EP30 Jason Lau Talks Pricing, Studios, Fashion and Commercial Photography

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello and welcome. Welcome to episode 30 of the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by lucky camera straps. We're coming to you live from Victoria, Australia. And it's the. What is it? It's the 19 September already. It's like 100 days till Christmas. The Christmas trees are already up in. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Big w. It's all happening. Cameras are getting released. Gopros are coming out. You know, it's that time of the year. [00:00:40] Speaker A: It is that time of the year, isn't it? There's a lot of buzz. There's a lot of buzz and we'll get to that soon. If you're joining us live, thank you for coming along on this journey, this photographic journey. Please don't forget to leave or letheme. Let your comments fly. Ask questions, make comments. We are live at the moment, which is why I'm having so much trouble getting my words together. But don't forget to check out the back catalogue of Camera Life podcast. This is episode 30. We've been, I think we've been maybe doing about ten episodes now since we've. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Relaunched, since the relaunch 20 because, yeah, we did some in 2023 and then stopped for almost a whole year and then back into it and, yeah, I think this is about number ten. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Cool. So, yes, and we're also available on this episode will later be available on audio podcasting platforms. So if you like to go for a jog, I don't know why, or you like to listen to podcasts while you work, then you can listen along. [00:01:44] Speaker B: To the camera live, podcast, apple, all those things. Yeah. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Now I'd like to obviously welcome Justin. And I do have a question for Justin off the bat. You know, what were you like as a dancer back in, in high school and college? Because that was atrocious. [00:01:59] Speaker B: So I can remember distinctly, like year seven and eight formals and things like that. That was basically a strictly no dancing period of my life. And then as I blossomed and grew and got more self confident, I sort of moved up to the, sort of the shuffle in the corner kind of. And that's about, that was about my peak of dancing. [00:02:21] Speaker A: That was your confidence. The shuffle in the corner. [00:02:23] Speaker B: The shuffle in the corner says a lot. [00:02:25] Speaker A: I was in three debutante balls at my high school. I was the page boy at my sister's debutante ball. And I had a blue tux, nice pale blue tux. It was like something out of the wedding singer. And then I was in, I had my, I think, year eleven form or dead ball. And then I was asked back by someone else in year twelve. When I was in year twelve, they were in year eleven. So I was very popular. I had your moves. I don't have them anymore. Speaking of having the moves, that's a terrible segue, but I'd like to introduce our guest, Jason Lau. Jason is a portrait fashion commercial photographer and university lecturer in commercial photography. Welcome to the show, mate. [00:03:11] Speaker C: Thank you so much for having me here. Love being here. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Not a problem. Great to have you on board. Finally Justin got his wish of not having a Fuji shooter on the show. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Yes, I was. When I went to make a coffee before because you guys were just chatting before this episode went live and you said, I remember seeing you at a Fuji event and I was like, oh, he's done it again. He told me this was a Different, you know, Sony photographer and turns out now he's got another bloody Fuji photographer on. [00:03:40] Speaker A: But no, we did meet at a Fuji event many years ago. Gosh, it must be like eight or nine almost. [00:03:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Eight years. [00:03:53] Speaker B: Were Fuji even making digital cameras back then? [00:03:56] Speaker A: Stop it. Fujifilm made the first commercially available. Publicly available digital camera. [00:04:01] Speaker B: I have no. You got me there. [00:04:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't. [00:04:05] Speaker B: I was watching another trivia show on YouTube the other day. I gotta send one through to you. I think we should do a photography trivia show, like a game show one day on the podcast live. I think that would be fun with stuff like that. What was. Who made the first digital camera? That sort of thing. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Anyway, it's a topic for another day, maybe. [00:04:23] Speaker A: Maybe. So, Jason, welcome to the show. Great to have you on board. And we want to hear all about your photography journey. And I know that Justin in particular is pretty keen to find out more about the work you do in lecturing photography students around how to run a commercial photography business, how you set pricing, invoicing, contracts, all the things I'm looking. [00:04:47] Speaker B: For, free advice and mentoring without having to go to uni. So that's. That's what I was. [00:04:53] Speaker A: The only reason we've got you here, mate. It's all about what's in it for us. [00:04:56] Speaker C: No worries, no worries. [00:05:00] Speaker A: But we'll get into that. Just before we do, I just want to point out that both Justin and I are wearing our new lucky straps. Merch. Both got the black and gold going today. [00:05:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Printed in Brunswick in Victoria. [00:05:14] Speaker A: Printed in Victoria. Is that stuff becoming available for customers, Justin? [00:05:18] Speaker B: It will be. We've got tons of it ready to go. I've just got a. And I've taken some photos. When I picked it up some behind the scenes shots, but I've got to do the model photos and, you know, that's a whole thing. So I've got to put them on people and take some white background kind of product shots. [00:05:33] Speaker A: I'm sure Jason will give you a good price on the photography. [00:05:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I trade you a hoodie for two days straight. Straight deal. Speaking of pricing. Yeah, no, so I've just got to get that done and then they'll be up and ready to go. Yelena's got all the products sorted on the website. It's just. They're just not live yet because they're waiting for photos, so it's on me. [00:05:54] Speaker A: And do they ship from the supplier or is Jim's garage. [00:05:57] Speaker B: No, no. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Well, he's away. It's full of Jim's. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Jim's garage. They'll be just filling up. He doesn't. He's not much he can do at the moment. Hopefully he's listening. You'd think he would be listening because he's sitting at home on the couch with a. An operated on leg. But he hasn't jumped in the comments yet. So I'd say, jim, if you're out there, let us know. [00:06:14] Speaker A: Yeah. How you going, mate? Hope you're recovering well. We look forward to having you back. It's been. It's been like a month. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, probably because he went away and then he had surgery. So. Missing out co host. [00:06:27] Speaker A: Oh, and speaking of missing out, we. We took a little break last week. [00:06:30] Speaker C: We. [00:06:30] Speaker A: Justin and I both had a lot of commitments and I ran out of bearded people to run the show, so. So we took a week off. Yeah, we took a week off. [00:06:42] Speaker B: I actually had a. I actually had a photo shoot on the Thursday last week, a commercial photo shoot, which is why I wanted to ask Jason whether I underpriced myself or not. Later on in the episode. It was for a very iconic australian brand, Furfy. Bit of furfy. [00:06:58] Speaker A: The beer. [00:06:58] Speaker B: They. Yeah, the beer. They're more well known, more. Most of their revenue comes from galvanizing and steel products. But yes, they do make beer also. Yeah. Yeah, it was super fun. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Looking forward to it. Are you able to share some. Share some shots? [00:07:19] Speaker B: Share some shots? I might be able to. They're unedited as yet, but I might be able to bring a couple of. They're not. I mean, I really enjoyed it. That was like this, you know, welding, all that sort of stuff. Actually got to photograph the galvanizing process, which is pretty intense. A lot of chemicals and heat and stuff going on, so I couldn't do the whole lot, but I could get in there. It's my favorite kind of work to do. Very. There's no posing. It's just people doing their stuff. There's no lighting. There's no, it's just like, the factory's operating, and they just got to cruise around all day and take photos. [00:07:51] Speaker A: So it was street photography in an industrial facility? [00:07:55] Speaker B: Yeah, documentary photography, but it is kind of that street thing. Like, I would, I would literally find, like, a nice composition of what, whatever, and then just wait for, like, a forklift to drive through. There was no, like, hey, hey, can you guys drive a forklift through here while I take the shot? It was. I would just, like, prop up and wait, you know? [00:08:10] Speaker A: Yep. Nice. [00:08:12] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. They'd be watching me being like, what's this guy doing? I'm like, don't worry about me. Go about your business. [00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:19] Speaker B: Anyway, I like to do it. It was cool. [00:08:22] Speaker A: Let's dive into our guest, Jason. We want to hear about your story before we get into what you're doing at the moment and before Justin gets his, his pro bono work out of you. What was your earliest recollection of being interested in photography, and where did that lead to? [00:08:43] Speaker C: Well, I actually began my creative life as a painter. So when I went to universities to study art, I actually thought I'd be a painter. And I had my first couple of photography classes. It's one of those general art classes in first year, I found that I didn't struggle with the work as much as other people did. I know it sounds really weird comparing myself, but, like, I kind of. It felt logical to me, and it felt. And. But when I talk about doing photography, I mean, film photography. So when I studied, digital cameras actually were not around. So it was mostly a dark room subject, and I loved it. I loved the alchemy of it. You know, it was a very physical way of understanding, understanding that light got captured onto a medium, and that medium, when projected onto another light sensitive medium, created a photograph. And that amazing process really helped me understand that I could take moments on the world and put it onto a piece of paper. And that actually blew my mind. And one of the things I enjoyed Washington. You know, the difference between a photographer and painter for me was that I could get out of my own head and rather than wake up and go, what am I thinking feeling today? I could ask my question, what's going on out there? What's going, what's happening in the world today? That I can interact with. And anyway, 20 something years later, it's still that feeling like I wake up and I put a camera in my hand, and what's available to me in the world, you know, expands. It becomes different, and, you know, doors are open because I can create a moment from life and have someone else sort of view it, enjoy it later on. So that's my earliest memories, I guess. Still stays with me today. [00:10:38] Speaker A: I love that description of the alchemy of film photography because it is pretty bizarre and magical and, yeah, it's absolutely amazing. [00:10:47] Speaker C: I mean, you put a white piece of paper into chemicals and, you know, you wait for your projected image to appear, and then you see the grain form and. And you kind of go, that's. That's it. That's. That's the moment I shot. Or even just when you process the film, is that sort of nervousness. Did my film work? And you pull it out, the chemicals roll, you wash it, look at it and kind of go, I've got a minute. I've got an image. Something happened. [00:11:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah. I recently shared with Justin, although he usually doesn't read my messages, and it was a YouTube video shot entirely on film. [00:11:27] Speaker B: I did watch some of that. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Oh, you did? [00:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:11:30] Speaker A: Fascinating. [00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I forgot to reply. I'm sorry. I did watch some of it, but I've got it. I've actually still got the tab open to finish watching the video because I got busy about five minutes into it. But it is fascinating when they start talking about the, the cost of and, like, how many frames to shoot video on 30 film. [00:11:50] Speaker A: I was like, whoa, he's going, now's $100. [00:11:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, he just. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Now's a $100. [00:11:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:11:55] Speaker B: He was like, we'll wait yet another hundred dollars. Yeah, it's, running the. Running the film through. [00:12:01] Speaker A: It's really fascinating. And it explains a lot about the alchemy. Not as. Not as deep as it could have, but it talks about the different frame sizes for different cameras and how super eight looks. And they made sort of scale, actual scale models in orange cardboard of the celluloid. And then that, in green cardboard, they had the cutouts of what the frames would be, and they showed how each of the frames would, would appear on the celluloid strip. It was really fascinating. Really cleverly done, aside from the fact that the whole thing probably cost a fortune to not only film in, because I had two or three cameras going, not only film in celluloid film, but also to process it and scan it and like, crazy. Gosh. But it was really fascinating. Often we talk to guests on the show about where they started, and it always lights me up a little bit, hearing about how other people started in the dark room. And I felt the same, but it was quite magical. The whole, we've got it, you know, loading a spool or unloading a spool in a bag, and then, you know, going into the dark room. And that whole process was just phenomenal. It felt like. Yeah, it felt like true chemistry, which it was. It is, let's face it. [00:13:24] Speaker C: And the weirdest thing of doing dark room was if you started your work sort of later in the day and you've been working in there and you step outside, it's nighttime. It's like you've been transported in a time machine. I don't remember it being late. You walk out, you're all disorientated. You stink. Chemicals. It's very visceral. Wonderful. [00:13:44] Speaker B: It's like coming out of a nightclub. [00:13:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:47] Speaker B: Much the same chemicals. You're like dehydrated daytime. [00:13:50] Speaker A: What the hell? [00:13:51] Speaker C: Yeah. Bottom. Your shoes are sticky. [00:13:53] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if I told this story before, but I. When I first started, I had a mate, Luke, who we both shot film. We went to different art schools, and his parents had moved off to their retirement home. So he had this sort of big house near where we grew up, and we converted his parents ensuite into a dark room. [00:14:15] Speaker B: Nice. [00:14:16] Speaker A: But because it was plumbing. So we had, you know, and we had drainage and plumbing and the essentials, but we also needed drainage and plumbing for our homebrew kit. So we set up benches around the kind of the perimeter of the walls. Blacked everything out, and everything below the bench was homebrew, and everything above the bench was photo processing. Wow. You can imagine the sort of work we got done. [00:14:45] Speaker B: That is cool. [00:14:46] Speaker C: Well, just as long as you drink the right thing, that's fine. [00:14:48] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, true. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah. You don't want to get anything mixed up there, do you? [00:14:54] Speaker C: This id eleven is delicious. [00:14:58] Speaker A: So, Jason, you were educated in photography. Do you still paint? [00:15:10] Speaker C: No, but I spent quite a bit of time over lockdown, drawing pictures of Batman on my iPad, so that was quite nice. [00:15:17] Speaker A: I think I remember that, actually. I remember that. You were sharing them, weren't you? [00:15:23] Speaker C: Yeah, I was. [00:15:24] Speaker A: I do remember that now. [00:15:26] Speaker C: So what was the most frivolous but focused thing I could do during that time? Because obviously work got very quiet over lockdown, because if no one's allowed to work, you've got nothing to shoot apart from a few afternoon photo walks. But yeah. So I spent my time drawing Batman on my iPad and it was quite fun. [00:15:45] Speaker B: That's awesome. [00:15:46] Speaker A: Very nice. Similar to you, I went to art school because I wanted to be an illustrator and that didn't work out. But every now and then I pull out a sketchbook and doodle and go, oh, it's too frustrating. I'll just go take a photo. It's quicker. [00:16:04] Speaker B: I could draw this in a second click. Yeah. Multiple with more detail. [00:16:10] Speaker A: So what was the first camera that you remember, the first film camera that. [00:16:13] Speaker C: You remember shooting with that would be the Minolta XG two film camera. And it had a fixed 50 mil. It's funny thinking about my students today. They have amazing cameras, stuff that I couldn't even imagine shooting back in my day. I shot most of my course on my 50 mm 1.7 Roko lens. Later on in third year, I think I bought a zoom, but it was a terrible, cheap third party zoom and the colors were all weird. So I think I went back to my, my 50 mil and, yeah, it had a really annoying feature. It had to be to use the light meter, you had to like turn the dial to automatic, get your light reading, and then turn it back onto manual because like, once you're in shutters changing your shutter speed, it actually didn't give you a light reading, you know, but when you, when you're, when you're starting, you don't realize any difference. This is just how I. [00:17:14] Speaker B: That's the process. [00:17:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the process. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Interesting. And then you, you finished up your course. I assume you got a certificate out of it. And what was the next step for you? [00:17:28] Speaker C: Fresh out of, fresh out of uni? I, well, I briefly, I went and worked in a petrol station because I just needed a job. But that, that made up money so that I could go to Europe for, for three months. But once I came back from that, I actually got a job at Ted's camera stores. [00:17:45] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:17:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So I worked there for about five, six years. [00:17:51] Speaker A: Yep. [00:17:52] Speaker C: And it was actually a really exciting time to work because it was in the early two thousands and people can start to age, work out my age from this information. But it was really exciting because it was actually, I came in around the time where the first digital cameras started getting sold, you know, to, to the consumer, you know, 1.3 megapixel canon cameras. I sold a 1gb micro drive card, 1gb for $1,000. [00:18:23] Speaker A: 1Gb. [00:18:25] Speaker B: Are we going to be one thing? Because 1 tb CF express at the moment is about $1,000 like, what are we going to be saying in 20 years? Like, oh, remember when 1 tb was a $1,000? [00:18:40] Speaker A: That's like those memes. Yeah, it's like, it's like those memes, you see where they say, you know, your smartwatch has more, has ten times the amount of computing power as the moon lander. And. [00:18:52] Speaker B: And, you know, and then they follow up with, so how did we go to the moon? [00:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah, so how is that possible? [00:18:57] Speaker C: They didn't, but it was really exciting because there was a real struggle at that point because film was still a little bit better than digital cameras. So there was that. There was a genuine decision for the customer that came in, should I buy film camera or should I buy a. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Digital convenience versus quality? Was it that kind of thing? Like, and it was sort of like, you are. You're taking the easy way out, getting the digital but crappier camera. A professional would still shoot film kind of thing. [00:19:28] Speaker C: That's right. Because the digital cameras were still compact cameras. There were small sensor cameras, low resolution. The batteries lasted for about 20 minutes until, you know, until lithium batteries later on came in. They were good, but they were also a real pain to use. And, you know, like, if you had an SLR that, you know, you don't have to think about batteries on your holiday. Let's say you go, you. The lens was superior, things like that, and. But, yeah, it was a real interest. But what was also really fun was every digital camera that came out, every tiny little generational increase was very exciting. It'd be like, oh, wow, this one, one megapixel became a two megapixel, became a three megapixel. And then, like, some of them would have little twisty screens. Some will be like, almost like a pistol style, you know, design. And it was truly, truly innovative. [00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Everything was like, what angle are they gonna take on this? And really try something different? Because I guess there was probably that those early days where manufacturers were like, well, now that it doesn't need to have a standard film style back design, we can make it any shape. And turns out photographers want it to leave it the same. Don't touch it, just make it the same. But, yeah, I can imagine the designers in those companies would have been just going, oh, we can do anything now. This is, you know, we've just got to deal with a sensor and then all of the, all the different components, we can shape it. Yeah. Like a, like a hand grip or with a flip out or any of those kind of things. [00:21:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I remember my first Sony digital camera and it was. I can't remember the name of the. Right. Was it cyber shots? [00:21:07] Speaker C: Yeah, they're all cybershots. [00:21:08] Speaker A: And they were. Yeah, they were like a brick, but they had one end was rounded where the. With the lens was. [00:21:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:21:14] Speaker A: They took those weird long Sony memory cards. You could. There was no third memory option. Yeah, the memory and you just. And they cost a fortune for like four megabytes, you know. [00:21:26] Speaker B: Good job, Sony. [00:21:27] Speaker A: Yeah, good job, Sony. [00:21:29] Speaker C: When I first started, there were shooting that, we were selling the Sony Mavica FD 73, which took a three and a half inch floppy disk. [00:21:37] Speaker B: Nice. [00:21:39] Speaker C: That is, it was like a brick with actually a ten time zoom lens, which was quite impressive back then. And. But, yeah, it shot a half megapixel photo and I think people paid it nearly a $1,000 for it. [00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's such a big leap to go from, you know, what did we have, like 100 something years of film photography to go from that, to trust in digital, that's a huge leap for people to make. I mean, people new to photography. Well, you know, you can either spend all this money on film and processing and cameras and lenses, or you can just get this one and done. Here's a little thing. You plug it into your home computer when you're done with it. [00:22:24] Speaker C: Well, here's the journey. When I first started, we were selling 1.3 megapixel kodaks and cannons. And in about a space of six years, when I left the job, we were selling the. I think there was the eos ten d digital SLR for about, you know, $1500, something like that. And just in that small half decade, it. The world absolutely changed in photography. And it was. It was absolutely phenomenal to think. The first camera I held and the last camera I held when I worked, there was just worlds of unrecognizable. [00:23:01] Speaker B: And then the next. We'll probably talk about this at some stage. [00:23:06] Speaker C: Probably. [00:23:06] Speaker B: But the years following that is when the profession of photography changed pricing and everything changed because the barriers were lowered and more people were sort of flooding into the industry. Absolutely, yeah. And it wasn't as stressful to, you know, you could. You could double check if your images were actually working while you were shooting a wedding or something, as opposed to, you know. Yeah. The fear. Nev's actually asked. Hello, nev. Good to see you. [00:23:32] Speaker A: Hey, nev. [00:23:32] Speaker B: Always reliable. Nev, in the comments, asked a question is saying the GFX 500 megapixel sensor will be a thing. It probably will be in two years or something. I found it a struggle to swap over to digital. Just everything was different. Did you find it difficult, Jason? [00:23:52] Speaker C: Well, question. In my early photography live, I did shoot a lot of weddings as well. And probably the most difficult thing was the post processing, because you gotta remember when, you know, when I shot a wedding on film, I would have a six or an eight pack of, you know, film, various isos. But at the end of the day, I would just grab my film, take it to a lab and just go, I'll pick this up tomorrow. That was, that was post process. Post processing was literally taking the duds and just chucking them in the bin. Taking the prints and chucking the duds in the bin, yeah. And, and the biggest shit was knowing the look that you like. And then all of a sudden it was your responsibility to get that look on computer. And, you know, being sort of the first generation kind of shooting individual. It was like, I don't know how to get that look. How do I, you know, RGB channels and things like that or whatever, you know, color curve. I mean, I was familiar with Photoshop and things like that, but it was a pain. It was, you know, to have to open a photo, edit the photo, close the photo, and. Yeah. And then when Lightroom came in, that made life a lot easier. It was actually after Lightroom came out that I decided to make the switch fully to digital, because then I can't, I could actually fathom processing all that work, rather than opening, editing and closing. And also, obviously, Lightroom offered non destructive editing, which meant I, every time I don't, I didn't have to keep resaving images, which, which meant I often, you're either saving huge tiff files or you're losing quality resaving JPEG files. So that was a big thing. And it still took a few years to kind of get the look that felt like what I wanted. [00:25:40] Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. [00:25:42] Speaker A: And where do you think that's gone now? Do you think that people are still striving for filmic looks or do you think people are going for realism is perfectionism? [00:25:51] Speaker C: Um, I think we're in that era of, I think it all exists at the moment. So there are people who really love the retro, you know, look of it. And, you know, I see people often post food issue. And I actually wrote an article on, for f stoppers many years ago on why can't the JPEG just look better? Because, you know, in. So you go back five, six years ago, jpegs were just really flat, uninteresting colors. They were pretty neutral, but they didn't have the character of, let's say a provia or a Velvia setting or something like that. And both available on Fujifilm on VG film. That's right. And since then. Yeah, like I said, I feel like. So there's, you know, for. Depending on the generation, I think. I think if you were, if you're a Gen Z, the aim is actually that nostalgia to them is photos from a two megapixel point in shoot. [00:26:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it's becoming. [00:26:58] Speaker C: Trying to edit. Yeah, it's becoming things. They like that flatter look. And, you know, there's, in a weird way, more trust in a photo that is less edited for that particular generation. You know, it's going to become a. [00:27:12] Speaker A: I think it's a really good point. I think that's going to become a much bigger topic too, because you look at AI generated photos and. And they're just too. They're too good. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Hyper real. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah, hyper real. Yeah. You know, once that are done properly. Yeah, she just on that and talk about writing articles. I was asked to write an article recently for new software that's just come out and it's AI photo manipulation. So basically you take a photo with yourself, a selfie with your phone, and then you can basically make yourself look like a supermodel and put yourself in a whole range of different situations. You can create fake girlfriends. And I said no, because morally it didn't feel good to me to support that because the tagline on the product was, fire your photographer. And obviously that hurts all of us. But aside from that ridiculous kind of subheading, we're seeing it used in really terrible ways. And recently in Victoria, in Melbourne, I think there was a couple of schools where students were using AI to create deep fakes of female students in compromising situations. You know, there's a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done around it. But yeah, I think there is that trust element of, you know, and now we're seeing it like with the presidential election in America, these fakes are being made of people supporting different people. And I think there is that need for kind of trust to be rebuilt in imaging. Yeah. [00:28:47] Speaker B: And I think it's going to find a way. I've been thinking about that a lot lately as well. I think it's going to find a way. It's gonna obviously take some time, but people are going to want to know something was a real moment as opposed to AI generated. And we're gonna figure a way out to do that. I don't know what it's gonna be, but, yeah, because there we. No way to sense, like, to not, what's not censor it. What do you call it? Like, regulate it. Because the nefarious people can always get like that. They don't care about regulations. Like, regulations aren't gonna stop the, I guess the equivalent to hackers creating AI stuff. So it's not that that will solve it. It's like somehow we will figure out a way that you can, I don't know, using, hopefully. Let's get the, let's get the blockchain going. Let's somehow stop it. NfT, every, every photo we take or something. [00:29:44] Speaker A: No, we talked about that a couple of episodes ago. There's that certification thing that they're exactly. Yeah, I think, like, as well. [00:29:52] Speaker B: And that's why I love doing the POv videos as well, because it's like, and I know, who knows? In the future you might be able to deep fake a video of you taking a photo or something like that. But it's like, if I've got a camera pointed at my camera while I take the photo, it's like, hey, that's, that's, that's me taking a photo. Like, I was there. That's what happened. So it's kind of. But yeah, it's gonna be an interesting situation. Yeah, we'll figure, we'll figure it out, but it's gonna get weird. Weirder before it gets better, I think. Yeah, yeah. [00:30:22] Speaker A: So you eventually made the shift to digital. Do you remember what your first digital camera was? Did we cover that? I don't think we did. [00:30:27] Speaker C: Oh, let's see. [00:30:30] Speaker B: Working in a camera store, you would have been, like, able to pick whatever you want. You're looking around. [00:30:35] Speaker C: We used a lot of them, but I also did love, I love film photography, and I think that's because of that. It made the transition quite difficult. You know, I had my canon EOS 50 Ethereum film camera with the eye control focusing. And, you know, I loved, I loved shooting film. And it was actually, I felt like I had to surrender part of myself when I switched to digital at first because I. It, it actually felt like a step backwards. I think my first camera was the EOS ten D and I think all of eight megapixels or something like that. And, yeah, I actually sort of skip the consumer and sort of went to sort of the prosumer camera just because if I was spending that money, I had to make that money back that was sort of my justification to myself. And, yeah, I didn't love it at the start, actually. I had to buy a bit of glass because digital, you know, once you shoot, you want to zoom in. You want to check the detail and things like that. It was a bit mushy. It didn't have the bite off grain at the start. The focusing was okay on it and. But, yeah, that was my first camera, I think. Yeah, I. From there, I. What did I get then? Yeah, moving. Moving on to the things. Mach two, mach three s, things like that. [00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:05] Speaker C: So I sort of progressed quite quickly. The 5D was probably one of the last cameras I use when I was working at Ted's cameras. And that was a wonderful camera, that. It was the first camera that made me believe that it could. That's it. We've done it now. We've beaten film. And the colors on it were fantastic. And it felt true to life, but warm and interesting. So, yeah, so I very, very quickly switched to the 5D system. [00:32:36] Speaker A: Speaking of, let me just jump in there quickly. Nev has said Fuji. It's why I can't leave Fuji now. They are the only ones that you can get that look we were talking about earlier without having to do 200 things to the photo in post. And oddly, I edit Fuji photos way less. [00:32:53] Speaker B: I have a question, NeV, you can throw in the comments. One, what do you do? You start with one of the Fuji profiles. But in Lightroom, on your raws, is that how you start your edit and then just tweak it from there? Because I have no problem editing my Canon files. I've got a style that I work and they're all pretty much the same. Maybe a couple of slightly different styles, depending on if it's. If I want more of a film look or more of a true to color look for my commercial stuff. And that's basically it that I don't muck around with looks, you know, I know what I like with the Leica Q three. I love their profiles in the camera. I shoot Jpeg with it a lot raw and jpeg. And I cannot replicate the JpEG in Lightroom on one of their dngs. I just cannot get it to look. They've got a Turner profile built into the camera. And I love the way it looks. And I don't know what it's doing to the colors. I need to find like a wizard on color science and stuff like that to build me a profile. But what I don't understand is why Leica, it seems like Fuji have done it is there. If you have a Fuji Jpeg and then you put a Fuji raw into Lightroom and select that profile, does it look almost the same? [00:34:15] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. It depends on the color balance, but for the most part, yeah. [00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Whereas I start with the. I'm like, that Jpeg looks awesome. I just want to recover the highlights a little bit more because it. And the latitude is in there, in the DNG. Because I put the DNG out. Yep. Highlights are all there. It's all good. I've exposed it correctly for, like, being able to work with the latitude of the DNG, the raw file, but then I cannot get it to, like, look the same as the JPEG, and it bugs me. [00:34:47] Speaker A: So you can't access, like, a profiles in Lightroom like, you can with Fujifilm. [00:34:51] Speaker B: You can. You can do one that's called embedded. There's going on a rabbit hole on the Internet on this. So you can get into the profiles in Lightroom, go to, like, show all profiles. There's a little hidden button. You can see all of the possible profiles you could put on that thing. And there's one called Leica embedded, which is supposed to then use the embedded profile from the camera, but it's not. It's not the same. It's definitely not the same. [00:35:18] Speaker A: So I don't know if there's any $10,000 on that. [00:35:22] Speaker B: Yeah, not so much. It is still far superior image quality to any food you film camera. But it bugs me. It bugs me that. Yeah. I can't just, like, start with, with that look that I already love out of the camera. They've nailed it. The colors are perfect. It's exactly what I want, and I just want to be able to just slightly tweak it and you can't do that. So I hope they fix that or something, but, yeah. So what's Nev said? He said raw and edit from scratch mostly, but the pic still has a different look. Fuji raws are just different. That sounds like a, like a user. You could replace Fuji with liker in there, whatever. A 3d pop something. His lenses, they got magic in them. [00:36:05] Speaker A: They do. [00:36:05] Speaker B: Anyway, what were we talking about before we got sidetracked? [00:36:08] Speaker A: Jason. We're talking about Jason. Before Jason made it all about you and your. Yeah. Hi. Hi, Jason. Welcome to the show. So you left Ted's and you decided to become your own boss. Is that when that kind of took place? [00:36:25] Speaker C: I actually spent seven years working as a high school teacher after that, so I taught art and photography. So I was the main photography teacher. But I also got to teach painting and drawing, which was wonderful. [00:36:40] Speaker B: That sounds fun. All of your skills together. [00:36:44] Speaker C: I loved it. Yeah. [00:36:45] Speaker A: I just want to interject there for those of you that are watching along. Yes, Jason does look infinitely youthful, but his, his handsome young man looks actually hide the fact that he's 73. If you add up all the years that he's been doing things, I was. [00:37:02] Speaker B: Gonna guess 26 and I was trying to add up, I was like, right. So he started off shooting film that doesn't add up quite right. But anyway, we'll see. [00:37:09] Speaker C: I often tell people, most people mistake me for an impressive young person rather than a very average middle aged man. [00:37:17] Speaker B: Nice, nice. [00:37:18] Speaker A: I think we can all agree with that. I mean about ourselves, not about you. Sorry. [00:37:22] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:25] Speaker A: High school teaching. Are you a brave man? [00:37:30] Speaker B: Hang on, so you had to monitor kids in a dark room. Was that part of you guys have a dark room? Wow. [00:37:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:37:36] Speaker B: People dumb shit in there. Yeah. [00:37:38] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, yeah. I, I mean, especially when we were loading the films on into the canisters. That means you have 15 students in a class because there's an elective and all the lights were off. [00:37:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:54] Speaker C: And I think one, one class I, there was a stack song, so in the dark room. [00:38:02] Speaker A: Stack. [00:38:02] Speaker B: So I've heard that for years. [00:38:04] Speaker C: I had to use my grown up voice to break that one up. [00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:08] Speaker B: Because that was in general they loved. [00:38:10] Speaker C: It, but in general they loved it because we, instance, we didn't have time to muck around because like developing a film was so time sensitive. I was like, we have 20 minutes to get this right or you'll have nothing. And to be honest, my students learnt photography really, really well. I would actually say to them, if this doesn't work, you're only going to find this out next week. So when you're taking your exposure, make sure you get your exposure right. Make sure you get your focus right. [00:38:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:34] Speaker C: And yeah, you know, otherwise to do it again, it's another week and a half. So if, and by the time they finished my subject in year ten, they could operate a fully manual film SLR and develop the film by themselves. Because I say to them, by the time you get the VCE, I don't want to teach you photography anymore. I want to teach you how to think about making interesting work and learn this. And they did. And I even warned them, once we switched to digital, your work will get worse and some of them will come back all sheepishly like, yeah, it got worse. I stopped thinking about how to, how to frame and take my exposures just left on auto, and it's not as good. And then they, they mature through that again and they get better again. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Wow. [00:39:22] Speaker C: Yeah, that was, um, that was seven years of doing that. And then I think, obviously, towards the end of seven years, I, I realized that I'm teaching other people to be great photographers. I want to go be a photographer myself, so. And that's when I made that switch. I was actually, you know, for anyone there who's out there thinking, you know, is it too late to start or change something? I was in my mid thirties when I had that thought. And when I transitioned to full time photography, I was, you know, 36, 37. Around then, you know, I quit. Was arguably one of the most secure jobs in the world to do one of the least secure jobs in the world. And I remember waking up the day after I quit. I was like, I'm out. I. Everything now that happens is on me. If I don't, if I sleep in tomorrow, that I sleep in, if I don't make money tomorrow, that's, that's on me. And every decision was then, you know, I was. No one was going to give me work. I had to go and get the work. [00:40:18] Speaker A: It's liberating and scary. [00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. [00:40:21] Speaker C: Liberating is a perfect way of putting it. [00:40:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I like what you said about how, you know, when you, you need to mature again, you know, when you kind of get used to becoming lazy with a digital camera, you're talking about one of your students. It just reminded me of Justin's recent efforts on his 30 day challenge of getting out, shooting jpegs for 30 days and looking for, you know, and having to be mindful of the composition and the lighting, you know, everything, because he wasn't going to edit these, he was going to dump them out. And he, you know, and as you said, justin, you, you had the pov camera on your chest. We all could hear you breathing heavily and what you drink your coffee. But it was also interesting to see that what you, what you were shooting is what you were posting, not only on YouTube, but on all the socials. And, and I think it's a really important lesson about not just trusting on it on a pasm dial to take the photo for, you know what I mean? [00:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a very good point, Greg, because I think it's, it's the fact that I was filming it and also posting them. And there was that in the back of my head that even I was just doing it for myself. Other people were going to see this, and I was completely cool with that because I've kind of. It's very freeing, actually. So, like, I've been a professional photographer for ten years, and, you know, like, full time for most of those paying work from clients. So there's this thing that builds up in your head about, like, the quality of work you should be producing. And it's very freeing to stop worrying about that and just post whatever it is that you get. But then it also still, it made me care a lot more about every single shot as a, like, in a, in a sort of a shooting film kind of way. But instead of me worrying about, like, wasting film, I was worried about, well, people are going to see this, so do a good job, you know, like, try. Try and find the best composition I can, rather than just, like, take a shot over there. Take a shot over there. I'll see what works. It was like, um. Yeah, really? It definitely did slow me down. A similar way to when I've shot film in the past as well. [00:42:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it was obviously being mindful because you were, you were thinking out loud about your process and, you know, it wasn't like you were just spraying shots, you know, you wrong with. No, no, there's no. But you would set up a shot. Yeah. And, but, I mean, with this challenge you were doing, you know, it really slowed you down. You could tell that you were being mindful because you would frame a shot and we could see it, obviously, because of the, the chess camera, and then you'd go, no, that's not working, and you'd walk off. [00:43:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:20] Speaker A: You know, and I think that's the sort of thing that we used to do in film photography because, you know, like, with that film video I talked about earlier, you know, every shot is a, is an investment, not just financially, but in time and, and energy and care to get that, that image appear on the paper. [00:43:37] Speaker B: Hmm. For sure. Yeah, I hadn't. I definitely had. It had sort of started to occur to me that that's what was happening, and I knew I was slowing down for sure. But now that you mention, I didn't realize maybe that it was the, the accountability that people will see these that made it take it. Slow it right down to probably the speed of shooting film. Really? [00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:03] Speaker B: To be like, all right, I really gotta try and, I don't know, not look like a terrible photographer, if possible. I screamed. [00:44:13] Speaker A: I was screaming at YouTube a couple of times watching videos, but turn around. Yeah, it's right there. [00:44:18] Speaker B: Look at that I wondered whether, because I mentioned that a few times to, I was like, I bet you you guys can see something that I can't see. And a few people did comment. One guy commented, when I had a really bad day in bright walking around and nothing seemed to be working. And some guy was like, you are nothing more than a beginner photographer. You walk past so many great shots. I was like, ouch. Wow, thanks. [00:44:44] Speaker A: That's kind of helpful. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Yeah, you really helped pet me up after a tough day. [00:44:49] Speaker A: Speaking of comments and sloppy segues, let's jump to a couple of comments from our live viewers. So JS Heine, which is Jason. Morning, Jason. Great to have you back. You could also replace Fuji or Leica in that conversation with Sigma foveon. For better or worse, those sensors are truly unique in output. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Do they still make them? Are they still a thing? [00:45:13] Speaker A: I have no idea. [00:45:14] Speaker B: They were very. There was a whole lot of talk about how they were the highest quality camera there is, and they sort of, and everyone was sort of waiting for them to become a. Oh. Once Sigma released their camera line with their lens technology and the foveon sensors, that'll be the. I don't know. I don't know what happened. COVID ruined everything, crushed everything. [00:45:37] Speaker A: And Nev, again. It's so different, isn't it? Doing film. It teaches you patience and today's youth just want to click that button and instantly pop the photo. Our old high school had a dark room until three years ago. Yes, the youths are very impatient. [00:45:55] Speaker C: It's not just the youths. For every generation of teachers coming out, there's less teachers that know how to teach darkroom now, too. So when I left, when I was in the subject, I grew the darkroom. When I left the dark room shut. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It takes someone to really love it, to keep that program rolling. [00:46:15] Speaker A: Plus, it's also expensive. [00:46:17] Speaker B: That's what I was going to say. The consumer school costs for a school, if they looked at and they said, wow, we can buy, you know, this fleet of digital cameras and then not have to spend this much on film and chemicals and, you know, we can turn that dark room into a. I don't know, whatever. Something else. [00:46:32] Speaker A: Yeah, there's also the hns side of. [00:46:34] Speaker B: It and, yep, that's true chemicals. [00:46:38] Speaker A: World's gone mad. [00:46:39] Speaker B: Kids in the dark doing stacks on. [00:46:42] Speaker A: Stacks on, lots of problems. So now you're a, you're a professional commercial photographer. So proud of you at the ripe old age of 22. And tell us about your work now. You know, where are you based. What do you shoot and what do you shoot with? [00:47:06] Speaker C: I shoot, I'll start with the last question. I'll shoot with a Sony, a seven r five and as a backup in a seven III. There's just standard lenses. What do I shoot now? It's funny when you sort of look at business, entrepreneurship, content, people talking about you got a niche down and find your niche. And this that, I don't know if that's necessarily possible in a city like Melbourne where you don't have the population to support certain niches. So I was thinking about this when I was trying to redo my photography website, and I'm trying to think of one tagline. How do I summarize the work that I do? And I came up with photography to keep you relevant. And it's really about creating imagery that helps people communicate what they want to communicate about what they're doing now and what their goals and values are and things like that. And that's where when I attend to commercial photography, I do branding photography, I do fashion, I do corporate stuff and on the side, some event photography as well. So it's really a mixed, probably where I bring most value is probably my lifestyle commercial style work. [00:48:37] Speaker A: You know, I'm just gonna bring up your website while you're talking, mate. [00:48:40] Speaker C: No worries. And then, yeah, just making, making it look like, you know, helping people stand on world stage, the world platforms, and helping people make an impact with the work that they do. You know, people who create businesses are taking massive risks. They put so much money in thought and energy into what they do. And, you know, I get the privilege of showing that off right at the end. So, yeah, this is, this is some of my, my lifestyle work made in the last few years. You know, I love, I love lighting. I love creating sort of mood through that and really thinking about what I want to communicate. Yeah, I love it. I love what I do. [00:49:32] Speaker A: And so you're based in Melbourne. Do you run a, do you work out of a studio? What's, how do you, what's your day to day like? [00:49:41] Speaker C: The thing I love is my day to day is different. You know, every, every day I had to put a slightly different hat on. You know, some, some days I am a fashion photographer. I, I have to think about hair, makeup, styling, things like that, all the logistics. And there are other days where I'm somewhere weird and remote and, you know, capturing some motorcycle adventure somewhere. So it's quite different. Yeah. And there are days where I spend just editing, so I actually really like the variety in my week, you know, so I have two photography studios that I co own with my business partner. That's Lumi studio and fabric, and they're right next door to each other. Both are 240 square meter spaces. One is primarily a photography studio with a cyclorama. And, you know, we call it the sterile space. It's got lots of white walls, real clean space. And next door, we actually created what I like to call a production space. So we. We made it a very rustic space, you know, almost a giant New York loft with rendered concrete wall, sanded round brick wall. And both attract very different type of clientele. So I don't work out of it that much these days, but that place very much supports itself and helps us fund. [00:51:11] Speaker B: I was going to say. So are they. Are those places available for rent as well? [00:51:16] Speaker C: Absolutely. Primarily for rent. [00:51:18] Speaker B: Primarily for it. I was going to say. Holy moly. Two studios, like, two spaces. That's. That's a. That's a big investment in terms of. [00:51:26] Speaker C: And that was. That was what it was when I first. When we first started, we actually shot in there ourselves a lot. [00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:34] Speaker C: But. And it grew over time. And the funny thing is, now if I shoot in my own space, and if I'm not charging for the space, I'm the liability, because if I'm shooting there, we're not making money for the studio. [00:51:48] Speaker B: Well, the cool thing is in terms of business structure, and this is something that often takes newer business owners a long time to appreciate, is the correct thing. The correct way to go with that was you would have to charge yourself the studio higher rate, whether the money changes hands or not. You would have to price it into your pricing, because, like you say, you're absolutely stealing from one side of the business to support another side, even just. [00:52:14] Speaker C: The time to look after the studio. There's a cost for yourself. [00:52:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And you've got to. The reason you have to factor that in is because you could say, oh, it's only a couple hours a week, or something like that. Doesn't really matter. You always need to look at it and go, well, what if it was 40 hours a week? How would our finances work if Jason had to shoot 40 hours a week in the studio for six months straight? Like, would everything still work? Or would we run out of money on that side? And it's like, yeah, that's so interesting that you've been able to make that a reality. Wow, two studios. That's amazing. Congratulations. [00:52:44] Speaker C: Well, thank you. Well, the biggest thanks goes to my business partner. He. His name's Nick Walters. And he is, he's just a very, he's very passionate about running the space. And I, he takes care of a lot of the bookings and stuff like that and the maintenance of it. So like, I definitely couldn't do it without. Actually, the reason I have this space was because I joined a small little space in Malvern when I first started shooting. So I'll give you a little picture of my first year. Year one Jason Binger. [00:53:17] Speaker B: Starting from the day after you quit your job. [00:53:20] Speaker C: That's correct. [00:53:21] Speaker B: Awesome. I love it. [00:53:22] Speaker C: All right, this is for anyone who wants to know how to become a full time professional photographer. So I only had the confidence to do it because I saved enough money to live for one year without having to make a cent. So I made, I had enough money to cover my rent, my food and, you know, just living expenses and things like that. And that year I decided to put down a paper. What were the things that made me scared and not want to do this? And then I had to go and solve that. So one of the things was I didn't feel confident in studio photography. I thought, well, let's solve that. So I joined a small studio. It was essentially a glorified garage with some paper backdrops and things like that. And that's where I met my business partner, Nick Walters. And he actually, you know, he seemed so professional, like, he seemed so in control of this space and things like that. I was like, I think I can do something here. And, but I used that time to grow my experience and reach out to people to shoot things like that. You know, I started with, you know, reaching out to modeling agencies because I knew I wanted to grow a fashion portfolio at that time. And, you know, and basically I wanted to reach out to fashion aside to modeling agencies because I wanted my folio to really have a look of authenticity of an industry standard because I didn't sort of want, just like I was trying to do one. I wanted to look like someone who was shooting work that other people were paying for. So that, that was a great experience, sort of learning that. And I developed my own style with my own lighting and it started becoming not a problem anymore. So I just lost the fear of lighting. And today I don't even think about it a lot is a light from, whether it comes from a flash, a window or a torch, it's all the same to me. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:24] Speaker C: And, and, yeah. So from, from there, I. What did I do? We've, I found out that both Nick and I lived in the same suburb. Nowhere near our studio. So we actually decided to go look for a big warehouse ourselves. And we stumbled on. On this one in Vauxhall north. And it was a crazy venture. Like, we went from an essentially double garage to. Well, it's actually just a deep single garage to a 240 square meter warehouse. And it was dirty and it didn't look anything like a studio. It was like, it was wild. It was just this big. [00:56:02] Speaker B: Which space was the first one that you got? Which one is it? The Lumi cleen, which is the clean one. [00:56:08] Speaker C: The clean white with a cyclone, things like that. Yeah, so we. It didn't feel like a space until we hosed it down. We just used a big power, you know, gurney and. And hose everything down, push the sludge out. And then we got a forklift and a spray and we sprayed all the walls white. And then once the walls are white after the fourth coat over, I think we. I think we have a studio. I think we have a studio. And we built a psych. And. And that was it. And we actually. We got members. That's how we started. We didn't actually sort of open up the public. We had members sort of have a love that idea, rent out our space and that covered rent. [00:56:52] Speaker B: That's build a relationship and an ongoing, like a recurring fee. And they could. Absolutely, yeah, that's a great. [00:56:59] Speaker C: And we have. We have people who started with us who are still with us. Like that series been around sort of nearly twelve years now. And that some of the members who started there are still with us today. Yeah. So that was before COVID Well, well. [00:57:14] Speaker A: Before COVID I'm just fascinated by how Covid changed things for everyone, but. [00:57:19] Speaker C: Well, Covid was the launch of fabric, which is our next. Our second space. So the. The business next door to us actually went. Went out of business. And so they left. And so before it was put on market, we made a pitch to the agents and said, can we rent this space? And they really like us because we really look after our space and we essentially increase the value of it. And, um. And, yeah, so they let. They let us have that space. And that was, um, how we spent the second half of. COVID was building. Building that space. [00:57:50] Speaker B: Nice. [00:57:51] Speaker A: Wow, that's so between Batman drawings. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:54] Speaker C: And, you know, just a bit of industry inside that space probably is more successful now than our photography space, which is a fully kitted out space because people just need a big empty space. [00:58:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So is it. Is it cheaper? Like, if I was coming down, I was like, hey, I just want to. I just need a spot to do some shoot. I don't care what it looks like. Is it cheaper for me to rent that space than it is for the Lumi space, or are they the same price or it's more. You're awesome. [00:58:22] Speaker C: It's because we rent out the whole space, whereas the Looney studio space, we can actually segment it, and people can sort of walk in and out and things like that. But if you have the big fabric space, it's, you know, we. The great thing is it's got a big garage that starts. You can drive a van straight in. [00:58:39] Speaker B: That's what I was going to load and unload. And you could do a car shoot in there or something like that. [00:58:43] Speaker C: Oh, we do. Yeah, we have car shoots. Yeah, we've had massive commercial clients. [00:58:48] Speaker A: Can I share the website with people? Oh, yeah, sure. [00:58:52] Speaker C: Of course. Absolutely. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Let me just bring it up. Where did it go? [00:59:00] Speaker B: Trying to think of a shooter. [00:59:01] Speaker C: One's called Lumi studio, the other one's called fabric space. [00:59:04] Speaker A: Got it here. So this is the Lumi studio website? [00:59:10] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [00:59:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's huge. [00:59:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:14] Speaker C: Wow. [00:59:15] Speaker B: So cool. [00:59:16] Speaker A: Is this a hair and makeup section? [00:59:18] Speaker C: Yep. Hair and makeup section. And next to that is what we call the attic. So it's actually a little stair that leads up to a little booth next to the window. So we actually have a natural light space as well. [00:59:29] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:59:30] Speaker B: So cool. [00:59:31] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really big, isn't it? [00:59:35] Speaker C: Basically, whatever you can dream of, you can do it in that space. [00:59:39] Speaker B: Yep. [00:59:39] Speaker A: That's phenomenal. And what was the other website? [00:59:43] Speaker B: Man, it would be a lot easier for me to come down and lucky apparel down there. [00:59:46] Speaker C: Fabric with a k f a b r I k. [00:59:52] Speaker B: That. That psych wall just looks so. I love it. Just, you see that and you're just like, wow. I wouldn't have to set anything up. I just put my lights on. Standard done. [01:00:01] Speaker C: That's right. Sometimes people just use our window light, and they just shoot in there. And this is a fabric space, like I said, very different vibe. Like a real New York loft. Really edgy. So, basically, if you ever see a campaign with a rendered brick wall or a concrete wall, it's probably shutting down space. We have a lot of commercial work go through here. [01:00:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's very cool. [01:00:24] Speaker C: But it's like a giant concrete playground. [01:00:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:00:28] Speaker C: And, yeah, we've had people shoot documentaries in their cars in there. [01:00:33] Speaker B: It would be perfect. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Heavy metal videos with flames in there. [01:00:37] Speaker B: Yes. It would be perfect for the Netflix style. Like, yeah, interview documentary video. [01:00:45] Speaker C: We literally had one of those. [01:00:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it looks exactly, you know, throw a few background lights in there and stuff like that. Done. Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. [01:00:56] Speaker C: Well, that's how I. You know, like, it's. I don't. It's just accidental, wonderful, kind of serendipitous thing that sort of allowed that to happen. You know, it's. Meeting another photographer who. Where. It wasn't a. No, it was like a. Yeah, that's difficult. But how do we make that work? And you start making plans and. Yeah, I can't believe I have these two spaces. But, you know, you just take one step at a time and all of a sudden it's there. [01:01:26] Speaker B: I think accidental is not giving yourselves enough credit in the terms. I like to think of it in terms of being open to opportunity. [01:01:36] Speaker C: That's right. [01:01:36] Speaker B: As you. As you flow through life. Like, you can be open to things like that, or you can be closed to things like that. And just obviously that opportunity has to present itself. But the fact that you were open to when the neighbors moved out, as opposed to just like, in fear mode, because Covid and all this sort of stuff, you could have easily been closed off to that opportunity completely, but you were open to it and then you worked on it. It was sort of fortunate that it was available, but it wasn't just sort of luck or anything. It was. Yeah, it was you. [01:02:11] Speaker C: Well, the second space, we were more confident because we knew what we were doing then. We knew how much things cost. We knew what kind of. How to find a clientele and things like that. And you're looking. Yeah, credit. It's actually credit to my business mind because he. He was the one that wanted to take over that space, and I was. I was actually a. No, I started so I don't think I want to take out more risk. And he was like, oh, you know, we could turn into this. And once. This is the thing, once he starts generating an idea, I like to feed into ideas, I get excited by improving ideas. And, you know, that's kind of where I got the idea. I said, well, I don't want to actually replicate the space, I want a different space because I didn't see the point of having two spaces attracting the same audience. I said, I want this new space to have a completely different type of person that uses it. And that's exactly what we got. So that's how we managed to double the business, by not going after the same clientele. [01:03:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's brilliant. [01:03:09] Speaker A: Very clever. Second, guys, hang on. Sorry, mate. [01:03:13] Speaker B: Let's go for it. [01:03:14] Speaker A: Let me just jump in there. I know you're the boss, but I'm running the show. [01:03:18] Speaker B: I'm down the bottom. [01:03:18] Speaker A: I want to jump to a couple of comments. Speaking of the boss, just a reminder that today's episode is brought to you by the wonderful team at lucky straps. How's that for a segue? [01:03:28] Speaker B: Good job. [01:03:28] Speaker A: Remember the tops, the merge, the straps. I don't. I don't have any straps. Oh, yeah, I do. Look, this one here's my camera life strap. It's probably upside down. [01:03:40] Speaker B: Just very quickly, if any of you guys are going to the bright festival of photography, which is now sold out, Greg and I are going to be there, and we've actually already launched the possibility to order yourself a bright, a beefop bright festival photography custom camera strap. We've already got a heap of orders through, and they'll be running for another couple of weeks. So I know we had a few listeners last, the week before last that were be foppers. As I've realized, they've come to call themselves beef uppers. Yep. So we'll see you all there. I'm excited. [01:04:13] Speaker A: Sounds like the dance you used to do in the corner at the prom. [01:04:16] Speaker B: Yep. The beef. [01:04:17] Speaker A: The beef up. Yeah, we will be there. We're gonna do workshops. We're not just standing around trying to flog product where we're actually gonna be involved. We're gonna be entrenched. [01:04:27] Speaker B: I was looking at that the other day. Have you ever been up to it, Jason, or heard about it? This the bright festival of photography. It's like 500 photographers attend. I think what they have like 30 workshop. What do you call them? People that run structures. Really smart people. 30 smart people. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Oh, no, it's more than that. [01:04:46] Speaker B: Maybe more. [01:04:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like 70 or something. 317 instructors. Instructors, yeah. [01:04:53] Speaker B: So they've created this thing where it's like you pay for your ticket and then you get beef up dollars in return for your ticket, like fake money. And with this fake money, you can book workshops across the weekend. And they run the workshops all weekend. Some of them run multiple, the same workshop, like every day, and they're all different times and all this stuff. So there's this massive schedule that you've got to then look through and you're like, oh, yeah, that one's worth $60. That one's worth $120 or whatever. And you start to plan out your weekend and then they, on one day they release, like, the ability to book them because the really popular workshops book out fast. So there's this, like, frenzy of people trying to book which one they want to go to and all the different spots, and it's. And then crashes. Yeah, the website crashes, apparently, every year. And then once you've spent all your beefop dollars, you can even spend real dollars on additional workshops if you're super excited about, you know, in their spots available and stuff. It's a wild. It's. I'm super interested to go there and see how it all unfolds. I was looking at the workshops again the other day, Greg, this. There's so many different, interesting portraits, landscapes. [01:06:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm looking at a lot of portrait stuff. I want to build up my portrait skills. [01:06:05] Speaker B: What you would be. I think you want to go to that Shibari thing with Shibarium. [01:06:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I do. [01:06:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:11] Speaker A: The japanese bondage session. [01:06:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:15] Speaker A: Photography session. [01:06:16] Speaker B: Photography, yeah. [01:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm not the model. Thank God. Yeah. Looks pretty good. We had Matt Crummons on a few weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago. He's one of the directors of Befop. [01:06:30] Speaker B: Also a Sony shooter also. [01:06:32] Speaker A: Yes. And he's also an educator and a workshopper and all of those sorts of things. And, yeah, he's really excited for it. And it's gonna be good. It's gonna be really good. Yeah, we're gonna head there. We've got our merch to wear. Just once again, lucky strips of match. [01:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll do some. Do some fun, getting around, chatting to people. All the major camera brands go there. And. [01:06:56] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of. A lot of accessory product brands. [01:06:59] Speaker B: And sorry to hype anyone up that's wanted to go that doesn't have a ticket because it's already sold out, but next year. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Yep. Let's jump to some of the comments, and then we'll get back into Jason's story. And I know that Justin wants to ask Jason a bunch of questions. Yeah. So Nev said, I want the Mittecon 65 one four and darkrooms closed because of chemical safety. Now, Nevis also does some workshops at high schools over in wa, so a bit of a theme there. The next one is from Jason. The foveon cameras themselves are generally terrible in use. Very slow, strange handling, and difficult software to process. They're about as practical as a large frame plate shooting. But the output. Were they the ones that were like, those weird shapes? They went for really dynamic industrial design. [01:07:50] Speaker B: Yep. And then there was. There was sort of talk of, I think maybe they released an l mount one or whatever. I think there were some fixed lens ones. And then there was FP and Fpl. I think they were foveon sensor cameras. I'm not sure. I was googling it. But then I think earlier this year there was something put out by Sigma that says, but it's not foreseeable that the full size foveon sensor will be commercialized. The release date of a camera with it is undecided or something like that. So I think it's been put on ice. Dunno. [01:08:26] Speaker A: And some feedback for Jason. I applaud the bravery for making that leap, but also the articulate problem solving to get to that point. And I think, yeah, I think that really resonated with me too. It's something that I like to say that I don't bank on hope or faith, I bank on action and actually getting it done, even though I'm terribly lazy. And Jason said, agree with Nev. Fantastic on every level. There's a couple more here. They've said Bruin is referring to your studio when we're showing your studio earlier. It's a vibe. That's old school. Isn't it interesting what you can create from a space like that? Amazing. I think we all agree with that. And then there's a question from. Hi, people, what do you think about canon t seven? I. I'm a student. [01:09:19] Speaker B: This has got Jason's name all over it. Teacher students used to work at Ted's. [01:09:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:09:26] Speaker A: We can go on a coffee break. [01:09:27] Speaker C: Look, like I said, I think cameras are all brilliant today, so that's plenty of camera to get started with and the rest is more showing up. I think it's more important to show up with an average camera than have the best camera and not show up. [01:09:44] Speaker B: I never understood the t seven stuff, you know, like the Rebel, the t 700, 800 D. Right. Because that's the problem. Everyone always mentions that on the Internet and I'd always be like, I don't know what camera that is. Like, it's a. I'm like, what's a rebel? What is it? And then you'd find out it's. Yeah, it's like a 550 D or something like that. [01:10:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:10:04] Speaker A: Anyway, it was an interesting decision when Canon America went their own way with branding. [01:10:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would. My advice would be, if you're looking at buying that camera new, because I don't think. I mean, it would be very cheap. Now, basically my advice would be, if that's cameras extremely cheap, then go for it. It'll be a great camera, but don't spend a lot of money on a. What would be an APS C DSLR in 2024 because you could get an APS C mirrorless for probably not. Not much more at second hand entry level or even. Man, I've seen some second hand. I sold my canon. This will make the lenses more expensive. But I sold my Canon EOS RPD, which is a full frame mirrorless camera that's going to take Canon's current lens system for a long time. And I'm sure there's Sony's and stuff in similar price points. I sold it for $700 and it was basically brand new. Yeah, like that is a camera you could make professional work with. Full frame, 24 megapixel mirrorless, $700. It might be a little bit out of the budget, but there will be second hand offerings. Yeah. So I'd just be. I'd be mindful about how much you invest into a system that APS C DSLR is probably on the way out. So lenses and everything. While there'll be bargains at the moment, hopefully I wouldn't invest a ton into that system because you'll probably want to change in a year or two or three. [01:11:33] Speaker C: Good advice. [01:11:36] Speaker A: Jason. You got any other advice for pum pum. [01:11:41] Speaker C: Shoot in terms of gear? I do agree. I think there's, like I said, it all depends on how much you want to pay for it. I think a cheap prime is a nice thing to have. Like 50 mil, 1.8, something like that. That thing that really gets you that real teach you depth of field and separation, things like that. I think that's where it feels fun. It feels fun to use a full frame or APSC versus something like a point and shoot. [01:12:13] Speaker B: That's what got me hooked in photography to start with because I bought the Canon 60 D to start making videos because that was like, it was like, hey, you can make really cool looking videos with these cameras now. And I was watching a lot of stuff like that. I wanted to make action sports video and I bought that camera and I bought a lens or two, but I also got the 50 mil 1.8, the Nifty 50. And on that would be like an 80 or something, like a portrait y kind of on the crop center. And I took some photos with it just wide open. I was like, oh, these look awesome. And then that's why I became a photographer from then, because I was like, wow, look, you can just like focus on this thing and everything's all blurry in the background. It looks amazing. And it got you that kind of. Yeah, that look that I certainly didn't get from whatever wide angle lens I got with it or something like a, you know, like a zoom that 4.5 to 5.6 or something like that. And it just looked like it took a crappy photo. It just looked like crappy photo. Whereas with the other lens, I could take crappy photo and looked awesome. [01:13:18] Speaker C: That's right. [01:13:18] Speaker B: At the time, I think. [01:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think there's a lot to learn, like Jason said, from starting out with either a 50 mil full frame or a 35 mil APS C lens. Because if you get that and you shoot everything you can with it at every aperture, and you review your photos and you review how you're taking photos, if you're zooming in a lot, then maybe you need something longer. If you. If you're taking steps back every time you go to compose a shot, well, maybe you need something lighter. It's a good. It's a good kind of goldilocks lens, if you will, to work out, you know, where. What. What your style is, what your range is, what you enjoy shooting. And I think just get out and just use that camera and lens until, you know, until your fingers hurt, really. And review your photos and look at the ones that you love and look at the settings and commit that. Sort of start committing that stuff to memory. Because the more you do it, like Jason said, just show up. The more you show up, the more you do it, the more that stuff becomes muscle memory. [01:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's a good. A good way to. To not buy gear that you don't need is to, like you say, greg, like, start with something. And it's sort of like, be aware. Allow yourself to be in moments where you're like, damn, if I had a telephoto lens right now, I would have got that shot. Like, let that happen a few times. It's okay. There'll be other photos to make. So let that happen a few times before you run out and spend $3,000 on a 70 to 200 or something. Like, you don't have to have everything from day one. And you can allow those moments to come and go where you're like, if I had a wide angle lens, then I would have got the best shot of the day. And then let that happen a couple of times and then go, okay, I'm going to go and invest in a wide angle lens. [01:15:10] Speaker A: Most definitely. Nev has commented. You can check in Lightroom. What is your most popular focal. [01:15:16] Speaker B: Yep, you sure can. [01:15:18] Speaker A: And one other quick comment from Jason back on the sigmas. The Sigma FP and FPL cameras are traditional bayer sensors, which is what the. [01:15:29] Speaker B: Fuji started with, not the foveon sensors. [01:15:31] Speaker A: The SD changeable and DP were the foveon models. [01:15:35] Speaker B: You are a wizard when it comes to weird camera stuff. I'm gonna have to have you on the podcast. [01:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. You're always up at this time, it seems. [01:15:47] Speaker B: Now, other. Jason. Jason, that's our guest. [01:15:51] Speaker A: Yes. [01:15:51] Speaker B: I have a question about your business relationship. Is one of you more risk averse and one of you less, like, sorry. More risk tolerant and one less risk tolerant? Like, is there kind of a push and pull relationship there when it comes to, like, business decisions and stuff? Someone's like, yeah, let's just buy the thing. And the other person's like, oh, I don't know if now's the best underbarrede thing. Yeah. Is that how it is? [01:16:15] Speaker C: I think. I think at the start, I generally think with my studio business partner, if we end up agreeing on something, they're generally good decisions, because both of us will also interject and kind of go, I don't think that's a good idea. So I don't think that we generally play a role. I will. If I. If there had to be one, I would generally be a little bit more skeptical. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:43] Speaker C: Because, but it doesn't necessarily mean I'm not for investing in things either. So I remember a while back where Nick had bought a video light, and I looked at it and went, what are we doing? This was, oh, we could use it, maybe hire it out. And I actually said, I don't think that's enough light for us to invest, invest in. And I'm normally the person that sort of say, oh, why are we spending on this? And I said, if it's not a good enough light, no one will want to hire it. So actually went and spent, like, four times more and got our first sort of video light kit that actually made its money back because it was a better kit then to have something that no one wanted to get. So that's sort of an example of where I would normally be the person that says, no, I don't think that's a good thing to have to actually. I think we need to spend more money in order to regain that money. [01:17:45] Speaker A: The reason why Justin's asking this question, Jason, he was actually describing his relationship with Yelena. Sorry. Justin's the, I think we should buy this. And Yelena's, though I don't think we should buy this. [01:17:56] Speaker B: It's actually, there's actually two reasons, but no one reason I was reading a book yesterday. But before I tell you about that, what you said then about the lights actually reminds me of a quote. I don't know who the original quote is attributed to, but it was someone I used to work for in my early days when I worked for a boat sales business to sell boats in Bendigo. In Bendigo? Yep. Fishing boats and stuff like that. And the guy that I worked for, John Nankovis, who was actually the partner of one of the most sort of premier wedding photographers at the time, Lisa Nankervis, who taught me a lot of stuff and is awesome, doesn't, she doesn't do it anymore. But anyway, that's irrelevant to the story. He used to always say when we were talking about things like that, if you're going to be a bear, you might as well be a grizzly bear. And that was, he's saying like whenever we're talking about, you know, should we get this or this or whatever, he was basically saying like if we're going to do this, we might not do it properly. You know, if we're going to hire lights out, we might as well get lights that people really want rather than, you know. Yeah, I love that. You might as well sort of. Because then it's, it's a big enough deal that people will take notice of it and be like, oh, they've got that awesome kit, let's, let's bring them or whatever. [01:19:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. And I think we're at a point in our relationship like we're twelve years into this now that I trust his decision. If he's, if he gets that, you know, then probably there's more need for it because he might be, probably spends more time with the hiree so he has a better idea. And it's really just the big stuff that we sort of do talk about the day to day stuff if needs is that I think there's no point going to business someone you don't trust for sure. I trust him implicitly with his decisions and he makes lots of great decisions. [01:19:42] Speaker B: The dynamic of the business relationship is what made me curious. I'm in the middle of the book about Charlie Munger, poor Charlie's almanac or something like that. So Charlie Munger, business partner of Warren Buffet, both super successful investors. And there's all these in the book. There's all just a collection of letters and things that were written back and forth between all these different people and stuff like that. And what was interesting is I think Warren Buffett used to call Charlie Munger and he called him this in like a letter, the abominable no man. Because Charlie would always tell Warren no. Like, when they were talking about business risks and things like that, and they had that dynamic where one was a bit more push and one was more pull, and it helped them, I guess, make wiser decisions about the business rather than both. If both of them were very risk tolerant, maybe they would have taken, too bigger risks and things like that. So it's interesting. [01:20:47] Speaker C: Yeah. I also love the. Appreciate the opportunity to learn from my business partner as well because it's, you know what? When you first go out as a solopreneur, you realize that it is a very lonely journey for a lot of the time. And even just having someone just to bounce ideas off is very valuable. And especially if you can find someone to tell you the truth, that's where. That's where the real value is. [01:21:13] Speaker B: I was gonna say, the thing is, when you're both in business and you're bouncing things off each other, you both got skin in the game. You're both taking the risk. Whereas, yeah, if you just chat about it with a friend, they might be like, yeah, just get the big lights or whatever, you know, like, it's not their money. [01:21:25] Speaker C: That's right. [01:21:26] Speaker B: You know, so it's. [01:21:26] Speaker C: Well, in that. In that sense, I think sometimes, you know, I warn people about taking advice from just anyone, especially in the world of creativity, because unless you're actually in that world, most people give awful advice to creatives. It's very, very cliched, very tried. Or sometimes your biggest enemies are your friends who are praising you and you don't have that. One person is like, actually, you should probably get better at this thing before you go and do that thing. And, you know, I think there's a lot of. Have you considered missing that stuff? Stuff, yeah. [01:22:00] Speaker A: And I think that's, you know, a big part of what I like doing with the Fuji group and with, obviously with lucky straps. One of my commitments to Justin is to build community around the brand. And I think community is really important in creative pursuits because it gives you. It gives you a safe space to actually ask those tough questions. Am I getting this composition or wrong? Like, you know, I thought I was doing well with lighting. What do you think? You know, all of those, you're going to get real honest feedback from a good community. And I think for students that we were talking about earlier to pum, another key thing about showing up is build your network. Not. Not in a traditional LinkedIn sense. I mean, that is obviously those sorts of things can be important, but more in, you know, go out on shoots with other photographers, watch what they do, you know, swap cameras with someone. Like I went on a shoot with a friend and, you know, here's my Fuji. Can I use your Sony and, you know, and build that community and join a Facebook or an Instagram group? That seems reasonable and, you know, comes recommended and ask tough questions and learn from that part of the process because it's, it's a really important because photography can be a very lonely thing. Even if you have a business partner, you're still in your own head the whole time, you know, when you're doing something creative like that. And I think having community is really valuable asset. A part of the toolkit for a creative. [01:23:34] Speaker B: It's, it's very similar with owning your own business too. And that's something I've had to work on a lot and actively try to cultivate and probably still don't do it enough is finding business owner like other business owners to talk with. And because as Jason said, with creatives, be careful who you take your advice from. 100% or possibly even more so with business. If you're looking to get into business as a photographer or any business, be careful who you take advice from. Because if they don't own a business or they have never owned a business, they, this is generalizing, but they will probably give you shitty advice because they have no idea what, what it's about. So find people that have done it, whether it's other photographers or even better, sometimes other business owners that are in unrelated industries that have experience as well, just in different forms of business. Yeah. Seek advice from people that qualified to give it. And even then, remember that even then, it's coming through their own perspectives and their own lens. And I. They'll tell you something because they've had a bad experience with it, but it could be. Yeah, you've always got to take that into account. What's their experience and why they're telling you what they're telling you. Usually they're just telling you stuff that they probably should have told themselves ten years ago, which is fine because it's probably good advice, but yeah, just be, take it. Take everything with a little bit of caution. [01:25:02] Speaker C: That's excellent advice. And also to extend on that is whoever's giving you advice needs to understand what your goals are as well. [01:25:11] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:25:12] Speaker C: Because everyone, the one thing I'm really careful about is what does success mean to you? You know, and everyone has slightly different goals and, or even just slightly different stages of their career and what they should be focusing on now and later and things like that. It's. It's. It's complex, and it's a lot more nuanced than just to do these three steps. And you'll be a success. Which, you know, I really reject those really quick answers. [01:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:36] Speaker C: Things. [01:25:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Takes time. Um, just a very important comment. Greg is right. I like that. Thanks, Nev. It's about connection. Photography is hard because soon as our images go up, other photographers try to get piece of the pile. They try and copy your work. They steal your clients. Oh, Nev, that sounds like a story for another episode. [01:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll get you on to talk about that, Nev. Yeah, we will. [01:26:01] Speaker A: We will get you back, Nev. So let's. Here's a lovely segue from Jason. [01:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:07] Speaker A: So, to the important things. Jason photographs motorcycles. So do you also ride them? And if so, which brands? Hint only one acceptable answer. And Jason's. I don't know if you can tell what. What sort of bike that is. [01:26:19] Speaker C: Jason, that looks like a ducati. Tri ducati. [01:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah, looks good. I just. That's purely because it's red. I know nothing about motorbikes, but also, I was thinking, like, what is the liker of motorbikes? Or, you know, like, what's the brand that someone would say, there's only one acceptable answer. I don't know. [01:26:42] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a whole other podcast on this that I can go on. In answer to this question, I'm actually a real brand agnostic in everything. Like, I don't consider one brand in camera better than the other. And in terms of motorcycles, honestly, if it's got two wheels and an engine, I love it. I. You know, you can have fun on a little 250. You can have fun on a 1200 cc bike. And you know that if it cuts. [01:27:09] Speaker A: To the chase, mate, what do you ride? [01:27:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I ride a Harley Davidson at the moment. It's a Harley sports day. You can see that in the fourth image. There's a little video reel there. That's that one there. Yep. That's. That's my bike. [01:27:23] Speaker A: Looking cool. [01:27:24] Speaker B: That is cool. [01:27:25] Speaker C: That was just creating some content for our alpaca backpack and. [01:27:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:27:31] Speaker C: Nice, nice. Nice break from being behind the camera. I got to be in front of the camera this time. Yeah, that's my bike. And that. That kept me quite sane over Covid as well, because I very much customized that over lockdown, and I loved it. But that's partly because my. My triumph Bonneville prior to. That got stolen. [01:27:49] Speaker A: I remember that, yes. [01:27:51] Speaker C: Yeah, that was. That was annoying. I still. [01:27:53] Speaker A: Did that. Ever show up? [01:27:54] Speaker C: It did show up very mangled. And they pulled bits off it and spray painted my. Over my custom paint work, things like that. But, yeah, so that's that. That's my harley now. So that's what I write. [01:28:07] Speaker A: Wow. [01:28:08] Speaker B: Very cool. [01:28:08] Speaker C: And I like it because if I get bored of it, I can change it up and it will feel like a different bike. And I quite like that customization side of it. Not that I'm. Please do not think of me as like a engine tinker or anything like that. I'm not great with stuff like that. If. If I can unscrew it and screw it back on. Yeah, that's great. If I have to balance something or fix the fuel pump or something. Wouldn't know how to do it. [01:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:36] Speaker C: But I love the aesthetics of motorcycles. [01:28:38] Speaker A: Yeah, clearly. I mean, you capture them very well. And I've seen some of the ones where I think they were done, like at a sun, sunset. It was quite a while ago now where the bikes were moving quite fast and there was, you know, dust and dirt flicking up and. [01:28:57] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of that. [01:28:58] Speaker A: So are you photographing these? Is this purely for you or are these for clients? [01:29:03] Speaker C: It's a mixture. So some of them are definitely for clients. Some of them have been for Harley Davidson themselves, some for adventure companies, some just for myself. And I love being in the community, so sometimes I'll just. Someone will send me gear and I'll shoot that gear for them. And some. Yeah, some is just paid work. [01:29:25] Speaker B: So it seems like you've made a conscious choice that your Instagram is a place for motorcycle content and your website is not so much. I mean, it's on there, but it's like if you. [01:29:40] Speaker C: Oh, I also have Instagram just for my fashion work. [01:29:43] Speaker B: That's what I was going to ask, because I was like, if I found both of these things, I would for a second almost be like, hang on, is this the same photographer or have I found the wrong Instagram page? [01:29:54] Speaker C: And this is actually my answer to niches, because people remember I talked about how it. It's very difficult to have a niche. So instead of having a niche, I try and communicate whatever it is, I want to communicate clearly enough to an audience. So it's not about starting six different accounts, but I have one for my sort of commercial fashion work and I have one for my motorcycle work. And I don't care if one people from one end don't know. I do the other, as long as it cuts through to the people who I needed to cut through to. Because clients are, in a sense, and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but clients are lazy. They don't want to spend that much time thinking about you. They just go, can you do it? And can I trust you to create this type of imagery? And if you can show consistency, they go, yep, I can trust you to make this type of imagery. So if I mix weddings with fashion, with motorcycles, with lifestyle, with photos of my lunch, what am I saying? I'm not saying anything, but if I have an account for motorcycles, people go, yep, I want to. I want you to shoot this. If I have account for fashion people, yep, I want you to shoot this. [01:31:05] Speaker B: What's the, that, the quote about the. They need a photographer to take a photo of a banana, and they, they show them through the portfolio, and there's like, here's a shoot I did with apples. Here's a shoot I did with oranges, watermelons. And then they get to the end of it, and the client goes, yeah, but have you got any examples where you've shot a banana before? You know, like, they. They want to literally almost see, like, exactly what? Because you're right. It's funny, I used to always tell Jim that with us, with our wedding photography, Jim was my business partner, or still is in. We have Justin and Jim photographers, but he basically, he might even rebrand it. He does all the weddings now. I don't really do any other them, but for five or six years, we both ran full time shooting weddings under the brand name Justin and Jim photographers. And I always told him, and he obviously agreed, we need to be the safe choice. Like, customers. Clients need to choose us because they're like, they will show up. They will deliver exactly the quality that we expect. That always be the safe choice. And any decision that we made around business or anything like that was like, how do we make sure that they can safely be like, those guys are the guys for us. There's no other. There's no risk in us booking them. And that would. I guess that's the same thing as building trust. Yeah. [01:32:28] Speaker C: And, you know, clients, you know, if someone doesn't want to spend money on you, that's normally it's a risk issue. They're like, well, I don't know if you're gonna do this. I'm only willing to give you this much. But, you know, if you're focused on the. If your site speaks to the client's success. They go, yeah, if I spend this, then I can make that out of this kind of work. [01:32:49] Speaker B: Yeah, or, yeah, they'll pay double because someone else is a safer choice. Or, yeah, that's right. They might pay you double what they'd pay me, because they'd be like, show me your fashion work. And I'm like, you know, much. And then they see yours and they're like, oh, wow, we'll pay double to make sure we don't have to do this again. [01:33:09] Speaker C: Yeah, or I can so say I can get this, but in half the time. [01:33:13] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:33:15] Speaker C: This is what I focus on. These are the gears I have and yeah, so one of the things I just to move on, Greg, what I did next, I now also teach commercial photography at college. Thank you, thank you. And one of the main lessons. So, firstly, I love teaching commercial photography because I've obviously spent many years teaching photography one on one, how to use a camera and things like that. Commercial photography is essentially how do you live making, you know, how do you make a living working in photography? And probably the core, core thing I try and teach my students is seek your clients success and understand what success means for them. Because if you are, you know, if you are wanting to quote for a job, you can quote hours less than, like, this job will take me 2 hours. This is how much I charge. Or you can quote value, which is from what I give you. What can you do with this? How can I help you succeed? Like, so why does your photograph, why does your client want these photos in the first place? And what does it mean for them to have this or that? That will even determine what kind of budget they should spend on it. And it's not necessarily how they use your time. Because I might be able to do something faster than another photographer. It doesn't mean I should be paid less for it. I might have more insight into how they can cut through to their target audience. What's the value of that? What's the value of an idea? What's the value of having, having fun on the shoot so you don't hate your job as much? You know, there's a whole host of factors into this that's so much more than just what's your hourly rate? So I'm always thinking about what are the deliverables? What's the meaning of it? And I, you know, and the easiest way to do that is essentially, is lead with curiosity. You don't have to be an expert in anything, but you just have to kind of go, yeah, tell me about your business. What is, what are you guys doing? You know, what are your, some of the challenges that you're facing at the moment? And what can I do to be part of helping you succeed? And once you start talking to that, the conversation of hours goes away because you can be like, oh, let me help you increase your sales by 20%. Let me help you do this. You know, and actually, even before that, what you're really doing is you're trying to establish whether they're your client or not, because if someone comes to you and kind of go, well, I've got $200, but I want to do a $10,000 looking shoot. Yeah, they're not your client. You know, there might be. There might not be. I don't know. But, like, you know, you have to decide that for yourself. But once you sort of decide that, you know, I think, I think we can work together. The thought is then just how do I help you? You know, really make the most of what you're trying to do? And my thoughts there, and as long as I always try to remember, remind photographers, actually, I remind my clients, there's no such thing as an idea that's too big. Let's go for it. Let's dream it. If you got the budget, let's do it. I don't mind if the shoes overseas. I don't mind if it's interstate. I don't mind if we have to hire a lighting crew, whatever it is. As long as you've got the budget, we can do it. But if they don't, then let's be clever about this and let's see what's the best we can do for your budget. If you only have $1,000 to spend, how can we, how can I help you make the most of that money? So it's not about greed. It's not about trying to rip people off. It's actually kind of go well for your money. What can I give you that will help you multiply your bucks, multiply your investments. And one of my favorite, talking about Warren Buffett, one of my favorite quotes from Warren Buffett is, if you can buy a dollar for $0.80, that's a good thing. And if you can show your client that if they spend this money, they get more back, that's a good thing. [01:37:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:11] Speaker C: That's where, that's where the mentality should be, rather than, in a sense, thinking of money as something punitive. It's like, well, I did 4 hours of work for you. So you should compensate me this much money. See, that's a very different mentality. If you invest this much, what can I get help you earn? What can I help? What goals can I help you achieve through my work? [01:37:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And that can also flow both directions as well. Not saying people should discount their prices or whatever, especially not if someone just offers you exposure, but it does flow through to the other end of the spectrum. And I've had this conversation with people a lot before, but how much you're willing to, how much you want to do that job? And does it have other benefits for you as a photographer and for your career? That's right. Not having that get pushed on you from the client side, but you going from the other direction. What is this to me? Is this going to be an annoying job? That is not something I want to do in the future, and I don't want to attract similar clients and things like that. Maybe there's a reason then to try and maximize your earning potential out of that job. And if you miss it, you miss it. And that's the question I often ask people is like, will you be disappointed if you miss out on this? If you quote it higher than someone else does and it's purely based on price and they don't pick you, will you be like, damn it, I shouldn't have charged that much. I really wanted that job. Because if that's the feeling you're going to get, maybe you should be more aggressive with your pricing. It depends on how much you want it and whether it has other benefits to your future for your photography career. It's tricky, but that's. That's the other side of the equation that I always think about. It's like, where does this fit into my overall plan and how much do I want? [01:39:09] Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that's why it's not going. [01:39:12] Speaker A: Greg, I was just going to say, I imagine, Jason, that, you know, that whole approach of, what are your goals? For the, you know, you asking the client, what are your goals? Let me help you meet those goals. Businesses will continually have goals. It's a core part of how they operate. And if you help them achieve this lot of goals, well, then there's no reason why you can't help them achieve the next five lots, too. So for you, as a commercial photographer, you're opening a doorway or a pathway for more work from that same client or even more referrals. [01:39:52] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [01:39:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:39:54] Speaker C: Yeah. And I also want to be careful not to oversimplify things because, like I said, it's not about earning top dollar. And like I said at the start, we all have to work out what success means for us because, yeah, I love what you said, Justin. Like, there's value beyond monetary value of a job as well. Like, you know, you might love the experience. You might love the connections you get from it or, or even just if you can make it, if it's a fun enough job that you don't mind doing lots of times there's a lot of earning potential there. If you can do, if you can do ten of those a week versus only one, and then you're really enjoying it, that's also value there as well. So I think, firstly, like I said, that's why I try and encourage people to approach jobs with curiosity, because it stops being too formulaic. It stops it from being to, I don't know, one sided. Like you said, if you're looking at it, then you first go, what is my relationship with this job? Is this something I want to do more of or less of? Am I moving into this direction? Is this someone I want to work with? Some of my most fun jobs have been, on paper, my most boring jobs just because the team has been so fun to work with. I woke up and I go, I get to hang out with these people all day. How fun. I really, really enjoyed it. And sometimes the coolest jobs with the coolest celebrities turn out to be the biggest pain because, like, I was like, I'm hating being here and I hate everyone, you know, like, and you just, you have to determine success. What, what success or what something good is. Yourself on your own terms, you know, and really sort of resist the urge to kind of just, oh, look at me, I'm so cool. I got to do this. Like, you know, you, if you're happy shooting this thing, do it. If you're, if you don't feel comfortable with it and you hate it every time, no matter how much you're charging for it, stop doing it. Because I think that the main goal is longevity, you know, over everything is longevity. Like, I want people to still love it in ten years time rather than sort of have, have a real hard push and then not want to do it again. [01:42:05] Speaker B: Do you want, do you want to do a free pricing workshop for me? I've done this for a few clients already because I don't shoot. I run lucky straps as well, so I don't shoot full time. So I've got a weird, I can shoot for free or I can charge as much as I want. And it financially isn't a massive issue to me because it's not my sole income, but I want to do. I've really enjoyed commercial work that is probably the opposite to what you do in the sense that, well, it's probably more like what you do with adventure, motorbike stuff and stuff like that. It's like less set up, very documentary style. Like I was saying with this job that I did last week and I've done that before for other clients as well. You know, everything's in my backpack. I move fast. I've been underground in mines, in shut down power stations, all that kind of stuff. Very rarely with lighting, unless it's a underground like mining situation or what. Like working to the environment in the elements. Usually for a half day or a full day. And the clients are usually looking to get a, they're not usually looking for like, hey, this is a campaign. We want to increase our sales in this demographic or whatever. It's usually more overall branding, document what they're doing. There might be some elements in trying to get bigger projects in the future, but it's not something where I can be like, hey, I'll help you land this project and that's going to add a lot of value to your business. It's more just like we're doing a full website refresh or something like that and we need imagery, updated things and stuff like that. How do I, let's say, for example, there's a national company that's been around for a long time, let's call them smurfy, and they, you know, they're a big company but they're also mindful of costings and things like that. How do you approach pricing something like that for a full day when you don't have, you know, there isn't a specific outcome. It's not, it's not going on a billboard or something like that. It's like, hey, we just want fresh set of images for future website and branding, things like that. Promotional fly. [01:44:31] Speaker C: This is a single job or is this an ongoing kind of like you. [01:44:34] Speaker B: Do in a few weeks single to start with? Just like, hey, we just want to come in for a day, get some images and it's one of those things where it's like, personally I would also prefer if it goes well, that they, they want to work with me ongoing and maybe I can cultivate an ongoing relationship with them where I pop in every few months or something like that, but not a, not a weekly thing. [01:44:56] Speaker C: So they're looking for a bank of images, like basically like as many as you can give us. [01:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah, basically. Basically. But not, not. None of these clients want hundreds. You know, they might want 50. [01:45:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:45:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:10] Speaker C: That sounds like a great job. [01:45:12] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. I literally did it last week. It was amazing. It was really fun and I enjoyed it. And so I'd like to do more of it. And I actually want to try and figure out a way to try and advertise that to people like regional australian industry business. [01:45:27] Speaker C: I love that. I love that. And look, I guess I try and think about once again in terms of their goals, even if they don't know what their goals are. Maybe it's part of, you know, if you can insert yourself as early as possible in the conversation, that's always a good thing. Like I'm talking about, right? Pre planning what, who's, who's designing the website, whatever is. The earlier you can get in the conversation, the better, because you get more influence later on down the track. Because what's going to make you love or hate your job is ultimately the logistics of your work, which is like, you know, when my show up, are people going to be happy to see me there, or am I going to be just like, in the way things like that? [01:46:10] Speaker B: Well, that's the value that I've seen. I've been able to provide. Like I say, I roll up with a backpack, I've got extra gear in the van, but I don't get it out unless it's required. I roll up with a backpack and if they need to, that, you know, put my hive is on, I've got safety gear on already. They don't need to, like, you know, handle me all day. And, you know, often they'd be like, look, I've got a meeting. I will be back in 2 hours. Are you cool? Just to keep doing your thing? And I'm like, yeah, I'm good. You don't. This doesn't have to be, we don't have to take employees off the floor to do this shoot. We don't have to interrupt everything for this shoot. This is just, I'll sort this out. And I need minimal input from you. I don't have to disrupt your day or your entire businesses flow for the day. And I think that's a value that I can provide, but it's hard to communicate until people have, especially if they haven't worked with a photographer that's more, you know, that's sort of like, all right, guys, I need ten people to stand over there, and I'm going to set this lighting up and hold my light meter out and double check that and do it. You know, and it slows everything down. Then they realize, oh, okay, that's actually quite disruptive to our business. So, yeah, it's like trying to communicate that and then also knowing how to price it, because from the outside looking in, it's like less of a production, so it's less valuable. You know, it's like, oh, he didn't, he didn't set up lights and bring a crew and all this stuff. So it's like, was it, was it really that valuable? Or could anyone with a camera have just rocked around and taken these photos? [01:47:44] Speaker C: Well, yes and no, because, like, I think this is a mistake a lot of us photographers make. We tend to think, oh, anyone can do this. But to the client, if they trust you, they don't trust someone else. Even if they could have the same skills, do they have the same empathy? Do they have the same insight into what you want? Do they even want to, on a basic level, do they even, how many times do they want to have this conversation? They may only want to have this conversation once. So their time is valuable. So you want to think about, about, and this is where a lot of photographers get it wrong. They try and make their business too official and they go, here's the contract is the thing, here's that. And you're overwhelming the client. They just go, I just want some photos. I think your approach is very good. Like, like sometimes it being easier is more, is of a higher value to them. [01:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:48:38] Speaker C: Then it becomes complex. So, yeah, the value of us going, I need to set more lights. That makes my work more valuable. It's not the same value for the client. [01:48:47] Speaker B: No. [01:48:48] Speaker C: So you have to view it with deep empathy towards them. Like, yes, I will make your day easier and I will still be able to deliver the things that will benefit you. So I don't think that that cost necessarily translates that if I only bring one camera, one lens, it's a less valuable job. You know, like, if you photograph a celebrities with the same lens every day in natural light, is it any less valuable if it's a great shot? No, it's not. It's, it's, yeah. So I would ask yourself that and then work out, yeah. What is the value of these? And if they, this is the hard thing. I often do have this clients who don't know why they want photos. They've been like, I think we want some stuff. We need some content, we need some assets, really? Because someone in our marketing team told. [01:49:33] Speaker B: Us, okay, yeah, because I've had the other way around where usually they like, they're like, we've known we've needed photos for six years. We just, we just haven't gotten around to organizing it yet. All the clients that I've worked with are sort of the other way around. I don't think I've ever had someone be like, I don't know what these are for, but we just thought we'd book someone. [01:49:51] Speaker C: But actually I think that they're actually the same size as the same coin. I think like that if they knew it was important, they would have done it, but they kind of, there's still the uncertainty about like how do we go about doing it? I don't really know what outcome really should be, how to prioritize it. And really if you want to work as professional, photograph, not you specifically, Justin, because I know you are professional, but like talking to, talking to your audience broadly, like it, you know, it's the commons. The work is that, the work is that relationship. Because ultimately if you want to be a photographer, photography should be the easy part of your job. It should be easy whether you have to set lights up or not. It should be, I don't hide a plumber hoping they can do the job. I expect them to be amazing at their jobs. So the work is really the relationship that you create with the client is to help them go, yes. The thing that you've been avoiding, actually, I can make that feel quite easy. I can make that feel quite possible actually. If you were, if you had this budget, I could even do this for you. And then we can actually make that even simpler. Have minimal interruption, but still give you maximum sort of value in the content that you create. Now, in terms of monetary value, this is where I would think usage has a big factor in it. Like if it's going to go in a national campaign, that's where the value delivers. [01:51:17] Speaker B: I don't understand. Can you explain that to me? And by proxy the rest of the Internet, why does usage matter? And why should I as a photographer take that into consideration with pricing? Like say, if I'm going to shoot for a day, and I know that the editing will take a day, it's two days of my time, I want to try and run a profitable business. Say I've taken those factors into it and come up with an idea of where the price sits. Let's say, for example, I'm going to shoot for a day and edit for a day and I've decided that that's worth $2,000 of my, not, you know, but like, that will allow me to run a profitable business with my overheads and my gear and everything that's involved in it. Why would the price change depending on how they're going to utilize the photos that I give them? [01:52:11] Speaker C: Well, firstly, I think your model is absolutely fine. Like, I think having a day rate is good and my day rate, this is how I, I teach people to work it out. How much do you want to make a year? Let's say this easy number, let's say, let's say 100 grand a year is something I think a lot of people, most people should aim for. How much does that mean? A week? Let's say you give yourself a few weeks holidays. That means you should earn about $2,000 a week. And from there you can work out the value of every job. If this job, after meetings, shooting, editing, and, you know, I only have the energy of to do one of these a week, it should be minimum $2,000. That's, that's a really good baseline to have. I think that's a very responsible baseline to have. That means if I can do three of these jobs easily in my time and still have time for marketing, invoicing, feeding myself, you know, spending time with people, I love that. Then, you know, if I can do three of them, each of those jobs should be worth about seven, $800. So, yeah, you know, that's a nice, easy, base level way of thinking about charging. But in terms of thinking about usage, I think we, a lot of photographers leave a lot of money on the table because they're not understanding the value of a single image and what that does for the client. It also means if you're thinking about hours, that means you're actually assuming how much time a job will take versus their goals. Now, I'll turn the scenario a different way. I'll give you an example. Someone came to me with a job to say, oh, we want these assets. It's about, I think it was about 1516 photos. And in my head I was thinking, yeah, I could do that in a day. And, yeah, that'd be about $2,000. But I shut up and I said, what are your goals and what's your budget? And so our goals are, we want to reach a public audience. We really want to because we got a lot of expensive equipment that we want the public to work with and things like that. And we have a budget of about $20,000. Now, how does that change your approach? So is it now a day shoot or do you have more scope? Yeah, because the deliverables are the same. 16 photos. If I, if I got $20,000, I saw. When do you need buyers? All, you know, a couple of months. What if I spent a month doing this to give them 16 photos? [01:54:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:43] Speaker C: And all of a sudden, the job totally changes. [01:54:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So you would now be looking at it as multiple shoots, potentially with different themes or goals for each shoot or whatever. Maybe different models or whatever's involved, because you're like, okay, this is actually, maybe we've got scope for, for one day shoots with more pre production and more people on hand during the day. And, I mean, higher cost models. I don't know what in your world, like, what that equates to, but is that how you. [01:55:11] Speaker C: Or even, or even just. Or even just paying for an idea? Like, I actually put a creative fear there because I went, I had so many meetings because they didn't know. They knew what they wanted to spend, but they didn't know what they wanted to end up with. So I was like, let's sit and work it out. And how much is an idea worth? You know, like the person who designed the virgin logo on a napkin, how much is that idea worth? Like, it's, you know, the time is not the point. The point is the value. The decline has already decided that this campaign is worth possibly millions of dollars to them. [01:55:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:42] Speaker C: So a $20,000 budget is a reasonable amount of money to spend on something like that. [01:55:47] Speaker B: But you wouldn't, you wouldn't just do the $2,000 shoot and charge them. $20,000 is what. Well, I mean. Well, yeah. So how does that work? Talk to me. [01:56:00] Speaker C: It's value is. Value is always in the eye of the spender. If they feel that that $2,000 shoe is worth $20,000, why not? Because there's people who make way more money. And that's not about being unethical. It's actually going well. Wow. Maybe my work is actually worth a lot more. Maybe this one photo will really make a difference. And even if it only takes me a day to do it, if the value is there, then the value is there. And I'm not saying this is a typical day in anyone's photography world, but it's a mental exercise to kind of go, well, what is the value of an image? Because we, as photographers, tend to only think hours. This takes me a day. This takes me that, and that's how much it should be. And that's actually, the value is not in the value to us. We're not even thinking about the value of the image to the client. So the client has a billboard, a billboard that they want, and that billboard is going to go around the world. So let's talk about usage now. And that billboard is going to launch a new product that's going to once again make them millions of dollars. What is that single image worth? And even if it took you five minutes to shoot, is that the value of a change to the client? Not really. If it's going to, if the outcome is still, I'm going to make millions of dollars on this, then why not? [01:57:20] Speaker B: So let's say the client smurfy. This company doesn't know what they're going to do with their images. They just want a little bit of a bank of them. Would you then do you have rates that we're like, this is the fee for these images, and they can be used in this way. However, if they're going to be used in these other ways, there are. [01:57:44] Speaker C: That's exactly what I is. That's exactly what I do. That's exactly what I do. [01:57:48] Speaker B: And I'll give you like, when you, when you explain that to them. Oh, yeah. [01:57:53] Speaker C: If they, if they, if this business has a marketing department, they will understand it. [01:57:58] Speaker B: Okay. [01:57:58] Speaker C: If there is solid. I don't really talk about licensing to small businesses. They literally have no concept of it. They be like. [01:58:06] Speaker B: So you wouldn't, you wouldn't present that to them. You would just say, this is the rate and you can, you can do what you want with these images. [01:58:12] Speaker C: That's right. Because, because, yeah, the most they could earn is maybe nothing. Still, they're still taking that risk. But when you're working for a different level, and this is what I mean by starting to decide who your client is. You know, if you, if you're working for, you know, clients who are just starting from zero to one, sure, you're going to shoot for $200 and they want to, they want you to work like a $2,000 job and. [01:58:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:38] Speaker C: You know, versus the client, who knows what they want, who knows what, what value it is. And. But then by then, that client is paying for minimizing risk. [01:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:48] Speaker C: So if you are a known quantity and if you can exercise empathy towards them, you have just raised the value of your business. You kind of like, I understand what you're trying to go for, even if sometimes I've actually had to educate clients. So in saying that I've had to go, this is why you're paying licensing, because you stand to make this, and I explain licensing as protection for them so that if that image becomes viral, it becomes a massive sensation. I can't come back and then ask for licensing money if they've already paid it. That makes sense. Like, licensing protects the client from having to spend more money. If that, if that image becomes more valuable, if the person who sold the right of an image can't ask for more after that, if that's within the contract for the first three years for this, for $500, you get usage for this amount of work. And if that thing absolutely blows up, you can't come back and go, well, actually, you should pay me more. And they've protected themselves by paying the licensing fee. [01:59:52] Speaker B: So, okay, so if they didn't pay the licensing fee, say, it's a small business, do your images then, do they have a limited amount of time they can use them, or, and that's, that. [02:00:05] Speaker C: That's, that's a real gray area. And I would rather leave that for a copyright lawyer, but, okay, I, for that particular level, I just let it go. If it gets, you know, like, in both ways, you're still caring about the client, you still kind of go, okay, you can't afford this, so have it. If it makes you lots of money, that's great. Come back to me for the next job. Yes, but if you're shooting for Fortune 500 company, then absolutely they should understand the value of your work and value licensing and the value protection as well. They would be all lawyered up. They already understand these things. [02:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:00:44] Speaker C: So I'll give you an example as well. In terms of accidental earnings. I did a job. It was for a commercial. It was, they were filming commercial, and they said, oh, we'd just like you to come in and take some shots. We don't know what, whether we'll even use these shots. So I said, oh, look, my minimum fee is this much. Like, if that's fine, I'll show up, I'll shoot whatever. And I, I probably shot for about 15 minutes. Honestly, 15 minutes. It was literally almost observational stuff. But there was one image that went, this is perfect for our billboard. But before that, I actually said to them, I will shoot it, but we will. But any usage of it, they will have to pay. They can use for web social, but if they're going to use it for public displays, there will be a licensing fee attached to it. And I made way more from that licensing fee than I did from the actual shoot. [02:01:41] Speaker B: Okay. And do your licensing fees change depending on the client or is it more depending on the scope of the potential for that image or is that the same thing? [02:01:52] Speaker C: I guess it's kind of the same thing. And it is not easy. It is not easy to work it out. But I mean, generally a billboard lasting fee, maybe between one to $3,000 for. [02:02:04] Speaker B: That means, well. [02:02:07] Speaker C: Things like that. But like I said, it's a lot of these things a lot of photographers don't have to deal with because a lot of big companies go to agencies, creative agencies to get these billboards done. And actually the licensing goes to the agency. So this is kind of like you're sort of playing in that in between area, but still a good man finds. [02:02:30] Speaker B: Someone like me who just does the shoot and just like, yeah, enjoy that. And then they hit the client with like, oh, by the way, all these licensing fees that you have to pay. [02:02:39] Speaker C: That's right, that's right. But in the day, the client doesn't care as long as they're paying what they getting, the value. If you can start doing it yourself, then why not? And I think that that also shows respect to the client as well. It gives you an understanding that I want to create something of value for you. If it's not value, then, you know, you shouldn't pay this much. So going back to Smurfen Smurfy, you know, like, I think your day rate is just fine. And like I said, putting a little caveat, like if this gets used for XYZ, there will be a license cv attached to it. I think that's a very fair deal for everyone. [02:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, so it basically just says, hey, you know, if you plan on putting this on your buses or billboards or whatever, this is the fee. Now as a business owner as well, I want to give people just some of my experience when it comes to. Because despite the grand nature of lucky straps, we are quite small. There's a couple of us, we're not a big business. Most of our straps get shipped out of Jim's garage, which is quite amazing. We'll do some more content around that soon, won't we, Greg? We'll do like a big deep dive on how it all works. I've had photographers, we get photographers reach out to us all the time, content creators saying, hey, love your straps. I'd love to create some content for you, blah, blah, blah. And every now and then if I like what they do, I'm like, okay, like, what do you have in mind? And they usually come back to me and say, what's your budget? And I usually say, no, no, no, like, we do most of our own content creation. We're photographers ourselves. I do love your work. Do you have some rates or whatever? Because our budget is essentially nothing unless I can strip it out of somewhere else and pay you, because I really like what you do. And then they usually have some fees. I want to work with photographers and pay them, but we have shoestring budgets and a couple of photographers have sent through stuff and I'm like, yeah, great, let's do it. I'll send you some straps, let's go. Because they just send through a quite a realistic price. And it's just a price. And I'm like, that sounds awesome, but I've had a few send me through ones that are like, you can use these for six months and then every, at six months it's another twelve hundred dollars. And it can be used for this social media and that, but you can't use it on your website. If you want to use it on your website, you can have a twelve month fee for stuff like that. And I immediately like, just shut down because I'm like, yep, not interested at all. Like, we're way too small. We're not, you know, and that they were sort of looking for licensing on stuff that, like, we're not doing. If they had sent through a billboard one, I would have been like, fair enough, we're not doing billboards. Doesn't matter. Sure. Like, if we do put it on a billboard, I'll pay you the money. That's cool. But they wanted licensing ongoing for social media use. And I think that is a thing with creators, maybe with big brands and like, where they're posting them too, and collaborations and all that sort of stuff. But is that something you ever see in the commercial world, like wanting like annual licensing for social media. [02:06:06] Speaker C: With me? [02:06:07] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Or have you ever heard of that being a thing with like sort of just normal? [02:06:12] Speaker C: Not for social media. No. This is what I mean by like, you. They've lost empathy to the clients. [02:06:20] Speaker B: That's what it felt like. It felt like they were like, here's a way for me to make ongoing revenue from you. And I was like, I, I don't know about this. [02:06:28] Speaker C: This is what I mean by it. By, like, for most of what I've just shared, largely, it's a thought exercise, but it does come into reality for every now and then when you shoot for those big clients who have, you know, the budget to make it. And that's actually doesn't apply for most companies. And, you know, like I said, 1200 bucks is, you know, it could be your profits for a month. Who knows? Like, you know, it's small business, you're just not going to do that. So therefore be like, well, what's. You have to find out? Value. Make value some other way for yourself. If you want to share someone, whether it's like, yeah, you give them a shout out along with, you know, a fair rate or whatever, you know, or gear that's on them to decide that value for themselves. If it's not, then you just politely just go, I don't think we're in alignment, or what, the value workers. [02:07:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is how they conversations sort of end up. I'm like, say, sorry, I don't think our sort of budgets align with what you're worth. I'm sorry. Because it's totally fine for them to charge whatever they need to charge. Like, that's. I would never sort of say, hey, you're not worth that money. Because they might be like, they probably just work with bigger brands than us. That's right. But a lot of it was also just the complexity around the billing arrangements. If there's that unknown, like, it's too. [02:07:46] Speaker C: Much for a small business, it feels like homework. [02:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So that would be my caution, obviously. You've said it's like this is for sort of larger businesses. Is, yeah, maybe be careful about bombarding a smaller business with too many different fee options and things like that. [02:08:02] Speaker C: Exactly right. Because that's why I said. That's why I said your approach was. Was just fine. This is my day rate and if you're going to absolutely use it for something that is like a national campaign, that's where it changes. Other than that, enjoy, you know, like, you want the client to love working with you because they go, yeah, this. This person's really on my side. [02:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [02:08:25] Speaker C: And payment is. Should not feel punitive. Like, if they pay you, be like, I'm giving you money to do something for myself. [02:08:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:08:36] Speaker C: And that's where the value is. It should not be, well, I've done work, so I'm going to take what's mine. It's a very different mentality. You know, I remember. I remember shopping for a luxury item. I went into Cartier and I thought I was shopping for a wedding band and I was looking at some watches. I love my watches. And I looked at the price, I went, who? That's a lot. And this must be a trained line from them. And all he said was, just put it on your list. When you're ready, come back. It's fine. It doesn't matter. There's no insult in you finding that expensive. But if one day you feel that that is of value to you, come back. And that's the thing I sort of approach. I kind of go, this is my value. If you're not my client, that's totally fine. It's, you know, like when you, when you, when you're at the stage, come back, and I've had clients who, when I first quoted them, they're like, oh, I'm not at that stage yet. And then two years later, like, I'm ready now, and let's do this. And they have felt that value because I went, okay, now I really want to say, because I really want to honor them because they're using their hardened money on me. They did come back, and I want to make sure that that helps them push what they want forwards. And I think that's, you treat it as that kind of healthy relationship, then you also have a healthy relationship with the way you quote, the way you talk to people, the way you manage your own finances and things like that. And, yeah, look, there are days where I still do something for next to nothing because I go, this is a fun job. So I don't want everyone to think that once you make it here, you only charge this. You know what? The big jobs only come every now and then, but you should be ready for them. You know, if you want to, if you want to talk to a big company every now and then you'd be like, all right, I can, I can have this conversation. But if you're not even anywhere close, remotely close to thinking that way, then you're only going to think of invoicing as a punitive thing and you'll, in a sense, find no joy of it. [02:10:44] Speaker B: And you can also scare, you can scare larger companies off with the wrong fee structure and the smaller fees as well, because, because they'll be like, oh, this isn't us. You know? Like, well, I mean, if you, if you go into a, maybe not, not Cartier, but like, if you just went into a general store that sells watches and the guy shows you one and you say, oh, I like that. How much? That. And he's like, oh, $64. You're probably like, yeah, that's probably not what I was looking for. You know, like, it can be, yeah, it can scare people the other direction they think, or this person is not at the level we're looking for. They're not the safe choice. They're not the trustworthy choice. Yeah, there is. [02:11:23] Speaker C: And like I said, I also encourage my clients to kind of go, if you want it bigger, it's fine, as long as you can afford it. We can do whatever you can dream of. As long as the budget's there, we can, we can hire a van to go and do this. We can take, do an overnight thing. We can get the celebrity and whatever you want. As long as you're ready for it, we can do it. So I want to be able to be prepared to have that conversation or even be able to talk at that level. If you never think that way, you will never know how to have that conversation. So even as a mental exercise, it's worth going. Well, yeah. If I could do this job for 2000, what would it look like? If I could do it for $20,000, what would it look like? Because there will come a client that goes, this is worth $20,000 to me and this is how I want to feel at the end of it. And if that comes once every few years, that's still great. But if you don't think of it that way, that will never come. Exactly. You'll price yourself out of the bigger clients because you're too busy thinking, thinking bottom, bottom dollar. Oh, yeah, I can get this done real quick and, you know, it'll be this much. And I'm going to give you this product. What if they wanted this product? [02:12:34] Speaker B: Exactly. [02:12:35] Speaker C: And you wonder how to deliver it. [02:12:36] Speaker B: Yeah. And like you say, get in, get in early with them and work towards their goals. That'll help you better understand the potential for the pricing. And then there is always the opportunity to say, you know, you present them with a price and often in my quotes, I'll say something along the lines of, you know, if you would like any modifications or amendments to this quote, please give me a call or whatever. And it's kind of like a soft opening of like, hey, if this hits a bit out of the range, like, talk to me and we'll, you know, I'm not just going to discount it, but we can, like, maybe we can make this shoot a little bit smaller than what I was thinking or whatever, and that you can always help them out afterwards. Whereas if you say, if you sort of under quote it and then they're like, yep, great. You don't know potentially what you might have been able to charge and what the value was to them. [02:13:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a tricky, ongoing learning process, but. [02:13:40] Speaker C: It, honestly, in a weird way, it doesn't get easier and it's always a new conversation. [02:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:13:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I've been doing it for, you know, I've been doing for a long time, and there's still days I want everyone to know. There are days I still get nervous quoting a job because, like, I'm not quite sure where we're at. I'm not quite sure what their situation is. And, you know, I send this out if my way, anything is, you gotta let them go sometimes. If it doesn't work, doesn't work. I've tried this and you gotta tweak it and you'll work out where you at, but you also should work out where you want to be. So you got to understand the market, all those little things, and you learn. Sounds great. [02:14:21] Speaker A: If you stuff it up, you'll learn. [02:14:23] Speaker C: That's right. Absolutely. [02:14:25] Speaker B: I like that thought, though, that it doesn't get easier. It's like, that doesn't get easier. The numbers just get bigger. And that's something that, my partner's a fitness coach, a crossfit coach, and I go to the gym every day, but we tell people that start that are new, that are like, oh, man, this is really, it's like, it's hard, hard work exercising, and we're like, yeah, it doesn't, it's also hard for any, like, it's hard for all of us every day. You know, it's not like you do it for a while and then you're like, ah, this is easy. We just, it's just easy. Every day. Every day is hard. There's just sometimes the numbers get bigger. You lift a few more weights or whatever, but it's still hard. Every day sucks. [02:14:58] Speaker C: Definitely. And I think a lot of, a lot of photographers feel guilty about finding it hard. And that's why I feel it's so important to say that is because it's, there are days I, after I said, I hit send and go, I don't know if I did the right thing. [02:15:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool to hear that it's even someone at your level. Is that because, I mean, most emails I say, the way I reconcile myself with that thought is asking myself that question, that if they decline this, will I be upset? I love that advice, you know, like, because maybe if they would. I used to tell my sister, do you remember eBay? I used to tell my sister when she bid stuff on eBay, I always used to mess with her head because she'd be like, that's it. I'm bidding $80 and I'm not bidding any more than that. I'd say, will you be upset if it sells for $81. And she's like, yeah. I'm like, well, then bid 85. You have to. And then I think that's something. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't just maybe go as low as lows to make sure you get the job or whatever. But it's a good question to ask just before you send the emails. Like, would I be upset if they turn around and say, no, that's, that's, that's too expensive for us. And if you'd be upset, have a rethink through all your pricing and double check it even just a second. Look, you know. [02:16:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And the opposite is true, that the stuff I kind of go, it's this much. And they said no. Like, I was like, phew, that's good. Now, now I know where now we're at. Because like, yeah, it's often, often it's the low paying clients that will work you the hardest. [02:16:29] Speaker B: This is very true. [02:16:34] Speaker C: I've paid you for 2 hours and you finished half an hour early. Can I, can you do this? Whereas the ones who, if you quoting on value, they'd be like, great, we got our job done early. We can all go home a bit earlier. We still got the same value done. Two slightly different mentalities. But yes, it is that. Tweaking and working out where you want, where you are and where you want to be and it's. It, yeah, I don't want anyone to feel guilty about it. It's just trying tweaking, applying, thinking about your language. But in a, overall, if you approach it with, I want to help people. [02:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:17:11] Speaker C: And you know, if their bigger budgets help me help them, that's also a good thing. But if they don't, how else can I get it? And you know, it's that, that little back and forth and end of day you should enjoy what you do and feel. Feel the value in it. [02:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. [02:17:27] Speaker A: Very good advice. Yeah, great advice. [02:17:30] Speaker B: If people wanted to professionally get their advice from you in on like a semester by semester basis, how do they do that? Like what, so what, where is it that you're teaching? [02:17:41] Speaker C: I teach at Collets in Collingwood. [02:17:43] Speaker B: Okay. [02:17:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So that's a bachelor degree. And I teach the commercial photography units. Within that it's a good course. And our students seem to be enjoying themselves. [02:17:57] Speaker B: I bet they've got great teacher. Very cool, very interesting conversation. [02:18:05] Speaker C: I love talking about this because I want people to keep doing what they love doing. [02:18:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it's important. [02:18:12] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [02:18:13] Speaker A: Most definitely. Just before we wrap up, just a couple of comments I want to share. One's from Nev, who's gone off to his day job. Thank you for the show, Jason. And guys really always enjoy it. Sorry for too many questions and comments. And have a great day. Had to do my day job. Hope your day goes well, Nev. Thanks for joining us once again, and we look forward to having you on again in the future. What else we got here from Jason? Did we work out? It was Jason, wasn't it? J's honey. Yeah. To Shani. This is fantastic listening. Extremely expansive and informative. And in fact, earlier, when we're talking about your bike, Jason La. [02:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. His is a triumph. Yeah, triumph. [02:19:06] Speaker A: Although try and sprint. Not that one is currently running. Head gasket. Cracked head. Needs a rebuild. [02:19:14] Speaker B: Dang. [02:19:17] Speaker A: What else you got here? [02:19:18] Speaker B: Does that mean he can't accept the harley? [02:19:21] Speaker C: That's right. It's a very divisive bike. [02:19:24] Speaker B: Right. [02:19:26] Speaker A: Just referring to our most recent conversation, that's the exact outlook that the guys at the Melbourne Leica store adopted to me. Try the camera. Use it a bit. Yes. It's expensive, but when it's right for you, come back and see us. And then to finish off. I haven't returned yet, but when I do, it'll. Because I'm good to buy the first. [02:19:47] Speaker B: My first experience at the Leica store was like that. And that's what got me hooked to buy the Q three. But unfortunately, since then, I've been in once or twice, and the experiences haven't been as nice. And it was a different staff member. I don't know if they have that staff member anymore. But I was like, this. Whoever the guy was, it was what I would expect walking into, like, a Rolex store or something like that. He was charismatic, friendly, completely like, hey, dude, most people can't afford these cameras. Don't worry about it. Like, let's have a look at some. Like, don't stress. Let's just. Let's just check them out. Don't, you know, like, this is kind of a. You know, we don't expect everyone to walk in here and buy cameras. You know, let's pull some out of the case and check them out. And it was a very fun. And what did you say? Like, disarming experience. When you kind of expect them to be like, hey, can we check your credit card before you touch any cameras? Or something like that? You know, like, it was the opposite. It was like, manda, most people don't buy these cameras. Like, let's check them out. [02:20:55] Speaker A: Speaking of likers, let's end on a little bit of news before we wrap up. So, like, it goes for a retro touch with its new M eleven D range find. Have you guys seen this? [02:21:06] Speaker B: I have, yeah. [02:21:08] Speaker A: Very interesting move. [02:21:10] Speaker B: They've been doing this for a few. They've been doing this for a while. The Yemen LCD? No, no, the. No, the. No lcd thing. Yeah. [02:21:17] Speaker A: So with this one. [02:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:21:20] Speaker A: I didn't realize they had this range. But this model, as you can see, doesn't have an lcd screen. It's going for more of a traditional, you know, the experience of the photography. Trusting in knowing the camera, knowing the settings, working with your exposure triangle. And so they've gotten rid of the lcd and put a. An old school ISO dial on it. And it kind of remind. Being a Fuji guy, it reminded me of the X Pro three when they. They. It had an lcd, but it folded up, so. And in play. And where this. On this Leica, where the dial is, the X Pro three had a little unlit lcd that showed the film simulation or the camera settings. And I think it's a. I like it. I can't afford it, but I like it because it goes back to that whole stop. Stop checking every photo. I mean, obviously, the stuff I do, it's different. Commercial is a very different story. But, you know, for street photography and for, you know, photojournalism and documentary kind of style, just go and trusting your gut and going with the flow of what the light is doing and what the. What, you know, what's happening around you and capturing based off your knowledge of how to correctly expose a shot. I think it's really wonderful. Not for that price. I don't know if they've actually listed a price just yet. [02:22:47] Speaker B: But really, Greg, when you think about it, what's the value of an image? That price really is probably a bargain compared to some of the memories and the images that you could create with that. [02:23:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing. [02:23:03] Speaker B: I mean, we just talked about pricing. [02:23:05] Speaker C: Love it. [02:23:07] Speaker B: I did a workshop with James Day, a wedding photographer who was a Fuji shooter. I think he's now a Sony shooter, back in the day. And I think this has been done before. I think he might have copied it from someone else. But we all taped up our lcd's for like an hour shoot. So you can get this experience for less money if you want to with your own camera. I mean, it's hard with mirrorless now because it's, you know, three year it's essentially just a mini lcd in the Eva. But this was with dslrs and it was. Well, actually he was shooting Fuji. Damn, he was cheating. I didn't even think about that. We were shooting dslrs and, yeah, we taped up the lcd and it is a fun experience. It takes a few shots to realize, hey, they're not coming up on the back screen anymore. And then you just kind of ease yourself into it. And it's nice. [02:23:56] Speaker A: In other camera systems, you can actually just turn off the LCD. But Canon obviously hasn't gotten to that point. [02:24:02] Speaker B: I was shooting Nikon at the time. I don't know why. Maybe he. I think he wanted us to not be able to cheat and press the play button or whatever, because you turn the lcd up good. Like, so dslrs, the LCD was always off. Yeah. Until you press. Until the image review come up. And then you just turn the image review off play. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, sorry. Going. Moving on. [02:24:28] Speaker A: That's okay. But that does bring us in. I'll start again. That brings us to the end of today's the Camera life podcast. I want to extend a warm thank you and appreciation to Jason for sharing so much insight into the world of commercial photography. Your journey, your inspirations, your story, you've inspired us very much so. And I'm sure that the people that have watched or are watching and will watch this in the days and weeks to come will feel the same. But it's really opened my eyes to a very different way to look at how we value our work. And then obviously, if we take that next step to want to make money out of photography, how we actually go about doing that. So thank you for your time today and your amazing, you know, sharing your knowledge. It's been great. Thank you, Jason. [02:25:25] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks. [02:25:25] Speaker C: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for having me. [02:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no worries. 2 hours and 25 minutes. Holy moly. [02:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I was very, very keen to get you on when I started looking at the guest list. And Justin has been getting cranky because all I've had on so far are bearded fujifilm shooters. [02:25:45] Speaker B: So out of place. [02:25:47] Speaker A: So out of place. But look, for those of you. [02:25:53] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying. I'm trying. [02:25:55] Speaker A: Are you? Are you? [02:25:58] Speaker B: I'm trying to squeeze it out, but nothing comes out. [02:26:01] Speaker A: I just had mine trimmed. [02:26:04] Speaker B: Did you save some of the trimmings for me? [02:26:06] Speaker A: No, I've done it to a hospital. Anyway, the camera life podcast, brought to you by lucky camera straps. Justin, what's happening in the week ahead for you or for lucky? Anything, anything big and bold. [02:26:22] Speaker B: Trying to get these, trying to get these clothes photographed and no, nothing super exciting. I've been shooting some more mountain biking with the Canon RF 51.2 lens. I'm going to do a little bit more of that because I read some things on the Internet and there was a guy saying that it's very slow to focus compared to Sigma and Sony 50 mil lenses. And I was like, that's wrong. So I've been testing it and he's wrong. I've been shooting a fair bit of sports with, with the RF 51.2 at 1.2 and it tracks very well. Very, very well. So I've been enjoying that a lot. I'd say possibly user error or maybe just justifying a gear purchase because he chose the Sigma over the canon RF because of the autofocus speed. And I was like, doesn't add up, buddy. Like, anyway, so I might make a video about that soon because it's been super fun shooting mountain bikers blasting past, but at 1.2 and then getting home and it's like you get to, it's like shooting film, you get home, you're like, oh, how many of these are going to be in focus? Yeah, they are. Which is pretty sweet. [02:27:30] Speaker A: That's nice. Well, if you're looking for a fashion photographer for your lucky straps merch, I can hook you up with someone. [02:27:37] Speaker B: I can't afford it. I don't know. Oh, I thought you meant Jason in the studio. [02:27:43] Speaker A: No, I did, I did, but I was just showing off the merch again. [02:27:46] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [02:27:46] Speaker A: I'm doing some marketing. I'm gonna take, I'm gonna talk to you later about my value, Justin. [02:27:52] Speaker B: I'll come back when I can afford it. [02:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's fine. Jason, what's on for the, for you in the week ahead? [02:28:00] Speaker C: What's on for my weekend? Oh, I'm teaching tomorrow, so my first class for this trimester, so I'm looking forward to that. [02:28:09] Speaker A: Nice. Very cool. Very. What have I got on? I don't, I've been getting out a bit more with my camera, which is nice. [02:28:16] Speaker B: Excellent. [02:28:17] Speaker A: The light's been better. I've been out on walks, which has been good. [02:28:22] Speaker B: And I don't have your blog from the weekend. That was really cool. Which one was that when you got out and strolled around on, I think, Saturday or Sunday, I think. Oh, yeah. [02:28:33] Speaker A: Went to the city and went to the. Stumbled, stumbled across a protest. [02:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I really enjoyed the vlog, the blog particularly. Yeah, I love that I might. I'll throw it in the link in the description if anyone wants to have a read. It was a great blog. [02:28:49] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. Thank you. But that's about it. We, next week we have, we're returning back to Fujifilm will be the Fuji Camera Life podcast. Once again. Russell Lord is joining us. And Russell is a Fuji ambassador and shoots a legend. Yeah. And he does remember you, Justin. He says he had a few beers with you at some stage. We sure to go. But look, we'll hear from Russell next week. Once again, thank you, Jason, where can people find your work? Where can people get in touch with you about gigs? [02:29:32] Speaker C: My website is probably the best. Jasonlauphotography.com. and I'm on Instagram. Yeah, yeah. [02:29:39] Speaker B: Links for both of those are in the description. [02:29:42] Speaker A: Wonderful. [02:29:43] Speaker B: Instagram for motorbike content and, and my. [02:29:49] Speaker C: Fashion Instagram, Jason Lau photos. [02:29:51] Speaker B: I'll add that one on there. I didn't have that one. Yeah, I'll add that one in there as well. [02:29:55] Speaker A: That's my bad. [02:29:56] Speaker B: And thanks, guys. Yeah. [02:29:59] Speaker A: All right, well, look, we're going to sign off, guys. For those of you watching along wherever you might be, as Jason said, get your camera. Doesn't matter what it is, just be present because those moments will come and go and you might as well be there with a camera in hand to capture them because they'll never happen again. But on that note, signing off from the camera life podcast. Have a great weekend, everybody, and we'll see you next week. Slow shuffle in the corner. Come.