EP26 Who Are We Taking Photos For? With Special Guest Greg Carrick

[00:00:06] Speaker A: Good morning and welcome to the Camera live podcast. It's 09:00 a.m. victorian Melbourne, australian time 15 August 2024. And this is episode 26 of the Camera live podcast. And we'll get to our panel of presenters in just a moment. But if you're watching along live at home or at work, don't tell your boss, but feel free to add comments, ask questions, join in the discussion. And we've also got, if you head to our channel, the camera live channel, we've got a back catalogue of our past 25 podcasts. We didn't celebrate it the silver anniversary last. It's not really an anniversary, but the 25th episode. That's right. And also, interestingly, Justin has been posting daily videos with his daily photography challenge. He's trying to get himself into a groove and explore new avenues of photography, many of those without people in them. [00:01:16] Speaker B: Interestingly enough, it's been tough. We're getting through it with today's day eleven. So I've already been out and shot this morning, got out into the fog and wandered around town all by myself. [00:01:29] Speaker A: So you can check out those videos on the channel. And also we are available on audio podcast channels, Apple, Spotify and Amazon. Is that correct? [00:01:41] Speaker B: We should be on Amazon. Yeah, I haven't actually. I haven't actually tried to listen on Amazon but we're supposed to be on there too, so I'll have to check that confirm, but should be all good podcast places should have us. [00:01:53] Speaker A: Very good. So we've already heard from the man himself, Justin, and it's either Jim has stopped his, his beauty routine or it's Greg Carrick rejoining us. [00:02:04] Speaker C: G'day everybody. Good to be here again. The beard's real. Dustin, you're going to have to pull your finger out the beard, you know. [00:02:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I'm letting the team down, man. It would take me a thousand years to grow a beard. Even as. As Greg, let alone Greg's, is enormous. It's very impressive. He probably. Did you shave yesterday, Greg, or something? [00:02:27] Speaker A: That's a bit neat there, Mister Carrick. [00:02:30] Speaker C: Oh yeah, I shaved this morning but it's coming up already. [00:02:34] Speaker B: Overnight growth. [00:02:37] Speaker A: It's a 03:00 a.m. shadow. Welcome back, Greg. And for those of you listening or watching along, Jim is currently on leave, having a bit of a break. Justin worked him. [00:02:52] Speaker B: We give him one day off a year and he's taken it today. No, he's in Queensland for a few weeks. It is rude, isn't it? [00:02:59] Speaker A: It's very rude. But at least he's warm. [00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I should have actually. Too late probably to do it today, but I should send him a link when we're live one time and see if he can give us like a live update of where he's Athenae. He'll be on a beach somewhere. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Probably enjoying the warmth. Although victorian weather, for those of you that are not in Victoria, it's been quite, especially Melbourne, the last couple of days have been 2021. Positively balmy. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Mild. [00:03:29] Speaker A: Yelena. [00:03:29] Speaker C: Fantastic. [00:03:30] Speaker A: Part of the lucky straps team has said, damn, where is Greg's flanny? Greg Carrick, that is. You think Jim would have left one in his place? That's very true. [00:03:39] Speaker C: I was wearing a planet yesterday. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Spiritual, spiritual. Very spiritual. Now, this week we decided not to get a. Greg Carrick is joining us as a co host today. We decided not to get a guest in this week. What we decided to do was discuss a topic that's been on our agenda ever since we kicked off again a few weeks back. But before we get into that, I just want to have a quick chat with Greg about his. His activities this week. Just before we went live, I was having a chat to him about what he's been doing with his photography this week and he talked about how he's been out and about, as per usual, with his camera always on him, and he took some accidental aurora shots. Greg, do you want to just quickly talk us through that story again? [00:04:30] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm involved with a community radio station, Yarravalley FM, and their studios at Hillsville, and one of my shows Monday night goes till midnight. So I had my camera along because I thought, I'll go out to the local railway station in Hillsville, which is now like a tourist run railway station. And I wanted to get the Milky Way above some of the old rolling stock carriages that are there at the station, because they're really old. And I thought, that'll look great. It was a nice, clear night, sort of perfect conditions for it. So I took my camera out there and I set up on the tripod and I'm getting the composition. I start taking photos and I'm looking at how good the Milky Way is, you know, and what the light's like. And after three or four photos, I'm seeing this red glow above the carriages and I'm thinking, is that a servo or the pub or something? There's some lights behind. And took a couple of more shots and the red glows increasing and it was the aurora. So, yeah, I decided, what the heck? I shot for another hour as the aurora sort of increased and then decreased and the stars moved and it was really good till the security guard turned up. [00:05:46] Speaker B: Oh, did you take a photo of him as well? [00:05:51] Speaker C: No, no, I had to explain what I was doing there, you know. [00:05:55] Speaker B: Wow. So this was obviously the night. When did you say this was? [00:05:58] Speaker C: Monday night. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Monday night. [00:06:00] Speaker C: Well, Tuesday morning by then. 01:00 a.m. yeah, yeah. [00:06:02] Speaker B: There's photos popping up all over the interwebs. [00:06:05] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of people had had some good shots of that. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Did you know it was a possibility or was this just a right place, right time? [00:06:14] Speaker C: For me, it was right place, right time. I should have known, because I've got this, this app, website thingy, that tells me the levels of solo activity happening. And that night it got to seven. Now, a couple of months ago, when everybody was shooting the aurora, it was nine. [00:06:33] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:34] Speaker C: So it wasn't quite as strong, but stronger than people expected. [00:06:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's funny, I saw that pop up and then myself and Jim and Grant, who's actually is in the chat at the moment, he's normally at work, but he's, you can see his profile picture of Jim's face there. He says, morning, justin, and Greg's, he's Grant's home from worksick today, so he's watching live. [00:06:59] Speaker C: G'day, Grant. [00:07:00] Speaker B: Hello, Grant. He. So we had a little group chat about this potential aurora thing, and we all basically wussed out and were like, ah, the moon will probably drown it out. Anyway, the moon's gonna be up and I don't know, it's probably not worth it. None of us, we all just went to bed early like wimps and then woke up the next morning to photos everywhere from, including, I saw some photos from Mount Tarangauer Tower, which is in Malden, which is only 30 minutes from my house. And some people got amazing photos just from there. So I'm not going to let that happen again. Next time I'm heading out and I'll, and I'm sure I'll be disappointed, but it'll be worth it. I'll be able to say I tried. [00:07:44] Speaker C: I recommend people hunt up some sort of app or something that keeps an eye on these things and check it every day because you never know what night it's going to go off. [00:07:53] Speaker A: It's been really, it's been a lot of it this year, lots. [00:07:58] Speaker C: I've lived here for 65 and all my life, never seen an aurora except on television. And they all of a sudden, they're like yard almost. They're like Melbourne trams, they're everywhere. [00:08:10] Speaker B: Like, bin chickens. [00:08:12] Speaker C: They're all coming groups. [00:08:13] Speaker B: Did you. [00:08:14] Speaker A: I saw some bean chickens in Bendigo. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Well, I saw some this morning, cohabitating with Batsdez in a tree. There's like, 30 bats and one bin chicken all day. [00:08:25] Speaker A: That's how Covid started. It was the bats and the bin chickens. It was collusion. [00:08:34] Speaker B: Oh, no, we'll get. I'm sure if you. I think if you say that word still on YouTube, you get pulled off. We'll see what happens. [00:08:40] Speaker A: Sorry. [00:08:40] Speaker B: No, we'll be right. Bin chicken. No, not that word. I saw in those files, I think, on the file names. Were you shooting with both your XE four and the GFX for those aurora shots? Is that what. [00:08:54] Speaker C: Yeah, what I was doing, um, was I set up the xe four to take. What's it called when, uh, the. The camera just takes shot after shot after shot? [00:09:04] Speaker B: Time lapse, like, interval? [00:09:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, interval, yeah. So I was taking 30 long. 32nd long shots. [00:09:10] Speaker A: This is the XE four here. [00:09:12] Speaker C: Yeah, with the xe four. And I didn't move that camera. So I've got almost an hour's worth of photos. [00:09:20] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:09:21] Speaker C: And I'll string them all together, and they'll show how the aura came up and then went down. And the star. [00:09:26] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:09:28] Speaker C: But then I was using the GFX 50 r. This one's the GFX for my main photos. [00:09:36] Speaker B: So do you remember roughly, like, what lens, what settings, that kind of thing? [00:09:41] Speaker C: Yeah, this lens, which is a bit of a strange one, because, uh, I can't afford. [00:09:45] Speaker B: I wouldn't expect anything less from you. [00:09:50] Speaker C: I can't afford the expensive Fujifilm wide angle. So this is a Pentax 18 to 35 plastic kit lens from, I don't know, the seventies or eighties, and, uh, from. Yeah, an old 35 mm film camera. And it does my wide angle work really well. So. [00:10:09] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:10:10] Speaker C: That's what I was using for the wide angles. [00:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:13] Speaker A: Any XC four. Sorry, just. [00:10:16] Speaker B: No, sorry, Greg. I was just interested to know whether, like, how long you normally leave the shutter open for something like that. That kind of thing. [00:10:22] Speaker C: Yeah. You work on the 500 rule, so 500 divided by the focal length of your lens gives you the amount of seconds before you get star trails. [00:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:34] Speaker C: Okay. So for that lens, and I had the Samyang twelve mil on my XC four, so I was able to use 30 seconds for both cameras. [00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a cracker of a lens. The Samyang's been on forever. [00:10:48] Speaker C: I absolutely love it. Yeah. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it was one of the first 3rd party lenses with a Fuji mount. [00:10:54] Speaker C: Hmm. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yeah I'm pretty sure it was other than the, the Zeiss, the Toit trilogy but yeah, that's an awesome lens for. [00:11:04] Speaker C: Astro I had and everything else I use that twelve mil and photojournalism, I use that crowd shots and everything because on the Fuji's it's actually 18 mil so it's not too wide that it gets stupid looking. It's quite nice. [00:11:24] Speaker B: I had the Samyang twelve, the twelve mil full frame lens that is stupid wide. And I actually got some cool shots with that and I think I had a, I might have had a 14 as well. They did a 14 that was sort of more flat and then they had a twelve mil that was, was pretty fisheye and I used both of them and had some fun with them. Cheap, sharp, you know. [00:11:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:48] Speaker B: Good lenses. [00:11:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah and there's a, there's a ton of them on the second hand market now too. Yeah, they're readily available, which is great. [00:11:58] Speaker B: Yeah I would imagine especially for the older like the DSLR mounts. So if you happy to adapt them. Yeah, those are probably getting less and less popular and. Yeah, yeah, cheap. [00:12:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I wonder if there is a bit of a. Especially with the. You know we talked last week about how Canon have started to announce some stock delays, stock delivery delays and because everyone's, you know, I think everyone's finally woken up and jumping to mirrorless. That's my view. I wonder how, how strong the second hand canon af mount products are now. You know, I haven't. Whether it's saturated, whether it's. [00:12:43] Speaker B: People still want to them how steady when it comes to prices. I keep an eye on the prices in case a bargain comes up. There's a 135 f two canon EF lens that was always really nice. It was quite light so I've always kept an eye on them. They've held steady at about seven to $800 secondhand for the last probably three or four years I think. So they don't seem to be, but it's probably more lenses. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Is it more availability? [00:13:16] Speaker B: Don't know, I think they'd definitely be. Maybe it's a unique lens that people are still kind of keen on. I would imagine something like you know, an older 70 to 200, older 24 to 70, that kind of thing. Well you know, lens are one thing. What I have been seeing is sora one DX mark two, which is, I guess it is an older camera. But you know, the one DX mark three has only just been superseded by the r one as the flag, the official flagship one, DX mark two, like, selling for $2,000. [00:13:54] Speaker C: Wow. Which. [00:13:56] Speaker B: It makes sense because when spec for spec, like, it's an older camera with a, you know, a low res sensor and stuff like that. But I. That was a $10,000 camera. Not that brand new, not that long ago. [00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah. The flagship body. [00:14:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's only like one, essentially. Well, now two generations old. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that stuff. People just don't. Don't really want it. [00:14:20] Speaker A: I guess. If glass is cared for properly, it should hold its value pretty well. [00:14:25] Speaker B: That's right. Yeah. So, yeah. I don't know. I haven't. I'll have. I'll have another look. I haven't looked too closely at. Yeah. Something like 24 to 72.8 or something like that. Like a workhorse lens that there should have been truckloads of out there. Whether they're sort of. There's a million of them and they're getting really cheap. I have to have a look. [00:14:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, no. Sorry, Greg. What was that? [00:14:52] Speaker C: Got the kookaburras out the door. [00:14:54] Speaker B: I could hear. Yeah, that's cool. [00:14:57] Speaker C: Lovely place to live, the Yarra Valley. [00:15:02] Speaker A: All right, now, Justin, did you want to give us a quick update on your 30 day challenge, how that's going? What you're finding, what you're learning about yourself and your photography. [00:15:13] Speaker B: What am I learning about myself? It's difficult to make something out of nothing, and that's why I started the challenge anyway, so I knew that what I've learned is sometimes you. You just don't want to do it, so you have to force yourself out and get. Get out there and make it happen. And even then, a couple of the days, I think not, the last video I put up is titled don't watch this because that's the one I watched. [00:15:44] Speaker C: No one tells me what not to do. [00:15:47] Speaker B: It's funny, I told. I was telling someone about how tough that shoot was and what I titled the video, and they were like, you know, that's going to make people watch. And I was like, that's a good point. I should have just told day ten or something. Instead of, don't watch this, you just. [00:16:01] Speaker A: Need one of those thumbnails of you going, like, doing something very dramatic. [00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, it was just like, I had trouble with the video camera and the audio as well, but also just, I don't know, I kept lifting my camera up to try and frame a shot up, and I was like, oh, no, not that. And then move along and stuff. But then in most of the videos, I can tell there's a point where I, if I get a photo that I don't mind, and I'm like, oh, that one. That's actually not bad. From then, the pace of, like, finding shots seems to always increase. It's like slow. And then I'm like, oh, I don't mind that one. Okay. And then, and then things start to get better and better. [00:16:41] Speaker A: It's like a switch in your brain, isn't it? [00:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:16:44] Speaker A: You start to see it. [00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know whether it's just confidence or something from getting something that didn't look too bad, you know, remove a little bit of that self doubt or something, but, yeah, that's one thing I've noticed. And other than that, yeah. Doing it every day, including making a video, is not easy. I'm thinking about changing the rules of my challenge in the middle of it to where I can post the video the following day rather than the same day. That would certainly make evening shoots a lot easier rather. [00:17:20] Speaker A: Because you're not compelled to sitting at it. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Yep. Get home and get it out before I go to bed. So I feel like that wouldn't be too much of a cheat if I did that. Basically. Yeah. Put it up within. Within the day, the next sort of day, basically. But otherwise, yeah, I don't know. It's going well. I need to. I need to probably do more. I'd like to get out a bit more with and do some more people because it's not specifically about not shooting shots with people in it. I've done a little bit of it. It's just, it's hard to organize that on a daily basis as well. Like, hey, he wants to have some photos taken of him. But, yeah, I'd like to do maybe some street photography in Melbourne and then maybe also a bit more. What I actually thought was whether there's some small businesses I know around town that probably couldn't really afford a professional photographer at the moment, but might be able to use some photos for social media, especially if. And, you know, I just cruise in there and do that. And if they're happy for me to film some of it, maybe that could be something to do that would be a little bit interesting for behind the scenes. [00:18:29] Speaker A: And, oh, before you know it, you'll be doing weddings. [00:18:31] Speaker B: No, no, not again. No weddings. Hey, doing this at a wedding would be really fun, but I don't know whether I would be in the mindset to film it and talk to the camera when you, like, just stressed and focused about getting all the shots and that kind of thing. I don't know how that would turn out, but it would be interesting. [00:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I was at a. I photographed a concert a couple of months back for Fujifilm Australia, and I was shooting with the new. It was just after the X 106 came out. They wanted me to do street photography style shots of the concert and the band behind the scenes. [00:19:10] Speaker B: Nice. [00:19:11] Speaker A: And they had another guy there that they invited along. I don't know if he was shooting with an X 100 as well, but he had a, like a bracket in the thread mount on the bottom of the camera, and attached to that was an Insta 360 camera. [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I've done that before. [00:19:25] Speaker A: And so it was, you know, obviously it was seeing what he was seeing, but also looking back at him at the same time. It was really fascinating. [00:19:32] Speaker B: You could spin. You can spin it around in post production and stuff like that. [00:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah, the content would be really interesting. [00:19:38] Speaker B: But I've done it when I was shooting a mountain bike event in Tasmania, and I never did anything with the footage. I find it really difficult. It's a lot of post processing with those Insta 360 cameras. Afterwards, like, put all the footage in, reframe the shot fairly regularly because you're always having to move where it's pointing and stuff like that. Yes. I found the workflow for me difficult. And the quality of what you get out of there, too, in low light is quite bad. I shouldn't say that. Like, it's amazing what they've been able to do with that camera. But, you know, compared to a camera that's not shooting 360, it's definitely a lot noisier and. And stuff. So I've sort of. I've got it sitting here. I just haven't used it much lately, but maybe I'll whip it out again. [00:20:29] Speaker C: Yeah. If you do YouTube, it's like taking a drone with you. You know, just for those few seconds of nice overhead shots, you got to carry the thing around all day, you got to have the batteries, you got to stop. And extra processing later. [00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's what slowed it down for me, is the processing, and yet just sort of. I don't know. I don't know. That's why I've kept it very, very simple with this challenge, is like, I've used the. Either the GoPro or the Osmo pocket three, which is their little gimbal fella. And usually if I'm on doing it, it's either either or of those cameras, but not both. You know, I'm not. I'm not, like, putting the GoPro on the chest and then putting the. Setting up the Osmo over there and trying to get different angles and stuff. It's just like one camera. Sometimes I hold it, sometimes I put it on a chest mount, and then all the footage goes into final cut, start to finish, trim out some of the crap, insert the photos and edit, and that's it. Whereas. Yeah, if I sort of had. Oh, sorry, Greg. Go on. [00:21:30] Speaker A: No, sorry, I interrupted you. I was just gonna say I applaud. I applaud your ability to do all of that and carry a coffee at the same time. That's dedication to the course. [00:21:40] Speaker B: The only way that I would be able to get out in the mornings and make it happen, you know? [00:21:44] Speaker C: You know, he's got three arms. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Yeah, he does. [00:21:48] Speaker B: I've just got this awesome jacket that I bought years ago from MacPac that's got pockets everywhere, including these really big pockets at the front that can hold the pockets big enough to hold this. I could put lenses in there if I wanted to. [00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:01] Speaker B: So, yeah, I've got that in one side and then a few other bits and pieces, and I just. Yeah, I'm all kitted up in this giant jacket, thinking, because if I might continue this after the 30 day challenge, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll slow the cadence down a little bit. But I was like, oh, what will happen in summer? Like, you know, because with the jacket, I can kind of put the chicken. [00:22:18] Speaker A: You get one of those hats where you put the two beers, but you can put two coffins in the straw and two lenses. Yeah, with two lenses or coffee and a lens. [00:22:27] Speaker B: And then it gets on. On the front like that. [00:22:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And the little fan in the hood in the. In the cap that blows on your face. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know what it's going to look like wearing a goPro, because at the moment, I put the chest mount for the GoPro on and then I put my jacket over it. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:44] Speaker B: To where the camera is. So I still look like a weirdo, but not too bad. But I feel like if I'm wearing the full chest mount thing and that's just over the top of my t shirt while I'm walking around in summer, I'm going to look like a bit of a goose. But, you know, it's not all about looking cool, is it? [00:22:59] Speaker A: The Bendigo youth will tease you, mock you. [00:23:02] Speaker B: They would, anyway, throw nangs at you. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Hey, Greg Carrick. I seem to recall years ago, probably the first time we met in person, was at a people with cameras event in Port Melbourne. And I think you were wearing one of those old school. I don't know if it was a vest or a jacket. And it had all the pockets on it that photographers used to wear. [00:23:22] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I used to use that times on my. Well, my work, photojournalism, because I take. I had one of those camera slings where you had two cameras, you know, and you pick a different lens on each camera. So I had that. I had this vest thing with 20 different pockets on it, and, uh, each pocket had a different camera or lens or something in it. Um, yeah, I found it very handy because a lot of people get around with knapsacks, and I find knapsacks are a pain. They're always behind you. [00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:55] Speaker C: Never in reach. You have to pull them off all the time. It's extra weight all the time, all on one spot, which is your back. Whereas these vests, I was able to distribute things around basically my whole body, and they're right there. Accessible. Yeah, I'm still got that vest. [00:24:16] Speaker B: You'll have to wear it on next time you're on the show. [00:24:19] Speaker C: Hey, good idea. [00:24:20] Speaker A: That was about five years ago. I remember that. [00:24:23] Speaker C: That was before COVID Yes. [00:24:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it was. Wasn't it, like 2019 or something? [00:24:28] Speaker C: Yeah, well, Covid basically killed off my work, so that was it. [00:24:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, very true. Had to hang up your vest, empty the pockets. [00:24:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. [00:24:38] Speaker A: Um, very interesting. Very interesting. My week of photography has been pretty non existent, other than. Well, I shouldn't say that because I still do photography related work. But I. I've mentioned a couple of times that I've been needing to get out for a shoot, and I just. I just haven't been motivated. I don't know if it's the weather or if it's me, but I went out with Justin, Jim and Grant last weekend. Weekend before. When was that? Now? [00:25:06] Speaker B: Weekend before. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:10] Speaker A: I got a couple of shots from that that I really liked. And then on Monday, I went to. Into Melbourne, into the CBD, and took my x 70, my little fantastic camera. And I took a. I haven't even taken the memory card out to look at them. I'm still in a bit of a funk. And it's been watching you, Justin, and you, Greg. I follow your stuff pretty closely, too. Watching you guys challenge yourself with unique situations. You know, just arriving with a camera and making whatever happened works. It's certainly inspiring me. I just need to get out and do it. And I don't know what the motivation block is. I mean, when it comes to taking photos for my work stuff, my articles, no problem. Happy to do it. But, yeah, it's just heading out the door. It's interesting. [00:25:59] Speaker B: It is. Because, especially if you, I guess it almost brings us to the topic that we had loosely scheduled for today's show. Which is what? You know, who are we taking photos for? [00:26:10] Speaker A: Or why? [00:26:11] Speaker B: Why are we taking photos? Nice segment, I guess. Yeah. Great segue. [00:26:15] Speaker C: Took 30 minutes. [00:26:18] Speaker B: That's all right. [00:26:19] Speaker A: I'm sure there's a slow burn, but. [00:26:22] Speaker B: But if you, if you currently don't feel like there's a reason for you to take photos, is that gonna, you know, slow down your. Or impin dot impinge your drive to get out there and do something? Because, like, do you need, do you need to take them? Like, what are they for? Where are they gonna go? [00:26:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. [00:26:42] Speaker B: Put them on social media and then they kind of just disappear or. [00:26:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, some, I often do shoots and I'll edit them and I'll, you know, download the jpegs and put them into a folder on my desktop, ready for something. Whether it be to put a couple on social media. I'm a member of a couple of different street photography groups. Just contribute to that. Or whether, you know, I use them in one of my own personal blog articles that I write weekly about my photography life. It's a good question of who we shoot photos for. I mean, in the past, and I've talked about this on the show before, earlier on when, when I first joined that, for me, photography more recently was a therapy to get me out after, you know, personal loss. And, and I'm in a really, really good space now. You know, it's been eleven years since that happened. And mentally and even physically, I mean, I'm in an amazing space compared to back then. And I fear there's a little kind of voice in the back of my head that says, what if you don't need photography anymore? What if you're therapies? Therapies? Is that a word? What if you're fixed? What if you don't need it? But I still crave it. I still crave the experience. And I think, you know, early in the early days when I joined Facebook, when I was in Facebook and using Facebook to post my photos, I was all about getting my images on there. You know, it wasn't so much about craving likes or comments, it was just about sharing my work and, you know, and often I'd add a little story to it or an experience or something like that. But then more recently, I just haven't, haven't been posting much to my socials. Every now and then I'll do a dump onto, not a physical dump, but I'll dump some images onto Instagram. My Instagram account's kind of, it's patchy at best in terms of where I post my photos. So I think maybe I've also lost a bit of that focus on who I am taking photos for them. You know, if it's not for work, then I don't feel compelled at the moment to take photos for anything. So. Yeah. Yeah. What do you think? [00:29:11] Speaker C: I'm glad the therapy use worked. [00:29:13] Speaker A: Yeah, it did. [00:29:15] Speaker C: That, that is a very strong motivation for people to pick up all sorts of different hobbies or activities, especially if it gets you out and about, rather than sitting in a room at home doing an activity that's, that's extra benefit. [00:29:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:33] Speaker C: So street photography is really good for that. So well done. I find. Yeah, I was very busy doing photography work for a number of years is doing the photojournalism. And I. You're also always then taking photos for a client. So the photos had to make them happy so that you could be paid, you know, so when you're working for clients in whatever field, you have to have output that suits other people, not yourself. You might think this would look better in a different way, but the client won't like that. So I won't get paid, so I won't shoot, I'll do what the client wants. So you're always pumping out content for other people that to be happy with. And when Covid hit and the events dried up and my photojournalism just stopped, I had all this gear. I'm thinking, what do I do with it now? I do like taking photos, but what sort of photos do I take now, you know? So I thought, okay, I'm going to have to find out what I like taking photos or what style I like. And that journey took me about two years, trying different styles, trying different times of day, even finding out what I really enjoyed using my cameras for. And I initially thought, okay, am I then going to be a street photographer, landscape photographer? What am I going to end up gravitating towards? And that would be my style or genre. Turns out I like all of that. What I really enjoy, taking photos or projects. I'll do a seascape project and it might last several months, might go for a year. I'll do street photography projects that might last several months. So it's not really a genre that I'm attracted to. It's having a project so you can build up, I suppose some people would say a portfolio, but I'm not using my photos as a portfolio to gain work or anything. So it's finding something and all of a sudden sparked some interest that I will follow with tenacity until I'm satisfied with the results I'm getting. And I never know when something will pop up to make me happy, to send me down a new path. Like I've got sitting right here, this thing that is a slide projector lens, uh, this green bit. And then I've got it on a helicoid that will fit on my PG film cameras. Now, slide projector lenses are dirt cheap. I just come across them by accident, find them in op shop, whatever, and all of a sudden I've got another project in front of me. I can take, you know, a couple of months where I explore all these weird lenses from slide projectors and. And have a lot of fun with that. You know, I get quite self absorbed by it because, I mean, how many other people out there are going to go, oh, slide protector photos, you know, big deal, you know, it's. It's very personal sort of thing to follow. Yeah, but that's fine, because this is what the main point that I found. I'm not taking photos for anybody else except myself. I don't care how many people think, this is interesting. Oh, slow protector lenses. Two people might think, wow, this is good, that's fine. They're two extra people because I'm the one I'm doing this for. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:53] Speaker C: And this brings up a whole branching of things, like social media. I used to have an Instagram account, but I gave that the flick more than a year ago, and I find a lot less stress in my life. I'm not so busy, I'm not so time pushed. I've got to get this stuff on Instagram, you know? [00:34:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:20] Speaker C: Because I'm not saying Instagram is wrong for everybody, but it's wrong for a lot of people because they find that they end up under the pump. I've got to produce other people to see my images, and then I'll watch, is this type of image getting lots of likes or not? How will I change what's trending that I might be able to do to get more followers? You know, and you end up pumping out all this content for people who look at it for a few seconds and then move on to something else and don't pay for it anyway. What are you doing? You're working for nothing, for a whole bunch of people who you're never going to meet. And if all of a sudden your stuff goes out of style or gets them behind, they've moved on to something else. You're left behind, you know? [00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:19] Speaker C: So I find social media, especially things like Instagram, they're not. It's not the only platform that this is applicable to, but it's a very strange beast because the only sort of happiness some people get out of it are the validation of likes and stuff, and they end up sort of enslaved to it. Got to do this every day, you know, keep my numbers up. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Do you think that takes a level of. To move beyond that? Yeah, because that's where I started. That's. It wasn't so much. Maybe it was some validation as well, that actually I, you know, because I had a lot of self doubt about my work, so I was getting validation from others that my work was okay. You know, we're raised to seek validation in everything we do, and. But I think you reach a point of maturity or self awareness or self actualization where you no longer need to seek that. You don't, you don't need to seek those likes and those comments and that, that gratification unless you're running a YouTube channel. But what do you think, Justin? Where are you? Where are you at on the. Who do we take photos for? [00:36:37] Speaker B: That's a bigger question. While I'm just, it's in my mind because Greg was just sort of explaining it, a smaller component of it being the social media side, I'm notorious for not posting on social media, which is, I don't know, like, I've done a lot of cool photo shoots and taken some great images, and you sort of go back through my Instagram feed, there'll be gaps of 18 months where I didn't post a single thing. And I always felt like I should be putting the stuff up there. I'm not sure why. I just sort of thought, you know, if I was. If I was more organized or whatever, I would be putting them up there, but I just don't because I'm not organized. So it was, I felt compelled to do it, but I just didn't. And I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm now putting them up every day for this challenge purely because that I didn't know what else to do. With them, you know, like, if I'm gonna take, take photos and put them out there every day, like, where do I put them out there? So I was like, I'll put them on my, my Instagram profile. But it kind of, it also kind of sucks because Instagram, it's like, it's a terrible place to view photos in terms of the actual medium. It's tiny, it compresses them. It's like, it's, it's very hard to see the image in the way that I would like to display. You know, I'd rather walk, walk someone up to a physical print, but we can't do that each day to more than, more than one person at a time or whatever. So it's, that's something I think about a lot. It's like, where can we put great photos? If you've got this amazing camera, amazing lens, you put all this work into getting the perfect shot, the right time of day, and then you put it on a tiny, tiny display of a phone on Instagram and you can't even sort of. Yeah, you can't even view it bigger. It's like, it's just, it is, it's just this tiny little thing. I'm not sure that's what I've been thinking about a lot. [00:38:45] Speaker A: And I think with that, with that compressed file and the size that we view it on, you know, being our phones mostly, and with the rise in AI created images, it's getting harder to tell the difference at that scale. Especially on a site like Instagram where you're, you know, you're doom scrolling and you're flicking through countless things that your brain may or may not take in. And then you come across an image and you kind of have to pause. As a visual creative, you pause and wonder whether that's real or if it's a fake or is it, you know, composite or something. So I think it's, you know, we talk about putting photos out there. What, what is out there? Who is out there, you know, and what do we want to achieve with putting stuff out there? And I think that goes back to Greg's point of, you know, that he's taking photos for himself and he shares them and if someone likes them or big whoop, that's great, I'm, maybe they'll learn something from it, which is something I've always tried to aspire to, I think, you know, when I would post photos and I'd put little stories about how this was a difficult shoot or first time doing a concert or you know, here's my camera settings kind of thing. I hope that someone can pick something up from that. So it's kind of a sharing of, here's what I achieved and how, and maybe someone else will learn something from it. And I don't know if that's an arrogant mindset, but it's not a selfish one. [00:40:20] Speaker C: I think it's better than just photos on Instagram because there's a process that you show people as well as the photos on Instagram. They just see the finished result on something like YouTube. You take them for a journey, sometimes literally, of what you're doing, where you're going, what the conditions were like. You talk to them, then you show them a photo. And to me, that's much more, I think, engaging for the viewer rather than just seeing a single image, which is why my stuff, people say, oh, where do I see your photos? Well, you don't really. I might put some on Facebook, but I do YouTube videos. I don't use Instagram or Twitter. You won't find single images of mine out there like that. You'll come across my images on YouTube, which is video, and most of the video is me doing stuff. And then you see the photo. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:27] Speaker C: To me, that's, that's more satisfying because there's more to the story being told. [00:41:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. And I think it raises the question when we talk about, you know, Justin, you mentioned about, you know, wouldn't it be lovely to walk someone up to a physical print that's large and behind glass and framed and sitting in a great spot to really appreciate the overall, you know, feel of seeing a physical image other than on a screen. But do we, do we really print anymore? I mean, Greg, do you print many photos anymore? [00:42:03] Speaker C: Not as many as I should. I'm getting a bit of a collection of photos that I really like myself, that I do want to print. And I've got, I've got some printed, but then I've also got to frame them now, so. And then I've also got to hang them somewhere. But, yeah, the value of printing your images is immense. I remember start of digital eradic because everybody had their photos printed from their negatives. Digital came along and all of a sudden, yeah, they had the option of having your photos but not printing them. And people were then saying, oh, all my old printed photos, I want them scanned and put in my computer and no, the other way around, please get the digital files and print them. Have physical prints that you can hold in your hand. Cause hard disks, I've had. I've lost thousands of images from computer crashes. Yeah, in the past. Now I back up everything twice sort of thing. But, yeah, digital storage mediums are very ephemeral. [00:43:13] Speaker B: Have either of you guys heard of the social media? The social media platform glass? [00:43:21] Speaker A: No, no. [00:43:22] Speaker B: For photographers specifically. And it's. Hang on, let me try and get out of here and I'll bring it up on the screen in case people haven't seen it. It's paid. I'm not sure whether it's a thing. [00:43:37] Speaker A: You lost me there. [00:43:38] Speaker B: No, yeah, exactly. [00:43:39] Speaker A: I like all the ads. [00:43:42] Speaker B: This is the thing. This is the thing. It's paid, but it's ad free and it's sort of. This is their tagline, obviously, at the top here. Fall in love with photography again. Glass is a paid global community platform for photographers. No ads or manipulative algorithms. It's your home for photography. [00:44:01] Speaker A: So it's basically a Flickr again. [00:44:03] Speaker B: Yep, yep. But Flickr was free. [00:44:07] Speaker A: It was, but it quickly, it quickly bottomed out. [00:44:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where I think this is. It's interesting to me is one, like, one thing that I find interesting is obviously, you know, they've put a lot of effort into being able to view the files at a higher resolution on a monitor or whatever. They've got apps and all that sort of stuff. And there's obviously a lot of photographers talking to other photographers. But then someone said, and it resonated a lot with me, they were like, basically, you're only putting your work out to photographers on this platform. Like, no non photography person is going to pay a membership to this site and look at photography. So basically it's just photographers looking at other photographers work and there's no, you're not sharing it with the wider world on this platform. And that's interesting because, you know, photographers with a special skill. I sort of feel like our job is to create work and then share it with people that don't have that skilled. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Well, it's a form of art, isn't it? Like if, if all of, you know, all of the famous paintings of the world were locked inside a paywall. Well, some of them are, but for the most part, galleries around the world are free. [00:45:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And, and look that. So I don't, I'm just checking it now. I do think it is possible to put your work up and link to it and people can view it without the membership. So don't like it is. It is a place, I think, where you can have like a portfolio. I'm just going in there now. But, you know, so we can see this guy's images and I'm not signed in or anything like that. [00:45:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:45:59] Speaker B: So he could link to it, but, but it doesn't have the benefit of, say, Instagram where it can get discovered on the platform by someone who's not. But yeah, you could, you know, so it's sort of, I don't know, it's just different. [00:46:11] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a bit protective too. [00:46:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:15] Speaker A: You know, because it's, it's kind of trying to keep photography alive on social but keep it in a relatively safe space, which is what Flickr started out as. [00:46:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:27] Speaker A: It was a relatively safe space. You could build communities. You know, you'd have astro communities and you'd have, you know, science, photography community, all these different communities in Flickr. But then it kind of, it, it opened up too wide and people just started posting filth and trash. Yeah, you know, it declined rapidly from there on. But yeah, there is, there is a level of protection in here for photographers who just want to provide, who were, who want to, I guess, stay within a peer group discussing their work. [00:46:59] Speaker B: Looks like you can browse by camera as well. [00:47:02] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. [00:47:04] Speaker B: And it has the ability to take in metadata. It's got the settings and stuff like that. [00:47:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. [00:47:09] Speaker B: So look, I think this could be a good thing. Sort of a flickr style replacement for photographers maybe. [00:47:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:17] Speaker B: Where it doesn't have that potential to turn into filth because it is a paid platform. So you're not going to get just sort of just random shit getting put on there. [00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but hopefully it's moderated better. [00:47:31] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it'd be interesting to know. I'm assuming they would have moderation, but it'd be interesting to know how much is required because again, being paid, I guess, you know, you're still going to get some weirdos out in the world, but yeah, that's a big barrier. Sony shooters. What's that? Sony shooters. Oh, like a q three gallery? You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to, I'm going to sign up to this and pay the fee and sign up to it, create an account and start putting my daily shots on here and I'll give you guys an update of what it's like on the inside. Whether this is a thing or not. [00:48:16] Speaker C: You can be the canary. We send down the mine. [00:48:19] Speaker B: That's right. If I don't come out, don't sign up to glass, you don't ever hear from me again. It's no good. [00:48:27] Speaker A: Back to the topic of printing. Justin, do you print any images still? I know you've had a few shots printed. [00:48:33] Speaker B: Yep, for sure. Our house didn't have any for a long time. Now it's got, it's got quite a bit. I'd like to do some more. We had an Epson 3880 as our office printer, myself, and Jim, Jim's got it in his office still now, which I could print from it anytime I want, but it's even just the physical barrier of ithood. Not being in my daily office has slowed down my printing a lot. I used to print out stuff pretty regularly just because it was right there and it was easy to do. And I'm thinking about maybe investing in another one, maybe just, this was an a two printer. I'd maybe just get an a three to keep the cost down. And, you know, printing much bigger than a three, it's probably easier just to get a lab to do it. A lot of the stuff around my house was done at our print lab that we use, that Jim uses now for the wedding business, so. But I, but I also do have a ton of six by fours kicking around the house and my office from when I shot a lot of film. And I've got these packs of stuff from Japan and like, I've opened a lot of them, but some of them I'm just sort of saving to, to bust out and flick through. Obviously I've seen the photos because I get the scans and everything, but then I just got them all printed. And one year I got a heap of rolls of film, a 35 mil film to shoot on my Nikon F five that's still sitting up there. And I also bought my whole family a heap of disposable cameras and gave them all disposables for Christmas. So that kind of Christmas and then summer holiday period, everyone was taking photos with the disposables and I was taking photos with my Nikon. And then I just, I got them all, just, I printed every single frame. And then they're just, they're all just floating around. They've got a scrapbook that they're going to put together from all of them, but they still haven't, you know, it's one of those projects for a rainy day that hasn't happened yet, but the prints are all sitting there. I've got tons. Yeah, tons and tons. Just on my desk. I usually take a couple when we travel from my, my poor dog Ted, that, um, passed away late last year. But yeah, we took a heap of photos with him, just from around the house. So I do print a lot of stuff. Um, but no one really sees it other than me. I don't know. [00:51:06] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's fine. I mean, you. You've mentioned the word pop, polio. Several. And do you, have you found that social media has helped your business at all? [00:51:26] Speaker B: Our wedding business, for sure. It was. It was the thing. It was. It was critical and we put work into it. Definitely beyond that. Not really. Maybe in ways that I don't understand. I'm sure there might have been people I've reached out to when I was trying to build relationships with flow, mountain bike, who I shoot for now, and with mint tours, who I did snowboard photography for in Japan and New Zealand. I'm sure they probably scoped me out a little bit. So there needed to be something on a social profile or whatever. Yeah, my personal one, I certainly didn't have much on there, so they couldn't have put too much stock in what was on there. But our official sort of wedding business account, Justin and Jim, we put a lot of time. One of our key marketing strategies for wedding photography was this was mainly on Facebook before Instagram was as popular was every Monday after the wedding, we would get an album of 30 to 50 photos up on Facebook, like, really, really quickly after the wedding with no one was doing then. I think everyone does it now and then everyone would look at them, tag each other in them, comment on them, and those things would certainly help spread the word about what we did. Yeah. So, yes and no. In terms of a portfolio of work, I would much rather have that living on a website, which I currently don't have. [00:53:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:53:16] Speaker C: I found social media because of my field. Working with media itself. Social media didn't help with the portfolio at all, didn't pick up a single bit of work, mainly because media isn't looking at Instagram or whatever, they look at other media. So the only way I would pick up any extra clients is because they see my work in their own area of work itself. But, yeah, I would suspect, like yourself, Justin, if you're doing weddings, then you would want as bigger social media presence as you could get. [00:54:00] Speaker B: Yeah, still. Still not critical though, you know, word of mouth referrals. As you know, you can build a whole business just on word of mouth referrals if you do a good enough job. But, yeah, for something like weddings, you'd be. You'd be crazy not to add to that with. With a decent social media presence of some sort. But, yeah, but yeah, like, I said, like any of the other stuff that I've done, it's all just been networking, essentially. I don't know what networking? Just. Yeah. Talking to people. Yeah. And then trying to do work for them for free and then do more work. [00:54:37] Speaker C: It is funny how people rely on word of mouth what used to irritate me. But I've come to realize what the upside is. You go on Facebook and then somebody will post a question, is there a plumber in the area? And I'm thinking, what if you just google it? [00:54:54] Speaker B: Just google exactly. [00:54:56] Speaker C: What they're actually after is people recommending a referral. [00:55:00] Speaker B: Exactly. A plumber I can trust who won't overcharge me and I'll show up on time and be nice to deal with. Yeah. That's what they want to know. And that's a. Yeah. [00:55:09] Speaker A: That's because I think the thing with that, Greg, is that when you do Google it, they all have these glossy websites with full of promise. [00:55:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:17] Speaker A: And yet more often than not, the guy that shows up still got his pants halfway down his arse and, you. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Know, I mean, that is standard. [00:55:25] Speaker A: Says he doesn't have the parts for the job. Yeah, exactly. It's a part of the gig. [00:55:30] Speaker B: The, the other tough thing, I think I'd love to know if other people have found this. I found that with the way Google works and the way SEO works now and how tough it is. I know this personally because we used to rank really, really well for camera straps, because our entire website is about camera straps. It is what it is. That's all we do. It's our core business. And then in more recent years, we can't outrank bigger websites like Timu and other things like that because they're just massive. Even though camera straps is a tiny part of what they do and they have almost no information about them on there. And I've found, you know, with things like, say, plumbers, that first result that you might get isn't even in your town. Yeah. It's some, like, conglomerate website that might advertise a heap of different types of plumbers or whatever, or it's just some shitty information site that doesn't give you any real value, but because it's so big, it's outranking, like, local plumbers. And I know Google's probably working to try and balance that out, but I'm often pretty skeptical of anyone that can rank first. I'm like, this person's spending more on SEO than they are on whatever service they're providing. That's how I often look at it. So it does make it tough. [00:57:01] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of the smaller online media sites, regardless of what you're interested in, like for me it's, you know, I watch a lot of gaming stuff because I like video games and so does all my family and a lot of those guys with the more recent Google changes from SEO Rich content that they've found that, you know, Reddit is just dominating because of the volume of traffic. It's not about the quality of content, it's about the number of clicks and eyeballs on the prize. And a lot of these smaller media outlets have like, their traffic and their eyeballs and their clicks have just significantly slashed with the more recent changes in Google. And so the smaller businesses and the smaller outlets, groups, whatever it is, they're struggling to get attention again. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:54] Speaker A: So it does, there does need to be a better balance. It can't be all about whoever pays, wins. [00:58:02] Speaker B: Surely it's what it is at the moment. But, yeah, I mean, in terms of getting, getting your images out of the world, that's where I'm stuck. How do we do that? Or, you know. [00:58:19] Speaker C: Yeah, what's, yeah, to me, I still think, do I have that itch that needs scratching? I don't really. Yeah, I still do my YouTube's because that's an enjoyment thing. It's almost self indulgent. Yeah, I might. You spend several days putting it, making a YouTube and it ends up with 300 views. As a business case, that's ridiculous. But as a personal hobby, just for fun and enjoyment, that's fine. It's pretty cool. [00:58:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think, I know with me when I, from my big trips like to Japan because they were kind of highlights for me and I would take, I think my first trip to Tokyo, I took 7000 photos in the like eight days. You know, part of the enjoyment wasn't necessarily sharing them. I mean that came into it, but it was also about going through them and editing them and, and remembering where I was and what I was doing and what my mindset might have been. And, you know, and often I would, I've printed a few of my photos quite big, some of my favorites, others I've just printed, you know, four by sixes. Yeah, I've got a huge box of them upstairs somewhere. But even those, you know, I think I've shown them to like two or three people. But I think it was more for me just to have something physical that if I wanted to I could put up. And the other thing I did was I made some with some photo books. I had some really nice ones printed. And the first one, from that big first trip to Tokyo, I made a very thick photo book with almost half the images in it, which was ridiculous. And then in my last trip, I just made. I chose 35. I don't know why I chose 35. I chose 35 of my favorite shots. And I did a book for colour and a book for black and white. And, you know, that were. There was only like, you know, 35 pages. But again, you know, they sat on the coffee table for a while and then they kind of get put away and someone spills a coffee on them or, you know. But I think printing, I really like having my. I like having my prints, but I just don't do it. And I don't know whether the investment in a printer is right for me, whether that would motivate me to print more of my own stuff. [01:00:56] Speaker B: Have you had one before? [01:00:58] Speaker A: Not a photo printer. No. No. I mean, I've only got. I've got a. Got a big w down the road. [01:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:04] Speaker A: You know, crap quality, quick turnaround prints. [01:01:08] Speaker B: That's right. The pain of printing is hard to explain. [01:01:17] Speaker C: I've had. [01:01:18] Speaker B: I've wanted to throw that thing through the window so many times when it. You set it to a certain setting and it. And it. You set it to a two. And these sheets of paper are expensive, and I sheet of, like, expensive photo paper, and it start and it prints a six by four on the corner of it, and you're like. You check all the settings. [01:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:40] Speaker B: Why? And. And you just want to smash the thing. But, yeah, I did a. I did a one day printing workshop in Melbourne, I think, with KL or someone like that. I can't remember the guy's name, that Rantaine, but he was like a master printer type person who helped, you know, prepare fine art images for competitions and stuff like that for people. So it was all about profiles and color management, but also refining your edit, you know, before to get the perfect. He was the person that taught me what black point and white point was in editing, because I knew. I knew what they were, but I didn't know he was, like, his simple answer. And I know someone will probably say, oh, that's not true. Was every photo has a black point. Not every photo has a white point, because white point's where it hits to full white. And if you don't have point light sources or something like that in there, once it's hit full white, it's lost detail. And not every photo has that, like a light or something in it, or a bright reflection or whatever it's like. But every photo should have a black point. And if it. If you're not at your black point, which is at the bottom of the histogram, if anyone hasn't seen it where it touches black, you might be not getting a full dynamic range in contrast. So teach you how to set that. There's an overlay in lightroom so you can see. Oh, have I lost everyone? What's happened? Wow. I'm here by myself. Anyway, I'll keep telling the world about this. There's an overlay in Lightroom. One of the shortcuts you can press to get, like, to see, to visualize how much of the photo is in your black point. Hang on, I got Greg Carrick back. Where did you go? [01:03:34] Speaker C: On alternative reality. [01:03:36] Speaker A: Oh, how was it? [01:03:38] Speaker C: It was quite depressing. [01:03:40] Speaker B: It was depressing. Okay, hang on. We've got other Greg back as well. Here he is. [01:03:44] Speaker A: Just got kicked out. [01:03:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:03:46] Speaker B: What happened there? [01:03:47] Speaker A: Oh, it was really shit. [01:03:49] Speaker B: I thought I actually. [01:03:53] Speaker C: Did. [01:03:54] Speaker B: Just turned it off. [01:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry, mate. We didn't mean to leave. [01:03:58] Speaker B: That's all right. I kept on trucking. I was. Anyway, I learned a lot from this print workshop about editing, color management, and printing, and that certainly it gave me. This might be interesting for you, Greg. It actually gave me. I was passionate to print photos, whether it's something I'd taken back in the park. So, say, instead of you going, I know going on a photo walk would be more fun and stuff like that. Get outside. But you might find joy in spending an hour printing some old images. And the process of that, you know, like fine tuning the color, doing a test print going, that's not exactly what I wanted. I might try it on a matte paper instead of a gloss, blah, blah, blah, and playing around with the mediums and then printing it out and then just putting it in a cheaper. A four frame on the wall or whatever, there was a place, I think they still do, and there's a place in Bendigo that made really nice a four frames for, like, $30. [01:04:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:57] Speaker B: So I used to just. I'd go in and buy five of those, all the same color, same style, just keep them in stock, you know, in my house. [01:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:04] Speaker B: And whether I printed something for a gift for someone or to hang on my own wall or whatever, I could. I could print and frame it in a pretty short amount of time. And it was a fun process. And then, you know when you're out shooting and you get that nice shot you're like, I might print that, see how it looks. So I do. I do recommend it. Print is a big investment. It'll make you want to smash it multiple times. Try not to. And it is easier just to send it to a reasonable lab or something like that. And I would probably recommend that for anything of significant size. [01:05:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:05:40] Speaker B: And let the lab do the color management, everything. [01:05:44] Speaker C: I've got a photographer friend who nerds out with printing, and he, you know, he's known in the photo group as. He's the printing expert, so if I want something done, I'll just take him. He's done all the worries. [01:05:57] Speaker B: That's right. [01:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's a key thing about, you know, what we're taking photos for. Like, you know, I know people who take photos and hate the editing process, and they didn't necessarily start on film. They, they just disliked that process of sitting in front of a computer trying to work out, man. Maybe it's, you know, they're not as tech savvy or it's, they don't have the right software or they can't afford the subscription to Adobe or whatever it may be, but for me, that's just as important a part of the process. And it's not that I shoot haphazardly knowing that I can fix things in post. That's not what I'm referring to. I still take the time and the care to get the shot right in camera. It's just I really enjoy that whole, that I know that I'm gonna. I can go home and I can, you know, pop the memory card into the computer, and I can go through the files and work out which ones I want to keep and don't want to keep, and, and start the editing workflow, which I'm always refining. You know, I'm always changing, and I'm playing around with lightroom presets and the Fujifilm film simulations and creating my own filming simulations from those. And I love that. It's just as much a part of the creative process to produce the end product, which is the image. Yeah, but it's what I do with the image afterwards that we all seem to. I think we can all probably agree that we're not quite sure what to do with them yet or where to put them. And whether it's. We don't. That Greg, you know, Greg Carrick gets the satisfaction from taking the photos for himself, or whether it's for a client, whether it be a mountain bike company or a wedding client, or Jim with his boudoir photography, whether they want them on, whether they'll be using them to publish or use for memories or whatever it may be, or whether it's just to share on social media, I think it's. I think it's still a question that's really tricky to answer. But another question that I have for you guys is, you know, we touched on earlier about AI influencing photography and videography more now and appearing more and more on social media alongside traditional digital shots. But with the rise in AI photography, do we as photographers have more responsibility, or any responsibility to post traditional photos to show that there is a reality that we still need to cling to? [01:08:36] Speaker C: Well, seeing as I'm taking photos for myself, I don't really care that much. But the only thing about AI that I find is it's really annoying that you go through Facebook and all of a sudden some image will pop up and straight away, you know, it's fake. And all of a sudden you look at the comments and, wow, isn't that fantastic? All these people, non photographers, are just blown away by this image. They think it's amazing. And you think, that's not even real. I put up real photos and no one says anything, you know, and I have to explain to my friends, do you know, yeah, you like this photo? You know it's fake. Oh, how can you tell? I think, oh, my goodness, AI is not that good. [01:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah. And that girl's got six fingers on her right hand. [01:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah. That's obviously a composite photo of three others. [01:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:37] Speaker C: Of what's real. [01:09:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, people like to believe what they're fed because it means, I don't have to think. It was pretty deep. [01:09:45] Speaker B: That was very much. [01:09:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, sorry. [01:09:47] Speaker A: Went very dark. Um, my horn stuck out a bit. But it makes me wonder, you know, we see, we saw a, we saw it from film to digital, where everyone like, oh, digital photography is going to take over and, you know, what's going to happen to film photography. And we accepted it and we, we moved on with it and obviously we all love it. But then with the rise in smartphone camera technology and processing technology, there was a fear amongst our community that smart, you know, people wouldn't hire photographers because they thought that, well, I can get that on my smartphone. And I've had that example for someone who asked me to, quote, for a job and I told them what it was and, you know, they thought they could do better themselves. So, whatever, it's your event. But, you know, is there a risk to real photographers that AI art or AI photography and image composition could supersede us, could replace us, put us out of business or, you know. [01:10:45] Speaker C: Yeah. In certain fields it's already happening. Certainly just get worse. [01:10:52] Speaker B: Certainly if you want to be famous on social media for images that are, that pop on a tiny screen. [01:11:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:02] Speaker B: You can already see like you say, those ones that you scroll past and it's like, it's like a scroll stopper, they call it, because it's, it's so fake essentially that it's too perfect. It's too perfect and it's um, you know, that's the sort of thing like love it, love him or hate him. That's the sort of thing that the photographer, super famous rich photographer, Peter Lick, you know that guy? Yep. His images had that usually about them almost like this. How did they do that kind of thing. Yeah. And that, that's probably why some of his images sold for millions of dollars. But now that stuff's popping up on social media all the time. But, but in a way that it's even more like not even, how do they do that? But like that place isn't even real. Like that lake doesn't exist. It's just, you know, some blue lake that they've inserted into a mountain scene with a sunrise and an aurora and the stars and you know, like it's, this didn't happen. [01:12:14] Speaker C: So that's like stock photography. [01:12:17] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:12:18] Speaker C: Stock photography is dead now. It's AI. [01:12:21] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:12:22] Speaker C: Yeah, but weddings, yeah, I've said some people say, oh, you're winning, can't get real. That'll be one of the last things. It'll never happen because the wedding is a one off event with one of people. You cannot do that with AI. You have to have a photographer. [01:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's, it's one of those things where it's like weddings, sports, current events, all that sort of stuff. AI is not going to change any of that, but might make, you know, people might start messing with photos in that kind of fake news kind of way. Yeah. More so for clicks and that kind of thing. But I don't think it's going to replace jobs. Yeah, exactly. All that kind of stuff. [01:13:06] Speaker A: There was a photographer a couple of years ago, um, Lisa Saad, and she was an award winning photographer. I think that was her name. She was an award winning photographer. And there was a big controversy because she won an award for like photography for photo of the year or something. And it turned out it was a composite. It wasn't, I don't know if she stole someone else's work or if it was actually a composite, but she claimed it not to be. And then someone pulled it apart and looked at the metadata and the file and worked out that actually it was, you know, it was a composite image. And that's kind of like an early sign of people using technology to manipulate photos. And look, we all do. We all edit photos. Well, Justin's not doing that at the moment. He's going straight out of camera. But, you know, we all manipulate photos to some degree. And where do we draw the line? Like, we have aid noise in lightroom now. And I don't like it. I don't like the way it cleans. It's that it's almost too perfect, the way it cleans up images. Yeah, I'd rather go black and white, slap a bit of grain on and call it art. You know, like, it's, just keep it really simple. [01:14:19] Speaker C: But that brings up another side issue that probably won't get into now. But the clinical perfection of modern lenses, they've gotten so good now that people are using glimmer glass and stuff to bring back some imperfection. [01:14:41] Speaker B: Mist filters, missed filters. [01:14:42] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. [01:14:44] Speaker C: I find that amazing. They're spending a $1,000 on a lens and they're not too good. I'll have to dim it down a bit. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Get out of rock and scratch the front of the glass a bit. [01:14:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:14:56] Speaker B: Get off my digital lawn. Otherwise known as Tony has commented. Is that kind of like some of Chris Benny stuff? Chris, Chris Benny's a automotive photographer in Australia. He's a, he's actually a lucky straps user, one of our early, early adopters from years ago. And he, his product, his images are those ones that you scroll past and you like. You're like, holy crap. Like, that's amazing. But even from the very early days, I'll bring up some of his stuff. He was very heavy into photoshop. He's a master of it. He's actually more into video now than anything. But, like, he's, he's a car photographer that gets paid by some of the biggest. And, yeah, if you saw that, if, if it wasn't done by someone like him, you could possibly say, oh, that's an AI generated image, and they've just sort of slapped a car in or something like that. But when you see the behind the scenes of how much effort goes into these shoots, then you know that it's real. And that's where, that's where it's going to get tricky because an untrained eye might see something and be like, oh, wow, that's amazing. But, you know, when it's coming out of something in the level of these productions, you know, that the work that's being put into it, you know, there would have been a team on this shoot. It would have taken days. Like it's. And it would have cost a lot of money. Um, so. But yeah, it is hard because on this, on a tiny little screen on a phone, you can get tricked into thinking that something is, you know, an epic photo when it's just a generated. Yeah, so anyway, that was, yeah, I. It's interesting. [01:16:43] Speaker A: It is. [01:16:45] Speaker B: But your original point, Greg, which was, do we have a responsibility as photographers? I don't know, dude. Like, I don't know about a responsibility. Like, it's possibly almost going to be like, you know, fighting against a tidal wave with, with some buckets. It's probably not. Not something you can really combat other than just by doing what, you know, to be true to what you want to make. And it'll go where it goes. [01:17:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:27] Speaker B: If you're sort of constantly posting on social media about AI and stuff like that, it's going to distract from you making. Making the content that you should be making. [01:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:38] Speaker B: And it'll find its way, like you say, similar to film versus digital and all that sort of stuff. I do find it fun doing these daily challenges where I'm posting the jpegs and I'm filming myself doing it. So it's very real to me. Like, there's no question. Yep. It's like, hey, you saw me take this photo, you saw the settings it was. And then I posted it and, yep. That might be a little bit crooked or something like that because I wasn't holding the camera completely straight. Normally that would take 2 seconds to fix in Lightroom, but you're going to see it exactly as it was taken. And that's why I enjoyed posting the straight out of camera jpegs. I think it undoubtedly makes you a better photographer. It doesn't mean editing is not part of it, but if you are putting the work out straight out of camera, you're going to take more care each time you take a photo. [01:18:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's like going back to film, isn't it? [01:18:35] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Just not quite as much consequence. You know, you're not paying for each shot and. [01:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:43] Speaker B: All that sort of stuff. [01:18:43] Speaker A: You're not getting a contact sheet back and realizing that you destroyed every photo, you know? Yeah. And I think what's been good about watching your, your daily challenge videos, Justin, is, is the mindfulness that you and I know that you're narrating, what you're thinking, what you're doing and what you're experiencing, but also just the mindfulness. Like, you're not. You're not just pointing and shooting at everything that has a bit of light on it. Like, you're being very considerate about, and you're even choosing not to take the shot. [01:19:11] Speaker B: I was going to say, it's actually funny because I watch some of the videos and I often think, oh, should I have taken that shot so that people could see, like, why I didn't think it was going to work or whatever. Because a lot of the time in the video, you'll see me and I. Because the microphones right here, too, you can hear me breathing as well. I'm walking around, and then you'll see me, like, lift the camera up. And I'm like, nah. [01:19:34] Speaker C: And then I enjoy the base. [01:19:37] Speaker A: Yes, they're heavy breathing. I listen to that as. Just as an audio podcast at night. No, I think it's good. I think it demonstrates that, you know, because I know with your sports stuff and your mountain biking stuff, you'll shoot in a fast burst. [01:19:50] Speaker B: Yes. [01:19:50] Speaker A: And. [01:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:19:52] Speaker A: So that you can. Because you can't. Your brain can't see and think and shoot and frame and compose that fast. No, you get the basics of it, but the camera needs to do a bit of the legwork there with those sorts of environments and settings, especially when. [01:20:05] Speaker B: It'S for a client. And it's like, I can't, I can't. And when you've got a bike rider who's doing laps of this feature to get the shot, I can't just, like, keep sending him back up because I'm like, oh, I think I could do better. Can you go and do that again and again and again? So, yeah, it's. Yeah, there's. [01:20:20] Speaker A: You gotta make it work. Yep. But I like the mindfulness approach of, you know, am I gonna take this shot? Aren't I? And I think, you know, street photography, and one thing I've found interesting watching you is that, and Greg can probably attest to this, that with street photography, sometimes you're just not in the right spot and the light's falling in the wrong direction, and the person's already walked into the shadow. And so, you know, you just walk away. [01:20:49] Speaker B: I'm gonna insert. Insert the man with a briefcase walking in the sunny spot with a shadow. I'll just pop that in later. [01:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah, but, yeah, I think there's that. And I think the other thing with, with, you know, what, who and what are we taking photos for? Is that sometimes people will just point and shoot at everything and deal with it later or not deal with it later. But I like that approach, that mindful, straight out of camera approach. I think it's really important that everyone give that a shot, switch off or go to JPeg. It will make you a better photographer. It will teach you about getting your exposure right the first time. And that's something that we all learned shooting film the hard way, the expensive way, the wrinkled fingers from chemicals way. You know, it will make you a much better photographer. You know, you'll frame better. You'll make sure that your frame is straight, not worry about cropping and rotating later. You know, all of those things. I mean, you can edit jpegs a little, but you can't push and pull them like you can with, with raw files. And, and there's a lot to learn from that. [01:21:59] Speaker B: Before I pull up Nev's comment now, I just. On that, the photographer that I actually learned a lot of that from, and I don't know how much teaching he does anymore. And it's probably not that relevant if you're not into portraits or weddings. But I applied to all my photography, photographer by the name of Jerry Jonas. He was actually from Melbourne. He's now like a Hollywood photographer. But when I was learning, he was like the wedding photographer to the rich and famous in Australia. And he used to like, this is going to be funny. Any of you remember the band Savage Garden? [01:22:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:22:35] Speaker B: Remember when they won, like, every award one year for that? When they had that album out and they won ten arias or something like that? That's what Jerry was like at the, the awards, the AIPP awards and stuff like that for years until he sort of started judging instead. It would just like, everyone be like, oh, it's Jerry put in this year, and everyone see his photos. Me like, oh, fuck, he's. Yeah, he's gonna. He's gonna win everything again. Exactly. So he, I did a workshop with him, and I also subscribed to. He, he used to do, he used to bring a film crew to a heap of weddings. Back before it was as easy to film YouTube videos as it is now. And he would get them to shoot the whole day. And then he could watch it either with or without his commentary that he recorded later on. And so you could either hear him talking to the couple, or you could hear him talking over the top of it later on in his studio, saying, so what I was looking for here was to move them over there because of the light and blah, blah, blah. He. He was huge on shooting Jpeg and getting it right in camera and getting your crop riding camera, your framing straight. Don't crop off hands, don't cry. It's where I learned all of that sort of stuff. [01:23:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:50] Speaker B: And I sort of learnt it from him. And then Jim and I used to edit our photos side by side in the studio and we used to roast each other when we did something dumb like that. Like how crooked. If one of our friends was crooked or if we chopped their hands off or chopped their feet off or something. Something silly. Yeah. So there is a. There's definitely a lot to be said, but for not just mindlessly correcting it in lightroom and actually going, why did I do that? That was silly. I should have just straightened my frame up. Or why didn't I take two steps to the left so I could block out that rubbish bin or whatever, instead of just removing it and moving on with your life. You would definitely get better. [01:24:31] Speaker A: Those that don't like editing, it's the ultimate way to go. It's way better, you know, and plus, you know, if you really want to go really, really simple, you know, like with the. With. I'll speak about Fujifilm because that's what I know best. You know, they've got this, this app, smartphone and tablet app now that you can transfer your jpegs straight to the app and you can edit them on your phone or you can do some minor edits on the computer when you export them. On the camera when you export them. But it makes it a really simple workflow to just have your camera and your smartphone shoot in JPEG. And if you do need to share them with. If you do want to share them with social media or with, you know, friends and family, it's really easy to do. You don't have to have a computer to be a photographer. [01:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. The like of photos app is also exceptional in that regard. That was one of the reasons that I. I shelled out for that Q three compared to, I don't know how Canon and Nikon and stuff haven't, you know, they're far bigger and I don't know why their apps and their camera connectivity is so crappy. I don't know what Fujis is like. It sounds like it's better, but, yeah. [01:25:42] Speaker A: The, like, the app has always been problematic. Yep. The apps, yeah, it's had a pretty rough history. It hasn't always been as reliable or as capable as it should be that the latest version, which is now, it was the Fujifilm camera remote app. Now they've got this Fuji X app, Fujifilm X app, and it supports more of the newer cameras. I think the oldest camera it supports is the XS ten and the XE four. But anything prior to like X Pro one, X Pro two, that doesn't support those. But you can still use the old app for those. But it also has this feature on the, which I find kind of interesting. I don't, I wouldn't use it, but, you know, it, it records your activities and your location. So it does the geotagging thing with your phone, but it actually sets up kind of like a diary. And so it's an app on your phone and you can download your photos and it will record all of your camera settings. It will say where you were, you can add notes to it, and it looks like a calendar, it looks like a diary, you know, with the date at the top. And that app also tracks your activity. So what camera you used, how many shots you've taken, what lenses you use. So in that respect, if you're someone that really likes to analyze what you've done and how you've done it, especially if you're new to photography, it's kind of a nice idea because it tracks it all at a really handy place. So if you're new to photography, and my advice to new people, when I'm talking to new people, people that are new to photography is go and take some shots at this ISO, this aperture, and, you know, this shutter speed, and then come back and look at the photos and work out what went right and what went wrong. And then take note of the settings you had on the ones that went right and note of the settings are the ones that went wrong. And then you go out and you try it differently again the next time. And that's how you're going to learn how to master your camera. And I exposure triangle or exposure square in Greg Carrick's case. But yeah, the app is really handy because it. And then from there you can bounce it straight to, you know, socials, email, your website, whatever it might be. But yeah, shooting in JPEG is definitely a good learning tool. [01:27:50] Speaker B: You mentioned has got some, some good AI stuff here. I don't know if we want to dig into his few comments. It never was on the podcast last week. It's a great interview. It's going, hey, great. Hey, Nev. Nev says, I can see it in the shadows. This is in regards to AI images, I assume, popping up on social media. If you look at the trees in an AI photo, the shadows, I think that means often in the wrong spot. It's bizarre how much adulation they get, but I think it will die down with time. And then he continues. Interesting how much AI is built into a camera as well, with things like auto eye detect and then. Yeah, the new five reals mark two reals and r1 we were talking about last week that have got AI autofocus tracking for sports and things like that. And then following into. I've really enjoyed Justin's videos this week. Thanks. Thanks, Niv. Giving me lots of thought provoking stuff as well. Maybe that's the answer to go completely opposite to AI, authentic photography. Maybe that's a term. I don't know if it's. And it certainly doesn't need to be like, hey, if you don't shoot straight out of camera, you're not. You're not authentic or whatever. Artist yeah, it's a great way to take any of that out of the equation if that's the way you want to go. Same as shooting film. You know, like it. It just sort of deletes all of those questions and then you just can focus in on what you want to focus on. I've actually thought about it a bit as well because I think the Leica M eleven P or something has this new protocol, copyright authentication protocol or something. I don't actually know. Have you heard anything about that, Greg? [01:29:39] Speaker A: Yeah, I have. With Fujifilm. When they have x think the X 100. Sorry, the GFX 100s Mk two. And when they also announced the X 100 Mk six, they talked about this new authenticity program that they're setting up a certification for the. For the validity of a photo that comes out of a Fuji camera. [01:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:06] Speaker A: That there's a way that it kind of stamps in the metadata that can't be foiled, can't be faked and can't be manipulated without that stamp being impacted in some way. So it kind of certifies that this is. This is a Fuji shot. It's real. It came out of the camera. Especially in media and, you know, and obviously competitions and. And things like that, it's important to have that authenticity. [01:30:37] Speaker B: This is the one on the Leica website. And I don't know if that's the same thing. It's called the Content authenticity initiative. Cai. [01:30:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:46] Speaker B: And M Eleven P has that encrypted metadata in compliance with CAI provides an additional layer of transparency to the conception and modifications of an image file, bringing awareness to the file's provenance. I feel like, um, I feel like that is something that's going to become more and more relevant if it's adopted by Fuji canon Nikon. Um, used. Is this going to be used in photojournalism, um, to sort of prove that something happened when they're saying it happened? Uh, and, and is that, you know, is this going to sort of get, I don't know, is it going to get integrated with the whole crypto, blockchain, nft kind of thing to, you know, authenticate original images that were taken at a specific date and time that can't be faked? Yeah, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see. [01:31:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Fujifilm, it was on, it was in May this year, Fujifilm joined the CIA CI. [01:31:54] Speaker B: It's confusing. [01:31:55] Speaker A: It is. We're thrilled to welcome Fujifilm, one of the world's leading camera manufacturers, as a. [01:32:00] Speaker B: Member of the content one, one of. [01:32:02] Speaker A: Them of me as a member of the Content authenticity initiative, joining more than 3000 media and technology companies. So technically they're late to the party, but yeah, so there's all these different standards. They also join the Coalition for Content Providence and authenticity, which is c two Pa. [01:32:24] Speaker B: Okay. [01:32:26] Speaker A: It adds prominence to digital content, enabling content creators from journalists to artists to attach Tampa evident metadata at the point of creation. So I think that's something. And I obviously like, and Fujifilm are seeing that. [01:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:42] Speaker A: You know, this is, maybe it's a liability prevention thing for them. Maybe it's a little bit of survival. I don't know, maybe it's just what photographers are demanding. [01:32:53] Speaker B: I was gonna say, I think it's a little bit of that where it's like, survival in terms of, like, if every photo popping up on Instagram is AI generated, how do we keep inspiring people to pick up a $15,000 Leica M Eleven and post photos that maybe aren't getting as many likes as what this AI generated thing are? Well, let's give them a thing where they can tell everyone, hey, this is, this is it. This is the photo. There is nothing fake about this. So, yeah, I wonder whether it's forward planning, possibly in that, but also possibly there's going to be very professional ramifications in terms of, yeah, if someone claims a photo is faked, which I believe happened, I think, don't want to get political, but I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. Trump claimed that a rally photo from the other lady, Kamala Harris, the new candidate, he claimed that there was no crowd, no one there. [01:33:53] Speaker C: It's all fake. [01:33:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And then, and then all these other photographers and videographers that were there have put. Have sort of said, well, here's a video of me panning around the crowd. I don't think this was AI, so I haven't heard what happened with that. But, for example, if that was, say, if there was only one photo of that situation, if they could have had this to say, no, no, this is. Here's the file. The encrypted. [01:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:20] Speaker B: CIA. CIA. Here's the CIA. They say it's real, so it must be real. [01:34:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Here's the encrypted data from that exact moment when I took that shutter. And an unedited file, this. Maybe that's enough for. Yeah. To sort of quell that stuff. If you don't have a million other cameras and videos and a live stream of the event like they did. Yeah, yeah. [01:34:41] Speaker C: But it gets back to what Greg Cromie said. You know, people will believe what they want to believe and doesn't matter how much information you put in front of them. Oh, it's fake. [01:34:50] Speaker A: That's. [01:34:51] Speaker B: Look that you can't. You can't. Yeah. You can't fix that. [01:34:56] Speaker C: You can't pick stupidity. [01:35:01] Speaker B: Where's this other. One more comment from Nev. I think this is why Fujifilm has become mediumly popular. Not as popular as other brands, but still doing okay is because they have really marketed straight out of camera. I've noticed Lumix cameras has the Luthen now, and maybe it's helping bridge the gap between smartphone users and cameras. I've paraphrased. Yeah, I agree. Fujifilm really did, really did pioneer that with, you know, their look. What do they call them? Film simulations, film sims, especially the x. [01:35:35] Speaker A: 100 series, because they have always marketed that at. Not always, but in the last sort of three generations especially, they've really marketed that at. This is a do it all camera for people that don't want a camera or for people that don't want to use this smartphone. And you can get these gorgeous straight out of camera looks with film sims and they are amazing shots. [01:35:57] Speaker C: Don't get me started on straight out of camera, which is an invitation to get me started on straight out of camera. [01:36:04] Speaker B: So hang on, are you pro or con? Straight out of camera, Greg? [01:36:08] Speaker C: I enjoy it, but I think that the term is misleading or people use it. [01:36:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:36:14] Speaker C: Have the wrong. [01:36:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. [01:36:15] Speaker C: People think straight out of camera means realistic realism. This is what was in front of me. I've manipulated it. But every single aspect of your camera is manipulating an image. [01:36:29] Speaker B: Yes. [01:36:30] Speaker C: You choose the shutter speed that manipulates it. You choose the aperture that manipulates it. Your lens has coatings on it that manipulates the color. You. When you point a camera at something, you are manipulating the image. You're cropping, you're deciding which bit of reality in front of me. I'm going to record. [01:36:50] Speaker B: I've got a book on that. I'm interested to see if you know it. I'll be back 1 second. You guys keep discussing. [01:36:56] Speaker C: So, to me, straight out of camera, people think this is reality, but it's not. You've changed so many things. You decide how you're going to present that picture to people. So you're. You're manipulating and changing and altering things all the time with your photo there and. Yeah, all along the way, every step of the way, every choice you make manipulates the picture. Have you read this book, Errol Morris? No, I haven't. [01:37:32] Speaker B: Believing is seeing observations on the mysteries of photography. It digs into that a lot about what is reality and what we're showing. And they use this. This image as one of the examples and like this. Yeah. So this image probably quite see it. Oh, during a war. And then there's. Yeah, this image with. I think they're cannonballs strewn all across the road for a war photograph. And they actually place the cannonballs on the road for this shot. You know, so it's. It's. It's early. [01:38:16] Speaker C: I've seen this online. It might have been a review of the book, actually, or something. But yeah, I. [01:38:21] Speaker B: And it's very much about how every part of, like you say, what you leave in the frame, what you exclude from the frame every the time of. [01:38:29] Speaker A: Day, you go there. [01:38:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Is creating. [01:38:34] Speaker C: And my work as a photojournalist, the rules are you do not change anything. You don't post process your image to get rid of things or, you know, you have to produce reality. But you go to an event, and I've turned up at some events and I'm thinking, there's not much happening here. This is really dull. Hardly anybody, nothing's happening. So I move in close, I fill the frame with people and stuff. And you give the impression, oh, action. A lot of people here, blah, blah, blah. But if I panned back, there'd be empty space. And you get the same thing in Melbourne. If you go there and some protesters on or something and not much is happening, then you get in close and you. And you make it look like full on the reality is 20 people. [01:39:24] Speaker B: So you're shifting it up or downstream. You can do that with AI, editing and lightroom or you can do it with your brain, your knowledge of how a camera and a lens operates and your position and moving around the frame and sort of. Yeah. [01:39:42] Speaker C: And every choice you make manipulates it. [01:39:45] Speaker B: Correct. But I do think there is. There needs to be some line where. [01:39:49] Speaker A: It'S like, okay, we accept that there's a camera. We accept that we're making choices. [01:39:53] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [01:39:55] Speaker A: But we can do. [01:39:57] Speaker B: Yep, sorry, we don't accept where we don't accept you adding a crowd to a shot or removing a crowd or. [01:40:02] Speaker A: Being chickens and bats. [01:40:04] Speaker B: Exactly. Like they were either there or they weren't. [01:40:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:40:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's sort of. It's interesting though, because it is. Everyone thinks it's black and white and you're right, it's not. It's not. There's a. Definitely a whole spectrum of what can be done to manipulate what you're going to show people and that's why. Yeah. So if anyone wants to explore that topic in more detail, Errol Morris believing is seeing. I found this at an op shop. So good luck. I don't know, it'll be somewhere. [01:40:32] Speaker A: Yeah, somewhere. Very good. [01:40:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Super interesting. [01:40:36] Speaker A: It is a very interesting topic and I think it'd be interesting to watch the AI space, you know, and I'm also a writer and I'm very conscious of how AI has impacted my industry and that of my partner, Sasha, who's a university lecturer, and having to contend with students using chatbots to complete their assignments and their, you know, their written tasks. So there's all levels of stupid in that space as well, so. But, yeah, so we'll have to sit tight and watch it work out where we fit into the space. And I think it's just like another one of those evolutions of visual creation where, you know, it's like we said, we have to accept that there's a. There's a camera. Yeah, we have to accept it. You know, we're capturing a reality with tools that, yes, we manipulate to some degree. And will AI be accepted as just another reality? Just another. Will AI be welcomed as just another thing that we have to accept as part of the creation process or will it. Will it pass? So it'd be interesting to see, but I did see an interesting name on that subject where someone was saying AI should be created to do all the boring tasks so that we can get out and take photos and create art and write beautiful stories with our real brain rather than the way it is at the moment where AI is taking all the creative tasks from us and leaving us with the mundane. So it's. Yeah, it's interesting. It is interesting. Should we jump to the news of the week? [01:42:16] Speaker B: Yeah. What news we got? [01:42:18] Speaker A: Well, western digital have been added again. I recently bought a sandisk. Who? A Sandisk portable SSD. It's only a 1 tb, but I use it for my working lightroom folder. Justin scared the crap out of me when I was with him a couple of weeks ago because he mentioned that he was pretty sure they were the drives that were failing, so. [01:42:44] Speaker B: Well, they were. I don't know if yours was, but they did. They had some. [01:42:50] Speaker A: I know I should check the serial number, but I like to live dangerously. Let's jump to this bit of news about some digital. Can everyone see that playing along at home? Let me just. [01:43:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it's up. [01:43:02] Speaker A: Make that a bit bigger. Western Digital is developing a new eight terabyte SD card under the Sandisk brand. Eight terabytes. [01:43:12] Speaker B: Not big enough. [01:43:16] Speaker A: Not when all you do is shoot continuous high bursts. [01:43:19] Speaker B: That's right. [01:43:20] Speaker C: On your Fujifilm 100. Yeah. [01:43:24] Speaker A: Yeah. But eight terabytes, it kind of made me a bit nervous. Like, I. I think I'm using a 128 gigabyte. Granted, I'm not a. I'm not an event photographer or a sports photographer. I'm just a lowly street photographer. But, you know, eight terabytes, a lot of data. And what if it went wrong? You know, what if. What if you thought, I won't. I won't back it up until I fill it up, you know, and you had a card reader or a fail or you lost it. [01:43:55] Speaker B: True. I would push back a little bit and say, then that cards. The cards, probably not for you. We used to get that a lot. So when we, Jim and I. When I say we, me and Jim, who is not here this week. [01:44:12] Speaker A: No. [01:44:12] Speaker B: We started shooting weddings. And my policy with Jim was we. We buy the best cards we can. We buy the biggest cards we can afford. We put them in our camera. At the start of the day, two cards always shot two cameras that had backups. We shot raw to both. [01:44:28] Speaker A: Yep. [01:44:29] Speaker B: And we did not take those cards out for the entire day. Now, all of the other photographers around town, they used smaller cards and they would swap them out through the day because if they. If something went wrong, they wanted to only lose part of the day and not all of the day. And my rationale was this, there is way more likelihood of something going wrong. Swapping cards than there is a card just erroring out in the camera. And then the chance of that happening to both cards is very unlikely. Stolen camera could happen. We were willing to take the risk of that with our lives, so. And we also said if we lose part of the day, we might as well have lost the whole day, because it's a massive mistake. So that was our procedure. And we never had an issue with more than one card. We have had once or twice had a card fail error. There was one day, I think, Jim had to pull a card out of the camera because the camera didn't want to shoot anymore. So he literally just ripped one out, put in his pocket, kept shooting to one until he had a chance to put a new card in that other slot. So in that regard, if someone's using this for big video files like long shoots, and they just need that space, if it means that they don't have to swap cards during the shoot, it's. It's worth it. But you're probably right. If the plan is to not attach that, that, like, to your computer for however long it takes a street photographer to fill up eight terabytes, that's pretty risky. It could be years. But I actually did this. So when I. When I traveled for ten weeks with the Leica, the photos are still on. I've got a 256 gig in the Leica SD card. They're still on there, but I attached it regularly, downloaded everything. So it was a rudimentary backup, as in, I've got the photos in my camera and I've got them on my computer, and I threw them on a hard drive every now and then as well, because I always back up to three spots. But it was sort of like, yeah, rudimentary backup by having them stay in the camera forever, essentially. [01:46:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:46:42] Speaker B: So that's, that's. That's where I would think. I wouldn't be the first one to buy that eight terabyte card, though. I'd let someone else test it out. [01:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah. A terabyte is going to be expensive. [01:46:51] Speaker B: Expensive. And, you know, when you get in a pro grade. Yeah. If you push the limits of size as well, it's always far more expensive. And there's a chance that might, you know, you might get some failures in that first run when they're still kind of figuring it out. So, yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't run out and grab it, but. [01:47:09] Speaker A: And I wonder how long if you are going to record even video up to eight. Eight terabytes of data. I think your camera would overheat and shut down before you fill the card. [01:47:19] Speaker B: On an s in a camera that's SD equipped? Probably. Yeah, I would probably say so. I don't know. [01:47:25] Speaker A: Cf express. [01:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. Cameras. Yeah. That are just. That are just SD that could handle that kind of. You know, if you're shooting like eight k, I don't think any. Anything shoots eight k to SD card that I know of at the moment, I'm not sure. So, yeah, it's. It's interesting. It'd be interesting to know who they say that cards for. Like, we've developed this for what purpose? [01:47:49] Speaker A: Yeah, they don't really say. Yeah, no, it's all. It's all speculation. But they are also bringing out a four terabyte micro sd. It says it's some here in this article. They're also bringing out your four terabyte micro sd. And. Let me just stop that for a sec. Sorry, guys. So, yeah, so they're going to do the eight terabyte, uhs, one only. So it's not even really fast enough. [01:48:23] Speaker B: Okay, well, that's. Yeah, that's kind of weird. [01:48:26] Speaker A: So it's almost like a bit of a. We've got the biggest and the best for no reason at all. And a four terabyte micro sd. So that's, you know, that's a stunning amount of data on something the size of your fingernail. Your little fingernail. [01:48:38] Speaker B: It is crazy. It is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. [01:48:42] Speaker A: That is. How does it. How does it. How does it work? Yeah. [01:48:48] Speaker C: Video as well. Not just stills. [01:48:51] Speaker A: Well, it's. [01:48:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but like, say that. That kind of. It'd be interesting to know what sort of applications there are for long term lower res video for these things. And also, I was just thinking potentially audio, maybe trail cameras. Exactly. That's what I'm just trying to think of. Like, other applications. Like, hey, we just. Yeah, we set up this camera. It's just going to run for days or weeks or something at a live music venue or something that has a. Throw the SD card in the soundboard and you just literally record every set of every band. Always. Or something. I don't know, I'm just trying to think. There might be applications that are lower data transfer for us. One, but just long time durations with no overheating issues. So. Yeah, maybe we're just not in that world. [01:49:39] Speaker A: Maybe we're not. Maybe we don't. [01:49:41] Speaker B: Crazy though. Like, this is. What's this? This is five terabytes. [01:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:49:48] Speaker B: Yeah. It's awesome. It's nice and big. Like, nice and big, as in five terabytes is a lot of space. [01:49:53] Speaker A: Yeah. And when did they go to the moon? Like, with bytes? [01:49:56] Speaker B: Yeah. They didn't. [01:49:58] Speaker A: That's why the moon. [01:49:59] Speaker B: Don't be silly, Greg. That was all in a studio. [01:50:03] Speaker A: Sandisk are also one last little bit of news about the. The memory and the storage business. They're also developing what they call the first ever. It's got a big asterisk next to it, 16 terabyte portable SSD, proof of concept. So, in other words, they're thinking about it and. Well, proof of concept means that they can show it works, but. [01:50:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:50:24] Speaker A: And they're also going to do a 16 terabyte sand disk desktop version. [01:50:30] Speaker B: Okay. [01:50:31] Speaker A: Which is interesting, you know, and again, it brings up that whole, you know, well, the cost will be monumental to begin with. [01:50:37] Speaker C: Mmm. [01:50:40] Speaker A: And if you're storing that much data, you really want to back up. [01:50:44] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [01:50:46] Speaker A: So, you know, two of them. [01:50:48] Speaker C: You need two of them. [01:50:49] Speaker B: Three. [01:50:50] Speaker A: Three places. [01:50:52] Speaker B: Three places. One of them always. [01:50:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Or not. Keeping it all on your camera forever. I remember western digital a couple of years ago. They brought out. It might be longer now. They brought out a drive. It was like a square little number. It was probably about the size of a sandwich, and it had an SD slot, and you could just plug your sd in it and would just automatically dump it all onto the drive without having to plug it into a computer or. Or anything. [01:51:20] Speaker B: There was one called a na box as well. Remember that? [01:51:23] Speaker A: No, I don't remember that one still exists. [01:51:25] Speaker B: Narbox. [01:51:26] Speaker A: You're making that one up. [01:51:28] Speaker B: Well, allow me to prove you wrong. All right, hang on. Share my screen. Our box, $125 used. It's still on a couple of websites, but I'd say, yeah, this is, this battery. This is it. They were expensive. So, like 1 tb sd slot, a few other things, and then. Yeah, it was water and dust, shock resistant. You basically just plug your card in and it ran an auto back up. Yeah, I think now with cards getting so much bigger, these have kind of become redundant. [01:52:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:52:08] Speaker B: If you can get a 1 tb safe express, like, why would you buy this kind of thing? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, but, yeah, there was a few of those things that sort of come out and then they seem to disappear as well. [01:52:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:52:22] Speaker B: There's a video on YouTube that's literally called Narboxes dead. So I'll look into that. [01:52:26] Speaker C: Oh, there you go. [01:52:27] Speaker B: See what it's on your main. You know, it's got to be true. [01:52:30] Speaker A: Yeah, um, that's all the news I had for this week. It's been a bit of a slow, slow period. Um, posted one last comment. Thanks for the show, guys. Really enjoying it. Have to head off. Have a great weekend, everyone. Stay safe. Thanks, man. To you, mate. [01:52:45] Speaker B: Thanks for hanging out. [01:52:46] Speaker A: Great chatting to you last week. We are about to wrap up the show, but before we finish up, I just want to thank everyone who's been watching along live with us and commenting. [01:52:57] Speaker C: Hi, mom. [01:53:01] Speaker A: Oh, that's, that's our one viewer. Make sure she subscribes, okay? [01:53:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:07] Speaker A: But before we do wrap up, Justin, what have you got in store, creatively speaking, for the week ahead? [01:53:15] Speaker B: Oh, man. I've got to come up with some ideas to do these daily shoots to start expanding my horizons. I don't want to just walk into town every day and see what I can find. So I come up with some, maybe some themes when I get on my whiteboard and come up with some ideas. I'm going camping with my nephew on Friday night, so I think that'll be an opportunity for get some nice sort of camping shots of him hanging out with the fire and stuff. [01:53:40] Speaker C: Yep. [01:53:40] Speaker B: And yeah, otherwise I really just want to, I'd like to explore some smaller regional towns as well. Like do kind of a early morning photo walk through a smaller town. I think that might be a fun way to. For me to explore a little bit and also see what I can get photography wise. So. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's about it. Got another mountain bike shoot on Monday. If anyone's ever wanted to know what it's like to do hybrid photo and video of mountain biking, I've got a video up on that and it's, it's our, my worst performing video, but it's actually the most interesting one, I think. Apparently no one's too fussed about it. [01:54:19] Speaker A: But very specific. [01:54:20] Speaker B: It's quite specific. I mean, you could apply it to any sport, but just switching between photo and video modes using variable nd filters, settings, that kind of stuff, how to frame up a shot for different purposes. Yeah, it's. I don't know. I had fun making it, but don't often end watching it. So check it out. [01:54:39] Speaker A: Cool. Mister Carrick. Oh, what have you got on? [01:54:42] Speaker B: Yes, Craig. [01:54:43] Speaker C: Well, I'm going to be discovering the joys of fish eye lenses I've recently. Well, Tam, yesterday I bought a couple because I use the GFX system and the X system. So for the GFX system, I bought an old vintage Pentax 17 mil. I think it's a four fisheye lens that's going on the GFX. It's got an m 42 screw mount. And for the X series, I bought very cheap, seven artisans 7.5 mil. I think it's 2.8. And that's, like, ultra wide. And it's going to be a lot of fun. I've never had fish eyes before, so I'm going to really go overboard finding out what they're good for. [01:55:39] Speaker A: That will be something to see sometimes. [01:55:41] Speaker B: They're good for accidentally getting your feet in the shot. [01:55:44] Speaker C: Yes. [01:55:45] Speaker B: I've had that problem before. [01:55:47] Speaker A: There's my toes I had to play around with. I think it's Lauer Venus optics. I think they had a four mil for X mount for. [01:55:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:57] Speaker B: What would that equate? [01:55:59] Speaker C: Four mil. [01:56:00] Speaker B: So like an eight mil? [01:56:01] Speaker A: No, no, six. Six, but, yeah, that you could not get your. Your feet, your head, everything was in shot, and the images were spherical like it was. It was impossible to flatten them out properly, you know, so it's a very specific use case for a lens. But, you know, you can have a lot of fun, especially when you've got leading lines and, you know. [01:56:30] Speaker C: Well, the good thing about the GFX is it's also a full frame camera. You can choose. [01:56:37] Speaker A: Yeah, true. [01:56:37] Speaker C: Use either medium format sensor or as a full frame 35 mil. And for those fisheye lenses, I've switched it to 35 mil. And you no longer have the bit of big netting around the corners. [01:56:49] Speaker A: And you just crop it nice. [01:56:51] Speaker C: And you use things at all. Yeah. You're using it as the lens's native focal length, then, so, yeah, very nice. [01:57:02] Speaker A: Nice. Well, we look forward to seeing the results of that one, Greg. [01:57:05] Speaker B: Yeah. That be a YouTube video one day? [01:57:08] Speaker C: Yeah. It'll be a bit of fun. [01:57:10] Speaker A: Yep. [01:57:10] Speaker B: Awesome. [01:57:11] Speaker A: Yep. [01:57:12] Speaker B: And what about you, Greg? What are you gonna do? You got some ideas to get yourself out and about taking photos? [01:57:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I'm gonna head out this afternoon. Typically, after we finish a podcast, I treat myself to lunch at the pran market. I feel like I've earned it. And so I think, yeah, it's not too bad a day in Melbourne at the moment. So I think I'll take my x 70 out and just maybe I'll look for a particular color. Maybe I'll hunt for red. [01:57:42] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [01:57:43] Speaker A: And just see what I find to see what I come across, you know, and I try to build some compositions with red elements in it and see what happens. [01:57:52] Speaker B: Nice. [01:57:52] Speaker C: Yeah. You can do the selective color thing on the fujifilm. So it's just the red and then black and white. [01:57:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I've never actually done that. [01:58:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:58:02] Speaker B: Like that classic shot of. It'd be like a flower in the shot and then everything else is black and white. But the flowers thread. [01:58:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:58:09] Speaker B: You can do that in camera on Fujis. [01:58:11] Speaker C: Yeah. And you can choose different colors. Do you want green or red or yellow? Really? Yeah. [01:58:16] Speaker A: That's why Fujis are superior. [01:58:19] Speaker B: I don't know if that particular style makes them superior. That's definitely something that was like, I was like, when you're becoming a wedding photographer, that was the first thing everyone would tell you is like, do not do that. [01:58:31] Speaker A: Never ever do that. [01:58:32] Speaker C: Yeah, that's how we want not to do. [01:58:35] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:58:42] Speaker A: Everything will be yellow. But look, before we wrap up, I just want to thank Greg for joining us as a co host this week. Great to have you back on board. Always wonderful to have your insights and obviously your experience in the craft is unparalleled. So thanks, mate. It's been an absolute buzz having you back. [01:59:01] Speaker C: Wow. You can write a review for me. Parallel, unparalleled. [01:59:07] Speaker A: Unparalleled wisdom. And Jim's not going to be back next week, is he? [01:59:14] Speaker B: No, I don't think so. I'm not sure. He's not back to, like, the 1 September. So we'll send him a link next week and hassle him and see where he's at, see if he can log on for a couple of minutes and tell us what he's been up to. [01:59:25] Speaker A: Yeah, all right. But look, thanks for watching along at home, everyone. Thanks for those people that have commented. And if you're watching this when it's no longer live, you can watch it on our YouTube channel, the camera life, brought to you by lucky straps. And please feel free to add questions, comments, topics you think we should discuss, guests you think we should get on, or if, even if you want to be a guest, if you're a photographer or a visual creative of some kind, then, yeah, drop us a line and we'll go from there. [01:59:56] Speaker B: If you do want a camera strap right next to Greg's head, look at that. Yes, that. If you scan that code, you'll get 15% off our leather camera straps and belts if you need a belt. So, yeah, if that's you, check it out. [02:00:13] Speaker A: Nice. All right, well, thanks, lads. Enjoy the rest of your day and the weekend ahead. And if you've already, get out and shoot. [02:00:21] Speaker B: Thanks. Yeah, we'll catch you in the next one. [02:00:24] Speaker C: No worries. [02:00:27] Speaker A: Bye for now.