A conversation with Doug Porter (EP213)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, g' day, everybody, and welcome back to the Camera Life podcast. It is Thursday 3rd September, and we are here to interview yet another amazing Australian photographer and image maker. But before we, before we chat to our guest, just a very quick g' day to Justin Cassels, who is the mango to my smoothie. How are you, Jay? [00:00:45] Speaker C: That's a new one. I'm great. Good morning. How are you, Craig? [00:00:48] Speaker B: I'm all right, I'm all right. I'm doing okay. Fighting off a little bit of the household virus that's going around. But look, rain, hail or shine, I'm here for you, Jay. [00:00:57] Speaker C: Well, try some kung fu or something. Keep it at bay. You can do it. [00:01:00] Speaker B: I will, I will. Yeah. Jiu jitsu. I was thinking Brazilian. [00:01:03] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, nice. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Now, of course, we do have a guest with us and without further ado ado, we are joined by Doug Porter. Doug, do you prefer Doug or Douglas? [00:01:15] Speaker A: Only my mother used to call me Douglas and that was. [00:01:17] Speaker B: All right, well, I won't claim that status. We are joined by Doug Porter, who has been in the image making game for, for over 60, has a lot of stories to share and yeah, we're going to unpack your story. So welcome to the show. [00:01:34] Speaker A: Thank you so much. Yeah, it's quite an amazing thing to be invited, actually, as I said to you earlier pre broadcast, looking at some of the luminaries you've had on there. Yeah, it's quite humbling to be invited, so thank you so much. [00:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, you're very. [00:01:50] Speaker C: More than welcome. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Very keen to hear more about your life's journey as a creative. Let's, let's, let's kick off with a question before we do anything else. We'll get to saying hello to the folks in the chat in a moment, but as I've said, you've got quite an extensive history. I think we talked earlier. It was 1964 was when you began art schools. [00:02:13] Speaker A: I came out of art School in 64. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay. And for those of you that was 1964, just in case you're wondering. So, you know, like me, you attended an art school where you worked with and experimented and experienced a whole range of different mediums and formats. [00:02:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:33] Speaker B: What is, what's some of the fundamental things that you still carry to this day from that early art education period of your life? [00:02:41] Speaker A: The lighting of Renaissance and Romantic painters. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:50] Speaker A: Just. It's just extraordinary the way, the way they could paint light, the way they used light was just. It's the way I edit all my work. Is using those types of techniques. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Softening backgrounds to push them back, using sfomato. So there's no hard line. Just keeping everything softly toned. Really. Nothing that I do is particularly contrasty unless I do just a black and white sort of line thing. Everything else is usually very softly toned. [00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Okay. [00:03:33] Speaker C: How do you learn, do you think. Do you think that's been lost a little bit in modern photography because the tools that we have now are so capable of capturing huge dynamic ranges, all sorts of lighting conditions. Do you think those more nuanced lighting techniques have been. Have fallen by the wayside A little [00:03:54] Speaker B: bit [00:03:56] Speaker A: with some artists, just. But then you look at the work of Nika and it's all there. It's just brilliant. Her work in particular just speaks to me of how. And Ricardo da Corner as well. And it's just. Just extraordinarily beautiful, emotive, almost poetic works. Just beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can only sort of hope to be as good as that. Yeah. [00:04:27] Speaker B: And who are your. Who are your today, you know, who are your motivations? Where do you seek inspiration when it comes to looking at other photographers or artists? [00:04:39] Speaker A: Work, it's everywhere. Certainly the painters, especially the Romantics and the Renaissance painters. Movies. I quite often, if I'm watching a movie here at home off a dvd, a scene will come up and I'll stop the movie and take a screenshot of it so that I can use it as inspiration. I often download things that I see on the net. I have a whole folder, hundreds of images on one of my hard drive, which is just called Inspire. And I'll thumb through that every now and then and think, yeah, I have something that I could sort of work around that. When I was. When I was actually at art school, my father was an artist and one of his friends had an agency, small advertising agency in East Melbourne, and I used to go there and work there during school break. The first time I went there, I said, hey, Don, what's this great pile of magazines for? And he just said, inspiration. There's nothing new. It's all there. It's all been done before. Said if you can break, go for it. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I remember thumbing through my. My lens, National Geographic collection every time I'd go over for a visit or stay for a weekend. That that stack of yellow spines was so tantalizing to me. Flicking through and seeing the world in images that, you know, we otherwise hadn't seen. [00:06:09] Speaker C: Movies are a big one for me as well, but I've never gone to the point of pausing and taking a shot of that moment to look back on and add to a collection of things for inspiration. That's actually a great idea. I. Yeah. But I do find myself constantly looking at the lighting, the treatment, like the color, grading things like that composition and just. I think a lot of that definitely just naturally comes out in the way that I shoot because it's. Yeah, it's always turned on. I love, love watching movies. [00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of the best photographers and lighting technicians in the world work on movies. [00:06:48] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:06:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:51] Speaker A: Inspiration. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Yeah. It is interesting that you say that, Jay. I didn't think you were that sort of person that would look for that in movies. I don't know why I thought that about you. I might have just elevated my expectations of you a little. [00:07:05] Speaker C: But I don't say what sort of movies. I didn't. Oh, that's true. They're mostly Adam Sandler movies. I love the way they use the lighting in Billy Madison. No, sure you do. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Sure you do. [00:07:16] Speaker C: No, it is. It's quite mind blowing that even on, you know, even before TV became, you know, TV now or series is now are quite insanely well produced. But even before that, I found myself looking at the lighting and trying to figure out how they've lit that scene. And it's still. I still struggle to. To put it together in my head. When you're like, okay, I can see what they've done there, but I don't understand how. How the rest of the scene is lit without interfering with the way they've lit the subject. And, you know, like, I'd love to be able to just pause and zoom out and see the entire studio at any time I wanted it. It'd be so great. [00:07:58] Speaker A: One of the almost Hackney terms these days is cinematic lighting. [00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:05] Speaker C: Yes. [00:08:08] Speaker A: What? Two colors? [00:08:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I was going to say, what do you think cinematic lighting is? What does that mean when you hear [00:08:14] Speaker A: that phrase and when I try to emulate it? Very little detail in the blacks, usually. Normally the blacks are cyan or slightly blue tinted, the highlights slightly yellow. Red tinted and sort of misty emotive type rendering. Yeah, well, that's for me. It may not be for everybody. [00:08:40] Speaker C: Yeah. But you're right. That term gets thrown around all the time, especially if you venture onto the YouTubes, which we are now, where we're in here right now. Maybe we're doing. Is this cinematic lighting? Not really. Maybe if I. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Mine's not. Mine's blown out. [00:08:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yours is very bright this morning. You look like you're in a Tanning salon. [00:08:58] Speaker B: Sorry, guys. There you go. Look, I've turned it off and I'm still glowing white. [00:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah. What's going on? [00:09:03] Speaker B: No, I'm just very pale. My face is like a magnet for [00:09:08] Speaker A: light, dark room tan. [00:09:11] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. I'll keep that. No, that's really interesting. Really interesting about that. You know, sometimes I'll think about what I carry forward from when I did art. And for the most part, it was. There are elements of composition, there are elements about perspective that I employed, my street photography. And of course, I learned to do photography at art school. So that was probably the biggest influence on me. And I think fondly of those days and learning those new skills. Now, before we wind back the clock and maybe get stuck into your story a little bit more, Doug Jay, do you want to say good day to some people in the chat? [00:09:50] Speaker C: I do. I definitely do, because Philip Johnson was here first, as always. Good morning, Philip. Philip's excited because it's only 36 days until the bright festival of photography. He's excited. It's almost time to book all your workshops. Philip Rodney Nicholson. Good morning. David Mascara says, hi, guys. He's from San Francisco. He says, hi, guys. I just want you to know because of the kind words from Justin and Greg and many of the viewers, I completed my website with the help of my daughter. You've motivated this old guy. Thank you. Well, that is awesome. Very cool. [00:10:21] Speaker B: Amazing. [00:10:21] Speaker C: Great to see your work. All in a bit of a collection. Yep, that's. That's very cool, David. Who else is here? Robert Varner is here. Good morning, Australia from a gloomy rainy day in New Jersey. It must be. Would be starting to get cold now in New Jersey. Yeah, the. [00:10:39] Speaker A: The. [00:10:40] Speaker C: The Fall. Autumn. The fall east coast photography. Good morning, shooters from Foster, New South Wales. Feeling like summer here. 29 degrees today. Wow. The other end. The other end of the. Yep. Bruce Moyle is here. Bruce Moyle says if you like movie frames, Shot Deck website is what dops use all the time for inspiration. I'll have to check that out. Shot Deck website. [00:11:04] Speaker B: Shot Deck my hall. [00:11:07] Speaker C: Good morning. Could Doug repeat the name of the artist he found inspiring? Thank you. Who was that artist you mentioned, Doug? [00:11:17] Speaker A: Now that I mentioned one specifically, but people like Turner, Constable, Canaletto from the Renaissance, those, Those type. They're the type of artists that I really enjoy the paintings of. Monet, Manet. Yeah, lots. Lots of different ones, that's for sure. [00:11:41] Speaker C: Maya will be going on a. On a deep dive. Maya. Maya Mayer. [00:11:45] Speaker A: Maya, My name. [00:11:47] Speaker C: No, no, sorry. I was Talking about Maya. This is Maya hall, her name. And I was trying to work out if it's Maya or Maya. [00:11:52] Speaker B: I think it's usually Maya. [00:11:54] Speaker A: I don't know. [00:11:55] Speaker C: She'll tell us. Roy Brigsy. Roy Bigsby says, greg, don't go towards the light. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Not ready, not done. [00:12:08] Speaker C: Philip Johnson says he loves getting inspiration from landscape and abstract painters and always suggest to young photographers to go to galleries. Yeah, that's probably something I should do more of, is go to go physical galleries and see things in person. Good morning, Paul. And finally, Maya says, was there May with an A on the end? Oh, was there May, Maya? Maya mayer. Done. [00:12:32] Speaker B: Okay, Ms. Hall. [00:12:34] Speaker C: Worst segment in podcasting history, but I got there. Let's get back to. Let's get back to Doug. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Excuse me. So, Doug, you mentioned that your father was an artist. [00:12:46] Speaker A: Yeah. He could draw a seat where you could reach into the COVID and shake hands with. Was amazing. Absolutely amazing. [00:12:56] Speaker B: And so what were his. What were his preferred genres of art? What medium did he work in? [00:13:01] Speaker A: He was a pencil and charcoal artist. Mostly figures, you know, faces, hands, bodies, portraits, and so forth. Yep. [00:13:16] Speaker B: It's always fascinated me how people can create such lifelike portraiture from pencil or charcoal. I kind of get it in painting, but in. I mean, I tried my hand at illustration when I left art school, and faces and accurate anatomy always stumps me and just blew me away. That people can see or can create even out of their mind, you know, perfectly formed portraiture. That's a whole new level of autism that I just don't have. My autism's fairly. Fairly basement level at the moment. [00:13:52] Speaker A: So, I mean, one level of expertise is getting it down onto paper for the ones that blow me away. Who wants to do it in a single block of marble? [00:14:02] Speaker C: Oh, that's crazy. [00:14:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that is. Yeah. [00:14:06] Speaker C: That doesn't even make sense how that's possible. And then what about when you make a mistake? [00:14:11] Speaker A: Have you ever been to Rome? [00:14:13] Speaker C: No. [00:14:14] Speaker A: No. If you do go, go to St. Peter's just purely to see La Pieta by Michelangelo. It is just breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking. Yep. [00:14:28] Speaker C: What about it? Like, when can you describe what it's like to be there [00:14:34] Speaker A: looking at La Pieta? [00:14:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:37] Speaker A: I'm not a deeply religious person. And the fact that he carved this from a single block of marble when he was just in his early 20s. Yeah. It's just. I mean, that's the skill level. It's a savant level of artistry. Incredible. And things like in Naples, there's one called the Veiled Christ which is the prone body of Christ draped in a transparent cloth. And you'd swear you were looking through a transparent cloth to the body underneath. It beggars belief. It's incredible. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I think what else is, what even amplifies that, how amazing it is, is that that wasn't his only genre or medium of expressing, you know, just the stuff that he did, the, the ideas he came up with. The, you know, the Sistine Chapel, the, the paintings, the sculptures, the mechanical contraptions that he tinkered with. [00:15:47] Speaker A: Nice stuff. Interesting. [00:15:49] Speaker B: Oh, sorry, wrong person. Wrong person. I got that wrong. But, you know, just equal, equal, equally as impressive. So, you know, your dad was into arts. Was that. Was that your sort of key influence that sort of led you down that path? Was it, you know, was it to emulate what your father had done or was it to, you know, was it. Was he your key inspiration? [00:16:14] Speaker A: It wasn't to emulate what he did or was doing. It's just that I never really had a leaning towards anything else. I've always been a doodler scribbler. Not so much. I mean, I painted at art school. I've not painted much at all since I left art school. And like I said, that was 1964. And I think this in front of me now is my easel. And this is where I sort of try to do my creations now. And that why, I think just because I didn't really want to do anything else. [00:16:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:56] Speaker A: My father was. Was an artist. My mother was a singer. My grandfather was a musician. My uncle was a musician. I've been a musician. My son's been a musician. My younger son was up until recently, the principal ballet dancer for the Sacramento Ballet in California. So we're all people rather than. Rather than bricks and mortar type people. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:17:29] Speaker C: Sorry. Were you a working musician, Doug? Was that what you mean, as in you were working in bands or. Yeah. What was that like? [00:17:38] Speaker A: Oh, it was a ride. And I was. It was the early, late 60s, early 70s. So yeah, it was good fun. Sorry, folks. [00:17:50] Speaker C: And was that a full time living at that point or that was just like a journey? [00:17:56] Speaker A: I was playing gigs and then going to work the next day. [00:17:59] Speaker C: Oh, okay. [00:18:01] Speaker A: I came straight out of art school. The course I wanted to do was a four year course. So that was a certificate of art and then a diploma of art to finish it off. Sadly, towards the end of my first two years, my father was retrenched from the job that he had and I had to leave school to help support the family because there were four other siblings and my mother. And he was a bit devastated after having worked at the same job for a very, very long time. So I never got to finish my diploma, sadly. And we kept the family together for quite a few more years. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:43] Speaker C: Did him losing his job that he'd had for a long time, did that impact your thoughts around work and the sorts of work that you pursued? [00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, obviously when I came out from finishing certificate course, I wanted to get into an agency or something like that and do illustration or whatever. And there were pretty bunch of no opportunities. So I just scoured the newspapers for something that I thought I might be able to do. And I found an advertisement for a company called berrycolor, which was the original business of Max Townsend. Of Max Townsend, and who had probably at the time the largest photo finishing lab in Australia or certainly in Melbourne. And then he expanded that to a very, very large premises in Clayton. This was original one was in Flinders Lane in the City. And then he expanded that to a very large premises out in Clayton where we were getting work from all over Australia rather than. And that was film processing and lots of chemist stock stuff. And then also doing work for professional photographers as well. I started there doing whatever he wanted me to do. So I started off mixing chemicals, which is probably why I loathe the alchemy of photographic chemistry, even though I dabbled in it for 45 years. Yeah. So I started off doing that for mixing chemistry and doing small enlargements, black and white and color, throwing things onto glazing machine. I don't know if you know what a glazer is. [00:20:43] Speaker C: No. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Oh, you're such children. [00:20:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Previously, everything was processed and come out wet. To dry it, you have to put it through a glazer to put a gloss on it or turn it upside down on a different mat to have it come out as a sort of semi matte paper. So there was that and then there's. Of course, quite often they would stick to the drum, which was always fun to peel them off. Then because of my art background, he thought, would you like to try retouching? Yes, please. Purple fingernails, this is wonderful. And yeah, so I started doing spotting and then retouching. And then because I was also an airbrush artist, I was doing airbrush retouching on car photographs and things like that, and removing backgrounds, masking with gel and with papers, and airbrushing new backgrounds into things. That was always good fun. And from there his production manager then left Varicolor and started a company called Bond Imaging. And I was invited to go along there as their retoucher. So I went along as retoucher and as I have all the way through my work in life. I've always embraced every opportunity to learn something new, to sort of grow and to expand my fields of expertise. So after about four or five years, I actually became the production manager for the company. So I was responsible for the running of the whole thing. And then when that company grew to about probably 100 times the size, it was originally 3,000 square feet in one little building. And by the end of bond imaging was probably over 100,000 square feet over four buildings. [00:22:58] Speaker C: Wow. [00:22:59] Speaker A: With millions of dollars worth of equipment. But then it was split into two genres. One was the commercial section. One was the social wedding portrait section. So I took on the mantle looking after the commercial section. And at the same time I was still doing a lot of artwork and retouching as well. So I had two strings to my bow for most of the time there. It was challenging, it was good fun. It was 12, 14 hour days. So I don't miss that. It's the paycheck, don't miss the hours. [00:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, we've spoken to David de Parker. We haven't interviewed him yet, but we have spoken to him a couple of times and we met him at BFOP last year. And you know, he's often commented when we've talked about film photography, like analog photography, that he doesn't miss the dark room, he doesn't miss the chemicals. You know, he's done his fair share of that. Along this part of your journey, Doug, you know, where was the camera? Were you taking photos at this point or had photography actually picking up the camera and getting out for your own personal pursuits at that? When did that kick in? [00:24:13] Speaker A: I bought an SLR Nikomat FTM. And I bought with it a 50mil 1.2 and 135mil 2.8. I think I've still got them. And I just started taking photos. I've never had a photography lesson in my life. I sort of learned by just jumping in the bend. And then you sort of flounder about for quite a few, quite a bit. And then I started getting some reasonable results. And I was booked by a lady who ran a wedding studio and said, would you like to do weddings? Naively, I said, oh, yeah, sure, no worries. Not really realizing what it encountered. So I went along with her a few times and said, oh, Bobby, this looks okay. So I did that for a while and then I got married and I was working like, As I said, 12, 14 hours a day and driving from Berwick to Richmond every day. And I just put all cameras away instead of. Unless I was taking photographs with the kids when they were born or when we were at the odd weekend off or something like that. So that was In, I think 1977, I think I just put cameras down, didn't pick one up to do any work for myself at all. And in 2004, my wife's cousin and her sister husband came out to visit us here in Australia. And he and I have very similar interests. He's a mad keen amateur photographer and he's also a bonsai artist, which I do. Bonsai as well. And he said to me, you've never been overseas? I said, no, never been out of. I've only been out of Victoria three times. And he said, well, make a date now. I said, what do you mean? He said, make a date and come to Sicily. He said, if you don't make a date now, I'm gonna send the man with a violin case. So we made a date. And in 2006, I had my first trip out of the country and I went to Italy. And I went with little tiny Kodak point and shoot digital camera. Just gave me a 14 megabyte, 8 bit file. Yep. And I was just absolutely blown away by the light, by the antiquity, by the color, by the texture. Just. There was just so much about Italy that just resonated with my love of things like Canaletto and Michelangelo and so forth. So I shot five little cards that could just pop in and out of the, out of this little camera and came back and sort of. I didn't even have a proper computer at the time, so I think I was popping them into my. I had a little laptop, tiny little laptop. But it rekindled my love of capturing images. Yeah. So I said to June, I said, well, if we're going back. And this was in 2006. You said, oh, we're going back in 2008. I said, well, I'm not going back with this camera. I want. I want something better. So this was 2000, 2007, so things like this exist. [00:28:17] Speaker C: What's that one that you just picked up there? [00:28:20] Speaker A: D810. [00:28:21] Speaker C: D810. Okay. Yep. Yeah, 2007, we were talking, that's. It's sort of on in the early days of digital. [00:28:28] Speaker A: So I scoured what I could get. And being an artist or a guy, I like the look of this little Olympus E410. So it was a kid thing. It had the body, two lenses, 14 to 40 or something like that, and then 40 to 115 or 120, something like that. And I went off happily and did. My first trip to. First time I went to Venice was in 2008 and I shot the hell out of that place. And that was giving me a 28 megabyte file at 8 bit, 50 something when you convert to 16 bit. But I knew nothing about taking photographs the way I do now. It was all JPEG. I just was shooting JPEG. And this one behind me, that's 1.2 meters square. So that's from half of one of those 28 megabyte files. [00:29:50] Speaker C: From that camera, which is a 10 megapixel. I think I'm just googling it now. Released in 2007, 10 megapixel. It had the Olympus Truepic 3 processor, Craig, in case you're wondering, a 2.5-inch LCD screen. And what else did it have? It only weighed 375 grams and it had built in supersonic wave filter dust reduction to clear the sensor at startup. Compact flash and XD picture cards. Remember xd? Yeah, yeah. Dual card slots. Wow, what a cool camera. [00:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's. That's not the biggest print I've made from that. [00:30:32] Speaker C: Really. [00:30:33] Speaker A: I've got on my lounge room wall. Here is the one. This is just a. This was just a proof one. On my lantern wall is one which is 1.5 meters square from the same file and was one of the first exhibition. [00:30:50] Speaker C: Wow. [00:30:51] Speaker B: Yeah. With that in mind. Does it. Does it drive you crazy when people say I don't have enough megapixels. [00:30:58] Speaker A: Oh, I've never got enough megapixels. [00:31:02] Speaker C: I was gonna say he's got a D810. So he's obviously not. He's not against megapixels. [00:31:07] Speaker B: He's not against it. [00:31:10] Speaker A: The 18 six weeks before the 850 was released. Yeah. [00:31:18] Speaker C: And gosh, that 850 was a magical camera. [00:31:24] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it still is. Yeah. It's iconic. [00:31:26] Speaker C: Yes. The sense is still right up there with. With current offerings in terms of just pure image quality. I. I think anyway, someone might tell me I'm wrong, but I love shooting with that camera. I had a D810 for a while as well. That was a great camera. It was just not quite as robust for. I was doing weddings and events at the time. And the D850 took it to a sort of a speed area where really brought it in line with the faster cameras. And still had high megapixels. It was. Yeah, it was amazing. [00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I mean, most of the work that I sell, if I do sell anything, it's usually in the area of this sort of size, you know, 1.2 meters square or some of them. I mean, there's one in Perth waiting to be framed at the moment, which is 1100 by 1800 millimeters. Yeah, 1100 by 1800 millimeters. It's gonna cost a few bulbs to get framed, but yeah. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:30] Speaker C: Wow. [00:32:30] Speaker B: Yep. That's pretty impressive. [00:32:35] Speaker A: That's off the A10, that one. That's not off the little. [00:32:38] Speaker C: Not off the 10, 10 megapixel Olympics. [00:32:42] Speaker B: So I'm curious to know, you know, you spent time in Italy, you know, where eight times since then. Oh, my Lord. So obviously there's something that keeps drawing you back. What, what is it about Italy for you? Is it the. That it's the home of many of those Renaissance artists? Are you seeing that, you know, when you're traveling there, do you see, you know, the history of Italy, the architecture, does that all contribute to what you're, you know, to your themes? [00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I just think that somewhere very deep in my DNA there must be some sort of some tiny little bit of Italian heritage. I don't know, because the very first time I landed there, I just felt home. I was happy just to wander the streets. It just. I mean, I speak a little bit of Italian, which I learned by going to Italian classes, but there's not much about. I was going to say, not much about Italy I don't like, but there are things I don't like about Italy and there are things that annoy my wife about Italy. I'll give you an instance. When we stay in Sicily, June's wife and. Sorry, June's cousin and her husband, he's Sicilian and he built a three story villa on a hill in Sicily on his old family plot. So the mud floored house that he grew up in as a child is buried underneath the new house. So it just, it's all there. All the history is there. Wow. And when you go there and you stay with them for 10 days or something and you go off and see some of the amazing sights of Sicily, there's no garbage collection, so you've got to take your garbage down to big communal bins and put it in. You don't drink the water out of the tap. You have to go down to La Fontana and fill up all these bottles and take it back to the house. You can use the water for washing. So what were you going to drink? It. And the one that really blew Jimin away was when we were leaving to go somewhere else and we were in Salvatore and we had to go to the cemetery to say goodbye to everybody. [00:35:06] Speaker B: Wow. [00:35:07] Speaker C: Interesting. That's just. That's customary. [00:35:11] Speaker A: Yeah. The strength of family is just amazing. It really is. Family is. In Italians say la familia etuto. Family is everything. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Yep. [00:35:27] Speaker A: It's great. But yeah, the architecture. There are things you see in Italy that you can't see anywhere else in the world. I mean, the Pantheon, my godfather, the largest unsupported concrete dome in the world. I wouldn't know how to do it. [00:35:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:44] Speaker A: Look at a Sagrada. Familiar. [00:35:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Just the architecture there is. Is just extraordinary. [00:35:54] Speaker B: How long have they. They've only just finished that, haven't they? They've been building it for. [00:35:58] Speaker A: It's been going on for something like 200 years. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a crazy project, you know, to. To work on that and know that you won't see it finished in your lifetime. [00:36:09] Speaker A: Is that. [00:36:11] Speaker B: Must be such a different mind shift for artisans who work on. On places like that. It's interesting. It's interesting. [00:36:21] Speaker A: An optimist is somebody who'll plant a tree that he knows and never sit in the shade of. [00:36:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I like that. [00:36:28] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:29] Speaker B: Just a very quick message here from Rodney Nicholson. He says that you look Italian. So there you go. Maybe there is some heritage there. There you go. [00:36:43] Speaker C: Rodney also said back here a little bit, Doug used to print my negs at Bond Big. No, at Bond big. 20 by 30 prints to perfection. Often would bump into Ken Duncan and Wolfgang on my trips from the coast. [00:36:57] Speaker A: Nice, Wolfgang. Miss him. He was such a good friend. Such a good friend. Yeah. We printed all Wolfgang stuff except for his black. [00:37:12] Speaker C: When would this have been? What. What sort of time period? [00:37:16] Speaker A: I. I retired in 2015, so. And Wolfgang died quite a few years before that. So would have been probably late 90s, early 2000. Yeah, late 90s, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ken Duncan, he actually, I think he came. He was down here shooting something for a project and he was shooting everything on the 6 by 18 transparencies on Velvet 50 ISO. So we were doing all this processing and proving. I'm not sure whether we ever did print any on the superchrome for him. I'm not sure. But yeah, we process a lot of film for it. 90s says Rodney. Yeah, there you go. [00:38:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:08] Speaker A: Yep. So, yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate. I've mixed with it, learned from by just by observation from really some of Australia's finest photographers who came, came into that lab. You know, Wolfgang being one. Athol Smith, Ian McKenzie. Just so many, so many. I remember going. When Athol smith was shooting E3 4x5 transparencies for the release of Truactin cosmetics, I was delivering some process films to him in his studio in Collins street and he was still shooting and he had cosmetics that was all shot on type B film. So he had lots of little lights and lots of little mirrors and bits of silver paper and stuff just reflecting into these cosmetics. And the room was like a sauna. It was so hot with all these, all these lights and just beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Yep. [00:39:15] Speaker B: Doug, I read in part of your bio you were talking about, you know, the, the advent of digital photography and Lightroom especially. Sorry, Photoshop, I should say not Lightroom, Photoshop. Tell us about that transition for you. You know, we, we've spoken to obviously lots of photographers here on the Camera Life podcast, many of whom were shooting film and then transitioned into digital. And everyone's had their own journey. What was that stage of life and creativity like for you? [00:39:43] Speaker A: Well, at the time that the lab went, started to go digital, I wasn't shooting at all. Not right at the very start anyway. So very early into the. I did. But our first foray into digital within the lab was an imaging system called Kodak Premier. It was a. We had three workstations, film scanner, a film writer and we could Write up to 8 by 10 inch transparencies and negatives from files and the UNIX based monster processor. And it was compared to Photoshop, it was a pretty amateurish OR system, so it was destructive. Whatever you put, if you imported something onto it, you had to put your coordinates in so that it would drop into where you wanted it. Otherwise you couldn't move it around as well as what you can these days. And then our first Mac, which we got purely because we wanted to be able to put type into things because we were doing work for companies like Just Jeans and Country Road and so forth. So we need to be able to put logos, type and stuff onto things. So they would, they would send us six by six transparencies, we'd scan them and we'd make 10 by eight negatives with the logos and everything on them and then print them on a big horizontal projection enlarges. So we got a Macintosh. It was called a Mac server. This has 10 times the power of that Mac. [00:41:29] Speaker C: An iPad. [00:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:33] Speaker C: And that would have been, that would have been an insanely good The Mac server, like that would have been enterprise level sort of stuff that you were buying. Not. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it had about 20 megabytes of RAM or something like that. Just tiny, tiny little thing. But we could. There was a way with all these dongles and stuff that we could get files from it into the Premier system. But again, we had to make sure we could drop them in via coordinates. So we spent a lot of time writing negatives and transparencies and stuff for advertising agencies in Japan. We did retouching and so forth, or I did retouching on the Premier system. And then we got this wonderful machine called. Jesus. It's a giant laser printer going great. It'll come back to me. Anyway, we could handle. It took 50 inch wide rolls of paper, codec paper and we could take the files directly from Premier through the workstation in the laboratory and print them directly to paper digitally and Then process the 50 meter long rolls of paper 50 inch wide through an 80 inch paper processor. It was the Lambda Laser Trilaser printers. We had two of them. [00:43:14] Speaker C: That would have been massive. [00:43:17] Speaker A: They really changed the way we made photographs. We're talking about varicolor. When I first started Varicolor, the largest print we could do was about 16 inches by 20 inches. We could do about six a day in baskets, jiggling them up and down. And by the time I left varicolor with the two Lambdas running, 50 inch roll of paper would take about two hours to process. So it'd be 50 inches by 50ft, two of them running concurrently with two 80 inch processors running. So hundreds of murals per day. [00:43:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:00] Speaker A: And the quality was extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. There's no way you can get it that good off a negative. Sorry for you purists out there. [00:44:14] Speaker B: I was just going to say Doug, and you know the people that were around you in the industry, you know, the photographers, you know, how. What did you see in terms of the impact of film almost collapsing very quickly versus digital's uptake? How did that impact the folks around you? How did it impact where you were working? [00:44:38] Speaker A: Well, one third of our major. Our capital building was given over to film processing. So we had a negative processing machine, C41, we had an E6 processing machine. We had a black and white processing machine and we had a dark room for. We had. Yeah, we had a black and white dip and duck machine and we also had a dark room for black and white processing as well. Now just take the E6 machine first for an instance. Every rack of film, every rack could take 12 rolls of film picking up every 45 seconds could do 600, 800 films a day without even writing. By the time I left, we were lucky to be doing 100 films a week. Now there has been innocence in film. People are re embracing film. I don't know why, but they are. So when you think of the extra, I mean, as production manager I was responsible for the alchemy and all the chemistry as well. So I would have to do all the analysis of all the chemistry and so forth as, you know, chemistry ages and it only gets. Only stays stable by constantly working it. So to have the films going through it all the time and having. Being replenished with. Because they're all automatically replenished, the E6 bleach, something cost something like $80 a litre and the tank held 110 liters. [00:46:38] Speaker C: Wow. [00:46:39] Speaker A: And I was throwing that out or having it taken away every four to six weeks because it was just dying. It just wasn't being worked. [00:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:50] Speaker A: I tried to campaign for removing all the film processing and putting in more digital, but no, didn't happen. So, yep, they were all still there when I, when I left. Yep. [00:47:09] Speaker B: I wonder where those machines are now. [00:47:11] Speaker A: In the tip. [00:47:15] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:15] Speaker A: Sadly, I think that's possibly where the 80. I don't know where the 8 inch film pack processes and the Lambdas went and. Yeah. And Kodak premises and absolutely gazillions of dollars worth of. [00:47:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:30] Speaker A: And. [00:47:30] Speaker B: And the, the crazy part is, is that even if the business chose to shut down of its own accord and sell off its assets, there would be no one wanting to pick those up because they would become. They were virtually obsolete. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:43] Speaker B: And too expensive to run for such a small demand. It's, it's interesting when we see those sorts of technological changes and how it impacts an industry, you know, and just thinking locally, when Uber was introduced to Australia, especially in Victoria, you know, the impacts it had on the taxi drivers, who up until that point mostly were, you know, sole traders. Some work for agencies, many work for agencies. But, you know, as Uber and Rideshare came in, you know, that industry started to suffer and it had to adapt and change and lots of people stopped being taxi drivers and, you know, all that sort of stuff. So yeah, it's really interesting to hear how, you know, from the enterprise side of photography, you know, that big scale stuff, how that went when, when digital came in. [00:48:33] Speaker A: Well, I think, I think most, I think Horsham Pro has now gobbled up all of the. Have taken over the Warshaw, they've taken over Bond have taken over the edge. It's just all under the one roof now. I think they're doing well. But how much of it is in parenthesis, analog? I don't know. [00:48:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:49:04] Speaker A: When we first started accepting files from outside for printing, you know, we bring them up on our fully calibrated system and then we sort of look at them and go, do they really want it to look like this? Because in the early days, nobody knew anything about calibrating or doing calibration or how to set up a file. Though a lot of them, like us, were finding our way. And you'd print it as it came in because maybe this is what they wanted to look like. And then they come storming in the office and say, this is not what it looks like on my monitor. This is. And I'm sorry, this is what it looks like. And, yeah, quite a few arguments like those in the early days. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, we were happy to correct them, but, you know, that's time and time is money. [00:49:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:57] Speaker A: Yep. [00:50:00] Speaker C: It's like you've got a pretty long history with film and then the transition into digital. Do you think this trip to Italy was obviously a huge catalyst for you. And I know that feeling of going somewhere new and just having just inspiration just hits. Everything's just captivating and you feel like making images. Do you think. How big of a role do you think your digital camera played in that? Do you think if you had taken that trip with a film camera, the same spark would have happened? [00:50:34] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yes. [00:50:36] Speaker C: It wouldn't have mattered. [00:50:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I was still working at times, so I could have got all the film process, no problem. [00:50:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it wasn't. It wasn't the instant gratification of the digital and that kind of thing that helped, I guess, turn a corner in terms of, like, I want to pick the camera up again and do this. [00:50:57] Speaker A: No, it was this way that made me want to pick the camera up again. Okay. For sure. [00:51:05] Speaker C: It's such common advice, but it's take the trip. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely. [00:51:10] Speaker A: In this book, most of them are from the 2024 trip, but there are still some from the 2008 trip, you know, which was shot on the little Olympus that's. So that's 300 by 420, that book and those little files, nothing to bring them up to sizes. They come up really well. [00:51:39] Speaker B: Yep. [00:51:41] Speaker C: Let's detour to the. To what's capable in the present. What sort of digital processing are you doing to those small files? Like what would you do to them today to make them into a big print or are you leaving them as they were processed years ago? [00:52:01] Speaker A: Oh, God, no. I look at my processing from years ago. Lucky I still have all the original files, Even the little 14 megabyte files from the little Kodak camera. I've sold image framed images from that at. Oh, you can't see it. What's that? That's. 700 by 500 on printed digital prints, obviously. So from that. And there were I think three images in my first exhibition that were actually out of that camera. [00:52:43] Speaker B: Yeah. That's amazing. [00:52:46] Speaker A: That's very cool what you do with it. [00:52:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:52:51] Speaker A: What someone. [00:52:52] Speaker B: Roy Bixby, just very quickly, cheeky comment from Roy. It's not the size of the camera, it's how you use it. [00:52:59] Speaker C: That is true, that's true, yeah. What sort of processing you're adopting today? Are you doing everything in Photoshop still or you got other tools that you're using? [00:53:10] Speaker A: I don't use Lightroom at all. Yeah, I just use Photoshop, my original. Firstly, it's with the little files. They're 8 bits. First thing I do is convert them to 16 bit and after that it's into Camera Raw. Because you can still open those JPEG files in Camera Raw. We just save them, save them down as tiffs from the JPEGs and then go into Camera Raw and you've got all those lovely controls there to get you underway. And once I have what I think is the base image, then it comes into Photoshop and that's when I start using the things that I learned at art school. The lighting, the dodging, the burning, the. The painterly effects. One of my favourite ones is painting with what a guy called Adam Williams taught me called painting with pure sunlight. I don't know why that's going all dark. I'm sorry, folks. Painting with pure sunlight, You take a solid colour and then you paint it on using color dodge and you can actually highlight things very well with that. And it's how I can bring the highlight side of things to life, basically. So it's one of the tricks I use. I also use a lot of self captured textures to sort of antique my works a bit. There's nothing, there's nothing sort of weird or anything that I do when I'm making my imagery. It's just straight processing, I think it's just, you know, you work from here, you just work until it feels right. Yeah, yeah. [00:55:17] Speaker B: These days you're doing well for some time. You do a lot of know Composite photography work where you're taking your original images and you're piecing them together to create finished pieces of art. When did that part of your, you know, your process? When did, when did you adopt that? When did you start going into that space? [00:55:39] Speaker A: Well, at Bond, I used to do photo mechanical composition. So that's with multiple lift layers and multiple exposures using contact frames and registration pins. So I was already doing sort of composite work analog wise, but doing it like this was. I just, I just wanted them to be able to create. And I saw works by one of my favorite people called Karen Holsop. I don't know if you know Karen at all. She's an amazing, amazing digital artist and photographer and she does some breathtaking work. So yeah, I saw what she was doing, thought, well, I'll have a go at that. So yeah, a lot of my stuff is. Oh gosh, [00:56:33] Speaker C: I was trying to remember. I'm sure I've seen her stuff before. [00:56:39] Speaker B: Karen's a beef up instructor. [00:56:41] Speaker C: That's right. I was like, I'm sure. Yeah. Here we go. The, the kids portraits and things. [00:56:46] Speaker A: There's all the elements. And that, that's the final image. So that's, that'll, that's what it'll be in this particular book. So this, this book is ready to go to print. So. Yep. Yeah. So, yeah, so it'll be the spread for each page will be the elements and then the final rendering. Yep. But yeah, that's my favorite genre is making composite work. Yeah. [00:57:22] Speaker B: Jay, do you mind bringing up the Australian Photographic Prize link that I've added to the running sheet? [00:57:27] Speaker A: We'll have a. [00:57:29] Speaker C: Actually going to suggest whether we could even do that. And I know you can't tell us exactly what you've done without showing us with as you do it, Doug, but even just some, I thought it'd be cool to get an idea of the sort of processing that you've done on some of the images. Especially when you were talking about that painting in. Painting in color. [00:57:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So if you look at the second row down, the second one from the left. That one. That one, yeah. That actually got me a silver distinction. And that is a composite of 1, 2, 3, 6 images. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Wow. [00:58:18] Speaker A: So, yeah, again, influenced by the likes of Canaletto and so forth. The Santa Maria della Salute, which is the cathedral in the background, was photographed in Venice. Obviously. The sky, I'm not sure where I photographed that now. I have a huge library of skies. The sailboat is just a model which I photographed on my kitchen table. [00:58:44] Speaker B: What? Wow. [00:58:46] Speaker A: Yeah. And the little gondola was from another shot in Venice. And there are some birds and some other very small things in the background which you can't see. And that's the problem. One of the problems with my work is that in competition, they've got such a short time to view them and assess them that they miss a lot of the very fine details that people like me put into them. So they don't always speak to the artist. They. I mean, they'll get the original. The look of that, but they won't see the detail that's gone into it. I mean, that. I think that took me about 12 or 14 hours of masking and compositing and mucking around and changing, and I think that's version 11 or something. Yeah. So, yeah, they're always a work in progress. And I have always believed that the creative process needs to remain fluid. It might not be what you started out to do, but as it grows organically, it can morph into something you had hoped, deep in your recesses of your mind, that you wanted it to be. This was one. It's a. It's possibly only 60% of what I originally had in my mind, but I'm more happy with that than what I actually originally had in my mind. [01:00:22] Speaker B: Okay, and when do you know you've reached that happy place? When do you know that a work. I know you said that it's fluid and that it's ongoing, but do you ever get a point where you say, okay, this. This one is definitely. It's done, it's locked away? Or does your view of it change over time? [01:00:40] Speaker A: Of course, yeah, it does change over time. And you know that it's right when it doesn't change. So once I finish that, I put it away, I don't even look at it for a couple of weeks. Then I'll open it again, turn it upside down, and if it still looks okay to me, I'll turn it back up the right way and file it as a final. [01:01:02] Speaker C: Why turn it upside down? [01:01:05] Speaker A: That's a trick I learned at art school. It's particularly good with lettering, but it works with imagery as well. If it's upside down, if something's not in the right place, it actually can actually point to you, something that it needs to be moved. I don't know why. It just does. One of my art teachers taught me that. A guy called Henri Valise. [01:01:32] Speaker C: Right. I have to try that technique. I've never. Never tried it. [01:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:36] Speaker B: I think I vaguely remember being told something similar in art school, something like that. [01:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:01:42] Speaker C: I guess our brain's so used to filling in, filling in the gaps in. In the world from what we're used to seeing. So if you, if you flip it, maybe it. It's like a pattern interrupt and you can be more analytical of the scene rather than just seeing sort of a boat on the water and. And letting your mind fill in. How that's supposed to look. I don't know. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's definitely important to walk away from them. Walk away from it for a while and then come back with fresh eyes. Yeah. [01:02:14] Speaker C: Where did this. So you said this was only maybe 60 of what you had in your mind when this started. Where does this start? An image like this? Like, what was the catalyst for it? Was it the boat, the model boat, and you thought, I could build a scene around this or was it like, what. Where does this begin? [01:02:35] Speaker A: It began with the image of the cathedral, Santa Maria della Salude. And if you saw the original file, that it wouldn't recognize it. It's just shot in daylight. I think it was about 11 o' clock in the morning or something. But that's the good thing. With Photoshop, you can change all that. That's been. Apart from obviously made to look like dusk or early evening or whatever. It's totally relit. The light was coming from the opposite direction. So I've totally re lit the thing to put the highlights on the cathedral. There's. Yeah, just. I think it was, it was the picture, it was the image of Salute. It was just a blue sky, which is great because it's very easy to remove that and put. Put your new sky in. [01:03:27] Speaker B: Yep. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah. And the boat, I think, I think I'd seen. I think it was a Canaletto that had lots of sailboats on the Grand Canal. I thought, oh, you know, that's. That's the sort of thing that, that little model that I've got, which is only about yay big, so I could sort of antique that up a bit and make it look like it possibly belonged in that era. And being a dark shot, a lot of the imperfections of it not being a. An amazing model sort of disappeared, which is hide the crimes done. [01:04:15] Speaker B: Hide the crimes. [01:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you make decisions, you know, as you're doing it, like allowing the light to bleed through the sail. I mean, that was almost one of the last things that I did. I thought, well, that probably would be the way it would be. [01:04:33] Speaker C: I think that actually really makes the image too. Let me just bring it back up. That's something that, for me, I keep getting drawn into that area. Yeah, I think that was a brilliant choice. Before we look at some more of your images, I want to derail the conversation with a controversial and common topic. At the moment, just on this subject, do you have any thoughts about AI and doing this kind of editing with AI rather than doing it through Photoshop and our more traditional methods of doing this kind of stuff? [01:05:10] Speaker A: I don't do it. I don't use any. I know there are AI tools within Photoshop that I can use to make my life easier, but I don't use any of them because I want satisfaction of doing it. And for me, it's not only the end result, it's the journey as well. I enjoy making it, but if somebody wants to do it with AI, that's there, so long as I don't have to compete with it. Because I think it's good that most photo comps at this stage anyway don't accept AI imagery or anything which is done with AI. Even one of the removal tools in Photoshop, the one that's got the little stars over it, you can't use that because that's AI. You can use some of the things, but I use very little things within Photoshop. My main one basically is. Is painting with solid color with different blend modes. And also I like to do this thing where convert just through. There's a filter called Find Edges and it changes your image to a black and white drawing, black and white outline, which is basically what I used to do for contrast masking for high contrast superchrome printing. So you'd make a black and white negative to sandwich with the transparency so that you could actually retain some of the highlight detail. So I quite often use this Find Edges, which I then overlay in multiply Mode at about 15 or 20% opacity to give it. It just gives that little snap to it without. Without sort of degrading the image. And it brings things that even highlight control doesn't always get back for me. It just. It just puts that little tiny bit of neutral density in highlight areas and can outline things a little bit. So, yeah, thing I do because I enjoy doing it. [01:07:35] Speaker C: Is there an image on here that would. That would sort of show that. Well, that technique. [01:07:44] Speaker A: What the. The line technique? [01:07:48] Speaker C: Yeah, like where you've used that to good effect on one of these images? All of. Well, look, this one caught my eye. Tell me about this image. [01:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. When I went to Sicily in 2013, Salvatore took me to this Forge, which is just down the hill from the villa. And it was where as a 13 year old, he did an apprenticeship as a smithy. It's still there. It's still there. Oh, wow. And when we walked in in 2000, I think it was 2013, he said, said, I remember putting that there. Nobody's been in here for bloody 30 years. Oh, my gosh. So I, I photographed it with my little Olympus and I, you know, I got some reasonable shots. But when we went back in 2024, I said to Sobie about, if I do nothing else while we're here, if the forge is still available, I want to go back and photograph in the forge. So, yeah, I went there and I photographed it. But those hands, they're from a totally different shoot. They're from a winemaker up in Great Western. I did some work for him and I just wanted to do this, which I call the hands of the. Obviously the hands of the smith, but it's got pretty much all the techniques that I use. Again, if you saw the original file of that, of that workshop, you would not recognize it. I just wanted to antique the thing and just have this soft, luminous. So I don't know, old light coming in and most of what you see there was there, but you can bring it out. I think one of those panes of glass had a slight yellow tint in it and I thought, oh, that's lovely. So I just, I just did them all in that yellow tint and then brought the light down through to highlight on things that would catch, like the end of the ant or the handle of the, of the. Whatever there is a sledgehammer or something and anything that was in that path, you know, you just pick up the little highlight areas by just dodging them with that colour. [01:10:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:23] Speaker A: Allow the shadows to recede. Because there was no overhead light in the room. It was just. That's the way it was only obviously much brighter because there was more white light coming through the, through the window. But I just wanted to create an atmosphere and the judges thought it was okay. [01:10:45] Speaker C: Well, it certainly caught my eye and when I was looking through your images, it was just. Yeah, there's something about it and it's. And it certainly is the use of your use of light and bringing things out. [01:10:58] Speaker A: If you don't use light, you've got no picture, so. Exactly right. Most. Most of what? Most of what I have in my work, most of it is there anyway and you can just enhance it, push it back, bring parts forward, push it back, dodge it, burn It, Color it. We are so fortunate to be able to use things like Photoshop. We really are. It's just. Amazing tool. Amazing tool. [01:11:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, just on that, on Photoshop. And we mentioned earlier about, you know, some of the AI features that we're now seeing starting to regularly drip into Lightroom or all Adobe products, really, but Lightroom and Photoshop, which we use the most, do you see. Where do you stand on where Photoshop's headed? You know, you've been using it for few. A quite, quite some time. You know, do you see that the. The introduction of AI features will continue to drop in, will increase where you won't have choice? What do you hope for? [01:12:05] Speaker A: I mean, if they can, if they keep putting more AI tools within Photoshop, that that's fine. There are people who want to use them and will use them, but as long as the traditional tools are still there, that's fine by me, too. I just like the journey of creating something rather than letting the machine create it for me. Yep, yep. [01:12:31] Speaker B: Okay. Now we've just taken a moment to look at some of your images and talk about how you go about creating these. Does it start off with a theme in mind, or do you start scrolling through your catalog of resources, past images that you've taken, and does something jump out at you sometimes go, oh, actually, I want to. I want to elaborate on that theme. Or, you know, you know, where does. Where does some of that first thought process come from? [01:13:04] Speaker A: Again, it's. It's all. It's all the movies. That's. It's the books. I mean, I read a lot. Yeah, it's books, it's movies, it's music. Watching my son dance in California put a lot of. A lot of things in my head about creating, because when I watched him dance the lead in Romeo and Juliet, I just had all these amazing pictures in my head about what I could do with some of the photographs that I shot of him and his partner on stage during rehearsal. And I've used a lot of them in some of my Renaissance images because they were all in costume. It's just, you can't get stuff like that in these beautiful Renaissance costumes. And when I. In Umbri, I photographed a whole bunch of people in what they call the Festa della Spina, where they do this processional walk through the village, all in these Renaissance and ancient costumes. And I was just blazing away, taking photographs of these people, and they show up in all my. All my Renaissance works now. But as far as what gets me going, yeah, you go scrolling through and you think, oh, that would make a nice background. What can I put into that? I'll get this. So I drag all things out of different folders and create a folder on my desktop of all the elements that I think might work. I might drag 30, 40 pieces in and I might only use 12 or 15 of them. And then I start masking them and getting rid of things that I don't want in there. Like a lot of the stuff in my Venice book here. I've spent hours retouching out all traces of modern Venice and then sort of relighting them and retaining them as if it was a Canaletto painting. Yeah, so yeah, things like that. So, yeah, things. An image will give me an idea and then it takes me sometimes days to sort of formulate what I'm going to do. Even when I've got a whole bunch of images on the desktop and I start putting them together. Yeah, it's a long process and seldom have I shot an image and said, I know what I'm going to do with that. Except one instance only as again, when I was in Italy in Assisi, I just wandered into this little courtyard and I photographed it. Number of different angles and immediately I had my son and daughter in law who was the principal ballerina there, dancing in this courtyard. And it's one of my favorite works that I've ever created. And it's got 1, 2, 3, 4, it's only got about seven images in it, but an enormous amount of retouching and relighting and creating mood and ambience and atmosphere and I don't think you'll find it in that. It's on my, it's probably on my, maybe on my Instagram, I think. I don't know. But yeah, I created it for app 2022, which was the first time I went in app. But yeah, inspiration comes from every, from everywhere. And as I said, you just never know sometimes where it's going to take you when you, when you're creating. This one behind me, it's only made up of about nine images, I think, but it was when Photoshop didn't have layers. [01:17:19] Speaker C: Photoshop didn't have layers. [01:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah. So every time you put something down again, had to be in the right place. So if something is this area here, it's just dropped in through an oval vignette. But once it's there, it's there. I couldn't, I couldn't move it. So you have to be. So we're very lucky today. Layers. Yeah, and adjustment. Layers. Oh, Great. [01:17:55] Speaker B: And from a practical sensor, you. Sorry, Jay. [01:17:58] Speaker C: Well, I just. I wanted to know about whether. Is there a way to. That you could explain to people that have never tried this kind of technique how to give it a go without it feeling super daunting? Like. Like we've all got catalogs of images, tons of them. [01:18:18] Speaker A: Opposite work. [01:18:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Just to try it. Just to. How do you even get started? Like. Or how. I know how. How could you describe to people that have never done it just to. Just to give it a try with stuff that's already. Already in their catalog? Where could they start? Is it. Is it something you can explain or is it something that's just in you and it's. You can't explain it. [01:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it just comes. And something said to me, when they knew I'd been to Venice, and they said, what do I photograph in? What should I photograph in Venice? I said, for God's sake, if it moves you, photograph it. Yeah, I don't take anything that doesn't move me. [01:19:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? [01:19:07] Speaker A: I only shot about 500 frames. I suppose I was there three days. I think that's the legacy of film. I don't just spray a lot of people. I went to Bolivia and I shot 20,000 shots. Why? [01:19:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But there is something about travel that Jay and I have talked about this often, where, you know, you go to a new city, or even if it's interstate, but especially overseas, where there's a vast cultural shift from what you're used to. And it just feels like everything you point your camera at is worthy of an image worthy of pressing that button. Yeah, I know. I felt that on my trips to Japan. And Justin's done a fair bit of traveling himself, where everything just grabs you more. You see more detail, you see more experiences, more opportunity. [01:20:05] Speaker C: It lights me up big time. And I can't do it in familiar locations. I can sometimes do it with a familiar. In a familiar location, but a completely different setting, different event, different activity. Something that's Stimulates my brain that's new, but otherwise it looks for well being. [01:20:25] Speaker A: That's what stimulates your brain, Takes you out of your comfort zone, makes you think, yeah, definitely, because that's not me. I. Walking the street and trying to shoot a subject that's just been given to you 10 minutes ago. That's so hard for me. So. [01:20:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean, he. We're talking about Craig Witch, and for those watching and listening at home, we talk about Craig Witchen's photography walks for well being. Which happens on the first Friday of every month, usually somewhere in Melbourne cdd. Except this month, Craig's overseas at the moment. But you're right, I mean, last, when, when we first met up, Doug, last month at, at the walk, the theme was the five senses. That was all we were given. [01:21:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:06] Speaker B: You know, and all of a sudden we're. And then sent on our merry way. Oh, and you, you've only got an hour, by the way, to go out and try and document those five senses. It was interesting, challenging, fantastic. [01:21:22] Speaker A: People interpret that. I mean, everybody interprets it differently. And it's just incredible to see them all come up on the web page or sorry, on Instagram in a day or two or three or whatever. Everybody has great ideas. Fantastic. There's a couple of outstanding people go on those walks every time. Amazing. [01:21:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Just a couple of quick comments and then I've got a question about the practicality of you using Lightroom, but couple from Bruce. He said, I remember starting on Photoshop too. He's showing your age, Brucey and everything. Everything being permanent and just a word. Yeah. Word of you, word of praise for you. Doug's work always astounds me. [01:22:09] Speaker A: Too kind. Thank you, Bruce. [01:22:12] Speaker B: He is a kind man. You know, when you're working on images these days, are you using a laptop, a desktop, a tablet, or like a Wacom tablet with a, with a pen? What's your go to setup? [01:22:25] Speaker A: Okay, I've got 27 inch iMac. [01:22:31] Speaker B: Nice. [01:22:32] Speaker A: And a Wacom tablet. A small Wacom tablet, the smallest one. My son bought it for me for Christmas one year. And a little stylus thing, which is, and it's, it's. That little tablet has enabled me to do things that there's no way I could have had the control of just using a mouse. And it's opened up possibilities of the way I paint now on the images. Being pressure sensitive just, just opened up my workflow, for want of a better term, because I don't have one that's sitting concrete. Yeah, it's just I could not. I don't think I could work without a tablet anymore. [01:23:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I imagine that sort of reignites your early days in art training. Absolute practice of having something physical in your hand that wasn't a mouse because let's face it, I've just. Recently, we've just refinanced recently. I had to sign some documents and, and I had to use my mouse to, to try and do the signature. It's like, oh, that's not it. It's stupid. I should have, I should have used my tablet. Didn't even think of that at the time, but. But yeah, it's interesting, you know, just even, you know, one of my kids, one of our youngest here, is in year 12, finishing year 12 this year and she's an artist and she does a lot of her illustration and work on an iPad with, with the, you know, the stylus and the. Because it's touch sensitive and it works out what angle you've got the pencil at. And it just creates a whole new palette of options for people, which I think is wonderful. Very clever technology. [01:24:18] Speaker A: When I wanted to digitally sign some, some images, I had a go at writing, writing on the tablet. I thought it's a bit sort of squiggly. So I just wrote it on paper, scanned it, converted it to line, then just dropped it in. [01:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I've since done something along those lines. So, yeah, I'm back up with the modern times. Very cool. Just before we go on, I am conscious of time and we want to talk a little bit more with Doug about his journey. But Jay, as much as I love hate putting you on the spot, I should say, could you do an ad read for today's sponsor? [01:24:56] Speaker C: We should mention today's sponsor, which is Lucky camera straps. The finest camera straps you could possibly find for any of your cameras. They fit any camera that has a 10 mil slot. So it might be a Canon, it could be a Sony, could be a Fujifilm, could be a Nikon D810 like Doug just held up before. So if you've got the rings or if you've got the slots, it'll fit it. The only straps that. The only cameras our straps don't fit are really tiny little compacts. But everything else, my Leica Q3, everything they can fit. They've got a great quick release system that is cut resistant Dyneema webbing that we have spun here in Melbourne and we have to spin kilometers of it at a time because we're the only people that get it. The only people. He makes it just for us. So I have to get 4km of it. That's a lot of camera straps because it's only on the ends. It's a lot of camera straps. It's a quick release system. The quick release has a safety lock so you can't accidentally dislodge it from your camera or whatever. And when you do disconnect it, there's nothing left on the camera. No dingly dangly dongles or anything. So if you want a premium Leather camera strap. Go to Luckystraps.com have a look at our range. If you like it but you're not sure which one to choose, just email us us, email us and we'll help you figure it out. There's a contact form on the website or just, I don't know, message Greg on, on Instagram, he'll help you. Yeah, there's even a code Greg to get a discount. [01:26:14] Speaker B: There is, yeah. [01:26:16] Speaker C: Thanks Doug. [01:26:17] Speaker B: Well done, Jay. Well done. Keep the lights on for another day. [01:26:20] Speaker C: That's right. [01:26:21] Speaker B: Back to the show indeed. Let's, let's just shift focus a little bit. Doug, are you still, when it comes to camera gear, are you still keeping a fairly simple kit or what are you running around with? Is the, is the D810 the primary workhorse for you? [01:26:38] Speaker A: No, it's the only. Remember. So yeah, I have the D810. I have 24 to 70 Tamron. [01:26:53] Speaker C: Oh, nice. Is that the G, what was it the. I, I had a G2, I think it was something like that. [01:27:00] Speaker A: Bought it in 2015 so it's an older one. [01:27:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember they were one of the first 24 to 70s that had image stabilization. I'm pretty sure. [01:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The Sigma 14 mil art. [01:27:15] Speaker C: Oh, very nice. [01:27:17] Speaker A: It's just unbelievably sharp. [01:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:23] Speaker A: And. Oh, 70 to 200 Sigma. [01:27:28] Speaker C: Nice. [01:27:29] Speaker A: So that's everything apart from I have a wireless remote which my very good friend David Anthony Williams has bestowed upon me because he didn't need it anymore, which was quite handy. If I've got something set up on tripod and with a long exposure I can just sort of trigger remotely and not touch anything, which is nice. Other than that, that's, that's everything. Yeah. Very, very simple setup. [01:28:03] Speaker C: Which, which lens is the. Is the one that's. Well, give me two things. Which lens is the one that you, you. If you could just take one lens, what would you take? And then which one's the one that is your Most like? [01:28:17] Speaker A: Yeah, 24, 7 is the one workhorse. I mean that's on the camera more than anything else, but as good as what it is. The edge to edge and absolute dynamic sharpness of those Sigma lenses just blows me out of the water. They are extraordinary. The art, the 14 mil art. I'm not sure you can shoot out of focus with it. It's just. [01:28:47] Speaker B: It's cheating. It's cheating. It's so good. It's cheating. And is that the reason why you went for non native glass? That you went for third party? Because the quality is better in your [01:28:59] Speaker A: view, a lot cheaper. [01:29:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very true. [01:29:09] Speaker A: I don't. I mean, I bought the 14 mil art because at one stage I was approaching approach to photograph interiors of houses and I bought that purely for that. And then that didn't happen. So. But it's really handy in those little tight little streets in Italy where now you've got your back against the wall and the other wall in front of you is only 12ft away. So, yeah, it's very easy for that, but really likes to be very level. Otherwise you get amazing perspectives. [01:29:50] Speaker C: Yeah. As soon as you're on any kind of angle, it's going to be pretty wild. [01:29:54] Speaker A: What does my friend Ian Vanderbilt call it? He said all lenses are electrolinear, but this one will be even more. [01:30:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay. So it's a pretty special thing. Canon recently released a 14mil 1.4. That was very tempting until I saw how much it cost. And then I've put. [01:30:14] Speaker B: How much was it? [01:30:15] Speaker C: I think they're close to four grand. I can't remember what. Yeah, let me check. [01:30:20] Speaker B: So, such a wide lens. [01:30:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.38. Oh, they're on special now for 3200, but they were 38.99. When they get too east. Yeah, I'll get to. Why not? I could get a spare. And I've got the 20 mil 1.4, which is a favorite of mine and much more useful for most things. So it's like the 14 mil would really be a specialty thing that I probably can't justify. And I quickly put it on the back burner. [01:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you guys have a lot of equipment, a lot of cameras and lenses and so forth. [01:30:57] Speaker C: Do I? Yeah, I have a fair bit more than I need, that's for sure. I could trim it down, but I do. I do video work and I do hybrid photo video work and. And some of it is for commercial clients in rough settings. Some of it's for mountain biking where things need to be light because it's all on my back. So there's a few different settings that I take gear into. So I tend to. I don't take all of my gear into a shoot. I might have it all in the car, maybe if it's a big shoot. But I won't take it all with the. In my mind that I'm going to use it all. I. I'll then pare it down to usually one or two bodies depending on what I'm shooting, and then two to four lenses depending on what I'M shooting will be my like working kit for that shoot and everything else is kind of just in reserve as backup. [01:31:56] Speaker A: I would really like to have a second body so I didn't have to be. [01:32:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I've got the two bodies. I've got two Fuji X APSC bodies, XE4 and XC5 and I've got about six lens but I only shoot primes. I never shoot with zooms. I much prefer the simplicity of primes and making it work. And I've got a little compact Fuji kind of point and shoot. Still an X series, but just one of their first. And yeah, I've probably got more lenses than I need. I've got two versions, two different 23 mil lenses. One's an F2, one's a 1.4 and I can't bring myself to part with either ever. So they both, they both serve special purposes as far as I'm concerned. Does the, does the mirrorless world, does that tempt you at all to step up or to step across? I should say not necessarily always up or. [01:32:49] Speaker A: If I didn't have to buy it. Yeah. [01:32:52] Speaker B: Well, guess what? [01:32:53] Speaker C: Today's your lucky day. [01:32:55] Speaker B: Justin's giving you one of his. [01:32:58] Speaker A: Yeah, why not? I mean I was at a Australian photographic something or other at the convent in the other weekend and was talking to. To Julie Kimpton there and I was handling the Z8s and the Z9s and stuff like that. They're lovely, you know, beautiful. For me, not being a working professional, I can't justify in that sort of money when this still works. Yeah, I mean it's. What is it now? It's bought it in 2015 so it's. But it's got a very low shutter count compared to what a professional photographer's camera would have. [01:33:40] Speaker C: If, if you're not doing a ton of high ISO work, the obviously slightly bigger, like more megapixels would be nice always. But I wouldn't say the, the Z8 sensor. I don't know. I'll probably get in trouble for saying this is. Is it light leaps and bounds ahead for lower ISO work? Obviously it's a. Yeah, more megapixels. But in terms of dynamic range and stuff, that D810 sensor was pretty, pretty great. So it's. [01:34:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it does what I need it to do and I'm not a technical photographer, I use none of the things that it can do. Yeah. F stop shutter speed. That's the triangle. That's. That's me. So yeah, there are things in there that Although I have been playing with multiple in camera exposure, which is a lot of fun. [01:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [01:34:49] Speaker C: The multiple in camera exposure is something that I've always. I've never struggled to get to. To like get something out of it that I wanted. And I remember distinctly reading a review when I. I switched from Nikon to Canon. I switched from Canada to Nikon, then back to Canada again. And the way that they each handle in camera multiple exposure is different. I'm trying to remember what it was, but I think. Does Nikon let you output a RAW of the blended exposure? [01:35:14] Speaker B: Is that. [01:35:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:16] Speaker C: Why? Yeah, whereas Canon don't. They'll give you both raws and a jpeg, I think, of the blend, but they won't give you a RAW of the blend. [01:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll get a raw 206 megabyte raw file. Yeah. [01:35:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, right, that's cool. [01:35:38] Speaker A: I think the. Is it the Canon R5 where you can see each of your individual exposures as well [01:35:51] Speaker C: overlaid while you're shooting? Yeah. As a compositional tool. I'm not sure there was that as well. [01:35:59] Speaker A: I'm. [01:35:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm trying to remember because I remember this review was going in deep because it was just like, this is my. This is my thing. I love this. This stuff. And it. And the two systems handle it very differently. Yeah. I can't remember if there's a tool where you can see the previous frame overlaid over the next. Next frame. I'll have to try with mine. [01:36:19] Speaker A: You can't. In the Nikon, I mean, you just see the final of what you've attempted to capture. But if you look at the work of Jackie Rankin, who does this sort of work a lot. Just amazing. Absolutely amazing stuff. Yeah. I did one before I could figure out how to do it in the camera, I did one in Photoshop where I took an image and. And then I sort of changed it and then just sort of overlaid them all one on top of the other and moved them around and changed the blend modes and stuff like that. And she came on, she said, good effort if you did this, this and this. [01:37:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very cool. Where do we go from here, Jay? [01:37:09] Speaker C: Well, we could have a look at some more images. I was interested to know, like. So on your Instagram, I was doing some hunting around and I saw that, you know, you do post what I would call a. Just a what? A standard image as a single capture, but most of the. No, none of them, really nothing. [01:37:36] Speaker A: When I say single capture. Yeah, it's the one Image. But yeah, it would never go into a single capture competition because they're so heavily edited. [01:37:46] Speaker C: Right. So even. Okay, I'm just gonna bring one up. [01:37:49] Speaker A: Sure. [01:37:49] Speaker C: I'm just gonna rerun it because I need you to explain that one. And there. So an image like this. [01:38:00] Speaker A: Oh, that's. Yeah, that's just an edited single capture. [01:38:03] Speaker C: Yes. I thought I picked one. I was like, all right, so there is some stuff that you're like, all right, that's how I want this image to be finished. This is done. [01:38:15] Speaker A: But there's a lot of masking. The background's been blurred and dropped back and desaturated and the foreground's been brought forward. And just the foreground image alone of that house has had that line effect that I spoke about to sort of help antique it. It does a great job of picking up, texturing, broken facade and so forth. Yeah. So, yeah, that ostensibly, I suppose, is single capture. Edited. [01:38:48] Speaker C: Edited. Yeah, but it is. You haven't sort of added other images to it, but you've just heavily edited the single. [01:38:53] Speaker A: The single idea of putting somebody on the balcony. So. [01:39:00] Speaker C: So that stuff comes into your mind and you think, what could. What could I add to this? What could I change? What could. And then. But then you sort of dismiss that if it. If it's not working or. [01:39:10] Speaker A: I thought the house was interesting enough. [01:39:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:39:14] Speaker A: Said in the little blurb up there. You know, I first saw that house in the Godfather Part one. So. [01:39:22] Speaker B: Well, I love the little bit of blue from the door frame peeking through on that top balcony. Yeah. [01:39:29] Speaker A: Again, draws you in. It was there. All I've done is make it a little bit more so that it actually. Yeah. That color is so prevalent in. In Italy and Sicily on door frames and shutters and so forth. [01:39:46] Speaker C: Just quickly. Bruce. Bruce Miles says, annoyingly, Sony removed the multi exposure system from their bodies years ago. I miss it. Yep. That's why don't go. Sony, they don't. They don't care about photographers, Bruce. They care about technology, speed. [01:40:06] Speaker A: So that one come down second from the left. [01:40:13] Speaker C: This one. Hang on. Which one? [01:40:14] Speaker A: Sorry? Go up one. Yeah, that one there. [01:40:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:40:23] Speaker A: 14 mil, eight bit. Very heavily edited. Only two left in the edition of 10. [01:40:34] Speaker C: Really. Tell me about prints. Tell me about selling prints. [01:40:44] Speaker A: I would if there was. Yeah, we don't. We don't sell enough. I mean, I would love to have my own printer. And June said to me, yeah, you can have your own printer when you start selling. A lot more work. It is just really hard because I think we Live in a disposable society these days. And Walmart, if it doesn't match this season's cushion covers, it ends up on the nature strip in the hard rubbish collection. And I'm fortunate that I do have people who collect my work overseas and here in Australia. And I have one person here in Australia who's got six of my works in their home, which is, wow, very rewarding. [01:41:29] Speaker B: Yeah, [01:41:32] Speaker A: I decorated an entire 5 million dollar apartment in Toorak with works from Italy as the owners of this apartment built atelophiles. And when I saw the apartment, they chose the images from 40 that I showed them. We ended up doing about 12 images, I think. And when I saw the apartment they had, it was all bespoke teak cabinetry and teak floors and just this beautiful soft mocha color. So. And he didn't want color except in one image, he wanted black and white. So I said, well, just leave it with me. I think, I think we can just put this very slightest tint of this more locker in them. So I showed him a proof and he said, go with it. So yeah, he's got, I think 12, either eight or 12 images. They range from 1.6 meters long down to about 20 by 24. Is the smallest ones, I think. Yeah, yeah, 500 by 600 were the small ones. I think they came up really, really well. They were framed in Bellini frames that looked awesome [01:42:55] Speaker B: and you got to see them up on the walls when it was done. [01:42:58] Speaker A: And I photographed them in situ as well. [01:43:02] Speaker B: That was very rewarding and humbling at the same time, I imagine. [01:43:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it's always humbling when somebody chooses to add something that you've created to their home. And yeah, it's extremely. I love sending work overseas. I mean, that's great. I've got stuff hanging in Umbria, Tuscany in Sicily. Yeah, it's very rewarding, for sure. Yeah. [01:43:31] Speaker C: How do you get the word out about your images? What's the main way people find you? [01:43:37] Speaker A: Well, at the moment it's just through Photoshop, on Instagram, mostly through Instagram. And because I have, I've got my email address on there, I think. And yeah, often, often people balk when you, when you give them a price. But that's all right, you know, if you don't want to pay the price, you don't get the print. So. Yeah. [01:43:59] Speaker C: Can you, can you tell us how you price print? [01:44:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a never ending worry actually, because you'd like. But you also don't want to devalue your brand? [01:44:15] Speaker C: Yes. [01:44:17] Speaker A: I normally take what it cost me to do the print. So if you say it's an AO, an AO just to get the print alone would cost about 300. $300? [01:44:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:44:41] Speaker A: Yep. Because I use a very, very fine printer. And then you have to add your brand to it. So I always say, well, okay, what's my brand worth? If I had say another $300 to that, that's my brain brand. So that makes it $600. That's not much for an AO print, you know, Finart Limited Edition AO print. So then I, I just normally add another 300, you know, so it comes out about 9. At $900 for the print. And then if I take it to the framer, he actually gets more money than what I do because frame big prints in Bellini frames under museum glass or gallery of clinic. In my 1500 square prints, they cost. Each frame costs $1600. [01:45:31] Speaker C: Wow. [01:45:33] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. [01:45:34] Speaker B: That's crazy. [01:45:36] Speaker A: Yes. 1600 five meter square frames and that. And they're not Bellini. If you did it in Bellini, I mean, it would be two and a half thousand dollars. Yep. [01:45:49] Speaker C: And so do you mostly sell prints unframed? And then the customer will then get their own frame done because they say they're at a distance, so it's simpler to transport just the print. Or like how do you usually decide on that overseas? [01:46:07] Speaker A: Mostly it's unframed, but I also send with it a schematic diagram of how I believe it should be framed. As far as the Mapp mat mat size, the frame width also put a notation. Let the client choose the actual molding to suit their decor if they want. Let the client choose whether he wants four ply or eight ply mats. Or if he doesn't want mats at all, it can just leave enough white space around so it can just be spacer framed. The big ones, the five, the 1500s, none of those have mats on them because mats of that size are just, just ridiculously expensive. So there's what's spacer frame? So I put a bead of like foam core around the inside of the frame and then the print behind that so it stepped back a centimeter and a bit from, from the covering glass or acrylic. And that works well for those. They, they look like they've got a mat on them anyway. [01:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. [01:47:16] Speaker A: So like, like this is, this is just, this is just white paper. [01:47:23] Speaker B: So the, the edge of the print paper. [01:47:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:27] Speaker B: Or is it a separate mat? [01:47:29] Speaker A: No, that's just the Edge of the paper. [01:47:32] Speaker C: Ah, right. And it still looks nice like that. Just. [01:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah, almost all. All my big ones are framed that way. Even the 1200 squares. I've been doing them like that way. But I give the client the option. It's totally up to them how much money they want to spend. And if it's somebody I know here who buys a print, I'm happy to take them to my framer and say, because I don't mark up the frames, it's ridiculous. You know, if you're paying sixteen hundred dollars for a frame, you can't mark that up. It's ridiculous. I take my framer and say, you know, Trinidad, this is a client who's had this 1200 square print of mine made. He wants to talk to you about getting it framed and I just leave him to it. And Trinidad quite often gives them a bit of a. Anyway, so. [01:48:31] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's great. Very cool. [01:48:36] Speaker C: It's amazing you've managed to be able to sell prints, especially big prints, without a website. That's. [01:48:45] Speaker A: Oh, a lot of them I saw when I did have the website. [01:48:48] Speaker C: Ah, right. I was going to say, because it's. Yeah, it's more. It seems to be the story on the Internet is often more the other way. They say, I built this big website to sell my prints and no one bought one is usually the more common answer. [01:49:02] Speaker A: But I think, you know, these days now, Instagram seems to have a fairly wide viewing audience and that's why a lot of the stuff I've been putting up now have got like a faux matted look to them. So they've got. So they look like what it could look like on your wall. [01:49:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I see, so you've done that intentionally to create sort of more of a wall art look. [01:49:37] Speaker A: A solid image. Wouldn't have the logo on it, but yeah. Single capture. [01:49:43] Speaker C: Single capture, yes. Another one, [01:49:51] Speaker A: Actually. Ricardo da Cunha. When I sent that one to Ricardo da Cunha, I said, is this all right, mate? He just came back with one word. He just said, Luminous. [01:50:01] Speaker C: Luminous, Yep. It is beautiful light on that tree. [01:50:06] Speaker A: Yep. Some of it's from himself upstairs and some of it's from me. [01:50:13] Speaker C: Joint effort. [01:50:14] Speaker A: Joint effort, yeah. 12 images made. That one. [01:50:18] Speaker C: This one, the black and white, or mostly black and white. [01:50:22] Speaker A: 12 images in that? Yeah. It's called. [01:50:26] Speaker C: Called what, sorry? [01:50:28] Speaker A: Aftermath. [01:50:29] Speaker C: Aftermath. [01:50:30] Speaker A: After the bush. [01:50:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:50:36] Speaker C: Gosh. Did you. How did the concept for that come about? And what was there an image out of the 12 that was the impetus for the entire image to come about? [01:50:49] Speaker A: It's part of a two print series and the first one is just blackened trees with smoke still rising, which is. I use clouds to make smoke so I can just. I mean you photograph a little cloud but you can turn it vertical and become smoke. That's cool. But I saw an image of Matt Palmer's where he did this after bushfire image and this one and the previous one of the two images actually were the catalyst for making these ones. This one's only very new. The first one I did quite a while ago and it was just the blackened trees with the smoke, just with the kookaburra sitting in the tree. That was called Aftermath and this one is Aftermath too. So the catalyst for this particular one was the old shed which I photographed up in Great Western. [01:51:53] Speaker C: And then just built from there with additional images. [01:51:58] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's got iron, the row of trees in the back on the left hand side. They were just little bushes growing on a wall in Tuscany somewhere. The windmill down in. Down there Clunes. The shed I think was somewhere in Victoria. I can't remember exactly where the little tree was just in the local park. The man was walking along a boardwalk in Monterey in California. The background image which has none of this, it's just a horizon image was up in Clunes. It was just a recently harvested wheat field or grass field or something like that. So it was just flat grass and the sky could have been from anywhere in Victoria. Yeah, pretty sure. Victorian sky. Yeah. And then I just popped it all together. The little machine underneath the, underneath the tree and the lamp. I think they were photographed up in properties in Great Western Victoria. So yeah, I had folders and folders of some just called things and then there's one for skies and people, animals, all sorts of things. Yeah, keep them all in separate little folders and if I think I need a person, I'll go through. One of the judges at app said she was a bit at odds with the liking of the man compared with the rest of the scene. So I have since re edited that and she was right. You know, the lighting on the man is actually too hard compared to the rest of the scene. So yeah, I've re edited and I think it's a better image now. So that's valuable feedback you get even in the short time that they have to judge them. [01:54:03] Speaker C: Yeah, that is perfect because we're coming towards the end of the show but we almost forgot this topic before we go on to this topic, possibly one of the most important, important topics of the entire show. Quick question From Bruce Moyle. First a comment. He says, I have to go to the framers today feeling sticker shock before I even get there. And then he says, are you sending the prints rolled up or flat when you ship internationally? [01:54:28] Speaker A: Well, 1.5 meters square. Have to be rolled and tubed, mate. Yeah. [01:54:33] Speaker C: No option. [01:54:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. 310 GSM paper. When it gets to the other end, there's probably have to lay at the framers for a week or two before it's gets flat enough to frame. But I always use quite heavy material. Yeah. [01:54:50] Speaker C: So you just mentioned you took on feedback that you got during the judging process of the Australian Photographic Prize app on this image and I'm assuming possibly other images as well and did a re edit and learnt from that feedback. [01:55:09] Speaker A: Lifelong learning. [01:55:10] Speaker C: Lifelong learning. I love it. You mentioned to Greg before the show you're talking about some of Greg's photography things and you said, greg, why aren't you entering the app? Tell me about your experience with entering competitions and then pitch us on why we should. Because I don't know. Have you ever, Greg, have you ever entered any anything? [01:55:34] Speaker B: Don't think so, no. [01:55:36] Speaker C: Not that I remember, I haven't. And I even set a goal at the start of this year that I would enter two competitions and I have yet to enter one but. And I don't know what it is. I know maybe I'm scared, maybe I don't think any of my work is good enough or what work I would even pick. So give us, give us a rundown on your experience with, with competitions, Doug. [01:55:56] Speaker A: Okay. I've had some amazing successes and I've had images which I thought would do well and didn't. That's because art is subjective. I mean, it is so subjective and in the main they have so little time to look at them. You know, it's like 20 seconds or something and then they have to come back and unless something gets challenged, you know, that's it, game over. But I've had some great successes. I've had a platinum award in the 360 degrees photo awards. I've had a gold award in Epsom International Pano. I've had silver distensions. I've never won a gold in app. So that's if I go in next year, I would like to get a gold just to add it to the group. So distinction is the highest I've had. But I did have one which is top five in Australia, which was nice. Why should you do it? Because life, because of lifelong learning, It's just it's just a. It's a good thing to do and to support especially app, which is Australian. You're supporting an Australian innovation. I mean AIPP is trying to Rebirth. I assume it is rebirth, but it's mostly for working professional photographers. Whereas this is open to everybody and some of the stuff you see is amazing, some of it's not. But we all have to start somewhere and we all learn and I know some of the stuff I've put in, you know, in retrospect I probably shouldn't have put in. But you do and you get feedback. [01:57:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:57:50] Speaker A: And it's. It's good. Your work would go well. Greg. I haven't seen any of Justin's work. [01:57:56] Speaker B: No one has. I'm fairly sure they're just toy cameras on the shelf back there. Doug. I never see it with a camera. [01:58:04] Speaker C: I don't post it on social media and. And my main website is turned back to a landing page because I don't really, really take on any new clients anymore. But I do need to, I need to build, put together something. But most of my work, I've shown the majority of my work of recent stuff that I would call personal work only on this podcast. So I need to, I need to get it organized so that people like yourself could say I should or shouldn't enter into photography competitions. [01:58:33] Speaker A: Would be a good subject for a talk and show some of his work. Work. [01:58:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:38] Speaker C: Well this is true. [01:58:40] Speaker A: This is true. [01:58:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:43] Speaker A: Each other. [01:58:48] Speaker B: Collate each other's works or [01:58:51] Speaker A: interview each other and show each other's works. [01:58:54] Speaker B: Oh, on the podcast. I have thought about that before. I thought about that last week we didn't have a guest. Was it last week? [01:59:01] Speaker C: Yeah, we had the first day off. Yes. [01:59:03] Speaker B: We couldn't get. [01:59:03] Speaker C: We decided to last minute to have a. A buy week instead. But that we could do that. Great. Or we could even. You know what, what I think would be fun would be. It would be useful for me, I'm sure is do a live. Like let's say I was going to put a portfolio up on. On a website and do like a live. What makes the cut kind of thing. So like you know, trying to, to condense the images down into a more cohesive set of. Of images that are worthy of a particular type of website or something like that, you know, like distill it down. [01:59:38] Speaker A: It's the same when you're creating a book. I mean my first one genres has images from all the genres which I attempt. So there's the composite work, there's the renaissance Work, there's landscape, there's arty works, there's all sorts of things. But that took me two years to combine. Yeah, two years. And then to actually edit it and get it into a form that could go to go to book. Took it, you know, another six months. And I was very fortunate. As Steve Parrish said, when you had him on, there were people expressed interest in it. And I thought, well, you know, to get one book done was costing over $450 just to get the one book printed. And I knew if I could get more people interested, then the price per unit would come down. So I pitched it to like, if anybody was, if anybody was truly interested and were willing to prepay. I'd make a limited edition of 10 and they'd all be hand signed and numbered and that they sold out in 36 hours. [02:00:51] Speaker C: Wow. [02:00:53] Speaker A: So I got all 10 printed and they arrived from the printer in two giant cartons, all beautifully packaged because they're all in slip cases as well. I was just sent about signing them and delivering them by hand where I could, which was again, a lovely experience. Venice, I don't know, it's just a nice thing to have. But I'm hoping to do these other two to Australia. And the fourth one I'm working on is called Works, and it's all painterly and impressionistic works. Okay. [02:01:36] Speaker C: Do you think that people, photographers are held back from creating a book because there's sort of this thought that you either create one for yourself, you just create a book from, from work for yourself to have at home, or you need to make something that's going to sell a hundred plus copies kind of thing and there's no in between. Whereas that, that idea, that book that you just mentioned there, you know, creating 10, 20 copies, a limited release of a book is a real thing that you can do. And it's something that feels very achievable when you say it like that. You're like, okay, could I find 10 people that want to buy a book of a certain style of work? Maybe. I know I couldn't find 100, but 10, maybe. [02:02:26] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, when I first floated the idea, I said to, I won't mention her name, but I said, who knows me? Nobody knows me. You know, a few people might have seen some of my work, but. And she said, you would be surprised how many people know your work. And that's what Ashley put the idea out there. I put up on Social, I think I put up the COVID and then I had the pitch, which went under. You know that people that had shown interest in the project. It's a two year project. There's 140 pages. 90% of them are limited edition works at 16 by 24. So. So this is, this is what the books look like, you know. Yeah, the big units. And so you're getting in the big one. There's nearly 140 images of that size. So you know, to buy 140 A3 prints of mine would crush you a lot more than $400. [02:03:52] Speaker B: That's very true. That's very true. I'm curious about that. You know, if, if there's a work that you've sold to someone maybe as a one off or a limited edition, is part of that sale agreement that you have the right to publish it in a book, but in no other way and will you do that? Or if it's, if someone has purchased the only copy of your image, you don't include that in your, in your, in, in your books, so to speak. [02:04:16] Speaker A: Oh no, it's in the book because it's basically a portfolio. Yeah. [02:04:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:04:21] Speaker B: Okay. [02:04:22] Speaker C: Because a limited edition print is that often based on a certain size as well. So you might do, I'm only doing 10 at this larger size or something. But then you might produce them in a smaller size. Is that how that works? [02:04:35] Speaker A: I used to be like that. And then I had a, a chat with one of my American photographer friends and he said that what he does, he has, he'll do 10 at what he calls the hero size. So in my case, say, for the big ones would be 1.5 squared, there would be 10. But I've actually made, there are only 5 off the big ones. They're fives. And then you come down to another size which you know, said you choose. But now you've got to be back a bit from your, from your hero size. So the 1200s are probably a bit too, too big. But they're nice on a wall. 1200 square is nice on a wall. So I quite often offer some of them at a thousand square on the image with 100 mil border, which makes them 1200 to frame. And that looks nice. [02:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:05:36] Speaker A: And I've got a couple of those that size hanging in places in Tuscany and in embryo. [02:05:44] Speaker B: Quick question on the printing of your works, Doug, from Philip Johnson. Doug, do you have a favorite paper for printing and how do you choose? [02:05:55] Speaker A: I'm very fortunate that I use a man to do my printing who is an Ilford master printer. So a lot of my work is printed on the Ilford Gallery texture, fine art texture. And it's also available in 1.6 meters wide, which is kind of handy for me. [02:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah, [02:06:21] Speaker A: I also like some of the Hanna Muller papers for. For my heavily textured works like the Hannah Muller. What's it called? William something or other. William Turner. Yeah, I think it's William Turner and the German etching. They're beautiful papers. Things which have a lot of blacks in them on really drawn to the platinum papers. [02:06:58] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Canson. Canson Plateen fiber isn't very nice. [02:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:07:05] Speaker C: That I could see that with your work would be beautiful. [02:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah, the. Yeah, that one that I sent you, which you put up on the little. Little blurb that's been printed on a number of different papers and it only really works on platinum. [02:07:24] Speaker B: Yeah. That's interesting. I never thought that that would be. You know, there's certain types of images, depending on the density of color or texture, would work better on different papers. I've never looked at it from that perspective. [02:07:35] Speaker A: Yeah, A lot of my images dwell in dark areas. I like moody, darkish sort of imagery and it can be a problem to print sometimes. Thankfully, everything that I've put into the books, even the ones which are really, really strong, strong tonally, this printer brings them out beautifully. Just totally the ones. Yep. [02:08:04] Speaker B: Okay. [02:08:05] Speaker C: So cool. [02:08:05] Speaker B: Might have to think about doing some more printing. Jay. [02:08:08] Speaker C: Oh, I've got it. I've got this stupid printer sitting there just looking at me and for weeks I haven't printed anything. I was supposed to print some of the images I showed on the podcast last week and I haven't yet. But I've got a good batch of images for Monday night's podcast. Maybe I'll print some of them before the show. [02:08:27] Speaker A: What's the podcast on Monday about? [02:08:29] Speaker C: That's. [02:08:30] Speaker A: That's. [02:08:30] Speaker C: We call it the random photography show. So every Monday night at 7:30, we kind of just. [02:08:37] Speaker A: Just. [02:08:37] Speaker C: It's like a debrief about the week. We talk about any camera news and industry news and things like that. And sometimes we have special guests on Dennis Smith, Bruce Moyle, Lucinda Goodwin. A heap of sort of people have popped up. The guys that run be on not last Monday, the Monday before. And it also gives us a chance. People that listen to the show send their images in and Greg puts them all together and they say a few words about each image or whatever and we bring them up during the show as well. So it's just a bit of a. It's like a photography variety show. We've even got a live call in number so people can call, call into the show while we're live and I don't know, say whatever they want really. I'm dreaming about the day we get a prank call. We haven't had one yet. [02:09:24] Speaker A: I've written down Monday 7:30 podcast so you could get one. [02:09:28] Speaker C: Oh, perfect, perfect. Our first prank call. That would be the dream. But yeah, it's good fun. It's just. So we were doing just the Thursday shows and we were. What we would do is do the interview with a photographer, but then at the end of the show we'd talk a little bit about some news and things that had happened that week. And we were just finding we often needed more time for the interview than, than what we had. But we also wanted to chit chat about just general photography stuff. And so we decided to separate them into two, two different shows. More people are available to watch live in Australia on Monday evenings, so we get less viewers live on Thursday mornings. But that doesn't matter as much because it's more about sort of going deep on, on you and what makes you tick rather than interacting with the, the live audience. [02:10:16] Speaker A: So I hope it's been okay for you guys. Like I said to Greg when I first met him, I'm not a talker, I'm not a Steve Parish and I don't have that wealth of exposure. But yeah, hopefully it's been okay for you guys. [02:10:33] Speaker B: It's been amazing. I've learned quite a bit. [02:10:35] Speaker C: It's blown my mind wide open to composite like I understand like composite photography and how, you know, people like Bruce and stuff have created this beautiful art using those techniques. And it's something that still I can't wrap my head around because I'm very much a see it and that's it kind of person. Not a create something from scratch kind of person. An empty studio is terrifying to me. So. But just, just seeing how much goes into your images is mind blowing. I can understand like, oh, I've changed the sky and the lighting treatment on, you know, so it's a two image composite or something like that. But beyond that it's just. Yeah, but being able to try and slowly wrap my head around it. Seeing the images that you've created is pretty cool. [02:11:25] Speaker A: Well, I did a renaissance scene which had 28 separate images in it. [02:11:31] Speaker C: That's insane. [02:11:31] Speaker B: That's bananas. Yeah, that is insane. Now just conscious of time. So just before we move to, to closing down today's interview, you know you mentioned Steve Parish. He tapped you on the shutter or he dubbed you in to be. To be on the Camera Life podcast. It's your turn. It's time for vengeance. Who would you like to see us interview? [02:11:55] Speaker A: Well, you've already had one of my favorite photographers on, which is Ricardo Dakuna. His work just leaves me breathless. It's just so sublime. Absolutely sublime. Who else would I put? Who would I tap? So many. I don't want to leave somebody out [02:12:27] Speaker B: or a couple, you know. [02:12:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Throw a few names at us. [02:12:32] Speaker A: Who's just recently come back from 15 years in Canada. David Anthony Wiggins is a master photographer, portrait artist. He's been an AIPP judge and judge. He's been WPPI judge and panel chairs, a trainer of judges, a critique of work. So, yeah, David Anthony Williams would definitely be. If you want to talk to somebody about portraiture, definitely. I know you've already had Craig Ricardo on. I assume you've had. Oh, you have had Mika and Matt on, haven't you? [02:13:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. [02:13:13] Speaker C: We haven't added them on. Have we had them on together? [02:13:17] Speaker B: Not together, no. [02:13:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. One day we might be able to do a fun one, a bit more of like a. On a topic or something like that with both of them. [02:13:28] Speaker A: And Paul Holland, aerial photographers. Just amazing. Aerial and landscape. Amazing. [02:13:38] Speaker B: Paul Holland and who was the first one, sorry? [02:13:40] Speaker A: Chris Saunders. [02:13:41] Speaker B: Oh, Chris saunders. Okay. [02:13:43] Speaker A: Yeah. N.W.A. yep. Amazing photographers. Just amazing. Christian Fletcher. Another wh. [02:13:57] Speaker C: It's a bit of a list for you, Greg. [02:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a list. That's good. I like a challenge. Very cool. Thanks, Doug. Jay, do you have any last questions for. For Doug before we close down? [02:14:09] Speaker C: I think so. I think we've covered a good bit of stuff. I'm excited to. I'm excited to get some of my work out there. Doug's lit a fire under me by saying I haven't seen any of your work. Yeah, it's because I haven't put any of it on the Internet. All right. I need to. [02:14:25] Speaker A: I need to do something as well. [02:14:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's time. Well, I was just going to bring up Bruce's comment here about. About paper. Just mentioned that the platinum is his go to for many things. I think the. The print that he gifted me is on platinum, I'm pretty sure, and it looks absolutely insane. But he also likes burrito matte too, for others. But experimenting with paper is so much fun. I'm a. Is it burrito or burrito? Either way. I always get that wrong. Yeah, that's my go to. But not matte. I like the more glossy one. It's Burrito, the Canson Burrito Prestige or something like that is my go to. But it's insanely expensive. [02:15:11] Speaker A: There's some beautiful papers out there for sure. [02:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's a whole nother side of photography, isn't it really that you know, and I think you mentioned it early that you know, for you sometimes it feels like if you haven't printed it, the photo's not done. You said something along those lines, I believe and it's got me think I need to print more. I don't print anywhere near enough actually. We're doing a print swap for the Bright Festival this year that Bruce and I are leading the project on it and with obviously with just Justin's and Matt and Nick's support, we're doing a print swap for bfop. So we're encouraging people to bring prints and just six by fours and swap them with one another at different times of the day. We'll set up meetups and yeah, just really relish each other's work in, you know, in a physical format which I think is, is vital. We're looking forward to that. [02:16:01] Speaker A: Sort of quite jealous of the expertise that people have who do single capture work and put it out there to be seen like Matt and Mika and lots of other photographers. When I take my presentation for VAPs, the Victorian Associated Photographic Societies, one of the things I said right from the start was that I'm going to get rid of the elephant in the room. So I know a lot of you are camera club people are single capture people. That's not me. If you don't like composite work, go and get a coffee. [02:16:39] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's good. [02:16:41] Speaker C: What I find is so interesting though is, and I know I'll probably, I'll never be a composite person, it's just not how my brain works. But I can learn a ton from looking at the sort of work work that you do and look at that and go, okay, I'll probably never be able to find a scene that looks like this in, in, in the natural world. But I can strive to find something that has some of those lighting elements and some of that feel, you know what I mean? And, and so you can learn from what you've crafted. It's. It's no different to looking at painters and then, and then learning that lighting they've created that and then, and then trying to find a scene that you see some of those elements in to capture in a single capture. [02:17:25] Speaker A: I mean if you have a scene which is almost the basis of something you've seen hanging in a gallery. You can use that as like a template. You know, you can use the lighting. You can use the way that the painter has recessed things by changing the tonality and the contrast of the. To push it back further into the distance, to create that. That illusion of distance and space. The painters had it all over. They were just amazing. [02:17:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep, yep. Absolutely. [02:17:59] Speaker A: Looking forward to seeing your first composite. Just. [02:18:02] Speaker C: Yeah, give it a try. I don't even know what I'll do. I'll think, all right, I'm going to do it. [02:18:07] Speaker B: Composite. [02:18:09] Speaker A: Just open up a couple of folders and pull some images out and start the first step. [02:18:18] Speaker C: Yeah, all right, I'll give it a try. It inspired me. [02:18:23] Speaker B: Look, I think on that note, we'll. We'll call it a day. But first and foremost, Doug, thank you so much for your time today. We, we absolutely appreciate your input, your insight, but also the amazing journey that you've. That you've led. Well, before many of us got into the photography scene, you know, you've paved the way for folks like us to enjoy our craft as well. So we thank you for that, too. Best place for people to check out your work. Would you. Would Instagram be the. The ideal. [02:18:52] Speaker A: Go to there, Graham, is where I put up only images on my Facebook pages. I have. I do have a Facebook page called Doug Porter Imagery, which is a public page. So there, There are stuff. Stuff there, too, but it's the same stuff that I put on. That is what I put on Instagram. But my Doug Porter page is a friend's army page where there are messages and stuff like that. But Doug Porter Imagery is definitely. It's all public. Okay. All and scraped and used to train AI. [02:19:28] Speaker B: Well, who knows? Not sure where we, where we. Where we landed in that scenario anymore. It's a bit of a mess. But anyway, thank you once again, Doug. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you. And for those of you watching and listening along, thank you so much for your time today and for your input in the live chat. If you're watching this after the fact, hit us up in the comments. Let us know what you thought of today's interview. Let us know if you've got a guest that you'd love to see us bring on the show and. And have a chat to in. In much the same fashion. But on that note, I think we'll roll some music and say goodbye to some peeps. [02:20:03] Speaker C: Let's do it so much. Thanks, Doug. And thanks to everyone that was listening, including Bruce Moyle, Rodney Nicholson. [02:20:11] Speaker B: Paul was here. [02:20:13] Speaker C: He was here. He said he was still here. Listening. Bruce says I use some of my. Some of my dog images and find a background. That's probably a sim. Simpler way to start. One background or whatever and a dog. That's. That's pretty straightforward. Create atmosphere. Okay. Okay. Philip Johnson says. Thanks, Justin and Greg, many thanks to Doug. Very inspiring. What else, what else? Who else was here? I have to scroll back a bit. See, he was here early in the show. Oh, Dennis was here for a bit. He was very excited about the travel book. A ticket and the rest will come. Roy Bigsby, Mayer Hall. Who else was here? Oh, of course. David Mascara was here. [02:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he dropped in. [02:20:56] Speaker C: Keen to see your website, David. Robert Varner was here. East coast photography. It was a busy day. Thanks, everybody listening. Thanks, everyone listening. Later. We'll catch you next week on Monday and Thursday. [02:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah, next Thursday. We've got Jonas Williams, Jonas Wilson joining us. [02:21:10] Speaker C: Richard, awesome. And Otherwise, head to Luckystraps.com and buy one of the greatest camera straps on the planet. [02:21:16] Speaker A: Thank you, gentlemen.