Brian Carr | Backstage Stories from 50+ Years of Live Music (EP186)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: There we go. Well, g' day everybody and welcome back to the Camera Life podcast. It is, is a drizzly Thursday morning here, 28th of May, and we are joined today by a career photographer. Some may call him photography royalty. He's certainly got a lot of, a lot of interesting stories to tell and a lot of amazing, amazing images to ponder. So we're joined by music and commercial photographer Brian Carr, author of Music City, which was a book that you published not so long ago about the, the Melbourne music scene and the Australian music scene. And we're certainly going to get to that in just a moment. But welcome to the show, Brian. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Thanks, Greg, and thank you for having me on. Pleasure. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Oh, no, the pleasure is all ours. We were chatting about a few things just before we went live, folks, so we, we, we got lost in conversation so we were a couple of minutes late. I do apologize. But we're gonna, we're gonna retrace our steps and have that conversation a little later on this morning with Brian. Just before we get started, let me just say hello to the people that have shown up in the chat so far. Who we got? We've got Philip Johnson's Good morning all from a chilly and wet Blue mountains. Yeah, it's a bit of a. The whole east coast I think is a bit drizzly. Lisa Leach, Good morning. Fabulous foggy morning here in the high country. Just warming up with a cuppa and my favorite podcast after a dawn wander with my camera. Love it. And Lisa, congratulations once again. You have now had your second article published in a magazine. You are now beating me by one. Exactly. So I look forward to catching up to you. Julie Powell, photos. Morning, Julie. Great to see you. Lovely Philip to say Good morning, Julie and Lisa, We've got some goose from lucky camera straps. I think that might be a scam account, but morning guys. I'm actually looking forward to getting home soon to some chilly Australian mornings. Yeah, it's not too bad. It's not too bad. Rodney Nicholson's in the, in the chat. Morning all. There's another career photographer with 50 plus years under his belt, Stuart Lyle. G', day, Stuart. Morning all. Foggy here in Hobart as well. Foggy rainy music Melbourne. Yes, indeed. And Greg's Greg Stubbins. G', day everyone. Hope you're all well. G', day, Greg. Thank you to everyone who's joined us this morning. I know that I'm sure some of you are hiding in the, in the, in the toilets at work watching us live right now on your phone. So we appreciate your dedication and service. Okay, Brian, let's, let's talk about you. I wanted to sort of launch with a question about the Australian as particularly the Melbourne music scene. I've lived in Melbourne all my life and I've enjoyed, as have my, my family and, and friends, many, many amazing concerts. I think the highlight for me was Aerosmith. I saw Aerosmith at the old tennis center a very long time ago and I think that was my first live stadium size sort of music scene. Music's very important to Melbourne. Obviously. We've had a long and proud history of musicians here and you've documented most of them over that sort of 50, 60 year period. As a photographer, what have you seen in the industry throughout those decades that has either impacted you positively or negatively? You know, changing, changing scenes in the music industry and trying to document those. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Oh, well, you're right, it has been a long time. But I've been a music fan since I was a kid and grew up in Ipsland and we used to listen to the radio and rave it on every night. And I can remember the music before rock and roll came and it was, you know, Gary Comer and Big Martin and Crosby and Frank Art and all that sort of stuff. And one night I, I heard Elvis. Oh, no, it was Bill Haley, quite honest. Bill Haley. [00:04:36] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah, and it came over and I think it was rock around the clock. And I was absolutely dumbfounded as a kid. I couldn't understand what it was. I asked my older sister, what's that? She said, oh, it's called Buck and Roll. Anyway, wow. Had a, like a massive impact on me. And then, and then coming over the radio, apart from Bill Haley, there was the other sort of band I remember was pretty Bell and Bell Boys. And then of course Elvis came on and. Yeah, and it pretty much rocked my soft self, but you could only listen to it for perhaps half an hour a week. And that was all the, that was all the rock and roll shows that were on as I got older and music started. [00:05:34] Speaker A: Oh, hang on, just give me a second. I think we've lost your audio somehow. It just faded out at the end there. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, Brian, but that's all right. No, that's okay. You. Yep. [00:05:48] Speaker B: And then, and then I started hitchhiking down to the city from Gippsland to see Jazzly the people like, you know, Frank Trainor and Judy Jar and Judith Duron who was a gospel singer then before she joined the Secret. And she used to sing with Fang training out of the place member does. And then another story is when I started taking photographs. And I used to take a camera to me to a lot of the gigs. And initially I wanted to just record what I saw because I was impressed by it. But then I found that using a camera, I had a perfect excuse to get up close to the stage. People would see you with a camera and they'd part ways and you could ease your way through a crowd. And I liked getting close to the stage because you could pick up on what the musicians were talking about. You could see dropped drumsticks and broken guitar strings and drummers frowning at bass players because they were out of time and so on. [00:07:12] Speaker A: Oh, we've lost your audio again. Sorry. Sorry, guys. We'll get on to this in just a minute. Let me just see if I can fix this from here. Can I get you to do a sound check? Sorry, Brian. Oh, hang on. Your microphone has dropped out some reason. I think you've muted yourself, Brian. On the screen down the bottom, there's a little unmute mic icon with a line through it. [00:07:50] Speaker B: Okay, that better got you back. Yep. Thank you. There we go. I don't know what happened there. Yeah, okay. And that's right. And then I started to realize that I had quite a collection pictures. And as the years went by, the collection grew and grew. And of course, I started shooting in on film. And I used to shoot on film and then process it back in the lab and then hold it up and put on a light box, have a quick look, and then followed away in a book. And this collection just grew and grew and grew until I thought, yeah, there's some stuff there that never be repeated. As with all photography, once the name has been taken, that's it. [00:08:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:44] Speaker B: But then the idea for the book came along. But as to your original question, what's impressed me? I think hearing about a good gig that's coming to the city or hearing about a band that somebody's put me onto and then going and seeing it. And I often. Well, I've got a lot of friends in the music industry that I've made over the years. A lot of us were shooting them live. But then I started to get a lot of other people coming into the studio wanting publicity stuff and album covers and things like that. And I got to get a pretty wide circle of musician friends. [00:09:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:38] Speaker B: And to this day, some of them are like family. They're just to clarify it, I classify myself as a musician who can't sing a lick or play a note and hold a Tune, which is pretty sad. I had one shot of those. I was doing some photos for some assignment, and a friend of mine had a recording studio, and I said, do you mind if I come down and take some pictures? You're recording? No, no, not at all. But you can do something for me. Said, what's that? And he said, I'm recording a jingle and I want some vocal or want another voice, but fatten out the V a bit, just to give them a bit of. Because we only had another. Another singer there. [00:10:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:29] Speaker B: I said, what do you want me to do? And he said, oh, we'll just go into the booth and sing this. When I tell you, I'll cue you in. Anyway, I went in and had a shot, and the other fellow in there that was singing tapped on the microphone to my friend and said, mate, can you get him out of here? He's putting me off. And that was my musical career. Shot one. Go. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Dreams crushed. [00:10:58] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. So then I realized I was probably better off sticking to the camera, even though I dearly love music to this day, even though my hearing aids. Yeah. It doesn't quite sound the same, but it's. It just made a huge impression on me. [00:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And, you know, live music has a very different energy, doesn't it? [00:11:23] Speaker B: Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, you can. You. You get used to hearing music that the band or musicians recorded, and you think that's the only way it sounds. Then you go and see a live gig and you find they do it a totally different way. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:42] Speaker B: You know, which is one of the surprises, one of the lovely surprises from following music. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:50] Speaker B: And you often hear it and think, oh, my God, they're doing it wrong. But it's not. It's just another version. Version. Yeah. [00:11:58] Speaker A: And [00:12:00] Speaker B: I love the joy on musicians faces when they connect with each other and they. They speak a language that I can sort of understand, but I can't speak or say. They, you know, they. They talk through their instruments, through their melodies, through their harmonies, rhythms and all that. And I just love it. Yep. [00:12:21] Speaker A: It's interesting because I remember I've always been a big REM fan, and rem, for those who don't know, is a probably an American, maybe folk rock band. They were quite big in the 90s. They did very well there. And just. Just that surprise and delight hearing Michael Stipes sing one of my favorite songs in a completely different way live. Yeah, it is. It's very magical. And it just. You know, I'm getting goosebumps now thinking about those moments. And I'm sure you, you've had plenty. Brian, let's roll back the clock a little bit. You talked about going to gigs and taking your camera. When did the camera and how. What was the inspiration to pick up a camera in the first place, do you think? Oh, when did that happen for you? [00:13:10] Speaker B: Okay. Well, I grew up in photographic family. My mother was a photographer, albeit in the amateur ranks. She was, she was pretty high up in the aps. She. I grew up with, you know, podochrome around the house and little yellow packets being delivered by mail and my mother spending most of her time over a light box. And I also had an uncle her married my mother's sister. He was an American marine and he was combat photographer during the war. And he. After the war, well, he was at. He was a Guadal Canal legend. Actually. There was a book written about him. He went, he went back home to the US and worked for Walt Disney as a documentary tulip. Oh, wow. Then in the 50s, in the late 50s, they moved to Australia and came to live at our place in Gippsland until they found somewhere for themselves to live. And as a kid I used to hear him telling me stories. He had two sons of his own, but they were quite young at the time and you know, they weren't conversational. I was actually sitting there listening to him and he'd tell me all these stories about his exploits during the war and Cameron and his talk was all about documentary filmmaking and all that. So I sort of, sort of grew up with that around me but had no thoughts of getting involved. And after school I left school and had various jobs in a bank and public service and driving cabs and builders, laborers and all that sort of stuff. And I had a, a friend from school who was working on the local paper as a photographer and he left there and joined the Air Force to become a photographer. Anyway, I was on a, I was on a, a scuba driving trip with him one day and he said, we were talking about work and he said, oh look, he said, I have a, you know, that's pretty good. I have a good life in the Air Force as a photographer. He said, give it a try. I started thinking about it and at that particular time in the late mid to late 60s, the only way you could become a photographer was either, I mean, apart from being self taught, but you could go to rmit, which was pretty expensive, or you could do something like I did, which was join the Air Force and learn. They had a fabulous course up at Sale and anyway, this friend of mine said, oh look, if you like, I'll have a chat to my CEO and if we can get you in. Which you did. And I did. And. And I got to tell you this story for camera lover. I'd had a. Prior to joining the Air Force, I'd had a little, I think it was a Kodak star flash with a little plastic camera that you could film in. And I've taken a few pictures and I like the idea of it, but after I was on the Air Force and went on photo course, we went up into this shed at the Basin sale where they used to run the course. And one of the guys in the shed said, oh, here mate, sign here. And I signed this bit of paper. And he pushed over a Linhof case and inside it was Linhof Technique five with three lenses and cams and the whole lot. Wow. And then you moved up one and sign here. And you pushed over a case with a Mamiya C330 outfit in it again, three lenses, the case and the body. And then you went on to another that moved up a little bit further and they gave you a Nikon F outfit again in the case of three lenses. So you had those three cameras for the course, large format C330, 120 size and the Nikon 35. And the same guy said, said to me, he said, look, there's a shed over there with more film in it than you'll ever see in your life. He said, it's your duty to use as much of that as possibly can while you're on this book. And the reason was, they said, we find that, we've found that you only improve if you take pictures. You only take pictures by using film. And that's why you've got to use absolutely as much film as possible. The course had. They used to bring in mathematicians to teach us optics and optical physics, which revolved about around lenses. They used to bring in chemists and teach us about processing, development. All the rest of was a pretty intense course in that every Friday you had an exam what you'd learned through the week and if you copped two failures in a row, you were thrown off the course and you had to go back to being a general hand or mowing lawns and washing dishes the next. So there was a bit of incentive to do it. But like it was, it was an incredibly technical course. I've still got this head full of knowledge about photographic chemistry and optics that probably never use again. But I must admit it was the only Thing they didn't teach us was anything about the art side of it. And I queried one of the lecturers, one of the lectures up there once, I said, why don't you teach us anything about, you know, apart from basic composition and the rule of thirds. Why don't you teach us anything about, you know, the old photographers? He looked at me and he said, son, we want to know what you're coming back with before we send you out. So. Well, that's, you know, that was fairly reasonable that there was. In that course. There wasn't much room for. Yeah, but overall was a great book. [00:20:02] Speaker A: And these days, do you, do you think that looking back, that you have adopted that, that art element in your own way? [00:20:11] Speaker B: Look, I think so. I ended up. Once I. Once I left here, six years, I went to rmit, and even though, I mean, RMIT was known as place where commercial went, whereas somewhere like grand was where the art photographers and the documentary shooters went. Yeah, but look, I still think of those principles every now and again. But of course, you know, digital to me was an absolute revelation. [00:20:58] Speaker A: I was going to ask you how you, how you went with that transition given, you know, you were using film for a very long time before the digital evolution. How did that go for you? [00:21:09] Speaker B: It was great. We used to, we used to go to all these incredible lengths in the dark room to try and get fine grain and, you know, we used to split developers and all sorts of techniques to try and to get contrast and grain in the same photo, fine grains. And I used to sit there thinking what it would be like if you had control over each individual silver halide in the film and thinking, wow, wouldn't that be fantastic? And then digital came and that's virtually what it was, was you have control over the people. And, you know, I can understand people today getting back into film. The romance of the dark room, which was quite a place. You'd lock yourself in, turn the music up and disappear for the day. Yeah. But now, but now, you know, with digital, you. You don't need safe lights, you. You don't need to put a filter on your camera changing daylight, which was quite a pain in those days. And you can just keep shooting as long as you like. Of course, the trade off is with film and you had to, you had to think of the cost of the film, the time processing, so you tended to think more about shots before you. Before you took them. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:48] Speaker B: Whereas now you can sort of take a shot and think, I'll worry about that later when I'm Processing it, but I'll get it. Better to have it not use it than want it not have it. Yeah. And so to me, digital is just like a breath of fresh air. Even though when I first started I got a Canon 1D and I think I paid the time about 13 grand for the 4 megapixel camera. [00:23:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:21] Speaker B: But that 4 megapixel camera got work up on Billboard. So it wasn't like a. Wasn't like a real problem that it was such a small file size. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:33] Speaker B: You could still, you could still get results with it. But yeah, I've still got the camera down there and you know, you look at the price, I would think. Yeah. I don't know whether I play that sort of day now, but no, it was, it was, I thought it was fantastic digital. But as I say, I do see the. I do see the idea of people and film as, you know, as being manufactured again. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:05] Speaker B: When we were on photo calls from the Air Force, we went on tours of the factory in Melbourne and the Kodak factory and it was. The size of the industry then was just massive. Kodak is almost a village out there in Co Vertical. [00:24:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. I didn't realize they were up there. [00:24:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's even a road there called Kodak Way or Kodak Street. Oh, wow. Runs off Bell Street. Yeah. But they used to, they used to cope film there. They used to, used to receive huge long rolls of film from overseas, from Eastern in the US and split it up into different sizes and roll it. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:53] Speaker B: Put it into canisters and you know, onto real. But yeah, it was. Well, just for example, back when I was in the Air Force, I was based at Laverton and there was a unit there called cpa which was photographic establishment and there were a hundred photographers in it. We did everything there from general purpose things like filming parades and visiting dignitaries and aircraft. And then we had another place which was dedicated to aerial photography. And at the time the Air Force was involved in mapping New guinea and that consisted of flying missions over New guinea and photographing the ground. But there was a problem and there was so much cloud there that you rarely got a day when you could actually all of the land. And the other problem was that because of the mountainous country there, an aircraft flying would often lose flight like a few seconds. It might drop 2 or 300 foot. [00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:10] Speaker B: And the film, the film we were using there was like 500 foot rolls and it was. I think it was 10 inches by 10 inches. That was the negative side. [00:26:25] Speaker A: Oh, wow. That's amazing. [00:26:27] Speaker B: And it was. And they had to. We'd have to do maybe get request print from maybe 100 prints of each negative. And there were. It could be 500 negs on a roll or 500 roll. And each one would have to be shaded because of the impact of the sun caused a hot spot in the middle of the film. They all have to be shaded so they're even. And the end result of these was that air photo plotters could put them together and come up with maps, aerial maps of the area and of course catalog. But that was. We had. We developed techniques for processing those films which you could process 100, develop 100 prints at a time. You know they were deep tanks filled with decal and sort of those chemicals. And you have one person who was developing and it was their job put all the prints in the developer and then rotate them through and until they were. And they all had to match. So at the end of the roll of film print had to match out of the roll of film print. And then there was a person standing next to the developer who was called the splasher. And it was their job push the prints into the shop bar to the acidic acid and then rotate them through and then put them into the fix. And then there was another person's job was a splasher who was. Who used to rotate all the prints through the fixer and then go and put them into an automatic washing machine. And they all had hand dried on a glazer. But it was pretty massive. We had. We had print runs of 500000 prints. [00:28:33] Speaker A: Oh gosh. [00:28:35] Speaker B: And they might have to work around the clock to get them out by a certain time. But yeah. And the amount of chemicals paper we went through was just. [00:28:48] Speaker A: They're staggering, mind blowing. Let me just jump into the. Into the chat very quickly. Just want to catch up on a couple of comments. First of which Rodney Nicholson said. Love this story, Brian. David Leporardi who also did some photography work over the years for the Defense Force of Australia said I agree with Brian. The RAAF photography course was a very intensive and technical and using a 4x5 Lindhof was used for every subject. And then Dennis Lights joined the chat. G' day Dan. Dennis Light. Dennis Smith from School of Light. Sorry mate. Morning you bunch of legends. Who else has jumped in? Phil Thompson's here. Morning all from Geelong. The sun has finally broken through here. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Well done. [00:29:40] Speaker A: And again, David Leporati, a 10 by 10 inch RC10 aerial camera. Is that what you guys were using up there? [00:29:50] Speaker B: We had quite a few different ones. Fairchild was another company that made aerial cameras. We had one that was. It was an 18 inch long negative. It was 18 by 10 and that was a fair child they had. There was probably about six or seven different format aerial cameras that were used. One was called Chesapeake or the Gunsight camera which was the pilot operated with a control in a cockpit. But that wasn't a. It wasn't a. Used very fast film and it was used for reference rather than for any sort of measurement work. What else was there? There was an F24 aerial camera which you could handhold. It had two massive grips on the side and like a sight that you lined it up through. [00:31:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:02] Speaker B: And a huge trigger on one hand. It was. It was designed to be operated. Love them. So you could. You could sit in the open door or say DC3 or something like that and, and pretty much take roll pictures on large format. But. But that was. Right. It did use 5, 4 for pretty much everything. 35 mil. We used to call it miniature film. [00:31:32] Speaker A: It would seem. It would seem that way after 18 by 10 inch film. [00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And. And even for the five, four we had. We had these Kodak build. It was in a thing called a film pack and there were. It was 5 by 4 inch and it was Triax and it was extra thin base which meant that it had a pretty low hog level. So you got good contrast out of it. And it was for, for Triax it was rel. Even though it was. It was. It was the same silver halide that was in normal Tria. When you printed it it came out very fine grain for tri. But there were 16 sheets in one of these packs which needed an adapter on the back of say a Linhof or whatever you were using. [00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:29] Speaker B: And they had little. They had. It was interleaved by sheets of paper. So you take a picture and you'd pull this, this sheet of paper on the film pack and that would bring the next sheet up for exposure in the camera. And I still got some neg from it in, in the files and I've been getting on the scanner and I find that they, they scan beautifully. They just you Know Cry and HP4 were the. Were pretty much the. The standard films were used in. In the Air Force for general purpose work. For aerial films there were things like Kodak Double Xero Graphic. I can't remember the other. The other films but we went through [00:33:23] Speaker A: a lot of films and so there were specialty films made for that purpose for shooting from a fast Moving plane documenting the land below. Were these cameras mounted to the plane or was it always handheld? [00:33:38] Speaker B: No, they were mounted. They were mounted to the plane and they used to. They had like a hole drilled through the body and the camera was mounted inside the fuselage. And they used to take a photographer up there to keep an eye on the camera and make sure all the settings were right and the exposure, of course. And there was. You could set it onto automatic so that it would take film every time designated so every, like, few seconds or. And there was a formula working out what height it should be flying at for what coverage you wanted on the ground. [00:34:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Would the speed of the, of the plane make an impact? [00:34:28] Speaker B: Not really, because you didn't need any depth of field at all. You worked on pretty much in those big lenses. F8 is about, about normal. But yeah, because you weren't looking for depth of field. You had a. And, and the, the lenses were designed as fairly flat field. They weren't, they weren't like, like modern cameras, like a, A curved field in front of the. Front of the. The photographer. Yeah, they were a flat field because you were. And you had a percentage of overlap which had to be worked out. I think it was a 30% natural overlap and, well, a 20% wide overlap. And that was because when you were putting the films together, once you process them and we used to make mosaics out of them, there were people called f photo plotters, and it was their job to work out where. Where it was taken on, say, a map for, say, New Guinea. You'd work out where in New guinea it was taken over, which range and flight path which would give you like a strip compared with the area. And they put those images together with the right amount of overlap and you could, you could. Look, [00:36:06] Speaker A: We've frozen, folks. Brian, if you can hear me, for some reason your video has frozen. I can't hear you anymore either. Bear with me, folks. Let's just see what's happened here. He's gone. We'll just give Brian a moment just to see if he returns. I'm not sure what has happened there, but the Internet may have dropped out at his end. Thank you to everyone who's. Who's watching live with us today apologize for the technical issues we've had this morning. Sometimes it just doesn't work, does it? But we. While we're here, good opportunity to remind you that today's episode of the Camera Life podcast featuring Brian Carr was proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps, which is us as well. We are Lucky Straps we are the Camera Live podcast. If you're on the hunt for the perfect camera strap that offers comfort, safety and a way to connect with your craft, then head to Luckystraps.com and if you use Code Greg, check out any of the Lucky Straps branded products. You'll get a cheeky little discount. So head over to Luckystraps.com and yeah, have a look at what we have on offer. But I think Brian has just returned, so let's jump back into the interview. Hello. [00:37:31] Speaker B: Hi Greg. Sorry, I think the, I think I had a crash here. [00:37:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's okay. No dramas at all. It happens. Fortunately, this is not my first rodeo, Brian. So not quite, not quite in panic mode. Fascinating hearing about that side of your work while you're with the Air Force. It's, you know, a lot of that stuff is stuff that we often don't hear about. You know, it's, it's done differently now I imagine, but. So for you, how long were you with the Air Force doing that role? [00:38:12] Speaker B: Well, I was with them for six years and that was from 69 to 75. And back in those days a lot of government departments had in house photography. There were literally, look, I went, I applied after I got out of there, I got a job in Department of Industrial Development and oh wow, the lands department had a photographer. I eventually ended up at Melbourne University in the science factory. After I left the airport there was a photographer there. Oh, I think there were. Melbourne Uni had something like photographers on the campus. All in different department. Yep. That, you know, with the introduction of digital and those sort of jobs sort of disappeared. But there, there was like, there was a lot of employment for photographers. So I went from, I went from the Air Force. Oh of course The Air Force 51, of course for the army and the navy. They all had too. [00:39:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:39:34] Speaker B: But I applied for, I was only, really only out of work. Weekend after, after I left the airport I got a job at Melbourne Uni working in the genetic department at the time. And then I went to the zoology department which was. Oh wow, that's great. But during that, that took me up into the 80s and I used to keep up with what was going on in the industry. I kept hearing all these stories what a great life commercial photography was. There was a lot of money, there was a lot of long lunches and making a rather insane decision. I left a well paid photographic job at the university to go freelancing to commercial. But unfortunately I'd missed the boat. Most of those good big paying jobs and Long lunches were over. There was a. The industry was becoming a bit more sensible. But I ended up sharing a studio in Collingwood with a friend who I'd met through the RMIT course. And I launched into this commercial work which I'd never really done. Everything on. Done up until that stage under the shelter of a yearly salary and somebody else buying cameras and film. [00:41:26] Speaker A: Yeah, there were no sheds full of. Full of film anymore. [00:41:31] Speaker B: I was faced with the reality that I had to buy my own cameras and watch what I shot. Yeah. But the upshot of it is I actually really love most work. I like the idea of having a. Having a photographic task in front of you and the collaborative efforts of other people, art directors and executives and all that, moving away and eventually coming up with the result that everyone satisfied with and getting paid for. But I do, I realize work you take commercially is not eternally lasting or quite ephemeral. You know, it lasts for the last project you're doing it for. Whereas say something like documentary photography, you're actually recording something that's never going to happen again and is there for posterity. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:42:36] Speaker B: And influences I had, you know. Well, I still love all the great documentary shooters, Son and Frank and Gibson and all those people and you know, I still think they're the. They're up on the top of the pile. I love looking at their work. I'm kind of. [00:43:00] Speaker A: Yep. Let me just jump in here quickly. Speaking of looking at people's work, great comment here from Dennis. I would highly recommend spending some time on Brian's website. The variety of work is amazing and the personal tab is fantastic. So I'm just gonna bring up your site just for a few moments and have a look at some of you, especially some of your commercial work. Obviously now you don't work alone under the Brian Carr photography banner, do you've? You've actually had someone under your wing for a couple of decades now. So your daughter. [00:43:36] Speaker B: My daughter Alice, who's. Who has become. Well, she came to work with and I've got to say it's been an absolute joy. She's a pleasure to work with. I don't think we've ever had a crossword. We might have had a round of each other over a few decisions, but a lot of the work you're seeing there is Alice's as well as mine. That particular one there, that's Alice the portrait shop. Yes. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:11] Speaker B: And she works for. She does work for. She's specializes in cars and people. I think she prefers cars because as she says, they don't talk back. [00:44:25] Speaker A: They do as they're told. Mostly just looking at some of these Mazda shots. Oh, there's a Porsche. So yeah, just Dennis. Dennis has a keen interest in cars and often will incorporate his. His light painting will incorporate vehicles both classic and new. It's quite mesmerizing to watch him work. But yeah, these are wonderful. These are really, really well refined like that. [00:44:56] Speaker B: We researched the location for that for quite some time. [00:45:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:01] Speaker B: And of course it was in the city so we had to do that. There was nobody there otherwise people walking past and me touching. There's huge amount goes into the, into the pre production of say a shot like that. And I mean that those shots are Alice specialists who just really work. And that one there for instance, we shot that up in a private property in New South Wales and we had a driver there for that car who was an ex British army tank driver. Anyway, we met on the site and I sort of said to the guy oh well what can you do in the car? And I said well he said well what do you want me to do? He said I can break it. I know we've got to drive it back to Sydney tonight, so please don't break it. I said we want to go, we want to splash the river. And he said okay. So we, we drove around the property looking for a little creek or cream and we found one and Alice and I said oh well what he reckon would go through there. And the driver said, he said how big do you want the splash? And I said, you know. [00:46:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:39] Speaker B: And he said okay, that'll be 30k. And he went across the other side and Alice and I both positioned ourselves. We were using hand. I think, I think we might have had 5.10 and we've got either side of the. Where he was going to come from. And sure enough, I think that was probably the first take and had an art director with us and he said yep, that's it. Thank you. We went on to the next one. [00:47:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's quite impressive. And I love. Also on your, on your website you've got a behind the scenes section which actually shows some of that car photography work. Like here. [00:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. [00:47:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:30] Speaker B: There was a lot went into those. Yeah. That was the CDK crew at the time and we. And in front of that there's a police car that's. Yeah. Clearing away in case cars coming around the other side. As you can imagine, the actual expense, the expense of shooting these cars is pretty amazing. [00:47:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:47:59] Speaker B: But that's why I say I really enjoy the collaborative process on a commercial shoot, it's. It, you know, but the side of, say, seeing six grown adults arguing over this, over the height of a froth on the cappuccino, you start to say, are we in the real world or not? Yeah, yeah. [00:48:28] Speaker A: Photography by committee. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. [00:48:34] Speaker A: And so obviously this. This commercial work, you know, after you'd finish with the military and you'd move forward this commute and you decided to. To go it alone, pretty much, like you said, abandon the comfort of a steady paycheck and. And step out on your own. Do you recall how long it took before you felt like, yeah, this is. I've got this now. I, you know, I've not mastered it necessarily, because I don't think anyone ever masters a creative craft truly fully, but where you feel satisfied and safe and secure in knowing that your work will meet the client's needs hands down, without hesitation. [00:49:15] Speaker B: Look, I don't think you quite ever get to that stage of feeling comfortable. We're still nervous if the phone doesn't ring and if we haven't got any jobs booked in. [00:49:32] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. [00:49:34] Speaker B: But in saying that before I went out on a job in the early days, I used to be really nervous whether I'd be able to get it, whether the things would fire against me or not. They don't. There are situations that arise that you just have no answer sometimes. But it's the fear of something going wrong, I think still causes sweaty palms when you go out on a commercial shoot because, you know, there's a bit of stake that people have given up time for it. People. Yeah. Be there on that day. You might have, like, you know, a makeup artist and a wardrobe, and you might have directors from the agencies. You've got an art director, and they're all expecting you to come up with the result. You're saying, what if my camera fails? What if my flash fails? What if this happens? What if that happens? But over the years, we find that on the balance of everything, it's going to work. Yeah, but you still. Still that little nagging tension that something might go wrong. [00:50:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that's healthy. I think that means. I think it shows that you care enough that you want to do the right thing, you want to do a great job, and you want to make the clients happy. You know, at the end of the day, they are your. They have become your, you know, irregular paycheck, so to speak. And. And also there's a. There's a lot of self pride in. In doing it. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Right, yes. Well, as a photographer, I guess I was fairly fortunate once I made that jump. As I said, I was sharing a studio in Collingwood and one of the other photographers I was sharing with asked me to fill in on a shoot one day that he couldn't do. You go and do this group for me. I said, what is it? He said, oh, it's a catalog shooting for Billy Guys, which was electrical. They used to do, like, bedding and electricals. [00:51:49] Speaker A: And I remember vaguely. [00:51:52] Speaker B: And they used to put out two catalogs a month. And catalog work was pretty lucrative. There was a fair bit of it and there was, you know, they paid reasonably well. Anyway, I said, oh, you've got to go down and meet that the art director who's putting it together. And so I did. And Billy Guys had a studio and a platform which was massive. It had room sets and outdoor sets. And anyway, I sort of went into this. I've never done it before, and I. And I got through that. Look, the person who was putting the catalog together said to me, oh, look, you want to move into my studio, South Melbourne? So I got, you know, dark room. I've got a psych. I've got light. He said, you can. You don't have to pay rent. Wow. And as long as you do my catalog and you'll get paid for them. I said, yeah, okay. So I did that. Went. Moved out of Collingwood and went down to South Melbourne and. Oh, it was pretty good, you know, he had this terrific dark room with. Had a. Like a Negro where you processed an egg with a nitrogen burst agitation system built in. There was like a trimming and potting area. There was. And then there was a reasonably dark room there. I think I brought my enlarger down from Pinewood, but. And I was in there for quite a while there about 13 years. [00:53:41] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Wow. [00:53:42] Speaker B: And the fellow that owned it was as a character, and he ended up going to jail, fraud the government and ended up. And I ended up getting the studio almost by default. [00:54:02] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Yeah. [00:54:03] Speaker B: He said, look, will you take over? And so I ended up taking over. And. And interestingly enough, just before. Just before I did. Excuse me just a minute. No, you're right. Just before. Just before I took. I took it over, I had a phone call from a friend of mine, a very dear friend who was my lecturer at rmit. And he rang me up and he said, look, mate, I was wondering if you were interested in sharing a studio with me. And I said, hell, yeah. You know, he was great photographer and dear friend. And I Said, yes. And he said, well, I'm going to go and have a look at a couple tomorrow. And I said, don't bother, I've already got one. And anyway, he came down and moved in and it was like. It was, you know, having like electorate in the studio with you. [00:55:17] Speaker A: No pressure. No pressure. [00:55:20] Speaker B: That's right. To solve all these photographic problems. And Brian had. He had a photo agent called Grace Southern Scott. He used to get images and, and lease them out to, you know, know, book publishers and anyone who needed an image and that provided, you know, work for everybody. And eventually another photographer, another photographer, Jamie Mercier, who now unfortunately passed. He moved into the studio. There were another friend, but the person I've been sharing in Collingwood with came over to South Melbourne too. So there were four photographers working out of the studio in York Street. It was a great time. Like, you know, everyone had a job on, you know, some. The toing and frying, going between different jobs. I was shooting a lot of music stuff then I had a lot of musicians coming in, mostly after hours. Yep. They're normal by hour. And it was, it was. Even though money was still tight, we used to, we were still looking for checks whenever we could. It got to the stage where we. We'd follow the postman up the road. [00:56:52] Speaker A: Anything for us? [00:56:54] Speaker B: Anything for 19 yards route. I was just passing by and I thought I'd ask. We could, if it was further upon in South Melbourne, we could ring up and say, eagle has landed, we're safe, pay the rent. And, you know, I had three young children at the time and, you know, we were pretty desperate to survive. There was an old saying, you never undercut another photographer. And my attitude was, look, I'll do anything I can to put food on the table. Yeah. And if it means undercutting another photographer, so be it, because, you know. But we'd get a request, I'd get a request from an ad agency and they'd send me a rough I downloadable they've got from a. From a stock agency and it'd be an image that they played this and they'd say, can you do this for less than 400 bucks? And look at it. Yep, no problem. Might be 350. It might be 300, but I'll. I'll do it. And you just work and work until you got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Like you said, responsibilities, you know, responsibilities are. They're real. Those things don't get put on hold, especially looking after family, looking after your kids and feeding them and keeping them warm and all those Things have to take place of importance with running a studio with other photographers around you. What was the biggest benefit of having that small community, that small tight knit group around you at all times? [00:58:49] Speaker B: Look, I think, I think the benefit was problem solving. You, you know, you, you'd get a photographic problem and how the heck do we do this? And someone will say what about if you tried this? And so I think it was having those four different aspects of photography that you could, you could try. [00:59:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:19] Speaker B: And not only that, having another photographer there, there was someone to cover you if you double book. [00:59:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:59:27] Speaker B: There's always somebody looking. You go out and do this, you can have the money, but a lot of people follow and plus the camaraderie of having people there that spoke the same language, understood the same problems. Yeah. And just the, you know, the, the joy of having people around you that were like minded. [00:59:55] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Do you think that's something that that current day photographers are missing out on? Do you think? We, we all tend to be lone wolves in a lot of way. I know that some professional commercial photographers will have teams, but there are plenty out there who don't. Do you think that that's a disadvantage? [01:00:10] Speaker B: Look, I think so. I know I was also involved with Andrew Tapman, you might recall, in a group called map, which was many Australian photographers. And part of the beauty of being in a group is again that sharing of photographic issues and photographic themes and aspects and influences. And I think the collective something like MAP took the place of being in a combined studio situation. Yeah. On a, on a larger scale. Because people involved. Yes. You know, there's a few different, those different organ. Well, going right back to what I initially said when you asked about influence with my mother. She had a group that would be back in the 60s and 70s where they'd all shoot on live film and they'd get perhaps a group of a 10 people might be within the, in the camera club or number of different camera clubs and they'd send around to each other like a box of slides and by mail. So to go in the mail, people would get the slides and they'd put them on their projector, have a look at them and then they protect them and write down oh wow. And then package up that paper and the slides and send them off to the next person and they collaborated that way on their images. [01:02:00] Speaker A: That's fascinating, isn't it? [01:02:02] Speaker B: It was, it was a long process because you can imagine the post involved and then person getting time to do them and then making a critique. [01:02:12] Speaker A: It's like old school. It's like old school sending out an email, isn't it? Here's my images. What do you think? Yeah, crazy. [01:02:20] Speaker B: And. But you know, the beauty of being in say, group studio, you could share it instantly. [01:02:29] Speaker A: Sorry, say that again. [01:02:32] Speaker B: You could share it instantly, being in a group in the studio. [01:02:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:37] Speaker B: What do you think of this? And they say, oh, rubbish. Really good. [01:02:42] Speaker A: Yeah. You mentioned that you were shooting a lot of music at that stage. Let's talk about your work in. In, you know, the music scene in Melbourne especially, you know, you obviously have taken countless images of performers, concerts, music events, all those sorts of things. At what point did you. Did you decide that actually, you know, you're going to turn this into a book which, which we now have today, which is Music City. What was the process behind that like for you? Because I know a lot of photographers that dream of, you know, creating a photo book at some point. It's kind of one of those things, you know, create a photo book, hold an exhibition, those sort of, you know, tick boxes that we'd like to strive towards. Yeah. What was that like for you? [01:03:35] Speaker B: Oh, well, as I mentioned, I got to the stage where I had quite a collection of images in piles. They were mostly on Meg. I think I switched to digital a bit later, but I had a. Had a bit of a health care back in the early 2000s. Heart issue. I ended up having to get [01:04:13] Speaker A: a [01:04:13] Speaker B: new half valve put in. [01:04:15] Speaker A: And anyway, just some small maintenance then. [01:04:19] Speaker B: Yes, yes to the mechanic. And anyway, it was during that time and I thought, you know, you're sort of lying in bed contemplating immortality. And I thought, what's going to happen to all those pictures of the band? I kept thinking, there's some. There's. And shooting them I used to concentrate on. I wasn't chasing Pansy Clancy. I thought there was, you know, plenty of those already done that level of commercial musician. And I'd gone after the sort of smaller ones that musicians that had had to work, you know, three gigs a week to survive. And I really enjoyed them. And I thought, just not many people have done that. Not many people have documented it. It's an area that should be saved. And that was when I thought that there might be a book in it. And so I started along those lines. I think. I think I made a copy behind Blurb for myself that I wasn't a designer. [01:05:49] Speaker A: I found your blurb copy online and [01:05:52] Speaker B: there was a lot more to it than just sticking a picture on a page and a title under it. Yeah. And so then It. Well. And through commercial work, I was. I was lucky to be embedded in an ad agent. One of the. One of my clients asked me if I wanted to share some space in there in their studio. Again, I've kind of places to do our work first, and you can be there rent free. And through that, I got to know a lot of designers and people who knew how to do these things properly. One of the designers, one of the art directors gave me a lot of help putting the book together again. I did it through. I did his design through Blur and got a copy back. And I thought, well, doesn't look bad. Then of course, you got it done it printed with another issue again. [01:07:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:05] Speaker B: But I think it was that period. And I've got to say that doing the book, I don't know how many. I don't know how many times I agonized over which picture to put in. Because you can imagine you go to a gig and you shoot a roll of film or half a roll of film. So there's. There's a lot of different images from that. [01:07:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:31] Speaker B: And you start to look at which ones will I put in. And, you know, you put one in and then you think about it at night when you're in bed and think, no, that's the reason. Wrong image. Go back and put the other one in. And so I think that going backwards and forwards through all that was hard to say what took longest, getting the pixel, putting the book together. And that was purely my indecision. Wasn't. You know, I'm sure somebody who can come to a decision a lot quicker than me could have done it. [01:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah. We've interviewed other guests, other photographers who, you know, Andrew Chapman, he's done countless books now, but lots of photographers seem to have a very similar tale of that indecision and that almost that you hit a roadblock because you just can't make a choice between these two images. And. And I think as the. As the creator, as the visual artist, that that was in that moment was at that was having that experience and captured it to document it for later. It can be hard to let go of that sometimes, you know, And I think that's where a book designer, you know, a book designer, where you give them license to be brutal and honest, obviously makes a bit of a difference. [01:08:48] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. And I've also got to say that the influence on Merciful has left me with this odd situation. Sometimes people say to me, what's your favorite photograph? And I'll be honest, I have no Idea. I usually wait for an art director who told me which is the best one. And I think the reason for that is you put so much into. When you're shooting something and you take a picture of it and you think, oh, maybe if I move around there, maybe if that light's over there, just so you, you change that, you do another shot, they all become sort of equal to you. And then when you see them, when you see them up, say on a screen or on a light pocket and they're all laid out and you trying to work out which one to use, it's the. You think, oh, I like that one because of that. And I like that one because of that. And yeah, it's really difficult to make a decision. And quite often if you've got someone that's paid to do it, like, you know, an art director and they say that's the one. You say, yeah, well, just. You're absolutely right, that is the one. But when you have to do it yourself between children. [01:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it can be. It can be. And do you think that all that agonizing, specifically in relation to your book Music City, are you satisfied with the outcome and has it been the success you hoped it would? [01:10:29] Speaker B: Look, yes and no. It's. Book publishing is not for the faint hearted. Self publishing not for the faint hearted. I'm happy every now and again I'll look through it and I'll say, oh gee, it was. I had a different shot than that, but not necessarily better, but different. Yeah, yeah, look, I'm pretty happy with the images that went in. I wish I'd known a little more about the process before I started. But it. A giant learning curve that you have to do on your own. [01:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:13] Speaker B: But yeah, look, overall, you know, I'll see an image that somebody's taken of someone and I say, oh yeah, that's great. I've got one that I think almost good. But no, look, in answer to that, I'm pretty happy overall with the collection of images. I changed it that many times. The person who helped me put it together, I'm sure got absolutely sick of an email saying, Andrew, I've just another book thought. And, and he, you know, he said, all right, I'll swap that one for you. And but then realized that he might have also alter the index and the name in it. I mean it look, even to be, to be honest, getting things like dates was a problem. [01:12:21] Speaker A: Getting. Sorry I missed that bit. [01:12:23] Speaker B: Date. [01:12:24] Speaker A: Oh, dates of. [01:12:26] Speaker B: I wanted to have like a location and date on every picture. [01:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:31] Speaker B: And some of them. Stupidly. I ignored all the, all the training and advice I was given in the Air Force, which we were told to, you know, write on the negative the number, the place and the date. [01:12:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:45] Speaker B: Everything I failed to do. So when I was shooting bands, develop the roll of film, put them in a plastic neck bag and write on the top the name of the band. And that was it. [01:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah. And how did that go for you? Tried to recall shots from 50 years ago. [01:13:06] Speaker B: Well, what happened? Sometimes I'd get to a point where I have no idea about this and I'd get in touch with somebody I knew in the band and say, do you remember when this was done taken? They'd say, you know, maybe then maybe this. And I said, well, I've got it down. Do you disagree with that? They say, no, that sounds good to me. I think if they didn't know and I didn't know, couldn't be. It couldn't be faulted. Yeah, yeah. And you know, even during the book, things like spelling, spelling everyone's name right was what? Yeah, absolutely. Well, of course I didn't know I had done. But the book designer did that. [01:13:54] Speaker A: And you know, Music City is, is a good sized book. It's. Let me just have a look here. It's 232 pages of which 188 images, and it's available for sale from your website. Given your experience with creating, you know, a record of the Melbourne music scene in a book form, what would be your advice to maybe younger photographers or anyone that's really considering creating, curating a collection of images and maybe going to blurb and, and self publishing a small book, maybe even just for their own sake, what would, what would your best advice be for them? [01:14:36] Speaker B: Look, my advice to them would be do it. If you do it on a scale that's not going to like financially hurt you, you know, you can make, you can do a blurb book for quite a reasonable price. And I'm sure there's other people. Was the only one that I've ever used, but. And they often have 50% discounts. [01:15:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I've used it for a couple of just personal books too, but always wait for a sale. I know we've lost you again. Brian, you still there? If you can hear me, you're frozen. And I might have also lost your audio. Just pop you out for a sec. While we're waiting for Brian's Internet to catch up, there's a couple more comments in here. Oh, yes. Okay, let's go back here. Lisa Leach has Wished Dennis a happy birthday. It was Dennis Smith's birthday yesterday. I had a little chat with him in the morning. He was looking forward to a productive day and yeah, it was all always lovely to catch up with him. Speak of the devil. Dennis Smith. Thanks mate, it was beautiful. In reply to Lisa's birthday wish, Stuart Lyle has, has joined the chat. Amazing work. And 100 agree. And then we've got. Is it JC Orange? Hey, all from Perth. G'. [01:16:13] Speaker B: Day. [01:16:13] Speaker A: What time would it be there now? 7 8. I always get it wrong. Julie Powell has jumped in with the behind the scenes shots. Fabulous. And I agree I spent a lot of time yesterday looking at those behind the scene photos. So it was. I love that it's on the website which is great. Rodney Nicholson loving this old guys rule. Yes you do my friend. You know it's quite a unique club of, you know, people that have been in this industry for over 50 years and Dennis has said had to go into an edit. Definitely coming back to hear Brian's feelings about AI in commercial photography and thank you for your time including Lavender's joined us from Creative Photos. [01:16:55] Speaker B: G' day mate. [01:16:56] Speaker A: Great to have you on board. Dennis raised a question about, you know, about AI in photography and it's obviously a very hot topic at the moment because businesses seem to think if you slap the word AI onto a product or a, or a piece of software or whatever it may be that it is deserving of praise and adulation. But what are your thoughts about the introduction of AI into photography? You endured from the jump from film to digital. In fact you seem to really love that process of being able to finally manipulate images. What's your view on the advent of AI? [01:17:42] Speaker B: I suppose in one way I'm a little bit scared of it. In another way I've only haven't actually created anything purely with AI, but I have used some of the features in Photoshop. Basic ones like content aware, deletion of stuff and look that side of it. I thought fantastic. Prior to it used to go around and circle things and put a plate on it and then delete it and then try and fill it in. And the first time I ever used that Content aware I think quite impressed. But having seen, you know, I can remember that recent issue where somebody entered a photo contest purely AI generated image and one which I thought was that's you know, pretty scary from. Yeah. Photographer's point of view. Yeah but and, and you wouldn't countenance any aspect of it with a documentary shooting because then it destroys the whole documentary Aspect of it. [01:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah, so loses credibility. [01:19:05] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. And, and I don't think there's any way you can force people to designate something as AI generated. I guess it would be nice if there was, if there was some sort of software developed that could protect AI in an image. But I don't happen, I don't know, not technical enough. But it would be nice to know that there's some sort of safeguard over that. [01:19:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that word safeguard is probably my biggest concern about the introduction of AI into photography, about safeguarding the authenticity of a creator's work on Monday night, because we do a Monday night show where we talk about photography news and things like that. We talked about how someone who owns a gallery, runs a gallery, actually used an AI prompt to pretty much create an exact replica of one of Ansel Adams images, but in color. You know, one of, I think it was moonrise. Anyway, so it was one of his landscape shots, probably Yosemite or something like that. And this gallery, this gallery owner defended his actions for using an AI prompt, according to him, to reproduce a like, for like image, but in color. And of course the Ansel Adams Trust, as well as a lot of photographers, you know, very high level names came out in, in defense of the Ansel Adams Trust, saying this is, this is a clear breach of, you know, of copyright, of our moral obligations towards one another. But yeah, this person put this image up for sale from his gallery. So it's an interesting time. And I think that safeguard feature, often with things like this, I have gotten to an age where I just think everything's, you know, we blame the government for everything. And you know, I just, it's rushing ahead at a pace and no one's regulating it, no one's, no one's keeping it honest, you know, and there's been cases where AI image creation tools have been used nefariously. You know, there was a case here in Melbourne last year or the year before. You know, senior students at a high school created deep fake porn images and videos of teachers and female students. And I think they were expelled or something quite serious. And it's, it's that side of it where companies are coming out with these products that are unchecked. And I think that's my biggest concern with it. And like, you know, the only AI I use for images is for noise reduction when I've shot in especially low light. And I'm not happy with the, you know, the quality of the grain or the detail. That's about the only time I'LL use AI for something, but my editing processes are very, very minimal. You know, I'm a street photographer, not a commercial photographer, so it's a bit different. Yeah, it's interesting times. [01:22:12] Speaker B: It is. But again, you know, I heard similar things when digital came in over analog in photography. And I thought, you know, it's the end of photography as we know it. And of course it wasn't, but. And I say the same about AI I'm saying, you know, like, you can, you can create anything you like with AI so therefore, technically should mean the end of photography. But I don't think it will be. And yeah, and I'm, I'm pretty sure someone's going to come up with a way of picking AI in an image at some point. I heard of it yet. [01:23:03] Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, I'm not really sure. [01:23:06] Speaker B: I know for every lock there's a key and there's a way to, there's a way to unlock. And I hope it's the same with AI in photography. I hope that the way we can say, well, yeah, that's fine for AI, it's all right for an ad, you know, you can put it up for advertising product and we know that it's AI but it does the job. But you know, as you well know, the potential for AI to come up with say an authentic looking news photo where someone pictured doing something they don't or they wouldn't or never would do, potential was high. [01:23:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:58] Speaker B: And you can't trust the integrity of media owners not to use it. [01:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, especially. Go on. [01:24:11] Speaker B: Sorry. I'd like to think that media owners were too moral to use these sort of things, but, you know, as it's been demonstrated, it's not the case. [01:24:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Look, if it saves a few bucks, then they'll, they'll, you know, they'll get rid of. [01:24:29] Speaker B: Accentuates the sort of a particular philosophy that the media owner has. Use it deliberately to mislead it. [01:24:38] Speaker A: Yeah. And we're seeing that in, in the United States at the moment a lot. And that in itself is a whole nother topic and scary and. Yeah, that's very scary. Let's shift gears a little bit. Maybe the last, in this, in this last home stretch. Let's talk about gear. You know, you talked about in the early days some of the, the cameras that you're expected to use both in your training and once you were actually doing the job of being a photographer for the raaf. Oh, gosh, I just lost track of my question. Now, gear, when you moved to digital, you Said you got a, was it a 1D? Yep. And is, is Canon a brand that you've stuck with over the years since that? [01:25:29] Speaker B: Well, yes, I have been over the dark side. I have, have had Nick ons pretty much. I've used. My first actual camera that I owned, somebody else owning and me using it. Power 6 which I still love those things. Tower were actually a lens making company, a Japanese lens making company that made cameras later. And the Kara 6 was often called the poor man's Hasselblad. [01:26:10] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [01:26:11] Speaker B: They were, they were a good price and incredibly sharp crisp lenses. But I had a Power 6. My mother was a Leica fan. She used, she started off with an ultras and then moved over and got on to [01:26:35] Speaker A: classy lady. [01:26:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And when she, when she died I inherited her Leicas which was like fantastic. Yeah. And then I bought a, I bought a Hasselblad. It was, there was an auction in Melbourne one weekend and it was Henry Talbot. Talbot Newton had a commercial studio just up near the Russell S.B. police Station and that was Helmut Newton and Henry Talbot and they advertised this auction and I went to it on the day and there were tables and tables with Hasselblad bodies on the back lens and anyway I went around and picked up a body and a lens back. I, I just absolutely adored it. I loved the graph format at the time. [01:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [01:27:36] Speaker B: Didn't have to think about, about the orientation. [01:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a fair point. [01:27:41] Speaker B: Yep. I ended up in Hasselbad and got terrific outfit. I used that quite a lot commercially. Polaroid back and I think three or four lenses for a couple of bodies and you wouldn't believe it. Once I bought this Canon D, I wanted another lens and they brought out the 2470. I wanted one of those at the time. I used to get all my cameras through a place called the Camera Exchange in the city just off Elizabeth Street. [01:28:19] Speaker A: Right. [01:28:21] Speaker B: And anyway they take trade ins and I had this pelican case with a Hasselblad outfit and I went down to Eric, the guy there and I said look, I want to one of those lenses here, 2470, I want to try this. Just look. I opened the box. Here's this lovely Hasselblad outfit laid out inside a pelican case. [01:28:46] Speaker A: Yep. [01:28:47] Speaker B: Anyway, he had a notebook and he was taking down notes and looking in it. And after about five minutes he looked at me and he said I'll tell you what, throw in the face and I'll do you a direct swap of all that. Funnily I did wow. [01:29:04] Speaker A: Do you think that was it? Looking back? Do you think that was a fair deal? [01:29:07] Speaker B: Oh, look at the time everyone was rushing to get into digital and yeah, needs must. And if with the benefit of hindsight, I probably would do it. [01:29:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:23] Speaker B: Of course I didn't have it at the time and I walk away with just one lens and I still got it. We'll use it. Be quite honest, I love it. 247 is a great length but you know, when I look at what went across town of me back the other way to him, I still like the, the 500ft. [01:29:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Worth a pretty today. [01:29:55] Speaker B: I've been canning ever since that time and I think the reason I got into Canon was from memory. I think they were the first of the two majors, Canon and Nikon, to bring out the autofocus lens. And I got. The last film camera I had was a camera. It was a Canon 1N. They had the N series with the Canon. Canon, well, identical to 1D in operation but film. But I think Canon were the first of the two to bring out autofocus lenses and they were, they were just as much revelation to me as digital. We used to come back from shoots and. [01:30:49] Speaker A: Oh, hang on, I think you've. You've accidentally muted your microphone, Brian. Sorry. If you can just unmute that for me. So if you go down to the bottom, there's a small window with you. Oh, there we go. Got you back. [01:31:09] Speaker B: Okay. I think I mentioned my email was down. I think the person that fixing up my email at the time I might be jumping onto this computer came on. [01:31:20] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Yeah, it's all good. All good. [01:31:25] Speaker B: Yes, it was as I mentioned. I thought that's right. We were looking at panties on live box and you'd be going over with a loopy and you say, oh, that was good. But I can't use it without a focus and manual focus. You're shooting something that was relatively fast. Moving was pretty hard at the time. It was often hit and miss. [01:31:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:51] Speaker B: So we'd lose a lot of shots for out of focuses, but when autofocus came in, the hit rate went up considerably. Yeah, and I think, I think I stuck with Canon. I guess just because I had like lenses and it's, it's easier. If you're going to change cameras, you've got to pretty much change glass as well as body. [01:32:20] Speaker A: Yep, yep. Yeah, it's. It's always a bit of a, you know, if you, you're thinking of jumping systems, there's always that. But I've got All this glass and now I'm going to have to find all that glass in a new mount. You know, it's not just as simple as changing a camera. And Justin, who obviously is the, he's, he's the boss and he's a co host of the Camera Life podcast, he's currently on holiday so, you know, I'm doing all the heavy lifting. But, you know, he jumped from, from Nikon to Canon partway through his wedding photography career and, and now he's strictly a Canon. Well, he's got other cameras in different brands but he's primarily, his workhorses are canons. And so these days, are you still shooting DSLR or have you moved over to Mirrorless? [01:33:12] Speaker B: I came under sustained pleasure from our good friend Andrew Chapman, who's, you know, he's, he's got quite a collection or he has quite a collection of cameras and he jumped over to Fujifilm and along with a lot of his friends, person I mentioned, Jamie Mercier, was also dumped over from Canon to Fujifilm and they raved about and you know, I kept saying, you should do it, you should do it. And. But then, you know, I, I'd had the, I'm still using the 5D Mark Fours DSLRs and to be honest, they provide a pretty good file or pretty good image. Yeah. And Andrew once said to me, he said he had a, he had a Mark III and he said to me, I don't think for a commercial application, he said, I don't think you could go much better than a 5D Mark III. And this was before he jumped over to Fuji. [01:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:23] Speaker B: And of course now the goals of values of Fuji and you know, often see his point, he does really horrific images and, and I think Fuji's fantastic for a documentary shooter there. Everyone who uses that. But I, I don't know whether I can actually think tech brick enough to use one. I'm so used to the 5D Mark IV. You know, if you're in the middle of a commercial shoot, you have a quick glance at what you're shooting and there's a bit of an issue. I know how to fix it right away. [01:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? Because, you know, even, even jumping, even if you're going say from a baseline cannon system to a, you know, to a current high end like a Nikon Z8. Yes. It's a much more capable camera, high performance, high resolution, all those things. But I think there's always a bit of a quality drop in your output while you make those Changes because you have to reacquaint yourself. You have to retrain that muscle memory so that you can use that camera in the dark, you can use that camera in the blink of an eye. All those sorts of things have to fall into place. So, and I think, Sorry, Brian, I think you've been muted again. If you can fix that for me. [01:35:49] Speaker B: There we go. [01:35:51] Speaker A: So, having said that, what is your go to glass for? You know, a commercial gig or, or, you know, shooting one of the other genres. What is your go to lenses? [01:36:03] Speaker B: I'd like to be able to say for purity's sake, that I only use prime lenses, but I use zooms for convenience. Staple lenses, 16 to 35, 2470 and 7200. Yeah. Workhorse kit that covers most of the format or the focal length that you need commercially. You know, I like the idea of like 85 1.2s and 1 4s, but I, I, I find that even shooting portraits, when I first, when, well, when I first got these autofocus lenses, I used to be 2.8 all the time. [01:36:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:56] Speaker B: But then I noticed that sometimes, and going, focusing on the eyes, you know, if you can see eyelashes, if eyelashes are sharp, they're okay. But then I started wanting, say, not only the eyelashes, but perhaps the start of the year to come in focus. So then I shifted from 2.8 to 3.2, 3.5, just to pull that little bit extra in. [01:37:23] Speaker A: Yep. [01:37:24] Speaker B: And which, which means I should be satisfied with F4, but because it's only a little bit past 3.3.2. 3.5. [01:37:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:34] Speaker B: But one of my favorite lenses, to be quite honest, is the pit lens, the 24 105. [01:37:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:44] Speaker B: It's an incredibly sharp lens, but if only it was 2.8, which is not. It's a really useful focal length range, 24 to 105, because, you know, up around, you're up around the 80 to 124 for anything you want to get wider. [01:38:03] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a very convenient lens, isn't it? [01:38:05] Speaker B: It is. And, but I can imagine the price and the size of it if 2.0. [01:38:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Very different story. Yeah. [01:38:17] Speaker B: So, you know, I've had a lot of prime lenses over the years, but I think zooms are more practical. My purpose. Yeah, I know you should zoom with your feet, but I'm a bit lazy. [01:38:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that's okay. The beauty of it is that it's your business. You can do whatever you want, provided that, provided that Elisa agrees, obviously. But, and what about, you know, these Days. Do you. Is there something that you pursue photographically for fun, for mindfulness, for enjoyment? [01:39:01] Speaker B: Look, I'm still shooting. Still shooting bad. Yep. I've got a project. Well, I'm spending a lot of time on the scanner, to be quite honest. As I mentioned earlier, I used to shoot rolls of film, put them away in the neck bag and not look at them again. [01:39:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:39:27] Speaker B: I'm going back through them all and scanning. I've got a. I've got a. My family will probably roll their eyes, but I've got this long standing family and friends project that I want to do, which mostly comes from using the scanner and old film. But I want to put together some sort of document for my children when I shuffle off this mortal coil so that they. To give them this broader base of where they come from and who their parents are and who their great grandparents and everything are. And you know, again, it'll probably come in book form, but it will only be. I'll only get three or four copies done. [01:40:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:40:22] Speaker B: But I'm going through those and. And I'm actually finding a lot of stuff that I thought that's actually not all that bad. [01:40:33] Speaker A: I was going to ask what that's been like for you, going back and the recollection and retracing where you were in your career and what was even going on in your life around you. You mentioned earlier about having kids and responsibilities. How is that process for you one [01:40:50] Speaker B: of the joys of being a photographer in that you've got a. Pretty much a record of everything you've done in your life. Yeah. Whereas without it, I'm sure a lot of people got so much in their life that they forget because there's no visual reminders or no triggers to trigger that memory. Photographers have got it on film or on file somewhere. And in the older days I used to have a camera with me pretty much all the time. I don't. My phone's taken over from that now. [01:41:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:41:30] Speaker B: Camera bag over the shoulder when I've got a phone in the pocket. But I've been had this project in mind for the family and I've come across a lot of shots that I didn't take. You know, my parents, book or uncles have taken of the family. And what happens as you get older for everybody. But the images that come from your life, unless they're dated and named, they're pretty much useless. You can't work out who's in them or where it is. [01:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah, [01:42:10] Speaker B: they're not much good. They're just a photograph. But if they put together in some. Well, as I want to do in book form, you get a chance to put down where it is, who's in it, what the situation and it makes those images more valuable to whoever's left behind to look at them. [01:42:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:42:37] Speaker B: So. And I. I've got to say I'm not progressing as rapidly as I would like on this project. It's pretty much down to a couple of folders with all this stuff in it and I think, oh, there's a great picture, I'll just chuck it in that folder and. But they're there. I know they're there. [01:42:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, but also keep in mind, you know, like you said, you've got your own sort of 60 years of, of image making plus your uncles, plus your mums. You know, that's a lot of. That's, that's, you know, generational documentation of the family that you've got to go through and you've made it your. [01:43:19] Speaker B: An interesting experience through COVID lockdown in that. My mother died in about 1984 and she'd left behind just trunks and trunks of blood, pretty much all Kodigro. And I'd been dragging these things around with us for years and during COVID we ended up moving from the city up to. Up to Gippsland and I thought, oh, we've got no room for these. So I went, actually went through. I think it was close to half a million slides. And from that I got to see how my mother saw life which was. It was quite interesting. [01:44:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:44:13] Speaker B: Bet she was mostly nature photographers. Was in like field naps, used to shoot orchids and eucalypts and I got to see how many eucalypt and orchids ended up. I went through them and I kept anything that was sort of family related. [01:44:38] Speaker A: Yep. [01:44:39] Speaker B: You know, and it was, it was, it was quite an interesting experience because as a kid, I remember we'd go out for like a Sunday drive and my dad had been driving and I'd hear Bill, Bill, stop the car. And. And my dad said what? What? Heck what? She said, look at the light. And anyway. [01:45:04] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. [01:45:06] Speaker B: And. And shoot a eucalypt. That was in the stressings. It was something like that and. And my father's eyes would roll and he'd stop the car dutifully and wait there. All the camera was got and the exposure was meted and the picture was taken. Oh then he had to sit through the interminable slideshows happened at the house and he'd often get A elbow in the ribs for snoring during the, during the. But he had a. He had a. He automatically woke up when he heard the chink of the te up on a sorcerer and. But he was the, the long suffering photographer's husband. [01:45:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah good on him, good on him but let me just jump in [01:46:01] Speaker B: I still haven't been through. I've made this selection from all those, all those slides and I haven't. Still haven't been through process or anything like that. [01:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah well you know half a million slides, it's a lot. [01:46:18] Speaker B: Sorry, that's the after the family project. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah okay. All right queue it up. Let me just jump into a couple of comments. One here from Rodney. I'm watching from a car park in rainy Northcote the battery is getting low so I must go can't wait to watch when I get home. Thanks in advance Brian and Greg and congrats on your career Brian enjoyed your story. Thank you Rodney. And then finally another one from JC Orange Great work. I think he's talking about me not you Brian so it's okay so you've got this family project on the cards what else are you looking forward to photographically ahead in your life? [01:47:08] Speaker B: Well as I said I've been. I've been on the scanner for probably the last year I've been going through and there's a lot of stuff that is. There's non family in there I think during the 70s and 80s I used to love going out into the city with a camera on a Sunday, Saturday whenever I had a fair moment and just shooting stuff and you know, stick up to walk around the city and you just see something and photograph it because it interested me anyway I've been going through a lot of those and the way I do it is I've got all these folders and folders of negatives and I'll open them up and put them on the lighthope to see if there's anything interesting and even if it's out of focus it looks like nothing I. I'll scan it just to see what turns up. Yeah I've actually come up with quite a lot of. A lot of images of the city that they're not there anymore. Place has changed so much Even things like shop fronts that aren't there anymore and. Yeah and what we notice the cultural things like clothes and hairstyles and the way people look. Yeah just changed so totally. [01:49:04] Speaker A: Yeah it does doesn't it? [01:49:06] Speaker B: And concentrating mostly on stuff that was found but three days digital where people got all that thing that sort of thing on phones now. So I'm just sort of. I'm hoping to interest somebody like State Library or that collection, Melbourne Ephemera. And I'm hoping to put together a bit of a selection. Yeah. That might interest them to add it to their collection. [01:49:46] Speaker A: Yep. It's interesting about the changing face of a city, you know, especially Melbourne. It's had many, many changes over the years. I recently watched a documentary about all the building that took place in melbourne in the 1800s and very early 1900s. You know, they. There was this vision to make Melbourne like the Australian version of New York City, you know, for high class kind of establishments and businesses and. And then, you know, into the last century where a lot of those buildings had to be knocked down because they weren't safe. You couldn't upgrade them or retrofit them with, you know, a lot of them had gas pipes running through the walls because they used gas lighting in many of those buildings. And then, you know, they couldn't update that system so that the buildings all just came down. And documentary was more about wheel and the wrecker taking his hammer to, you know, huge amount of landmarks in Melbourne. And it reminds me, and what you've been saying too about going through those images and seeing the differences in fashion, in the way people hung out and, you know, what the city looked like, all those sorts of things it aligns with. My growing philosophy about photography is that I feel we have an obligation to document that stuff because I see our role is to document what is before it becomes what was. Because once it's changed, it's gone. And we rely on visual language more now than we ever have as a society. And that visual language should tell our history very clearly before it changes or is gone. So, yeah, I really encourage you to keep doing that, to look at those images from those times and maybe find somewhere that will welcome and cherish and rely on them for historical purposes. [01:51:39] Speaker B: Well, I think you're right. I think it's. And I know the State Library has a great library collection of images of Melbourne and I know there's other places to do it. I just can't recall them at the moment, but they should. It should be a place where. And it will be where researchers can go and you can mount. I mean, you can mount exhibition from it. [01:52:10] Speaker A: Sorry, cut out just for a second. [01:52:12] Speaker B: You can and mount exhibitions from. [01:52:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, of course. [01:52:17] Speaker B: From such things, you know, like Melbourne during a certain period. Yeah. And people are really interested in it. [01:52:26] Speaker A: Yeah, Well, I went to an exhibition, I think it was last year. I don't know. Time's losing all meaning these days, but. And it was Rennie Ellis's work around the fringe culture of, you know, St Kilda, Prahran, some of those grungier parts of Melbourne that he documented. And, yeah, we went to the exhibition was on at the State Library, and that was phenomenal. We went there with a large group, actually, from. It was like a. It was a bright festival, photography day held in Melbourne. I'm pretty sure it was last year, early last year. But that was fascinating. And they would show his slides with. With the names or the dates or. And he had his own kind of stamp because his studio was in Prahran and he's, you know, not far from where I am. And. Yeah, it's just fascinating seeing that. That side of it and retaining that part of Melbourne's history because, you know, people won't be around forever to retell those stories. [01:53:25] Speaker B: Rennie was terrific. He was a great photographer and we. I only really met him once and he came to RMIT to give a guest lecture, which was terrific. He illustrated with slides and everything. But then we went over to the pub over the road after it and that was when he really came to life. Yeah, the stories that he told. And I'd already had a couple of his books. I had Australian Graffiti with is, I think his first, where he photographed beauty all around, especially around the University, University of Melbourne and. And then of course, Life's a Beach, his photographs of the beach. But. And I was a huge fan before I met him and even bigger fan after I'd met him. Yeah. And I think his. I think his organization. Is it the Rennie Ellis foundation or something? [01:54:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not sure, sorry. [01:54:31] Speaker B: They still publish his work on social media and, and thinking books and they were real, you know, they were a mine of information and it was always well seen by many. They always was in the right spot. Yeah, yeah, I'm a huge fan. [01:54:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And having seen his exhibition, I, I became even more of a fan of his work because it's. It's kind of the work that I. And because it's local, you know, for me, it's local. I've lived in South Yarab Paran since I was 21 some years ago and, you know, and. And it's a documentation of this place on our call home. And I value that incredibly, because the inner city suburbs change constantly, especially inner city suburbs. And yeah, seeing the history of it is remarkable. And speaking of, you know, time and history, I have a Question for you. And if you could, knowing what you know now about your craft and the work as a photographer, if you could go back and give your younger self a bit of advice about the road ahead, what would you say to yourself now? [01:55:54] Speaker B: I would say, well, with the benefit of hindsight of doing a book, I'd say write down the places and dates. Idiot. [01:56:04] Speaker A: Yes, that's a good way. [01:56:08] Speaker B: I think I would, I think I would. I think I would tell myself to shoot more variety. You know, I used to shoot a lot of the same thing then, so with only slight variations in it, I think. And so when you're looking back at it, you can you look at like images and there's various differences between them. Had I moved around a little bit further or not been so lazy, got out the foreground a little bit more, I might have got a different perspective. But I think I'd tell myself to perhaps shoot a little more. I don't know whether I'd choose more varieties. Like my daughter and I have got this saying that photography is like, a camera's like a key, it opens doors for you and people know that you're a photographer and you're not part of their industry and they'll explain things to you in ways that are jargon free because they know you won't understand it if they use jargon. And so we say being a photographer, you know a little bit about a lot of things because you get to see them, because you only visit them temporarily. Yeah, yeah, for a day. But even coming from commercial work, you might go into like an ice cream factory and somebody will show you the whole process of how you get from like stuff that's delivered into the factory into getting it pasted out in the back of the room and they'll show you the process. We went through, we went, we were doing a job for a bakery. Remember the names of the baker? They've got cake shops and, and they make bread for all the supermarkets. But anyway, we went through, we were doing some shots for them and as a bit of pre production they took us on a file of bakery and I had no idea how it worked. But I, I know now how, how, how the whole process is done. From Flowers of the Low. Yeah, it's a little, it's a tiny little bit of that industry that you get to see. You know, we've been down in, in mines in Western Australia, like mile underground and you see where nickel comes from and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, you know, I mean, aircraft flying over things that people show you and you get to see all this like a, like a monopoly of all sorts of things. But you only touch on the surface of it. You don't go deep into it. So it gives you look. I find it fascinating being a lifelong newspaper reader where you can see in the newspaper article about all sorts of things alive. [01:59:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:59:37] Speaker B: As a, like, as a photographer you get to see the same sort of thing. [01:59:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting take on it, isn't it, Especially as a commercial photographer that you become exposed to so many little bits and pieces. Do you think that that's character building? You think that's a benefit or, or something that can be used? [01:59:57] Speaker B: If I was outside looking at me, I'd say no, I think it is because you tend to understand other people's point of view more. [02:00:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. That's a great call. [02:00:11] Speaker B: You know, we do, we do all. As a photographer, portraits are like a huge piece of photographer's life. You end up being asked to take people and commercially, you know, you might, you might go into like an insurance office in the city on the 23rd floor or something. And yeah, you've got a portraits of all the people in there and you think, oh, well, that's pretty tedious. It's going to be the same thing after the same thing. But when you're shooting them, we've always had a policy where you bit of a t someone before you photograph without even. Without even putting the camera up your face. Just want to get to know them, relax them. Because for a lot of people having their picture taken is almost akin to going to the dentist. And you want to put them at ease so that they're not. I've looked through lenses of people having their photos taken so seeing their lip crib and geez, I didn't realize you were so nervous about it. And that's have a tattoo just to ease their tension a little bit. But in talking to them, you find out what they do and because that's one of the most easiest things to do is to ask them what they do and if that doesn't work, you ask them when they started and that either gets. That either gets. Oh, ever since I was kid, but it does. [02:01:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It breaks the focus away from sitting in front of a camera to. [02:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, and recently I've had to have a couple of pictures taken of myself. I didn't realize how much hate it. [02:02:12] Speaker A: Wow. [02:02:13] Speaker B: Being on the other side of the land and you know, I don't know where to look. I don't know what expression to give anything like that. And yeah, and so it sort of reinforced. I'd always. I'd always been taking portraits. I'd always sort of just out of courtesy, open to people before you shoot. [02:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:02:42] Speaker B: Unless of course, your quote has indicated three minutes with each person. [02:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You gotta make it quick. [02:02:49] Speaker B: And of course the conversation's a bit shorter then, but, and, but often if you're doing a quote, you know, like 24 in an office or something and you say, oh, we'll allow 10 minutes for each person. So you can. How long it's going to take. The photography only takes like two or three minutes. Yeah. But it's getting someone relaxed in front of the camera or not self conscious or something like that. That takes, you know, that takes a little bit of time and effort. [02:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It takes a genuine, A genuine or authentic level of care and understanding that, you know, like you said, you don't like being in front of the camera yourself and understanding that they may feel that way too. And I think that's really important. I think there's a level of insight and maturity into the human condition to be able to master portraits in a short amount of time. [02:03:51] Speaker B: And especially if people aren't sort of in the imaging world or they're not used to it. Yeah, yeah. It's like we had to. We had this terrific job for a company that was Massey Ferguson, I think we went around Australia and New Zealand and we were photographing farmers with their equipment and they were all arranged by local dealers. And we drive out to a farm, meet them and we'd get them to kind of put their tractors or harvesters or whatever they were using in a certain area and stand in front of it. It was for a calendar. Anyway. We found out later that in their local communities, if they were they appeared in a calendar, they automatically got the nickname Hollywood. [02:04:56] Speaker A: That's great. [02:04:57] Speaker B: Speak about stuff. And I say, oh, buddy Hollywood down there. Yeah, yeah. Now he's been on a calendar. [02:05:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:05:06] Speaker B: It sort of hit home how much even like a simple photograph can change. Not change somebody. But. We found that the farmers actually liked it. They like being. They liked having someone visit them, seeing what they do, telling their story and like the image was part of the whole process. [02:05:34] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's not the entirety of it though, is it? Because there's their experience and your experience, you know, in undertaking that job. I think all too often the photographer's experience gets lost. You know what it took to hike that mountain for three days to get that landscape Shot that became an award winning. Most people just see that the image hanging in a gallery or in the shop window but they don't understand the know the experience. And I think you talked about it earlier about your commercial work that you know there's days and days if not weeks or months of preparation for some shoots that the client doesn't see necessarily, you know and then you've got a day or two or whatever it may be of shooting and then you've got post production stuff and you know those handful of images that the client might finally use for an ad could have taken you know, months and months of your time, effort, knowledge, insight, all those sorts of things. And it's hearing you talk about today is quite, you know, it just raises people's awareness of the challenges faced by commercial photographers these days. [02:06:39] Speaker B: Yeah, well there's the unreal expectations to clients. We had a. We had one job and we were going around Western Australia for I think at the time was telecom, now Telsbo. But the shoot had been planned in St Kilda Road and by county executive and we had, we got the, got the schedule and I could. One part of it jumps out. Had arrived in Kalgoorlie, go to Western Mining mine, get picture of kangaroo on hill with sun going down behind it and anyway we arrived in Kalkuli at about 4 in the afternoon. Had no, no idea where the Western Mining line was. It was just hundreds of them around. Yeah, this was pre mobile phones and, and Google Maps. So we're driving around looking for Western Mining just anything Western Mining sign. Couldn't find it, had no idea where it was and anyway in desperation we had a. I was traveling with a copywriter and an art director and. And the two of them jumped out 10 of the old kangaroos and stood on a sand. I think the only kangaroos we saw on that trip were dead ones on the side of the road. Yeah, but it just shows somebody sitting in Chicago Road has absolutely no idea what it's like when you actually get out there. [02:08:29] Speaker A: Yeah, well when you read out the expectation, when you recited the expectations they almost sounded like AI prompts because they lacked authenticity and soul and character. You know, find a kangaroo sunset like it, you know. Now people would use those words as an AI prompt to create that image. Yeah, [02:08:52] Speaker B: sorry. [02:08:53] Speaker A: No, no, you go please. [02:08:55] Speaker B: I can remember an interview with a National Geographic photographer that came out and shooting the Australia edition. Whether it was around 2000, around that era. But anyway they had a requirement for kangaroo on the sand dune with the sun going down behind him, but he had an absolute array of remote control cameras that were set up. He had riders on motorbikes scouting kangaroos to chase them up a certain sand June to come up. [02:09:32] Speaker A: Wow. [02:09:32] Speaker B: He had. I think the amount of film that was booked, which was all photogram at the time, was just. I remember at the time I was. My mind was boggled how much film they go through to get a cover shot. Admittedly, it was the Al and. But he got the shot. It was all this organization went into it. And there were, as I said, there were riders on motorbikes connected to walker talkies, you know, saying I should be coming up about now. And he got perfect shot for it. [02:10:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. It's that whole thing. If you often don't think about what went into behind the scenes to get that shot. Look, I am very, very conscious of time and, you know, we could keep talking about this stuff all day, but I might draw a close to today's episode of the Camera Life podcast with maybe just one more question for you, if you don't mind. And this is a question that Justin usually asks if he's here. It's his favorite question to ask guests. But if there was some form of catastrophic event such as a zombie apocalypse, that's his preferred style to end the world. And you only had time to grab one camera and one lens to document what was going on around you as you fled for safety, what camera and lens would you grab? Could be anything. Old, new, digital film, anything. What would you go for? [02:11:11] Speaker B: It sort of gets down to almost what's your favorite camera, doesn't it? Because if you were going to document it, you want to make sure you got the image. So in that case, I'd go for the equipment I'm using now. The 5D mark 4. [02:11:30] Speaker A: Yep. [02:11:33] Speaker B: If it was for. If it was for personal, sentimental and Image Quality requirements. Hasselblad 500C. [02:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And what. And what lens would you put on the. The 5D Mark IV? Only one lens. [02:11:58] Speaker B: Again, I wish I could say I had a 5 favorite prime, but I'd put the 2470 on because that covers all. All aspect. [02:12:05] Speaker A: It does. [02:12:06] Speaker B: If it was. If it was going to be like a nuclear explosion I was shooting, I could get back a little bit. [02:12:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Just a little bit. [02:12:17] Speaker B: If it was. If it was a portrait of the person pressing the button on the nuclear explosion, I could walk in and shoot on 70. Yep. If it was the actual explosion, it would be over my shoulder, running at 20. Yes. Yep. But now look, I've had things I've loved using. I had a bike around five. It was pretty nice. Yeah, the cow was lovely. But I think it's the feel of the Hasselblad in your hand. Like I remember someone showing me one day, if you hold your hand out like that Clonker Hasselblad in it, your thumb and forefinger immediately go onto the focus and your middle finger goes onto the trigger and it's just like an automatic fit. And I love the fact that you look down like through a viewfinder at the top, because it lowers your center of view down about the middle of your stomach, which means you're ever so slightly looking up at things, up at people. Most people see things from their eye view and reminds me of a story. I think it was Ansel Adams and Weston were out on a trip together. I think it was Weston, but Ansel Adams was pretty tall, Weston was pretty short. Anyway, they were sitting around with a few whiskies around the campfire one night and one of them said, I can't imagine looking at the world from your point of view. And I think it was Adams. Well, now that you mention it, I can't imagine looking at the world from your point of view. So the next day they tried an experiment. Adams went round and shot half his height all day and Weston went around and stood on a ladder. [02:14:28] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [02:14:29] Speaker B: They took pictures like from each other's point of view. I think they both ended up saying that they preferred what they actually were rather than what the other person was. Yeah, but that's part of the Hasselblad thing. You know, the viewfinder he looked down on, all those roller flags, they all had that viewfinder. And even the codec, you know, the early Kodak hold out ones, they will look down, look down that tiny little prison. [02:15:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen them. There's a company, or probably a couple of companies now advertising them a lot on social media that I see on Instagram and, and you can basically drop it onto any of your cameras so that you've got that shooting from the hip. It's. It's one of my preferred shooting styles for street photography because like you said, everyone looks like this level, everyone sees the world at the same height. But if you drop it a foot or two, all of a sudden the world becomes a little more interesting because it's not how you're used to seeing it and it's that whole concept of seeing it from someone else's point of view, which is a You know, which I think is, is one of the most powerful things about photography is it opens up other people's eyes to how we all see the world differently. [02:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a couple of. Wasn't there a couple of cameras, Film camera exactor, I think had a look down viewfinder on a 35 mil. There's a. There was a few odd cameras that, that had that feature that you look down on the viewfinder. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. I loved it in the House of Blood. [02:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:16:18] Speaker B: And power. Of course, then, then of course they came out with, you know, alternative viewfinder held up dry with the. Yeah, yeah, I think I had one. I had one. Never really used it all that much. Right. You had to actually physically put it onto the camera. [02:16:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm getting a theme here if I needed it. Yeah, no, that's, that's a good call. Look, I think that's a perfect spot to, to wrap up our interview, you know, down the track. Maybe we'll, we'll call you back for a part two. But look, just on behalf of obviously myself, the Camera Life team and our wonderful people watching live and, and this will go onto YouTube and into audio podcasts later tomorrow and it'll be accessible for more people to watch or listen. But yes, on behalf of everyone involved, thank you so much for your time. It's been such an insightful, insightful discussion. You know, you've documented such an expansive period of Melbourne's history and shown your point of view of how you see the world, and I think that's pretty remarkable and you should be congratulated for your body of work. And obviously it's not over. We look forward to seeing what, what you've got coming up next and we wish you all the luck with that. But just before we sign off, I might just go through some comments in the chat and say goodbye to some people. Where were we? Julie Powell. Hey. Hey. I still do that. Stop the car. Look at the light. [02:18:01] Speaker B: Yep. [02:18:03] Speaker A: I tend to do it too, with my partner. Who's this? Oh, Greg. Stubbing is. As the saying goes, there's a song in all of us. But as photographers, there's a book in us all. Yeah, maybe that's the case. Maybe that's the case. David Liparati, again, great to have you on this morning, David. Photography is like a ticket that you get to go places that other people don't get to go. And at the end of it, what you end up with is like a souvenir of that experience. That's a really great way of looking at it. Philip Johnson, who was first in the chat this morning. Thanks gents. Good chat. Until next Monday. Indeed. Julie Powell's been great. Gotta go. Thanks, Greg And Brian. Phil Thompson's it has been fantastic and very inspirational and encouraging. Listening to Brian make you. Makes you want to get out with the camera. Lots, lots more. I agree. And finally another thank you from Philip. Wishing you all the very best for the work that you're working on and what's coming up. Brad, Brian but we'll call it a day and we'll we, we look forward to seeing your work in the future. [02:19:10] Speaker B: Thanks, Greg. Thanks for having me. [02:19:12] Speaker A: It's been our pleasure. All right, guys, don't forget we'll be back on Monday night, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time for the random photography show where we, you know, cover industry news, product announcements but most importantly, we look at your images. That's right. You can send your image, one or two images with some camera specs and camera lens used as well as a little story about your experience and send that to justinuckystraps.com au just send through the image files and we will, we will endeavor to have those image on display on a Monday evening show. So we look forward to catching up with you then. But that's it from, from us for now. Thanks again, Brian. Be safe. Take care everybody. [02:19:53] Speaker B: By.