we knew a person. [01:38:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll put the word out across the community. Maybe someone will reach out. Yeah, you never know. [01:39:05] Speaker B: Sorry, Go, Greg. [01:39:06] Speaker A: I was just going to ask you a question on gear, but probably a bigger topic of access and composition. You know, when you're, when you're documenting, say, a live stage event, whether it be a circus or another sort of performance, whether it be a dress rehearsal or an actual, you know, event night, do you. Where do you photograph from? Because, you know, we talked to Lucinda, who we mentioned earlier, who's a live music and artist, you know, musician, photographer. She has access to a pit. Sometimes you'll have access to get on the stage and work around the performers. Where do you typically set up for those sort of shots? And do you. Are you ever tempted to, you know, get up a rope ladder and, and find something? [01:39:49] Speaker C: Always. Always tempted to get up off the ground. Yeah. So usually it will be during a tech run or a dress run. Dress runs are great because it's all full costume, hair, makeup, lighting, sound. Everything's, everything's going. But there's always the option to stop and start. So the Production crew can stop the show whenever they want to fix something technical. Within the dress run if they want it, and in the tech run. But I like the dress runs because I can. I can roam around the auditorium wherever I want. Sometimes there's a small group of people, maybe directors, choreographers, some of the crew are sitting there taking notes. As long as I don't get in their way, it's okay. But I like to be able to get whatever angle I want. Especially that's often determined by the lighting. Actually, like, if there's like a beautiful spotlight on a solo performer, I'll move so that I can get that nice diagonal spot coming in. I shoot a lot from the side only because I guess as an audience, we're very much used to being front center. Like, most of the artists are performing out to front and center. I do like to get around a little bit more, just to get more of an unusual angle. I like getting, like, right onto the apron of the stage. So, like, the stage is here, and I like getting right on it and like wide angle just to get a bit of a more dynamic view. Yeah, I like going right at the back by the sound desk. And especially if you're shooting for the whole production, it's not just about one artist or the group of artists. It's about the show itself. And you want to show off the set design, you want to show off the lighting design. And every lighting designer loves those wide shots from the back, you know, so you can get the entire cross arch and the open of the stage, and then you can see the stage in all its glory backstage. Love shooting backstage. My. My dream job really is when I'm able to get all access. So I go in, I'll meet the cast, they'll be warming up. I'll take some candid shots of everyone getting ready. Then I'll go out into the auditorium as the audience coming in and settling down. Then the show kicks off, and then I'm running around. If it's. If it's a full house with audience and I can only shoot without dress run, I will, I guess, pick my lane. Sometimes I'm allocated a seat front and center, which is. Which is fine. But it gets quite restricted quite quickly because you're kind of sat there with your lenses and your cameras shooting, shooting same angle the whole time, which is great. That definitely ticks the boxes. But if I can run around the aisles. Sometimes in theaters, you have aisles down either side of the seating, so you can go onto the edge or you can go along one Edge. Go around the back and down the other edge. That's really good. So you've got a bit more choice that way. Lots of long shots on a 70 to 200, sometimes to 300. Yeah, I try and mix it up as much as I can that way. High ISOs, of course. Yeah, it gets tricky, you know, if you're shooting fast action, then often you want to freeze the movement. So then you start shooting 500, 800th of a second and then it's low moody lighting and you're like, okay. So then you know, your aperture's wide, wide open, 2.8. And then it's like, okay. So I'm at 5600 ISO all of a sudden, you know, and then there's haze. And then they decide, oh, let's light haze with like a red light. And you're like, oh, I hope my sensor can handle this because this is a nightmare for my camera. And that's when, that's when you start losing like if you don't have a good enough low light camera and a good enough glass, that's where you start losing shots. Because those shots become rubbish very quickly. You know, you've got a lot of noise in there, you've got a lot of washed out color. I guess that separates start to separate. The slightly better gear than the not so great gear is those high speed, low light, hazy reds or blues scenes. You know, it's a recipe for disaster. But if you have a fast enough lens, good quality optics, a full frame sensor that can handle a lot of noise, then, then it's really enjoyable to shoot in that way. Yeah, that's why, I mean, I know I'm plugging Nikon, but to be honest, I, because I was shooting a lot of live shows, I started leaning on Nikon a lot. I started out with Fuji, but I went to Nikon because the low light performance has always been really good. And I shoot, I was shooting a lot of low light. So I've kind of. That's how Nikon became a really reliable system for me and still is. Yeah. [01:44:46] Speaker B: Is that why you stuck with a 24 megapixel body? So you said you used the D750s for 12 years or so. An amazing run. And then you upgraded and your upgrade is essentially the same megapixel size sensor. Was that a conscious choice to do with noise? Do you like that file size or did you just like the overall package of the Z6 III as a new camera? [01:45:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it was the same choices I made years ago. With the 750, it's, it's lighter weight body. It's kind of packs in lots of the features I like. And it doesn't have big, big bloated file sizes. I've never really, I don't really need 48 meg pixel or above files. And I shoot volume as well. Remember, you know, I can, yeah, I can come away from shooting a live performance with two and a half thousand shots. I do not want those images to be close to 50 meg each. I want them to load fast. I want to be able to edit fast. I want to be able to transfer the files quickly. And yeah, I've never really, I've never come away from any shoot thinking, God, I wish, I wish my megapixel count was higher. It's like, no, just shoot better, shoot better, use better lighting, Be smart with your settings. Just make sure you're getting the shots. Yeah. And also that's the reason for the upgrade is like, I'm noticing that the newer cameras have, they're cleaner, they're cleaner with the noise. It's amazing how much you can shoot and they're like now compared to older sensors. Yeah. And that's why I'm sticking with full frame. The Fujis are great for travel, but I kind of want those bigger. I want a full frame sensor for low light. It just really helps to have those fatter, bigger, fatter pixels. [01:46:33] Speaker A: Yeah, indeed. [01:46:34] Speaker B: Agree. I, I even notice a difference between my. So I issue it with Canon. The R5 Mark II, which is an amazing sensor, but 45 megapixel. But the R3 has a 24 megapixel sensor and it is noticeably cleaner. A nicer looking, nicer color rendition. In low light at those high ISOs, the image just looks better. It's not just noise level. It's not, it's not a matter of just. I'll just throw it through, denoise it. Everything about the image at say once you push up after 6400 ISO and especially up around 12800 ISO, the R3 looks really good. And the R5 is starting to be like, this is a, this is. I can make this work. But it's a, a pretty big compromise in image quality. [01:47:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially when you're using those native isos. I think they work really well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:47:25] Speaker B: Quick question here from Jason. Would you opt to protect the highlights and just let the shadows black out if needed? I imagine the dynamic range of some stage lighting is extreme. [01:47:37] Speaker C: Yep, yep. So totally always looking at the highlights. Yeah. Because, you know, there's a lot of spotlights, a lot of really hard lighting used on stage, which can blow out very quickly. And the lighting changes can be very rapid as well. And the last thing you want is the main performers to be completely blown out and unusable. So to answer your question, I kind of don't care about the shadows when I'm shooting shows. I really care about the highlights. And you can bring up the shadows a little bit more in post. Yes, that's where the noise lives. But I'd rather have some slight noise in the shadows than like completely blown out highlights. So, yeah, I'm keeping a close eye on the highlights. I have my little highlight blinker on my preview to tell me what's going on. A lot of the time I'll shoot auto ISO because I cannot keep up with the rapid changes of the lighting and I'll just really keep an eye on that. Sometimes I'll switch to manual if the camera's not getting it right or if I want to deliberately underexpose or switch to manual ISO and then back to auto when I need to. [01:48:48] Speaker A: Yeah, nice. Amazing. Just before we proceed, I am conscious of time and we're going to move into final questions. That's more a warning for you, Justin, than anyone else I know a lot written down. He does, he always has a lot written down. But just before we go into final questions, I just want to remind everybody that this is the Camera Life podcast and we go live to where? On the YouTubes and the. Well, no, mostly on the YouTubes. We go live twice a week. Every Monday evening at 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, we have our random photography show where we talk about industry news, we look at product launches, we do some live unboxings. Most importantly, we look at viewers images and have a good chat about those. And then every Thursday morning, of course, where we 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time, we interview an amazing photographer from Australia or from across the globe and hopefully gain some inspiration and insight into what makes them tick. And who knows, you might learn something new along the way. So if you are new here, give us a like. It helps out a lot. But also don't forget to subscribe. It doesn't cost a dime. And if you tickle the bell icon, you'll get notifications of every live video before it happens in your time zone. So that is the Camera Life. Let's move into final questions. [01:49:57] Speaker B: Joe, I want to ask about business commercial photography in 2026 and beyond. Is it getting harder to make a living [01:50:14] Speaker C: Good question. I've had an uptick in my work the last financial year because I just done my tax return and that's been good. But it's really hard to tell like year to year, like to get a real accurate snapshot. I mean, it really does depend on who you know, right place, right time as well. But budgets are getting tighter, turnaround times are getting faster. You know, maybe you might get hired for five days, but now you get hired for two. For example, on big events, I think you really have to hustle to get the jobs that you really want to get. Often I do, I do jobs where I'm like, ah, okay, so this is a great client. How can I get, how can I get more work with this type of client? You know? But I think you have to be so adaptable these days in terms of, okay, so I love shooting in the arts industry and I would, I would love to do that full time, but I don't believe that there's enough resources to make that happen, you know, So I shoot other commercial stuff. Some of it I really enjoy and it's really insightful and I meet very different types of people and that keeps it exciting for me. And I really appreciate all the work I get in that way. And I think the more photographers I know when I talk about the same question, it's like you just have to be adaptable. It's almost like if you really want to shoot portraits and you want to get in the studio all the time, then that's where you need to go. But you're probably going to need to shoot some brand promotion at times or some event or a couple of weddings here and there to make ends meet before you can really get there. In terms of like being a full time portrait photographer in the studio, I think it's, it's rarely the case where you set yourself up as a portrait photographer. You get portrait photography jobs and that's it. And a story. I think that used to happen back then, but now it's more like, okay, so how adaptable am I prepared to be? I think that's a good question to ask yourself as well. It's like, am I just going to shoot everything or shall I just pick a few different lanes where I can build up my folio and build up my career and then maybe I pick four lanes and then it becomes two lanes and then it becomes one lane. [01:52:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I don't do a ton of photography work now because I'm sort of busy with the camera straps. Luckystraps.com Go there, use code Greg. I'm busy with that and. But I still do like doing some photography work that's not just personal work. I do like getting paid for it. Not just because money's wonderful and can buy new equipment, but because doing a job for a paying client is different to doing personal work. You can try and make personal work feel like it, but when someone needs an outcome, and I really like trying to match the outcome, like really find out what the business outcome is. Not just work off a brief that has someone's come up with. I prefer to work with a business that's just coming to me and saying we need, we're trying to do this. And then I come up with how we're going to, to shoot that. And I've been thinking about a lot because I'm like, how do I, how do I take, how do I convey to, to businesses the sorts of work that I like doing? Because it's not so much an industry thing or this style of shoot. It's very. Well, it's, I love doing work where it's, it's very raw storytelling of what the business does and very much in that, like construction, mining, like heavy industries. I love just getting in there and just documenting the cool work that they're doing. Not working with a marketing company or creative director or anything like that. That's not my, that's. My other people are way better at that to bring those ideas to life for like a campaign or something. I'm more of a, hey, just send me with, with someone for a day and yeah, I'll pull together a really cool set of stuff that you can use on socials for the next year. Yeah, but, but don't use me for your like hero campaign. You know that that requires a whole heap of moving parts and, and you know, a lot of creativity and things like that. That's not really my style. But it's hard to try to communicate that stuff isn't. [01:54:57] Speaker C: Is. Yeah, exactly like positioning yourself so that the job you're going to do suits your skill set perfectly. It's like, like what you're saying about storytelling and you know, coming in as almost like a documentary photography photographer and having that evergreen content that they can keep using. Right. And you're telling the story of the process of their work or the industry or you're making it really clear to public in a way like what this company is about. Yeah, sometimes I struggle with that. It's like, okay, so we're going to shoot this to your brief doesn't really make much sense, but, you know, let's. Let's try and. Let's try and make it as clear as possible. Or it's like, wow, that's an amazing story. I really want to get behind that. And I loved. I love the storytelling aspect of photography. I think I was trained in that way. Like, what is the narrative here? What are you trying to communicate? You know, what is your communicative intent with. With me supporting you? Get your message across. I mean, sometimes it can be as mundane as I want you to shoot these trainers, or it can be like, this is a huge waste management organization. We want you to shoot the whole site. And it's like, wow, okay, so let's. Let's start at the beginning. Like, where does the truck. Truck deliver the thing? And. [01:56:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:56:13] Speaker C: Who's involved with that? And, you know, that sounds really cool, though. [01:56:17] Speaker B: That's the sort of thing where I'm like, oh, you could just. Because you're just learning about their business through the process of the shoot. And. And, yeah, that. Yeah, that. [01:56:25] Speaker C: You've got fresh eyes. You've got fresh eyes on it. It's a complete advantage. I had a. I had a job. I was commissioned to shoot in Norway for three weeks. And the travel agency that hired me, they wanted to hire me because I'd never been. So I was, like, arriving, like, whoa, Noticing all these amazing, extraordinary things about the landscape and the people. And that's the advantage that they wanted to leverage. It's like, you are not from here. So we want you to photograph stuff that you think is amazing because you've got fresh eyes. And I think it's the same with any type of story. It's like, oh, I didn't know your organization existed. Okay, tell me what you're about. Right. Okay, so in my head, this makes sense. How about we shoot abcd? Those are the shoots I love as well. It's like, to be able to tell the story of that company or that person to promote that service or that product in a clear narrative structure, I think is a win. Because in a way, it's. What's the word? It's quantifiable. You can look at it and go, does that tell the story or not? It's quite a simple question, you know, and you can. You can. You can put it across to others. Does that make sense or not? And you can gauge whether you did a good job or not just on the basis of that. [01:57:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. [01:57:43] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great way of looking at it. Just a couple of quick questions before we go to Justin's next one. Just on the topic of clients and art directors, they take all the fun out of photography, according to Roy. And interestingly, Paul's got to run. He said, thanks for helping me see the light. Got to run. As I'm about to tour a working mine here in the Pilbara. What are the odds? [01:58:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:58:09] Speaker A: And there's a question here for you, Aaron, from Lucinda. Aaron, are you seeing more of a push for social first content in the art fringe world? [01:58:18] Speaker C: Totally. Totally. Yeah. It's. It's so funny. Good question. Of the last few years, every time I go on a shoot, whether it's commercial or arts, it's like, who are all these people in my way? And it's like, oh, they're the social media content creators. You know, they're there shooting away and they have access, like I have access. And it's like it's a real game of Tetris. You're like, oh, okay, so I've been commissioned to shoot this thing and I have an hour to get this done. But you also have been commissioned to shoot this thing for socials and you have an hour to get it done. And it's like, you're in my way and I'm in your way. You need to get your images out immediately from your phone. I need to shoot them and edit them and process them and send them and get green lit and okay, there's a whole process to do with that. So it's like, how can we negotiate this space? It can be good, it can be terrible. So, yeah, last year I've noticed more and more that happening. I know it's not going to go away, it's here to stay. So, yeah, social media content, first year, a lot of inquiries like, hey, can you shoot this? But can you get the highlights out immediately? Can you just stay on site, get the highlights out immediately and then the rest to follow? I actually would prefer it when the client gets content creators in and I'm separate from that, I don't mind going into the job and getting socials out straight away. I understand that. It's how we work now. So I do cater for that. I shoot RAW and JPEG if that's the case. So I can pull the JPEGs from my card and just get them out straight away. You should bring a laptop if needed and dump the files. That's another good reason to have a 24 megapixel camera. But things like that. Yeah, yeah. I do. Does it get in the way of my work or my bookings? Probably, probably. There's a lot of jobs I lose because they just shoot, they just shoot for content and they're not shooting for a full suite of photography. You know, shooting for the entire show, getting different angles, lighting it in different ways. They're just getting snapshot. Sometimes it can be really frustrating in the shoot where I'm shooting stills, but the client wants a few video clips and I'm like, okay, so I have to bring this rig and I have to stop shooting stills at this prime moment and then grab the video and. Or I have to use a hybrid camera and switch and it's doable and I do do it quite often, but it's, it just gets in the way. It gets in the way of the workflow and it's all about quantity. Right. It just becomes about how many stills and how many video clips you could possibly generate within that time frame. And then I start feeling like I'm a bit of a factory and I'm just producing volume and that gets frustrating for me. Although I do realize and understand it's part of the job. Ideally I just want to make great photos or take great videos or do a bit of both, but I don't want to be just churning, churning social content out. That's a long winded answer to your question. [02:01:41] Speaker B: Sounds like in a dream world, some young photographer, videographer who wants to learn from somebody on some pretty cool commercial jobs should be tapping on the shoulder and saying, hey Aaron, for a very low rate, I'll come with you for the day. I'll shoot the video clips. You, you direct me and teach me. I'll be shooting video clips while you're shooting stills and then you deliver that to the client as an, as an add on service and, and the young person would get the massive benefit of being able to just see exactly how these shoots work day after day. [02:02:16] Speaker C: Yeah, there's certainly a niche or an opportunity there. And I understand the socials. It's like it's actually a different, different, it's a slightly different approach. Like it's, it's fast and, and they need to get certain key shots out to suit the branding and to push the social media feed. Maybe there's a bunch of stories that have gone up prior to the show or to the event and they need specific images. Whereas I come on and I don't have that backlog of stories or reels or feeds. I'm approaching it as a professional photographer would approach it and this is how I want to capture it within my photography practice. It's quite a different approach. So we're, we're shooting the same stuff but in different ways for slightly different needs. So yeah, yeah, totally. [02:03:05] Speaker B: Lucinda says I'm finding I'm asked to do more content first. Content. Ag reels for musicians. Not necessarily a professional photo shoot. That makes sense, particularly in the, in the music and arts world. You know, it makes sense for a musician to be like, why would I just put photos out when I could put something out that has my music in it as a piece of content? You know, a visual piece of content that also has my, my art form in there as well? I get that. [02:03:35] Speaker C: Yeah. And it taps into, it's the speed of which you can turn over content. It's like a lot of musicians and artists might be going through a lot of different shows, different acts making different tracks, performing in different venues. They might have like a booked out six months ahead and they just want to show volume. They want to show how often they play, how often they create. So, you know, reels kind of make sense in that way. Or if you want something that's a bit more like longer lasting, you get into the studio and you do a full blown shooter. Of course the budget is higher, but that, that video clip or that photo series will be able to be used for a lot longer. So it's all about, is it, is it long form or short form? You know, how much budget do you have? Do you want instant promotion or do you want long term promotion? [02:04:28] Speaker B: Yes. [02:04:28] Speaker A: Yep. [02:04:29] Speaker B: Makes total sense. [02:04:29] Speaker A: That's a good way to break it down, I think. Absolutely. Jay, any other questions coming from you this morning? [02:04:37] Speaker C: I do, I do, but we probably [02:04:39] Speaker B: have to call it soon. I've got to go to Melbourne and I can hear my puppy yelling at [02:04:43] Speaker C: me from the other room. [02:04:44] Speaker B: Yeah, he's obviously woken up and he's. It makes. I've got a, a noise gate on this microphone so you guys can't hear it, but it's, it's definitely there. Yeah. [02:04:57] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [02:04:59] Speaker A: Well, let's tie. Let's tie a bow in this episode of the Camera Life podcast. Aaron, what an incredible conversation. I think what's really stood out for me, and I'm sure for people that are watching and listening along, is that there was. There's a process that you employ when you approach your craft. It's very clear, it's purposeful, but it also allows for flexibility and adaptability to match whoever it is that might be sitting in front of your lens. Or performing in front of your lens. And I think you've given us a, you know, an insight into that side of the industry that we don't often talk about. You know, it's not every day you find, you know, someone who works in the performing arts space as a photographer that we get to talk to. And I think, you know, you've certainly opened our minds a little bit to how yet another genre of our craft operates here in Australia. So thank you so much on behalf of everyone for your time and your insight and your inspiration and for sharing so much about yourself on this episode. We really appreciate it. [02:05:58] Speaker C: Welcome, guys. It's a pleasure to be on your podcast. What a great conversation to kick off a great day. [02:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you indeed. [02:06:06] Speaker A: And we look forward to catching up at Bright, of course. [02:06:09] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Coming like a freight train. Where can people best follow your work to see what's coming out? Is Instagram the best? [02:06:19] Speaker C: Instagram is probably the best. Yeah. I'm such a lazy poster. Oh, my God. Like this morning I was frantically putting up more portraits. I'm so bad at the socials, but I do get there in the end. So, yeah, Insta is a good place to follow me or website. I'm about to update chunks of it as well over the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, website Winster, that's where I am. [02:06:39] Speaker B: Perfect. [02:06:39] Speaker A: Amazing. And we'll put the links to those sites in the show notes. [02:06:43] Speaker C: Great, thank you. [02:06:43] Speaker A: Later. [02:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah, otherwise, if you Google Aaron Walker Photography, you'll find them. [02:06:48] Speaker C: Yeah, people can. People can just reach out, ask questions, you know, see if you can bounce around on a shoot with me as well. I have some coming up. Yeah, I can fit some people in. Maybe I'll check in with the client. But, yeah, then you never know, there might be some opportunities to jump in and to collaborate too. And hopefully I'll meet a lot of yous at Beef up anyway. [02:07:10] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. Can't wait. All right, well, on that note, we'll say our farewells to the folks in the chat, we'll roll the music and we wish you all the best. [02:07:19] Speaker C: Aaron. [02:07:19] Speaker A: Thanks again. [02:07:20] Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Thanks, everybody that joined us today. Rodney Nicholson says, very enjoyable, learnt lots. Thanks, Rodney. Thanks, Lucinda. Thanks, Roy. He says Melbourne is wet and cold right now. I bet it is. I won't be staying. I'll be turning rapidly around, coming back to vinegar. Thanks, Philip Johnson. Who else was here today? Paul Henderson, Jason Hannigan. Everybody was here. I gotta scroll so far up. Brucey was here for a bit. Nathan was more Paul. Oh, Samantha was here. I miss you, Samantha. Morning. Good morning. Stuart Lyle, David Mascaro. Oh, it's a busy one. Thanks for everybody for joining us. It was a wonderful, wonderful podcast. And see you in the next one. [02:08:04] Speaker A: We will see you guys. Be safe.