EP103 Geoff Webber | Portrait, Beauty and Outdoors Photographer

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sa. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the Camera Life podcast. This is episode 103. If you haven't watched it already, make sure you go back and watch our 100th episode that took place last week. And yeah, join in the celebrations and check it out. But it's the 31st of July and we are the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky camera straps or Luckystraps.com and head there if you want to pick up a new camera strap or a belt or some merch. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Or some gloves, some photography gloves for winter, you know, whatever. Yeah. [00:01:00] Speaker B: But anyway, that's enough of the ad read. Today we are joined by Australian portrait beauty and outdoors photographer Jeff Weber. G', day, Jeff. [00:01:09] Speaker C: Good morning. G'. Day. [00:01:11] Speaker B: Now, you're not new to podcasts, are you? I think I've seen you on a couple already this week. Looking into. [00:01:16] Speaker C: I have done. Have done one or two. Yeah. [00:01:18] Speaker B: Digging up the dirt on you. [00:01:20] Speaker C: Oh, good. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:21] Speaker C: A bit of background info. [00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, we'd like to thoroughly vet. [00:01:26] Speaker A: That's good. [00:01:28] Speaker C: As long as it passes muster, that's okay. [00:01:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:32] Speaker B: Just before we jump to the chat to say good morning to everybody, Jeff, can you just give us a very brief 60 second version of who you are and what you do? [00:01:39] Speaker A: Sure. [00:01:42] Speaker C: Based in Melbourne. Was a. Did photography back in the film days in the 80s and it was like 70s, 80s then didn't touch it for a long time. My wife does a lot of bush walking and hiking and said we needed a camera for taking pictures out in the bush and so researched it and got back into it. Got her an Olympus EM5 mark II and then after a year or so she said, I don't want to take this any out anymore because I don't like changing lenses while I'm out in the bush. So I said, well, give it to me because I used to do photography so I might get back into it as a bit of a hobby and things. I think she's regretted it ever since because I spend way too much money on camera gear these days. [00:02:17] Speaker B: She's only got herself to blame. [00:02:19] Speaker C: That's what I keep saying. That doesn't go over as well. [00:02:22] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no. You say that in your head. [00:02:25] Speaker C: That's right, yeah, yeah. [00:02:26] Speaker B: Word to the wise. [00:02:27] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Say the quiet parts out loud. Yeah. And so since about 2018, 2019. Got back into it more seriously after retired in 2019 from a life in finance, I t. That type of thing. And I've been doing the photography ever. [00:02:49] Speaker B: Since Right, so you're a full time photographer now, you consider yourself. [00:02:52] Speaker C: Well, if I do anything it's a full time. Actually as of about three or four months ago, I am an official photographer because I've just started working for a company that does the university graduation photos and so. Oh yeah, when all the people stream off the off stage and things like that on there, you know, we have all these studios set up and take their graduation pictures. So I am officially on my tax certificate it says I am a photographer. So that's, that's good. [00:03:17] Speaker A: It's always a fun discussion, the old, you know what, when do you, when can you say I'm a photographer? And I personally think anyone can say that depending on what their interpretation of what they do with it is. But, but broadly speaking, I remember when I was starting my business and she meant this is a joke but still happened. So I bought, I bought a camera, I'm self taught and I was doing it on the side and I was trying to get stuff so that I could tell people, hey, I take photos and I'd like to take photos of anything that you need. And so I got business cards made and my sister said, ah, so you think that you've got business cards that say photographer on them, that you're a photographer now? And I said yeah, yeah, that's exactly. [00:04:00] Speaker C: What, that's exactly what it is. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Yep. I just got my own thing printed and now it's done, no courses needed. [00:04:07] Speaker B: How do we, how do we qualify or define what a professional photographer is anyway? Is it someone that makes money off prints? Is it someone that works for a corporation? Is it someone that only does commercial? I personally like the idea that everyone with a camera can be, that takes photos, can be a photographer. Just many choose not to make money off it, you know. [00:04:29] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true, yeah, yeah. And the professional I think too is probably in the mindset you go into why you're taking pictures, pictures, the approach you're taking to do it as well. [00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's also all the background stuff around, you know, the 90 of the work that goes unseen if you're doing taxes and you know, having to find money to buy new gear and how that works into, you know, your finances. Like there's that whole background stuff which always intimidate, intimidated me quite significantly when, when I tried to do, you know, some paid work. I've done a bit of it over my time but you know, the business side of things, I wish I'd known Justin back then because Justin's Got quite a keen business mind. That's about all he's good for these days. [00:05:09] Speaker C: But there we go. [00:05:12] Speaker A: It's not the photography. [00:05:14] Speaker C: I'm doing the buttons on the deck. [00:05:18] Speaker B: So anyway, let's look, let's move on or I'll start yelling at the clouds as they pass by. I mean that's not a headspace. Justin, you want to say good morning to the chat. [00:05:27] Speaker A: I do, I do. And actually so speaking of professional part time photographers, Nick Fletcher is in the chat and Nick Fletcher is one of those guys we actually, you know, our article and email that we sent out after his podcast the other week was, was all around that theme of like a part time professional photographer. And often people, if they've got a day job, people are often like, oh, they're not a professional photographer. And Nick is the epitome of a professional photographer with a day job. But he describes himself as a passionate fraud with a camera which also works. Yeah. Nick says, have I turned up in time for the prizes? No, you missed out on the prizes, Nick. Sorry. Dennis says you are the prize, Nick. I'll save that question for later. Neil is here. Morning gents. And which, which means if Neil's here, Lisa's here. Lisa says good morning guys and good to see you back, Greg. It is good to have you back on deck, Greg. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Thanks kiddo. I've been following you on socials too. Your work is stunning, Lisa. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Keep at it schmick. The Down south photo show is here. Says morning Jeff. Morning lads. Morning Down South Photo Show. We never know which half. Which half. [00:06:35] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:06:35] Speaker A: Who miss it. We'll wait and see. We'll see if we can decipher from the comments who. Exactly. [00:06:40] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:06:41] Speaker A: Ernesto Creativo is here. Best night. Greetings from Germany. Good to see you. How's it going over there? Ian Thompson. Morning David Mascara. Good afternoon San Francisco. Got some cool for Monday night show. We've got some cool photos from David that he submitted for the your photos section if anyone wants to. Yeah, if anyone wants to send any photos in for us to check out. We're going to be doing a big bunch on Monday night hopefully. So just email them to me justinuckystraps.com and no Philip Johnson. I still don't have a Dropbox setup. I'm working on it. I'm working on it. Good morning Philip. Ltk photo says good afternoon John Pickett. Good morning. Everyone's here. Bim bim aventurados. Good morning. Read that one up close. That's it. Oh and yelena of course, the true. [00:07:35] Speaker B: Brains of the operation, let's face it. [00:07:37] Speaker A: That's right. Listen, it keeps it all on the rails. Oh, and that gets. [00:07:39] Speaker B: We're just the pretty talent. [00:07:41] Speaker A: We're just. That gets me to Nick Fletcher's question, which was, Jeff, are you working with Craig Whitgen on the graduation work? [00:07:53] Speaker C: No, no, I, I do some walks with Craig every first Friday every month. He has a walk for wellness in the city and I go into that occasionally and. But no, the company's. It's. I don't know if you say names, but it's a company called GFP Events and they basically run the whole graduation ceremony for the universities. Like they've got a warehouse with fort with 40, 000 gowns in there. It's. It's unbelievable. [00:08:17] Speaker A: So it's. So they're not just doing a photography. [00:08:20] Speaker C: At various things, they do the. Yeah, yeah, It's. It's unreal and for me it's great. I mean, you know, working there is a. It's just very casual. So three times a year you're busy. Sort of the month's just gone and then September and then December. And some of the days are crazy. Like one of the universities down here hires out the Melbourne Convention center for their graduations. Cost them a fortune. So they say, well, okay, we're going to do three ceremonies in one day. Well, that means you get in there at 4 o' clock in the morning to set the whole studios up and everything like that. And then you leave at midnight after packing everything down. Yeah, it gets a bit crazy. [00:08:58] Speaker B: They're pretty huge events. My, My. My partner is a lecturer at. She was at rmit, now she's at Melbourne Uni and she's been to graduations and described. And she said it's just crazy. Like there's multiple stages with graduations going on. You know, it's not just everyone's focused on this one, on this one thing. [00:09:14] Speaker C: That's right. [00:09:14] Speaker B: It's just. Yeah, it's crazy. It's quite overwhelming. So. Yeah, that's great. In fact, a lot of guests that we've had on the show either kind of their first role or one of their first roles was doing school photography and, or graduation and events like that. And they talked about how it's a good filler, a good money filler when whatever your genre is, it's the off season potentially. [00:09:38] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Like if you're a wedding shooter and you know, it's winter. No one wants to get married in winter. Well, you can, you can do school you can use this month, like you said, to do school photos. [00:09:46] Speaker A: It's funny too, Greg. It actually seems like almost more of them. Maybe not more of them, but a big chunk of them. It wasn't just people that it was like their first thing or whatever. A lot of them were pros that have, have picked up one of these roles as a part time thing. Just. And, and not even just. It's just like takes the pressure off financially. But also it's a different thing, like a different challenge, different style of work from whatever their main genre is. It's kind of cruisy. Yeah. I don't know. Have you found it, have you found the work so far? [00:10:19] Speaker C: In all honesty, it's about 30 of its photography and the rest of its people management and yeah, you know, time management, getting things done quickly and stuff like that. The actual photography. Because you walk in there, they give you everything. I don't take you, I don't take my own camera or anything. I'll go in there with a, a bag over my shoulder with my lunch or something like that. They give you the camera. They give you. They have this amazing app that's like an iPhone sitting on top of the little cage on the phone. And it sends the images directly to a server back in, I think it's in Glenn Waverley. And after you take the photos, they'll get a notification on their phone within like two minutes your pictures are ready to download. And you go from there. Yeah, it's unreal. It's all shoot to deliver. There's no editing or anything like that. [00:11:06] Speaker A: So. [00:11:06] Speaker C: Yeah, okay, so you gotta get it right. You gotta get it right. Yeah. And so in the, you know, you work out where the grid lines have to be and stuff like that. And, and it's, it's not the most creative thing in the, in the world that you can do because there are set poses you got to do and depending on what package they bought, they either get two, two poses or four or eight. [00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:26] Speaker C: And you turn through a lot of people. Like we'll do on, on, on a long day, I might do 40 different people that come through and then. And it varies from mom and dad, mom and the kid, or everybody's come from overseas. And so you'll have 12 people trying to fit into a little three by three studio space. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, how far, it's how far that genre has come because you know, we spoke with Mark Bluetooth. Is that how we pronounce it? Justin Bloat hoof. [00:12:03] Speaker C: I can't remember. [00:12:04] Speaker A: Bluetooth. He's going to kill me. I've met him so many times. Mark, Blue Bluetooth. [00:12:11] Speaker B: We'll start with Bluetooth. Anyway, so Mark works for Arthur Reed, Is that right, Jay? Yeah, Arthur Reed. And when we spoke to him, he pulled out one of his cameras as a prop to say this is what I used to shoot back in the film days. And it was a modified Nikon with this huge back body that had like a cartridge that had like 250 frames on the film. [00:12:34] Speaker A: Roll. Yeah, it was. [00:12:36] Speaker B: Now you're clicking and you're sending the images straight to the client and to the server. That's. That's just phenomenal. [00:12:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:12:43] Speaker B: Such a huge leap. I mean, I know it's been, you know, 30 years since. Since we were shooting film or maybe not quite as much, but you know. [00:12:50] Speaker C: I remember those old, those film backs back in the film days they used to have. I've still got the original om ones and things like that. And they'd have the 250 bank. You'd buy film in a roll in it. Like it by the foot. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:02] Speaker C: And they'd roll onto this film back and then you'd have the, the OM Winder. Winder two, I think it was. And it would do three frames a second. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Was that an add on or was that built into that? [00:13:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, it was an add on. It was that you take the, take the back off the film camera and then this one of the little pins that go into replace the back. [00:13:22] Speaker B: That's phenomenal. [00:13:23] Speaker C: You know, shoot through it at a. Great. And you'd be there thinking, well, this is like a machine going click, click, click, click. And now doing 60 frames a second. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy. [00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:35] Speaker A: I just want to update us on the chat. We've had a little bit of development. So Cam Blake says not the best half. He is here. Okay. So it must be expanded on the down south account. Greg Carrick says morning after a night of no sleep, trying to catch meteorites. I heard there was some meteorite action over the next week. Did you catch any? Greg, you said it says trying to catch. Did you get any or was it too cloudy or what happened? [00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, if you get something you're happy with Greg, shoot it through to Justin's email and we can have a look at it on Monday if you like. [00:14:05] Speaker A: Yes, do it. Email it to me. [00:14:07] Speaker C: There's the big meteor shower that's happening, but it's mainly in northern hemisphere thing at the moment, isn't it? The one that's happening now. The starts with P. I can't remember what it's called. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I saw the news that it was happening and I didn't look far enough into it to see whether we'd be able to see it. Greg will update us. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Ernest Ernesto Creativo says, my wife is always pleased to get pictures for. From the family. Above average, but she would be surprised at how much my gear is money, my gear is consuming. Yeah, that's the. [00:14:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's, that's common. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Just come clean. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Just keep it. [00:14:44] Speaker B: The longer you leave it, the worse it'll be. [00:14:48] Speaker A: So you got a good deal? I got a good deal. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. [00:14:51] Speaker C: I've had this one for ages. Yes. [00:14:52] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. Oh, and so we've also got. Jim is here. Good morning, Jim. Hope everything's going well. Pete Mellows is here. Howdy. From Hobart. [00:15:00] Speaker C: Hey, Pete. [00:15:01] Speaker A: And Robert Varner says, good morning, Australia. Good morning to the entire country. Thanks, Robert. Robert's from. [00:15:07] Speaker B: We all appreciate it. [00:15:09] Speaker A: We appreciate it. Robert's from near New York somewhere, so it's probably summer up there. Yeah. Paul's here. G', day, guys. Yeah, you can catch up on it later. Paul and Greg says a few, but they're just streaks of light. Cool. Oh, one more. Marco Wolfart says, good morning. This name has a long story. And I was like, oh, yeah, well, fart. That is an interesting name. And then he says, no, no, the BEM. The BEM. Adventurados 1. I mean, okay, your name has an interesting story, I'm sure too. [00:15:45] Speaker B: It does. [00:15:50] Speaker A: Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. Southern Delta. It's called the Southern Delta. Aquarids and Capricornids. I don't think I pronounced that right. Okay, I'll take your word for it. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Anyway, he's had no sleep. Don't start an argument. [00:16:08] Speaker A: No, exactly. All right, ugly, back to Jeff. [00:16:11] Speaker B: Let's press on with, with learning more about you, Jeff. So we like to roll back the clock and you know, I've done some research on you. I've read your bio. But for the folks watching and listening along, when did your photography journey commence? Like, what was your first camera? And were you raised in an artistic household or a business minded household? Let us know. [00:16:34] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Well, the first, the first real memory of cameras that I have, I don't know if you guys have seen or you're not old enough to have used them probably, but the Kodak Instamatic, the 126 Little Cartridge Film drop in the back. Have it. Have the thing called a magic cube flash on the top, which is like a. [00:16:52] Speaker B: Was that the little thin camera? [00:16:55] Speaker C: It was long and thin. What. What number did you say that was? A1? 126 instamatic. 126, yeah. Now the one you're thinking of is the site that holds sideways. Like holding an iPhone on the edge. [00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Was. [00:17:08] Speaker C: It was a 110 Kodak 110 Instamatic. Yeah, the 126 was a little bit bigger. Would have a aperture set. Aperture. They have a picture on the front of the sun. That one. See that? Oh, yeah, I'm pointing to it. That's good. [00:17:26] Speaker B: You went to touch the screen, didn't you? [00:17:28] Speaker A: I love it. Like. Like this. [00:17:31] Speaker C: That's a 100, but that's. That's the way the film was. See the one that had the flash cube on the top of it and it's got a blue background down the bottom row at the moment down there. That one. That one. [00:17:44] Speaker B: Oh, those flash cubes. They. I was fascinated with them as a kid. [00:17:48] Speaker C: Yeah, they're cool. It was like, that's cool. Same shape as that. That's. That's the 333. But. Yeah, but that. That little dial at the front would have a picture of the sun or a picture of cloud and that was your settings. I have no idea what the shutter speed was, but my first experience with using it. A friend of mine used to do observed trials on motorbikes, which is like motorbike racing, but as slow as possible. You go through these sections that are really up and down gullies and things like that and you lose points if you put your foot on the ground. And so he was right into that. That, you know, bike control and that sort of thing. And so I'd go out with him and. And take pictures of him in weird positions because I get on these very strange angles and that. And that was my first experience of actually going out shooting something intentionally was with this little Kodak Instamatic. [00:18:39] Speaker B: Very cool. And what about your upbringing? Was it. Was it a Nazi family? [00:18:44] Speaker C: Business? [00:18:44] Speaker B: Family? [00:18:44] Speaker C: Not really. Somewhere in the middle. Dad was my. My dad was a capital layer. Mum was stay at home. Mum. My grandma was a singer. She used to. Not professionally. We were just. Was a very good singer and stuff. No, the. The arts. Oh. Mum's a ceramicist, so. But she really got into that later in life, so. Yeah, ceramics and stuff. [00:19:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:12] Speaker C: But at the time, though, we were just a run of the mill. Right. You know, it Was back in the days when you'd sort of get home from school and then get told, okay, go. So I'd come back when the street lights turn on. Yeah. So you'd run around in the neighborhood and climb trees and things like that. [00:19:27] Speaker B: I had my bmx. I was pretty happy. [00:19:29] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. [00:19:30] Speaker C: I never had a buy. I never, Never got. Never had a bike when I was a kid. [00:19:33] Speaker A: No bike. [00:19:35] Speaker C: I never had a bike. Never. [00:19:37] Speaker B: There's a therapy support group for those people. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Wow. Can you ride one now? [00:19:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:19:42] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:43] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I've had one since. [00:19:45] Speaker B: He hasn't taken the training wheels off yet. But you can still ride it. No shame. [00:19:50] Speaker C: I had to sell it because I got a flat tire and I didn't know how to change the tire. So I thought, I'll just sell the bike. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, no. I mean, he could have just taken it to a bike shop. [00:20:02] Speaker C: I know, that's right. [00:20:05] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay. So what age. What age were you running around with the Instamatic? Do you remember roughly how old? [00:20:10] Speaker C: Probably 13. 12. 13. [00:20:12] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:13] Speaker C: Like that. Yeah, yeah. [00:20:14] Speaker A: So pretty early to be. [00:20:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:16] Speaker A: Being a photographer. [00:20:18] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. On assignment too. Yeah. Because he'd say, okay, I'm going to do the section. So he'd pick me up from home and then we'd go because it was always out in the country somewhere. And they'd mark off these sections with tape and there'd be people standing there with overcoats and clipboards watching like, like train spotter type guys. So you make sure you didn't put your foot down to take off penalty points. [00:20:42] Speaker A: And. [00:20:43] Speaker B: And so from those early experiences, I know you mentioned earlier about, you know, you sort of. You did the film stuff and then it stopped. [00:20:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:50] Speaker B: You picked up Digital in around 2019, I think you said 2018. 2019. Just in time for Covid. [00:20:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:21:01] Speaker B: In those, in between, in those years before then, were you doing incidental photography? Did you always have a camera in the house? [00:21:07] Speaker C: I had. I had a camera. Always had a camera. My first overseas trip. Wife's from New Zealand, so we went to visit her in New Zealand with her family. That. And so I need to, you know, overseas trip. What's the first thing you want to do? You're going to buy duty free. In those days they had the duty free shops in. I was in Sydney at the time. And so George street had all the duty free shops in a row. And you'd go in there and so I bought myself an Olympus camera there. [00:21:33] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:34] Speaker C: Which one was it OM2SP which was the SP for sport performance something performance basically was. It had more electronics in it which actually was its downfall because you had those cameras had little non rechargeable batteries. Yeah. And the SP had a leak in the circuitry. Yeah. Like exact spot program. That's what it was. [00:22:01] Speaker A: Spot program. Yeah. [00:22:02] Speaker C: Okay, so you so actually do spot metering. So the. I had the O1 as well when I was at uni the first time I got introduced to Olympus and sort of fell in love with the brand. One of the Japanese developers came out when they launched the OM2 and they had a big event at the Sydney Town hall and I was going to college up near Newcastle so we all came down the train and went to the thing and this guy was showing me how it does off the film plane metering and he was the one who showed me that his motor drive that did three frames a second and I thought wow, this thing's so advanced it's great. One of these days I'm going to buy an Olympus camera. And so got the OM2SP for the. For my first overseas trip to New Zealand. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Wow. So that, that guy, that Olympus rep or whoever it was really hooked you in for life. Yeah, you're right. Or die. [00:22:54] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly. I'm not as bad as some people who get OM system tattooed on their arms. There's a photographer in the U in the US who's and now he doesn't shoot for Olympus anymore. [00:23:07] Speaker A: Wow, that's a problem. He'll have to do a cover up. [00:23:10] Speaker B: It's like a bad breakup, isn't it? [00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah, you just get your whole arm. [00:23:16] Speaker B: Done black as a sign of remorse you just. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Exactly. You add sucks underneath it. Now Dennis from School of Light says selling a bike because of a flat tire is like the young fella binning memory cards because they're full. We had on on Monday night show that was amazing. Just stores them away. He's like memory cards full. Put it in this box. Buy a new memory card. I could not believe that. I've never heard of anyone doing that before. [00:23:45] Speaker C: You want to meet my wife? [00:23:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:51] Speaker C: She says it's the safest way of keeping them because she doesn't like putting them onto computers and the hard drives. Well if the hard drive doesn't work then I can't use the card anymore. So I'll just keep all the cards. Okay. [00:24:00] Speaker B: I mean it works actually if I. [00:24:02] Speaker A: Had enough cash to constantly buy 512 gigabyte CF Express cards that are fast enough to shoot what I Shoot, I'd probably do it too. Oh, what does this one say? Marco says, speaking of full cards, my new trick as a non professional photographer is to leave the photos in the card as a backup from the external memory. There you go. It works. [00:24:24] Speaker C: More common than you realize, SD cards these days are getting cheaper and cheaper. So yeah, kind of you can. [00:24:31] Speaker A: You know what's weird is getting fast enough ones for what I need. They're almost the same price as Safe Express and in some cases more expensive. And I don't know if that's just here in Australia, but like trying to get. I can't remember what. They've changed the categories so many times now. [00:24:47] Speaker C: V90 or something like that. [00:24:49] Speaker A: V90 seems to be the new thing. And a V90 that's like 256 gig is not a cheap memory card. And it's actually cheaper to get a CF Express that's even faster sometimes. So, yeah, yeah, I haven't had a look lately, but I've been on the, on the hunt for. I think I was going to get Angel Bird ones maybe. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to get some new ones too, but I'm going to wait for Black Friday because you get insane deals. Like they had a few with the Amazon day, they weren't great and a lot of crappy knockoff ones. But Black Friday is when I tend to buy new storage things because you just find great deals. It's a really good way to do it because everyone wants to get in on the Black Friday offer because, you know, it's this whole, oh, look, we've got a new marketing opportunity in Australia. [00:25:32] Speaker C: That's right. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Well, the last couple of years they've called it, it's been Black November and it starts in October. Yeah. It's supposed to be the end of one weekend in the end of November and it's, it's ended up creeping to where they were calling it last year. They were like, black November's here and those emails were coming out mid October and I was like, what the hell is going. [00:25:52] Speaker B: And then if you were. [00:25:54] Speaker C: Sorry, Jeff, you go, it's like East Easter. Like hot cross buns coming out on Boxing Day. [00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. [00:26:02] Speaker B: And Boxing Day sales. Like, I remember my mum, every year, year when I was a kid at home, she would go into the city, she would jump on the tram and from Airport west to the CBD and go to Myer and she'd be there when the doors opened, like, and there was crowds storming in because you'd, you know, back then the sales were actually more like clearance things. [00:26:19] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:19] Speaker B: And now it feels like they just get stuck in for the sales. So, you know, it has certainly morphed and changed a lot. Wow. We went way off topic there. [00:26:28] Speaker A: I know that it's fun. I was just. I'm looking up memory cards as we speak. I'm just like. So. Yeah. So a 256 Angel Bird V90 is 685 bucks. Oh. It just seems like a lot. [00:26:44] Speaker B: What, what? How many gigs? [00:26:46] Speaker A: 256. Whereas I can get the Angel Bird, which is not their fastest one, but it's still way faster than a V90. It's 1100 megabytes a second. 512 gigabyte CF Express for 475. [00:27:05] Speaker B: So it's like a lens for that. [00:27:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's the thing. It's like CF expresses were really expensive and they're still really expensive when you're buying like the peak capacities of 2 TB or whatever. But that 512 gig now is kind of the middle of the road size, whereas that's still massively pushing the limits when it comes to SD cards or fast SD cards. [00:27:29] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:27:31] Speaker B: And. And as they. As they phase more into that faster category, some of the slower, smaller gigabyte ones, they just become their, you know, the really basic cheap version. They don't even make the gold or the black label ones in sand. [00:27:42] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:43] Speaker B: For some of those megabyte ones anymore. It's interesting. And you know, and because camera sensors are capturing more data, people are doing video. You know, a 16 or 32 gigabit card. A gigabyte card just doesn't cut it anymore, does it? No, I got one. [00:28:01] Speaker C: One. Most of mine are 128s, but. Yeah, that's one that's not. That's an advantage of the om system is the files are. It's only a 20 megapixel sensor, so the files peak out at like 18, 19 megabytes a piece. Whereas the guys are shooting a GFX or something like that. How big are their files? [00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, when I reviewed the G1 of the GFX's last year, my. I had an older imac and it just struggled. Those files were massive. Like even just importing just took forever. [00:28:29] Speaker A: You know, John Pickett says, I got a Lexar silver 1 TB for 310 on sale at the start of the year. Was that an SD Lexa? Like a SD card? That's crazy. He uses it silver and he says he's never hit a buffer. Are you doing RAWS to the SD as well as the. Or is the Lexar Silver a CF Express? What is it? I'm confused. Okay, that's still a great. That's still a great deal. That's a 310. Yeah, yeah. [00:28:59] Speaker C: For terabyte, Man. [00:29:01] Speaker A: Next time you see that, get me one. John, I missed out on that deal. Okay, well, we're really sliding all over the place today. Where were we up to? Okay, so you were shooting? Yeah. [00:29:17] Speaker C: Occasionally from, you know, uni days. And then travel. Say, first overseas trip. Got the. The OM2SP, ended up selling that with all my Olympus stuff at the time, or lenses at the time. I had, like, remember Canada cat lenses, the mirror lenses. That's how you get a telephoto lens. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like a fight, you know, 500 mil lens, but it's f8 and it can only ever be f8. So I sold all those, and then between my wife and I, we bought a Canon AE1 program because it had auto focus. So. Oh, yeah, we've got to get into the autofocus thing. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Came over to the dark side for a little bit. Little bit. [00:30:01] Speaker C: A little bit. But that was never my camera. Like, at the moment, she has the Leica cue and I'm not allowed to touch it. [00:30:10] Speaker A: Oh, really? Wow. And originally the first cue, the first queue. [00:30:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:30:15] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [00:30:16] Speaker C: That was what? That's what. After a number of iterations and trying cameras like, you know, Sony 6004 hundreds and a Rico GR2, she finally settled on a Leica cue to take out when she does her walks. Wow. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Well, I guess that helps keep your gear budget high. If she's got a Leica, it's hard. It's. You know, she can't be like, oh, you bought another camera. You're like, you've got a Leica. Come on. Yeah. [00:30:43] Speaker B: I gotta say, those Sony A6, you know, A6700, 6400s, they. They're surprising, surprisingly good cameras. I. I went into a JB hi the other day, and they had. I think they had the a 6700 on. Which you rarely see obscure cameras like that in JB hi Fi. [00:31:01] Speaker C: But. [00:31:03] Speaker B: And for a moment, I was tempted to think about buying it. But no, it's just a nice compact. Just, you know. Yeah, yeah, it just. It just. It was a fleeting moment. It's not. [00:31:14] Speaker A: It's not a Fuji, though. What would happen? This podcast would fall apart. [00:31:18] Speaker B: It would. [00:31:18] Speaker A: We wouldn't know what to do with you if I Couldn't make Fuji jokes. [00:31:22] Speaker B: You can just make Sony jokes. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Oh, that's true. They're pretty easy to. [00:31:26] Speaker B: No, it's interesting though because yeah, they are. Over the years I have considered a number of Sony's like you know, the original RX1R, some of the more complex RX1 hundreds. You know, they're, they're great little street cameras, great little travel cameras and I have considered them many times but yeah. [00:31:43] Speaker C: I'd often thought that if you ever switch from Olympus it would, would have been Sony back in the. When the A7s first came out. I'll tell you, if I ever switch now, Z8's got my heart at the moment. [00:31:57] Speaker A: I think. [00:31:59] Speaker C: I could switch to Nikon. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. So why tell us why? [00:32:04] Speaker C: Just because I, I think the, it just feels good in my hand. I really like the friend of mine's got a Z9. They're way too big for me. I mean, you know, coming from an olympus to a Z9 with this building grip, it's like, what was Olympus thinking when they made the E M1X? Great camera, but it's just so big. But The Z, the Z8, just the functionality of it and the way that they come back from the dead basically and the, the tech that they've thrown into these cameras now I'm really impressed with the Z8s. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's been, it's been a great turnaround story, hasn't it? [00:32:38] Speaker A: Yeah, look at all the, all the little Nick on the chat. Jim's like, yes, Nick on Samantha Olsen. I really like Jeff Now. The Z8 is beast. Anthony Stonehouse says, I went from Fuji to Sony to Nikon. [00:32:54] Speaker B: Love nickon2 and okay, Anthony, we all make mistakes. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Well, he said, I'm shocked. Greg talking about buying a Sony. He's, he's in disbelief. Lisa loves his ED72. Look at Nick only getting all the love in the chat. [00:33:06] Speaker C: The only thing that stops me is I'd have to take out a second mortgage to replace all my lenses. [00:33:11] Speaker A: Yeah, the big switch switching systems is. [00:33:14] Speaker C: Costly and I've got so much and I love to death I'll put Olympus glass up against pretty much anything and I love it, but I've got a lot of it now. [00:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:26] Speaker C: So it would, it would cost me a fortune to switch systems. [00:33:30] Speaker A: And, and so the thing is every time you're tempted to switch, just go and, and look at Scott Portelli's work. [00:33:36] Speaker C: And then you'll be like, oh, I know, yeah. And nobody else does computational photography like they do the the things that Olympus can do. I don't turn to Olympics Compass. Yes, I will. Yeah, they're live composite stuff. That's what, you know, really attracted me. That's where I first met Dennis was doing light painting and went on one of his workshops and, and how this light painting thing works with live composite. I mean, you just can't do that. Some of the systems have come up now and have followed on from what Olympus initiated. But you know, good old home systems, they've. They do break the ground a lot of the time. [00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And I saw an article or interview or something with one of them recently that said that the reason that they're avoiding. I can't remember where they said more megapixels or a bigger sensor. Couldn't have been a bigger sensor, surely. [00:34:28] Speaker B: Who's that? [00:34:28] Speaker A: OM System. Someone from OM System was saying they wouldn't want it to negatively affect the computational photography features that they've built in. So anything that they do to increase, you know, megapixels or something like that needs to not slow down the computational photography side of things. They said that was critical because they've. They've really put a lot. [00:34:52] Speaker C: That's what they've solved into. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And they don't want to try and improve one thing at the detriment of that stuff. [00:34:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, yeah. [00:35:02] Speaker A: It's interesting. I don't know. It's. I don't know. The more and more I learn about. It's a very cool camera system. It'll. What I'm really interested to see is like, where does it go from here? You know, do you ever think about that, Jeff? Like with, with. [00:35:13] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:35:14] Speaker A: You're so invested in the system. Like where. Where do you think they should go? [00:35:18] Speaker C: I think, I think they, they probably need to as much as the megapixel wars. We will. Olympus people will say is over, that you don't need more. A new sense will be good. I mean the sensor we've got in OM1s is pretty much this. That's the only new one that's come out since the whole IUM SER EM1 series because it's back, you know, backside illuminated and that type of thing. So the readouts are faster and that. But the. Just the megapixel size you'll get. People say, well, I can't shoot on Olympus because my stock agency requires 24 megapixels to do submissions for imagery. And if you can't give them a 24 megapixel file, you're out of luck. So that's the only thing I think that may happen. There's, there's a rumored Sony Micro 4/3 sensor that with I think it's 42 megapixels that it's been talked about for a long time but they haven't actually put it into a camera yet because mostly most of the sensors around are Sony. Sony sensors. Yeah, yeah. So it's really just a matter of finding the right body for that. [00:36:26] Speaker B: That whole situation fascinates me because, you know, camera companies are really competitive. You know, it's all about market share and the fact that Sony is making senses for people for other brands. You know, I've always been curious to know how do they manage that conflict of interest? You know, is it a separate wing of Sony that doesn't have anything to do with Sony optics or head on? You know what I mean? Like it's, I don't know, I just, it just fascinates me that there's that, that idea that, you know, we're building a new camera, we need a brand new sensor and we're going to let Sony know about it, you know, if you feature. [00:37:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:37:04] Speaker B: You know, yeah, it's, it's, it's really weird. [00:37:08] Speaker C: Yeah. The NDA must be 3 inch seal. [00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's obviously. Yeah. Ran as a separate business unit. Whether it's, whether it's connected or not connected or whatever it is. I guess there's probably economies of scale with sensor development and manufacturing as well where they're like we don't sell enough cameras to, to justify building this 60 megapixel sensor. But if we can sell them really expensive to Leica and Lumix and you know, like that, you know that sensor kicks around a bit. It's like we can justify the development cost, subsidize it essentially for our own line of cameras, you know, maybe make theirs slightly worse because we're Sony, we can do what we want now. We can do it. [00:37:52] Speaker B: I reckon OM will stick with computational. I don't think they'll push for higher megapixels. I think they'll use what they've got, which are great sensors but they'll use the computational side of things in camera to elevate the resolution and the dynamic range. [00:38:06] Speaker C: And you just need to see. You just look at iPhone photography which is all computational photography. The things you can do with an iPhone these days, put that into, onto a bigger sensor, onto, you know, with Olympus, know how behind it. I don't know where you can stop. It's just. [00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:22] Speaker C: It's, you know, endless. [00:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And we often discuss that whole sensor thing, you know, like, for me, with Fujifilm, like, they've got the X trans sensor, 5hr now, that's their flagship one. But they put it in every camera almost, you know, they even put it in the Fujifilm. Not in the X half, sorry. They put it in all of their X and GFX series cameras. But, yeah, it makes you wonder sort of where it's going to next. At the moment, Fuji flagships are capped at 40 megapixel. Maybe they'll push to 60 in the next year or two, you know, or. [00:38:54] Speaker A: Maybe they'll say that actually it's too. [00:38:56] Speaker B: Close to the gfx. [00:38:58] Speaker A: They couldn't possibly need to. I mean, look at Canon's R5 Mark II is 45 megapixel. It's. It's their highest resolution camera and it's. It's doing great. You know, like, until canon is at 60 or whatever, I don't reckon Fuji need to do anything because they're currently, they're that close to, you know, the Z8, the R5 Mark II in. In megapixel count. I don't think the megapixel is holding them back. It's probably autofocus anyway. Moving on. Dennis Smith says I make massive prints off my Olympus gear. But commercial work these days, they do want to crop and chop up images. Very, very true. They want to be able to cut verticals out of it and do all sorts of stuff and they want to have plenty of res left over. But he also says made 30 light painting portraits last night using live composite out to a huge screen in a room. Minds blown. [00:39:53] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:39:53] Speaker A: And that's what's important. [00:39:54] Speaker C: Hey, I'd like to have been that. I know the event Dennis was at last night, I saw it advertised and I'm from Adelaide originally and to get down to the Richmond Hotel and see all that sort of thing happening, it would have been very cool. [00:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I need to see it in person again. The first time I saw him doing his stuff, I was like, what the hell is. We watch him do it all day. [00:40:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:40:16] Speaker A: It's so much fun. If anyone has his energy, he brings. [00:40:20] Speaker B: To it, that, that in itself, that energy that Dennis brings to everything he does, I think it's. You see it in his images. There's. There's energy and emotion and it's contagious too, though. [00:40:32] Speaker A: It makes you feel excited about photography, just watching him be excited about photography and then you want to try and do something cool. If anyone hasn't been over to his YouTube channel or Instagram, whatever. Dennis Smith school of light, great big ball of light thing, you'll find him, go and watch it. Because he's got behind the scenes little clips and stuff of how he creates what he creates. And none of it's Photoshop. [00:40:54] Speaker B: It's all, yeah, it's all, it's just all there for taking what we were. [00:40:59] Speaker C: Talking about before, about, you know, in the old days there were gatekeepers on photography. [00:41:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:04] Speaker C: Dennis is the anti gatekeeper. [00:41:06] Speaker A: Yeah, he's the opposite. He's like, hey, look, he can just watch me do it. I'll show you exactly what I do. [00:41:10] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:41:10] Speaker B: And the other. [00:41:11] Speaker A: Good luck beating me. [00:41:12] Speaker B: I know we're pumping up Dennis's tires here, but the man too. Yeah, but yeah, you know, and the fact that, you know, every time I've either I've been a bit beef up, but when we've been talking about stuff and you know, he just wants to collaborate with everyone, he's just like, oh, let's just give that a shot, you know, we had Ian, we were talking with Ian Tan about his cosplay photography. It was one of our earliest episodes of the Camera Life podcast. And Dennis went, oh, cosplay with a ball of light. I'll be in touch. Ian, you know, he's just wonderful. [00:41:44] Speaker A: Brain's always going. [00:41:46] Speaker B: Anyway, we're here to talk about Jeff. That's enough. [00:41:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yes. Yeah, you know, we'll see, we'll see you in October. Dennis in Bright. [00:41:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So you're, you're coming along? [00:41:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been going for probably six years or seven years. I did the first one before COVID then I did two through lockdown online and then I've been to everyone since. So. [00:42:07] Speaker A: Okay, so we can kind of tie that into this point. The point that you were at where you I guess went headfirst into photography again. [00:42:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So that happened, let's say 2017-2018-2020-1819 probably when I picked up the camera that had been bushwalking but didn't like getting its lens lenses changed out in the bush and just got, just started doing and it was, that's how I was sort of winding down from work. Not really intentionally, but you know, getting to a point where I take. I took on a role that was a four day a week contract instead of five days a week working for, not for profit to, to sort of wind down. But I still feeling that, yeah, just pressures of life and everything like that. I used to just like taking the camera, go out walking the streets around Melbourne at night time, taking pictures of the lights and doing, playing with long explosions and that sort of thing. And so that, that was my entry back into it once I got this, this camera again. And since then it's been, I do a lot of hiking and bush walking myself. I do it differently. Ange does the guided walks where she does the distances but, and goes with a group and she carries a day pack and everything else is, is set up that she puts, she puts in all the miles. She's done some amazing walks like she did the whole larapinta Trail, there's 220km or something like that through the Simpson Desert, through the West McDonald's. Yeah. But I'd so take my camera now when I, when I go hiking, have all the camera, all the gear for you to be self sufficient, you know, tent and food and everything like that on your back and then you strap another 3 kilos of camera gear on your front. [00:43:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:50] Speaker C: To go out and take pictures while you're out. So that's, that's sort of where I am on the outdoor sides of things. [00:43:57] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [00:43:58] Speaker B: And so what was that transition like for you? You worked in finance and IT and Treasury roles. [00:44:06] Speaker C: Yep. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Talk us through that transition of actually letting go, you know, potentially a secure income to actually having to generate your own business, your own income. Talk us through that process. [00:44:19] Speaker C: It never really still isn't. I don't look at it as an income replacement thing. If I can make, if I can make enough out of photography, doing you know, things like working for the unis, doing headshots, doing you know, model portfolios for digis and things like that, that's fine. If it becomes self funding. I've achieved my goal and my sort of promise to my wife that this wasn't going to cost an arm and a leg. It's almost there, it's almost there. It's a work in progress so you. [00:44:49] Speaker B: Know, it takes time. Takes time. [00:44:50] Speaker C: That's right. That's right. I love the way the tax office describes my business as a non commercial enterprise. [00:44:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a bit of a backhanded sort of a. Yeah, yeah, nice try. [00:45:01] Speaker C: I have all these tax write off in the future but I can't apply them to personal income which is not so great. [00:45:08] Speaker A: So. [00:45:09] Speaker C: Yeah, so, so the, the when I was working, you know, working full time, I use photography as a release, as a way of getting out, clearing my head. Mental health is a Big thing. And when I was. We can get on to some sort of things like this later. But when I was studied at psc, the photography studies college, my folio there was about the impact that or how people present themselves in photography and hide behind a veil. Hide behind a person, not so much a Persona but, but keep them, keep something of themselves in reserve. They don't want to show their true self. Masking. Exactly, exactly. And so like I said, I would go out after work and just start taking pictures of lights and things like that. I did a series when I, when I just turned. I'm 66 now. When I turned 60, I did a thing 60 in 60. So I would do 60 second exposures to sort of go through what turning 60 meant to me. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool. [00:46:15] Speaker B: That's really cool. [00:46:16] Speaker A: What made you come up with that idea? [00:46:20] Speaker C: Basically just playing with long exposures. And I thought, well, I'm doing a lot of these things at 30 seconds and stuff. 60 seconds just to, you know, flatten water, to get light streaks and that sort of thing. And I thought, well, you know, my birthday's coming up. So that happened. [00:46:35] Speaker B: I think that's a great idea for a personal project, you know, celebrating a personal milestone like that, whether it be 60th, your 50th, your 40th or you know, whatever it may be. [00:46:46] Speaker C: A lot of people do the, you know, the 365 projects. They take a picture a day and post those and those sorts of things. Me and social media have a complicated history. I, I think social media is an awful thing in a lot of ways. [00:47:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:01] Speaker A: Except for YouTube. We love you YouTube. [00:47:02] Speaker C: But. Yeah, yeah, that's right. [00:47:04] Speaker A: All the rest of them are terrible. [00:47:05] Speaker C: The government doesn't even like YouTube anymore. [00:47:08] Speaker A: I know, I saw today under 16s are now banned from YouTube Kids. [00:47:18] Speaker C: Well, this is actually YouTube. YouTube Kids still exist and YouTube is not covered under it because. Yeah, you don't need an account to log in. So Google can't build you a profile. You can't get targeted with bullying and all those sorts of things. So they've exempted YouTube Kids version. [00:47:33] Speaker A: It's very interesting. It's. Yeah. [00:47:36] Speaker C: What I wonder is how they're going to police it. I, I've got a. My son's partner used to work in the E Safety Commission and they're just saying, how are we going to control this? How's it going? [00:47:49] Speaker A: Well, they talk. I mean, so this. I follow some stuff in the U.S. and in the U.S. in some states they've actually banned or Known they haven't banned pornography, but basically you can't access pornography on the Internet unless you put your ID information in. [00:48:08] Speaker C: Oh, really? [00:48:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And everyone's like, who's gonna do that? You know. Yeah. So. So they've effectively kind of banned that in some states by putting that thing there where they're like, oh, it's not banned, but we need to prove that you're over age. So all you have to do is like scan your driver's license on this porn site and you can come in. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Don't have ID though. [00:48:31] Speaker A: Well, that's right. So this would be a different thing. But, but if they, if they. Yeah, it's like sometimes those, those limitations can effectively cripple something that they're saying, oh, you know, we'll just do an age verification. They can, I don't know, do something or whatever. And whether they don't do it or they just get around it. And then if they get around it. So they go into YouTube, say a 15 year old goes, I just know how to make an adult account and pretend I'm an adult. Well then they're gonna get served all the adult stuff. Yeah, you know, so it's like, then there's no protections because they've gone around the, the system as opposed to being part. Because this, because what YouTube wanted was if people are part of a family YouTube account, it would be okay. But I think it was meta. Meta was like, hey, if we're banned, they're banned too. And Australia was like, okay, fair enough. So it was actually meta that got YouTube banned by saying, well, you've banned us for under 16s. Fair's fair. It's kind of. And fair enough. These shorts and stuff on YouTube are kind of the same content that you get on Instagram and stuff. And tick tock. So it's kind of like we can't do one without the other. Anyway, it's a weird. [00:49:41] Speaker C: I get where they're coming from because the damage that social media can do is, is immense. And yeah, you know, the, the problems with the effect on, on kids and things like that is very real. And in some ways I say, yeah, good on them for trying something. But I, I don't know if they've, yeah. Gone around. Around it's going to be enforceable. [00:50:03] Speaker A: That's the thing. It's like they got to try something, but this doesn't seem like the right thing. But what the right thing is. [00:50:09] Speaker C: That's right. [00:50:10] Speaker B: It was probably decided by a committee. That's probably the problem. But you know I think back to when my older two kids were younger and they were, they, they surpassed me in tech understanding so quickly, you know and you know, got in trouble for issues because they, they could work out, you know, workarounds and loopholes. [00:50:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:50:32] Speaker B: How to access things and you know, like it hacking. Clever. [00:50:35] Speaker A: That's what they do. And then they become brilliant. They do cool stuff once they get into the workforce but they've got to go through a few years of criminal activity, breaking rules together, of ruining the library's network to Download Duke Nukem 3D. You know, like I don't know if anyone will get any of those references but yeah, this is the sort of stuff that used to be happen at school. [00:51:00] Speaker C: Side scrolling games. They're the best, right? [00:51:02] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I don't know. Anyway, we can't solve that problem. We're just a little photography podcast. But As I said, YouTube. [00:51:11] Speaker B: We do love you. [00:51:11] Speaker A: Please don't love YouTube. Take our channel away. We, we think you should be allowed everywhere. [00:51:17] Speaker B: Yeah, we're on your side. We're on your giant anonymous corporation. I just want to bring up a comment and question from Ernesto out of curiosity. I am just in front of buying an E M 10 mark 4. Excuse me. To test Micro Four Thirds for street photography. I'm surprised at how cheap the lenses are compared to the Fuji lenses. And then just quickly, Dennis has followed up with Ernesto. The Olympus glass is out. Outrageous. That's such a dentist word. What's special is the variety and range of price. Remember this company makes medical glass tiny. Perfect. You'll love the system. [00:51:53] Speaker C: Absolutely. [00:51:54] Speaker A: So yeah, what lenses Jeff, do you reckon would be good for Ernesto? Have you got any suggestions for, for like if you were to get started for street photography with a little Olympus. [00:52:05] Speaker C: Kit, little Olympus, they got a series of 1.8 primes which are unbelievable. The 45 mil 1.8 prime is probably one of the sharpest lenses around. For wider they've got a 17 mil and that's got this still got the, the famous Olympus autofocus clutch where you pull it, pull it backwards and turns into manual focus and you push it forward. Traps everybody all the time you say why is my camera auto focusing? Because you pulled the clutch back. Yeah, it's a real, it's a real problem. But no, the, the for a little, a small bodied camera like the M10 Mark IV and with some of the 1.8 primes. You'll love it, absolutely love it. You're 17 mil and you've got to remember the crop factor. So 17 mil 35 is going to be 35 ish. Yeah, 34. And the 45 will be like a 90, which is a great portrait lens. [00:52:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Before I got, I actually got a 45 1.2 when I, I changed bodies still with an Olympus, but they had a deal on if you bought the new body, they'll throw in one of their 1.2 primes. And so I chose the 45 mil, but. And so I, I use that mainly for my, my portrait work now. But the 40, the, the 1.8 version of it is tiny. Tiny and is absolutely superb. [00:53:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Justin, speaking of, of Jeff's images shot with om. Should we bring up his, his Instagram page and have a quick squeeze? [00:53:31] Speaker A: Yeah, Instagram or, or the new officially launched premier world premiere. [00:53:39] Speaker B: You heard it here on the camera first. Just like we had the first interview with Scott Patelli. Well, we're saying it's the first interview. We have a world exclusive for Jeff Weber's portfolio. [00:53:51] Speaker A: So I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, but the lead up to this podcast was the push that you needed to get a web presence happening. [00:54:01] Speaker C: Correct? Correct. This has been a failed lockdown project. There's been about four versions of this and I keep saying, no, no, I don't like it, I like it. And changing it again and starting from scratch. And then somebody said to me, and I've just adopted, this is a motto now, don't let perfect get in the way of good. So it's out, it's up there. Take it for what it is. It'll be a work in progress forever. [00:54:24] Speaker A: Now actually, before we, before we look at some images. So you were saying before we start talking about YouTube. So you're not a social media kind of person, you. No, no, posting on there. [00:54:35] Speaker C: Didn't love posting. In fact, I stopped when I, when I went to. I studied at PSC for a couple of years. I was signed up to do what they call their advanced Diploma of Photography and that was 2019. Was going to take me through to 2023. And then Covid happened in the middle of it and that went to an online course. And I thought I don't pay, you know, uni fees to do an online course. So I stopped and, and decided to use that money to do workshops and travel and, and things that myself, which, which has been good, but I love it. I've got all the time in the world for PSC as institution and what they do, I think it's fantastic. And they were the Hosts of the photography prize that was on over the last month as well. They have a lot of things there. But at that time, I basically. I initially had set up a different Instagram page to go through my PSC journey, and then I fell out of love with the idea of posting of it and I stopped posting. And from 2019 onwards, and then I've been doing some doing shoots and did a shoot with a girl down in some rock pools down in Sorrento, and I got this message on my Instagram says, oh, do you want to collaborate on this post? I thought, oh, yeah, collaborate. Whatever that means to click on that. Clicked on it. And all of a sudden my Instagram page is alive again because when you collaborate on Instagram, it goes on your page as well as their page. And so all of a sudden I'm getting. Things are being posted under my name, so. Ah, okay, this is interesting. So I guess I'm back on Instagram again. But most of the things that are on there are through collaborative posts rather than me actually going and creating new posts on my own account. Is that so? Yeah. [00:56:14] Speaker A: Are you not. I guess this gets into a little bit of, like, what your goals are with photography and things is that you're not sort of desperately trying to use Instagram as a way to market your photography services. [00:56:28] Speaker C: Well, this is what I'm all through. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Word of mouth. [00:56:31] Speaker C: It's word. It must be word of mouth. Although since I stopped posting on Instagram, when I stopped posting, I was on about 550 subscribers, viewers, whatever. What, you know, people following in my account. [00:56:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:44] Speaker C: In the two years where I basically didn't post anything, I cracked over a thousand. I thought, how is this happening? I don't get it. [00:56:53] Speaker A: Keep doing that. [00:56:57] Speaker C: So I'm something like, I don't know, 2100 or something now, and I'm not actively pushing it. That said, I. I do get a lot of posts on there because people say. And they do, and they, you know, say nice things about, you know, how the shoot went and things like that. So that's all good. But definitely word of mouth is the way it is. But I'm not, because I'm not pursuing this as a income replacement. It's not. I wouldn't want to depend on it to survive. The pressure's way off. And so I just do it because it's what I like doing and it's what I get enjoyment of and I get fulfillment out of and always learning and exploring and trying different things without that pressure of having to make it commercial. In a real sense, yeah, it sounds like fun. [00:57:44] Speaker A: It's the way to do it. [00:57:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:57:47] Speaker B: Non pressure kind of, you know, experience with it. [00:57:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Can I ask you a question about when you return so you return to tertiary studies later in life in 2019 I think you said just before covered. What was that like for you being sort of more of a mature age student studying photography? What, you know, what was that like? [00:58:10] Speaker C: It was good, it was good. And admittedly the cohort that I was with, it was while I was still, was still working and so it was two nights a week, you know, starting at 6:00 o' clock at night, you know, going into night school for it and so a lot of the other people in our first year class were mature age students as well. Like okay, there are a couple from young ones, most of the young, the young people though tended to do the day classes and so the people who are working would go and do the night ones. But I had done part time study or you know, mature age studies since I did a master's degree in the mid-80s, went back and because I'd always been treasury and finance but never actually did any formal accounting work. And as you sort of get up in, in the finance or treasury game, you start off on the making the deals and, and that's what the treasury side is, the origination. And then the accountants, we always look down on the accounts, well they're the ones who record the deals. They don't actually do the work, they write down the numbers for it. But as you get higher and higher up to, you know, finance director and things like that, you've got to understand the balance sheets, you've got to understand the accounting side of things. And so I went back and did a master of Accounting at later in life. So the idea of study has never phase me too much. [00:59:30] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:31] Speaker C: And you, you, you find your, your group within, wherever you are and I, I can get on with most people hopefully. [00:59:40] Speaker A: Did you, did you make some friends there? [00:59:43] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. [00:59:45] Speaker A: How long were you there before, before you. [00:59:47] Speaker C: I did all of 2019. So yeah, I would do all of 2019 and then half of 2020 and then it went online and that was really unfortunate time because 2020 was this, you know, the second year program was when we were allowed to use the PSC studio and do a lot of studio work and all that went on. I thought well this is really defeating the point of doing and doing the face to face course. [01:00:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:14] Speaker C: So but out of that first year cohort, the lecturers were unbelievable. We had the best guy in the world who took us for our very first semester, took right back from the basics and, and he was terrific. But the students, there's probably six or seven of us out of maybe 18 people in the class and we still catch up every four or five months for dinner. And one of my mates is, he's retired since PSC days and he's now on a road trip. He's up in the bottom of Arnhem Land somewhere doing photographic photography. Another friend of mine I caught up with yesterday, she does circus photography and their own work, that sort of thing. So we catch up with them quite a lot and so yeah, we've made some good friends and the people at PSC too that have done like their judges now for the Australian Photography Prizes as much as other things that they are up to still catch up with them fairly regularly as well. Yeah. So it's. As an institution, it's a great place and if Covert hadn't happened and hadn't gone online I would have gone through, done the whole four years. Lady I caught up with yesterday, she did the whole four year deployment and then enjoyed it so much she's halfway through her bachelor's degree now. She's turned into a full on degree program. [01:01:34] Speaker A: So yeah, okay, crazy. All right, so you enjoyed it and you obviously really enjoy learning as you said, you, you progressed from that into just, just going okay, well what can I do in terms of workshops and you know, sort of I guess curating your own photography education. [01:01:51] Speaker C: Exactly, exactly the way I put it. To curating your own journey and to what you. So you pick a specific topic or you say I want to know about. Well take Dennis for example. I want to know about this light painting. I was sort of seal. I've seen these balls of light appearing on Instagram pages. How on earth do you do that? And what does that mean? You know, how do you do this light painting stuff? And so you go and do that or where I started where I got back into photography and doing the hiking side of it. I did a workshop. I did a hike with, with Cam. [01:02:24] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [01:02:24] Speaker C: So I've done the, done the overland track twice with him now. So I still haven't seen Cradle Mountain, but that's another story. The Tasmanian weather's like yeah, he's just. [01:02:33] Speaker A: He'S trying to get you coming back, coming back for more and more. [01:02:36] Speaker C: He keeps fighting the mountain. [01:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:40] Speaker C: Don'T do this in April. I've done it twice in April and I. [01:02:43] Speaker A: You think I'd learn what, what Is it to a. Like with Cam? [01:02:47] Speaker B: So. [01:02:47] Speaker A: So it's hiking like point to point with camera gear and your own camping gear and that kind of stuff. Does he carry all of your gear for you and cook you dinner? [01:02:58] Speaker C: That'd be nice. No, no, no. [01:03:01] Speaker B: The turn down search. [01:03:03] Speaker A: What. What is it? What is it like how big's the group and yeah, tell us about what's. [01:03:09] Speaker C: The. The first one with him we had two guys so Cam and another photographer leader there and we had six I think six people with us. Carry all your own gear, carry your own tents because Cam runs it as a. As a commercial camping thing. So basically I treated it as a way of doing the overland which is something I've always wanted to do and the photography was an added bonus for wasn't so but you'd still carry all your. You know I took a tripod. Don't know if I do that again actually. But that's the thing. It was good for Astro but there are way I've worked out ways now of balancing things on clothes and stuff like that to still be able to get long exposures. So yeah the, the journey was the. The overland was the main thing and the photography was the side but came and take you to all these great spots. Like we'd go to the waterfalls. He'd get it to know the range is what we stayed at one of the huts and the rangers have their hut somewhere away from where the main punters stay and Cam got to know this guy and said oh there's a up further up this creek around behind where the rangers hut is there's a great place you can see the waterfalls and just great landscape images there. And so he takes us to those sort of little special places and things and so and Cam's on the overland so many times that he know. He's knows where everything is and wants the best place and I think it's. [01:04:35] Speaker B: Worth doing those sort of journeys with someone especially doing for photography. Do it with someone who's done it before knows those spots. [01:04:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:43] Speaker B: We talked to Pete Mellows a couple of weeks back about. He used to do mountain biking tours on in Tassie on the tracks and you know he would get access to properties that otherwise you couldn't get. [01:04:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:04:57] Speaker B: You know because you're working on someone's private land to get to this amazing spot. But you know as, as the tour operator he made a relationship with the landowner and all that sort of stuff. I just also want to touch on a point you brought up earlier about you know The. Unfortunately, due to Covid, you had to move your studies online and that just didn't work for you. But I think there's a lot to be said for that whole notion of, you know, someone asking you, I want to improve my photography, what's the best. What's the best lens I should get? And, you know, my first answer is always, well, what lens have you got? [01:05:31] Speaker A: And. [01:05:31] Speaker B: And I'd say, well, a new lens isn't going to fix your photography. Keep that lens. The 1500 bucks you're going to spend on a new lens. Travel, do some workshops. [01:05:39] Speaker C: Yes, yes, yes. [01:05:40] Speaker B: You know, do a short course. Buy a book. Buy a photo book. [01:05:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:44] Speaker B: You know, there's so many ways to educate yourself now, and a lot of it. You know, we talked about Dennis being the. The. Is it the antithesis. [01:05:52] Speaker C: No, the. [01:05:53] Speaker B: The anti. [01:05:54] Speaker C: The anti. Gatekeeper. [01:05:55] Speaker B: The anti gatekeeper. Ajk AG K. Is that right? [01:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:01] Speaker B: You know, there's a lot of stuff online and you've got, you know, experienced professional people like Dennis, you know, Pete Malice, who I mentioned earlier, has a YouTube channel. Greg Carrick has a YouTube channel. You know, go and follow a bunch of people and learn. [01:06:16] Speaker C: You can absolutely teach yourself photography on YouTube. And the amount of information that's out there, I think when I was disposally saying, yeah, I didn't want to do a YouTube course. I think it's paying the university fees to do a YouTube course. [01:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:06:29] Speaker C: That I was reacting against. And then you, you know, redirecting that money to experiences, to travel to. To broadening your horizons out in the real world to put into practice or to find somewhere that you wouldn't get opportunities to otherwise. [01:06:44] Speaker A: And, and to. So what did you say? Six times to the Bright Festival photography? Five times. [01:06:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:06:50] Speaker A: And that's that. They're. They're weekends where you can absolutely come away with a bit of knowledge. [01:06:56] Speaker C: Absolutely. [01:06:56] Speaker A: What you're looking for. Yeah. [01:06:58] Speaker B: And the great thing, elevated appreciation of your craft, too. [01:07:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:02] Speaker B: Sorry, Jeff, I spoke over you, mate. [01:07:03] Speaker C: No, no, no, that's cool. No, the good thing with that with Bright is you get to try things you would never do. Like, I. Yeah, I'm not real keen on food, photography or that sort of thing, but it's, you know, it's there and you've got, you know, you. With the way the credit system works and you can't get into the workshop you want. What am I going. I've got my. I've got some money left over to spend. I'll go and do. I'll Go and see what Carl's up to. Taking pictures of soup that he's cooking. And you'd never do that. [01:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And you never know what little nugget from that you might take away and be able to use in your own studio work or, or something. Just because it's, it's food versus a full sized human. You might learn lighting or something where you're like, I'm going to give that a try. [01:07:43] Speaker B: Food for more, you know, because Carl's got this background as a chef. But you know, if you, if you want to get into food photography, well, you know, watch some videos, go to befop, do a workshop on, you know, because that will cover everything about how you, how you plate it up, you know, adding layers and dimensions to your shot. Like there's so much to learn. [01:07:59] Speaker C: What you just said about, okay, it's food photography. You're going to do that workshop. But the things you pick up out of it. I started doing another little sideline is working with some small brands doing product photography, which I can do at home and do it whenever I like, etc. But the lighting of that, some of the things I'm using for that is basically how you've done food photography. [01:08:19] Speaker A: Lighting. Product photography is a pain in the ass. If anyone hasn't tried it, it's a pain in the ass. I've done a lot of it for, for the camera stroke specifically and it's, it's not easy. [01:08:33] Speaker C: You think there's a lot to it? [01:08:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Small product, it doesn't move like, it's not that hard. Really hard. It's a pain in the ass. [01:08:42] Speaker C: Yeah. I say I've done some for a small leather brands, you know, handbags and wallets and things like that. Yeah. I'm yet to perfect. She's got these wrist straps, they're like bracelet type things. I have no idea how to photograph those. I just can't get them into a place. They need to be on somebody's arm. That's all. [01:09:03] Speaker B: I've been really hard to do, isn't it? [01:09:05] Speaker C: You can't, you can't photograph those in isolation. [01:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. See, look at this. Look. Nick Fletcher, your camera straps were horrible to photograph and capture. How awesome they are. They are. They're a pain in the butt. That's why when someone sends us a really cool. So Dennis sent us a really cool photo. Not to make it a competition, Nick, but Dennis sent us a photo and it was great. I want, I want to get Dennis to do more. [01:09:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:09:28] Speaker A: Saving up my Pennies. Roy. Roy Bixby says at least food photography isn't as boring as other product photography. He said that just before we start, before you said so. I've been doing some product photography. [01:09:46] Speaker C: It's a bit concerned about Nick's comment. I just thought, I've got a comment of Nick's. He wants to know more about closed based tripods. [01:09:53] Speaker A: I think we need to see more. Yeah, well, use your imagination, Nick. And he says, no surprise, Dennis nailed it. Yeah, Dennis nails everything. It's. It is. So the thing with product photography is it's. I don't know, it's just so finicky and everything is way more obvious later on when you're looking back at the images and you're like, oh, that little bit's sort of crinkled and it doesn't show the product off the way it's supposed to. And. And then you can't just fix it, you've really got to reshoot it. Because. Because once you start trying to manipulate the images, it looks unnatural and stuff. And it's especially leather. Anything with texture is really difficult. Do you use flash or continuous lights for the product photography you've been doing? [01:10:36] Speaker C: A bit of both, actually. I tend to mix it. I think one of the. My favorite things I'm doing product photography is I have like a big seven foot umbrella behind me to, to soften the light flying into it. And then I use directional light to do. To make something shine or whatever. If I have. I have some little Perspex clear Perspex acrylic stands and things to put things on and you can make those shine and things. Works really well. But. But honestly this, this giant umbrella behind me to just throw really nice soft light everywhere and takes care of all your shadows and things like that as well. Yeah, seems to work really well. [01:11:15] Speaker B: For me. The biggest pain with product because I photograph. Because I review cameras and lenses, I photograph them for my articles. The biggest issue for me is dust spots. Oh yes you can, you could. Like I've got a little kabuki brush. I. I get it looks like I get rid of everything. I take the shot and there's like a pube on it. [01:11:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:35] Speaker B: Where did that come from? [01:11:37] Speaker C: You know. [01:11:40] Speaker A: So Jim just did some product shots for not pubes. Don't worry where this is going. Jim just did some product photographer. Yeah. For a new strap that we're about to release, I could even show it on the. Should I. Yeah, why not? Let's see if I can bring it up. [01:12:02] Speaker B: It's your Podcast. [01:12:03] Speaker C: Another world premiere. [01:12:04] Speaker B: You decide, buddy. [01:12:05] Speaker A: Another world premiere. Let me see. [01:12:06] Speaker B: You're the boss. Remember. [01:12:09] Speaker A: People have already seen it. It's been kicking around for ages. We just haven't had a chance to release it. Where are we? Stop sharing this. But anyway, where I was going with it was Jim did the product photography for it and he did a good job, but he modeled it on his Nikons, which is already a problem. I had to remove the Nikon just because. It's just, you know, I don't, I don't normally. I actually don't normally take the brands off stuff. A lot of companies take the brands off the cameras. Whereas I'm like, we're. We're a camera. Like, we love cameras. I. We just leave the cameras in the product shots as they are. But the. In this shot, because it's. We don't usually do dark background. We usually do light background for our product shots. And because it's dark, because of the type of strap it was, we wanted it to be a dark theme. But the Nikon just stood out like crazy. So I got rid of it. But what the. What the thing was. So these are the straps that we're going to release. These like basket weave textured leather straps which look really cool. Trying to think of a name of it. If anyone's got a name. I was going to call it the Stealth Limited Edition. Stealth. What about this? [01:13:14] Speaker B: Oh, that's sexy. Let's just call it that. [01:13:16] Speaker A: We'll just call it that. The Vader. I don't know. I'm trying to think of something a bit because it's got a bit of like a samurai kind of a feel to it. If you see it in person, it's very kind of like. Anyway, long story short, Jim sent all these photos through to me and the photos are good, but the amount of dust that's on because he modeled it on his normal working like Nikon kit, Z eights and stuff. And it was just. There was just dust everywhere. I think I did like 400 spot removals on every shot. And I was like, Jim just. You could have just give it a quick wipe, just a quick wipe with a cloth before it would have. I would have had to do some still, but not that many. It was. Yeah, it was out of control. Yeah. [01:13:57] Speaker B: Why don't you put it in the Shintaro? [01:13:59] Speaker A: Oh, the Shintaro. I don't know. I don't want to do anything though, where it's like, I don't really understand what that means. And then I call it that. And someone from Japan's like, dude, that's. That's weird, isn't it? [01:14:12] Speaker C: Is that like the. The Pajero? [01:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:14:16] Speaker C: That means something nasty. [01:14:18] Speaker B: Hey, Jay, why don't you make it a competition for viewers to name it? [01:14:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, if you've got a name, if you come up with a name that we use, I'll give you one, but. [01:14:28] Speaker B: There you go. [01:14:28] Speaker A: But if you come up with it, if you come up with a name that we don't use, you get nothing. Sorry. [01:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we appreciate it. We appreciate it, but you lost. [01:14:37] Speaker A: But, yeah, so I agree the dust spots are an absolute pain, but, yeah, this. So this lighting setup Jim was playing with, I think we. He'd probably do it differently next time, potentially. The way that the different light spots in the background and stuff. But that's just black. Black rollpaper background with continuous lights. We just use two continuous lights. One bigger softbox and then one smaller one with the grid. So you can sort of use one as a soft. A big soft light, like you're saying, fill in shadows, and then the other one to do a bit more directional, controlled light. But yeah. Oh, LTK. Are you going to offer it in the simple 20? There will. I don't know. There's another new strap we're working on that it would get offered in. Do you want to see it? Do you want to see it? Should we. I mean. [01:15:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:15:22] Speaker A: Hang on one second. [01:15:25] Speaker B: Where's he gone? [01:15:26] Speaker A: He's gone. [01:15:27] Speaker B: He has. This is a perfect opportunity for me to fill the void by reminding people that this is the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. Head to Lucky Straps. If you're looking for a premium leather camera strap such as the ones where we're showcasing at the moment, even though technically we're supposed to be talking about Jeff and not just. [01:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah, but this can just be an app. [01:15:48] Speaker C: You've got to pay the bills, right? Yeah, it's nice. [01:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:15:50] Speaker B: So we've got to pay the bill. So head to Luckystraps.com and if you're new to the channel, you're new watching this video, whether it be live with us now or later on down the track. Drop a comment to say hi and let us know where you're from, what you shoot. And, yeah, join the community. Make sure you like this episode. It helps other people get notified that we exist and subscribe. And tickle the bell so you get all the notifications before the episodes go live. [01:16:15] Speaker A: I put myself here. Okay. So you won't be able to see this very well, because my light's not set up for this. But it's a 20. It's like a 20 mil wide strap, but with a direct connection to the camera with no adjustment. So it's more of like a Leica style. I've got it on an R3 at the moment because when I test stuff, I test it properly. But basically it's like it's got some built in leather bumpers around our quick release system. So it feels really nice and connected to the camera, but it still can connect to. The problem is most of these, when you see these, they're done with ring connections, which means they can't fit cannons, Leica SLS or anything with a slot. Whereas this can, obviously. But it's also quick and fast to connect. But it's got a bit of protection around it and it feels really solid. Feels not like I'm all about how it feels around your hands. And these just feel so nice around your hands anyway, that we could definitely do this in that new basket weave pattern. So we'll see. [01:17:21] Speaker B: Classy. [01:17:23] Speaker A: Oh, onyx. I like that. [01:17:25] Speaker B: Dennis, that's not bad either, is it? [01:17:27] Speaker A: It's not bad. [01:17:28] Speaker B: That's not bad at all. [01:17:28] Speaker A: Den, hang on, I gotta rearrange my. I'm gonna go over here from now on. Perfect. Okay. No peak design anchors. You can fit them to our straps. But we've got our own quick release system that's a little different to theirs. But I am making a video at the moment just to show how you can adapt our straps to their anchors. If you prefer their anchor link system because their system is very cool too. Just pros and cons. I'm actually going to make a video of the pros and cons between ours and theirs because they're really just sort of horses for courses. [01:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:18:04] Speaker A: Anyway, where were we at before that ad? Ad break? [01:18:08] Speaker C: You got to cover my enormous appearance. [01:18:12] Speaker B: We're talking about education and, and so maybe just talk to us, you know, you. You decided that. Well, sorry, Covid made the education thing too tricky and expensive. So you get yourself set up. You know, you've, you've. It's 2019. You've decided that photography is going to be it. And then Covid hits. And then after that, what did. What came next for you? [01:18:38] Speaker C: That's when I started doing the, the hiking thing really? And going out doing. That's how landscape photography came into it. Also. Landscapes are always there. It's easier than. And I didn't know anybody in photography in a studio sense, like where you Would go to even use a studio or how do you get people to come to a studio to be shot by you and that sort of thing. So landscapes were there. I enjoyed the hiking. Would take my camera out, take my Olympus out. And my favorite lens of. Of all time with the OM system, the. The 12 to 100. It's just a one. That's all I take when I go hiking. I might have a little 12 mil if I don't do some Astro in a side pocket because it's so small. But that 12 to 100 is equivalent of a 24 to 200 F4. It's just perfect. That goes everywhere I am. [01:19:29] Speaker A: I think that's the one that Scott Portale was talking about on the show where he said he was. There was like a gorilla that just popped out of nowhere. And he said if he hadn't. Didn't have that lens on, have not been able to get a shot and. [01:19:41] Speaker C: Would have been too close. Yeah. [01:19:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Wow. Okay. So that lens is really how big? Like roughly how big is that lens? How. [01:19:48] Speaker C: Give me one sec. [01:19:49] Speaker A: Oh, perfect. Show and tell. I'll pull that down for a second. Let me do the. Let me do this and do that. [01:20:01] Speaker C: So this is it. [01:20:02] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:06] Speaker C: Things on the side. [01:20:06] Speaker A: Sorry. [01:20:07] Speaker C: Oh, gross. Yeah. [01:20:09] Speaker A: What is it? So. [01:20:15] Speaker C: Yeah, so this is. This is. This is what? A cabin. And so I have a little bag on the front of my. That clips onto the straps of my backpack. You know, my hiking pack. [01:20:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:24] Speaker C: It sits in it like that. Or I do. The reason why I've got peak design things. I do actually use the capture clip and it's. [01:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:32] Speaker C: And Olympus. One thing that's really good about Olympus is the weather ceiling is unbeatable. Like, you can run this thing under a tap if you want to. [01:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:41] Speaker C: To clean it when you. If you get it muddy and that you can. I've done that. But yeah, that's. That's the 12 to 100. That's not the own one. Not the mark two, just the original one. [01:20:53] Speaker B: So 12 to 12. It's 561 grams. [01:20:55] Speaker A: That's what I was about to Google. Yeah. Okay, so 560. Okay. So it's got a little. [01:21:01] Speaker C: But yes. [01:21:03] Speaker A: A little bit of front, like slightly front heavy, but not too. [01:21:06] Speaker C: A little bit frontier, but not too bad. [01:21:08] Speaker B: The. [01:21:08] Speaker C: The OM one, they have a really good grip on it, which is why the OM3 that just came out, I like it a lot because it's very reminiscent of my film I won and om2s, but just not having that Grip would limit you to smaller lenses. I think that would be. It's just too hard to hold, but it's just being flat across the top here. [01:21:31] Speaker B: We recently tested the OM3 and they've put a new. Their new color dial on the front. [01:21:38] Speaker C: Yes, would be. [01:21:39] Speaker B: And with a heavier lens, that would be such a pain in the ass because it's, it's, it's sharp, it digs into you. [01:21:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:21:44] Speaker A: And it's. Yeah, it's sort of right where your finger rests when you, when you're trying to support a lens. And it was. Yeah, it was. But I actually didn't mind the ergonomics of it without a grip. But you're right with it with lighter lenses, with. With heavier lenses. [01:21:57] Speaker C: Those 1.8 primes that I was talking about before. Ideal match. Absolutely. [01:22:02] Speaker B: I think I shot. Was it the 17 mil you sent me, Justin? [01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah, we had the 17 and the 25. I did a fair bit with the 25 because I'm a 1.8. Yeah, 1.8. I sort of gravitate towards a 50 mil focal length. And with those lenses, it felt wonderful. Just a nice light sort of. Yeah, it was a good ergonomic camera. [01:22:22] Speaker B: Let's just jump in with a quick comment because someone's saying farewell. Oh, Ernesto. Guys, as always, a great podcast. Unfortunately, I have to leave work. Sorry. I have to leave to get at least some hours of sleep before my work day starts. I'll reach. Gosh, my eyesight's terrible. I will watch the rest in my lunch break. [01:22:42] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us, Ernesto. [01:22:43] Speaker B: Thanks, Ernesto. Good to see you again. [01:22:45] Speaker A: Good night. Dennis says the 1212 to 100 stabilized, combined with the internal camera stabilization, which is otherwise known as Ibis, which should be in every camera in 2025, but it's not, means insane. Long exposures handheld. How long do you reckon you can get Dennis on it? On a 12? What do you reckon? What could you hand hold at the time? [01:23:06] Speaker C: I've held. I've handheld. Six seconds. Whoa. What? [01:23:10] Speaker A: Really? [01:23:12] Speaker C: Yep. Doing. Really Standing. Standing at Hamer hall, taking pictures of the city at night, leaning against the wall and holding your breath, basically. [01:23:24] Speaker A: Wow. [01:23:25] Speaker C: I got six seconds out of it. [01:23:26] Speaker A: That's nuts. Yeah. That's crazy. Very, very cool. [01:23:34] Speaker C: Which is why. Which is why you're saying you want to go hiking now. Taking a tripod. You don't. Unless you're going to do long exposure, like real proper 30 second exposures or astro work. You don't really need the tripod. The stabilization is really good. [01:23:50] Speaker A: Dennis says 10 easy you need to feel it to believe it. 10. [01:23:54] Speaker B: Easy 10. [01:23:56] Speaker A: Wow. I need to see it. I need proof. [01:23:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:23:59] Speaker A: Six, eight. [01:24:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I was just reading the other question that came up. Six second brace. Yeah. Just like, like holding arms, you know, fully braced in. And, and I was leaning against the side of Hamer Hall. [01:24:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:24:14] Speaker A: Not, not six seconds without stopping kind of thing. [01:24:20] Speaker C: I don't like the way the kids these days take the. Take pictures like looking at the back of the screen holding them out like this, which I can't cope with. I have to, I have to, have to do that. The way people are taking pictures like this all the time does my head in. [01:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a different world. Although I am guilty of it sometimes these days I think because I'm shooting a lot of hybrid photo on video and, and when I'm shooting video I often hold it out and then, then sometimes I'll keep doing that when I flick back to photo and then I'm like, oh, it's. This is actually not as easy to see as if I do the viewfinder, but I just have it, you know, it's. Yeah. [01:24:53] Speaker C: And there's. And you've got to say, you know, articulated screens. Thank God for articulated screens. They are just unbelievable. You're getting high shots and low shots and, and that. Then, then I get it. But it's just when you. The default position of taking a P portrait of somebody, they'll hold it at arm's length. [01:25:10] Speaker A: It's odd. Articulated screens are. Have been a game changer. It's another thing if you don't have an articulated screen or Ibis in 2025 and you release a camera without those things. Sony, sorry, that would be insane. That would be absolutely insane. We can't help ourselves. Anyway. [01:25:29] Speaker B: Okay, speaking of Sony in the RX1R because I know that's what we're referencing. Petapixel just did their review. [01:25:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah? What did they say? [01:25:38] Speaker B: They. Some of the things we've talked about on the show, they talked about how the lens isn't stabilized. They just didn't bother to update it. It's like a, you know, 10 plus year old lens with nothing different. The fact that it. The screen is fixed, it's not articulating. They said why on earth would you do that? Why would you limit. [01:25:58] Speaker A: Especially when the previous version had it and then they went backwards. That was kind of weird. Do you keep up with this kind of with that sort of stuff, Jeff, or do. Are you like you're locked into Olympus so you don't look at any others. [01:26:10] Speaker C: I look at it. I, I, I, I follow all sorts of camera things. I'm a bit of a, a gear nerd. [01:26:18] Speaker B: I like it, you know. [01:26:20] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Do you, what were your thoughts? Did you follow the RX1R Mark III that got released? [01:26:28] Speaker C: I only to the once I saw the processor. Wow, that's, that's a lot of money for it. [01:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:35] Speaker B: But to be fair, that is happening a lot lately. You know, Fujifilm cameras, new cameras. I mean, putting aside the tariffs, even before those idiotic tariffs came into play, the prices were already marching upwards. [01:26:46] Speaker C: They were. Yeah. Well, three, I, I can't pay. I mean, I, if I want to get now in one month too, it would cost me the thick end of three grand. And I think that's a lot of money. [01:26:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:56] Speaker C: For to spend on a body. So I've got, you know, I wait for a year and then I always try and get my bodies at around the two grand mark. If I can get it. If I can get things for under two grand, I'm very happy, Chappie. Yeah, but I can't, I can't pay full, full whack for a Mark 2 body. I'd love to because it's got some things in it which I really, really like. More of this computational stuff. Graduated ND filters built in. I mean, wow. [01:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:20] Speaker C: The ND filters are in there now, are really good. And I use, I do use them a lot, but having graduated ones, that's just next level. [01:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [01:27:32] Speaker A: Do you, do you still, even with like computational, do you still edit all of your images or do you try and shoot anything jpeg where you're like, I'm happy with that just as it is. [01:27:42] Speaker C: No, I always shoot raw and I always put it through Lightroom and, and tweak it. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Editing. I don't, I say I don't mind it, but then when I've done like, July was crazy for me. I had, I think 11 different studio shoots and then having to edit those. And I kept telling people, okay, you got to give me a month to sort of get through, get catch up on all the backload. [01:28:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:08] Speaker C: But I don't, I don't mind the editing process. It's just another way of, you know, being creative or getting the most out of whatever you've caught. [01:28:19] Speaker B: Yep. I agree. I, I, I don't mind it either, but I, I have a very strict kind of light touch approach that I pose on myself that, you know, I want to try and do as much as I can in camera. I'm shooting this film and I like you, I shoot raw and I edit. Rarely do I shoot JPEG only or even a combo of the two. But yeah, I agree. I think it's part of the process. It's part of the. I've. I've taken this moment in time away to, to work with it and create something that's appealing, you know, so. [01:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:28:55] Speaker B: But other photographers hate the editing process and that's why a lot of these AI solutions around, cropping, culling. [01:29:02] Speaker A: Ah. [01:29:03] Speaker B: You know, a lot of people are going to flock to that because they don't want to sit in front. [01:29:06] Speaker C: To me, it then loses your connection to the photo. It loses your ownership of the photo almost. If you're letting AI programs take over and make all those decisions for you. Yeah, you've literally just been the monkey who took the selfie and copyrighted his own image, which was an interesting concept in itself. You know, the, the wildlife got there. [01:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:29] Speaker C: Guy that left his camera out and the monkey took a picture and then he didn't have copyright of his own picture. [01:29:35] Speaker A: That's gold. I mean, that's how it is. Like, who presses the button? [01:29:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. [01:29:42] Speaker A: Dennis says he's trying to find Jeff's website. Is it. Yeah, we can put it in the chat. Is it supposed to be public? Like we're going to show it? [01:29:50] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And literally it's a working. It's just an Adobe process portfolio website. Yep. Correct. [01:29:58] Speaker B: I've dropped the. Drop the link in the chat, guys. So have a look. [01:30:02] Speaker A: Speaking of which, I'll pull it up now. I'm going to pull up because we were just talking about studio shoots and you said you did how many in July? [01:30:08] Speaker C: 11. [01:30:10] Speaker A: Wow, that's insane. That's it. [01:30:12] Speaker C: That's crazy. [01:30:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that is crazy. Okay, so. [01:30:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:30:18] Speaker A: And so tell us about your studio shoots. Firstly, like, where. Where is the studio? What. What studio is it? [01:30:26] Speaker C: So I belong to Melbourne Camera Club. If I'm allowed to name drop things like that. I'm a great. Not because I'm a great club person and go along to all the events and go to their meetings, things like that, but they have a studio there and the studios not letting any secrets out, but it's like 100 bucks for six hours and so you can go in and basically there's a booking system. You go online, you, you book, book a space, book a time and you can be there for the day. Or for the night. You know I do a lot of things things at night time as well because that's when people are able to get in. It's. It's all. I tend to bring all my own lights and things these days because I've invested I'm pretty heavy into the Godox strobes and things now. So I'll bring it. Tend to do. Bringing all my lights. One of my toxic habits is I bring everything I own every time I go into the studio to shoot. So I lay it at the back of the sous vide and it's like takes me, takes me 10 minutes to get everything inside and then have to break it all down again to take it home. But that's, that's just me. So. Yeah, so I use the club studio a lot and it's just really convenient. I'd love to have my own studio that one of my, my dreams would be to knock down the garage out the back and build a two car garage, make one half and you know, one and a half story height so you get some, some roof space in there and have this year at home. If it actually won million I went on Millionaire Hot seat and if I'd won the Millionaire Hot seat I would have. That would have been. I've done. But I bombed out on the last question. [01:31:59] Speaker A: Are you all right? [01:32:00] Speaker C: I didn't get it. Yeah, yeah. [01:32:03] Speaker B: Oh wow. [01:32:04] Speaker A: So close. [01:32:05] Speaker C: So close. Got the last question. Got the 100 grand question and got it wrong. If anybody asks me about the star Vega and what constellation is, I'll kick them. [01:32:14] Speaker A: Damn. Oh dear. [01:32:17] Speaker B: Do you do some astrophotography and curse the sky? [01:32:20] Speaker A: Yeah, just bring that one into lightroom. [01:32:25] Speaker C: That's right. [01:32:26] Speaker B: You're gone. So you know you were doing landscapes as a result of, of the walking and the hiking. [01:32:34] Speaker C: Yes. [01:32:35] Speaker B: What, what led you into portrait beauty and those sorts of genres? [01:32:41] Speaker C: I like the idea of outdoor photography is great but you can't control anything. You can't control the weather, you can't control the conditions and you can't, you know, you go somewhere, it's like it's. You have to travel to somewhere to take best advantage of it. In a studio you've got 100 control and I'm enough of a control freak when I want to construct something like this to want to be able to control everything in there. And then the idea of. And then I started watching YouTube videos about how studio lighting works and you start off with a black frame and nothing is in, nothing will appear in your frame until you've Put it there deliberately. And so the control you've got over these things is just what. What I like. Then you can build up a. A thing. You can layer light on top of each other. [01:33:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:28] Speaker C: To. To build a. Build an emotion, build a feel, build a. A picture that you. That you want to create. [01:33:36] Speaker A: I went to a. I was just gonna say I went to a Joe McNally workshop. You familiar with Joe McNally? [01:33:42] Speaker C: Yes. [01:33:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I went to a Joe McNally workshop. And I don't remember how many times he said it, but, yeah, he did exactly that. He showed everyone. He obviously had the screen hooked up to his camera and all that sort of. Of stuff tethered. And he was like, this is what we. This is what the camera can see. See black frame. We only see that which we light. He said, we're in this big room. You can see the background is. Is ugly. But look this. I've set it up so now we've got a black frame, and let's start introducing light that we can control. And I was like, it was. It was such a visual representation of. Of how you can use strobes to construct a scene. Yeah. Even a scene that looks different to what's presented in front of your eyes. You know, the background was gray. He was like, look, gray background. Okay, now it's. Now it's black. Now it's white. [01:34:28] Speaker C: Now it's white. Yeah, yeah, that's right. [01:34:30] Speaker A: And it was. It was. It was really cool. [01:34:32] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I really enjoy that side of things. [01:34:38] Speaker A: Talk to me about. So these studio shoots, do you work with in terms of, like, coming up with a concept for what the shoot's going to be looked like? Is it a collaborative approach? Is it your idea? Is someone else coming up with the styling and the ideas, and you're then creating the lighting around it and photographing it? Like, how does it. Like one. Like this? How does this come about? [01:35:00] Speaker C: That was my idea. That was basically, we wanted to do a gold shoot using gold leaf, just with. With seen images. I. I'm a total. Pinterest. I was going to say a bad word, total a lot. And so I have mood boards on Pinterest for everything. And a lot of time when some of the most subjects will approach me and say, hey, I've been through your Pinterest thing, and I want to do this because I've created a mood board which is just a collection of images that other people have done. And we try not to replicate it, but we try and use that as the inspiration to sort of Build. Okay. I love this image. What we do to make it our own or what can we do to have you in it to make it more personal to you? So, yeah, it goes. It goes that way. I don't often work with a stylist I have done. Worked with. I did some. Some collaborations with a girl who was starting her makeup. She was a hair and makeup person, and she said, I just need somebody to take pictures. I've got all the ideas. I want you to come and just take the. Take the pictures for me. And then it just became a big collaboration between us, between her and me and the models that we had coming in. But this one, this is a good friend of mine who I've done a few shoots with her now. And I think one of the best things that you can have when you're going into experiment and trying out different things in series is basically to find. You give them the title of a muse. You know, somebody that you can just call and say, hey, I've got this idea. Are you up for coming in? Just to. Seeing what we can do, what we can shoot inside. I did some workshops with. There's a photographer here in Melbourne, Obviously, we know Peter Coulson, and he has his. His assistant Beck. Well, she's just there all the time. And anytime he comes up with a new idea, he wants to try something out, he has that. That person you can just call and just. And just go and experiment, go and try something new. And that's how he develops his craft so well. And having somebody like that, we had this idea. We want to do a gold. Lucian said, hey. And she was up for it. In fact, this happened at last minute because the girl that initially had to do this pulled out 24 hours before the shoot was planned. And. And Maria said, yeah, yep, I'm up for it when you wanted me to be there. So that worked out quite well. [01:37:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So. And. And so most of these shoots that you do, is it generally because if. If these are for model portfolios and stuff like that, I. I guess a lot of the time is it. How do you. How do you approach pricing and that kind of stuff? Is it always free because they're also a model and they're providing their own expertise. [01:37:52] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of what they call tfp, which is the. The, you know, standard think time for print. So the photographer gives his services for free. The model comes in and models for you for free. What I. I'm winding that, you know, having done 11 shoots and things in. In the last month or so, and winding that back a bit. And so I'm doing more a cost recovery type thing. Like it cost me money to hire the studio even though I'm a club member. And so now I'm basically doing cost recovery. And, and sometimes I, I, you know, we do do charge things. I do like engagement shoots or not engagement, maternity announcement shoots and things like that and that they'll be paid. If somebody wants their photos to send to an agency and they're going to make money out of it, then, then I'll charge for those sorts of things. [01:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:42] Speaker C: Okay. But a lot of the time it's, it's a collaboration exercise between the two of us. [01:38:49] Speaker A: Is it possible to make money out of this kind of work? [01:38:55] Speaker C: Yeah, I haven't found the, the key to it, but I think, I think it is somebody is, somebody's making money out of it. [01:39:02] Speaker A: But okay, it's, I think it's another. [01:39:05] Speaker B: One of those examples where, you know, like for some people who have a full time paying job and they can do this sort of stuff on the, you know, on the, on the side, on the side. But also, yeah, I guess we don't have to make money off every genre of photography. But like yourself, having having an alternative revenue stream with the school and the graduation photos gives you the luxury or the freedom say to pursue these sorts of things knowing that you're not going to make a buck out of it. In fact, it's probably going to hurt a little, but I'm going to learn so much about it in the, in, in the process and enjoy it and you know, build these networks with people that you can call upon as your muse or as a model, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's interesting. [01:39:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Dennis, Dennis says these are super fun mates and they are, they're very, very interesting shots. And it's that kind of work that I, it's the opposite of my photographic style skill set. I don't know, I'm way more documentary and give me, I can control lighting in a studio but if you give me a blank canvas and say, okay, do something, I'd be like, I guess we're just gonna shoot on that white wall. Then like it'll just be a water model in front of a white wall. You know, like I very much, I'm sort of shoot what I see and then I can control the situation. Give me a sunset and some strobes and stuff and I'll do something cool. But if you say here's a blank room, go nuts, I freeze up. You know, I don't have that. I don't know. I don't know what you call it. Creativity. I don't have that. Being able to visualize something and then figure out how to create it from scratch. [01:40:52] Speaker C: Yeah, the break. The breaking down of an image that you see, because I'll go through Pinterest and I'll see something saying, how did they do that? How did they actually build that? Where were the lights? Where. Where was the construction of how that. That image was created? I just really enjoy that sort of thing. But you do things that I would never do. Like, you couldn't pay me enough to be a wedding photographer. So it's. [01:41:18] Speaker A: It's. [01:41:19] Speaker C: Everybody has their own. [01:41:20] Speaker A: It's a different thing. Yeah, it's definitely a different thing. And I don't do it as much anymore. [01:41:26] Speaker C: So. [01:41:27] Speaker A: Yeah, we put the link to your portfolio site in there. [01:41:30] Speaker C: There is. [01:41:31] Speaker A: There is a ton more work on there as well. I didn't want to dig too deep because there is a little bit of stuff that YouTube would probably not love us to put live a few. Not. Not safe for work. Well, not safe for YouTube shots, but if that's what you're. If you're keen to dig into Jeff's work a bit more, just follow the link and have a look through. There really is some. Yeah, really vibrant, different colors that you've used to create the scenes and stuff like that. It's. [01:41:59] Speaker C: Yeah, there's some things like the ones I did that. That's sort of my ongoing. One of my ongoing projects is those work I've been doing with buildings. Just take. Basically take pictures of the skyscrapers and then editing. Editing them down to almost taking everything out, every. All distractions out and leaving them to representations of what the building is. More abstract, surreal type things. [01:42:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. [01:42:32] Speaker B: That's very cool. I love that building. [01:42:37] Speaker C: Have you seen it from the. The Laneway, looking straight up? They call it the Beyonce building because it's got. With those bolts on the side. So. Yeah, you look at it from the street underneath, it looks. The curves look like something completely different. When you're looking at it from looking at it up that way, you could. [01:42:54] Speaker A: Almost imagine a dress with those same. Like these, you know, like one of those. A sequiny dress that has these ruffles kind of on it or whatever. [01:43:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:43:07] Speaker B: Can you picture that? Can you, Justin? [01:43:08] Speaker A: I can. I can, actually. Yeah. Very interesting. So. And such a different. Such a different style as opposed to, you know, building something out in the studio to be sort of Walking around the city looking for. [01:43:25] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:43:26] Speaker A: Compositions or abstract shapes. [01:43:31] Speaker C: Well, that's one of the things I mentioned when we're talking with Greg setting this up was that people come in and say they're a landscape photographer or, you know, Nick with his sports photography. And that's like. I can't put. I don't. I don't have a niche and I don't really want to be put into a niche. I sort of do photograph all sorts of different things. [01:43:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:54] Speaker C: But there are some things I really enjoy. I really enjoy the work in studio and building and playing with light and building light. But then the landscape stuff I love because about outsource and. And doing the hiking and. And this thing with tall buildings. I strip them back to their essentials and go from there. Make it more graphic, more graphical images rather than photographic images. [01:44:17] Speaker A: It's very cool. Where do you want it? Where do you want to take it from here? Like you said, you want to make it self funding and obviously that's kind of a business goal. But what about photographically? Like what. [01:44:27] Speaker C: What. [01:44:27] Speaker A: Are there things that you want to look, learn? Are there things you want to dig deeper into? Is there a project or some like a. And even. Even a thought of a project that you'd like to do? Do you want to have an exhibition one day? What. What are you hoping to achieve? [01:44:41] Speaker C: I would like to do an exhibition one day. That. That'd be my main thing. My ne. My interim goal would be to. Because every year I make a calendar as Christmas presents, basically for our family. So I'll make like 30 of these calendars and that's what. That's Christmas. Christmas presents I do every year. So I would like to. One of my projects or goals in the interim is to expand on that and make a book like a photo book and get things out that way. I think that's also a really good way of showing your work better as well. Websites and a lot of fine. And this made of mine, who's actually in Arnhem Land at the moment, he's been doing. Creating a book for all of his travels. When he goes on something and it's just a great way of saying, oh, you want to see what my trip was? Instead of going to a website or looking at it on your phone, which is the image is only this big, we say, here's a book. Yeah, go, go your hardest. And this looks. It's like printing your work out. I used to have a printer, but I was printing that irregularly. Every time I would print, I Have to spend a fortune on ink just to get the heads unclogged and things like that. So I don't tend to print myself at home anymore. I print some external, outside things. But having that physical manifestation of your work, I think is really important. And that's a book. A photo book would be a good thing to. [01:46:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we've often talked on the show about people and just as a conversation topic in general around who do we take photos for and why do we take photos now now, when often they're consumed in a fraction of a second as people scroll. Yeah, and we've talked about printing and photo books. You know, I encourage any photographer, regardless of your skill level, if you haven't printed some of your works, like if you're new to the genre and. Or you haven't printed, just get some prints made. And, you know, photo books can be really cheap and easy to make. You don't have to go, you know, glossy hardcover with a hardcover sleeve and, you know, gold foil. You can go for a really simple, almost, even. Even a zine to start with. You know, just create a foldable zine that, that you're proud of. I think it just changes the way you see your images. [01:46:51] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I have put images up. When I was at psc, we would exhibit. I've been in, you know, local papers and things like that, with imagery and, and seeing things and. And I have put single images in exhibitions. I haven't gone down the photo competition path, like the app or anything like that. Even though my lecturers at PSC keep saying I should and I go there and I look at what's up on screen. Yeah, I really should do something with that, but. But I never do. But seeing them printed is a totally different field. I don't know who said it. A lot of people have said it, but yeah, your photo isn't finished until it's been. Until it's printed, until you've got a physical representation of it. [01:47:34] Speaker A: I just bought a new printer. It's still in the box. I'm terrified that it's going to have clogged heads. I've actually. I'm thinking I'm not gonna. I'm not even gonna, like, get it set up until I get back from New Zealand because I'm like, I'm gonna come back, it's gonna have clogged heads. And you just remind me of that and that one because it is the worst. [01:47:50] Speaker C: It wouldn't go through so much ink. And ink's, like, worth more than Gold on a grand by gram basis. [01:47:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:57] Speaker B: It's expensive, isn't it? Yeah, it's question here from Dennis. Let's jump to that. So Jeff, what is the thing place images that you find most joy making. [01:48:09] Speaker A: Of around? So just I think any, broadly speaking. [01:48:13] Speaker B: Where do you find peace? [01:48:14] Speaker C: Yeah, well, initially when I started photography I would just do these late night walks. I'd find, find the solitude and that's why I like going out hiking. Because when I hike, I hike by myself. I don't. Apart from when I go on the things the hikes with cam a few times like the walls of Jerusalem images that you saw before. I was out there for four days in the middle of the snow, didn't see another soul. It was great, just sort of walking around, you seeing you, you follow wombat tracks in the snow and see where they lead, that type of thing. It's just that solace that, that peacefulness that I look for at nighttime, look for in the, in the quieter parts of the city, in the laneways and things like when there's nobody else around. So lockdown's really good for that because you get out, there was nobody there. I also find a lot of satisfaction and comfort and I don't know know, I feel happy in the studio and building, constructing something piece by piece by piece and then seeing a final image that way. [01:49:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, that just the difference studio work is because like you said, you're building, you're adding light to create a composition. It's a very different approach to, you know, doing street photography or whatever it may be. [01:49:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I've tried street photography and yeah, I find, I feel really awkward doing street photography, taking pictures. You know, it's almost like I'm sniping pictures of people on the slide and I don't, I feel uneasy about that sometimes. Yeah, some people do it really well and some people are really upfront about it. Like there's that Japanese guy who got into all that trouble basically holding cameras in people's faces as I was walking past and, and setting off his on camera flash and catching all these expressions. Well, I mean that's, that's photography. [01:50:10] Speaker A: Sure. [01:50:10] Speaker C: It's, it's not something I could feel good about myself invading somebody's space like that. [01:50:16] Speaker B: Fair enough. [01:50:17] Speaker C: And I feel that I don't have the, the idea that taking a photograph is capturing somebody's soul as such. Like, like some cultures may have had. But you've got to be aware of the intrusiveness of what you can. What you can do and the fact that they've got no control over what you've captured and how it's being used afterwards as well. I'm trying to be more mindful. A lot of my imagery, apart from the studio things, are of landscapes or of static objects and things where the people aren't people. [01:50:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. [01:50:51] Speaker A: It's really tough because it's. It's exactly correct. You know, you're. You're kind of invading someone's privacy, essentially, a little bit. Not. I'm not saying legally or anything, because obviously people out on the street, it's all fine. [01:51:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it's all fine, exactly. [01:51:02] Speaker A: But on the other hand, as soon as someone is aware that you're taking photos of them, they change and capturing them, doing, living life, doing their thing. And I do this a lot and it's never completely natural, but I do it a lot in workplace situations or anything like that. Once people can forget that you're there, I think that you're there to do other things that you get really great images of people just going about their normal day or their work or whatever, that documentary style of stuff, and it's. Yeah, it's a tough thing to do on the street because as soon as someone notices you, it completely changes. So getting photos of them before they notice you is the best way to get sort of natural life street photography. But to do that, you have to do it without them knowing. And then. [01:51:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah. [01:51:57] Speaker A: And it's tough. It's a tricky balance. [01:52:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:01] Speaker C: The other way of getting around to sort of. Sorry, you go. [01:52:03] Speaker B: I was just going to say, you know, I. I've. I started out in my digital age as a street photographer and I had my own reasons for that. But it is getting harder, I must admit. There's a lot more people, a lot more cautious about people taking photos. People have a often incorrect perception of their privacy and rights and sometimes it's not worth having those. Those arguments with people. It's just like, I'll just delete it. Yeah, here, look. It's gone, you know, so, yeah, it's. It is an interesting genre in that respect, that, yes, you are. You are taking photos of strangers and you're not seeking permission, but like Justin said, I've always found that, and I have done street portraits where you ask permission, but it completely changes. [01:52:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:52:56] Speaker B: And. And how that person is connecting with the light and the space. You know, it completely alters it and their. Their defenses are down there. They're natural. So it's whatever masks they choose to wear on that day. But there's the defensiveness, isn't there? You know, and you. But I also recommend and encourage people that want to do street photography to create your own work ethic around what you will and won't capture. You know, I don't photograph kids. I don't photograph homeless people. [01:53:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:53:24] Speaker B: You know, so I've got a rule book of my own that. That I hold myself to. Yeah. It's an interesting genre. It's always been contentious. [01:53:34] Speaker A: Wait till you see some of David Mascara's images. His film photos from that he sent through for Monday's show from San Francisco. And it's. It's very much that street portrait style of thing, engaging with people. It's very different, but. But they're really beautiful. It's not something I think I could do, but it's. It's pretty cool. [01:53:56] Speaker C: There are some real experts at that, capturing that sort of thing. There's a guy here in Melbourne, Chris Chernata. I can't think of his last name. Who? Humans in Melbourne. It's like it follows on the Humans in New York. [01:54:07] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. He's got. He uses Greg. We need to get him on the podcast. [01:54:13] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, for sure. [01:54:15] Speaker A: It's. It's in the videos and stuff that he. He posts. I keep. I keep forgetting. I keep meaning to tell you. I'm like, we got to get him on. [01:54:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:54:24] Speaker A: What is this now? It's. It's Humans. [01:54:26] Speaker C: Humans in Melbourne is. Is the page, I think. Yeah, yeah, it's Chris. It's like Chinoda or something like that. [01:54:33] Speaker B: I. Yeah, I follow him. [01:54:36] Speaker C: Yeah. But he does a really cool thing too, which actually I got an idea from him, which I use in my studio when I'm doing these portrait things, is that I'll do because I have the two cards. I'll shoot Roar of one JPEG on the other because I have one of these little Canon selfie printers to print out a 4x6 postcard. And at the end of the session, I just get to the subjects to go through the back of my camera while I'm packing everything down to choose, you know, two or three images that they like, and it'll just print them directly off onto the little printer and they take that away as a. As a thing from the. From the shoot. Well, Chris has been doing videos where he's been doing street photos, unbeknownst to the subject sitting in a corner somewhere down printing them out, because his printer's battery operated, prints them out and puts them in a little 4x6 frame. And then while they're sitting having a coffee or just sort of turn up and give them a frame photo of themselves with a guy driving the tram. You know, he's taking a picture of the guy driving the tram and then next stop he's handed him a framed. Yeah. Picture that he's done as a street photo. It's a great, great little concept. [01:55:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that is, that's brilliant. That is really brilliant. LTK photo says. I really enjoyed doing street photography photography in New York City when I went. And I, I think that's one of those things as well. Sometimes getting out of your own local area and particularly country even for me, like when I was traveling in Vietnam, it feels so much more natural to be out on the streets photographing and I don't know what it is. And the only thing that Greg and I have talked about a lot, the only thing I can put it down to is my lack of knowledge, my lack of facial hair and my lack of knowledge of, of really understanding the local culture to being that little bit more unaware of what people are thinking and feeling about me. And so I kind of just, I'm not, I'm not hyper fixating on like, oh, is that person watching me? Is that person wondering what I'm doing or anything? You know, like that when you walk around Melbourne, you kind of completely aware of how everyone's acting because that's the way you act. You go to another country and it's sort of, I don't know, it seems to just disconnect me from that and I don't worry about it as much. I don't know. Yeah, I'm sure they're all still thinking I'm weird. [01:56:53] Speaker B: Little blissful ignorance when you're overseas. I found that when I was in Japan a lot that I felt freer almost. [01:57:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:57:02] Speaker B: Less judged. It's liberating, it really is. And once you can get over that, that, that hurdle, then I think that's when you produce some of your best work on street photography because you're not, you know, you're not. You're basically an observer. All you're doing is you're catching the way the light reflects off what's around you, you know. [01:57:19] Speaker A: And yeah, yeah, Roy's got some good comments. I'd like street photography more without all the people and all Aussies are weird. [01:57:29] Speaker B: Oh well, yeah, you're right. [01:57:32] Speaker A: So yeah, you know, we're all a little crazy that's right. [01:57:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean we're surrounded by water. We feel isolated. [01:57:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Should we talk before we end this show? Because it is. It is almost two hours in. Should we talk a little bit about bfop? Since you've been so many times and you're going back again this year and we're going back again. Have you got any like highlights from other years past or anything you're looking to like, forward to this year? Anything you'd like to see there? [01:58:02] Speaker C: Like to see? I just think more of the same I've enjoyed every time I've been there. The shenanigans and things on the at night time are always unbelievable. The workshops are great. The opportunity of just trying something new. I mean, yeah, you go there and you can do a Shibari shoot or something like that, which is not something you're going to do all the time. [01:58:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:23] Speaker C: That said that. Yeah. That's actually led to doing some of those outside of before as well. So that's been fun. But just the opportunities to expand different horizons is what makes it so special. And the fact you're there with what there's 500 people, so this year 550 taking. Taking over the town. Everywhere you turn you're going to bump into photography and you're gonna, you know, like I said, I'm a bit of a gear nerd and. And we'll geek out talking about photography all day, any day. It's just a really enjoyable thing. [01:58:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:55] Speaker C: And you catch up, you see people. [01:58:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Sorry I spoke over you. I was just gonna say what. What sort of workshops interest you at befop? [01:59:03] Speaker C: I've done a lot of the landscape ones basically because they give you. There's opportunities to get to places that I haven't been before. I did Brendan's is Cam's podcast. Did his big bus tour with. With Charlie. [01:59:19] Speaker B: Oh, did you speak to Charlie? [01:59:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:59:22] Speaker A: Okay. So how did you find the bus trip? [01:59:24] Speaker C: That was good. It was great. It was 10 hours. It's a long time, but it was really good. And we went to different places and. And what I really enjoyed about it was it's showed me places which I have then gone back to go in to look at in more depth. [01:59:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:59:39] Speaker C: And because you know, you need to discover some of these places on your. Charlie lives up. He's Mount Beauty. That's his backyard. So he knows the places that, that are good to go. [01:59:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:59:52] Speaker C: Where it would take me, I. I could find them, of course. But it take time and, and effort and this way sort of, well, these are the highlights. This is where you want to go and explore deeper. And one of my true of a. [02:00:04] Speaker B: Lot of be stuff, it. It leaves you with a little nugget that you can kind of take away and go, well, hang on, I'm. I'm inspired. Let's explore that a bit. [02:00:13] Speaker A: Yep, it certainly did for me. How many weeks, Greg, did I do Those sequences of 12 images before I, before I got too busy to stop doing them. But so, so I did a workshop about creating a series of. Was Chris Hopkins workshop about creating a series of images. What was it called? Photo Essay. [02:00:33] Speaker C: Photo Essay, yeah. [02:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So then for weeks after that on the podcast, I would submit a 12 image photo essay. [02:00:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:00:41] Speaker A: And. And we'd look at the photos. [02:00:43] Speaker B: A lot of Jeff, A lot of feet pics. I think you were, I think you were photographing your feet for a different channel. [02:00:51] Speaker A: But you know, it did get. It did get tricky towards the end and then I got too busy and had to. Had to call it. But I would like to revive something like that. I'm. I've actually been thinking about my trip to New Zealand about out what I want to get out of it photographically because I'm not, you know, I'm not some mega landscape photographer that, that plans out specific locations and lighting and all that stuff. We're going over there to sort of enjoy our travels and explore. So I don't want the trip to. [02:01:21] Speaker C: Be going north island or South Island. [02:01:23] Speaker A: South island, yeah. In a camper, which is obviously it's beautiful. You point a camera in any direction and get great photos. But I'm like, what do I want to come back with? And I've been thinking about it and I think the easiest frame of mind for me is I want to come back with a set of photos that help me explain our trip and what. And what it was like to be there while we were there. So I'm going to approach it with that mindset. [02:01:49] Speaker B: So more of a documentary style, storytelling style, collection. [02:01:54] Speaker A: So that each image. So if I put. Pulled them up on the podcast and went through them, I'd be basically using them to prompt me to tell a story of journey. And so I'm like, I think. Because I think if I think about, I want to go over there and get these, all these great images of iconic New Zealand landscapes. I don't. Yeah, I think I'll feel pressured that each photo I take isn't what I was hoping to get. You know, it's not. It's not great enough. The sun wasn't setting or the something. And you know what I mean? Do you ever feel like that, Jeff? Were you like, yeah, what am I going on this trip to capture? [02:02:28] Speaker C: Yep, yep. And I went with that. We went to. So originally, my wife's a Kiwi, and so we were across there in November. October, November last year for a wedding. And then we went back again for our. And we go back there every January for family holidays. And I've never done the south on. So the wedding was in Christchurch, and so we've. We flew into Queenstown and spent. I did all the adventure things in Queenstown in a day and then went to. Was supposed to do the road trip from Queenstown to Greymouth along the coast, along the west coast, but there was a landslip and they closed the road. So actually ended up coming up the center. [02:03:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [02:03:06] Speaker C: Which is still good. But, yeah. And you're saying, you know, I got to catch the iconic things. Well, there's Lake Tekapo. That's really cool. You want to catch the Wanaka tree. How many pictures of the Wanaka Tree does the world need? But. And when I got there, it was as windy as anything. It wasn't. There was no snow on the mountain. It was like, yeah, okay, I've got a documentary picture of the Wanaka Tree, but it's not what I went there to capture as the iconic photo. Yeah, yeah. So we ended up in Grandma, and we caught the transalpine train from Gray Mouth back into Christchurch. And that was fabulous. That was a day there. And you just take all these. You know, there's a picture on a website of these braided rivers and things like that coming through, just taken from. From the trade as it comes. The, the landscape there is just fantastic. So you go there with. With the idea of what do you want to capture it? And if you're making images on your trip to remember and be the prompts to bring back those memories, then that's a successful, successful trip for you. [02:04:01] Speaker A: Hopefully. [02:04:01] Speaker C: If you, if you went there with the idea I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make a prize winning. [02:04:10] Speaker A: The world's best wannaca tree photo. Probably not. And then you've got Dennis, who says, south island in a camper. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah, that's. I, I hopefully that's how I feel. Like Nick Fletcher says, come back with a book. Okay, challenge accepted. I'm gonna make a book of that trip. Okay. I like that. Roy says New Zealand is infested with hobbits. I'LL keep an eye out. [02:04:41] Speaker B: Tell them apart by their hairy feet. [02:04:42] Speaker A: Yeah. The drunk wedding photography. It'll just be a hobbit feet as I travel around. [02:04:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:04:52] Speaker A: I haven't seen you in a while. Drunk wedding photographer. It's good to see you. I hope you're doing well. Okay, Anything else before we, before we wrap up? [02:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah. What's next for you, Jeff? What's on the immediate horizon? [02:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:05:07] Speaker C: I think the next thing I do want to pursue this photo book idea and start to actually collect. Now that I've put my finger out and the website's up and live and open to the world, I want to expand on that and collate something into a more physical form. There are opportunities to have exhibitions. I know a couple of people who've got galleries have said just do an exhibition, have a, have a prince and work out and, and put it out there for the world to come and see, not just look at it on, in the, on their phones or whatever. So yeah, that'll be the next thing. [02:05:40] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. That is, that's the goal for so many of us, I think that is, is that physical exhibition. [02:05:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:05:48] Speaker A: Scary, but very cool. [02:05:50] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:05:51] Speaker A: I'd be standing there being like, what if no one shows up? [02:05:54] Speaker C: But yeah, that's right. You put on food and wine and everybody comes. [02:05:57] Speaker A: I was gonna say, I think, and people always do because if you've put that much work in and effort into pulling something together in person in a gallery, people, people rock up to support it and that's what's really cool. [02:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think if you're at the point where you're confident enough to display your works, you've already built a community of people, peers, supporters, you know, people that love your work, people that you, you know, that have helped you get to where you are. They're the people that are going to show up for your exhibition. [02:06:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:06:24] Speaker A: It's great. [02:06:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:06:26] Speaker A: Even we hope, even the, even the Melbourne, the Melbourne beef up contingent, I'm sure would show up in droves if it was free food and wine. [02:06:35] Speaker C: That's right. That's right. [02:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah, you'll get them all there. Yeah, that's very cool. [02:06:39] Speaker B: It is very cool. Well, look, I think we just hit the two hour mark almost on the dot, but I think we might wrap there if you lads are okay to move forward with the day. Look, Jeff, I just want to say thank you for joining us today, for sharing so much of your, your journey, your inspirations, you know, the work that you've created and how you got to where you are now. And on behalf of the camera life, we really appreciate your time today, so thank you. [02:07:05] Speaker C: Thanks. Appreciate it. It's been really great. Thank you. [02:07:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we look forward to seeing you in. In bright in a couple of months. It's coming up very quickly. [02:07:13] Speaker C: It's all very quick. Yeah, yeah. [02:07:17] Speaker B: Is in October, isn't it? So, yeah, clock is ticking. But we look forward. [02:07:26] Speaker C: I have a standing booking from the lady I rent the place from each year that I haven't. Haven't spoken to her since October last year. So I better check that it's actually still on. Yeah. [02:07:35] Speaker A: Yep. [02:07:36] Speaker B: If not, Justin's got a spare swag, I'm sure. [02:07:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Hopefully we've got accommodation. [02:07:40] Speaker B: Greg, don't do that. [02:07:44] Speaker A: I booked a tent site. But do you have a tent? You'll be all right. [02:07:49] Speaker B: No, I'm gonna bunk with you. I've completely lost my train of thought waking up in the morning next to Justin. But look, also, I'd like to thank everyone who has joined us today in the. In the chat, watching or listening along. If you're live with us, thank you so much for dedicating so much of your day already to the Camera Live podcast. And if you watch this back later, don't forget that Justin has offered to give away a brand new free lucky strap with the new special. What do we call it? Basket Weave. Leather. Look. [02:08:25] Speaker A: Yeah, just got to name it Lucky. [02:08:27] Speaker B: To the lucky person who picks the best name. [02:08:29] Speaker A: We'll. [02:08:29] Speaker B: We'll decide the name. Well, Justin will. It's his business, but we'll decide the name. And. And yeah, you could. You could win yourself a lucky strap. But look, on that note, please make sure you like today's episode. Drop a comment, let us know who you are, where you're watching from, what you shoot. And please subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon button because it sends you notifications when we have episodes approaching. But yeah, thanks once again, Jeff. It's been an absolute pleasure and. And a delight to talk to you today. I think that's about it, boss. Yeah. [02:09:02] Speaker A: I'm gonna play some music and check the comments. Philip Johnson says, thanks, Jeff. Lisa says thanks, and she said she's worried about Greg waking up next to my feet. I think that could be a concern. [02:09:13] Speaker B: Well, just waking up and I'm photographing. [02:09:15] Speaker A: His feet for only feet. Dennis says thank you, Jeff. Coffee date at BFOP engaged. John Pickett says thanks. All great show Trunk wedding photographers interested in the free wine. So make sure he might fly across your exhibition. Coffee, Coffee, coffee from Roy. Rodney's keen on the wine as well. Everyone's been on the wine and. Oh, Marco, thank you very much. I will be going to Milford Sound. I'll be looking out for those mossy trails and fill up the fuel tank before we go. Thanks, LTK and everybody else that was here. Nick, all the. All the legends. And we'll catch you guys in the next one. Yep. [02:09:51] Speaker B: See you there. Bye, guys. [02:09:53] Speaker C: Thanks, guys. Cheers.