A conversation with Matt Hudson (EP204)

[00:00:24] Speaker A: Well, g' day everybody and welcome back to the Camera Life podcast. It is Thursday 30th July, and being a Thursday morning, we are here once again live for an interview with an amazing, amazing photographer. But before we do any introductions, it's fair to say that Justin is still away gallivanting we talked about earlier, Jim and I, and joining me in the hot seat is, is Jim. G' day mate. Welcome back. Hey mate, how are you? [00:00:48] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Good, anytime. Well, I mean, you know your channel just as much as it is mine. Would love to have a chat and catch up but I think we'll save that catch up Jim for Monday night show you'll be co hosting there. So folks, you want to know what Jim's been up to and why he's been absent? I have questions too. The demand answers. We'll do that on Monday night. But for today of course, we are here to talk to career photographer who has, you know, transformed their journey, their creative journey from, you know, portraits and events right through to cosplay photography and more. Astro Cityscape. Astro I tend to call it. But I'll get your take on it soon. Matt, so good to have you on the show. [00:01:31] Speaker C: Yeah, no, great to be here. Thanks for, thanks for having me along. You, you flatter me a bit too much, I think. [00:01:37] Speaker A: No, look, it's. I think, you know, visual creators all deserve more credit than we give ourselves and I'm more than happy to do so. Matt, it is great to have you here and we're going to unpack your journey and, and you know, talk about your, your creative processes and, and all those sorts of stiff stuff. Stiff? Jesus, Greg, stuff. Not stiff. But before we do that and get into sort of a bit more of the history of, of your journey, we'd like to jump off with a question straight away. Now, some of your Astro work, some of your photography work includes astrophotography, but in inner city locations, especially in Sydney. Jim and I have been looking through your photos this morning and just marveled at some of the compositions that you captured in developing this signature style of astrophotography. So my question to you is, what was it that kind of led you into the astrophotography path? [00:02:34] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been quite a while. The first sort of thing that kicked me off was just being out in the backyard back when I lived with my parents 15 something years ago. I'm just looking up and going, oh, that looks nice, let's get a photo of it. And I think as most people who have tried Astro, certainly off your own own volition, when would have experienced it kind of just looked like a bunch of, bunch of white dots on a black background. So, yeah, so started there, kind of took a few shots and went, yeah, okay, that's fine. Put it aside for a bit. And then I saw a couple of photos online and I wish I could remember who they were, but 15 years ago, but it was of these, these lovely shots of the moon coming up with the Milky Way in them. And I went, oh, okay, that's something. That's doable. Let's go see if I can kind of figure that out, work out how to do it. Went out, did a shot or two, went, okay, that's nice. And kind of progressed from there, just going, let's see if this is possible. Okay, I can do that. Let's see if that's possible. I can do that. And move, move from there. And obviously that leads into trying to do Astro in Sydney. You know, can I do this? Turns out, yeah, yeah, you can. And you know, going from there. [00:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, amazing. Now, I, I did have another question to follow up from that. When I was checking out your, your Instagram account, which is largely populated by your Astro work, I noticed that, and I, I think I've seen this on your Facebook account as well. A message that, you know, you were doing portraits and cosplay, but that, that those accounts were taken down. Was there something that Meta did? What, what sort of led to that? Because we often hear stories of photographers work disappearing off socials without their, you know, without their consent. What was that like for you? [00:04:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, the reasoning behind that is my partner, she's not a photographer. She actually did a little bit of video work, but she was managing a lot of the socials there. For some reason, Meta decided she wasn't human. They thought she was an automated account, a bot. Which is really weird because her Facebook, she rarely posted on it. It was mostly just for keeping up with friends, like, you know, maybe two or three posts a year. But they decided, no, no, her activity on Facebook, for whatever reason, read a lot like a bot. And they asked, you know, they went, we think you're a bot. We need you to provide, you know, government id. We need you to provide a video self. You need to write all of this really like personal information. And then at the end of all of that, they went, yeah, we still don't think you're a person. And because her account got flagged and deleted any account she had access to, they also flagged as Some kind of automated spam account and deleted it as well. So that's why my. A lot of my accounts disappeared. Thankfully, the main account she didn't have access to, which is why it's the only one left. That was a hell of a process. Facebook refused to talk to us unless I paid them for the premium account there. They then put me through the loop for several months going, oh, look, we've just got a dedicated team looking at it. You'll be able to get the account back. At the end of. I think it was like three or four months, they came back and said, oh, because the account's been deleted, we can't ever get it back. You've wasted your time. And then admitted, yeah, we knew this from the start, we were just leading you on. But I went through everything. I went through like our. Our federal member was working with the communications minister to try to see about that. It was a whole miserable process and it really kind of. That's one of the reasons why I'm not uploading a heap onto those platforms now is because, quite frankly, they're scraping all of the work we put up, putting ads next to it to make themselves money, training their AIs on it, and at the end of the day, they're kind of, you know, right. Responsibility to us, as far as they're concerned, is to just say, suck it up, we'll do what we want. So, yeah, a bit of being a bit of a poor experience would be the, the PG way to put it. And I could probably rant for about 10 minutes about how ridiculous the whole thing is. [00:06:55] Speaker A: Oh, look, please do. If you feel like, you know, this is a safe space, we'll hold you in that space. It's shocking, isn't it? Because, you know, we often talk about this on the show and we've talked about a lot on our Monday night shows, the random photography show, where, you know, people are talking about this. We need to have social media potentially to advertise and to stay in the game and to be competitive and to get your voice out there. But, you know, Instagram used to feel like it worked for us. You know, it was a great platform. It was a perfect platform for posting images. It was a great platform for advertising business, the business side of photography. But. But now it feels like the reverse is true, that we're actually working for it. Like you said, we're feeding algorithms, we're feeding AI systems that are going to use our work to understand how to create their own images. And the lack of support you get from social media platforms. Yes. Okay. They're supporting tens of, not hundreds of millions of people. But if you can't operate a platform at that scale and not provide effective support, then maybe you shouldn't be operating a platform at that scale. Because you're right, it does feel like they just don't care. [00:08:08] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:08] Speaker A: And is that. Oh, look, align with your experience. [00:08:10] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, 100%. Like, I mean, I think the easiest way to kind of explain what's happened with Instagram and Facebook and a lot of those platforms is when they began, we were kind of the product. You went to Instagram to look at photos. You went, you know, so we were creating the content that made people go to their site. What's changed over the last couple of years is they've realized that photographers and content creators, as much as I despise that word, we're no longer the product. Like, people. You're not going to get any new people onto Instagram. You're not going to get any new people on Facebook. They've kind of hit the market saturation point of people coming on there, and people will go on and they'll browse. So what's happened is they've switched that to the audience is now the product, and we have to pay to get access to it. And if they want to do anything to, like, put up roadblocks between us and the audience, that's fine. It's not, you know, they're not trying to get people to the platform. We're trying to now reach people. And that's been the big shift, I feel, in that and why we've, you know, why we've suddenly seen over the last couple of years, it become almost adversarial. Unless you're willing to front up a lot of money to them, in which case then you're paying them and they'll be all, buddy, buddy. But it has become a lot more of an uphill battle to get your work out to people. Like, there's photographers that I will follow on Instagram who, you know, upload daily, whose work I have not seen yet. There's, you know, hundreds of pages. I don't follow that just because they've paid, they're suddenly put in front of me. And it makes it kind of. There was a talk that I went to at one of the big photography expos where the kind of keynote speaker went on very much about curating your creative kind of space inspiration. So they're talking about the work you look at is the direction that you go in. So it was very much about, you know, make sure you're looking at photography that you find inspiring. Make sure you look at people, people whose work you find inspiring. You can kind of get a direction to go in. And certainly over the last couple of years, with the amount of paid and sponsored content that's flooding into our feeds, and it's really, really hard to get, you know, to see really what you want to see. I think that's a real, real big loss and a real big disservice to the creative community. What's happened there that it's kind of, it's really hard to build a space that's focused on creativity rather than just kind of focused on this commercialized ad, pushing money, taking space. [00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spot on. Everything that you've said, and it certainly echoes my feelings, you know, I think what, what's starting, you know, I'm in my 50s, so I'm allowed to rage and rant every now and then. But, you know, sometimes it just, it baffles my mind how much corporate greed is involved that we are feeding. You know, how many more billionaires do we need to put in space? All of them? Well, yes, that would be a solution. Quite right. There you've got something. We'll load them all into a Tesla and we'll put them on the front of one of them. You know, it's just that it's, it's that we've got a, it's like you said, we've got to pay to access our customers now. Yeah. Potential customers. [00:11:36] Speaker C: Yeah. And I mean, it's, it's gone from like, you know, you do photography because you enjoy it. You put your photos up so people can see them. Now, like, we've seen a fair bit that's kind of gone from, oh, you're a photographer to, oh, you're a content creator. Everything's got to be content and like, it's got to be monetizable. It's got to be, you know, that's just. I just want to take a nice photo. I don't want to do a whole like, you know, behind the scenes video, content, edit all that. Like, I just, I hold a camera, I press a button, I take a photo. That's kind of all I've wanted to do. I put it up so people can see it. Can see it. Because people go, oh, we like your photography. But that's kind of, you know, I kind of miss those, those days, you know, from 10 years ago where it really was just as simple as, you know, you could focus on your craft and your art rather than kind of having to focus more on the business and promotion side. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a tricky balance. Jim, what about you? Where do you stand on that whole, you know, pay to play of social media? [00:12:39] Speaker B: Oh, even the content side, I get very frustrated with having to make content around the work instead of just the work standing out. Like, unless it's a reel or something like that, people, it doesn't get shown or doesn't get pushed so then no one sees it. So it sort of forces you to do as you say, like the, the behind the scenes video of how you took the shot instead of just showing, hey, there's this beautiful photo. [00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:07] Speaker B: And then obviously having to pay a substantial amount of money. We'll talk about another time, but I recently just did a big campaign and it was very expensive. [00:13:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm looking down that barrel too, because I've launched my workshops last at the start of this month and I'm actually going to hire Lucinda, our friend Lucinda Goodwin, who seems to be a master at optimizing social media as a working photographer. But it's true, you know, like, she is relentless in the work that she does on socials. You know, she's doing behind the scenes, she's doing reels and she's doing, you know, ask me anything events and all of this stuff that she's doing. And you know, good luck to her. I mean, she's great at what she does, but that's stuff that I just don't understand. And so I, you know, I, I'm gonna hire her to take care of that. Yeah. [00:14:03] Speaker B: So you're willing to, to feed the beast then? It works. But it's a continual daily slog. [00:14:10] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:14:12] Speaker B: And I think you beat as Matt saying, like, you're going to be doing work you don't want to be doing. [00:14:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd rather be out taking photos, to be honest, than sitting at a desk, you know, pulling my hair out over how to use social media properly. All right, amazing. Great place to start, guys. Let's say hello to some folks in the chat. It is, as I said, Thursday morning, it's a work day, so a little slower numbers at the moment, but plenty of people will watch over time. Let's see who's here. Philip Johnson first out of the gate, as always. G', day, mate. I believe he then added. What did he say? He said it's icy up here in the Blue Mountains currently. 3 degrees. Yeah, it felt Like a very cold night last night, that's for sure. Robert Varner. G', day, Robert. Good morning, Australia. Good to have you on board. We've got east coast photography. Good morning everyone. From Sunny Foster. A Foster, sorry, in New South Wales. No, you're right. [00:15:09] Speaker C: The first time. [00:15:10] Speaker A: Is it Foster? [00:15:11] Speaker C: It's Foster. It's Foster. [00:15:13] Speaker A: All right, cool. Stuart, Lyle. Morning, everyone. Roddy Nicholson's joining us, of course. Who else we got? Oh, and Lisa Leach is in the chat. Good morning, Lisa. Thanks, guys. Listen, guys, don't forget that if you've got any questions, format or for us, while we're having this conversation, just drop them in the chat. Or if you are watching and it's the first time watching the Camera live podcast, say g', day, drop a note in the chat and tell us who you are, where you're watching from. We always love to meet new people. And on that note, I will do just a very quick ad read for the Camera Live podcast. So this is our live photography podcast. We go live twice a week. Every Thursday morning at 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time, we live interview an amazing photographer. We learn about their journey, their story, what makes them tick and, and how they choose to hunt the light. And then every Monday evening, 7:30pm, we have our random photography show where we talk about industry events, industry news, product launches and you know, what we've been up to on the Daily along with reviewing customers images that are sent into us. That's right. If you send your image, one or two, don't go crazy and a short paragraph about what you experience when taking that image. Send it to order. Sorry, not order. Sorry, Jim, that would be you send it to justinuckystraps.com and we'll bring them up on the show every Monday night. But yeah, let's, let's move on with the interview now, Matt, as I said earlier, we like to roll back the clock a little bit and I wanted to understand, and I always love to hear this answer from people, where did that creative spark begin for you and what were the biggest influences on you for those early days of creativity? [00:16:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I first picked up a camera about 15 years ago literally just because I was involved in a couple of university clubs, societies and they really needed a photographer for a couple of events. And my mother had a camera. She's, she'd been doing photography for, you know, since she was at uni. She was a originally a sports photographer and all that, but she, she had a camera. So I'll just steal that and go and try it out and we'll see how hard it is. And it turns out at the beginning you go, this isn't that hard. And then as the years go on, you go, wait. Actually, it's really easy to get into, and then really hard to get kind of master the craft. But that's kind of where that, like, events, sports photography stuff started, was just they needed a photographer. And I went, okay, I'll figure it out. How hard can it be? [00:17:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:46] Speaker C: So that's. [00:17:47] Speaker A: That's very cool. [00:17:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:17:48] Speaker A: How many people. It's a surprising how many people started their journey by stealing or borrowing, you know, a camera from a family member. And what about, you know, before that? What about growing up for you? Were, you know, was your mother a really strong influence on visual creativity? Were you, you know, inspired by art? Or was it more about, you know, just exploring something new in your life, really? [00:18:13] Speaker C: Just kind of exploring something. Something new. My mother's always taken the photos in the family just because of. Because of her background. But I mean, yeah, I've been mucking around with cameras for a while, you know, just occasionally grabbing one. But nothing, kind of like. Nothing really directed or targeted. Just more of a. Like, you know, a bit like you'd use your phone these days. It's just, oh, there's a photo, I'll take it kind of thing. But it was really. Was just a. Kind of started out as, oh, we need someone to do this. And then I went, okay, but I know I can do it better. I just need to kind of learn how, get the experience. And it really, really went from there. Just, you know, I was shooting so much at uni, like some. Sometimes it'd be five events in a week, a lot of them at short notice. It's a really good. For anyone who's. Who is kind of at that point at uni and wanting to learn a lot more about photography. Getting in and shooting as many of the uni events as you can is a really good way to learn because I'm sure, as people have seen before, it's about doing as much of it as you can to learn that really provides the value. Like, there's the story about the class where half the class was told, you're going to be assessed on one thing that you make, and the other class, you're going to be assessed on how many of the thing you make and the people who made far more produced better quality work. It's about getting out there and, you know, practicing the craft, doing it again and again. Doing. Doing a lot of Events at uni really kind of trained that quick action event photographer. Being able to look at a variety of conditions, cut, you know, figure things out on the fly. I mean one time I turned up to the bar for what was ostensibly just going to be a standard bar party. You know, drinking, dancing, all of that. Within 15 minutes someone had backed a trailer up to the front stairs, dumped a load of fake snow and they started snowboarding down the stairs at the bar. So you're expecting, you're expecting just, you know, drink and dance and suddenly you're doing snowboard photography. It really does kind of train that. Think on your feet, really get that craft down to, you know, this is the situation. These are my limits. How do I operate within this to get a result that's acceptable to, you know, to me, to the people you're shooting for? [00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, looking back at those days, is there a, you know, putting aside the example you just gave, is there, is there a single moment where you thought or you believe that Actually this is, this is something I can take further as a career as well. Did that happen during the uni days or did that come later? [00:20:58] Speaker C: I mean it's always kind of been something sort of sitting on the edge. There's been a few moments where I've gone, this could be like the main thing, like I could, you know, quit my job or you know, not have to get a full time job. I could go and do this. But you know, it's for sure I've been a bit unlucky in that space. Kind of the last time where I went, oh, I'm starting to get a fair bit of work. This could be really good was the end of 2019 and yeah, you jinxed us all. Well, it was the, the bushfires initially caused a lot of cancellations for stuff just because smoke outdoor events and then as soon as it started picking up again, Covid hit and then a lot of the contacts that I'd been kind of making and working on, you know, moved jobs, lost their jobs, the big upheaval. But there's been a few moments in there where I've gone, I could do this full time, but just kind of making that, that jump from it's, you know, Fuji calls it an enthusiast, someone who does photography for money, but it's not their full time job. Making that jump from enthusiast, professional has been a bit, a bit challenging unfortunately. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is unfortunate and I think a lot of photographers and I found that too myself trying to make that jump into the pro level. The Business side of things. There's so many more barriers to reaching that level than people realize. You know, just the, Just the admin side of things alone. [00:22:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:22:29] Speaker A: Is crazy. You know, there's a. There's a lot at stake, Jim. You know, you've experienced this too, and with your business with Justin. Justin, Jim. Weddings and now doing the wedding solo and your boudoir work, you know, it's. It's. There's a lot involved in kicking that off, isn't there? [00:22:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. You've got to be a master of everything, unfortunately. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:49] Speaker B: And all you want to do is just take photos. [00:22:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, it's. It's. That side of. You want to be. You have to be a master of everything. But, you know, no one told you how to do tax when you were in high school. No one told you how to, you know, how to business plan, unless you go to a specific, you know, educational institution or you do tertiary. A lot of that stuff is just, you know, it's just nonsense talk, but you have to learn it. You have to do it, or you have to resource people that can help you do it. And, And I think that's the important part of. Of community in photography, even for pros, is to be able to gain advice and insight from one another and that no one's gatekeeping the answers. And that sort of stuff, which we've obviously found here on the podcast. Really interesting now. So you're shooting events at uni, and you. You've continued to shoot events to this day, haven't you? Yeah, something. [00:23:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:23:44] Speaker A: That you pick up quite easily, naturally, I imagine. [00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's. It's kind of, you know, it's where I learned. It probably dictates my style a lot that it's less. Less creative. We can dig into that later on. But more it's more like a documentarian kind of thing. I'm not out there really trying to craft anything. It's just. This is happening. Get the shot onto the next one. That's your events, sports, all of that. It's probably what's holding all of my wedding work back is that it's really just. This is what's happening, rather than any kind of, you know, creative, artistic area in there, if. Whoops, sorry. Yeah, it's like we have another guest on the podcast. [00:24:29] Speaker A: Oh, never be sorry. Who's that? [00:24:31] Speaker C: That. This is anarchy. Oh, wow. [00:24:35] Speaker A: Appropriately named. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Yeah, Greg's a big, big cat man. [00:24:38] Speaker A: So I am a big cat man. Yeah. I love a cat. Love a few cats. Actually, too many cats. [00:24:44] Speaker C: I've got three, so. [00:24:46] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yeah, they. They just get better the more you get. Jim, you. You don't understand. It's delightful. Anyway, let's get back on topic now. I'm. I've completely lost my train of thought. Thank you, Anar. You have just lived up to your. So, you know, you're shooting events, you know, you're at university. What came next for you? You know, you finished uni. I imagine that it was an unrelated [00:25:13] Speaker C: course that you were doing computer engineering and mathematics, so. [00:25:17] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:25:18] Speaker C: Yeah, that's very nerdy. [00:25:20] Speaker A: I remember being a nerd was terrible, but now it seems to be super cool again. And so what led you down that path? [00:25:31] Speaker C: Always kind of been into that maths, computers thing, as you said, a nerd. I don't think anyone's ever called me super cool, though. But yeah, just really that kind of analytical approach to stuff, which really kind of turns into how I shoot a lot in that I'm doing it by the numbers rather than, you know, as my partner says, I take. I take really nice photos, but I need to focus more on the feel than the technical stuff. But we'll. We'll get there one day, hopefully. But yeah, just always kind of enjoyed that technical side. Been working with computers for longer than I've been taking photos. I think I've been doing actual IT tech work now for over 20 years. So, yeah, yeah, that's. [00:26:19] Speaker B: That. [00:26:19] Speaker C: That's kind of the day job. And the photography is that creative release that I think. I think everybody needs. It needs a creative release. Like there's a. To be human is to create, as someone much smarter than me said. And you really need that creative outlet, and I'm not. I do notice that if, you know, work kicks up and I don't get out and shoot for a while, that it does kind of get a little bit twitchy and I do need to get out and create something rather than just, you know, sit there and work with numbers and computers all day. [00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Matt, can you elaborate on the technical side that you said that sometimes you follow? Because that really interests me. [00:27:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of. Especially with astrophotography. I think that's why I kind of dived really deeply into astrophotography. I find it a very kind of technical process there. There's a lot of, you know, your shutter speed is set based on how, you know, your focal length. All of the camera settings depend on the camera body. I can basically tell you on a couple of my Cameras, if you were to say, you know, we're going out to shoot Astro right now, what settings would you use? I could give you those settings now off the cameras because they've been, they're set based on, you know, how, like what's the noise profile of the sensor, what's, what lens are you using? Do you want star trails? Are you using a tracker? So that's really kind of been the approach I take to astrophotography. But I mean then that flows back into the other photography, like for events I know on my camera now where's like the ideal point to shoot to get the least amount of noise in the photo, if that makes sense. Like if it's an incredibly dark room, how far can I sacrifice ISO and shutter speed and where's that balance point? And I kind of have the cameras can set the cameras up now because of my Astro experience and knowledge or right on that balance point. So that when someone says, you know, we're doing a reception at this wedding and it's going to be candle lit, it's not a, you know, great, that's, this is going to suck. It's okay. I know where I'm going to issue. I mean, it still sucks at times, but I, you know, I know that I've got the balance point. I'm not spending, you know, half an hour fighting the camera. I know we're going in with this and this is what I've got to do. So that's, that's really kind of the area I go photography what I'd love to do, what I'd love to figure out. And my brain just doesn't work that way at the moment. I think it's just a lack of practice and skill. There is, there's a lot of really nice work online with double, double exposures, multiple exposures. Beware. My Fuji and Jonas Rask do a lot of absolutely spectacular double exposure work. And every time I see it, I go, I would love to be able to shoot something like that. And I don't even really know where to start. So that's kind of, you know, I know that that's an area I'm lacking is that kind of creative, artistic eye. So yeah, I really want to at least over the next year or two, really kind of dig in and figure that out and learn how to take images like that. Like literally create an image that's got that, that level of artistic ability in it rather than just, you know, see something take the photo. [00:29:34] Speaker B: I think that is hard though, on days like a Wedding day that to kind of take away from maybe real moments and, and create sort of art that's I guess completely. It is there, but it is I guess, you know, like a double exposures manufactured. It's not. [00:29:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:29:54] Speaker B: A one moment in time. It's. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:58] Speaker B: I mean that can be difficult on a, on a wedding day, especially in Australia. Doesn't seem to be the norm to have these sort of creative photo shoots. It's more just like get some cool photos, get back to the party. [00:30:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, that's generally how I approach weddings as well. I mean you've probably found it out as well when you're shooting weddings. It's a very different experience when you're shooting it solo versus when you're shooting as part of a team. I much prefer to have a second shooter there because it lets you actually explore and try and capture things that aren't like if you're just there as yourself, you know, you've got your shot list. You've got to get, you know, the rings, the kiss, the vow, you kind of stuck in these spots and having to, you know, it's a very structured, you know, you go here you take this photo, you go here, you take this photo and yeah, yeah. Whereas if you've got a second photographer, you can at least go, okay, they're in position to do this. I can go and get something a little bit different, a little bit unique and you know, if it doesn't work, oh well, that's what the delete buttons for on the computer later. But yeah, certainly when you're part of a team covering something, it's a very different feel and I find it a lot more enjoyable. It gets a lot more towards the enjoyment of photography rather than just kind of like this is a business thing and I'm just here to. Ticks and boxes. [00:31:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:31:21] Speaker B: There's not a shot list but you've got it. There's moments you have to get. [00:31:25] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:26] Speaker B: And if you miss it because you're trying to get something cool, it's not okay. [00:31:30] Speaker A: There's no do overs. No, no, no, that's very true. It is interesting that you know that topic about technical photographers but versus art photographers and how do the, how does one adopt the other? And I think it's a really challenging thing because I think it really comes back down to your personality and your brain chemistry. The way that you see the world, the way that you operate, the way that you learn and master a task, you know, you know, some people it's Interesting because I consider Justin a really technical photographer. He has a lot of fun and he's very creative. You know, from looking at some of his wedding work that he used to do with Jim. They obviously had a lot, a lot of fun doing what they were doing because the, the images tell that part of the story that they were involved in the, in the, in the moment. They were right in the thick of it taking those photos. Yeah. I, I don't know how a technical photographer learns to be an artist. And I think that maybe that's that like, that's. [00:32:33] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of what I do is just rules. It's, you know, that you have to do. Shoot it this way because nine times out of ten it will work. And that's the rule we have to follow. Yeah. You know, to make, make the days easy. So you have to forget the rules [00:32:48] Speaker A: to, to catch that. [00:32:50] Speaker C: That's the brilliance. [00:32:52] Speaker B: But you can't always do that. [00:32:54] Speaker A: No. [00:32:54] Speaker B: Because you'll miss stuff like. [00:32:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. And then, you know, we look at friends of friends of, of ours, like, you know, Joel, Joel, Joel Elston, he's a wedding photographer. Uh, and he shoots completely on film. And you know, he's doing probably smaller, more like tight knit community or friend group kind of weddings. But he's right in people's faces with a camera and a flash because that's what the clients love. You know, it's a really interesting parallel of the same genre handled in, you know, completely, completely different ways. It's interesting to see. [00:33:30] Speaker B: I'm sure he, again, I'm sure he has rules for what he does because especially with film you have. There is. Yeah. Well, you can't kind of stuff it up as. Yeah, we can't see if you have stuffed it up. But he, I would say he's also forgotten a lot of the rules to, to make. To be as creative as he is and. [00:33:48] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:33:48] Speaker B: To do what he does. [00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, and it kind of make me wonder when we talk to people that are learning photography, like those folks we meet at BEOP or people that ask advice about, you know, how do I elevate my photography? And we say, oh look, learn the rules and then forget them all. But for some people, they can't forget it, you know, because they, they work in a very structured manner. It is interesting to see those, those differences in, in people that do the same stuff. Tell us a little bit about your, your cosplay photography. A friend of the channels and one of the first person that. First people that I got on to interview also a Fuji shooter. He, Ian Tan is a cosplay photographer and you know, it's a relatively new genre in our field. What led you into that place? [00:34:36] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it once again goes back to uni. You meet all kind of, you know, weird and wonderful people at uni and you know, know a few cosplayers through that went along to a con. Actually started shooting with one of the, one of my friends from uni. We kind of figured out after the first convention or two that we could do better work together than kind of apart. Yeah. So for a number of years there I wasn't actually taking any cosplay photograph like cosplay photos. I was running the lighting. I put a, it was Profoto B1 on my shoulder with a soft box or a Magnum reflector if the weather was going to be, you know, clear and sunny and I'd run the lighting for the entire day and he'd do all the shoots, the actual shooting. And like we just found through that that you know, working together we could get like way better shots than we could working with ourselves. A lot of advantages to running, you know, a voice, a voice activated light stand as I think they're called. [00:35:44] Speaker B: My favorite. [00:35:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Well it turns out you don't need any permits. Security doesn't get that upset with you doing it because you're not blocking what, you know, there's no trip hazards. No, you're not blocking walkways. But yeah, working, working with Gani for a number of years there and then yeah, moved on to a couple of other photographers there as well. Dom Stevens, Mike, Mike Crick as well. But that's kind of where it started was just knowing some people from Union going, let's go along to this, see what it is. Doing some portrait work there. And that's moved on now to a more kind of official role with it like run the photo walls. Only at Oz Comic Con at the moment. But if any other conventions want to reach out, I tend to only go now if I'm invited because rolling in a full studio is, you know, it's a lot of effort, you know, building out a studio in a convention space. You know, it takes effectively half a day between setup and pack down. If you do it quickly, usually a little bit longer. So you know, I would, I would go along just to take photos normally, but I know that no, the way the argument I put forward is if this was a normal day, no one in an outfit like this would ever go to one of these convention venues. To get photos. Like, you're never going. I've got this wonderful new cosplay from this TV show or this anime or cartoon or whatever. Go to the convention center and get photos. Nobody ever says that. So my argument there is, why would I go there to take photos with people? Like, the only thing is that they're all there. Why don't we look at setting something up on a day when there's, you know, a lot less people around. We can go to a location that suits. Suits the outfit. We can bring in some special, you know, special effects and all of that, and it'll be a lot easier, a lot more fun, and the photos will look a lot better. So that's kind of why I've been avoiding kind of the lobby con experience, as a lot of people call it. Yeah, If I'm gonna go and take photos, I want it to be something good. I want it to be something. Yeah, something special. These people have put a lot of effort into their cosplays or, you know. You know, they may not have put a lot of it. They may have just bought it online, but, you know, it's their first con. They're going along, first time in cosplay. You know, it's special to them that it doesn't have to be special to me. It's special to them. And the way we run the photo wall is it doesn't matter whether it's, you know, something you've bought for five bucks on Temu or something you've spent years of your life painstakingly handcrafting. Come along. I'll do my best to capture the best photos I can. And then you've got something that you can look back on with all of the memories so that you can be proud of, something that shows off the work you've done or the experience or anything like that. And that's kind of the way we've been running it, which is why. Yeah, it's why I kind of take the approach of I don't want to charge for these photos. Like, I don't want to put another barrier. You know, they've already bought tickets, they've already paid all this stuff. I don't want that barrier in there. I just want to, you know, anyone who comes along get some nice photos to remember the experience they've put some effort in, regardless of, you know, whether that. Whether people feel that's worthy or not. And they should have something, you know, something to show for it. [00:39:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really nice. [00:39:03] Speaker A: I think that's a I think that's a good call. And it also, it's interesting because that also aligns with sort of the way Ian, our friend Ian Tan, how he approaches that too. A lot of the work that he does for cosplayers is gratis because he loves experience, he loves supporting the community. And, you know, he self identifies as a, as. [00:39:23] Speaker B: As a. [00:39:23] Speaker A: As a fandom geek too, you know, and watching him work is really interesting because you'll have someone come up to him. Here in Melbourne Conic Comic Con, they usually set up in the hallway that's outside the main convention space. As people are lining up, they come to him, but he too sets up special events. You know, he'll go and hire a big old dining room, like a ballroom in a big old mansion for a day, and he'll get 15, 20 cosplayers to come in and they'll do these huge group events, you know, and I wondered whether that, you know, that shift from doing it at the photo wall at a Con versus, you know, creating a special event just for cosplayers, whether that's where your creative side will emerge more, because you have that to, you know, that the fandoms are wild. Well, why not make the photography wild too? What do you think about that? [00:40:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I have done a couple of those. We have, you know, we did have access to a warehouse at some point. We've probably still got access, but it's been a while there. But we, you know, we build sets out in there and we do specifically themed shoots. The big thing that I've kind of done with creating that is I'll go to. Well, I'll go to someone, a friend who does the co. Who does cosplay, and go, what do you. What do you want to shoot? Give me a list and then I'll run down the list and go, I've got a really great idea for this. Like, we can really work. You know, I've got a location in mind. I've got an idea. Let's go run with that and we'll see how we go. Sometimes it's a technical challenge, like, you know, maybe I want to get a shot of them with the moon. I've done one of those where it's actually worked where putting, you know, everything, everything in camera is. Is real. It hasn't been photoshopped in or composited later, done a few where I have composited in later, done that, done one Astro shoot with some Milky Way and a person in there. I need to get out and do A bit more. But it's taking, it's finding the person going, you know, this may not be, you know, the most fancy cosplay. This may not be the one. You know, you may, like I said, you may have bought it online, may not have spent years building it, but you've got. I can, I can take that cost. I can see what I can do with that. Like, I've got an idea for it. Let's work together and get, you know, make something here that. That looks. Looks impressive. I mean, the, the most recent one I think was I was going to do a shot with the total lunar eclipse. That was a few months ago, which, where it rained all night. And we actually wound up down at Helensburg there with Soylent cosplay down there and just shot at the Glowworm Tunnel raining, waterfall coming down, glow worms behind. It was a really kind of wild night. But yeah, really kind of interesting. Interesting. Look. I'm like, looking back at the photos now there, all I, all I see are the problems, the things that I stuffed up. But it was a really good learning experience. And yeah, the photos look, look really, really nice. [00:42:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And when you are doing a cosplay shoot, how invested you do you become in that fandom? Do you, you know, do you take on the role of producer in, in, you know, guiding and supporting the artist, the cosplay artist, in achieving a look that aligns with that fandom, with whoever the, the contextual story of that character is, do you get involved in that part of it? [00:42:54] Speaker C: I really kind of just leave the cosplay side up to them. Like they know what, what they're going for. Sometimes they want screen accuracy. That's great. I'm sure they, they're capable of getting there. Sometimes they're creating something a little bit, you know, custom for what their, their vision is. Like they may be mashing a few things together. We've had cosplayers that have done. Yeah, I mean, there was a really fantastic. At the last, I think it was Oz Comic Con Sydney. Someone did a really fantastic. I think it was Iron man and Pirates of the Caribbean mashup. Yeah, I just like, look, you. You focus on the cosplay. You do. You sort that out. Let me know what your vision is and then I'll go, here's what I can bring to the table to add to it. Like I said, I've got so many ideas that I'd love to, love to get out and shoot, but it's, you know, it's a case of time and money at the moment, unfortunately, as I'm sure we can all relate. [00:43:51] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. They're the two things that I had the least of. Some of those mashups are really fascinating. You know, I follow a lot of fandoms. I'm a bit of a geek myself. Big gamer. Love my Star Wars, I love my Marvel. But some of those mashups are amazing. And I've seen a lot from recent cons, both here in Australia and abroad, where people are mashing up like Star wars cosplay with, you know, a pride kind of theme. You know, there's a guy at the moment who's just finished making a Mandalorian costume that, you know, has the helmet and the armor and, and he's painted it in gay pride and Trans Pride flag colors, but he's done so with kind of like rhinestones. You know, how Ryan people. Yeah. And so the whole costume is this glittering mass of, of light and color and. But it's. [00:44:43] Speaker B: I. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Undeniably the Mandalorian in, in its form. You know, it's, it's really fascinating to watch. [00:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:50] Speaker A: And, and do you see that, you know, cosplay photography will continue to grow because of the growing nature of fandoms? [00:44:57] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, it's changed so much in, you know, the last 10 years. I think I've been doing it. Originally, like, literally 10 years ago, it was just a whole lot of like just, you know, people with cameras taking photos. There wasn't a whole lot of, like, if you saw someone with off camera flash, it was a rarity rather than, you know, these days it's almost, you know, it's a given that if you're out there at one of these conventions, you're going to have a light stand, you're going to have a flash. Ten years ago, if you tried to do that, security would be on you, you'd be turfed out immediately. And now it's kind of seen as the norm rather than kind of an exception. Photographers are getting paid for doing shoots now as well. Like 10 years ago, if you said, oh, I'm going to charge you 10 bucks for a half hour shoot, you'd get a lot of, a lot of hate mail for that because it just like, how are you? Like, why are you gatekeeping it? Whereas now people will go, it's 100 bucks for 15 minutes. And they go, yeah, sure. So it's really kind of. It's gone from a real kind of amateur space to one that's a little bit more professional. But I mean, you've Just got to look at the results and it's just gone. You know, the difference from 10 years ago from what you'd expect from a con to now is you're almost expecting a full production by the photographers that are lobby conning it. [00:46:17] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but they also, you know, a lot of cons will do cosplay competitions and events. You know, they'll have very, they'll have dedicated stage space and time to celebrate the best cosplay artists of the cons. And some of those costumes are just phenomenal. I've been a big fan of Adam Savage who used to run Mythbusters along with his partner. Was it Jamie? Can't remember. [00:46:40] Speaker C: Yeah, Jamie Heineman. [00:46:41] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. Heineman. That's right. He's still heavily involved in the making space in the States. He's got a YouTube channel, Tested.com for those that don't know. But Adam loves cosplay play and he has built some phenomenally screen accurate costumes, especially around, you know, the bigger fandoms like Star wars and things like that. So it's. Yeah, it's an. And people like him, you know, put these sorts of genre, these, you know, what feels like a fringe genre on the map because he's showcasing, you know, what can be done with this kind of genre of photography. I think it's interesting, I think it's fascinating and I only hope that it grows and look, you know, more photographers step up and especially at that competitive level of cosplay, if cosplay is prepared to, you know, they've invested in a costume, they've researched the, you know, the, the fandom, you know, there's no reason why, why successful cosplayers can't invest in photography. So we'll stay tuned for that space. Let's have a quick look at the chat to see if anyone else has dropped in to say good day. Let us know where they're from. Who we got here? [00:47:48] Speaker B: Anarchy back in. [00:47:51] Speaker A: Hey, Anarchy. Darren, Isaac. Morning everyone from Horsham. G', day, mate. Who we got here? Lisa Lake. Photography can never have too many cats. It's like photography. That's very, very true. And he says he's not creative. Yeah, I thought that too when you were talking about creating these cosplay opportunities for people. And we've also got Paul Hendo in the chat. Morning all from Halls Creek in wa, West Australia. Where was I going to go next? [00:48:34] Speaker B: Have I just found your portraits Instagram. Is that a. [00:48:38] Speaker C: There is. There is one that's kind of just been set up But I'm not uploading a heap to there. But if it's the Matt Hutchins portraits a, then that's, that is the correct one. [00:48:47] Speaker A: Okay. [00:48:48] Speaker B: I will say quite creative. [00:48:50] Speaker C: Thanks. It really is kind of the cream at the top. You don't get to see all of the, all of the failed ones, but I guess that's part of the. Yeah, that's part of the curation. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Tell me a little bit about your portrait work. You know, how do you bring portraiture to people and make a difference for them? [00:49:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's been a bit of a complex one there. I said I do a lot of the, of the cosplay stuff. Also do a fair bit actually at live action role play, which is kind of like the next step up from, from cosplay. It's. It's kind of you're doing cosplay but also kind of playing the character, but a lot of it's original characters so it sounds, sounds complex. It's a lot, a lot of fun. I just go to take photos. I've done a little bit of, a little bit of it. It's the actual roleplay stuff isn't for me, but that's fine. But yeah, a lot of people enjoy it, but I go there and take photos and it's like even across that. The thing that I've heard back from a lot of people is it's so great to see this kind of professional, high quality photography. You know, it's better than phone photos, basically, is what they're saying. But it's really kind of capturing these moments, capturing these experiences. I mean, one of my old jobs a few years ago, I was there for I think three or four years. I just bring a camera along to our work events and one of the managers would say, oh look, don't bring the camera, just have fun. It's like, look, I'm going to get some photos. I'll still have fun, but I'll capture some photos. And then towards the end of that, we kind of, we all got laid off due to budget cuts. But then when they're going back through for like the farewells and that, having all of those photos and those, you know, over the last couple of years, it really was just a case of we're so glad that you kind of ignored us and did it anyway. Because now we can look back on these, on these moments. We've got a reminder, you know, it's unfortunately like I've lost a few friends, they've died. And being able to Go back and go, here's the moments we spent together, here's all the things that happened and have the memories of that. Like it's. Yeah, you know, it's a bit. Bit humbling to be honest. Like, I mean, the most recent funeral I went to, half of the photos up in the slideshow were ones that I, That I'd taken at events that, you know, during uni and after that. And to just know that that's kind of the memory that people think of as these, these photos you've taken, like, it's, you know, it is humbling. It's, you know, it's a bit of a responsibility there. You know, you think you're just going along to have a bit of fun, take a few photos, but, you know, in, yeah, yeah, 10 years time, suddenly they're, you know, precious memories that people are just so grateful. Grateful to have. [00:51:51] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It, it's. It's an interesting, you know, and some of the language you've used around the obligation and, you know, photographing things that may no longer be, or people even, you know, it kind of lines with my mantra that, you know, I feel like I have an obligation to document what is before it becomes what was in a world that's more complex than it's ever been. You know, but I'm a street photographer. I can make those sort of silly, grand statements and do whatever I want. But, but yeah, I mean, it's, you know, and, and I often say to people like, you know, think about photos from even 50 years ago and how fascinating they are and how much they teach us about, you know, culture and the environment and, you know, people's daily lives and what people were wearing and all those sorts of things. And then you go back to like, photos from 100 years ago and they're even more compelling because as we move away from those generations that have, that have left us, our memory thins and fades. But photography provides, you know, that, that true to life capture of that particular moment. And I think that's where that obt. I feel that obligation. [00:52:56] Speaker B: Sorry about the time stamp, like. [00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:52:59] Speaker B: What was happening at that exact moment. [00:53:02] Speaker A: Yep. [00:53:03] Speaker C: Well, one of the things I did, I did notice when I was. I went to University of Newcastle. They have, I think it's a Flickr account. They've got a. The University of Newcastle Archives Library Archives has a online photo stream and they put up all these photos from, you know, the 50s, the 60s, 70s, 80s, thousands and thousands of photos. Thousands from the 90s, you hit the 2000s and suddenly the. The quantity of photos just drops. And like, the kind of thing that I think really changed there is we moved away from film to digital. Whereas, like, film, the physical thing, the photographers go, I don't want to store this. What am I going to do? I'll give it to the. To the library. They can. They've got an archives, they can store it. Whereas with digital, because it's not a physical thing, it's a bit more transient and people haven't been donating their photos. Like, one of the things I did when I finished up at the uni is I went through and I got all of my photos and I donated them to the library as kind of the snapshot of uni life. You know, they had through, you know, 50s, all the way through to the 90s. They'd pull them out for all the events and show, this is students here at this building, this is students at this party. It was just kind of sadly missing. And now, you know, for at least. For the five or six years that I was there, they've at least got. And a pretty good cross section of what was going on at the uni at that time. [00:54:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it is interesting. And, you know, as I sort of immerse myself further and further into my own craft, you know, and especially after stalking, talking to Steve Parrish, nature and wildlife photographer. He was on the show a couple of weeks ago, you know, and he's 81, and he knows that his opportunity to continue to create work is running out. You know, that they were his words. You know, what. What legacy do we leave as photographers, as people that record timestamps, as people that document this time and place, you know, what is our legacy? And it's made me think more about, well, you know, what. What will become of my body of work when I'm no longer here, you know, and is that something that I should do, you know, maybe consider donating it to the Victorian archives or, you know, whatever it may be, Not. Not as a grandiose attempt to, you know, make my name last forever, but as a historical record of what took place in. In this particular time in. In our society. And I think it's something that we all should probably, you know, start to think about at some stage, you know, because you don't want your life's work as a photographer just suddenly disappear necessarily. I mean, I'll be gone. I don't care. I won't know. But, you know, how many times in recent years we come across these hordes of photos that family members have Found in boxes in attics and basements from these famous photographers or even not so famous photographers that they've discovered. Oh, actually this person was an incredible photographer, but they never went public with it. It's just all sitting in a box. And how many of those moments have been lost? But that's probably a little bit deep for a Thursday morning, at least without a few beers on board. Let's talk about the astro stuff, because this, this I've been looking into a lot of astro lately. We had Andrew Campbell, who is Andy's astro on socials, and he just actually last week he sent me a message saying that he, he went to, to parks. They had a photography prize event for deep space. [00:56:37] Speaker C: Yeah, the David Malan Awards. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And he won it. He, he won this year's event. He was going to be there and to support the community because he's, you know, he's got a pretty big name in the community and he does some phenomenal work. Like, it's just mind blowing, some of that deep space stuff that he does. But, but yeah, he won that award, which was amazing. You know, when you think about astrophotography, is is there ever a limit to what you can achieve or can we just keep pushing deeper and deeper to gain more from what's going on in the universe? [00:57:12] Speaker C: I mean, there is, there is obviously going to be a limit. I did, did have to take some physics classes at uni, so I know that there is at least a theoretical limit, but we're nowhere, like, we're nowhere near that with what we've got. I think really what it is, it's about finding what people think is impossible and then trying to find a way to do it anyway. Like years, years ago, what I would see a lot of online is a lot of comp, to be blunt, really bad composite images where people had just cut out bits of the Sydney skyline, whacked some stars behind and gone. Job done. And it was a real kind of, you know, cut and paste, really like a, you know, they'd cut something out of a magazine and stuck it together, which is fine. Like if that's the, if that's the creative decision, by all means go for it. But I wanted to look at something a little bit more like grounded, a bit more realistic. Might have been I needed, need to get my dates in order. But one year during Vivid, I went, let's try and get the Milky Way with the Opera House. And it was a total abject failure. Too much light, too many light beams, real pain. Didn't really understand. You're not going to find it on there. I've scrubbed. [00:58:31] Speaker A: I'm just providing the backing track to your song. You continue. [00:58:34] Speaker C: Yeah, but then when. Okay, if this isn't the right time to do it, when is. I mean, it's. At one point during Vivid, I was up the overseas passenger terminal with Jocelyn Cornell, Untitled shot. And he managed to get the Milky Way. [00:58:52] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:58:53] Speaker C: Yeah. So I went, okay, it's possible, but what do I need to do to get this to actually work? And it was, well, I need the floodlights off on the Opera House and I need no light beams coming from elsewhere in the city. So it's like, okay, when are the lights off on the Opera House? And thankfully there'd been this bit of a green push by the Opera House and they said we're being more energy efficient, no floodlights after one amount anymore. And I went, oh, easy, done. Yeah, let's go. So, yeah, so you'll see that when you scroll down, you'll see that there's a few times that I've gone out at, you know, two, three in the morning, very early in the season to get the shots of the Milky Way. The Opera House. Don't really do that anymore because kind of I've got the shot. I'm not going to be like, there's no. Nothing challenging, nothing new. Like, why go and shoot something you've shot before to get an identical result? Let's push something new. So, yeah, that was kind of the push there. I mean, there was a. I wish I remembered his name. But I saw some wonderful shots from Singapore of the Milky Way in the city, and they're not. They're not the best Astro shots because you're in the middle of Singapore. You know, they're grainy. It's in black and white, because getting colors too difficult. But just think that if you're sitting in the middle of Singapore and you're able to do something like that, which most people would go, if you talk to anyone who does astrophotography, they'd go, oh, you're in Sydney. You're not going to get any good results. To be able to go into Singapore and be like, getting recognizable results in that level of sky, it blew my mind when I saw it. And I went, okay, my excuse of, oh, I'll only shoot Astro when I leave the city, that's a bit. A bit poor. Like, if this guy's sitting in Singapore doing it, I'm in Sydney. My skies are so much better. What's my excuse? Why am I being so lazy and going, I'm not going to go do it? And that's kind of what kicked off doing all that. Astro in Sydney was just going, well, I've got no excuse, let's go, let's go do it, let's see what we can get and you know, go from there. [01:01:05] Speaker A: And so all of these images are single exposures, aren't they? [01:01:09] Speaker C: They were. If you go back far enough, they were okay. That was back when I was shooting on my Canon kit. Yep. It was a canon, canon 1 DX with a 16 to 35 2.8. [01:01:23] Speaker A: Just a small camera. [01:01:24] Speaker C: Yeah, well look, the. I've got that because obviously when you're doing sports events and all of that. Yeah, you kind of need something that's got a, that's a bit durable, works well in low light. You kind of get pushed in towards the 1 dx range. Much to the regret of my wallet. But about nine years ago, I think it is now, I picked up a Fuji GFX 50s. The original one. Yeah, it's a very, very different shooting experience. I don't know if anyone's, if you, if you haven't shot a 50s, it becomes a much more manual experience. It's like the one DX is literally push some buttons, point the camera, you're good to go. The the 50s was a lot more. I'm manually setting my shutter speed, my aperture. The autofocus can't track moving subject like a 1D axle, you know, hit anything that moves that the 50s is. If it's moving. Please don't everyone. It won't track it. So it really picking that up really kind of changed the way I was approaching things. And especially with Astro, the big kind of weakness, which still is a weakness today, and I will be honest about it with the GFX system is there is a lack of, of fast lenses on it. I think the fastest one's an f 1.7 and that's at 55 and 80 mil. When you're talking your wide angles like your 20 mil lenses, you're not getting anything quicker than f 4. So yeah, when you compare that to, you know, like the Fuji X system where you can get or the Canon system where you can get lenses that are, you know, wide angle lenses that are at F 1.8, F 1.4, trying to do Astro on the GFX system becomes a lot tougher. But the quality of the image that you get out of the medium format cameras is just so much nicer that I'm Willing to tolerate that difficulty. But anyway, to get back, a lot of the more recent shots will be one like one shot for the sky or multiple shots for the sky, one shot for the ground. Because I've moved to a tracking approach where the camera will move with the sky so that my shutter speed isn't limited. Because I'm stuck at f4, I can now do 1 minute, 2 minute long exposures. Track the sky, get the detail I want in the sky. [01:03:47] Speaker A: Yep. [01:03:48] Speaker C: Turn the tracking mount off, get the detail I want in the foreground. But that's really the way I mean that I was still doing some degree of that back on the canon days. Like there's some shots from, from the sand dunes out at Stockton. I remember I went out there one night, got some shots, they looked spectacular on the back of the camera, put them on the computer and went, my foreground's blurry. And that was kind of a real moment where I went oh, hang on, I'm now at the point where I'm going to be judging my foregrounds as well. I'm going to have to start effectively compositing these images together. One shot for the sky, 1, 2, 3, 4 shots from the foreground to get the, the sharpness and the detail. So they've, there's been kind of that multiple shot combined. But I mean the tripod doesn't move for a while now. Just because when you're operating at that kind of edge of the camera, you're wide open aperture and that you start to lose like, you know, you don't have the depth of field so you need to compensate for that and do multiple shots to get it. [01:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you're right, you know we with the GFX is the, the level of detail is gorgeous but it's also makes it more difficult to hide mistakes. [01:05:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:05:07] Speaker A: Because it just shows everything up. [01:05:09] Speaker C: It is such a beautiful image though. And that's, that was the one thing like I moved, moved off the Canon to the GFX simply because when I was looking at the photos on the computer later, the ones from the, the Canon, you could get them there but it'd be some work. But the Fujis just looks so much nicer straight out of the box. It's like every time I looked at the Canon images I'd just be like, oh, but imagine if I'd got that on the other one. It'd be so much nicer. And I just got fed up with just hearing that voice in my head all the time and went, I'll just shoot on the, I'll just shoot on the Fuji. I'll tolerate the, the how clunky and slow the camera is because I know that when the image hits it's just going to be so much nicer. [01:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:51] Speaker B: Yep. [01:05:52] Speaker A: Sticking to the theme of gear. So you've got your gfx. Is that the only camera system that you're using these days or are you, are you running with X series bodies or another brand? [01:06:03] Speaker C: So it's a bit different stuff. It's a bit, bit complex. I have a pile of cameras just off to my left that aren't in use at the moment. Predominantly it's the GFX system. So it basically I started out on canon, ran a 1 DX, bought a 7D Mark II as well as a backup body because when you're doing sports, 7D Mark II makes more, way more sense than a 5D grabbed the, grabbed the Fuji. Started using that for like the landscapes, the portraits. When I needed action, I'd run the 1 dx in parallel with it. Eventually actually went to an event, might have been a vivid event with Fuji. Got my hands on a 16 mil F 1.4 and I think it was an XT4. Did a couple of shots with that and was just astounded with how, how nice it was and went I should get one of those. Took a look at the price and the whole package was cheaper than a lens for the gfx. So I went, I could get myself a new lens or I could get a whole new camera system with a lens. I'll get the camera. So I ended up with an XT4 and I think it was an 18 mil. Yeah, an 18 mil F 1.4 simply for the party trick of that combination is able to do handheld astrophotography, which is insane. Like, yeah, if you go, go back a couple of years ago, like I can hand hold and get usable photos of the Milky Way. People would go, you're, you're an idiot. [01:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:38] Speaker C: So I rent, ran the X T4, upgraded to a XH2S and ran that as the second camera for a while there. And then Fuji put out the GFX100II which is, yeah, it's got an autofocus, it can track, does eight shots a second. And I went, great, you've put it out, guys. Wish you'd done it a few years earlier before. I invested in the, in the X mount system but then went, yeah, bought one of those. And that's kind of the main one I use. Depending on What I'm shooting it will depend what the backup is. If it's sports, action, movement, H2S comes out. If it's like a wedding, I'll grab the 50s and bring that because I'm after that resolution. [01:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:24] Speaker C: And detail. But yeah, predominant. Predominantly Fuji. Now the Canon. The Canon may come out if I've got like a use case for it. But realistically I probably should, I probably should put it in up for sale if anyone wants a slightly used one DX with a million shots on it. [01:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. But I, I think all of us have a little too much gear that should probably go up for sale. I know that I'm certainly guilty of that from time to time. And what about glass, Matt? What you know, what glass are you relying on? Are you relying on first party lenses or are you going third party? What, what do you, what's your go to kit for different genres? [01:09:03] Speaker C: So of shooting a lot of native GFX glass, it's like there's a lot of really nice GFX glass that Fuji put out now. Like their, their lenses, like they've obviously designed them for the system. A lot of third party glass that I've seen for, for the GFX system has problems with the corners. And when I'm doing Astro and that corner sharpness is like it's key. I was using a Canon 402.8 on the GFX for some of the longer shots. I've now moved over to the Fuji 500 mil for that just because it's so much lighter. It's a little bit longer but it is, it's so much lighter. I can fit it in the bag. It's not a separate briefcase. But yeah, a lot of like. I've pretty much moved now entirely just to first first party kit. I'm interested to see what other lenses there are around. But with the Astro stuff like the big lens that I'm missing is a wide angle, fast aperture and I haven't really seen one yet. I think Nissi might have one out now but I haven't seen one yet that has that corner sharpness that I'm. Yeah, yeah. That I can, I can go for. [01:10:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And what about the X series? Do you still, do you still hang on to that for time? [01:10:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah that's. That's somewhere in this, in this mess here. My partner uses it when she needs to do video. That. [01:10:32] Speaker A: Okay. [01:10:32] Speaker C: That I've got two lenses, two lenses for that. Just a 70 to 140 and the 18 mil, that I mentioned before, it's a good little backup camera that tends to get a bit more Canon glass adapted onto it. I do have an adapter for that. There's a shot on my Instagram of the ISS going across the moon and that was the 400 mil. [01:10:55] Speaker A: Let's bring that up because. Yeah, that is a cracking shot. Let me just find it. Where did I see it last? There it is. [01:11:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Tell us about how you achieve this. Let me just bring it up, folks. [01:11:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean it's a lot of. It was planning. So there is actually a web. If you search ISS transit, there is a website that will give you the locations you need to be, the times you need to go there to get that, to get the shot that was, as it turns out, a children's playground up on the north shore up in, I think, dy. So I rock up there with massive lenses and realize, oh, hang on, it's a very, it's a very warm day and there's a whole lot of kids playing in the fountains and I'm here in the bushes with a whole lot of camera gear. This could be a bit dodgy. [01:11:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Imagine. [01:11:47] Speaker C: Thankfully, thankfully, when you're using lenses that big, it's really obvious what you're doing. You can't, you can't be subtle. So I think everybody realized that when they're all pointing up at the sky that there's nothing, nothing suspicious going on here. [01:12:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:00] Speaker C: But this, this really was. I knew the location, knew the time I had to get there, Got there, set it up. That's a. Yeah, it's a H2S Canon 402.8 with a two times extender on it. So we're talking, I think 1200 millimeters all up. [01:12:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:19] Speaker C: And then, yeah, literally it was. I had a time clock on my phone that gave me time down to, you know, the millisecond. I'm just watching that tick by. And when it got, you know, two seconds from when the transit was supposed to occur, press the button. Took 20 shots a second. Waited till a couple of seconds after the transit when I didn't see anything. Hope I got the shot, went home. And then as I'm sitting on, sitting on the train heading home, just scrolling through, I saw one, one of those shots where I just saw the white dot and I went, I think I've got something here now. [01:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:54] Speaker C: Second I got home, load them all into Photoshop, align them all. Because the big problem was the moon was moving. As it's not something you really think about, but the moon. The moon does move. [01:13:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:05] Speaker C: So yeah, had to just align the moon, put, put them all there, just combined them and just went. That's pretty good. I'm pretty happy with that. I know it's not the, yeah. It's not the most like impressive in terms of things to view, but from a, from a technical standpoint, going through all the planning, the prep. [01:13:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:23] Speaker C: Rocking out. And like I do have the same shot taken on the GFX with the Fuji 501.4. I'm going with the H2S every time. It's you know, three times as many shots and you know, double the zoom at least. Yes, it's much nicer on that. And I did another one from my backyard at night getting the, the ISS going across, going across the moon at night. But that was literally from my backyard, so I didn't even have to travel for that. [01:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just going to bring up this ISS transit finder. It's the most streaming website I've ever seen. And, and so you can put in where you are. You can select from a map. [01:14:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:14:10] Speaker A: Where and when and it will tell [01:14:11] Speaker C: you and how far you're willing to travel and it'll, yeah, it'll just give you a wonderful list of all of the transits, solar and lunar. So if you're one of the people that has a solar filter, you can get the ISS going across the sun. And yeah, I can definitely check it the day of because the ISS does do like boost moves so it will change its orbit slightly and shift. But yeah, it's in terms of like on the day I went entirely off that website, I didn't like, I didn't see the iss, I didn't see it coming. I just went what it says goes and just did exactly as they said and got that. So it's, I can vouch for its accuracy. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. I love it when a well, a well oil plan comes to fruition. That's phenomenal. And so, you know, aside from the, the ISS transit site, what other technology do you use in planning and researching and prepping for a night shoot where you might have the sun, sorry the moon or you know, the Milky Way in your, in your cityscape. How do you go about planning for that? [01:15:17] Speaker C: Yeah, so a lot of it is, I hate to say vibes based, but a lot of it in the now is like, because I've been doing it for. A lot of it is vibes based. I know roughly when, like what direction where things go in terms of Milky Way, the big, the, the tool that I use a lot on the computer, it's called Stellarium. It's a free piece of software. You can actually load your camera and your lenses into it and then it will put a rectangle up on the screen and show this is what, this is your field of view. Then you can go through, set the date and time, go field of view. Okay. So this is if I want the Milky Way to look like this in my frame, I come at this time on this date and all that. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it's really useful for like I've got a bit of a tighter shot. Like what should I use? I've got, like I said, I've put all of my lenses in so I can see the framing for that. For doing all the moon alignments, there's an online tool called, called the Photographer's Ephemeris that I use. Yep. The app is now broken on my phone because unfortunately I'm, I'm on Android, not iPhone. So I do need to go and learn a new tool, unfortunately. But that's, that's been my go to for the last couple of years and I just, all it does is it gives you, just gives me the direction the moon is and the elevation and then from that I can start doing all the alignment calculations. So there's a bit of, a bit of trigonometry, a bit, you know, use the maths degree, but that's, yeah, that's how I do those moon alignments is just, you know, tell me the direction the moon's in, tell me how high, how high it is and I'll figure the rest out. Yeah, those are really the two big planning tools. [01:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I did a review on the Photographer's Ephemeris a few years ago for ShotKit. It's probably still online. And I was blown away by that, that app, it was so remarkably accurate and you know, would show you all these different elements about where the arc of the sun, where it would rise, exactly where it would set based on your pinned location. And I know a lot of folks who do landscape and Astro rely on those sorts of things. So it's. Yeah, it's great. [01:17:22] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:17:23] Speaker A: And then, you know, post production of Astro Shots, you talked about, you know, having to, having to combine images to, to make sure that you've got definition and sharpness and that you can have all elements, you know, accurately in the frame. How, how heavy handed are you with, with editing? You know, is it, is it something that you love to sit and spend time laboring over a single image? Or is it something you'd rather just get done as soon as possible? Because it's, you know, it's more time away from the camera. [01:17:52] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, look, I, My, my biggest kind of problem is I shoot to edit. I think for a lot of the stuff I do at the moment, I've got probably a backlog of tens of thousands of images to definitely tens of thousands of images to go through. But, yeah, for Astro, editing is kind of, especially if you're doing it in Sydney, it's kind of a must. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to just take one shot and be done. But, you know, even, even just. If you just did a single shot, you still got to do masking to bring out the sky and get the effects that you need to, you know, get it to a point where it actually looks what the sky looks like. Even though it's kind of. It's kind of fake and manufactured on one level, but also it's what the camera captured and what you can bring out. So it is real and it's. Yeah, but I will, depending on what the image is like, I will be stacking frames. I'll be getting, you know, the foreground and comping that in and putting it all together just to make it look good. So there is a fair bit, a fair bit going on with like a hero image, like the cave shot on the Instagram and all that. There's a. There's a fair bit going on. For the ones that are a little less don't just like, I just want to get that up. It might just be a quick little, quick little mask, quick little sky adjustment. It's going on Instagram, who cares? But for ones where, you know, I'm looking to print them, we'll put them up on the wall and that. It's like, no, I've need to take my time. I've got, you know, I've got 100 megapixels. I need it to look good. I've got the data I need. Let's. Let's spend some time polishing it. And it'll take, you know, a couple of days overall, but I might come back in like a week, two weeks, you know, or when I'm going to go print. I might come back and go, what was I thinking with this edit? Let me fix it all up in there. [01:19:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Absolutely amazing. Let me just jump into the chat quickly and there's some more folks that have joined and there's a couple of questions Questions and comments. We have. Phil Thompson's here. G', day, mate. Late morning. Morning, guys. Sorry, a late. Good morning from Geelong. Jason is here. Late arrival here, but good morning all. Nev Clark is in the house. Good to have you, Neville. He was talking about the Nissi 2.8. [01:20:05] Speaker B: That's. [01:20:05] Speaker A: That. Isn't that a fairly new lens for the GFX mount? I think it is. [01:20:11] Speaker C: I think so, yeah. I've seen a little bit. I haven't looked too much into it. [01:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it's only recent though, isn't it? I think I only talked about it either the past week or the week before. On the Monday night. Nev goes on to say, I'll be really keen to see how this 2.8 from Nissi is. I really enjoy the 500. I don't use it for much but when I do, I really enjoy it. [01:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:31] Speaker A: Nevser whilst he's. He's. He's. [01:20:34] Speaker C: He. [01:20:34] Speaker A: He has a foot in two cams. He's a bit of a. Like a shooter. He loves his Q3s. He's got a pair of them. But he's also JFX and an X photographer like your good self. There's a question here from Jason may have been covered, but does Matt ever shoot with a telescope and adapter? [01:20:51] Speaker C: I don't yet. It's been on the list to kind of get it set up, but it is. The thing is I need a new. A new beefier tracking mount. I'd have to get the scope, get the adapter. Although the Fuji. The Fuji X mount should go, at least from what I've read, really good on telescopes just because of the smaller sensor. Trying to find a telescope to cover a GFX sensor would be sad. So. But it's. Yeah, it's something I do want to do. Want to do. Like I've got the kind of theory down pat, but, you know, getting that, that heavier duty mount, the tracking mount and then you're looking at auto guiding and all of that and it's. It's a rabbit hole that I'm like, I would love to jump down it but I need to make sure that I can actually go all the way down it instead of just, you know, putting a foot in and then getting frustrated that I'm not getting the results I want. [01:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:21:41] Speaker B: Sounds expensive. [01:21:43] Speaker A: Sorry, Jim. [01:21:44] Speaker B: It sounds expensive to. To set up it. [01:21:48] Speaker C: It. It's not compared to some camera gear. It's not too expensive. Like I think the tracking mounts are a couple of grand. A telescope's a Couple of grand. Like it's not, it's not overly expensive but then you're starting to look at, you know, like where do you want to go with that? Like if you're looking at the really deep sky stuff, do you want to look at like narrowband imaging and all of that? In which case dedicated sensor, dedicated cooling and then the editing process as well. I have had a quick look at Pixinsight and it's like, I can tell, I can tell like it is going to be able to do anything you want for Astro, but it's also, at least with my experience, kind of like going from Ms. Paint to Photoshop, you just kind of walk and go. There's so much going on here. Yeah, I'm gonna need some time. [01:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:34] Speaker C: So yeah, that's kind of, I need the time to dive into it and I haven't been able to like, like put the dedicated time aside to make it worthwhile. But it is, it is something that's on the cards. At the very least I should be using the 500 mil on the GFX to do some more deep sky stuff. [01:22:51] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean that, that would be phenomenal. And you did mention that you use a tracker. What tracker are you using at the moment? [01:22:57] Speaker C: I have a very old and beaten up Skywatcher Star Adventurer. Everything on it is loose. It's a bit of a nightmare to work now. Whenever someone brings along a new one and they ask me to align it for them, I am insanely jealous of how every knob and dial does exactly what it's meant to do as opposed to mine where it's kind of force it into the position and clamp it down. But like it's, I've been using it now for so many years, it'd be nearly as long as I've had the GFX for. But it's like it was, I think 600 bucks for everything all up. So relatively cheap. Really good tracker. I can get two minute exposures on the wide angle, use it all the time. Takes about five minutes to set up once you're familiar with it. But yeah, it's been, it's been through so many sand dunes. I've pulled it apart a couple of times to get a toothbrush into clean sand out of the gears and re grease it. So it's, it's, it's durable, it's survived me, which is more than I can say for some of my gear. [01:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. Where to from here, Jim? We've often talked about Astro on the show. And you know, we've had a lot of amazing astrophotographers on deep space and you know, Milky Way photographers and all that sort of stuff. I guess my question for you, Matt, is do you think that the barrier to entry for let's say enthusiast photographers or even newbies is the barrier to entry into the astro world? Is it cost or knowledge which is greater? [01:24:31] Speaker C: That's a good question. I'll probably go knowledge. But I think it's just experience, to be honest. Getting out there and shooting, shooting the first couple of times. After that it becomes really. Because, you know, like you start to be able to identify things in the sky by sight and all of that. So it really is just kind of getting out and shooting. I mean, these days the phone in your pocket can take an astrophoto. So I don't think cost now is that. I mean, it wasn't much of a bar, bar to entry before. It really was just a case of have you got a tripod, have you got a camera? Off we go. Yeah, like you'll get something and then kind of everything after that was just learning how to, you know, how do you focus at night, where do you point the camera? So I think, I don't think it's, it's certainly not getting harder to get into. And at the same time we're kind of seeing on the upper end of it like that deep sky stuff. These amateur photographers are able to put together stuff that, to be honest, better than Hubble. I've seen some people online, obviously at the very top of their game, but these kind of, you know, just regular people, not, not like NASA or the esa, able to produce some fantastic images just with, you know, commercially bought stuff. They don't need to put a telescope in space. They can do it from their backyard. So I think so certainly it's never been easy to get into and I don't think we've, we've ever had a situation like we've had now where people are able to produce such stunning images just from stuff you can get off the, off the shelf and obviously a lot of knowledge and experience. [01:26:08] Speaker B: I think, I think the education is, is also there. Like there's, you know, you could jump on YouTube or on anywhere now on the Internet and you could learn and get, you know, go out your first time and probably get a photo. If you just listen to, watch a few different videos and get some basic settings to get something. [01:26:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a fair call. And then of course, you know, there's folks that Run workshops. Specific Astro workshops will take you out into the field and you know, guide you through that whole process. [01:26:40] Speaker B: I don't think it's easy to be good, but I think it's potentially easy to get a shot. Yeah, you know, there's. And there's a difference between being the. The two ends of the spectrum. [01:26:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Matt, I have a question for you unrelated to any particular genre and I think it's something that a lot of us are questioning at the moment is the, the increase in cost in media storage. And I was just curious how, you know, you're shooting with the gfx. You're shooting where every file is absolutely massive. And I reviewed that GFX when it first came. Well, actually before it came out I did a lot of reviews for Fujifilm and my old Imac was a 2017 iMac. Just couldn't cope with the file sizes. You know, just the computer itself couldn't manage. It just. It struggled. There wasn't enough RAM and all that sort of stuff. How do you tackle the storage crisis I like to call it, that we're facing today? [01:27:33] Speaker C: Yeah, not. Well, it'd be the. Be the overarching thing there. Look, it's what it's. One of my gripes with the GFX is that it doesn't have like an in camera down sampling to change the size of the RAW files. I know my old Canon had it so you could shoot a. It was also 18 megapixels, so why would you bother? But having. Having something where the RAW files can come out a little bit small, especially for like, like just, just regular events, sports action stuff. I'm getting out a 50 megapixel file instead of 100 megapixel would be great, but not on the cards. Unfortunately this time the way I deal with the storage is I currently have. Let me just add this all together. It's probably about 120tberabytes of storage set up at the moment with about maybe 20 of it free. So it is a problem sticking. Yeah. And I'm so glad that I got the most recent NAS in before the last round of price rises. Yeah, I think the hard drives in that now each one goes for as much as I paid for the full setup of that, which is just insane. I don't know how I'm going to continue on after this other than I'm gonna have to be a lot more picky on what I shoot. But I mean I'm talking about when I'm going out to like these, these larp Events that go on for the whole weekend. I will come back with 1012,000 shots per day. Yeah, yeah, like that's crazy. I went, I went to one in Victoria at the end of last year and five terabytes of photos coming back with me from a couple of days down there. Obviously that's getting culled quite heavily, but until I get through the cull, they have to sit somewhere. So. Yeah, so to answer the question of how I, of how I manage it. Not well. Not well as well. I need to do better. [01:29:24] Speaker A: All right, let me follow, let me follow that with another question about storage. And this is for both of you and anyone else in the chat who's listening. You know, given, given the right giving the scarcity of the materials or the rising scarcity of the materials required to create storage media combined with the insane cost that it has jumped to as a result of a shortage thanks to our good friends at AI data centers. Do you think that eventually camera companies will take on a greater responsibility for inbuilt storage in camera? I mean we already see it in some models. I think there's a Hasselblad I think has it. There's some of the Leica models might have it. Is that an opportunity for camera brands to go, well actually we can put in because we can bulk buy storage so cheap potentially. Should camera companies be doing more around digital media? What do you think? [01:30:17] Speaker B: I don't think the answer is more storage in the camera, only for the fact that it'll just compound the problem of digital photos not going anywhere. Yeah, like your photos on your phone probably majority of people don't do anything with them. They don't want to get rid of them. Yeah, but that, you know, you can't put them in an album and go, okay, I can delete these now. Yeah, so they just sit there and then you buy a bigger phone. You buy a bigger phone. If you, if, if the camera had the same thing, it wouldn't matter if it was 120 terabytes, you'd fill it up and you go, that's full now. Like now what do I do? Yeah, I think, yeah, I'd be great to have some storage. [01:31:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I've, I've. One of the Fujis around here does have some inbuilt storage, but that's because it's a Instax camera that also exports to digital. I think it stores like, it might store up to 100. [01:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty much on the insects. [01:31:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean look, it's A great little one's in going back to the wedding. It's a great little camera to be able to hand to, you know, the, the teenage, young, young kid and go, go, go take some photos. And then you go like, here's, here's some prints. Look, look what you did. And then, you know, you can take the card out, you can put a card in them, take the card out at the end of the day and go. I've got some extra photos here that the kids have run around and got, you know, child labor. The one thing that I really like about the current way that cameras do the story, you know, you buy your own storage, you put it in is it gives you some choice based on what you're doing with the camera. To get like, not everyone needs the ability to, you know, be able to shoot, you know, a gig of photos every second, push it out to a card and be able to do that all day long. Yeah, some people, some people are doing, you're doing landscapes with, you know, two or three second exposures. It doesn't matter if it takes two seconds to write that to the card. So you don't have to buy, you know, the thousand dollar CF Express card. Unfortunately for me, I'm stuck buying the thousand dollar CF Express cards because when you're doing sports action stuff, getting the photos off the camera as quick as possible is the name of the game. But certainly having that kind of customizable flexibility there. But I mean, we're gonna, we're gonna keep running into these problems. As long as these AI data centers keep being spun up at this rate, I don't know what the solution is there, what the fix is. I mean, it's going to keep happening because there's money in it. And while there's, while there's, money in it, the prices of everything's going to go up. Supply, demand. We might start seeing these camera, the camera manufacturers spending a bit more time and development effort on compression algorithms. I know the difference on the GFX between uncompressed and lossless compression is like 300 megabytes of photo. Maybe we can push that a bit further. I think that's, that's more like what we'll see there is that they'll start going, how can we store this data more efficiently? We might start to see a resurgence of people shooting just in JPEG because of storage. Storage. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a really interesting quandary because, you know, and I'm, when I'm out shooting, I'm shooting and like I said, I'M just a street photographer. I'm, you know, mostly doing single frame, you know, single frame images. I'm not shooting and shooting in burst mode or anything like that. So my needs are fairly simple. But even, even still I'm more ruthless with my culling and the images that I choose to delete than I've ever been. Because I can see that ticking that you know, SSD I've got ticking down how much space I've got left and I'm, you know, I'm concerned for the future and even just things like, you know, the cost of storage on websites and things like I have a WordPress site, I pay for a certain amount of storage. I need, I desperately need to upgrade it because I'm about to run out and you know, the next level is an extra 50 US a month build annually. It's just, yeah, it's, it, it's quite a, it's quite a punch to the guts, you know when all you're, you're just trying to host a website. But it's obviously it's just part of the cost of running business and, but do you think that maybe there'll be an opportunity where camera brands will lean heavier, lean more into this whole sort of from camera to cloud storage? [01:34:51] Speaker C: Yeah, the Fuji have a, I think it's frame IO integration now. I've looked at doing some stuff especially for the cosplay when I'm running a photo while being able to get the photos off the camera onto something so then you can print them out. Like I've got a stack of Instax film, big box of it around here. Because the kind of the vision there is to come get a photo can get an Instax print done within like a minute at the photo. It would be like, yeah, that's the goal. Getting the photos off the camera has been the kind of, the big headache. Just because you're in a, in a crowded environment with a lot of radio interference. I don't really want to pay for more cloud storage. I've already got Dropbox and Google that I'm forking out a lot of money for and they're both rapidly approaching full. But yeah, it's, I say it's just one of those things where the difficulty is going to be is that the cameras keep getting bigger in terms of the file size. Like it's 100 megapixels now. If you went to someone 10 years ago and said, I've got a 50 megapixel camera, they'd probably call you a wanker and why do you need that much resolution? Like, that's only literally for people, literally for people who are looking to print the size of a wall. And now you go to the, a lot of camera brands, even Fuji, even Fuji X mount has like a 40 megapixel option. [01:36:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:15] Speaker C: And you're going, there's a lot of resolution here. So the photos are going to get, get a lot bigger and I don't, I don't know where, where this is going to go. Like, there's obviously the pressure of we can't keep storing all this stuff. But also people, people want the resolution for flexibility. It's a good one. It's going to be fun to watch what happens. But I mean, even just being able to get them up onto the cloud, you're still going to run into the problem of they've still got to be stored somewhere and the cost of the, at the end of the day, the cost of whatever they're being stored on is, is going up. [01:36:52] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's definitely a pain point. And you know, I think for some people that, that may prove to be a barrier to expanding the craft in, down the track. Looking at the work that you've been doing and you know, I'd really like to understand or hear from you, you know, what are you, what are your current focuses, you know, and where do you spend your time? You know, if you, if you were to allocate a percentage to all the times you go out with your camera, where are you, where are you spending your time at the moment? [01:37:25] Speaker C: Certainly over the last month or two, a lot of it's just been what I call like the real kind of corporate stuff. Like I've done a wedding, done a couple of lap events. It's all that kind of event coverage. Haven't been doing a heap of landscape of Astro stuff. I would like to get out and start doing a bit more. But a lot of it's come from like I've, I've recently just shifted jobs so you know, the, the pain point with starting a new job and all the time that you need to invest in that. So yeah, I mean there's planning. The good thing is there's a little bit of planning. I've got a few, few ideas percolating at the moment that I want to go through. Yeah, not, not all Astro. There's some portraiture stuff in there as well. But when we, when we, when there's a bit of time and when I can align with, with some of the other talent, we'll we'll see how we go. But yeah, at the moment it's just, it's just 100% stuff that pays the bills, which is a bit sad on [01:38:24] Speaker A: some level, but yeah, it is, it is sad. Yeah. I feel that, you know, that AI is making all the, all the artistic tasks simpler while all the men and stuff is, is still there, you know, and it's, it's. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard and it's hard to balance time, you know, especially if you're. Balance, you know, especially if you're juggling a day job and, and trying to, you know, also run a photography business and potentially find time for yourself to shoot the stuff you love. You know, often that goes to the end of the line, that sort of creative fun just for me. Photography. [01:39:01] Speaker C: Yeah, you know. Oh, look, it's definitely. So if I don't do it, I get stuck getting twitchy and grumpy and all of that. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, a bit of a, bit of a. Bit of an issue. But yeah, I mean, I've got an email yesterday, might have been the day before from Oz Comic Con going, hey, it's that time of the year again. Like, great. Let's, let's start thinking about this, looking at the space we've got to work with. What, what can we do? What, what's feasible dealing with, you know, let me dive into that a little bit more. A lot of con photography, at least on the photo wall, I've basically refer to it as like slop photography. It's, you're in there, you've got a minute with people to do something. It's just get in, get out. Not really where I want to be with it. I mean, it's the same thing like with AI generated images, you're just doing the same thing over and over again to get the same generic stuff out. I don't really want to be doing photo wall work that I feel is just the same thing again and again, a bit sloppy. I want to do something that's a little bit more creative, a little bit more like trying to tailor it for each person. Like we do it a bit with gels. We've been looking at ways to implement like posing aids and all of that. Like the last time I got my father to run up some posing blocks that we could just put in there. Painted black. People can sit down, they can stand on them, they've gives a bit more dynamic stuff. Like really easy, you know, a day or two's work in his Workshop to run them up. But immediately you're just like, okay, you've got, you know, you want to do something a little bit different. You've got the option for, you know, to do something, do something different there. But I kind of want to look at ways to bring just a bit of variety in that in. So there is a bit more creativity in the, in that kind of, you know, mass produced photography thing. Like we're literally doing hundreds of photos a day. Like seeing hundreds of people per day, hundreds of photos. Like there is this trade off between. We want to be able to get through everyone because everyone deserves a photo no matter what they've, you know, your $5 bought cosplay versus your work of, you know, something you've been working on [01:41:18] Speaker A: for the last couple of years. [01:41:19] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we've. Everyone deserves a photo and we don't want to be turning people away way because we're too busy. But at the same time, we don't want to be just in one photo out like we want it to. You know, it's a balancing act and it's a bit challenging and we're trying to find a way to make it so that it's something special and unique for everyone rather than just kind of like, you know, an amusement park ride. Effectively you just go through and there's your experience. [01:41:48] Speaker A: Yeah. And so how do you tackle that balance? Where do you start? [01:41:53] Speaker C: I mean, a lot of it's just been looking at what, I mean, looking at what other photographers are doing, especially ones that are on the wall. Unfortunately there's not a lot that like everybody's dealing with the same constraints, so it kind of moves to the same, like it all regresses to the same spot. It's, you know, you put some gels on your lights, you use a plain background and then a lot of it is just a lot of it comes down to editing, which I don't, I'm not great at doing that kind of creative edit. You know, they add sparks and fire and smoke and all of that. We, we do smoke practically now. That was one of the concessions we, one of the concessions we managed to get from the, from the convention was allowing us to bring smoke machines in, which was great. We'll try to do a fair bit of that practically. But it's really just kind of looking at and going like, what, what could I, like looking at the photos after going, what could I do in 30 seconds to improve these photos? Like, what's, what's annoying me with this? What could I do in 30 seconds? And go, okay, if I can do this and if I could have. If I had, you know, this with me or that with me in 30 seconds, I could have done that. And going, okay, take a note of that. Just kind of as I'm going through and editing, going. And then go, what are the themes here? What's the few things that I could bring Next time that I can go, throw this in. Off we go. So, like, we've got the smoke machine, we've got a, like bubble machine, snow machine, all that kind of stuff that, like a bit of. It's a bit gimmicky. Yeah. But when it works, like when it fits with what they're bringing. Yeah, it can just elevate it a little bit. And doing it practically, I find, I mean, first of all, I don't want to spend any longer editing these photos than I have to. I've got hundreds to go through from every day. But it just elevates and the reaction that people see when, you know, they're standing there, they've got their, you know, like someone's brought an Iron man cosplay. They're standing there and suddenly smoke starts coming around them. It just kind of sets a mood and helps them kind of get into that kind of. So it's less standing there getting a photo, more like, oh, this is. I can see what we're going with here. You know, someone stimulus. Someone's got a customer stand, that bubbles start raining down around them. It's. Yeah, it helps a lot with getting the photo into that certain mood, into that vision, for lack of a better word. [01:44:15] Speaker A: But I think you need techniques. I think that should be next on the cards. [01:44:18] Speaker C: I would, I would love to set people on fire, but apparently the insurance company. I'm working on it. Yeah. [01:44:27] Speaker A: Corporate shields. I don't need to know. [01:44:29] Speaker C: Yeah, we've, we've. I've got a few methods that I need to try out in a safe environment with all like, you know, someone there on the first aid and safety monitoring and all of that. I've tested them out on myself already and I haven't burnt myself. So, you know, what could go wrong? Yeah, what could go wrong? But, you know, it's. It is. We've got a few things there that, like, let's set up a shoot and see what we can do with it. We want to do it in a safe and controlled environment because at the end of the day, you don't want. You don't want to be telling someone to do something and then get injured or hurt. [01:45:00] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely not. [01:45:01] Speaker B: No. [01:45:02] Speaker A: You don't need your name on that accident report, that's for sure. [01:45:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yep. [01:45:07] Speaker A: Amazing. I do want to just jump back in the chat. A couple of comments have come through about when we were talking about data storage and then I've got a couple of last questions for you and then I think we'll wrap for the day because it's almost been two hours. I can't believe how that's to going. [01:45:21] Speaker C: Gone. Time flies. [01:45:23] Speaker A: It does. Nev Clark, very experienced GFX shooter And even his Q3s, you know, they're. What are they? They're 60 megapixels each of his Q3 cameras and he sometimes uses those at weddings. So data storage is crazy. What else has he said? I think eventually someone will step into the fold with a very big online storage system that you just pay a subscription fee for. And we're starting to see that already, which is very true. Jason's come in with a comment. Even the new Ricoh GR has built inbuilt ssd. I didn't know that. I think it's an advantage for travel where you might be worried about corrupting a card or even just running out of storage, you know, because if you've got a single, if you've only got a single card slot like I have on my Fuji cameras, you know, if you run out of storage and you haven't brought yourself a, you know, a spare SSD or something. Sorry, a spare SD card, having some onboard storage does make a lot of sense in that scenario. What else have we got here? It's one advantage of shooting smaller res sensors. 20 to 24 megapixel are capable of 30 inch prints and don't fill hard drives quickly. Yeah, that's true. And finally Nev said, yeah, Fujifilm are working on 180 megapixel camera. According to all the rumors. Yeah, which that's just bananas. [01:46:52] Speaker B: Probably not needed. [01:46:54] Speaker C: I'm keen to see what they, what they bring along with it. Like, I would, I would much rather have like a 50 megapixel gfx, but all the autofocus tech is only available on the hundred so I'm kind of been forced into that. But I said I'd much prefer a 50 megapixel one, but they don't make it yet. [01:47:14] Speaker A: Yep. [01:47:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:47:15] Speaker A: Be interesting to see what happens next. [01:47:17] Speaker B: They might keep pushing forward and then pull back and yeah, get the 50 [01:47:24] Speaker A: because I mean it is still a relatively young series of products for them. [01:47:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:47:31] Speaker A: When you look at you Know, other, other companies that have been doing digital or even medium format, you know, that have gone through film and then digital systems like Hasselblads, phase ones, you know, that sort of stuff. It will be interesting to see where that medium format or larger format photography goes in the future. I am conscious of time and with Justin not being here, he typically asks a question. Jim, you know which question I'm talking about, don't you? Yeah. Jim, would you like to take it from here and ask Matt this one? Oh, okay. [01:48:03] Speaker B: So I haven't been on for a little while, Greg, so I might stuff it up. But Matt, if you only had one camera and one lens to shoot the zombie apocalypse, that's incoming end of the world stuff. End of the world, like. And it could be. There's no wrong answers. [01:48:23] Speaker A: Yep. [01:48:25] Speaker C: I mean, it's. The camera's easy. That's. That's going to be the GFX, the 102. The lens, though. Oh, that is a tough one. This. There's a lot of really nice lenses. I probably. It's a relatively new lens for me. I probably go the 20 to 35 F4 just because it's going to give the most flexibility there. I mean, I love, I love my 110. My 110F2 is probably my most used lens, followed by my 500. But you know, end of the world stuff, you don't want to be. You don't want to be stuck, you know, not being able to get wide enough. So I think probably the 20 to 35. Nice. [01:49:05] Speaker A: Nice. And you know, lugging a GFX, that in itself is a weapon. So I mean, it makes sense. You get to grab. [01:49:11] Speaker B: You kill a few people with that. [01:49:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Especially if you've got the, the L bracket on it. It's. Yeah, it's a beast. [01:49:18] Speaker A: It's a beast. It is a beast. Look, I think also. [01:49:25] Speaker B: Please, Jim, I wanted to say, like, your work around Sydney, for a place that's probably overly saturated photographically is. It's really remarkable, so. [01:49:37] Speaker C: Oh, thank you. [01:49:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think to see something different. [01:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty cool. [01:49:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:49:44] Speaker A: And to see that consistency of difference in your work too, you know, you don't see many people. We see lots of photos of Sydney Opera House and the bridge and, you know, all of that. [01:49:54] Speaker B: Lots of different. [01:49:57] Speaker A: But your stuff certainly stands out from the crowd and I think that's something you should be really proud of and something you should definitely continue to lean into because it's those points of differentiation that actually make us creative. You Know, and I know that you said yourself that you're more of a [01:50:10] Speaker B: numbers guy, so just continue not being creative. [01:50:14] Speaker A: Yeah, Just. Yeah, there's no creek. No, but I. I think that I. I think that there is creativity in your work, and I think those Sydney shots exemplify that because you were doing something different to the pack, and that's often where creativity stands out and lives. And I think that, you know, you should. You should take the credit for that, for that output. And it's. It's phenomenal work. And, you know, I think what's really amazing is that sometimes we talk to photographers that, you know, have stuck with one genre their whole career, the whole creative pursuit, or they might have dabbled a little bit, but really that, you know, this is their line, they're going to stay in that lane. But what we've seen from you today is a very clear example and a successful example of someone who's elevated the things that they love shooting by taking the time, investing time in photographing other genres and learning about their craft in its entirety. Not just. This is how I do this particular type of shot. And I think you should be, you know, you should be applauded for that approach because I think it shows, especially in these. These night sky shots that you're producing. You know, when I first saw the moon with the iss, I've been really fascinated with the. The space stuff, especially since the Artemis project started. It's kind of reinvigorated that. That love of space adventure that I had when, during the space shuttle days, which is what I grew up with, you know, and I think this sort of stuff really stands out because we are learning more about the universe and its vastness and our, you know, isolation in it. And this sort of. This sort of work really exemplifies that. So I think, you know, on behalf of the community here and us here at the Camera Live podcast and Lucky Straps, who is today's sponsor, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your journey. And, you know, you come across as quite a humble person, but you have a huge amount to offer in terms of visual narration of what we see and do. So thank you so much. [01:52:12] Speaker C: My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. [01:52:15] Speaker A: No problems at all. Now, quick question, folks looking for you online on socials. Where's the best place for them to go? [01:52:24] Speaker C: Probably Instagram at the moment. Matt Hudson photo should be pretty easy to tell. You've got the right one. There's a whole lot of moon stuff that's really the best place to find me. [01:52:33] Speaker A: Just look for Sydney and Moon and you'll find him. And there was another question I wanted to throw at you. Oh, yeah. So now that you've had your camera life experience and if you were to recommend another photographer who you think has a story that is also worth sharing, who would you tap on the shoulder? [01:52:53] Speaker C: I'll go full nepotism. You should tap my sister on the shoulder. Elise Hudson. She's doing a lot of great photography work at the moment with the wheelchair disability sports over in Perth. Oh, wow. [01:53:05] Speaker A: Okay. [01:53:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And if, you know, if anyone's paying attention to the Commonwealth Games, a few of the people that you know, she's friends with, that she's photographed over there with the, with the team at the moment. But yeah, she'd be. You really should have a chat to her especially about the work she's doing there to bring light to a sort of lesser known sport. [01:53:25] Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. I'll reach out to her and we'll try and get her on this show. It is interesting that you bring up the Commonwealth Games because typically when there's Olympics on, well, my social media feeds become flooded with sports photography because I mostly just look at photography stuff on Insta. But the only stuff I've seen, I've seen a couple of clips from the, from the Games. The Commonwealth Games. But the mostly I've been seeing stuff. Was it Bendigo that was supposed to host the Games, but it was canceled? [01:53:52] Speaker C: I believe so, yeah. Regional Victoria. [01:53:54] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just politicians and, and the like from, from Regional Victoria complaining about, well, the Commonwealth Game should have been here. That's all I've been seeing. I didn't even know the Games were on until I came across this content. So you're right, it does deserve more like light and it certainly should be something that more people are taking notice of, especially in the times that we're living in these days. But on that note, folks, thank you to everyone who has watched today's episode of the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. That's right, we're Lucky Straps as well. If you're looking for a handmade premium leather camera strap that will probably outlive you, it will definitely outlive your camera and it will probably even outlive you. Then head to Luckystraps.com we make handmade, handcrafted leather camera straps in Bendigo, Victoria. And we make them for every, pretty much every camera that's on the market, old and new. And if you use code, Jim, I'll give you A shout out there, Jim. If you are purchasing any of the Lucky Straps products from our website, use code. Jim. You'll get yourself a healthy little discount and Jim will be one step closer to winning the. I don't know. Supposedly Justin says that we're. He'll. He'll take us to Japan. [01:55:06] Speaker B: I think he's winning, so he might just take himself to Japan. [01:55:09] Speaker A: That's more likely. [01:55:11] Speaker B: Yep. [01:55:12] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's disgusting behavior. We'll have words with him when he gets back, folks. Don't you worry. But on that note, everyone, thank you so much for watching the Camera Live podcast. We'll see you Monday evening. Jim's going to be returning again along with Lucinda Goodwin. Uh, we're going to catch up on everything that Jim has been up to because he's. He's been a bit quiet lately and he's been a busy boy. So we'll get an update from Jim, we'll catch up with Lucinda, and of course, we'll look at your images. So don't forget to send in your images, one or two or a short series of images, along with your camera settings, the gear you used, and just a couple of sentences about your experience in capturing that particular frame. Send it to justinuckystraps.com and Monday evening, we will bring up images and talk to them with our amazing group of hosts. So, Matt, thank you once again. We look forward to seeing what's. What's ahead for you, and we wish you all the very best, and we will. [01:56:04] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you. [01:56:05] Speaker A: All right, guys, everyone out there, be safe, and we will see you Monday evening. All right, thanks, Jim, too, for showing up. Really good of you. All right, guys, see ya. [01:56:16] Speaker C: See, Yeah.