EP130 Alex Cearns | Australia’s Most Celebrated Animal Photographer

[00:00:05] Speaker A: Will I wake up early? Sunlight creeping in Grab my Taman lens and a cheeky grin Critter smiling fur in frame all round Good person yeah, that's my claim I'm a baby that's. [00:00:28] Speaker B: True Crank it, boss. [00:00:32] Speaker A: Hearts and golden hues I love my. [00:00:36] Speaker C: Quirks that's the root. [00:00:42] Speaker A: That'S just how I shoot now I didn't make that song. It was sent to me by an anonymous fan. [00:00:52] Speaker B: An anonymous Tamron ambassador. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Yes, it was. An anonymous Tamron ambassador said, Alex, request this song be played. And also you must provide her with $200 worth of cheese for the podcast. [00:01:08] Speaker B: The doorbell will ring any moment. Alex, the cheese is on its way. [00:01:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it's on its way. We mailed it. [00:01:14] Speaker C: Thank you so much. That was amazing. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah. You're the first person to get their own special intro song on the podcast. [00:01:21] Speaker B: I got one about shitting my pants on the train. [00:01:24] Speaker A: It wasn't an intro song. [00:01:26] Speaker C: I'm much more grateful for mine now. [00:01:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Yours is a lot more tame than. [00:01:30] Speaker C: What, mine didn't have any bodily functions. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah, we left those out. Left those out. Very cool. Well, look, welcome, everybody. This is the Camera Life podcast and it is Thursday 6th November. It's only a. Like a. It's less than two months now until Christmas, until Santa arrives, if you believe in that sort of thing. But this is episode 130 and we are joined today by, I'm going to say photographer. At the moment, there is much more to our guest, Alex Cerns. Welcome to the show. Great to have you on. And I believe you're still wearing your lucky straps belt from bfop. [00:02:03] Speaker C: Yes, I. I have to show you, this is like just a quick product. Product. Look at that. It's my belt. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Oh, look at that. Beautiful. Look at that. [00:02:11] Speaker C: And it doesn't stretch. It's incredible. It's. It's absolutely fantastic. And yeah, that was. It is the best belt I've ever owned. And also, I'm not even being paid for that. Probably should be. But that was free. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Probably should be. [00:02:23] Speaker C: First one's free. [00:02:24] Speaker A: Too late. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Too late. But I say that you are a photographer. Of course, it's many, many hats that you wear. Let me just. Let me just cover off a little intro I prepared for you here. So according to your website, which very boldly states, this is Alex Cerns, the most important person you'll meet this year. Okay, here is why. So Alex is a dog and pet photographer. Alex is a full time movie critic. How many movies do you see a. [00:02:53] Speaker C: Week between 5 and 11. [00:02:57] Speaker B: There you go. That's full time. A photographic ambassador not just for Tamron, but also for Profoto, BenQ Studio Ninja, SanDisk, Ilford Imaging Australia and Spider Camera Holster. You're a two leader, you're an educator, you love teaching people and you're a BFOP workshop instructor. And Dogstoday magazine UK called Alex one of the our greatest dog photographers in the world. How much did you pay them for that quote? No need to answer. You photographed over 15,000 pets in your studio. You've won more than 350 awards, you've published, you're a published author of eight books, you've appeared on television, radio, you're a guest speaker. And thanks to your philanthropic and charitable services you've won. Or not won, but you've been honored with the Order of Australia Medal. That's, that's fucking massive. Welcome to the show. [00:03:48] Speaker C: Thank you. I'm very tired. [00:03:50] Speaker B: No, my door hurts from that. [00:03:54] Speaker C: Thanks so much for having me. Me? Yeah, there's a lot, there's been a lot. I'm also very, I'm very old. Just looks like, yeah, 408. 408 years old. That's. I've managed to fit all that in. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Very nice. Now I know I've just covered off some of your many achievements and, and claims to fame. Let's hear it in your own words. So who are you and what are you known for? [00:04:16] Speaker C: Well, I would say in the simplest form I'm a professional pet photographer based in Perth in Australia and I photograph pets in a studio using studio lighting and wildlife using studio lighting and I photograph wildlife outdoors using natural light. So two very different types of photography. I love animals. Obviously I'm a big dog fan. Dogs are my favorite kinds of people. And yeah, when I'm not taking photos and doing workshops and tours, I have a very sedentary hobby which is watching films and TV shows. So it's not particularly active but it is a lot of fun. [00:04:52] Speaker B: I feel like you've earned that right to sit down for a little bit to be honest. [00:04:56] Speaker C: A lot. [00:04:58] Speaker A: Trust Alex to figure out a way to build, I guess another business side hustle on top of what most people would consider just sitting on the couch and watching movies. I'm going to review. [00:05:10] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You can make anything a thing, which I think is a good life lesson for that. But also sometimes I say to myself, just calm down. Just like doesn't always have to be a. [00:05:20] Speaker A: Doesn't have to be a thing. [00:05:21] Speaker C: Yeah, you don't have to have a Facebook group. But no, but I do. So there we are. [00:05:26] Speaker B: It's there. It doesn't matter. And you are everywhere. Like your social. Like your. Your auto signature on the bottom of your emails is phenomenal. [00:05:35] Speaker C: Obnoxious was the word that was used. [00:05:38] Speaker B: I think arrogant. [00:05:39] Speaker C: But. [00:05:41] Speaker B: But we'll get into that in a little bit more detail shortly. And please, for anyone, anyone watching along or listening along, whether it be now live with us. G'. Day. Make sure you say hi in the chat. Please give us a like. It helps out a lot. And don't forget to hit the button with the bell icon so you're notified of every upcoming the Camera Life podcast episode, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps, who also make premium leather belts. [00:06:04] Speaker A: Belts. [00:06:05] Speaker B: I don't know how it should be like a little cha ching sound, boss. Every time it stands up to show off her bell, it just goes chiching. [00:06:12] Speaker A: I haven't got a cha ching. [00:06:13] Speaker C: Oh, we need a bell on the air. Like. [00:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah, next time. [00:06:16] Speaker C: All right, Ba bao. What about that? [00:06:20] Speaker B: All right, stand up. Alex, you ready, boss? We'll just rehearse. Alex, up. [00:06:24] Speaker C: Chat. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Hang on, boss. [00:06:25] Speaker C: Up. [00:06:26] Speaker B: Share the belt. Oh, that's a wrap. [00:06:30] Speaker C: Yeah, we might need some work on the whole flow. [00:06:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:35] Speaker C: No one needs to see in the morning, but. Yeah, or the afternoon, to be honest. [00:06:39] Speaker A: Only in the morning. [00:06:41] Speaker C: All other times after 12 is fine. See what you want. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Apart from the scolding that I just got from Yelena for using the neph bomb. Justin, you want to say good morning to everybody in the chat? [00:06:51] Speaker A: I do, yeah. Elaine is like, Greg, language. Come on. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Sorry. [00:06:56] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:06:56] Speaker A: I'm glad you're all here too, because apparently YouTube, like changed the scheduling of this show and it said it was going to be at 7:10pm so I'm glad you all just rocked up at 9am Anyway, but yeah. Who's here? Philip Johnson. Yeah, look, assuming I'm not 10 hours early. Good morning all. Thanks, Philipson. [00:07:12] Speaker C: You can come back later. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I don't know why I did that. That's crazy. Lucinda, good to see you. Who else is here? Good morning. Rodney Nicholson. Yeah. Oh, my God. Now we're doing custom intros. No, we're not doing custom intros for everyone. We might because it was fun, but no, this was a special occasion. Jim's here. Hey, Jim. What's up? Robert Varner, ltk. [00:07:35] Speaker C: Hey, Robert. [00:07:36] Speaker A: Good afternoon. Stuart Lyle. Morning, all from down south. Jim says you can use code Jim for 15% off all belts so you can match Alex. So that works? [00:07:44] Speaker B: Yeah, if you want to be cool and hip hop, use code. [00:07:47] Speaker C: Greg. [00:07:48] Speaker A: Robert Vaughn is a pet photographer too. I take pictures of my cats every now and then. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Me too. [00:07:54] Speaker C: Love that. [00:07:55] Speaker A: Very cool. [00:07:56] Speaker B: I mean, that's, that's most of my phone. My phone photo archive is just photos of our five cats and one dog. The odd photo of Sash, but, you know. Yeah, it's sad. [00:08:08] Speaker A: No kids. [00:08:10] Speaker B: Welcome, everybody. Welcome, everybody. So we're going to uncover everything that there is possibly to know about you over the next 10 hours, Alex. But I thought maybe we'd start off by just rolling back the clock a little and talking about some of your earlier inspirations and, you know, when you first picked up a camera and when you first knew. So let's, let's roll back the time a little bit to when you were a wee pup. What sort of influence did you have, whether it be growing up at school, mentors. How did you get on this path? [00:08:42] Speaker C: I didn't really discover photography, to be honest, until I was in my early 30s. So I had a very basic camera as a teenager and I just took a few photos at school and then kind of threw it in the cupboard. I think it was an old red ones go faster red Kodak camera. And then when I was in my 30s, I decided again, because probably, you know, read a book or something that I should investigate paranormal, supernatural experiences and write my own book on whether this stuff is, you know, is it real, is it true? What are other people's accounts of ghosts and things like that. So I was interviewing credible people who had, you know, I guess, careers and reputations for telling the truth, if you will. So there were some, you know, people, careers in there I didn't interview, but I was interviewing like doctors and, you know, pilots and kind of people of note and asking them about supernatural things and what they experienced. And I was writing them down. And so in that I went to Port Arthur and I thought, well, I need a camera to take some photos of buildings and, you know, maybe try and catch some ghost orbs on camera and have a bit of fun with it. So I started doing that and then realized pretty quickly that I preferred photographing animals to balls of light, balls of, you know, dust lit up by a flash on a cheap camera that I bought. Yeah, so I wasn't really getting what I wanted. So I wrote about probably five chapters of the 20 chapter book. And then that's still sitting on a. Do you remember old floppy disk? It's on a floppy disk somewhere. [00:10:05] Speaker A: Smaller floppy disk or the bigger floppy disk. [00:10:07] Speaker C: It was, it was One of those small little square ones that maybe used to put it in the thing. And for those at home that don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry. It was basically a device about as big as this coaster that used to store information. Now we have the thumb drive, but had that. So it was on that click. [00:10:20] Speaker A: The click when you pushed them in was so satisfying, you know, it was so mechanical. It's like. [00:10:25] Speaker C: And then told you it was. [00:10:26] Speaker B: But also how naughty you feel when you slide that cover across and you can see the. The flat black disc underneath. [00:10:32] Speaker A: You're not temptation. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Every now and then I'm going to. [00:10:37] Speaker A: Be a little rebel. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Little rebel nerd. [00:10:39] Speaker A: Have a look. [00:10:41] Speaker C: Well, it's like trapped in there forever now, because I know there are places you can take it to get that stuff off. But I don't think my five chapters of the book are quite worth it. But. Yeah, So I went and bought a budget DSLR camera. It cost like, I think $350. And I had this. I had this idea that I'd photograph everything because it's easy, right? Yeah. Famous last words. Oh, just photograph everything. It's such an easy thing. Just hold it up and push the button. And I realized within about eight weeks that for me, it wasn't very easy to photograph everything. And I had this really pivotal moment. One day I was at the park with a friend's family and I said, I'll do family portraits. I'll photograph your family and your kids. Which I would never say, now that's something that I'm just not. Is not my, you know, strong suit. And anyway, while we're at the park, the little girl was about 6 and she was doing some ballet. And my eyes were glazing over. You know, if you picked up not quite a ballet person, love, yuck. Someone else is young, but ballet is not my thing. And as she was doing some ballet, twirling with this ribbon, saw a bird fly past. So I started taking some photos of the bird. And then she was like, should I keep going? I was like, yeah, just keep spinning. Because she couldn't see what I was doing. And I saw a swan and a duck and she's like, she's dizzy. When I got home, I had more photos of birds, swans and ducks than I did of the family. And that started to happen every time a creature was around. I'd just be like. So I just stuck to that. I listened to that. So very early on, I switched to animals. It was all I wanted to photograph. And yeah, rest is history. That's pretty much all I've done. Done with photography ever since. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's been a great interview. Thanks for coming. [00:12:08] Speaker C: Thanks so much. That's all there is to it. [00:12:12] Speaker B: And the rest is history. [00:12:14] Speaker C: That's it. Let's get to the end. [00:12:15] Speaker B: We need the horn sound again, boss. [00:12:18] Speaker A: There we go. [00:12:22] Speaker C: Oh, that was a big close up. [00:12:24] Speaker A: How do you. How do you go from. So you were. When you were trying to photograph everything, were you trying to do that for money or were you just trying to get experience? Was it always it like, oh, he's 50 doll, come and take photo of my family or whatever. It was like little, little jobs, like trying to turn it into something real. [00:12:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Initially, I think I was doing like, we all start from, you know, most people went from a starting point. They just want to get experience and some practice in. So I was just photographing, you know, like, still life stuff and landscapes and the family thing would have just been a free thing, I thought sounded like a fun idea at the time. And so it was just all, you know, trying to grow my business. When I first switched into pets, I was doing pets, photographing pets outdoors. And I was charging like $95. And then I'd move from the floppy disk to a CD to a. To a disc, a dvd, I guess, that you put. Remember they used to put your photos on them and. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so weird, you know. You know, DVDs even when they do exist these days, are for, you know, films generally. But we used to store photos on them. And so, yeah, I used to sell a disc for $100. 95 for 100 photos and the photo shoot. So that wore thin pretty quickly because I realized I was working 300 hours for every. Every client that got their disc of 100 photos. And I just decided that that probably wasn't really the best business model for me initially. [00:13:45] Speaker A: Before. Which makes sense. Before. Before you were sort of charging for all of these shoots. How did you get the ball rolling? Because so basically you were. You're taking photos of everything and then you're like, you know, I, I like birds and swans and whatever. How did you say, all right, I'm going to try and get someone to pay me to take photos of their pet? Like, what was the plan there? And how did those first few shoots and months and whatever evolve that into a business to where you were charging $95 for a hundred images? [00:14:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I just, I just told people, which I think is still the. One of the Best marketing forms today. Tell people, like, tell your friends. Ask, you know, if you ask for people to help you and say, can you give me some subjects to photograph? And I charged $99. It was a pretty good deal, I think, at the time, even for the quality of photos that they were necessarily getting. Just put it out there and asked friends and told people. And I didn't. At the time, I had a. I didn't have website to start with and social media. I think it was even like literally a year before Facebook had even kind of turned up. So there wasn't really social media at the time. So I just told people. And then I had a very basic Google template website which was unsearchable, unfindable. If I met someone on the street, the business name was Alex Kern's Photographics. No one could spell Kerns, no one could spell Photographic. So it just didn't. Didn't work. [00:15:03] Speaker B: And so sorry, I've been saying CERNs. Sorry, my bad. [00:15:05] Speaker C: Oh, I don't mind, I don't mind, I don't mind. Greg, that's fine. Yeah, I get it all the time. Literally. Call me Alice. No, Cerns. Cations. K. I knew you were talking to me. If it was a K, my life would be so much easier. But I think my stepfather. [00:15:24] Speaker B: You can change it. [00:15:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. My stepfather's fault on that one. So, yeah, just word of mouth is one of the greatest ways to let people know. So I didn't also, I didn't have, like, clients beating down the door. I might have had, you know, five clients and from memory, I think a few were strangers that obviously other friends had mentioned. Oh, my friend has a dog and, you know, just running around in people's front yards in bad light trying to photograph a, you know, white dog in bright sun or a dark dog under a bush. And it was just really difficult. I wasn't enjoying it. And I don't photograph pets anymore. Domestic pets outdoors in natural light, because I just prefer to photograph them in the studio. But I do wildlife across both platforms, but not pets. I like to sit super close to them and have that kind of control. So the whole thing just wasn't going to work for me from the start. Yep. [00:16:10] Speaker B: And so, you know, it's interesting, it's fascinating and amazing that in the last years since you picked up a camera, you've managed to. I'll go through the list again if you like, but you've managed to. Let's just condense it. You've become the most important person anyone will ever meet in such a short period of time. Tell me about what that experience was like for you, ramping up the business. [00:16:32] Speaker C: When I, when I had a, like a basic light kit at the time and I was photographing at the rspca, they were, I was doing like kind of white backdrop shots for them that they could use for marketing just for them. They just said, do you, one day they just said, do you have studio lighting? Another great business lesson, because if you can tell I'm quite business minded, was I just said yes. I didn't, but I said yes. So I went to my friend and said, can I borrow your studio lights and can I also borrow your husband? Because I don't know how to set them up and use them. And he was, he wasn't a photographer, but he was great at setting up lighting for my friend. So she photographed babies. So he came to the RSPCA with me and set up these lights. And then from that I thought, oh, that was really fun. I actually enjoyed photographing the pets with the studio lights. You know, it freezes the motion and I found that, that quite easy. And so I bought my own set of lights and then thought, well, I've got a studio now. I had a little room in the bottom of the garden of the house I was living at the time. It was probably 9 square meters, maybe 12 square meter room. It was tiny. And I thought just string a piece of paper up on one wall, put some lights on a stand on the other because that's literally all you need to get going. And then I did a newspaper ad. I think it cost me $500. That was a little tiny ad in the newspaper, just saying, pet photo sessions. Email this address if you'd like to book a session. And from that I think I got five clients. And I remember my very first client was Doug the Pug. He passed away recently in New Zealand and his mum was a radio, one of the breakfast announcers on one of the radio shows. And I think, I think Doug the Pug's mum, she spent $850. And I couldn't believe it because I've been charging $95 for disc of and I just couldn't, I was amazed and I thought, wow, like, you know, those five clients treat them like absolute, you know, gold. And from that more clients rolled in and it just kind of grew from there. But you know, that word of mouth thing was still continuing on. Like every client in and out is the quickest way to grow your business. Just clients in, clients out. Irrespective of their spending. And I've always kind of gone with that. It's not about the money, it's about the service. And if you give them good service, people, you know, spend freely and happily and that's what I always want from my clients. [00:18:34] Speaker B: That's really cool. That's Justin's philosophy too. I saw that in action at bfop, selling belts up. You get mentioned every time. Come on up. There we go. Product placement. [00:18:47] Speaker C: It's like I've been hypnotized. Unless I hear the sound, I can't. Yeah, I can't do it now. [00:18:51] Speaker B: You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of that, that kind of theater, sports show. It's a knockout. Do you remember that? [00:18:56] Speaker C: Are you. Yeah. [00:18:57] Speaker B: Anyway, Justin wouldn't. No, he has no idea. Google. Not now, later. It's a knockout. Lots of interesting. [00:19:07] Speaker A: If you guys are listening and you're not familiar with Alex, you might be starting to get the feeling that she somewhat knows what she's talking about when it comes to running businesses, particularly pet photography studio businesses. But I'm sure all businesses probably come naturally to you. Does that. Do you find that that business comes naturally to you? Like you haven't had to study for years to. To understand how business works. You kind of like see it and just like what you just said, then you look after your customers, give them great experience, more people will flow in and the money will come. Is that. Is that sort of stuff always come naturally to you? [00:19:43] Speaker C: Yeah, to be honest, yes. But I have a brain that doesn't really stop very often. Like I'm at my most dangerous if I' a long drive because I want to start nine more businesses and already have several, I don't need any more. But yeah, it's just like I know everyone's brain is a computer, right? But the way mine works, if you tell me in business you have a problem, mine goes straight into solution mode. So it finds solutions. And I think in business you're successful if you always push through and find a way. Whether it's, you know, if there's a roadblock in the way, like you can't get any clients. Well, you can advertise and invest money to attract clients. You can hire someone to go out and market for you, you can market yourself, you can go over, around, under, through, you can fund it yourself, transfer it to a third party, whatever you need to do, there's always a solution. So I'm very solutions driven, which is great. If you've got a business problem in Any business. I do coaching business. Any businesses. A lot of my clients are photographers and pet photographers, but I do coach small businesses as well in all sorts of things from hairdressers to fitness coaches to dog trainers, you name it. But it's great to have that if you have a business problem. But if you just want to tell me about your bad day and I'm trying to solve it for you, sometimes that's where I have to be quiet because people, you just want to tell me about your bad day. You don't necessarily want, you just want downloads. You don't necessarily want all the solutions. But I'm very solutions focused and I'm very customer focused. So for me, what business is, is just putting myself in the shoes of the customer. And if the customer would like it, that's what I do. And you're never going to go wrong. It's, you know, should I, you know, should I charge people $1,000 to get into my business and then have this price list and if they buy something from that, have a secret price list and then five other prices that if they spend this much, it opens up this and opens up that and my eyes are going like this and I'm like, I'm confused. If I was your client, I'd be like, no, you know, like not, not about the pricing, but just the model is all over the place. Just stuff like that. You know, should I sell, I want to, should I pressure sell to my clients and use sales scripts and you know, would, well, would I like it or something? I knew someone was reading a sales script to me. No. So that would be a no. You know, I just, all I do is I just ask myself, and that's what business is to me. And that's also part of that solution. I find a way through based on what I would like. As a client. I'm a pretty, pretty. Not a tough client, but I'm a pretty switched on consumer and I don't like any sales gimmicks or anything like that. So I don't do them in my business. I think the best thing you can do in business is be authentic, be yourself and treat your clients how you'd like to be treated. Not going to go wrong. That one's free. That tip's free. Thanks. [00:22:14] Speaker A: Hey, but you know, damn it, she's on to me. Basically. Alex provides various types of business coaching, as she said, and I'm trying to extract as much as possible out in this podcast for free under the guise of an interview. So, but I think she's already caught on to me. Anyway. My next question is, for example, hypothetically, if I was running a pet photography studio, so have you made any mistakes? So have you ever. Have you ever fallen into the trap of trying these ideas that maybe went against your gut feeling? Because some, you know, an influential person had said, you know, if you're not doing sales scripts in your business, you know, you got no chance or, you know, you've. So you've been presented with some advice that you kind of initially thought, doesn't really sit well, but this person's an expert. I'm going to give it a try. Have you ever had those experiences in your business and then had to work through the fact that it. Maybe it works for them, but it doesn't work for you? [00:23:20] Speaker C: I think some of those things I always like. I won't rubbish anything unless I at least investigate it, right? So I would have a good look at it. So I've looked at, you know, if we're talking like sales scripts, you know, or the way you run your sales sessions in your business, you know, should be to. If the philosophy is to shake every last cent from your client's pocket, well, I won't do that. Want my clients to be able to pay rent and bills and things like that. So I will look in. I will. I've got books on. I'm not going to show what this one. Books on the bookshelf. Don't want to say be sued, but here's one that is about selling. Sell, sell. The word. The first word on it is sell that I happened to grab earlier today to prop up my computer screen. But there's a lot of books on the bookshelf on sales and selling and all that. I read them and then I go, no, that's not for me. That's not how I want to run my business. And I do, you know, I do my own education. I watch people's webinars and listen to, you know, podcasts and interviews and all that sort of stuff, or training videos on that sort of thing. But it's. And I just pick and choose what's comfortable for me because I think that's really important too. There are a lot of voices out there about a lot of things we should do in the ones that have the experience and that you trust and then do what still feels right for you. So just because. And again, someone's probably sitting there right now going, well, I use a sales script and it works quite well. You do you. If it works and you're and you're comfortable with that? It's just not for me. And I always want to make sure I'm myself. And I just, you know, I even say to my clients, you do your purchase appointment with me, and I'm a photographer, not a salesperson, because that's the truth. Do I know how to sell? Yes, I'm sure I do. Do I want to? No. It's not my job to sell them stuff. It's my job to get them what they want. And that's the switch. You know, it's just those little things like that that flick around. You said, have I ever made any mistakes? No. Next. I've made heaps. It's not one I haven't made. My whole. My whole coaching program is basically based on eight years of wasting time and money. And, you know, every single sentence that comes out of my mouth when I coach people is because I've had an experience that didn't go the way I intended, probably multiple times before I realized. And I don't want other people to make the same mistake. So it's very based on real life and in real life experience as well, in doing things wrong. But I'll try. The thing is to try anything and if it doesn't work, don't do it again. If it does, you know, do it more or if it didn't work, tweak it a bit and give it another run. Like, do a different version of it. Don't just chuck it in the bin. You know, then that. I think people give up really quickly or go, that Facebook ad didn't work or whatever it is. You know, that market store didn't work. I'm like, well, what market store you're at? Well, I'm a dog photographer and I was at the baby show. Okay. Maybe the best. It wasn't the best fit at the baby show. I didn't think of that. Okay. That's probably an easy fix, you know? Yeah, yeah. Just, just. [00:26:00] Speaker B: I'm just curious. Sorry, do you want to go first? [00:26:02] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to say this is a couple of. Well, there's one super famous photographer in the chat. I just want to pull up his comment. Oh, no, that's not it. There it is. David. David. Yeah. I once had a key art shoot using flash, photographing rescue dogs. The next time I'm asked to do such a thing, it will be your name I share with the producers. [00:26:29] Speaker C: David, I love you. I would be honored. And can I just say once, actually, then, David, you'll relate to this. I got asked to shoot a movie poster for the film Red Dog. With the last Red Dog film, it was basically like kind of like a Docker and a film, you know, mixed together showing how they made the Red Dog movies. And it was. I had to go to the last day of the studio without doing the last day of filming and just photograph some dogs on a white backdrop. And I was super nervous because it was a movie poster. I got caught up in the result instead of the job. And I thought, oh, gosh, how am I going to do this? I've got to photograph dogs on a white backdrop, which I've been doing for like a decade. And actually that sort of stuff you can get really, you know, David is the master at it for him, at second nature, photographing on film sets. He takes amazing pictures that we then see everywhere on posters and on promotional stuff. But I was really intimidated by that because I thought, God's going to be on a poster. And then I went, hang on. You photograph dogs in a studio every single day. It's your job. Go and do your job and get out of your head. And I turned up and what I realized is that they were the people on set. And David, you might have found this too. They knew everything about making a film, which I didn't. But they didn't know how to set up the backdrop. And they're helping me and they're like, what do you want? What do you need? And I was in control of that situation. You know, they want to make the best of it for me. And I worked with these like literal dog actors, like the Brad Pitts of the dog world. These dogs were so amazingly trained and I couldn't talk to the dogs directly. The trainer stood over me and did hand signals. So normally I'd communicate with the dogs like give me a paw or you know, sit and give them a treat. Instead I just said to the trainer, can you please ask the dog to raise its paw? And he'd stand above me and go like that. And the dog would do a high five or he'd make it look. He'd point to me and it would look at me. And it was incredible. There was a puppy that did what it wanted, then a one year old and a five year old and it was really amazing. And they're like, oh, we love these pictures, it's so great. And they use them on some of the promotional posters. But I was really intimidated by that. And just again, you get in your own head about stuff sometimes. So yeah. But I'd be honored, David. Thank You. And nice to see you on dropping in as well. [00:28:24] Speaker A: We always love seeing David pop in. And then. And then there was this other guy here, too. [00:28:35] Speaker C: I think it's Glean. Glean, Yeah. I think, Glenn, you're going to be really upset because you missed the. You missed this really cool song that you've probably never heard. But anyway. No, that's Glenn. Say it's Glenn. I'm going to say his name properly. Hey, I don't. Please cut the recording. Kill the live feed. But he's actually a great guy. Don't tell anyone because he likes to make out. He's all. He's a tricky. Oh, it's Lynn. Oh, maybe it's Glenn Avender. We've been saying his surname wrong the whole time. You've got to make it all one word. He is a top guy. He's gonna hate this because it's recorded now forever on the Internet. Nothing dies on the Internet. Even if he sues you guys and tries to make you take it down, he's the top guy. Awesome, awesome guy. And you know what makes me really mad about him? He's a really good photographer. So good. He sells his pictures. He can photograph. And, you know, I'm an absolute specialist in what I do. Glenn can photograph so many different genres, really, really well. And I think that's a whole different skill level. I think that's amazing. Anyway, it's not about him. [00:29:36] Speaker A: No. [00:29:38] Speaker B: I have a question about your business prowess. So before you picked up the camera, were you running your own businesses or. Where did this. Where did this business savviness come from for you? Where do you think it started? [00:29:51] Speaker C: So my background, when I was in my final year of high school, probably, you know, literally 50 through the year, I got called into the office and they said, oh, sorry, we realize you've done the wrong. We've let you do the wrong subjects to get a university. You know, you had to have a TE back then, a score to get into university, and you haven't done enough maths and science subjects to be. You did enough English and social studies, which I love. I love English and writing. And then, like, didn't. So you can't get in. You can't get into uni. And I was like, oh, I want to be a journalist at the time. And I was like, oh, okay. So I said, oh, second best. I'll go and join the police force. So I did that. Not that you didn't need a qualification, but they. You have training within the system for that. So I went I joined the police force when I was 19 and 8 days old. I was the youngest cop in the state for about two years. And so I did that for, for about seven years. And then I, I went from being a sworn police officer to an unsworn, basically a public servant. But I was working at all the crime squads like armed robbery squad, homicide squad. And the last stint I did there was two years at child abuse unit. And as you can imagine by the name of it, that it's a place that's pretty full on and it kind of has a lifespan for how long you can work there before you start becoming pretty affected. And I had a day there where I just, I was looking at pictures of children and I saw a photo of a dead child and for the first time in I'd see my 14 year career. @ that point I felt physically ill and I went into my boss and said, I think I need to leave, I've reached my limit. And it happened to everyone that worked there. It quite often happened to the detectives when they had kids. They couldn't work there anymore because it's just a different level. And so he said, how, how long do you think you've got? Said, I'll be okay for a few months, but I need to go. And so I got another job within about eight weeks working for the federal government, auditing airports. I was a transport security inspector and I basically audited airports and airlines in Western Australia. So I traveled a lot and just from, you know, Cocos and Christmas island down to Kalgoorlie to Broome, everything in between, just auditing the, the security of the airport. So not safety stuff, which was casa, but security, like how you secure the airport. What do you do if there's a hijack on a plane? How do they, you know, what happens after dark, where does, where all the special documents in the airport go and how are they all locked away and all that sort of stuff. So did that for five years and I started my business in that time just because I really just, it was actually really authentic. I just wanted to photograph animals. Didn't have any, believe it or not, probably a completely different person now, but any intention at the time to make it anything more than that. And the minute I did that little ad for those studio shoots, it just didn't stop, you know. And now it's, you know, 57 years later, here we are, 87. [00:32:24] Speaker A: That is a, that is a wild career before photography, like, amazing career. Well done. It's such a range of. [00:32:32] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it was all like, you know what, my life is very different now, but it was all audit compliance, enforcement rules, you know, and I'm still a rule maker, not really a rule breaker. You're either one way or the other. I think you're either, you know, on this, the good side or you're criminal. And I'm not working in the good side anymore, but I'm not a criminal. But yeah, it was always like people had to adhere to everything I said and do what I said and this sort of stuff. And Alex Kearns, the ex police officer is. Well, the police officer is very different to Alex Kearns, the dog photographer. In business it's not about making people do anything, you know, and enforcing anything. It's just clear communication and, and letting them have that free choice. So it's a very different world. But you, you, you know, someone talks in a movie or tell you what they get. Frog marched out with their arm behind their back in a headlock. Yeah, pretty much. So that never leaves me. I still stand like a cop. I still do things because it was, you know, 14 years of my life was kind of ingrained in me in that, that kind of culture. Yeah, I'm very different. And now so. So you have. [00:33:35] Speaker A: How long, how long did you. So you started the pet photography business whilst you're still working, while you were just flying around checking out airports being like, that's unsafe. Lock that gate. Who's that guy? So how long did you. Sorry to derail this. Did you see the story about the attempted hijacking at Avalon a year or two ago, so that the young guy got. He had a shotgun and. [00:34:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been horrific. Yeah, I would have been working overtime on that because. Yeah, yeah. [00:34:13] Speaker A: Because how did he get in? [00:34:15] Speaker C: Yeah, basically we used to get reports every morning of even like an unattended bag. Any sort of. Any sort of security incident. So that's security. So we had a lot of stuff to investigate and we were in charge of basically enforcing that legislation in a way. So yeah, there would been lots of investigations with stuff like that. It would been a nightmare and just shouldn't happen. [00:34:34] Speaker A: Basically the, the guy. So we've shot weddings at the property that of the guy that disarmed him. [00:34:42] Speaker C: Wow. [00:34:43] Speaker A: So he was sitting in the front row. He must have been like 1A or whatever as a smaller plane. And he just. No, he just saw. He's like, that looks weird. That's a gun. Yeah, I can tell that that's not a shovel. That's a gun barrel. [00:34:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:57] Speaker A: This dude he owns, I think he might have just recently sold it at a place called Parracuda Station up on the river. And they just. They do weddings and wedding receptions and all that sort of stuff. He's like half farmer, half whatever. And yeah, just saw it and was like, I gotta sort this out. [00:35:12] Speaker C: That's a legend. Yeah. You know what I think, to be honest? Like, I think what that career gave me the most or I should rewind a little bit too. So when I was a. Moved around a lot. I don't know why I said to my mum once is my stepdad wanted by the police because we moved a lot. It was like, we're on the run. But she said no, so take that on face value. And so I went to a lot of schools. A lot of schools, like moved, you know. I remember one year I was in need, like. Like I was 8 years old and at school they had three terms back then and you did bush rangers, the solar system and dinosaurs were the social studies subjects each semester. But the schools could do them in any order. And I moved so much that all I did all year was bushrangers, you know, because every time I moved I just don't. Bush ranges again. I can't do like proper flowing writing because I moved to school so many times. They were chopping between modern cursive and cursive and printing. And so my writings were messed up and like my childhood trauma downloaded right there. So I moved a lot. So I was always the new kid. And then I think combine that with policing, where you've got to talk to all types of people, I think that gave me the ability to be. I was quite shy when I was younger. I wouldn't talk to anyone if they were older than me. And I was a little bit odd, may still be a little bit odd, but I'm not shy. And so I think that gave me the ability to talk. Always having to be the new kid and working in the police, dealing with all sorts of stuff as well, kind of, but just gave me that. That confidence, I guess, to know that I can manage situations. And even more than that, it gave me a really strong sense of how I react in certain situations. So I know what I know. If I. If a plane fell from the sky and people are running around on fire and it was horrific, I know how I'd respond. Whereas. So I'm a good person to have around. Something goes really wrong because I take action straight away if I've come and I've had that in my post. Police Life, you know, I've come across car wrecks with people in them and all sorts of stuff. And I know straight away how I switch on to controlling a scene and helping people and stepping up and that sort of thing, which is not for everyone. Sometimes that stuff's really traumatic and you just need to be away from it, you know, so kind of been. I don't have to pull that out too often, but it does, you know, I know if I'm not a bystander, if I see, you know, someone abusing someone else in the street, I'm careful, but I choose what to do. But I take action of some, even if that's just phoning the police or something. But I do, you know, so that's kind of been cool to know that part of myself and not something everyone gets to figure out, I guess, or wants to, to be honest. But yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:37:24] Speaker A: Confidence, a lot of internal confidence and. [00:37:29] Speaker C: Just too in stressful situations. I know how, I know how to work under stress, you know, like, which is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably why I have so many businesses because I like the adrenaline rush. Cannot be a plane wreck. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. [00:37:42] Speaker A: So let's, let's dig into a little bit of business stuff so I can get this free information. I'm worried we're running out of time. I'm just kidding. What I'd like to know, I think people would be interested. I'm interested. Can you walk us through? Like what. Because you're still, even though you're doing all these other things, you're mentoring people. You even have a program that if you want to grow your pet photography business, you have a specific program for that. Not alongside just generic mentoring for small businesses. You still photograph pets today. Like your business is still running week to week. What's, what's the customer experience like? Like, how do you, how do you. If I'm, if I'm the customer, how do you find me? And then how long, you know, when do you book me in? And then what's the shoot like? And then what happens after the shoot? Just like, how do you sort of treat people? [00:38:39] Speaker C: Well, I find having done it now for 16 years in the Perth market, I have a pretty strong brand recognition in Perth. So. And this is important thing for me to remember when I coach, I don't coach people based on where I'm at. I coach where the client that I'm coaching is at. Because, you know, the marketing strategies that I do these days are very, not, not as intense, I guess, as what I did in the beginning, but I still have to market all the time, so I mostly used to find them. I use Facebook advertising, so social media, advertising events. I find getting in front of people and, you know, they're buying us as much as they're buying our photos. So if you engage and connect with people and they like you and you like them, it kind of, it's a good exchange. So mostly just getting out and about and then that word of mouth, you know, I, you know. Clients coming back again. I have a lot of returning clients. I think my record for number of returning shoots is about 13 visits in 16 years. And that's not a bad, that's cool. But every week, Every week. So I only shoot now on Saturday. So to be able to do all the things that I do, I'm very good at time management and compartmentalizing time. And I'm actually not, believe it or not, a workaholic. I think that's probably why my hobby, part time unpaid job, is watching films because I like to just switch off and do nothing at times. But I shoot on weekends, so I shoot Saturdays. And when I book the shoots, I book them in a block every hour on the hour. So it could be 11, 12, 1, 2, 3. I do between. On a quiet weekend, three shoots. On a busy weekend, eight shoots. Eight. Eight is a lot. But the clients just, they, they, they get information. Please be on time. Because if they're even 10 minutes late, that throws out my whole schedule and I might not be able to do that shoot. So they come in, I photograph pretty quickly. To be honest, I find that I don't do these like two or three hour pet shoots. It's different in a studio to being outdoors. Outdoors the dog can run and they're having a lot of space to play. And, well, my dog is literally sitting right in front of me, this far away from me, so a foot away from my face pretty much the entire time. And I'm showing them a treat or toy the whole time. So it's pretty intense for them to just be looking at that the whole time. It's pretty brain draining. Imagine someone waving a block of chocolate around in front of you for 20 minutes. You'd be mad and you'd be tired. So I'm kind of aware of that when I've got toys and treats. So I shoot super quick. So probably the shoot portion when they arrive, 5 minutes of chat at the start, 20 minutes of the shoot, 5 minutes chat at the end, and within 40 minutes they're in and out. But that is what's in the best interest of their dog. So it's not through rushing it, just, you know, what's best for the dogs. [00:40:52] Speaker A: Do you let them know that even though it's like, hey, I've booked you on the hour, but this should only take about 40 minutes if all goes. [00:40:58] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we. They get in the information that says your session because you need to let people know how much time to set aside. We'll take around 40 minutes, but we have an hour slot booked. And then, you know, if we do need a bit more time, we take it. But, you know, I find that just going super fast. I'll take 300 photos in those 20 minutes and I show them about 30 to 40 pictures of that. And then on Tuesdays I process all those shoots. So Tuesdays is my office day. So Sundays and Saturday, sorry, and Tuesdays are my, you know, houndstooth business days. I process all those images for them and then they, they see their photos and they choose from that. The Sunday I always try and have, unless there's an event on, which is normally in summer. So rest of the year is always a day off. I recommend that for anyone, always have at least one day a week we're doing nothing. It's a family day. And then I do coaching on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays. Sometimes I was doing three calls a day, sometimes I'll do two. And a lot of my clients are in the States. I might be done by 11 o' clock in the morning and then I've got the whole day free. So I go to the movies, watch movies and say I watch up to 11 films. So those films I was quoting, they're at the cinema, they're not at home. I actually drive to the cinema and watch them at the movies. So, yeah, it's very compartmentalized. And then once the clients place their order, I send it to the photo lab, I edit the photos, send it to the photo lab, and it gets shipped direct to them. So I don't see them again after that point. The order just comes straight out from the lab to them. If anything goes wrong with that, it's normally because the postman's jumped on it or something. It's only happened a few times. The lab fixes it. They're a really great photo lab that I use in person. And so, yeah, customers get their products and book in again a year or two later. So every weekend I'd have, if I had five clients, at least two or three would be returning customers. Which just shows if you keep people happy there's no reason for them to go anywhere else, you know, they don't. Yeah. No matter how much, no matter how much choice there is, you know, and I don't, I don't do competition. I have competitors, but, you know, I have friends that take pet photos in Perth and they're just doing their bit of the market. I just don't do competition. I just worry about my own business. Better putting that energy into you than what's going on over there. [00:42:57] Speaker A: For those listening, how. What's the population of Perth? [00:43:02] Speaker C: Probably I think maybe 2 million, not quite. And surrounds about. Yeah, 2 mil. [00:43:06] Speaker A: Yeah, decent sized city. What size city do you think this business model could work in? How small could you be? [00:43:17] Speaker C: So anything. It's not actually population based, to be honest. It's, you know, and I was having a conversation with someone the other day about ideal client. Like there is no ideal client. You can have a. I can have a demographic of a client that is most common, that comes to my studio. But my ideal clients, anyone that loves their dog enough to want to spend and have photos and buy photos and spend money on photos, you know, that's my ideal client. Just someone firstly loves their dog and secondly values photography enough to invest in it. So some of my coaching clients are in, you know, small towns, rural towns, you know, and it's not a. And again, if you find your clients, you can find clients anywhere. And the beauty is that I think the statistic is, you know, it's about 60 to 70% of households in Australia and most other countries, you know, a lot of countries in the world have a domestic pet. So there's a lot of pets out there and there's a lot of. Yeah, yeah. So if you're in it, you know, if someone said to me, I only live in a town of 10,000 people, I'd say, well, there's still probably 10,000 pets. You know, it's just finding those people. So it's the marketing, to be honest. It's just usually the marketing, not the population. And sometimes you might have to go a bit further afield for that if you're in a small town of 500 people. But there's no reason that, you know, if 350 people in that town have pets, no reason why you can't photograph them all other than you're not putting your foot down enough in marketing. In your marketing, no such thing as too much marketing. Which is why I have a very obnoxious, arrogant email footer. Great. Because every time I email someone it's Free marketing. If I can say I will post my email footer in the comments on the YouTube because then it has to be seen. But it is very long and literally everything I've ever touched, sold or looked at is listed in there that you can click on. Buy, sign up for read. Yeah. So there's a lot of links because. [00:44:58] Speaker A: I don't think I've seen it. That's. That's cool. So it's just everything. It's almost like affiliate links of everything, but they're not affiliate. [00:45:06] Speaker C: Join this. Yeah, watch. Join the. Do you want to join a movie club? Random, but let's throw that in too because again, like, it's a. If people like that sounds interesting. I wrote to her about a business idea, but she's got a movie club. Everything is on there. So again, it's free marketing and if you don't want to click on them, you just delete it, which I'm sure. Yeah. [00:45:25] Speaker B: Justin, Alex and I agreed not to send you the emails because you'd be distressed. [00:45:30] Speaker C: It's distressing. [00:45:30] Speaker A: Well, yeah. [00:45:31] Speaker B: And, and we knew that you would hassle Alex for free advice on how to run a pet photography business. So that was an intentional drink. [00:45:40] Speaker C: Do you know what? I've got it to do list in my phone and it says speak to Justin about pet photography business coaching. So I haven't forgotten. [00:45:49] Speaker A: I'm, I'm, I'm. I've really been giving it a lot of thought some of the things. [00:45:53] Speaker B: So. [00:45:53] Speaker A: Okay, let's just switch gears. Just straight to me. Even though it's an interview about you. [00:45:57] Speaker C: Yep. [00:45:58] Speaker A: Some of the questions I had are. So you say you shoot on Saturdays. Is that the day you. You couldn't. You need to run a business. Like if you're going to run a pet photography business, you're going to be working every Saturday. Is that what you have, have found or is that how you've designed it intentionally for the way your life works? [00:46:15] Speaker C: A bit of both. People move within the space you give them. Okay. If you have very clear rules and boundaries, then people. So when someone signs up for one of my shoots, they get. Obviously there's an email chain of communication and really it's all rules and boundaries. But to them it's good information. And you know, to be honest, you generally have to give people some weekend time. People will take time off work, to be honest, to do a studio, to do a photo shoot. So they'll take some time off work. Not so much for the purchase appointment. The sales portion of that, they'll Normally want to do that after hours. So I used to do, you know, before I was doing all these other things as well. I used to do, I think I was doing, I was trying to remember maybe three shoots a day, six days a week. I was pumping out like 400, 4 or 500 shoots a year, which, you know, a lot. Which is how I got up to that. 15,000 pets. I was doing a lot. And then I dropped it down to Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Three shoots a day. So that's still, I don't know, 16 shoots a week or something for years, for like a decade. And for a decade in there I worked every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night doing purchase appointments to make up for all those shoots I was doing during the day. You don't have to do that now. I know it can be different. It's got to be work for you, you know, you don't want, you know, that thing. What do you, you don't want to live to work, you want to work to live kind of thing. So yeah, the restructure for me is because I know it's the most accessible day for my clients, I give them Saturdays. And because of that I know, you know, right now I'm, I've only got a handful of shoots left between now and March next year in this, in the studio. So I know that if, you know, someone says to me, can you, oh, on this Saturday I'm having a birthday picnic at one o' clock in three weeks time. I've probably got five shoots booked in then because I have no spontaneity on Saturdays I won't be able to go or to an afternoon thing. I mean the studio generally till about 5 o', clock, 5:30 at night on the, on Saturday. But to be honest, if you wanted to work at 11pm on a Tuesday, and as long as you convey that to your clients, they will book in at 11pm on a Tuesday. If you use my business system, we should have played the sound because it's almost like the belt plug because there it is. And yeah, so because they, they flow within the rules that you have. And so if I only shot at 11pm on a Tuesday and a client wrote to me and said, hi, great, can I please have a photo shoot Wednesday next Friday? I go, awesome. My Next Tuesday at 11:00pm is the 8th of May. They go, oh, okay, cool. They book in. Yeah, they're my rules. The other day I had someone say, I can't do a Saturday because I work. Do you have any other days? Well, actually I do, because when I'm, you know, I could go to a movie an hour later and, you know, fit them in. And I said, oh, yeah, sure, or I've got. I just had a session move, you know, in January. And she was like, oh, actually, that Saturday is fine. So it's just communication. But yeah, you run it. You can work any day that suits you, but you have to have some accessibility for people that do work full time. That's the long answer to the short question. [00:49:03] Speaker A: That's right. And I mean, it depends on the client too. You know, like if, if they're retired, they might be like, yeah, Wednesday morning's awesome. Or if they're not, then you're going to have to have some availability outside of those sort of. [00:49:15] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. [00:49:16] Speaker A: That makes sense. [00:49:17] Speaker B: And if you're, if, you know, if you're like us and you know, you love, love your pets and Saturday is often a time when you spend the most time with them because if you're working full time, you know, you hang out with them after work. But Saturdays, you're like the day you invest them, you take them for a long walk or you go to a beach or you, you know, whatever it may be, you know, decorate your tails, whatever it is. I'm not saying I do that. You know those little, you know, there's little, those little bottom hole modesty gems you can get, and they have a little. You hang it on the cat's tail and the gym. Yeah, they're very big in America. Anyway. [00:49:52] Speaker C: Justin. Justin and I have never heard of any such thing. Google it. [00:49:55] Speaker A: Not now, Greg. We're dog people. We're dog people. You don't bedazzle your dog's bottom. [00:50:06] Speaker C: Maybe not anyone. Not again. [00:50:08] Speaker B: Could you. [00:50:09] Speaker C: Not anyone's. Maybe not anyone's bottom hole, really. I mean, you do you. But yeah, no, ideally not. Yeah. Okay. [00:50:17] Speaker A: Okay. [00:50:17] Speaker C: Back. [00:50:17] Speaker A: Back into pet photography stuff. So. So you purposely. Why did you decide studio photography versus natural photography? You sort of mentioned. It's. It's your hat. You love doing wildlife outside, but why not pets so much? [00:50:39] Speaker C: I think it's the. But it's the. I mean, to be honest, you have, you have limited control over animals anyway. So with wildlife, you have to wait until they do something and grab that moment. You can't, you know, call out to the elephant and go, I can just come over here and sit and do these things. It's not. [00:50:52] Speaker A: Hold a treat out for the elephant. [00:50:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Actually on that, that's not entirely true. I have a thing where if you if you speak to animals, it's gonna make me sound crazy. Everyone's gonna be like, what? That took a turn. If you talk to animals, they kind of do have a general understanding sometimes of things you're saying. So when I am on like a safari and there's a giraffe and everyone's like, it's not looking. I say just ask it to. And hand on heart, if you just go, oh, hey, sorry, excuse me, could you look over here? It'll just go, oh yeah, it happens all the time. And they're like, how did you know that? I'm like, didn't. It was just probably coincidence they had an itchy neck or something. But I find with domestic pets, I speak to them like they're three or four year old kids. Like dogs, you know, don't touch that, don't lick that PowerPoint, put that down. They understand. Gone to that sort of stuff. Maybe two old kids. But yeah, I was just finding that the control I have over dogs. So in the studio, I actually photographed them in one square meter. They're sitting on an ottoman and it's boxed in into a very small space. I was gonna ask a lot of. [00:51:45] Speaker A: Control specifically about that as well. [00:51:47] Speaker B: About like. [00:51:48] Speaker A: So if you, if how much space is needed to do so you don't. The dogs aren't walking around on the. You don't need a 6 meter wide backdrop so that there's space for them to like wander or whatever. You prop them up and they stay. [00:52:03] Speaker C: For what I do. Yeah. So bearing in mind I'm a portrait photographer, I'm not merely an action photographer. If I photograph them on white, I'll roll out the paper roll. I think it's like a. Maybe is it like 2.6 meter paper roll or something? And 2.3, it rolls out and there is some space there where I can land the fourth row a treat. And they run towards me and stuff like that. But I prefer to shoot on the black background. So I've got the actual bits of plywood, like board from Bunnings and it's got stretch fabric on it from spotlight bolted to the wall. So it's very homemade. That's what the backdrop is. And then I've pushed the ottoman up against that against the wall. And then either side is a piece of, you know that yoga mat flooring that clips in together that kind of inch thick. That's either side. So the dog, the owner stands one side, there's another ottoman up on its side holding up one of the other bits of yoga Mat flooring so that doesn't fall down. And the client's basically holding up the other bit. And so they're kind of flimsy walls. The dog can push out of there if it wants, but they're the bits of yoga mat flooring. And so it's like a box with an open front and open top, if you will. It's just got a back, which is the wall and two sides and all the animals. Where do. I've got. I can fit like five Labradors in there, you know. So find this by two at the back, three at the front. Yeah, I could fit four cats and five cats and a dog in there. They would. They find their space, you know, like they. So, yeah, that's where I photograph. And that having them 30cm off the ground on the ottoman gives me a bit of reaction time. Then less likely to jump off. And if they. They're little, they won't. But if they're bigger, I can kind of. You know, there's. They like to think I can see them thinking about it before they do it. So they content to stay there. And I just. Yeah, I just shoot as many pictures as I need in there. Yeah. So they're sitting on the ottoman. That's a perfect picture for it. And that ottoman edges are probably right at the sides of that dog. And that cat's. Any shot on black is photographed on that ottoman. Them, not so much. They're on a piece of paper draped over the back of someone's couch in their pool room. My friend who rescues koalas. So, yeah, I keep it super simple. People think you need a big, massive space. That ottoman, that's probably only a tiny bit of it that's colored in black that you can't see, but that's how wide it is. It's not massive. You know, it's a pretty small space, but they feel safe in a small space. Cats like a small space. Any photograph I've got cat smiling, yawning. So they feel safe in there and it's just great for control. And then this one's standing up in there. I can tell by the pose, like they're standing up or they're laying down or. [00:54:17] Speaker A: And even in there standing on the ottoman. Or you move the ottoman out of the way and you do some stuff. [00:54:23] Speaker C: No, just standing up on the ottoman. Yeah, it's a. It's a custom. A lot of ottomans have like the framework and the ottoman vinyl. I think it's like really strong vinyl kind of stuff. And then they have like a Cushion top, another bit on top. Well, I don't have that cushion top on top. And I make sure they strengthen the top so that if a dog stands on it, their feet don't go through it. So it has a wooden top, but it's got padding on top of it. So it's nice and soft. And so the animals can lay on it or stand on it because you don't want their feet to push down into it. Because when you're looking with your camera, their foot's cut off and disappears. You want them to be able to see the toes. You know, if the fabric of the ottoman's too soft, their foot disappear into it, basically. So, yeah, they quite often lay down. Greyhounds will quite often lay down on it. Little animals just sit back. So some in the photos you'll see the edge of the couch in the shot, the edge of the ottoman, and some you just won't. But yeah, it just works for me. So everyone's got a different style. I used to shoot further back and the dog used to run them up, but now I've moved really, really close. So obviously with wildlife, I'm not using studio or if I'm using. I photograph wildlife in the studio too, in the same little box. The only time I move further away is if I'm photographing birds in flight or venomous snakes. I don't sit a foot away from. I'm on a chair. Yeah. Several meters away on a chair with a zoom lens. Yeah. But these guys are. They're tiny. They're probably, you know, that's the whole ottoman. They're pretty much laying on all those little puppies. And then you can see the couch line on there of the ottoman. Just, I notice, blended. It kind of. The light falls away and that background is just so dark because that fabric absorbs light, doesn't reflect anything. So it's just sucking the light straight into it. So the background's pretty much at the back. It certainly can come out that dark. [00:55:55] Speaker A: That's the difference between. Because you've got stretched fabric over that background as opposed to having like a black paper roll, a black seamless. You might get some highlights sort of reflecting off that a little bit. [00:56:07] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it will still sometimes be a bit dark gray. So this is how I get true black. It's just, if you go to spotlight, just find the densest, blackest, non shiny fabric. That's what is. And that's just mounted onto boards. I mean, it looks nice when you come in, but it's very Homemade. [00:56:23] Speaker A: Almost like what you would see at a theater for the curtains kind of thing. The black? Yeah, pretty much like that. Sort of thick. [00:56:31] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:56:33] Speaker B: Okay. [00:56:33] Speaker C: And before that, I think I had, like a calico fabric, but it was a bit. You know, calico can be black, a bit shiny. It looked like a fabric that someone had painted black and it didn't work. So I went and got the stretch fabric. But, yeah, just that dog is laying. So that dog's on the ottoman, but a bit further back from the edge, so you can't see the edge in there. So it just gives me that seamless. Kind of looks like it's just with a slight reflection under it, which is. The top of the ottoman's a little bit shiny, a tiny bit shiny. So there's a bit of reflection. Certainly they're just floating in space. But, yeah, for me, it works for control. So wildlife in there is awesome as well. But for wildlife outside, obviously, it's completely different. And you'll notice too, I have a lot of control over how hot the dogs look. You'll never see, unless it's intentional, a big tongue hanging out in the dog, looking like it's fatigued, because I can give them a treat and they pull their tongue in and close their mouth. And I can time it with the lighting for having a small tongue, which looks like a smile, as opposed to them just looking really hot. Whereas outdoors sometimes you'll get a lot more. They're running and playing and you'll get a lot more hot as a bat. A lot more hot shots. Yeah, Little rescue back. So all the wildlife shots are mostly rescue animals that are in care, being rebuilt. [00:57:37] Speaker B: I was going to ask you about that. How did that. That find its way into your pet photography business, you know, and what was like the first time that you shot wildlife in your studio? What was that like? [00:57:48] Speaker C: To be honest, the wildlife stuff wasn't completely selfless at the start. Like, I was doing that. This. The discs of photos for $95. And I needed subjects, so I thought I need to. I need animals to practice on. Only had, you know, I had two dogs of my own, but they were sick of it, so I have to go further afield. So I went to the rspca and firstly, I've researched do they have an official photography partner? Because they didn't want to tread on anyone's toes. And even to this day, if someone does, I stay away because that's someone else's relationship that they've curated, but they didn't have one. So I went out to the RSPCA and said, I'm a pet photographer. I'll just. I started photographing the dogs for adoption and then realized pretty quickly that they were turning around so quickly that, you know, photograph 100 dogs in one day and 60 would be adopted by the end of the day. So that was kind of a bit redundant. So I started just doing project work for them. Them. And then from that I went to a wildlife rescue called Kanyana Wildlife, who I still work with today. And this was even before a business. It's like 20 years I've probably been working with them. And because I wanted to photograph wildlife as well, so I learned really quickly how to photograph snakes because everything is different. Everything has different nuances and different stresses and different levels of safety and, you know, things that trigger them and stuff. So, yeah, through Kenyana, I photographed, or you name it, echidnas, you know, go into sorts of different birds, different reptiles, emus, baby emus and baby kangaroos. We had as a photo shoot once, our national emblems in there together. And there's a great photo of. Excuse me. It might even be on the website. It was like one of the kangaroo joeys looking at the emu and they're just both like, what are you like? They'd never say anything so weird. And I'm like, you guys are both a bit freaky, but you're cute. So, yeah, so I went to them just to practice. Excuse me. And then from that, I've always just had an intrinsic belief, I don't know where it came from, that if you are. If animals are helping you generate income, and that was my. Through my job, then I should give back to them in some way. It was never a business model to work with charity to get clients, because to be honest, what gets clients is doing a lot of clients in clients out. In my business, when the clients come in and say, oh, I saw you at the. I saw you because you work for Kenyana, or I know you work for them and do some work. If I say, is that why you booked a photo session? They'll say, no, I love that you do that. But my friend had a photo shoot and I saw their photo and to be honest, just a bit of a segue, but that's the same for everything. I've got all. I've got all your books. I make a joke and I say, oh, you're the one person that bought them all. Thank you. I'll say, is that why you booked a session? No, no. My cousin had a photo shoot. With you and I just saw her pictures. Oh, I saw you on the telly is that way. No, my work colleague had a photo shoot. It's always linked to another client. So that all that other stuff is lovely and I'll take it, but unless I'm keeping my core customer clients happy, I cannot get carried away in any of that, you know, that any of the other. The stuff about books and accolades and all that sort of thing, you. That's awesome. But are my clients happy? Because without them, there are no photos for rewards, there are no photos for books, there's no charities want to work with you because you're not taking anything, you're not active, you're not working and you know any not on telly because you know nothing to talk about. So, yeah, I'm very, very aware of that. So, yeah, it just came about from needing subjects and then it grew. So now I've worked with probably, probably about 40 different charities all over the world. I have some charities overseas that I lead photo tours for and that I travel overseas to photograph for. And from everything from, you know, Sea shepherd to, you know, free the bears to a wildlife rescue to a rescue that just rescues Joey's to a cleft palate puppy rescue, which is where I adopted all three of my dogs from. They save little cleft palate puppies at a day old. They're born with a cleft palate and tube feed them every. Every two hours for six weeks. And then at three months old, they have surgery to fix their clefts and. And off they go to their new homes, you know, so unfortunately, my three are the ones that didn't quite work out with. For successes with some of their surgeries and stuff. And one's too small for surgery, so I get all the wonky ones that have special needs, but I love them and they think they're completely normal. So, yeah, so it's my greatest joy is actually meeting those people that they're doing the real work, you know, saving these animals. I just swan in and take a few photos, cuddle a few things and have a nice day, you know, it's not. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Well, I mean, given that you just sworn in, cuddle a few things and take a few photos. Your effort, your fill out. I can't say that word. Your charitable efforts have been recognized. When did you get your Order of Australia medal? [01:01:52] Speaker C: That was in 2019. And to be honest, Order of Australia medal is like a lifetime achievement award. And, you know, so I wasn't embarrassed by it, but I was certainly the Youngest person at my awards ceremony, which drew a lot of attention to me because people afterwards recognized me and were coming up and congratulating me. And it didn't sit entirely well with me, I think, because, you know, I haven't done a life's work yet. I'd done it good at that point, you know, probably 15 years of charity work. So I guess that was what qualified it. And a lot I was, you know, in the day, I was doing half a million dollars worth of work for free a year for charities. Now that I've restructured stuff, I'd still do things for free for charities. And I give out a lot of gift certificates and stuff. Not quite the same volume because my time is readjusted. But I still do work with all those core charities to a degree. So I wasn't embarrassed by it, but it just made me feel like I needed to do more to earn it. I didn't feel like I'd grown into it enough. You know, I was like, in my 40s and I was, you know, like, I don't thank you, but I feel like I need to do more. And at the time, I think it was for working with Free the Bears and Guide Dogs Wa and a few other organizations. But. And that's kind of too when I stopped, to be honest, entering photographic competitions, because I thought when, you know, counting your awards, like, when's the point where you just sound like a bit of a tool because you've got 749 awards. Like, who is counting 749? You know, like. So I got to 350 with that, which was, you know, all the different things I'd entered over the years, you know, back in the day when there were only two or three awards. And that was, you know, a bit of a different structure to how it is now. And I just kind of thought, when. Why, what more validation do you need? I'd enter an award occasionally now if I have a photo that I just want to see how it goes, because this is fun. Let's see if other people like it. And sometimes they don't. I'm like, oh, no, like that. Not like that picture of a hermit crab. But, yeah, so I just. I just kind of. I thought, you know, I think you need to change. You've won an Order of Australia. Now, that's kind of the pinnacle of being acknowledged for things. So just redirect that energy into other stuff. So, yeah, so I love competitions. I think they're really valuable to grow and learn, and I judge a lot of them. Now, but I judge them instead of enter them. And it was kind of just a big shift for me mentally to think, you know, maybe try something else. And actually I just remembered way back in the day I was entering competitions. So one of the things I worked really hard on initially was not just growing my brand amongst other photographers. You know, there are a lot of famous photographers out there that only other photographers know. The general public, excuse me, don't know them. And I was like, well, the general public are my clients. So I need to, I need photographers to know who I am and I need to push through that to reach the general public. So I kind of saw myself surrounded by photographers and then. And so I was entering competitions manically, you know, 15, 20, back 20 to 15 years ago, before I even started the business, to try and just grow my reputation in photography. And in doing that, I won a few awards really early on. And I remember one of them was for a picture of blue underwater clams. I think it's on the website, Justin, under limited edition prints. I should put that in my email footer. You can buy one. And so it won an award. It's blue underwater clams and it's many of the colors I think that people like. I wasn't even underwater when I took it. They're in a very rustic breeding facility that had been half reclaimed by the ocean. And I'd gone from doing the pets and going off that to thinking I'll just photograph wildlife. I think I'm just going to be a wildlife photographer. This dog photography thing is not really floating my boat. And so I was in the wildlife phase. I won this award and people ran up to me at that awards. It was in a country town in Western Australia and were trying to offer me money to buy copies of this print, this blue clams print. And I said to them, oh, okay, well, yeah, there it is. Is there? I said, yeah, it's a hundred, it's, there's 100 copies of it. I made up a limited edition on the spot. And I said, and it's, you know, I think they start from like a thousand dollars for a 20 by 30 print of this picture. And since then I think I'm up to 75 copies sold at over a thousand dollars each. So this is my only potential $100,000 photo. But it was also the first time people had run to me wanting to give me money. And that's really this. Without this photo, which I don't even like the color blue, without this image, I would not be here. Today, because it's the first. It really made me stop and think, hang on there, I can make this a business people do want. The pet photo thing wasn't going so well. It only had like 5 clients, 10 clients before I chucked that in. And I was like, you know, only done it for a few months and I was like, you know, so then. And then it all fell into place with the studio gear and I was like, well, find the bit that does work for you. And so that's why I love the wildlife stuff, I love the studio stuff. So I just stuck with those two things. But. But this picture was the photo. The photo that started it all for me. It went on to win multiple awards globally and it's been on covers of magazines. And as soon as anyone sees it, hypnosis, they want to buy a copy of it. So if you email me about it, you'll get to see my great obnoxious email footer and you can have this lovely print. But, yeah, so it was taken in 2006, so. And it's still selling today. It's 19 years. They didn't all sell out in one one minute, but it still ticks over. And some people buy it as a massive, you know, I've sold, you know, several thousand dollars for great big, huge print, frame, canvas, whatever they want of that particular photo. But, yeah, that's what really made me think, hang on, you just need to do things a bit differently and find what you want to do, you know, and stick to that. Like, honestly, if someone came to me and said, I just want to photograph the rare African land snail, everyone would laugh at them. But when that thing goes extinct and National Geographic phones them and said, you're the only person that has a comprehensive collection of photos of the rare African land snail, you know, it's a little bit of a different story. So it's okay to just niche down into what you love, or if you love everything, photograph that too. But, you know, the focus of my lens has just always been the creatures from then on. And clams are a creature because they're moving. I don't know if they have a brain, but they move around. So they kind of COVID the creature category. Yeah, that's a big turning point, Shifting point in my career about where I want to go with it, because it was. [01:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:36] Speaker C: And then I just followed the thread. So while I was working in that government job, as I was getting more busy on the weekends, I was doing the shoot, you know, shoots after hours and on weekends, and I was traveling with that airport job. And in the end I got to a point where I was so stressed because I couldn't keep up with the photo shoots and the purchase appointments and the editing and actually went to the doctor and said, I need a week off. I need this week of stress leave. I just need to have a break, catch up on his stuff. And he just looked at me and said, what are you going to do after a week? I was like, fair, cool. So I walked in and I resigned. And you asked me earlier on if I had any business training. Oh, I don't, I don't have any photography education. I've done coaching over the years recently because, you know, I think you invest in yourself with coaching and stuff. And even I have had, you know, coaching programs that I've done not so much business, but just, you know, even how to create a coaching program kind of stuff, coaching on that sort of stuff. And yeah, it, I, if I just walked in and resigned. And I remember at my send off my then boss said, oh yeah, we're having a morning tea to farewell Alex and she's going to go and photograph dogs. Good luck to her with that. And he honestly thought it was the stupidest idea he'd ever heard. And I went to a small business center and said, I want to open a pet studio, like for people, but for dogs. And he laughed and said, that will only ever be a hobby. And it was a business advice center to help you get your business up and running. And I looked at him and I walked out of that meeting and thought, well, I'm going to do it anyway. I've got a room in the garden and I've got the lights for the rspca. I don't care if it's any of a hobby. Great. And I always think about that man and wonder how he's going to, if he's happy, should I send him my Christmas and let him know, give him an update 20 years later. But yeah, like, if I'd listen to that. So like I, I was like, well, the broom doesn't cost me anything. I'm not investing any money in it. I paid for, painted, paid for someone to paint it with cash. And I was like, well, got no reason not to do it if it's only ever a hobby. It's only ever a hobby. [01:09:17] Speaker A: And yeah, it's, it's terrible advice though, as you know now, because you would never say that to someone if, if they said, I want to photograph the African land snail, that's what I want to build my Business around you would probably say, okay, we're going to have to try and figure out how you can generate revenue from this because that's going to be tough. But you don't just shut it down, you know, like, you don't just shut someone down. You, you go, okay, okay, how, how do you see this working? How do you see it turning into a business and just see what, you know, what a loser. [01:09:51] Speaker C: He just, he said to me, yeah, he said to me at the time, there's only one business I know for dogs that successful and there's one doggy daycare in the city and that the person that opened, that had tenaciously fought the council for years to get that, now there's heaps, you know, but at the time she really fought the council and that was the only business he knew of. And so in between starting the pet photography business and then resigning from My job was 10 months. 10 months after I opened the doors for studio photography. It was too busy and I had to quit within 10 months. And that was not my, my dream life at the time. I think I thought I'll work maybe four days a week for the government and then I have every Friday off and Friday and Saturday I do my business and that's going to be the best that ever is. But when opportunities presented, I just took them. And when it got too busy, I was like, well, I didn't have a mortgage at the time, so I was pretty much debt free. And I was like, you know what, what's my, I always look at my risk. What's my risk, my risk if it fails? And just so you guys know, this is still my backup plan if it all goes pear shaped, I'm going to go and work at a pet store that doesn't sell pets, just sells pet stuff. So if you ever see me at like a, you know, a pet stock, you know, it didn't go so well. Not there's anything wrong with working at Pet Stop, you know, my business, I'd love that dream job. But, you know, my business didn't go so well. That's where I'll be working. Just selling fluffy toys to pet owners. That was my backup plan. I was like, and that's fine. I don't need a million dollars to survive. I just want to do what makes me happy, you know. [01:11:10] Speaker A: How long, just out of interest, did it take for you roughly to replace your full time income with the pet photography business? Income as in after costs are paid and stuff like that Was it, did that take one year, two Years, three years to from when you started it to you. When you were like, oh, I'm. Or did it never reach that point? Like, did it ever get to the point where it replaced the income that you used to earn from your day job? [01:11:41] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to think. So I think, I think I opened the business on like 4th of July and I quit the following year. So I think that first year I only had about maybe 40 or 50 clients, which is still decent. So I probably from those matched the income I'd been on. And then the next year I just up. We're doing four, four to 500 shoots a year. It was just a machine. And yeah, like beyond my wildest dreams. Times. Times that by probably seven, you know. Yeah. You know, then the exchange is good photos for good money. You know, I'm not the most expensive photographer in the city, but I'm also certainly not the cheapest. But I don't price on that either. I don't have that model where if it's this much wholesale, times it by four or times it by three. I look at what the product is, what I think the value is, what I know. I'm a pet, so I'm my own client. I'm my own ideal client. I love dogs. I like spending money on my dogs. So what would I pay for this? And you know, and then make sure it's not too low or too high. So kind of pricing is very individual per business and just finding that sweet spot. But it's never, to be honest, and it sounds insane, but it's never been about the money. For me, as I said, it's. You sell by not selling. I want people to. As long as they're happy with what they get, I'm. I'm happy. And all my clients mostly get an included free print with their bookings. They get a small 5 by 7 gift print with their booking. And some people just take that. And that is completely okay because I still know the value of that client. Person coming in and out grows my business. There's always a payoff for everything as long as you have less of that happening. But you know, if you had 10 people lined up in front of you and I said to you, right, these people are going to give you $10,000 between them, but one's going to spend nothing and you've got to take all 10 bookings to get that $10,000, will you take all 10 bookings knowing one's not going to spend. Exactly. If I said to you, you've got 10 people in front of you. This is, this is where it gets tricky. Got 10 people in front of you. You're going to get $10,000 from them. But nine people are going to spend nothing. But one is going to give you $10,000. Will you still take all 10 bookings? [01:13:46] Speaker A: Absolutely. [01:13:46] Speaker C: Absolutely. You get an A plus when you do coaching with me. You're going to be my star pupil. Because that's the right answer. That was amazing. So. Exactly. Because you can't blushing. I know. No, that's because he understood it straight away. 10 people, $10,000. Your average is a thousand dollars a client. That's. That's great. You know, so. And the first scenario, some people hesitate and go, well, no, nine people aren't going to spend. I'm like, it's actually the same result as the first scenario. 10 shoots for $10,000. And that's how you have to look at your business. You know, one person not spending doesn't make or break your business. It's just as long as they're a happy customer, other people will pick up the slack. [01:14:22] Speaker A: And I think, I think that's the important thing is that they leave happy because the issue with sometimes these models in family portrait studios and stuff like that, with the pressure selling, and then someone leaves spending nothing, but they also leave going, I spent nothing because everything was too expensive. And they tried to pressure me and it was terrible. And then you've almost created negative word of mouth through this process along with also not earning any income. And it's like, if you, you. Yeah. As long as you stay away from that side of it, then yeah, absolutely. It's just a matter of enjoying the shoots and, and it doesn't really matter because, you know, on average, enough people will spend money that you make a living. [01:15:03] Speaker C: Absolutely. [01:15:04] Speaker B: And it is, it is that word of mouth thing that comes back too, isn't it? Because, you know, one pissed off customer will tell, you know, 10, 15, everyone. Yeah. How negative their experience was. [01:15:16] Speaker C: Yeah. And. [01:15:17] Speaker B: And that, that in itself, like. And, you know, I learned this working with Justin at bfot, which I want to talk to you about soon, Alex. But I remember there was a customer who I think had a bit of buyer's remorse and came back, said they were going to come back the next day and maybe, you know, return it. And I didn't know what the process was because that was the first time I ever done floor sales for Lucky Strap or floor sales in general. And Justin's like, just do it. [01:15:42] Speaker C: What? [01:15:43] Speaker B: Do whatever it takes to make that person happy. And it twigged later for me that, that person, if we said nap, sorry, you stuck with it. They're at a festival with 600 other people. They're going to go home and talk to, you know, all of their photography friends and they're going to say that they had a bad experience. [01:15:58] Speaker A: But even that, even that wasn't why, even that wasn't, wasn't why I did it. It's, it's like I want to be, I want to be talking to that person later that night, having a beer and have them be totally happy. You know, it wouldn't matter if they, they knew no one and wasn't said, oh, whatever you do in this situation, I'll never tell a soul. I would still want them to be happy because I want to be able to hang out with them. And so you know, and just know that, that they're happy. I don't want someone to have a strap they didn't want or didn't suit. Anyway, they turned around. [01:16:27] Speaker C: You can, Is there a refund policy? Because. [01:16:29] Speaker A: No, not for you. [01:16:30] Speaker C: Can you take, can you, can you give this back? No, you're exactly right. So I have a, there it is. I have a policy of. I know it's lovely. It's not, it hasn't even bent shape and I've literally worn it non stop. And it's been like what, a month? I have a policy that, and this is a policy I go with that the customer's always right, even if they're not, because I put myself in their shoes. Imagine I get my photo order and I'm adamant, oh, there's three pictures and one is a high five photo. And I didn't order that. Ordered the laying down photo. That's what my brain's telling me. And I go to that photographer and I say, I think this is wrong. Photographer looks it up and goes, no, that's correct. Which is normally what happened. Or sometimes I mix up a number and it could be wrong, you know, occasionally and not great at numbers. And I might say, no, that's actually what you ordered. And they're like, no, we wanted the laying down shot. And I'm trying to remember the purchase appointment. I'm like, and I'm remembering, no, they want, they looked at the high, they, they looked at laying down shot. Then they chose the high five because they wanted three portrait orientated photos. The laying down was landscape. So I say, no, remember you wanted it because it fit the thing. But their brain is stuck on no, we're sure we got the landscape photo and I'll just go, we know what, I'll just order it for you as a canvas and get it to you. And they're like, why would you do that if you think you're right? Like, doesn't matter who's right or wrong, you're not happy. They're not trying to stiff me out of money. And for the cost it is for me to reprint that canvas versus the cost of what they've spent. It should be more than enough in there anyway, you know, to cover that. And clients aren't doing it to try and get free stuff. They honestly, genuinely believe there's a problem. But you're right, the whole business model for me is attractive. People through marketing, run them through my business system, which is as streamlined and easy as I can make it. They give me their money freely and they leave happy. And those four things are all I care about. If they do not leave happy at some point the wheels fall off and they're not happy. I go back and I fix it. And it's. None of that is, yes, they give you their money freely. None of it is take all their money and get paid a fortune. It's, you know, it's just, they give you their money freely, whatever they're happy with and they leave happy. Because if they're not, you're exactly right, they will tell everyone, you know, and, and I do value having them come back again. I don't want them to be angry and upset, just as I don't when I'm a consumer. If I say to a business this is wrong on the phone and they're like, no, it's what you ordered and they're not budging. That sends me into a rage. They get back, I don't feel like, you know, Google review and next minute it's permanent on the Internet. And they've told everyone I don't want to be in a five year hate campaign with them and their friends bombarding me because I just didn't reprint a photo that was laying down shot, you know, so that has always served me really well. And people get too caught up in the business part of business, not the personal part of business. Business is personal relationships. These people, I treat them like my friends, you know, it's where my tour people, people come to me on tours from my client base, you know, they're, some of them are photographers themselves, you know, that that's where I pick people up and do my workshops and all that sort of stuff as well. Like, like, yeah, so I just, I treat them like gold because that's what they are. Without them, I'm not the star of the show. It's the clients. Because without clients, there isn't anything to, to do for anyone. You know, sitting there empty studio on my yoga mat flooring, crying. [01:19:36] Speaker A: I am going to ask you more questions about your studio because we'll get to that in a minute. Okay. So you mentioned pricing, not, not having a formula. So you would literally look at the available products from various suppliers, whether they're canvases or frame prints or print blocks or things like that. And you would literally. Is there a situation where one of them, you know, might cost $200 to get printed and you sell it for a thousand? Another one might cost, say $200 to get printed and you're like, I'll sell that for 400. Because it's just, it's just that particular product, as you said, like the value it represents to you as a customer or to the client doesn't fit. What would. Because sometimes people just say, oh, you got times everything by three or you times everything by four or whatever. The generic, that's enough to pay your bills markup. You don't have a broad brush approach with that? [01:20:35] Speaker C: No, I don't. It's not a one size fits all thing for me. I think so when I work with people on pricing, I talk about what products. So with photographers in like coaching circumstance, what products they actually like and don't like. Because if you hate canvas, you are always going to have a bias against it. There's no point having on your price list if you're always going to be like, well, but the metal and the frame prints are nice, you know, so just you want to price this that you can hand on heart, hold up and go, these are great products that I love and these are, this is really good value, you know, for them and for you, that's the exchange good photos for good money. You know, so knowing, not, not going, throwing it out and going, oh, it's really expensive, or going, oh, this is too cheap. I'm not going to make any money. That doesn't feel good. So we. It's a. And so in that I talk about with clients, you know, what's the demographic of the area they live in financially? Do they, you know, you know your backyard the best. So what are the people like in the area that you live in? What are you comfortable with? And it's my job to make sure people don't price too low or too high. But for me it's just, you know, my price has obviously gone up over the years because I, my suppliers have gone up as well. But I still, you know, there's no thing like I'll make your prices what you want them to be in three years time and just sitting there because you'll wait three years to get a client, you know, because yeah, people don't see value in that. You know, if they, you give someone $5,000 and you say, right, you can buy a Gucci bag with that or this no name bag that's just come out that no one's heard of, they're always going to go for the. Yeah. You know, and it's going to take you by the. Or if it was Greg the Cern, the Cerns bag. [01:22:06] Speaker B: I'm more of a Bellroy boy. [01:22:08] Speaker C: But you know, Alice Cern's bags, it's going to take them five years to catch up to buy that bag because the pop, you know, the brand hasn't grown enough, you know, so same with, in photography, if your brand doesn't have a reputation and you cannot, you know, price on what other people's pricing is. People took my prices when they're starting out that sink because not the brand doesn't have that value in it yet. It, you know, that's right. And growing brand values like, it's like commercial photography. If a publisher came to you, you've taken one photo ever just took one photo and it's really good one, you're like, oh, that's nice. And a publisher came and said we want to use that on a book cover. And you go, oh cool. But you know what? It's the only photo I've ever taken. They go, great, we don't care. Here's $1,000, whatever it is. Right. But if you take one photo and you book a client and they come in and you go, didn't want to tell you this, but I'm going to. Don't. But I'm going to. You're my first client and I've only ever taken that photo you sort of book in. It's the only photo I've ever taken. They're to go, what? Hold on, hang on. No, no. What do you mean? No one else has been here that people want to do what other people do, you know? What do you mean that? No, hold on. I didn't want to. Have you not done this? And that's a massive red flag for them. And you know, it's so with pricing, it's kind of the same. You've got to have prices that grow and increase in increments as your business grows. So you start at a modest place where they're getting a good return and you're getting some good income. And I think we can get really greedy in, in everything. And not that you do this, but if something costs $100, even if you sold it for 200, you're making 100% profit. But people, that's not enough. Oh, that's only 200. You know, it doesn't have to be a thousand dollars, but you know, you start a new grow. And so it's a very customized kind of thing and a very personal thing. And I'm just careful to make sure right, even right now, just because clients are spending, I don't increase my prices. There's times to grow, there's times to be greedy and there's times to be grateful. Right now the financial market globally is on fire. The world is a bit of a mess in some places. And so it's not a time, there's a lot of distractions. It's not a time to increase your prices. When the general public isn't sitting there going, do you know what I feel like? I feel like a pet photo shoot. They're not saying that. They're saying, I feel like not working five jobs. I feel like not having interest rates go up again. I feel like not being able to afford food or worrying about my health care premium. People still have pet shoots, but we've got to go and get them because they're not just sitting there coming to us thinking about it anymore because there's so many other things distracting them emotionally and financially. So, you know, if you are in a business and you're selling consistently doesn't mean that's the time to. Normally you'd put your prices up a little bit because you can afford to. But in a, you have to look at global markets, not just what your clients are doing because you can price yourself out of a market. And I find that a lot of people in business, their vision is so small, you know, I know as much about American politics and financial economy, you know, as I do Australia, regrettably so. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on there and you've got a price accordingly to all those factors. You don't ever drop your prices. But if you go too high, you've got a problem because other things are going to take their attention away and they're not going to come in and spend, especially when it's cost of living stuff. You know, so you've got to set them and hold them and test them and, you know, and. And start from a really good, solid place to do that. Yeah. [01:25:14] Speaker A: All right, that leads me to a perfect question. AI is coming fast. People are going to be able to take a picture of their dog on their phone and then say, turn this into a Kern's masterpiece. And it'll probably do something like that. And it won't be their dog. It'll be an AI replication of what it thinks their dog would look like in your studio. And it'll have an extra tooth or something, but. But that will be possible for free for people. Also, you mentioned the potential, like the current economic times. You know, people might be spending less because everything's gone up. So pet photography is a little bit of a luxury. It's not something you need that week to live. Is now a good time to be starting a pet photography business? [01:26:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Start yesterday. Honestly, in. So this is how much I watch markets and look at finances globally, which is really boring stuff to look into, but in tough times. So in the global recession in 2009, 2010, and even during COVID there were two consistent areas of spending that went up globally in most categories. So there's these market researchers that break down every single category. Like, obviously, during COVID dining in restaurant, dining went down, but streaming services went up. Taxi, you know, rideshare services went down, that sort of thing. The two that always consistently in previous history have gone up Entertainment. So in 2009, 2010, people went to the cinema more. They went to more theater shows, they went to more fringe festivals and things like that because they want. Even though the economy was tight, they wanted to make themselves feel good, and they were things that made people joy. And. And in Covid, it was streaming service, so it was entertainment as well. Home entertainment and both times, too. Pets, pet spending. So when times are tough and you're either locked in your house because you're on a lockdown, or money's tight, believe it or not, people are spending on their pets because that's where they get a lot of love and joy. Both of those categories have gone up. Embarrassingly during COVID in Australia, alcohol and tobacco sales also would probably have one and two as well. I'm pretty up there. [01:27:20] Speaker B: We always return to our roots. [01:27:24] Speaker C: Remember when, like, the. We got that restriction on how many bottles of rum you could buy from online orders and stuff, it all got weird rations of Alcoh. So, you know, that was a wa. [01:27:33] Speaker A: Only thing I think you guys were you guys were free and having a great time over here. They were just like, don't go anywhere. But it's true. [01:27:42] Speaker B: We talk about COVID puppies and, and Covid kittens. Like, lots of people. The amount of people that were. When we could go out and walk. The amount of people that had a new pup in the. Because we had dogs too at the time. And in the park or just walking the streets, like it was crazy how many people had new dogs. Lots of oodles. Labradoodles. Yeah, lots of oodles. Absolutely. [01:28:01] Speaker A: The prices skyrocketed. Yeah. [01:28:04] Speaker C: See, even that. And you know, if you ever, if you ever get worried that the, you know. Yes, there's our audience, you know, we have to go and reach them now. So the difference is pre covered. You could sit around, have a good website, do some SEO, and people would probably, mostly, some of your clients would find you through your website. That still happens occasionally now, but mostly we have to go out and get them. So you can still get clients. Even though they're not thinking about a pet shop, you make them think about it. So that's marketing. Facebook ads, marketing events, all different types of marketing stuff you can do. You know, having a presence in lots of different things, that's been the main kind of shift. But, you know, all you got to do is go to like Vegas and look at those casinos that charge $500 a night and that's just a room, let alone it's, you know, it's like fifteen hundred dollars a day, thousand dollars a day to even be there, do shows and this sort of stuff. And look at how many people are streaming in and out. And they're just every day, you know, probably middle income earners, most of them, you know, and various sides of that, you know, they're pumping it like, so there is money. You've only got to look at Taylor Swift doing a Australian concert tour and what wasn't it like 20 of our population tried to buy 400 tickets or something. Like, people have money, you know, like. [01:29:09] Speaker A: I heard that stat and I was like, there's no way. Someone told me that 5 million people tried to buy. I was like, there's 20 million people in Australia that happen. And they're like, no, no, it did. I'm like, no, it didn't. It did not. Maybe on nine devices one person was trying to get tickets. [01:29:24] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [01:29:25] Speaker A: It was not. I was like, there's no, there's no possible way that one in five people of all ages from zero. [01:29:36] Speaker C: No. Greg, did you. [01:29:39] Speaker B: No, not Personally, but me neither. [01:29:41] Speaker C: So there's three of us here that didn't. We only need two more people to prove that. Yeah, but it's like. It's literally like one in one in four. So we need one more person who's probably the one that bought one. [01:29:49] Speaker A: They're the one that bought them. Yeah. Okay. We need a bigger sample size. But I still. I do not. I do not. But you're right, though. This is not to take away any of that six. Like it got smashed by. [01:30:01] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:30:02] Speaker A: Hundreds of people desperate to spend happily expensive tickets. [01:30:08] Speaker C: Yep. So those sort of things give me hope. So you just start and you start. You like, the best thing you can do is start. Because honestly, if you're like, oh, them, there's never a good time. I started in the global financial Crisis. It was July 4, 2009, when I opened my business. And that's partly why that business advisor, like a year later was still in the gfc, was like, it's not going to work. Like, it's. No one wants that. I don't think he's a dog person, that guy. But, you know, and if you. If you. If you like, he wasn't like. He probably had a cat and he was bejazzling its butt or something on something. I know, it's dreadful. I can't believe it. So, yeah, that, you know, so I didn't let that stop me because I was like, well, it's just what I want to do. If it's really what you want to do, you'll find a way and you'll find your clients and there's enough of the market out there for everyone. There's way too many pets in the world for people to photograph. But find your thing. So mine is obviously sitting very close and doing studio portraits, you know, find your piece of that, whatever that is, whatever. Whatever type of photo you like taking. You know, I say no to photographing people. I don't photograph people in the studio because I'm not. I don't enjoy it and I don't think I'm good at it and I don't think it's my best work. So. No. So it's okay to not. You know, in the beginning, I said yes to everything, but now I know I don't have to. And when you start out, you don't have to either. You just. No, I just like photographing. You know, there's someone that does dogs catching treats, dogs from underneath. You know, dogs. Just dogs heads. Like, there's all different, you know, African lands Now, like, whatever you want to do, I think the best advice is do it. Because the longer you leave it, the more it feels like that entry point, you know, I'm all for just starting it. Just start. Honestly. And most people, the fear of too many what ifs. Well, what if you don't do it? Then it doesn't get done anyway, so it's all redundant, you know, it's wasted energy. If you want to have a crack, do it. Do it now, you know, while you're not dead. Because, you know, taking a turn now, but, you know, everything has an end date. And I think we should. People really understood that if you don't, you know, you've got to hit it while it's hot, one day this ends. And if you can do it now, do it. Because life can turn and just get it done. Yeah, philosophy there. [01:32:16] Speaker A: Checking in with my wife. [01:32:17] Speaker C: Did my friends. Oh, Glenn. Glenn Avender. I got like 68 Taylor Swift tickets. [01:32:25] Speaker A: No, he actually got no tickets. [01:32:28] Speaker C: I'm so sorry. [01:32:30] Speaker A: You need a faster Internet connection. [01:32:32] Speaker C: Glenn, I'm so sorry. I was just gonna say, you must be a millionaire. Sorry, it's really sad. Just so you know, though, the concert's available at the cinema. You can go and watch it there. Just a bit of a plug recently. [01:32:43] Speaker A: Have you watched it? [01:32:44] Speaker B: Have you watched it? You have? [01:32:47] Speaker C: No. No, I haven't. No, I haven't. Because I. Yeah, no, like, that's why Good luck loves Taylor Swift, but just not my vibe. No, I don't do any films that are concert recordings or like. Like live stage plays that have been recorded. I just do cinema. Cinema. Yeah. Not there's anything wrong with that, but yeah, it's just my preference. There's so much stuff to watch that I just literally cannot. I try to watch most, but I cannot watch everything. So that was my excuse. You went to the. Oh, you saw it. Glenn's. Glenn Avender. Lynn Avender saw it. I hope it was a good experience. And it only cost $12, not 400, so that's probably a good night out. Yeah, go on. Cheapy Tuesday. 12 bucks. [01:33:28] Speaker B: Nice. [01:33:29] Speaker A: We are gonna. Oh, sorry, Greg. You go. I got a lot. [01:33:32] Speaker B: No, I just. Oh, if there's still business questions, then stay on it because I. I wanted to derail and talk about workshops and bfop, but that can work. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, let's. Let's. Let's end. Let's end on workshops and stuff because I've still got on my list here. It kind of flows into. It is like gear that you're using. We'll do some Tamron plugs and stuff. Stuff Profoto. Is it profoto someone? Yeah. So we'll talk about gear in a second. Just quickly before that though, just to kind of cap off a little bit of the business stuff. What are your thoughts on this idea? This is not free business advice. It might be. We had Louise Sedgman on the show and she said that she did some pet photography out of the back of a horse float it and I was like that's genius. I'm going to build a pet photography trailer to do mobile pet photography around like country Victoria. So I can base it in Bendigo in like a, have a home base here somewhere where people could come to me. But then otherwise I can just roll into like Sananad and if you don't know where that is but a smaller town for a day and, but you know, pre advertised line the bookings up. Going to be here on this day and then I just have to have like this air conditioned trailer. Am I insane? Is it a crazy idea? [01:34:47] Speaker C: No. Great idea. And one of my clients actually I have a client in the States and a client in Australia and they have mobile studios because your point of difference in the market is convenience for clients obviously. So you know, as opposed to me where they only they can come on a Saturday between certain hours and have to drive to my studio which is central in the city but still got to drive in. You can push back against anyone that's got a home based studio or a business based studio like that by like the convenience is we come to you and you can even, you could even potentially take your laptop with you and they go inside for a coffee for half an hour and you go in half an hour later and show them the best 30 pictures. Do it all same day service for everything. You know, like to be honest people are most engaged probably after the, right after the photo shoot. They've just had the photo shoot, they want to see the photos. My clients wait, you know, a few days to a week. You could be like go inside, have a, have a coffee and I'll be in in half an hour. I'm just going to pick out your best 30 pictures and then just run them through on your, on your computer. Absolutely. And a trailer like you just need a little bit of space to be able to pull your, bolt your lights to the wall and have a power source and yet no, it's, it's a great idea. Yep. Anything you can do to make the client experience different, better and easier. You've Got to make it easy for people, you know, to find you, to book in to you. All those things have to be easy and certainly for convenience. There's no. What's their excuse? You know, they just roll up in their driveway. Not great idea. [01:36:06] Speaker A: Interesting. So you don't, you don't think it would sort of devalue the experience to like. Oh, they're just, that's just like in a little back of a trailer kind of thing. It's not very. [01:36:14] Speaker C: No, not at all. [01:36:15] Speaker A: Or whatever. [01:36:16] Speaker C: No, especially you paint it nicely, you make you present it nicely. And the photos like, it's like. I have some clients and I started at a home as a home based studio and I had a client that was a baby photographer and she said I feel a bit rubbish because the, the studio is like a little garden shed that we've converted at home. It's at home. And I said what do your clients think? I said what happens when they come? She said well, they walk down the house, the garden's quite nice and it's this. I said does it look cute? She said yeah, it's cute. And in there it's just got some props on one wall and the backdrop on the other and a chair. And I said but what the clients say, they go, oh wow, secret garden. Oh wow. Like little fairy cottage. Like they love it. And I said it's only you that has the connotation. Most clients haven't had a photo shoot experience, to be honest. Unless they're repeat client. They haven't. Most people haven't had a professional photo shoot of a pet or even themselves. Which, you know, tells you how many people are out there and pets are out there waiting for photos. Like if you grab 20 people in a room and said, put your hand up. If you've ever had a professional photo shoot, you might get two. I don't know what that statistic is, but it wouldn't be many. So they don't know what they don't know. They think that's. They go, wow, this photographer has custom fit this trailer for me to have my photo shoot. Like this is what they've created for us to be able to enjoy and for our pets it's air conditioned, it's safe because they can, the dog's not going to run off or whatever. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. They don't know what they don't know. [01:37:32] Speaker B: That's very true and I'm sorry to cut you off. I think what you should also do is make it look like the dog car from Dumb and Dumber make it. [01:37:42] Speaker A: A giant fluffy dog with ears. [01:37:48] Speaker C: There is a dog wash. There's a dog wash company that has a dog. It's a dog wash little trailer for their little dog wash tub thing. And they have it like it's shaped like it's a blue, I think with a blue dog's head and all that sort of stuff. It just points the different, you know, points of difference you want to have. But clients love it because they don't know, you know, they never had a photo shoot experience. So if that's what rolls up, they, they would love that. Like, just like again, would you like it if someone came to photograph your dog and rolled up with a really cool looking custom horse float trailer for your photo shoot? If the answer is yes, that's exactly what your clients would like. You'd be like, wow, that's really ingenious and super cool. And it's air conditioned. How amazing. And I get to go inside for half an hour and look at my photos today. I don't even have to wait. You could, you know, you do all of it in one, one kind of appointment kind of thing. So. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. [01:38:37] Speaker A: Okay. [01:38:39] Speaker C: Yeah, you might just need to run it past a coach, that's all. [01:38:42] Speaker A: You don't worry. If I decide to do this, you will 100% be in charge of subliminal messaging. [01:38:52] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I can definitely, definitely. It's a great idea and I can definitely help you get streamline that process and get up and running. It would be very easy to do. Yep. Just got to do it. Just got to get horse float and fit it out. That's any work you have to do on that. [01:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's. [01:39:05] Speaker C: If you build it, they will come. But if you. Yeah, because I was gonna say if you build it and you go to them, it's even easier, you know, it's even easier. [01:39:13] Speaker A: Genius. All right, now, now, quickly, while we're on the topic of studio, so what, what gear are you using for most of your images? And then like, let's talk studio stuff first and then we'll talk a little bit about like when you're out on workshops and doing wildlife stuff and that kind of thing. But first, studio gear. Like, what are you running? [01:39:32] Speaker C: So in the studio, I'm still using a Canon 1 DX Mark II at the moment because I've always used DSLRs in the studio. And it's. To be honest, I've probably well done its number of shots that it can manage and it's on its last legs but so I still shoot with that. I just like, I don't know if it's like the weight thing or you know, how it feels. I'm just after 16 years of using that, that's kind of using Canon DSLRs, so I still use that. And I use a 24-70mm portrait lens in there mostly because the focal distance on it is about an elbow length. So it's about a foot and that's how close I sit from the animal. So I know that if I'm sitting here and the dog's back there a foot away, that lens will focus on their face whether they're lying down, standing up, whatever they're doing. I occasionally use a macro or a, you know, 70 to 200 zoom but that's only if I'm doing stuff macro with insects or the venomous snakes and I'm further back but that's not happened very often. Wildlife stuff I'm using, I just bought the Sony A12 and I love, I have the A1 original one at the moment and I use mostly for outdoor stuff. I use a 150-500-mil Tamron lens because I can focus from a little bit over a meter away and it's an amazing zoom and it's great for things up close and things right at the back. So I just, every time I travel I literally now just take a 90mm macro lens with me. The A1 or soon to be A2 body and that 150-500mm portrait lens. Because a lot of this I love the long end of lens macro close, you know, and then the zoom in close. So I like close stuff. So you notice on the wildlife section of my website a lot of the photos are headshots. They're portrait photos of headshots of bird in a tree and stuff like that. So that's what I'm using those lenses for. I'm always using the long end of the lens and the close up ends of the macro. Just what is close up? Because it's a macro. [01:41:20] Speaker A: So you'll go on these trips and not bring a wide? [01:41:24] Speaker C: No, I don't shoot wide. I don't do a lot of environment. Actually I did an interview once on Radio national and they said to me this and you know, normally the questions I get asked, which you guys haven't but like what do you like about dogs? And you know, how do you get a dog to sit for a photo? It's the same, right? [01:41:39] Speaker B: You don't need to ask that question. We know the answer is, do you. [01:41:42] Speaker A: Get a goal to sit for a photo? [01:41:43] Speaker C: You don't just do what they want, you just hold up a treat. Actually, the trick is your own pets are the worst for you, right? So my dogs don't do anything I ask them to because I go sit down. They go, no. I go. But for you, if you go sit, they go, oh. Because like you're a novelty, right? And they're like, oh, I don't know this person. I don't know what I can manipulate, what I can push boundaries on, you know, how I can get around them. I might get something if I do it. So they're always testing you. And so your own pets are the hardest to photograph. So I always have that upper hand. And they're the hardest to photograph from an external person in their own home. So that's why the trailer is a great idea or an external studio is a great idea. If you do home based shoes, get them out of their environment because it also, it not doesn't unnerve them. We don't want that. But like, it just, it's a different environment. So their reaction is at home. They're like, look at me, this is my couch, I'm jumping on it. And I'm like, come down here and sit. And they're like, now I'm over here flying off the wall. I'm like, can you come up? They're like, oh, this is my bedroom. And they're nuts, right? Because they're too familiar. What were you talking about before that? I completely. [01:42:46] Speaker A: You had an interview on Radio National. [01:42:48] Speaker C: Interview on Radio National. And she said to me, other than those normal questions, she said, do you think that because in your. So you'll notice my studio shots don't have any background, just block color. And you'll notice my wildlife shots also pretty much either have an even pattern background or block color background. Very different lighting styles, very different focus. Like there's not a lot. There's very shallow focus in my wildlife style, but. Oh, it's got a hand in it. But the backgrounds are just block. They're generally just block colors. They're not. There's no detail in there or animal. There's just nothing in the background. That for me is a lot of grass in a photo. So she said to me, do you think I've looked at your photos and across the board you remove environment, basically. And she said, do you think that by removing environment you are reducing the importance of environment in relation to Particularly wildlife. And I was like, oh, I love that question, because, you know, it gives me something more meaty to answer. And I said, actually, on the contrary, I think it makes it just all about the subject, which is what I want. I don't want. I don't need people to see the koalas in a eucalyptus tree with leaves everywhere. I just want them to see that, you know, bear cub or that elephant. Just that subject. I don't want distractions in there. I think that, yeah, I think it's got its place. So I don't shoot wide because I don't want environment. I just want subject. And I want clean. As clean a background as I can get. Whether that they're just bushes, you know, that was in the ubud in the monkey forest. I just want even kind of backgrounds as even and plain as I can get. So the subject is emphasized. Beach, you know, simple shot to get. So, yeah, I don't shoot wide for that reason. I did a shoot once for a strange geographic on Christmas island, and they said they wanted some environment in the photos, and I found that quite difficult. I've done a cover with them since then, but that was the only time I ever did a shoot for them when they wanted to. Because I think that we just both realized it wasn't the way I shoot shoot. And I always go back to what I know, you know, so it just wasn't kind of working for me, actually. Interesting in that photo. I've only ever done four black and white conversions ever for four photos. And they've all done really well. [01:44:48] Speaker A: For your pet studio at all? [01:44:50] Speaker C: No, no, everyone gets color. I kind of have this thing and this I love. Like, I judge some mono award categories and stuff, and I love seeing people's black and white photos. I don't like gray and white. I want strong blacks and strong whites. Right. You know, to me, this maybe, you know, I want that punchy color. And for a lot of animal stuff, I can't get it, and so I don't convert it. The four photos I have done, actually, I did a fifth one at BFOP this year of Mount Buffalo when I was standing down at a property below Mount Buffalo, because again, I don't really do landscape. But there was an. I was photographing birds and a bird flew away. So I took a photo of a mountain. But they've all done quite well in awards, interestingly. But because out of. You know, I have a image library of about 10 million photos and four of them are black and white. Five now with the B fold one. But yeah, when I convert them, quite often they just look flat. Especially studio photos. The background's already black, the dog's already white. Say. But I don't want to make a brown dog gray, and I don't want to make a colored bird gray or black and white. You know, I think the colors animals come in are so beautiful that I like to showcase them in their full glory. I guess. So that's why I'm not a huge. For my own work. It just doesn't fit. Not a huge fan of it because I love nature, black and whites, when people do them really well. But it's just not something that necessarily works for a lot of my photos. [01:46:00] Speaker B: I think it's wonderful. Alex. Just, you know, throughout our interview today, you've. You've made really clear what your boundaries are, where you will or won't shoot. You won't do environmental stuff because it doesn't work. Like, it just doesn't feel like that's what you want to capture. I love that you've set up a boundary around that. Other people might flex and as a result, compromise on the quality that the customer's getting. But you've set really clear expectations about everything that you do. And I don't know where I was going with that point. No, it's just gone. I just had a senior moment. [01:46:32] Speaker A: It'll come back to you. I'll read some comments out because there's a couple of great ones here. Good one. Says, I like the lack of environment. It feels more fine art. Portrait. [01:46:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:46:43] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:46:44] Speaker A: And Paul Sutton, who I believe is also from Perth. That's cool. Says, I love it. Color is the way to go all the time. I disagree. Love black and white. [01:46:55] Speaker B: I disagree. [01:46:56] Speaker C: I love black and white when they're done really well. Like, I really enjoy judging competitions, but I also really respect when people shoot stuff that I can't. So I'm, you know, if I'm ever judging an animal category, I'm a lot harsher, I think, because I know what a good animal photo 110 should be when I judge other categories. I know what a good photo should be, but I also appreciate the talent and the time of stuff that's outside my own genre a little bit as well. So I know how hard it is sometimes to find a photo that really sings when you make it black and white. And when. And you know, some of the competitions I judge at amateur level. But honestly, their photos, absolutely incredible. Like, these people are absolute masters pictures of Sydney Opera House. And, you know, Amazing kind of architectural stuff that they're making, black and white and even some wildlife stuff from Africa. Amazing contrast in those photos. And that's what you kind of need. Yeah, I just. Color's just my preference, you know, I just always want to show animals as their full, true selves. And again, I really love black and white, but it's just not something I do for myself. I appreciate it from afar, from the people that are good at it. [01:47:58] Speaker B: Here's another point that I want to start that I probably won't finish either. But when did macro come into your repertoire? [01:48:06] Speaker C: I think I've had a macro lens since the start. So what I did at the beginning, like most of us probably do, I went out and I bought everything, every lens. And then in about a minute I was like that 10 to 35 mil. I don't need that. Don't need that. And so, you know, but I had a macro in there from the start. I just. It's just while I. How I use the zoom, to be honest. Like, I use the zoom, as I mentioned, to get in close and same for the macro. What I love about macro is it shows us a world that you sometimes can't see with your naked eye. And it shows us things like, especially imagine that like, you know, flies are. Flies are pretty creepy and disgusting, but when you see a fly's eye, you're just like, what the alien. Amazing. What alien landscape is that? You know, like, it's just amazing. So I love that it can bring that sort of stuff, you know, when a photograph can really impact someone because it's a perspective you can't normally ever get be seen with your eye or ever just, you know, get shown in any other way. So, yeah, I just, I do, I do do occasionally, like I photograph leaves and stuff like it's nature based, even though it's not environment. I will photograph a flower or a leaf like I do, you know, especially if there's an insect on the leaf. Little things like that creep in now and then, but that's kind of pretty much the limit of it. But I just love. Yeah, and I love, like, just. I love focus that falls away. Very shallow planes of focus. My outdoor stuff in it studio, I have focus all the way through, but, you know, outdoors are just like a very thin plane of focus to emphasize what I want to show. And you can make photograph these dew drops once in Tasmania, the tiny balls of water on tiny little bits of grass. And it looked like a scene from Mars. The grass, the little plants were kind of Red and they had these white drops on them and it looked, it's like otherworldly. And it was just a tiny little. I took some people to the Tarkine rainforest and some of them were really active and they wanted to go on this big hike. And I said, okay, you guys go on a hike. One of the guides went off and they hiked a gorge hike down the gorge. And I was like, oh, it certainly sound like. I mean I watch films for a hobby. I'm kind of lazy. So I was like, I don't want to go and hike a gorge. I want to. I said let's mark out a two square meter area and do macro. So the other six of us just crawled around on the ground for two hours in a two square meter area idea I've ever had. And I photographed this little tiny piece that you would never guess had come from that. You know, when you're standing up looking at just looks like bits of bark and old crunchy old leaves and stuff. But you wouldn't get down amongst it. Completely different world. Try to plug things up. Surprises I guess it is interesting. [01:50:22] Speaker B: I've recently taken up macro. Not long before beef up I got my first proper macro gear and I got one of those Cygnus tech diffusers and a flash and a macro lens and. And it is interesting because typically I'm a street photographer so I'm always sort of scanning at eye level, you know, and looking up a little bit for architecture and backgrounds. And then I, I pick up my macro kit and all of a sudden I'm bent over and I'm looking at the ground like this and people are walking past me through the park kind of. What's that weirdo looking for? Did you drop something, old man? You know, and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm just looking, I'm just looking a for of plants and bugs. And it's interesting how it changes your perspective. [01:51:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:51:02] Speaker B: Become very conscious of what's going on at ground level. [01:51:05] Speaker C: Absolutely. And like you'll see like a bit of old like, I mean once I was working along a path and there's this bit of old dead bark and it had a spiderweb in it, the tiny little bit of like that. And the dew drops were all on it and normally you'd tread on it, you know, you would have been. But like, you know, it's not something that was beautiful from up here but when I went down close to it, all I photographed was the dew drops and it's just this whole black frame These little tiny water droplets of all different colors. You know, how you mix oil and water. The colors look really pretty. So it kind of had that shine to it because of the light. It was just amazing. I love that. But yeah, I have. Obviously all the lenses I use is, I use are Tamron lenses. I've shot exclusively with their stuff for about 11 years now. So every photo on that website's taken on one of those Tamron lenses. Because I find that, you know, how did it come about? [01:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah, how did, how did they, did you approach them? Did they approach you? How does that even happen? [01:51:54] Speaker C: So about, probably 10 or 11 years ago now, I, I won a competition, it was a photography competition for lowepro bags and I won a Low Pro bag. And the Low Pro distributor at the time was also the distributor for Tamron in Australia. And they wrote to me and said, oh, we need your address for this bag. They sent me the bag. It was a nice bag. I wrote back and I said, oh, thank you. Because I have this business thing. Always say thank you. You know, people don't do it, always say thank you. So I wrote to them and said, thank you for the night for the bag. And the guy wrote back and said, oh, thanks for the thanks. No one ever says thanks. I knew that, right? Because like, you know, just I was grateful. I got a nice prize and they paid for it. And, and so I waited about a year and my brand was kind of growing, my social media was kind of growing and I thought, maybe I'm ready to be a brand ambassador. And I, at the time I was using Low Pro bags. I thought, I will remember that guy. I thanked him and he thanked me so he'll remember me. I might write to him and just say, hey, I'm, you know, I did, I wrote and said, hey, I've. Do you remember me? I thanked you and you thanked me back and lots of thanks. Big group hug, you know, would I be a good, low pray ambassador? Just want to float the idea. And he said, oh, we have a few ambassadors at the moment and we're not, you know, doing a lot in that area right now. He said, but you'd be a great fit for Tamra on. And I said, oh, that's awesome. But I've just gone out and bought all these Canon L series lenses, you know, and you know, they have to do the same job. I didn't know anything about the brand at the time. You know, I didn't know anything about T. And he said, oh, absolutely, we're actually making a professional Range, a super performance series range for professionals. And we need a professional to use them to show people that they work for professionals. And I was like, okay. And I said, I don't know if they're going to suit what I do or what. And he said, look, we've got. I was using, I think a. The Tamron lens that was like a. Sorry, a Canon lens at the time that was like a 28 to 105 or something. And he said, our equivalents are 28 to 70 mil lens and it's got image stabilization. And it was the only lens of that. Those dimensions at the time or that those mills that had image stabilization built in. And it was really new technology. So I said, all right. He said, look, I just, I'm going to send you one to use. Just. I want you to use it for three weeks. Can you just do that in your studio? And I said, well, that's fair. And now it's. What is it? November 2025. I literally never took that thing off. It did. [01:54:05] Speaker A: Still haven't given it back? [01:54:07] Speaker C: No, still using the same one. You wore the rubber seal out on it. Because after 16 years I'd used it a lot of times. No, it just, it. I. I found the image stabilization was a bit of a game changer because I hand hold everything. I don't use a tripod. And I loved it. The only thing I had to get used to is the zoom ring was one way from one and one for the other. Yeah. So for a few days I went like that and I had to go the other way. But apart from that, that, that's just brain training. Piece of cake. And, you know, now people come to my tours and they've got the full suite of Tamron lenses because, you know, it's a very even playing field out there. And if you can get good stuff for good money, do it. And the thing I love what I think makes and even, you know, our friend Lynn. Lynn Glenn, Glen Lavender. What makes Glenn and I good ambassadors is that we both shoot pretty authentically. So if I take a photo of a bird on a tree, I might Photoshop out tiny leaf or something, but that's a bird on a tree. I'm not putting 16 layers on top of it. I'm not putting it on a boat with a unicorn riding next to it. I'm not creating like fantasy pictures and stuff like that. So my stuff is very accessible to everyday photographers. You know, if you're standing there next to me with some instruction on what to do, you could Also get a similar photo of that bird on the tree. And I know Glenn does that on his tours. You know, he has these beautiful landscapes, and he helps people get those shots because they're right there. He's not, you know, they're not overly processed or overly, you know, fiddled within. Out the other end. So, yeah, I find that. That, you know, people come on my trips with this gear and go, oh, my God, I just got a photo like you. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, oh, wow, I did that. And I love those moments. Like, yeah, if, you know, it's just accessibility, the right gear and the right instruction, the right place, right time. And yeah, all those things come together. You can get those pictures with that equipment. So help. [01:55:53] Speaker A: I love that. And in general, 99 agree with what you just said. But I saw a photo on Glenn's Facebook the other day. I'm like, there is no way this is a real. [01:56:08] Speaker B: I'm bringing. [01:56:08] Speaker C: I know which one. I know exactly which one you're talking about the. Oh, okay. [01:56:11] Speaker A: Is this. [01:56:12] Speaker B: Oh, I saw this morning. [01:56:14] Speaker A: Like, that can't be real. [01:56:16] Speaker C: He has to. He has to tell us in the chat. I thought you were going to talk about the Africa one that had a map of Africa in the background under. [01:56:22] Speaker A: Oh, we'll check that. [01:56:24] Speaker C: Is this flight photo real? [01:56:26] Speaker A: Is this real? [01:56:27] Speaker C: I think that's certainly. The landscape is. And the. The. Maybe there's an overlap of the bird and the balloon. [01:56:32] Speaker A: And the balloon apart from. [01:56:35] Speaker C: Apart from 2% of his work. Because there's a lot of stuff in there, too. That is. [01:56:40] Speaker A: Hey, just. Just to be very. [01:56:41] Speaker C: Get what I said about him. [01:56:42] Speaker A: No, no. Also to be very clear, I'm only bringing this up because it's. [01:56:47] Speaker C: It. [01:56:47] Speaker A: It like, instantly captured my attention. And I also have no issue if it is layers. [01:56:53] Speaker C: What? Yep. See, he's mad talented. That is. Please, please send us your. I do want to see. [01:57:02] Speaker A: I do want to see the role, Glenn, because it. [01:57:05] Speaker C: It. [01:57:05] Speaker A: It looks like one of those things you see on Instagram that someone's clearly just. Just gone into chat GPT and they're like, make amazing landscape shot with balloon and birds. And it. Because it's perfectly. Everything's framed up and the birds are flying through. [01:57:19] Speaker C: And anyway, actually, you mentioned AI before. And you know what? Like you said, you know, people can do the Alex Kearns treatment photo and stuff. I have people come in saying, my friends heard I was coming for a photo shoot. Look at these funny photos they've created for me on AI. But they still buy my stuff, right. Because they know it is not an Alex Kearns created photo. So I personally don't. Maybe my famous last words. I don't feel threatened by AI. I don't feel like it's taking my job. I think my clients know the value of photographs, their phone photos and stuff. You know, if they're using a phone photo and putting that picture in a scene, it only goes so far. It's a bit of a laugh. They use it as a bit of a joke. It's just like it doesn't matter how good video technology gets on camera. I do not shoot video because it is. I have no interest in it or the aptitude to do that. Right. But what I do hate is that that photo of Glenn's with it we even questioned is that AI. I hate that we're in a world right now where we have to question, is the whole fake news? Is this news accurate or not? Is this rubbish? Is it. [01:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:58:15] Speaker C: Fact. You know, I share a lot of memes on my personal Instagram page. I won't talk politics, but they're about politics. And I have to fact check them to even check if even politicians I don't like are actually saying these things or not. And. Or people I do like. You know, and the whole thing, for me, it just frustrates me that we have to question, is this stuff real or not? Because I wish it was just all real, guaranteed like it was a few years ago and we didn't have to worry about it. And so I love that, that photo. You know, even if that was a photo that was created in post, it's still an incredible photo. And I love it even more than it wasn't because that he's mad talented and that's the proof, you know. [01:58:48] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:58:48] Speaker C: Someone standing next to him could have got helped, could have got similar, you know, maybe not quite the masterful shot that Glenn did, but, you know, and I love that photography needs to be accessible to people. Yeah. And I really value that. You know, I. I respect photographers, but I worship surgeons and pilots. I don't fangirl over photographers because, you know, they. I don't fangirl over talents in the arts. You know, that's talent. It's kind of different to saving lives. So you got to keep it in perspective, you know, I find. And so I respect people professionally, photographically, and I certainly love that photo and. But I save that kind of. Sometimes there's that adulation and. Yeah, absolutely. There's a great Instagram reel in the. [01:59:27] Speaker A: Making yeah, Lucinda, who is. She's the wizard of social media at the moment. I'm just trying to figure out how we can get enough money to pay her to do our social media. Says Glenn. That's a great Instagram reel in the making. Showing the raw and then the processed image. Exactly. Just show people, strip it back and be like, this is what I took. And then I think that's going to be one of those things that will. It used to be popular because no one knew how to edit photos. So we were all trying to learn and when people shared that, it was great. And then we kind of all. All learned how to edit photos and it's. Maybe it's dropped off a bit, but now it's almost like you have to do it to show. Yeah. And, and same with. I did some YouTube videos that were just point of view footage of the camera. Like I had like a GoPro type thing on my chest and then me taking photos and it's like, that's kind of one of the only ways now that you can be like, hey, I was standing here when this balloon came across and took the shot perfect. Whereas, yeah, other than that, there's not. It's really hard to. If people are like, that's AI. And you're like, no, it's not. They're like, yes, it is. There's just two people yelling at each other on Facebook. [02:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I hate that. We, we have to do. And camera companies are stepping up to this, which is great, but it shits me that we have to do the authentic authentication of our own work. You know, what should be in place is, is, I don't know, regulations or processes for AI created art that it has to be stamped to say somehow to say this is AI. But yet photographers are the ones that are having to prove that they're taking real photos. It's horrible. It's a horrible state of affairs. [02:00:59] Speaker C: Absolutely. And I should just clarify in saying, I think saving lives, people who do jobs like surgeons and being pilots are incredible and photographers are also incredible. But in that I don't have that fangirl thing with photographers because I want photography to be accessible. I don't want people to even look at my work and go, it's so amazing. I want to be like, but you can do it too. You know, I want it to be open. And there are some photographers out there that if you took a photo of like Uluru or that they show you their photo, Uluru, and you go, wow, how did you take that? What were your settings? They Go. Oh, no, I can't tell you because they gatekeep everything or they want to be held in that esteem where it's all mysterious and difficult and complex and. And I'm like, well, I'm not actually standing in front of Uluru right now with your eye, your vision, your camera gear, your settings. At that moment in time, I'm not gonna go and steal the photo. I can't go and steal that image. You know, you can't steal other people's photos. Or you can if you're running a platform, but, you know, so I. From that point of view, I. I want it to be accessible to people. And so I respect other photographers, but also love. Like Glen does when he shares that education helps other people get those shots. You know, that's where I respect my peers. And. And, you know, there are. I do think there is. You know, you have to have an ego to be a photographer, I think, because you have to know your work's good enough to sell and you have to have confidence in yourself and do all that sort of thing. But some people's egos go a bit too far where they literally think they're, you know, they're saving lives with it. You know, I don't know. I just kind of like to always keep that in check. Like I said, if I'm not looking after my clients and serving them, then I don't have anything. It doesn't matter how good my photos are, if I'm not looking after clients and keeping them happy with it. My processes and my attitude and my prices, not just the images, it all falls apart. And I think the minute you get, you know, think that you're a little bit too special and start to become unaccessible to other people, you know, you've got to be aspirational. You can always give people hope that they can have this stuff too, because they can. You know, people can. Yeah. Take. Taking photos. Like, I don't tell anyone, but taking photos the way I do, it's not that difficult. Just need a bird on a tree. [02:02:57] Speaker B: We'll keep it between baskets. [02:02:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's really important. Spot on. To keep your ego in check and not think that you're too special. [02:03:04] Speaker C: But in. [02:03:05] Speaker A: In saying that this is why this is the greatest podcast in the history of photography podcast. So Glenn has just posted the Raw to the Facebook thread, and we can pull it up so we can actually check it out. And this is why going live is so amazing. Wow. [02:03:19] Speaker C: Even that looks amazing like that. [02:03:21] Speaker A: So there it is. There, that's the raw shot, which may also have been created with AI. We have no idea. But I'm going to take his word for it that this is the actual. This is the actual Glintis on chat. GPT is like make a raw version of this shot and it goes. Oh, sure. So I'm not going to check it. [02:03:40] Speaker C: Okay. [02:03:40] Speaker A: So it looks like it's been cropped and then converted and that's it. I actually like the Raw. Looks sweet too. [02:03:47] Speaker C: They both look great. [02:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. [02:03:50] Speaker C: Yeah. And photography is. Yes, it's a combination of time, place, circumstance and gear, but it's also the vision. So Glenn is standing there waiting for those elements all to fall into place to push the button. So if someone's staying next to him, he's helping them do that too. And I just love that. I love when people choose to teach and share knowledge. And you know, it's about community, which is exactly what BFOP was about, Greg, wasn't it? Like community, you know, sharing knowledge. [02:04:14] Speaker B: That's the biggest takeaway, I think, from. From befop, is that it is all about community. Everyone is interested in making sure everyone else is having a good time, that they're learning that they're gaining something, that they're supported. And that's why, you know, I've been talking to Matt and Nick from Beef up and I'm writing some articles for them and one of the things I keep coming back to is that everyone wins at bfop. Not that it was a competition, not that it was. There were the winners and losers. It wasn't that sort of environment, but everyone just walked away with something that elevated them. Cabbage. Yeah, if you know, you know. But speaking of Beef Up. Beautiful segue, Alex. I thought this before you were also an instructor at BFOP as well as there with Tamron Australia. Was that your first beef up or have you been doing these for a while now? [02:05:05] Speaker C: No, that was my first one and first one and I only heard about it when. Because in the west we don't really hear about Beef Up a lot, I think because it sells out so quickly that, you know, the repeat offenders keep booking and book it up so quickly because it's amazing. So it doesn't really extend all the way out to the west necessarily. It doesn't need to. It was also first time I'd met Glenn, which was lovely. And we had a house. There were four of us there from representing Tamar, two awesome members of the Tamron team as well. But then we had a little house and it Was just. It was such a cool experience. I haven't done. I've done a lot of conferences and you know, things like that. Workshops and stuff like that in the past, all over the world, but not where it is just workshop based. No one it like I've always said, wouldn't it be great to do a conference where instead of you have to choose, there's three different rooms going at once and you've got to pick and choose what to do. You just do the same. Like everyone has this option. Like everyone does everything, you know. And bfoot was kind of a little bit like that for me. I know there are workshops crossing over, but you either did workshops or you're in the main arena listening to the onstage talks. You weren't necessarily forced to do this opening keynote for two hours and then, you know, listen to 16 other talks ad nauseam and all this sort of stuff. You know, it was. You could basically go out and do workshops. They were running all day. I think there's 80 workshops or something, wasn't there? There's a huge amount of things happening. [02:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was great. [02:06:24] Speaker C: And that's what people want. It was all hands on education, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So I love that. And if you wanted to break your sat in and listen to a talk on the main stage, whatever was rolling through, but otherwise it was all just hands on and people were trying all sorts of different things they wouldn't normally do, which I really like too. Like people that were wedding photographers having a crack at the bird stuff and you know, people that normally photograph people were doing macro and it was dogs and you know, it was really cool. Yeah. So I just. The way it was set up, I really liked the way it was run. Yeah. [02:06:53] Speaker B: And of course you got it, you got a new belt. [02:06:56] Speaker C: I got a new belt taken off and pants gonna fall down if I stand up now. So I won't do that. Yeah, I loved it. You know, what I noticed was the people that attracted. I didn't meet a single one who had the bum. A bum face on. The single one that was angry or upset. I just felt that everyone was there to have a good time. Everyone was there to contribute, make friends. I mean the whole thing about is about it is inclusivity and being friendly. You know, even as instructors we were asked, you know, make sure you talk to people. And you know, and I found that everyone just did that. Everyone just was there to. To you know, have a great time and a great experience. And people have been very Lovely with their feedback and yeah, I hope to get us back again next year. Putting the screws on Tamron for that. Yeah, I've already got some ideas but yeah, hopefully they're good, they'll look after us. I think Glenn's been to a few beef ops before so he kind of helped, I was going to say help show me the ropes and I realize as I said that's a lie. He probably more led me astray but it was great. It was just a really fun team to be a part of and you know, the Tamron team and the ambassadors are really down to earth people and again just approachable and you know and I met and I'd get along with everyone else from the other brands as well. I made some great friends at befop, you know, because it's just. There's no competition there. Like there isn't even. It's like winner here, have a T shirt and it says whoever can catch it. So if you can catch, you'll do well, you know. But there's no like I kind of like there wasn't like whose photo is the best out of, you know, this photo exhibition. There was a little prize for a. [02:08:23] Speaker A: Photo challenge but there was no grand. [02:08:26] Speaker C: Like no like first, second and third in like submit images a month before and they got to print them and now we got to vote on them and it was. There was a photo five challenge where someone won because that was a little thing that people did within the group but it just didn't pitch people against each other. Not that competitions do that but there is still an element of if there's a winner there's always someone that doesn't win that sometimes, you know, feels that. So I really like that. It was just very inclusive. [02:08:50] Speaker B: I think so too. [02:08:52] Speaker A: Bruce. I'd love, I'd love to know if anyone's been to BEFOP over the years that's discovered, has discovered and changed their photo journey in a massive way. Like changed from portrait to landscape 100 etc. That's good. [02:09:05] Speaker C: We'll. [02:09:05] Speaker A: We'll start putting that out there. We'll see if we can find someone. [02:09:08] Speaker C: Well, I think it's a good time for me to announce moving forward I'm just going to take portrait photos of people in toilets. [02:09:14] Speaker A: Nice. [02:09:15] Speaker C: Yeah, it, yep. And I would be like Glenn when I grow up. So that's what I'm going to do moving forward. There's definitely a market for it. The portraits are really nice and the people didn't seem to mind that they're in the toilet. So people. Fine. It's good. Novelty involved. Exactly. Everyone. Yeah, that's. Yeah. So I think there's a actually untapped market there for just local toilet blocks, toilet portraits. Yeah, yeah. [02:09:38] Speaker B: Got to be careful how you advertise it. But. [02:09:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. You got to set some boundaries, some rules around it. That's a really good point. Like, because a lot of people there, I found with the B pop audience too, they just, they wanted, they wanted to get in, stuck into the taking photos, you know, so that a little bit of chat about what to do and they just wanted to practice their skills and on different subjects and you know, again, they weren't necessarily out there then going, I've got the best photo in the world. That's, you know, going to win a competition. They just want to have fun doing it. That's the thing. It was fun based, not, not necessarily outcomes based. It was just do a lot of things and have a really good time and get some photos that you're happy with. That was, was, you know, I love that it was just kind of free and easy with that and it was all about fun. It wasn't like, what's your best B pop photo? We're going to give you a pro. Like again, there's none of that. It was no pressure on anyone could just play and have great photo or not great photo. And I took some duds. Oops, you know, we're photographing birds and like I was on a, you know, spray and pray mode and sometimes they fly out of your shot because they're jerks. So, you know, like I just love that there was no comp. It wasn't competitive, it was all based on fun and it was just all about being in the moment and just trying new things and everyone was up for that. So it was very different to anything I've ever done before. [02:10:46] Speaker B: It is very unique, isn't it? [02:10:48] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Absolutely. And compared to the like just classroom conference model of two or three rooms running where there's just talks, you know, and there isn't freedom to move and freedom to take photos and just sitting there listening for hours on end, day in, day out, that's the kind of model I think that maybe getting a little bit, I don't know, just not old. But it's a lot, you know. And really it just told me that people just want to take photos. The photo workshops I do. Sometimes I worry, you know, we're in a beautiful house with some birds in the Garden. And I'm like, is there enough here for people to photograph? And I'm like, there is because there's just nature and birds. People are happy. Just got to get them things to photograph and then help them with how to do that, you know. And people just. Photographers are very easy to please. 2 square meter of area. They'll find it fascinating if they have a task and see it through different eyes and you know, an agenda of what to look for. [02:11:36] Speaker B: I find that really cool. One of the, one of the other big takeaways for me from bfop, probably more on a personal level, was about the, about the experience before you, leading up to taking that photo. You know, what got you there, what inspired you to go to that spot, what led you to choose that workshop or hike that mountain? And how was that experience for you? And I. It really hit home. I was talking to Mika, I was in the gallery in, in bright and she was talking to me about one of the, you know, majestic landscape shots that they've got in there. Massively framed one. I think it was one of their recent award winning ones. And, and she told me, talk me through the story of. Oh yeah, Matt and I had to get up super early. See that road down there, our cars parked just out of sight, those footsteps aroused. We were the first person on the mountain, first people on the mountain foot. You know, like it was that whole experience that she went through that people often miss when they see the finished product. They say, oh well that's a great, that's a great landscape photo. But they don't see the journey and the effort and what it took to pull yourself out of bed at 4 in the morning and put on three layers of clothes and a, and a, you know, 50 kilo backpack and hike a mountain to get that shot. Like we lose sight of that all too often, especially as we doom. Scroll through, you know, image based social media. And I think AI and I think the BFOT really taught me more about that experience, you know, because people were coming back and telling us about the experience, not the photo. [02:13:05] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:13:06] Speaker B: Talking about their time on the mountain and freezing their fingers off and oh, and by the way we sell gloves, you know, that, that whole, that whole experience more valuable if we do that. That experience was far more valuable than the photo they hadn't even, they'd only seen on the back of the camera. They haven't even looked at it properly yet. And I think it's really important. [02:13:26] Speaker A: Bruce is spot on. That's why photo podcasts were invented. So we can tell those stories. But also that's actually, that's literally where the name for this podcast come from, was that, that, that I believe you can live a more fun and interesting life with a camera in your hand. It'll lead you on adventures. Whether you end up with a beautiful photo or not. [02:13:45] Speaker C: It teaches you to see more. I think, I think when you've got a camera in your hand, you're looking for photos. And I don't always take the photos, but I see photos everywhere, you know, like sometimes I just got my phone or. But you have your eyes open, I think, to more beauty, you know, I know there's that thing too, that if you're on like a whale watching boat and you spend your whole time looking down your lens, you're missing the experience. But I'm actually having just as much of the experience through my lens, you know, Like, I don't necessarily agree. I miss, miss out by not looking, you know, with my eyes, with nothing in front of them. But yeah, it teaches you, it teaches me to see more and it certainly makes me more open to my environment, more aware of the little tiny nuances of it that might make a nice image or the, the bigger pictures of it, you know, that I, you know, I would have stood next to Glenn and watched that balloon float away, but I would have been trying to zoom in on one of those birds, you know, like, that's another thing I love about it. You can put a can of Coke on a table and give 10 photographers a camera and they will all photograph it differently, you know, so that's why there's that thing. Sometimes people feel like every photo has been taken. How am I going to stand out? Just put your spin on it. You just do what you do intrinsically and then that's enough, you know, because no two photos of the same subject are the same. We all interpret stuff in a different way. And I love that about it too. It's infinite, you know, the possibilities of photography. [02:14:53] Speaker A: And then the cool thing is, is one person will have an absolute standout image that no one else could have imagined. And then the other nine photographers will be like, oh, I could have done that photo. I could have. I see how they've done it. I could have done that. Yeah, yeah, we all suck with that. Where you like, yeah, you're like, oh, if I was there with the right lens, I could have done that. You're like, yeah, but, but you didn't. [02:15:18] Speaker C: Yeah, and you weren't, you weren't there. [02:15:20] Speaker A: That's what I always have to tell myself, I'm like, yep, yeah, you know what lens they've used and you know what settings they had. But you have to do the thing. You got to go and do the thing. [02:15:27] Speaker C: Absolutely. [02:15:27] Speaker A: You gotta be there. [02:15:28] Speaker C: Yeah, totally. Accessibility is a big part of it. Like, before I went to the Antarctic, I saw this, I judged. It was a photo competition, so I didn't judge it, but I've seen similar photos since. And it was a picture of a penguin with a rock in its beak. And it was in this quite prestigious competition. And I remember seeing that as a photography judge and thinking, wow, like, like, imagine going to the Antarctic all that way and, you know, all that time and expense and then getting to the Antarctic. I mean, how often do you see a bird with a rock in its beak? Normally, not often. And I was like, and then finding the one penguin that's got a rock in its beak and getting a photo. Well, when I rolled up to the Antarctic and walked onto the Antarctic continent and looked around, every second penguin had a rock in its beak. So it's a situational photo, you know, like, yes, you still have to take the photo the right way, but the subject is right there doing the behavior. It's accessibility. You know, if you put people in front of it, they can pretty much get a photo of a penguin with a rock in its peak, you know. So, yeah, a lot of photography is that too, you know, it's why we travel so much and we all invest back in our. In this thing that we love to go and see stuff. [02:16:26] Speaker A: Was Antarctica a tour you were running or did you just go on a holiday? What was so, you know, I did. So you led a tour? [02:16:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:16:35] Speaker A: Tell us about it. [02:16:35] Speaker C: It's pretty cool. It was, it was incredible. It really is unlike anywhere else. [02:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, I'll just say it's. We're caught apart. Like it's two and a quarter hours. So if you have to go, just say if we're keeping from. [02:16:47] Speaker C: I'm only going to the hairdresser later, get new hair. No, I'm fine. And then I'm going to a movie, funny enough. So, yeah, no, it was amazing. I mean, I've been very blessed through photography to travel to all seven continents of the world. So, yeah, I did Antarctic tour about maybe eight or nine years ago now. And yeah, it was just amazing. I found that the biggest problem there is you have image overwhelm because there's so many. Like, you know, if you land on a beach and there's 4,000 penguins even I was like, they're all doing stuff. Rocks in the beak. They're stealing rocks from other penguins. There's birds trying to grab the chicks. Chicks are running around, falling over. They're screaming at each other. Like, there's so much stuff going on in their community that you have to actually stop. Because I was trying to chase everything all the time. And I actually had to stop and sit in one spot for, like, the whole two hours and just photograph what, you know, unfolded in front of me. And so that it happens sometimes in, like, Africa as well. You can roll out on, you know, the Serengeti, and there's so much activity, you're not sure. You just. You don't even know what to shoot. And so you don't. You're just like, ah. So you got to, like, you know, thousands of zebras and, you know, wildebeests and stuff, and you gotta just stop and pick a section and work through it. So. But I made the most of that, that trip. Like, ironically, you know, some people on our ship would go onto shore for like, half an hour and then go, oh, it's cold, I'm bored. There's just penguins. And get back on the boat. And I was like, I'm. You know, I treat everything like I'm never going to go back again. Because you never know if you're not, you know, maybe you're not. So. So I don't want to go home and go, oh, I should have taken 20,000 more photos of penguins. So I made the most of every minute of every day out there on the ice, just photographing and photographing. And I remember one day, first time we'd been on the Antarctic continent and there was a glacier to one side and our ship was out in the distance and it snowed. And I actually just started crying because I'd never been in snow before. I'm in the Antarctica, it's gently snowing, and I was like, this could not be more perfect and more unreal. It was just absolutely unbelievable. Every time it snows, I run out. I was outside on the deck in this. There's pictures of me in this. Like, everyone's inside going, she, right. Because I just. I'm obsessed. We don't have snow in Western Australia. Running out there every five minutes. Yeah, just incredible experience. I'm very blessed to be able to go there and do that. I work with a tour company for those overseas tours. And, yeah, we had a boat of 80 people. I think about 20 of them had come with me on that trip. So it was just wow. Incredible. [02:18:55] Speaker B: That's amazing. [02:18:56] Speaker C: Yeah, so I do like one big trip a year these days and then you know, to somewhere kind of big destination that takes if from Perth four years to travel there. But yeah, and then I do just like local, I do local workshops and photo breaks as well. Like four day three night things which are becoming quite popular with people in America at the moment. They're flying in for four days to do these photos and I'm like, wow. So yeah, you really are good fun. [02:19:18] Speaker A: This is crazy when you know when there's like a TV tab on your website, you've kind of done some stuff. [02:19:26] Speaker C: I don't know. The website got hacked by the Russians who got really bored and threw lots of traffic at it. And I haven't rebuilt some of those links in that TV site so they're probably all disconnected. Like hey, here's me on the telly. You click on it. This is nothing like she's made that up. She's put a empty box up there. No, I do do a bit of TV and radio stuff now. I use it mostly for the film review stuff but I do occasionally do it for photo stuff as well. So because again it's just a platform to reach my audience, to reach the public. Speak. It's not necessarily originally something I enjoyed. I don't really like, you know, being on telly. You become really self conscious and you know how you look and speak and I slow my speech right down when I do that sort of stuff. But yeah, it's for me, you know, to get the messages out there, particularly about rescue animals or projects and things like that. They're kind of just great platforms to use like podcasts, you know, talk about what you do and with like minded people. Yeah, talk about your, your shopping purchases that you don't regret. Chat. It's always fun. We've mentioned that belt yet, so I just thought I'd get that in there for you. [02:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, no good, thank you. [02:20:25] Speaker A: Because we forgot lucky stuff.com use code justin if you. So if someone's interested in going on one of your trips, that's. Where's the best place to go for that on the Houndstooth Studio website or. [02:20:41] Speaker C: If you had my very offensive obnoxious email footer. It's actually a Facebook group. Yeah, you can go to Houndstooth and just flip me a message or there's a Facebook group called down to Earth Photo Breaks and that is the group where you can. That's all my free photo workshops. Photo walks on like I'll post a Copy of the. This interview in there, like that's where I post all that stuff. So down to earth photo breaks and then the pet photography or any business stuff is the Pet Photography coach is the Facebook group for that and I have a website for that as well. But I will post my. [02:21:16] Speaker A: There was a question here from Paul Sutton. Do you offer mentoring services so I can bring my skills up to yours? And that's a great question. Is your mentoring, because you obviously do, but is it more about business skills? Is it also photography skills if someone's purely just like, I want to become better. Do you do that as well? [02:21:33] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely, yeah, I do. I haven't done it for a while, but I have a program on better animal photography. But I have a classroom session you can do for a few hours and a practical session. But yeah, basically with the mentoring, mentoring is anything goes. So you can just say I am doing this but I'm having these problems, can you fix them for me? And I go, right, there's. That will take. There's a two hour time slot for that. I do them in kind of two hour time slots or you can buy four two hour time slots which is for more ongoing kind of stuff. So you get to kind of pick and choose what you need. But yeah, absolutely. And you can do, you could say, right, well for that can we do one on one and can we go out to the park and do it in a practical setting or can you show me how your studio is set up and what I need to get a studio up and running or all that sort of stuff. So yeah, mentoring is anything goes. The pet photography program is a seven week one on one, they're all one on one coachings as well. So the pet photography program is seven weeks one on one and that's for existing photographers who photograph anything or people who want to start out in pets or who are currently doing pets and want to close off gaps? Because I've coached some people have been in the industry for 30 years and still had gaps in their systems and I've just helped them close those gaps. I have systems that can get you, you know, eight out of 10 people booking a session, you know, and that's the biggest problem is people just asking for information and floating off into the ether and never getting back to you and stuff like that. So just all customer focused, non pushy, you know, ways of doing things just to get more clients in and then just to make sure those clients are happy and all the things that. But it's a done for you Service. So it's not. I'll say what works for me and then we talk about whether that would work for you. Don't make you do anything you're not comfortable with. With. I don't do the phone. So I have some idiosyncratic behaviors. And one is I'm very obsessed with this belt, just in case I've not mentioned that. And two, I don't. This is a. This is a computer for doing social media and just texting. It's not for talking on. So if this rings, I. It says, hi, sorry, I can't take your call. I'm busy. Probably watching it ring. Just going, yeah, no. So I deal with all my clients. That's by never speaking to them on the phone. Now, that doesn't work for some people. Some people's clients need to be spoken to on the phone. So if you're like me and you don't want to use the phone, I could build you a system where you don't have to. But if your clients need it or you like talking to people, we build you a system where you do. So everything's kind of customizable. One on one is very labor intensive. And I have had people who do coaching say to me, you're mad. You should just bundle it up. Group call it, make it an online course. They go and do through watching videos that. I don't believe that's the best way for my client base to learn. I think having real access to a person, one on one personal, it's confidential and you can ask anything you want and you don't have to share. And so that's why I put all that time and effort into it. That's what I prefer. It's how I like to learn. So I do that same. Same focus as the pet photography. What's best for my clients. It's best for me at the end of the day. Yeah, absolutely. [02:24:21] Speaker A: I love that. [02:24:22] Speaker B: Very cool. Very, very cool. [02:24:24] Speaker A: Glenn says, never answer a phone, Bruce. [02:24:27] Speaker C: Because it could be Glenn. [02:24:28] Speaker A: It could exactly. [02:24:30] Speaker C: Glenn ring me all the time. I'm like, I wish I knew had a block. I'd be like, he's doing that AI thing again. He's got an AI program that rings me in his voice. It's not even him. He's like, hello, it's Glenn. I'm like, it's not so computer. [02:24:41] Speaker A: It's not gm You. You have missed. Yeah. He says, I've missed most of this. Looking forward to listening to rubbish podcast. Yeah. [02:24:48] Speaker C: Best bits is bits that end. [02:24:53] Speaker A: Gold Jim's Jim's growing. He's a wedding photographer, works with us, but he's growing a boudoir business at the moment. [02:25:00] Speaker C: Awesome. Fantastic. Well, if you need any help, Jim, also. Jim, all you missed is me talking. I don't know if you've got the bit where I talked about this belt. That's what you've missed. We talk. I talked about that. There you go. And it's really nice about lucky straps, in case you haven't heard of them. Great. 10 out of 10. And I gotta say, you guys were one of my highlights from Beef Up. Actually, speaking of. Tell me more. I. I have a selfie photo where you're both wearing ladies nightwear or something. It's great. No judgment. It's 20, 25. It was awesome. You're wearing one pink dressing gown and I loved it. So you were really fun. And that's what. That's the vibe, though. Like, you guys kind of set the vibe as soon as people walked in and you gave me some discount code where if people quoted it, they paid more or something. I don't know what was with that. But people loved it. They went nuts for it. Yeah. So I don't. They actually did. And someone came in. Other Alex from Tamron came and used it. Like we just. [02:25:53] Speaker A: He did. And Nick Fletcher used it as well. [02:25:55] Speaker C: They Amazing. That's great. Use the Alex discount. And you got like. I don't know, you got. [02:25:59] Speaker A: I'm gonna make sure that. I need to make sure that's not still enabled. It was actually a fairly large discount. [02:26:07] Speaker C: I think you paid them. Hang on, hang on. [02:26:09] Speaker B: I haven't put my order in. [02:26:11] Speaker C: You paid me 10%. [02:26:13] Speaker A: I'm literally looking at it now to make sure it's not still on because otherwise someone's gonna. Oh, no, that's. Yeah, okay. I took it off. It's all good. [02:26:19] Speaker C: Good job. It's 15 off if you. Yep. Use the discount. Today's discount code. I think that was great. But yeah, you guys were great. And that's. I mean, how many Beef Ops have you guys done? [02:26:28] Speaker A: That was our second. It's the first time we had the lucky strap stuff there. [02:26:33] Speaker C: Right. [02:26:33] Speaker A: Last year. Last year we were just cruising around, just living the dream. I went to some. Went to some workshops. 1. One season significantly impacted my photography. It was awesome. With Chris Hopkins and Harriet Tarbuck on like photo essays and photojournalism, that kind of thing. I'm looking at photos now that I've got up on my wall that I created after that that were. Yeah. Some of my favorite photos I've taken. [02:26:59] Speaker B: And then this carrying on next week. Do we. [02:27:02] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:27:03] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [02:27:06] Speaker C: Bruce's question about has someone significantly impacted your photography? Photography from default. [02:27:10] Speaker A: I was gonna say that, but he's talking about like they just completely swapped genres and it's, it's more like I've. I've kind of drawn more of that into like my personal photography. But yeah, I haven't swapped genres. I wouldn't say. I don't even know if I have a genre. But yeah, so we did that and then this year we were supposed to do. Still be able to like go and check out some workshops and do some media and stuff and we just got absolutely so busy entire time. Stop. So yeah, it was. But we had a great time and everyone's awesome. That's why it's so much fun. That helps. So many people come up and talked and said they, they have watched the podcast. Which means if you're listening to this, do yourself a Favor, get on YouTube and make a YouTube account so you can get in the chat and hassle us. That's what we want, more interaction. [02:28:01] Speaker C: Well, I love to that I saw like people like Bruce, you mentioned Matt, Louise, like people I knew through Facebook but had never met Karen, like, and I finally got to meet them, but it felt like like, you know, we were old friends because we've all known each other through professional circles for like a decade or so. That was really cool too. Like actually just catching up with people who are actual real, real people, you know, not just names in a social media. On a social media site. So I really enjoyed that too. Like just keep catching up with, you know, friends that I'd never met before that, you know. Yeah, yeah. See face to face. It's nice especially being in the west because we are, we do sometimes feel so far away over here. Like I said, you know, you know, news of the conference didn't even spread this far because it just, it's so popular and so booked out that it's not like, oh thanks Bruce. I'd like to ran up, gave Bruce big hug and he's like, who's this crazy? Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, cool. But yeah, you know, because everything books out so quickly and, and you know, that it's not like, you know, befop has to go and say I've got 100 tickets left. Let's promote in every state. You know what I mean? So yeah, I can't believe I hadn't heard of it before. I mean, I thought I knew had a Finger on the pulse of most things that were happening in photography in Australia. The fact there's 600 people then, it's so awesome. I'm just really glad it came. You know, Tamron put it on my radar and I don't want to let it go again. I want to make sure I'm there next time because I'll have massive FOMO if I don't get to turn up. [02:29:22] Speaker A: It seems to be. It seems to be one of those things though, too, that they. They like Matt and Nick saying that if, if it, like, if it works and obviously it depends on Tamron and all that sort of stuff and I'm sure it costs some money to be there, but they try. Once someone's kind of in and. And does a good job, it's like they want to keep. Keep them there as many years as they can because they know it fits and they know everyone was stoked with the workshops and. Yeah. Which I think is what helps keep the vibe rolling year to year. Like, imagine if all the presenters changed every year. How, how it wouldn't have as much continuity. Especially, you know, you got people like Bruce, you've got people like Brendan Waits, Cameron photo and Ocean Grove rocking in every year. G', day, guys. I've had you on in the shop this morning. Been flat out. But this is such a great chat. Was hoping to catch up with Alex at bfop. We got too busy. Beef up. See you next year. [02:30:10] Speaker C: Definitely see you next year. Absolutely. Which feels like it's like it five minutes pretty much is going to be next year. So see you soon. Yeah, very soon. Yeah, yeah, now it'd be great. I'm looking forward to it and yeah, it is. It is totally unique experience and, you know, if anyone's listening and they missed out on tickets, just next year, be ready for when that public release of what's Left comes out because I can't express enough how. How just what a cool event it is, how fun and inclusive it is. Everyone gets to be themselves. It was very accepting. There's just. No, there was just. Absolutely. It was just a really safe, fun space to be in. I really love it. Yeah, absolutely. [02:30:46] Speaker A: And it's all. All about cameras and fun and photos and stuff. Everyone can nerd out with each other. That's what's cool. [02:30:52] Speaker C: And the sales. Oh, my gosh, some of those sales were unbelievable. Like the specials that just. Yeah, the deals were out of this world. [02:30:59] Speaker A: Like not Cameron doing. Doing good deals, were they? [02:31:02] Speaker C: Yes, they always. Well, they were started a good deal place to Start with. Yeah, good for good price. Yeah, good gear for good prices. It's a good exchange. But yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they had some of their. The Taman guys had some of their other brands there as well that they were ripping. I came home with some. A bag and like, you know, it's just, you know, because you just want all the things, you know, it's not. Yeah. Not necessarily the cheapest hobby to have, but we. Yeah, Bell. I mean, you know, it's like. I can't remember. I did get a discount. Got a discount on that. But. But yeah, that was one of my favorite things because you got these guys belt shaming me. I was wearing a Target belt and it had stretch, so it wasn't very. It wasn't looking very good. [02:31:42] Speaker B: It kept its shape. [02:31:44] Speaker C: It did. It was quite embarrassing. But, you know, so I got belt shamed and then I was like, well, I'm going to do something about that. So I'll buy a belt. But this will literally, you, you know, make sure this is on me the day, you know, my burial. I'll be like, I don't care what else I wear. Just make sure there's. That belt still be fine, as good as new. I don't know if you're making them so good that I don't know how you're going to constantly, you know, resell to a client like me. Because unless something goes wrong with it or it. [02:32:08] Speaker B: What if you need a brown one? [02:32:09] Speaker A: That's the thing. [02:32:11] Speaker C: Okay. The colors. Okay. [02:32:12] Speaker A: Different colors. But yeah, that unfortunately, it will last a long time for us. [02:32:16] Speaker C: I was gonna say, you know, iPhone, you know, iPhones are great, but they make their batteries die after. Like, clever, right? I don't know if I get sued for that. But yeah, like, so you got to buy a new one every year. So what? You know, but that's how they keep. Because otherwise you'd keep your phone for 100 years. But yeah, yeah, just to do. Just to do social media on. Oh, thank you. [02:32:35] Speaker A: Speaking of social media. Yeah. Lucinda, you can be our social media girl for 20, 26. We'll talk. Let's talk. Let's see. I don't know if I don't think we can afford you, but if you're willing to work for free. [02:32:46] Speaker C: Don't work for free. Charge them double. [02:32:49] Speaker A: Oh, no, don't do that. [02:32:51] Speaker C: Sorry. I mean. Oh, sorry. Use this discount code of. Absolutely. [02:32:57] Speaker A: What else? Anything else? [02:32:59] Speaker C: What else? [02:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah, well, we need to know about the zombie apocalypse kit. [02:33:03] Speaker A: That's true. I. I feel like I could Guess it. Well, because, you know, we always talk about what. What if you just had to pick up one camera and one lens. This would be tough for you, I think, but one, one camera and one lens to document the end of the world, whether it's a zombie. Are you a zombie movie fan? [02:33:19] Speaker C: I watch everything because I'm. Because I've decided I'm a fan. Yeah. I do quite like. Yeah, I don't like, like horror necessarily, but I do like zombie films. Yeah. Like 28 days later, that whole series and. Yeah. [02:33:29] Speaker A: Oh, that was good. What do you think about World War Z? [02:33:33] Speaker C: I thought it was okay. It was quite a while ago. It's a really bad memory. Yeah. Yeah. They were trying to get up the wall and. Yeah, that was good. [02:33:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And it had an epic score. The guy, Matthew Bellamy from Muse did the. The score for it and it's got. They got the. Yeah. And that's what you can tell if you watch it again and you're familiar with the band Muse, you'll. You'll be like, yep. Wow. [02:33:54] Speaker C: I actually had. And I had access the other day. I'm just, I'm not, not bored, just scrolling on my phone because I'm sick of the chat. I'm just like, hey, talk amongst yourselves. I actually just watched the film the other day. I watched it in a. It comes out in February next year and it's called We Bury the Dead and it's an Australian zombie film filmed in Tasmania and really it was actually quite. What scored it. I gave it 8 out of 10. So there's a hot tip. It's not even. It's not even. I would have beat it's. The review is embargoed until next year. But yeah, We Bury the Dead. I really enjoyed it. A very different sort of zombie film. Take that. I really like. Filmed in Tassie. It was really cool. So that's my hot tip for zombie films. Yeah. Besides, I do like zombie film, genre stuff. Yeah. [02:34:32] Speaker A: Okay. And you reckon it was that good? Is it like. Is this like it's good for a low budget movie or is it. No, it's. It's good. [02:34:40] Speaker C: I'm just going to read. I've written my review that I cannot reveal, but I'm just having a look. What? I liked that. That's. Oh yeah. I'll tell you something about it. I like. I'll tell you one thing about it that, that it. So these people obviously turn into zombies, but they do this thing with their teeth when they turn where they're grinding and grinding Their gnashing their teeth together and like their teeth are exploding and it, it's. The sound is so visceral that every time they did it, it gets you. It's just. It. Yeah. Which was great. But yeah, it's just like they're literally grinding their jaws and their teeth are like, like getting impacted and it's full on. [02:35:14] Speaker B: Oh, there's a couple of lads like that down on Chapel Street. [02:35:18] Speaker C: They might be extras. And what I liked about it is it kind of. The sets were kind of similar to how I like to photograph. They're very. It didn't feel necessarily low budget, but they're very. Just minimalist. Dark backgrounds and stuff like that, which really appealed. The way it was filmed was really, really cool and the plot was decent and acting was decent and. But a different take on what the zombies did. You know, normally zombies are brain eaters and it was kind of a little bit different on the way they behaved. But yeah, it was a cool film. Okay. [02:35:44] Speaker A: Yeah, look forward to that. I love how it takes so long for movies to come out. I can't believe. So you've seen it and it's not out for six months. [02:35:51] Speaker C: So a whole, whole chat for another day. But yeah, and because I. It was a good business lesson. About two years ago I decided I watch a lot of films and I love cinema. I miss the movies the most during COVID Lockdown being. No offense to family and friends, but I miss the movies. And I decided I wanted to write down. I was writing little film reviews on my personal social media and people liked them. So I thought I'm gonna create that as a public platform. So I started reviewing and it's now just become an obsession. I literally, like I said, go to the cinema five to 11 times a week. I think I'm there three films. I'll do a 12 hour shift at the movies tomorrow. Back to back films. I review at least something every day because I watch streaming, have every streaming platform. I watch multiple shows at once and I try and jump on stuff straight away, but I get a lot of. Because of that and because I've done it consistently, I'm now considered professional film film reviewer. Even though I don't get paid for it. Get a lot of free stuff. So I get a lot of free tickets to films from the studios and the PR companies and I get a lot of extra free tickets. So I run a film club as well in Perth. And since March, yeah, they have now I just did a recount again the other day. Since March they've Been to film club members have been to 540 films. [02:36:56] Speaker A: Whoa. [02:36:57] Speaker C: So I don't just want to take free stuff. I want to bring people to the movies, you know. So yeah, it's been kind of cool. Yeah. [02:37:03] Speaker A: Does that. So you say. So you make $0 from. There's no like way to make money from doing this, really. [02:37:11] Speaker C: No. And how I saw that film is I get sent screener links, so I get sent advanced links to watch online, which is not always what you want to do. You don't want to watch a Marvel film necessarily on your computer, you know, or your laptop, whatever. But I, I was judging a film competition and it had 40 Australian films in it, yet some are yet to be released. So that's how I was doing that. But no, it's not it. As I said, it's a, it's a part time unpaid job that brings me no monetary reward, but immense joy. Because for me, because I am so busy, the only time I can't be texting and messaging on my mini computer is when I'm in a cinema. Your phone has to be turned off. When I walk into a movie theater, that is when I'm the least stressed. All my stress falls away because no one can find me for a few hours. I just, I can't be on my phone. And I pay $15 to watch something that costs 200 million. I think I'm getting the better deal. And just like you might have three cups of tea a day to chill out. I go to three movies. But yeah, I just love it. And so the film club people get a lot of freebies. I sometimes go along and have 20 people come with me watch a film. And every film I go to, I share in the group. So sometimes I'm by myself. Tomorrow someone might turn up to one of the films or it will just be me all day. But they'll get like special lanyards so they can identify each other and. [02:38:21] Speaker A: Oh, really? [02:38:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So when they walk up, they know who's in the movie club if they're new. So it's very inclusive. Everyone gives me a score for the film. If they come with me, they give me an opinion on it and I write it all up. But I do all the work, work. And I'm required to provide that feedback to the studios as well for the free tickets and stuff. But yeah, from a business point of view, because I'm always looking at it. I had to create that whole brand from scratch. Right. Because no one in film reviewing or what, who watches films cares If I'm a pet photographer, whereas business coaching and tours and all that sort of came easy because it's easy to. Oh, I like what you do. Would you like to come with me and stay in the Antarctic while I do it? Yes, please. You know, like, it's kind of easy to leverage off that. I like what you do. Would you like me to teach you how I do it? Yes, please. So I built this particularly. I think my Instagram page is at 7,000 followers or something. I had about 60,000 interactions in the last month on there. Like, it's gone nuts. It's called the Popcorn Panel. So I'm on Instagram, on Facebook, and then I realized I had all my eggs in a meta basket. So I've got a website I just dump the content on in case meta ever bans me or kicks me off. And, yeah, I got approved for a membership for the Australian Film Critics Association. You have to have a referee and be approved. And that has opened up some incredible opportunities. You know, I haven't been able to say yes to any of them, but there's global film conferences, there's mentoring opportunities that are paid in places like Berlin for a week with other film reviewers. There's going to Toronto International Film Festival, enduring a category of film. So it's a completely different world for me and not one I've. I feel like a baby in it. Like, I'm brand new. But, yeah, it's just really cool. I just, you know, just to create something from scratch that I love and I'm passionate about. And also, it requires no physical exertion. It's the perfect hobbies. Lay around, eat pork, some of them. They even bring you food. You're in, like, a restaurant, if you're in a gold lounge, gold class, you know, like, it's awesome. [02:40:09] Speaker A: Does it. Is it. Does it ever make watching stuff feel like work or. It's never impacted the joy that you get from watching a movie? Like, do you ever just want to. To sit down and just not assess it? You know what I mean? [02:40:24] Speaker C: Yeah, no. Great question. No, but, like, when I came back from beef opsicular, I was pretty tired. I think I did. I did a number of presentations around that time in multiple states as well. So I'd traveled a bit. And if I'm really tired, like, for me, movies are joy. So if I'm super tired and I have to drag myself to a film, sometimes I'll jump online and you can change your session to a different day, because I don't want it to feel like That I don't want it to feel like, yeah, I have watched two films in the last week that were both stinkers. They were really bad. According to me, I was the one that hated them the most out of all the people that came. They were dreadful. But. And I have to give on a score, so one got two out of 10. I have to send that to the studio that gave me the free ticket. But when I do give a film 2 out of 10, people talk about it and people actually want to go and see for themselves. So it actually works in the opposite way sometimes, you know, Like, I gave a recent film on. It was an on released online called War of the Worlds. It had Ice Cube in it. It's fairly new, it's shocking. So War of the World's remake, but he's basically sitting in his office just using social media and product placement and stuff in this. Amazon's all over it and it was pretty dreadful. But I think I gave it zero. And so many people just talk to me, random people that I saw at things that their friends and stuff are like, that film you gave zero I went to. Because they want to check it out for themselves. [02:41:40] Speaker A: Exactly. 10 is huge, and 0 is huge. And I need to know why. [02:41:45] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, totally. And to be honest, overall, what I love about film reviewing is it's just an opinion. And if there's something and. And I love that I could go to film with you and I can give it 10 and you can go, Alex, I gave it three. And we laugh and talk about why, if there was ever a time in the world where we needed to have opinions that we accept that are different and, you know, it brings us closer together and we respect that. I think think only for some things, not necessarily, but for film, I think that fits perfectly, you know, like, it's not a fisticuffs, It's. Oh, my God. What? You know, we watched a film recently called Good Boy. It's a horror film or thriller. And it's film from the point of view of the dog. 10 out of 10 from me, right? Just so you know, one of my friends gave it a three, and she gave it a three. Because in there, in the scene the guy pushes the dog off the bed, the dog is fine, but for her, that was not cool. And she could not get past it. She was like, he went, get off the bed. And he. The dog jumped off the bed. She didn't like that. And I respect that. And I was like. But the rest was this. And she's like, nah, I Was done. [02:42:42] Speaker A: You know, so she's never watched a movie where someone gets killed or, you. [02:42:47] Speaker C: Know, care about the people. It's the dog don't kill you. The dog doesn't die. But in the film either. But yeah, you know. Well, case in point, one of the Stinkers the other day, the one halfway through the woman in it shoots the dog. And I was done. And I'm like, oh, I'm exactly how my friend was in the other one. The rest was trash too. But never kill the dog. It's a general, you know, so in Good Boy, the dog does not die. And it's not a spoiler. They actually put out press releases beforehand saying. Because people were going nuts saying, the dog does not die. It. But really cool film. But yeah, it's just opinions, and I love that because we've all got different opinions and we all see things from different points of view. And just as a life lesson, I think that's really cool. You know, I can watch a film and go, oh, I thought the. Someone said to me other day that ending didn't make sense. And I went, oh, it was a metaphor for this. And they're like, oh, my God, that just changed my opinion of it. Like, isn't that cool that, like, you know, through communication we can learn stuff and grow and, you know, sometimes I miss things and my friends go, no, that meant this. And I'm like, wow, that was actually really clever. It went over my head, you know, and, like, we learned from that. [02:43:47] Speaker A: So it's interesting you say that and you've obviously had experience being a judge, but then your friend Glenn essentially almost refuses to be a judge in photography competitions. He told me that he once did, well one, and he was supposed to go through all the photos and in depth and judge them. And he just went, that one's the best. And they were like, a lot of work. And he's like. He's like, I like that one. That's all there is. Like, that's. That's what judging photography is. Because he's true. He can explain it much better than me. His stance on it was like, it's subjective anyway. I'm just. That's. I think that's the one that I like. But what I was going to say is, what's interesting is the, you know, the judging formats where. With photography, where you can. The old AIPP format where you can. What's it called, advocate for your score. You know, how they used the panel that would show the photo and if the score was. If it was like 4. [02:44:43] Speaker C: Too high or too low. [02:44:45] Speaker A: You could have extreme. [02:44:46] Speaker C: Yeah, you could, yeah, yeah. [02:44:48] Speaker A: But you could stand up and be like, no, no, it's. This is why it's brilliant. And it's that same kind of vibe. And you might get challenged. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, Bruce. Yeah, so like, you can. You can challenge it and you. And then people might revise their opinion, go, oh, I see it now. I understand what you're getting at it. And it's the same kind of that, the conversation. But no one's right but you. You can. You might be able to change someone's mind or enlighten them as to why you thought that movie was a stinker. [02:45:15] Speaker C: Totally. [02:45:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:45:16] Speaker A: I think it's really, really interesting. [02:45:18] Speaker C: Well, I love it. And if people are listening, think, gosh, she's banging on about her hobby that she got really excited about. About. The point to it is, if you want to do anything, just do it, you know, Like, I decided I wanted to review films, so I did it. And it's work. I have to put in effort and I have to put in time. And I use a lot of the free film clubs, so I get points when I see film, so I get the free tickets and I pay for some because I do want to contribute to the film, you know, cinema industry, but I get the freebies and I use points and stuff. But the point is just that you can do anything. Like if you'd said to me two years ago, you're probably going to be a member of these organizations and voting in these films that haven't even come out yet and have a film club and they're going to see 500 films in six months. I'd be like, no one's going to come to movies with me. I just went, okay. You know, I just try stuff and like I said, if it works, I do more of it and I keep going. And it is like I. But you got to put the work in. That's the thing, too. None of this came for free. You know, film studios just don't give you free tickets to films unless you've got a platform, a profile, and you do do the reviews and you give them the feedback and do what you're asked, you know, honor your commitment to the them. So it's all a business thing. It sounds like a fun hobby, but there's always a business basis to everything. If you treat it like a business, in a sense, you're going to be professional in what you do and you know, it's going to have a payoff you know. But yeah, I love it. It's just really cool. So, yeah, if anyone wants to know about films, the popcorn panel on Instagram's probably or Facebook's best place to go because I don't know why I thought. [02:46:38] Speaker A: You did a podcast on it. You don't do. I was trying to see. You don't do it. You don't do any kind of like show about the recent movies you've seen or anything like that. [02:46:47] Speaker C: Well, funny you should mention that because I have six weeks off next year due to recovery from a surgery which is purely cosmetic, not medical. So it's not. Nothing's wrong. And in that. Let's just have a rest for six weeks. No, let's make more businesses annoying. So I've actually just, I'm just going to pick up on Saturday actually my Rodecaster deck and. And yeah, I know. Studying two podcasts, one on the popcorn panel. I want to just do like vox pop interview people at the end of the films saying what is a great idea? What did you think? Like right in situ and then throw that online that night. So it's not just me doing a write up. And I've also got another one coming out that's called Unpopular business Opinions where I will have guests on. They're like 15 minute segments and they just share their. What like, you know, like you sell by not selling? Well, no, you've got to sell to people. No, you don't. If you let people spend freely, they spend freely. Like just it's little things like that that everyone, you guys would have them in your lives. Like what's something that you do that you think everyone else would be like, don't do that. But you're adamant you're going to do it and it works. Works. That's what I want to, you know, create from that. So I'm going to put that out. That's all the, you know, build all the foundation stuff for that while I'm on those six weeks off and launch both of those next year. So. [02:47:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I love it. [02:48:01] Speaker C: I can't go to the movies for like a while either because I'll be sick. So I have to. I'll be just watching heaps of stuff on the couch. Yeah. And doing podcast things. So yeah, I love it. [02:48:11] Speaker A: Well, if you need any help with the Rodecaster, I won't be able to. Every Monday night I have a fight with a Bluetooth. But we are able to take live callers now. But it only works half the time. [02:48:28] Speaker C: Right. [02:48:29] Speaker A: We're slowly figuring it out. [02:48:31] Speaker C: Awesome. I love that you do a great job of your production on all your stuff too. It looks really good while you run it. [02:48:36] Speaker A: We're getting there. We're getting there. Slowly. [02:48:38] Speaker C: Yeah, it's awesome. Well done, guys. [02:48:40] Speaker A: Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'll. I'll read out a couple of quick comments just before we finish off. Oh, and then we get to the question that started off with the zombie movie thing anyway. [02:48:48] Speaker C: Oh, yes, okay. [02:48:50] Speaker A: Bruce says, I was a movie reviewer that picked up a camera and left reviewing opposite to Alex, which is very funny. [02:48:56] Speaker C: Yeah, we talked about that at befop too. Bruce and I talked about films. Oh, really? Yeah. [02:49:01] Speaker A: He says, I miss all the crazy promo material I used to get reviewing stuff. Also some of the crazy films from around the world. World. Yeah. [02:49:09] Speaker C: I had a group of us, I just jump in. I had, yeah, World War Z. Oh, it's a good book. I had a group of 20 people the other day come to a film. I won't say what it was. And I didn't go. I was away. And afterwards they all gave it like nine or 10 out of 10. Right. And I'd already had a bit of a heads up, it's probably a five. And so I watched it and it was like a five. And I said to them all, why did you score it 9 or 10? We watched and they're like, oh, because there was a red carpet and they had a dog. They touched the dog. They're very excited. And we got free snacks box. And there was a lovely welcome to Country. And I was like, you actually reviewed it based on the entire experience? They're like, yeah. I'm like, it's meant to just be the film. They're like, yeah. And I'm like, no. Okay. So I just, I let them have it. Like, they just, they get so excited because it's cool. Like it's just a real privilege to go to some of those things and you just get a free box of popcorn and you're stoked. So I fully get what Bruce is saying about the freebies. It's really cool. [02:49:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's so cool. So, so movies do that, do they? They try and like get people on their side. They're like, great. [02:50:01] Speaker C: They range in. Like sometimes it's just a small cinema with six of us sitting in there and security guards wearing night vision goggles. There's a private cinema in Perth, so quite often I go, we get sent to that and there's security guards with night vision on to make sure we're not filming on our phones. And I'm like, this film is trash. I'm not even want to watch it. My computer is over there. You know, not like, you know, not answering calls on it. That's for sure. Yeah. And so. Yeah. And sometimes they have a whole red carpet. This was like a big media event. They had half the cast and crew there and the dog was in the film. So the people got to meet the dog. They all sent me selfies of them rolling around on the floor on the red carpet, hugging the dog and stuff. It was really cool. But they, you know, they're like minded animal people as well. You know the film kind of bunch that I go with. [02:50:41] Speaker A: So yeah, genius. Just have a cute dog at the premiere. [02:50:44] Speaker C: I give it 10 out of 10. That's why Premiere's are a trick. Absolutely. Because they sway the like, you know, they just did all this glitzy stuff and everyone loved it. But I love that they all got to experience, experienced that. And I was so thrilled with it. So I let them keep their scores. I didn't make them rescore, but I still gave it a five. [02:51:00] Speaker B: Well, you didn't get to meet the dog, so naturally. [02:51:06] Speaker C: Get the free snack box. I was like, where's mine? Free snack. Yeah. But yeah, you have to give people a lot. Good business lesson in that you don't have to give people a lot to make them happy and exceed their expectations. You know, so just little things like that. Oh, everything ties into business. My brain is always like looking at those little avenues use in anything like that. [02:51:22] Speaker A: So yeah, you know what I heard the other day? This is not an unpopular business opinion. But it really pissed me off. I heard someone say we want to make people feel like we care. [02:51:35] Speaker C: I was like, oh, that's terrible. [02:51:37] Speaker A: No, you want to care. Like you need to care about them. You don't want to make them feel like you care. [02:51:42] Speaker C: That's terrible. [02:51:44] Speaker A: I was like, this is insane. [02:51:46] Speaker B: This. [02:51:46] Speaker C: We want people to feel. Feel much we care. Yeah. [02:51:49] Speaker A: Yeah. We want them to feel like we care, but we don't. But that we want to try and convey that in our. By putting a dog on the red carpet. You know, like. [02:51:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:51:58] Speaker A: Anyway, I couldn't, I couldn't handle that. That, that pissed me off. [02:52:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:52:01] Speaker A: Anyway, we better let you get, get to your hair appointment and movie so very quickly. Oh, hang on. First Nev. Good luck judging today. He said he's judging a local show today. [02:52:13] Speaker C: Oh, have fun. [02:52:14] Speaker A: I like it. I don't like it. Just do that. [02:52:17] Speaker C: That's great. Yeah. [02:52:18] Speaker A: No. [02:52:18] Speaker C: Yes. No, that's how it should be. Really easy. [02:52:21] Speaker A: Glenn says fake sincerity until you make it. [02:52:25] Speaker C: Was it Glenn who said, we want them to feel how much we care? We want them to think we care? [02:52:29] Speaker A: No, it wasn't. But it's something funny that he would say. [02:52:33] Speaker C: It's gonna be his new tagline. I will see it pop up on his email footer. Hang on. [02:52:40] Speaker A: All right, very quickly. So if you had to photograph the end of the world with one camera and one lens, anything you want, what would it be and why? [02:52:49] Speaker C: I would use the Sony A12 because the frame rate is out of this world and I love it. And it's just the fastest piece of kit I've ever had in my hand. And I would use the 150 to 500 mil because. Great for a zoom. I don't want to be too close to anything and I'm a bit of a creature habit anyway. So use something that puts a bit of distance. Distance. Yeah. And take photos that maybe, hopefully one day someone will find 100 years down the track and actually get to see. [02:53:12] Speaker A: Good answer. [02:53:13] Speaker C: Memory card. [02:53:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Keep, you know, well. But also. Yeah. And most people end up saying something like, oh, big beefy, you know, with a 24 to 70, I can use it as a hammer or whatever. But, yeah, being. Being 500 mil away from a zombie is. [02:53:27] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. Yeah. The macro. I wouldn't be using the macro that way. [02:53:33] Speaker A: The last shot. The last shot is from the macro. [02:53:35] Speaker C: Make it. Make it your best one. If you're going to die for it, that's. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. [02:53:40] Speaker A: Houndstooth comedy. [02:53:42] Speaker C: Thanks so much. Yeah. Cool. [02:53:45] Speaker A: Anything else? [02:53:46] Speaker C: Well, what. [02:53:46] Speaker A: Anything you want to plug for people that we haven't already talked about? Upcoming workshops, tours where they can learn all that kind of stuff. [02:53:54] Speaker C: Yeah. So best place to go is down to earth. Photo breaks on Facebook for tours. I have next year, two of my local tours. One is to. I don't even know how to say it. Probably monstadic. It's a monstadic. Australia's only monstadic. I'm probably saying it wrong. Town. It's a town with a monastery and it's only some monks live there and it's just all these really old buildings and it's out in the middle of nowhere. So there's birds and nature and a river and it's incredible. So we're going to go and stay in the town with these amazing old churches and buildings. There's about 20 buildings there called New Norcia. So that one is on in May. No, sorry, that's in March. March. And I've got another one in September which is to a retreat where we. It's a private property out on the Avon River. We have it all to ourselves. So I've got one spot left for one of them and like three spots left for the other. So they will. They always book out. So they're in the down to Earth photo breaks group. And then future tours are Japan in winter. I think we've got luxury houseboat in South Australia for wildlife. Um, I'm doing a, um. Can't say I'm gonna say it wrong. Spellblight. That place. Yep, that's it. Doing that. I better not go there until I can learn how to say it properly. And. Oh, gosh. Oh, Crocus, Cocus and Christmas island are in there as well. So they're all in the down to Earth photo breaks group. Any photography stuff, jump on Houndstooth studio, Instagram, Facebook website, business coaching, business advice, mentoring, just even how to take a better photo, anything like that. Or I do photo reviews and critiques. That is the pet photography coach, even though I coach everything. And popcorn panel is the film review stuff. So if you can. It's kind of our vintage, if you get what I'm saying. It's not for like 18 year olds. It's kind of stuff that we would like. And yeah, I don't go and watch, you know, Heartbreak High and stuff like that, so it's kind of relevant to the current audience. But yeah, love to see some people on there. Please just give the pages a follow. There's also a pet photography coach Facebook group as well which has business stuff, free business stuff in there. So anyone's keen on that, please feel free to jump in. Love to see some faces from the. The chat in there. [02:55:51] Speaker A: Amazing. I have no idea how you keep up with all of that. That is an insane amount of stuff. [02:55:56] Speaker C: Stuff. Yeah. [02:55:57] Speaker A: Very impressive. Very impressive. [02:55:58] Speaker C: Well, I'll just tell you a quick secret. I actually have another business that I've done nothing with. It's called Law of Order. Right. It's a bit of a police pun and it's basically time management and home organization service that I don't have time management or organization to run. I have the business name for four years and everyone's like, can you come and help me sort out my office? I'm like, I'm a bit busy. I'm at the movies. Yeah. So Laura Border is not quite as successful as the others because I haven't done Anything about it other than get a logo, some branding and a business name. So, you know, that's the business number five. That is like the poor sister to all the others. [02:56:33] Speaker A: It's scary how similar you and me are in. That's the sort of. That I used to do and still do all the time. Like business website, like placeholder website, logo. [02:56:44] Speaker C: Yeah, you've got to do that. [02:56:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You got to get. [02:56:47] Speaker C: It gives you a. Yeah, that's your umbrella of where everything else is sits. If you don't have that, how's it look and feel and what's its parameters? Absolutely right. Yep. And then. [02:56:54] Speaker A: And then it sits there for four years because you. [02:56:55] Speaker C: Then you've got. Then you've got to ditch your business name and your website that you've been holding. But yeah, hey, but you know what. [02:57:00] Speaker A: You said about, you know, if you get nine, 10 clients, nine of them, nothing, but then one of them 10,000. It's kind of like that with businesses, right? [02:57:08] Speaker C: Absolutely, Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. [02:57:10] Speaker A: You know. [02:57:11] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:57:12] Speaker A: In it. To win it. All right, we better let you go. I'm going to play the theme song that Glenn made for you and we'll read out a few comments on the way out, but thank you so much. Three hours. [02:57:24] Speaker C: Thanks, guys. Appreciate your time. Thank you so much. You guys are great. Hopefully see you soon. [02:57:28] Speaker A: You will. Definitely. All right, let's see who is in here. So Glenn wants to make his new. His Facebook bio. I want to make people feel like I care. And I think that's. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. Thanks, Rodney. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks. Philip Johnson. Good to see you. [02:57:44] Speaker C: Paul. [02:57:44] Speaker A: Paul Sutton, good to have you here. I didn't get to read this one out, but we'll catch up on the next one. Who else, who else has been in the chat? A lot of Bruce this morning? Jimbo, you better be catching up on this right now. Brendan Waits, Cameron, photo. Hopefully this song's playing in the shop right now. Seller, Tamron Lens. Lucinda, you're a legend. Everyone else, if I missed you. Oh, Paul Henderson, everybody was here today. Scott, good to see you all. And we'll catch you on the next one. [02:58:13] Speaker B: See you guys. [02:58:14] Speaker C: Be safe. See you later. Bye. Bye.