EP41 Emily Black - Photo Awards Judge, Commercial Photographer and Ultra Runner

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Good morning or good evening, or good afternoon or good night. Welcome to the Camera Life podcast. This is episode 41. It is Thursday, the 5th of December, here in sunny Victoria, Australia. Of course, coming to you live. And if you're listening or watching along live with us, please feel free to jump in the comments, ask questions, make comments, talk to each other. Even you can ignore us completely, have your own thing going on. We don't mind at all. Stick around. Today we've got a very special guest and a new friend of Lucky Straps and that's Emily Black. Emily, welcome to the show. [00:00:49] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Oh, no worries. And also, obviously, we're joined by Justin, who is still a photographer, but he's also a strap maker. And this episode is brought to you by the team at Lucky Straps in Bendigo, Victoria. G'day, Justin. How are you, mate? [00:01:07] Speaker C: I'm great. How are you guys doing? [00:01:10] Speaker A: All right. Busy week. It's crazy time of year. What are we, less than three weeks? [00:01:16] Speaker C: Yep. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Let's talk about how close we are to the end of the year. [00:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it's okay. [00:01:21] Speaker C: It's the time of year when everyone buys all of their stuff on the one weekend and then Australia Post employees are like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:01:30] Speaker A: I think I saw a. I think I saw some footage on Instagram the other day on a reel or a thread or whatever they call it, of a postie truck on fire. And I thought, oh, that's not good. Maybe it was just. Maybe the poor post, he just went, I've had enough. Bloody teemu. [00:01:45] Speaker C: The posties in Canada are on strike at the moment, which is causing a little bit of a. Yeah, a little bit of a problem, like, so people's attention. We can't ship anything to Canada right now. [00:01:55] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:01:56] Speaker C: We gotta wait until the strike is over before Australia Post will even take the parcel off us so that they don't have a massive storage issue, you know of. Anyway. So, yeah, long story short, if you're in Canada, just. [00:02:08] Speaker A: Sorry, sorry, we're getting to you, we're getting to you. So, yeah, stick around for more discussion around postal shortages strikes and also to hear. To hear Emily's. Well, the Woolies are on strike and Dan Murphy's now. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Woolies. I could handle Dan's. [00:02:31] Speaker A: No, well, just, just quickly on that news topic, it's completely underrated, but in Australia, Woolworths is the probably second biggest or equal second biggest supermarket chain they have. They've gone from being the darlings of COVID because that was the only place you could go to for any form of retail therapy during the COVID lockdowns, which we had extensive ones here in Victoria, Australia to now being probably one of the most hated companies in the country. [00:03:01] Speaker C: Yep. [00:03:02] Speaker A: They've been accused of price gouging, ripping off farmers, ripping off customers and also ripping off staff. And all their staff are starting to strike and it's spread to Dan Murphy's and it's only because it's spread to Dan Murphy's the politicians are now taking an interest. [00:03:16] Speaker C: If you cut off the booze, everyone's like, oh well, what's happening? [00:03:19] Speaker A: Christmas. [00:03:20] Speaker C: It is Australia after all. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:23] Speaker C: A quick good morning to David in San Francisco. The wait is over. We are here looking forward to seeing you again in the live chat. [00:03:31] Speaker A: Thanks for coming back, David. Emily, can you just give us a. Just before we dive deep into your story, just for the folks that are just joining us and want to see what we have in store for them today, can you just give us a quick synopsis of who you are and what you're doing with your photography at the moment? [00:03:46] Speaker B: Okay. I'm Emily Black. I run Emily Black Photography. Very creative name. I am currently doing a lot of work with adventure sport teams and stuff, doing some photography for them that takes me to my photojournalism side of things. Tapping a bit more into that and I'm doing a lot of rebranding work with other companies. I have a lot of ongoing clients that I build relationships with and I am also contracting out to do event portrait photos. So the, you know, debutante balls and the graduations and all of that. So when we're talking about busy time of year. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Wow. [00:04:31] Speaker B: So I, yeah, I'm fresh off, well, not very fresh off shoot last night. So I'm drinking my coffee. That's why. Because I didn't get home till about 1. Sorry. [00:04:43] Speaker C: So you a company contracts you. So they do a ton of them and they contract a number of photographers to come in and take care of that on the night of a dead ball. [00:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah, this is the beautiful of beef, the beauty of beef up as well. This is where I probably know some of these people from. So it was. Yeah, it's another business that's been going for a very long time. Changed hands and then changed hands again. It's like a 25, 30 year old company and they've been doing it forever and they just have so many clients that they hire extra people out to go and cover them. So you might have a weekend where there's like six graduations going on and you've got 12 photographers working and all of the rest of it. And it's beautiful because I just get to turn up, set up, photograph, hand cards over and walk away so I don't have to worry about doing anything. Yeah, that stuff. So it's really fun. [00:05:41] Speaker C: We lost you a little bit there in the Internet of. Internet. Might have slowed down a little bit wherever you're hanging out, but that's okay. It'll catch back up. [00:05:50] Speaker A: I think you're at home, teenagers are downloading something. [00:05:52] Speaker C: They might. [00:05:53] Speaker A: Streaming. [00:05:54] Speaker B: You know what? [00:05:54] Speaker C: She probably is cut off Netflix. So what I heard basically is that the cool thing is hand over the cards, no editing. And especially with that I feel like there would be a ton of back end organizing, you know, to get the photos to everybody and handle all the files. It would be. Yeah, they've obviously got a big system going on. [00:06:14] Speaker B: I mean they have. They have all the systems and stuff all worked out. So I'm sure they're really good. They got streamlined and all the rest of it. But yeah, it's great that I can just turn up, do my thing and not have to try and sell things later. [00:06:28] Speaker C: Yeah, that's cool. [00:06:29] Speaker A: That's good. Well now we had Joel join us a couple of weeks ago. [00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:35] Speaker A: And he also does. He does schools photography. Yeah, School groups as his day job. Was there someone else we recently spoke to? He was also doing. [00:06:44] Speaker C: It's. Who was? [00:06:46] Speaker A: Nick Nicholas. [00:06:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Wasn't he doing. Was it him? Yeah, he was doing. [00:06:49] Speaker A: He was doing. Yeah. End of year graduations and balls. [00:06:54] Speaker C: And I was at a Christmas party last night. One of the. I was. And one of the Bendigo photographers who. He does a ton of like sort of high volume commercial work and stuff is. I think he said he's got six photographers working for him now, all like uni student sort of age. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:12] Speaker C: And he's got. Just got them all over the place doing like Santa photos and all sorts of stuff. He's really having a crack and he said getting into the dead ball stuff next year. So yeah, it's. It seems to be a thing. [00:07:26] Speaker B: It's weird because if you had have asked me when I started as a photographer if it's the kind of place I'd end up doing, my ego would have said not a chance. It's soulless and all the rest of it. And I've just had this real turnaround of these are families that these might be the only beautiful professional photos they have for years. And it's like sometimes it's the last photo of a Full family together. Like there's actually a real power in that. And you know, my young adult ego didn't see it at the time. [00:07:57] Speaker A: So yeah, I think we've all been there, but I think that's a really interesting observation that there is power in capturing these really special moments and they are a big deal to some families. And you're right, you know, especially in teenage years, even early adults, like the ability to get family together or even just to get your teens to smile for a photo, like it's, it can be challenging to get them to look up from their screen especially. [00:08:27] Speaker C: The other thing with it is too, and this, this should not be ignored is if, if it allows you to have some sort of steady additional income as a photographer that helps you do the other work that you want to do. And, and it's. If it's enjoyable work as well, why not? [00:08:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. And you're right, it is another income. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hectic and it's another income and it is still seasonal to a point as well because the start of the year is pretty quiet. But as sort of the middle year starts to roll around and all of the debutante balls happen and the graduation, things like that, that's when it really starts to kick off. But it's, it's actually, it's, it's a nice little thing to store away in the back of your mind going, okay, I know I've got that coming. That's going to be okay. I don't have to stress too much about, you know, chasing, chasing the work as much and I can take on as much or as little as I want. So it sort of, there seems to be the work there that if we want it, we can take it and if we're available, we do. [00:09:23] Speaker C: So I promise we'll get to more of your story soon. But on a side note of that, you know, an interesting photography style that's in the US that isn't really in Australia that I know of is the. Have you seen like the high school senior portraits that they do over there? [00:09:38] Speaker B: Yes. [00:09:39] Speaker C: How creative. You know, if they're into soccer, it'll be like a full on styled soccer shoot with off camera lighting, really cool like motion blur. Like the photographers go to town trying to create really interesting portraits. Almost like what you would put in a magazine if this person was going to be a professional soccer player or whatever. And it was a feature on them that do at high school. Have you seen them? [00:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:10:05] Speaker A: No. [00:10:05] Speaker C: You have Emily? [00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I've got so I've got family in the US And I've got friends over in the US as well. And some of their kids are around my kids age. So they're coming into that. They're getting all of their grade, you know, their year 12 or their senior year photos and stuff done. And it's all around what they're into and everything. But I think that around the yearbook mentality too, we don't have, our schools don't have yearbooks. So in their yearbooks they have a real write up on this is this person and this is who they are and they have their page sort of thing. So we don't really have that. But I see a value in that as well because I think that's real. [00:10:39] Speaker C: Great time piece especially when it leans into their passions and hobbies and what they're pursuing and that sort of stuff. And I just thought also. So obviously they're getting valued by the parents and by the, by the kids and stuff. So they're getting, the photographer has paid work because these photos are valued. So they're actually getting paid for the shoots. But the photographer gets to be super creative in a way that, you know, maybe if you are a sports, a professional sports photographer that works for magazines, you get to do this kind of stuff. They get to do it, you know, on a weekly basis with various kids, you know, without having to have a magazine backing you or whatever to. It's, it's pretty cool. [00:11:22] Speaker A: Especially if the school has a heavy sports focus. Like if they've got a, you know, a team where a number of people are going to move into the next, the next pro league, you know, you know, like, they're really big on their, on those sorts of. I have seen the sports stuff, but now the only, the only American school graduation stuff I've seen is those reels that show terrible memes of, you know, people that have just gone too far with the makeup or the, or the, or too little with the dress code. But, but yeah, it is, it is an interesting, you know, and I think it's good because yes, it's high volume and yes, it can be exhausting, but it is also a, you know, a good avenue for, even for younger photographers newer to the industry. I'd probably just recommend avoiding Pixie Christmas photos. I don't know if you guys remember Kmart used to have Pixie. Every year Pixie would set up. I used to work at Kmart when I was a teenager many, many years ago. And they, they would have a Pixie photo thing set up with A Santa? Yeah, you know, in a chair and all the kids would scream and cry and all of that and they'd be forced to do it. It was very traumatic. [00:12:30] Speaker B: That's a whole other thing to unpack. [00:12:32] Speaker A: It is, isn't it? Yeah. I just. Yeah. [00:12:35] Speaker C: Now you look like Santa Greg. [00:12:36] Speaker A: I do. It's. It's kind of had a profound impact on completely my aesthetic. Thank you, Justin. Now, Emily, you and I first met at bfop and for the folks listening and watching along at home, just to remind you guys, we do have a couple of episodes about beef up. BFOp is the bright Festival of what? [00:12:56] Speaker C: Oh, that's what I was about to say. I was like, for anyone that's going, what is a bfop? Is that like an Australian slang word or something? [00:13:03] Speaker A: But it is, it is a Bright for testable Bright Festival of Photography. I'll get it right. And that's the three day photography weekend held in Bright in Victoria, probably one of the most prettiest country towns you'll come across in Victoria, apart from Bendigo, of course, Justin, obviously, but. And we met there. Now we. I attended your workshop was the very first workshop I attended upon Boots down in Bright when Justin and I first arrived. We dropped off the lucky straps at HQ and then Justin drove me up to Red Cliff and dropped me at the foot of the hill. And then you were kind enough to give me a lift up to the, up to the lodge where we sat down and. Or we didn't sit down, but we worked through your workshop. And then, yeah, you gave me a lift back to Bright and we had some very good chats in the car on the way home, getting to know about each other and your work as well as your passions. And we'll get to those in a little bit more detail. But you mentioned earlier about in the early days, in your younger ego, and take us back to that time. What was your earliest inspirations for photography? Did you study photography? [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I did. So when I was quite early high school years, I kind of thought I was going to be a writer, thought I was going to go into journalism and things like that. So I started to pursue that. And so I did media studies as part of that when I sort of hit the senior, not quite senior, sort of year nine, year ten. And it's probably a pretty common story, but I had one excellent teacher, I just had one teacher that was like, you've got an eye for something. There's something that you're seeing here that other kids aren't seeing, that other people aren't seeing. I want you to explore that further. So I did start to explore that further and then found how storytelling and photography was just as powerful as the words and combined, you know, it was like the world is my oyster. So I kind of started moving towards photography and then I loved the process of it. So we had a dark room and everything at school. So I was like, well into the dark room and mixing the chemicals and hiding in there and seeing what you could. Experimenting kind of seeing what you could do if you pushed something too far or if you dodged this or burnt this or twisted this this way and all that kind of stuff. And we were encouraged to explore that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it was. Yeah, it was that one teacher that just sort of gave lit that spark. And that's sort of a common story, a common thread in like all of my life. It's just like one person just lights a little spark and then I'm like, oh, wow, okay. And then I run with it. So then I moved through. So went and did photography and media studies and English and things like that through my senior years at school and then went straight into uni. So I went to photography studies college here in Melbourne and did that for three years and got a majored in photojournalism. So that was awesome. And then hit straight into a job in newspapers, which was like a baptism, like a baptism of fire. Like, it was really cool. Yeah, so it's a bit of a. Bit of a fairy tale story, really. Like it just the right place at the right time and knowing the right people to talk to and just put my work in front of and, you know, and being. Actually, I think it's being willing to be the lowest in the food chain for a while as well. So I didn't go straight into taking photos when I went into newspapers. I was in the photographic department. I was working in the lab. I was printing things I was not printing. I was working in the processor and all of that kind of stuff and learning as much as I could. And it was like that age where things were shifting from film to digital. So it was this really transformative time. And then, you know, I would be taking these older people under my wings. And this is how you scan a photo. And this is what you do here and this is this button here. And yeah, so it was really cool, really cool time. [00:17:23] Speaker A: So that. That first job of yours and you were. You were working with film still. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very, very much towards the end. Like there were digital cameras around, but it was because we were local news, and it sort of, again, the bottom of that sort of rung of hierarchy in the newspapers. We were sort of the last to kind of flip over completely. So we came into. We had scanners and all the rest of it, so they were still shooting films. We would process that and then we would scan it all. So that was our digitizing. After about a year and a half, two years, we went fully digital. But there was still. The lab was still there just in case something went awry for a while. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:10] Speaker C: How many photographers were working there when you started? [00:18:15] Speaker B: It was about 38. [00:18:17] Speaker C: 38. [00:18:19] Speaker B: So we had. We had a lot of. We had a lot of mark. So we covered pretty much all of metropolitan Melbourne. So it was sort of one photographer per two mastheads, pretty much. And they kind of fed into each other a little bit. So they'd be neighboring areas and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was. It was wild. It was. And of that 38, there was about three females. [00:18:45] Speaker C: Really? [00:18:46] Speaker A: Wow. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, I was. I think I was like the fourth female to come in. So that was a whole other thing too. Yeah. [00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Bet. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:55] Speaker C: Were the other. Were the other females fairly, like in their newer years as well, or were there a couple of senior, like, were there. [00:19:01] Speaker B: There was a couple of senior ones that had pretty much four or five, but there was. Yeah. And I'm actually still good friends with one of them through other facets of our life as well. But she. She got a cadetship into it. So she was like 16 or 17 when she started in the. In the thing. And she was much. She's a bit older than me, so she'd been doing it forever. And then, yeah, the other. There was another couple of girls that. Girls, ladies, humans, that were, again, a little bit older than me that had been in it for a lot longer. So I was. Yeah, I was this young little whip start that was embracing technology. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Yep. It's interesting what you say about how your. Your outlet was kind of one of the last to transition to digital, which is probably not a bad thing. When we talked to Jason Lau on our show a couple of months ago, he, like, you studied film, started in film, made an early jump to digital, and then ended up going back to film because the resolution of film is just still far superior than anything. Those little, you know, two megapixel sensors. [00:20:06] Speaker B: The first digital cameras we had were like Nikon, and I love Nikon, but that first digital one was an absolute mess. So the first digital SLR was just. It just didn't have what film Had. So we. We kind of sat it out for a little bit longer, waiting for the next and the next, and then we were like, okay, these are okay, now we can do it. And I mean, in print media, it's. You're not always that stressed about the perfections of it because it's, you know. But when people are buying the photos for their family or whatever, when you're photographing in local press, when you're photographing a 60th wedding anniversary, the family want to buy that photo, so they want to know that it's going to be okay. So generally speaking, we were making sure that. Yeah. That we sort of had that, you know, security. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And was that a common occurrence where people would want to buy photos from the outlet? [00:21:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I think mostly through the local news because it might be the only. You know, it was big deal if you photographed somewhere, you know, we photographed little local sports stars and all that kind of stuff. And you'd photograph. There was definitely a theme of photos that were being bought, but also weirdly. And I still get royalty checks every so often for like tiny little amounts. But there was a lot of times where you're photographing areas, so you're photographing areas of the local community and then random educational outlets are buying, you know, this is what this was at this time. And so we're going to buy that and they're using it because they've still. I think they've still got access to those. [00:21:46] Speaker A: Those assets, outlets and stuff to be. [00:21:48] Speaker B: Able to get them. It's. It's random. Who. Who buys the stuff. But it was like a consistent thing. Like, it's like, this is such and such train station on this date at this time. [00:21:57] Speaker A: Wow, that's really cool. And just for the, just for the kids listening along at home and watching along at home, a check is a piece of paper that pretends to be currency. You write on it and it actually turns it into money. It's magical. [00:22:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it's all, it's all digital now. I just get an email, but yes. [00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:17] Speaker C: I. The. So this wild, this massive team of photographers. It just sounds so interesting to me to be working in an environment with that many photographers. I want to know, like, was there. Were there ones that were sort of kind of competitive or like cowboys or whatever? Were there some people that were really pushing the digital thing and then others that were like, I'm never shooting digital, you know, was there any of that? Like, what was the dynamic like in the. And the different personalities. Were there any massive personalities that Were like the rock stars of the. Of the place. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Yeah, man, it was, it was wild. So there was. We had sort of three offices and so every office seemed to have their like hero. The one that was like, you know, I'm going to go for this. But we had like where I was. So I was in the northern suburbs of Victoria, so we. Of Melbourne. Sorry. And we had. There was a certain demographic of like photographer that was a bit more. Just cut and dry, a bit more black and white, a little bit more. I'm not doing that. That's rubbish. You know, I'm not embracing that. But then I'm an artist. We also had a photographer who was sort of towards the end of his career then. He'd photographed the Beatles, he'd photographed the Pope. Like he used to work, like big stuff and he was just happy to have a job that was ticking over the days and all the rest of it. And he was, he was like my little project. He was such a sweet guy. He's like, can you show me how to do this? And I'd sit there and I had like. I wrote up a manual for him that was like, even easier than like, you know, an idiot's guide kind of thing. Like it was like you press this button to turn this on, you wait five seconds for the whirring to sound to start, then you, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And watching him start to embrace it was actually really lovely. You can teach an old guy new tricks. Like this is great. But there was, but there was so much value that came from him as well. Right. Because he'd done all of these things. He had all these stories to tell. Yeah, he was, he was remarkable. But then we did have. There were certain mastheads that were like the Hollywood mastheads because you had created. So you might have the Preston leader or you might have the Maroonda leader, the area. So, you know, Herald's son is the masthead kind of thing. The age is the masthead. Yeah. So we had. Yeah, so we had a whole bunch of those. So there were certain areas that were like much more appealing to be involved with and they were generally in a city kind of. [00:25:01] Speaker C: They got the bigger news. Like it was it. [00:25:04] Speaker B: No, they just got a much prettier looking product that had a bit more creative control and a bit more studio work and a little bit more editorial based kind of stuff. Because that's what. Apparently that's what they wanted. A bit more magazine style almost. [00:25:20] Speaker A: And what was the stinky one? Sorry, what was the stinky One in the mob. What everyone knew, oh, I don't want to. I don't want to work on that one. [00:25:28] Speaker B: I got to. Well, there was, you know, I can't. We'll see that kind of thing. The Frankston leader or whatever. But there was. I worked on for quite a while. It was the covered sort of sunshine, deer park, foot scray. Like it was a bit of a. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Carry a firearm kind of territory. [00:25:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Like you knew you were going to get news. [00:25:51] Speaker A: Like it was. You just had to head around. [00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. Literally, you could just sit in the car and wait and you'd go and get it. Wow. So there was a few areas that were like that there was, you know, something was going to happen and you had good relationships with the police in that area because you. Sometimes you were kind of not breaking stories. But I've got to diverge. There's a fun story. So we had to set up a photo about some mobile police work that was going on in an area. And it was. They were trying to hunt down speeding motorbike riders. And, you know, they were, you know, on the hunt for trying to make that street safer and, you know, stop terrorizing the neighborhoods kind of thing. My husband and I both have motorbikes licenses, so I asked my husband if he'd be willing to just pose in a photo, just zooming past. Not zooming, but, you know, riding past on his motorbike. And we had the police there and doing his thing. So occasionally we were able to sort of set up the story for what we wanted to achieve. Right. And so we went and did this, did this shoot and my husband came along, bless him, and he was, you know, zooming past his blurring motorbike rider and the policeman there. And, you know, we're just finishing up and the police goes, gotta stop you right there. That car that just drove past is one that we've been hunting down. Lights and signs went on. Bang. He was down the road and it was just like, this is brilliant. Like, it's all happening right now. [00:27:17] Speaker C: Just start shooting, Start shooting. [00:27:19] Speaker A: Hop on the back of your husband's bike and chase them. [00:27:22] Speaker C: Chase him. [00:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah. But yes, it was. Yeah, it was such a cool, like, you know, you'd be right in the thick of it at times and just you never knew when something was going to kind of pop up. And some of those shows that are on the TV now, those. What are they? Highway Patrol and stuff like that. So some of the guys that were in that, I didn't work with them, but I Worked with their department back in the day kind of thing. It was like, oh, this is so cool. Full circle. It's great. [00:27:49] Speaker C: It's a shame. It's a shame Jim isn't on this episode. He's our other co host who joins sometimes. But he was. He was busy this morning. He might jump on later, actually. I'll see. Send him a text. But he. He went very similar story straight out of uni in Bendigo to the Bendigo Advertiser, like straight into news and this. The variety of work, you know, like he. There's. And there was. Seemed to be a pecking order of what jobs certain photographers got given and stuff like that. Because he, you know, sometimes you'd end up his say he's just end up at the hospital just taking photos of the newborn babies to go in the bed. Was it really? [00:28:30] Speaker A: Oh, really. [00:28:31] Speaker B: My first job was you've got. On every Thursday afternoon there's two hospitals that we go to. You get to go to these two hospitals, take the photos of the mother and the baby, which is another full circle moment because that's what I went into later on. But it was. Yeah, it's like that was the first job and you sort of had to prove yourself is being able to do that. And then once you kind of did that, like, would you like to do sport? We don't have someone on Saturday. Would you like to do the sport job? Yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that. You never shot sport in my life. Yeah, like learn on the job. [00:29:01] Speaker C: You just figure it out as you go and you. Yeah, and that's what he sort of. And then you end up at the point where. Yeah. I don't know the one. A local. Nearby town's flooding or whatever. And then you're, you know, you're the person that has to go to the floods and try and document that and those kind of. I guess what. What we imagine as more exciting jobs in that industry. You know, like there's news happening. Oh, Emily's frozen. We've lost her. [00:29:26] Speaker A: She'll know. [00:29:29] Speaker C: Yes. So I love this though. It's so exciting. Kind of. [00:29:31] Speaker A: It is really interesting. [00:29:34] Speaker C: Oh, you're back. [00:29:35] Speaker A: You're back. You froze. [00:29:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw everything freeze on my screen too. I was like, yeah. Because there'd be days, you know, in local news and regional news, you'd photograph a 60th wedding anniversary, a politician at a primary school. Oh, wait, there's been a fatality at the train. A train crossing. Can you get down and cover that or there's been a, you know, something else. Go on. Like, I've covered celebrities coming to hospital openings to photograph. And that's, you know, that's always fun when the media scuffle and all the rest of it, trying to get the shot that you have to get. And then. Oh, yeah. But then, you know, you'd go to. You'd get a phone. Your day would be going all smoothly, and your phone had ring. What's this? And then they'd be like, are you able to just get to wherever because there's been a body found in the back of a car or something. You know, like, it's just like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm free. Off I go. [00:30:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:30:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Really, really wild stuff, like, at times, but also some really lovely things. So it was a nice. [00:30:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:46] Speaker B: Balance for a while. [00:30:47] Speaker C: I think that's. That's the thing. When you hear of photojournalism, you kind of imagine I do anyway, because I've never done it. Is the first thing that pops into your mind is something happens that's newsworthy and you got to go and document it, like a body found in the back of a car or something like that. But most of the time, it's a lot more like you say, set up shots for a story that's running, because it's not like, hey, this is happening right now. It's like, hey, the police are trying to crack down on speeding. We need something that conveys this story in an image. Figure it out. And then you've got to go and try and essentially create a photo out of nothing. And it's a completely different skill set, and you have to do both. [00:31:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And if it's a tropical story, like, you've got the heads up that this is probably going to be our front page. So make sure you get a vertical or a horizontal or however the page is going to look. So make sure you get that as well, and all of these kinds of things. So you're kind of working within a lot of those guidelines and things like that as well. So. And there was always the thing of, you know, this is what I want to shoot and I'll get my shot, and this is what they need, and I'll get that shot. So you'd always do a couple of different setups, and then you'd always push the one that you wanted to use. [00:31:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:58] Speaker A: And so when you were. When you were. When the. The news department was finally embracing digital, and obviously cameras improved a little bit. Were you also editing your work or is that actually Going off to a separate person or department. [00:32:13] Speaker B: No. So we would do, we had very limited things that we could do. Being in news, we couldn't, you know, Photoshop things and stuff, but there was pretty much whatever you could do in a dark room you could edit. So and we could bring shade back and all that kind of stuff crop maybe in the real estate department and stuff. There was things like, you know, straightening horizons and lines and things like that if we needed to and stuff. But it was, we'd do a basic edit and we just shoot that through occasionally. There was times in some of, some of the more lovely mastheads where there was a little bit of Photoshop work done and you had to, you know, you had to say that this has been, this image has been Photoshopped and stuff. [00:33:00] Speaker A: Yep. [00:33:01] Speaker B: But yeah, it was, yeah, we would edit so we would download, download the card at a, put it into the job, select our images and submit maybe two to four images for each shoot with horizontal and vertical depending on where it was going to sit in the paper. And also you're also kind of thinking at the same time if this is something that's going to run again later on. So you needed maybe a couple of, if it was an ongoing story and they needed to refer back to or something like that. Sometimes there was that kind of mentality as well. So. Yeah, yeah, very good. [00:33:42] Speaker A: Cool. And for the, and just once again for the, for the younger generation listening and watching along, a newspaper is kind of like a website made out of origami. Just picture it that way. Now, Emily, at what point did you then decide to, you know, to. At what point did you transition into your, into Emily Black Photography? Was it a, was it a leap of faith that, okay, I'm going to do this, I've got what I need, I've got the skill set, I've got experience, references, I've got a body of work that I can show. Or was it a more of an integration of your day job and Emily Black Photography? Talk us through that transition. [00:34:26] Speaker B: So I worked in newspapers for about 12 years, but the last two years of that was pretty much I was, I was full time, a full time employed photographer. Like how many people can say that, right? I was a full time employed photographer in a large company for 10 years of my life, 12 years of my life. But the last two years was permanent part time. I, because I had children, so things shifted and I was photographing more. At that point it was being permanent part time. You kind of were given the odd news job, but you Sort of were covering specific things, so your life was a little bit easier, a little bit more nine to five. So I'd be doing more of the commercial advertising images and things like that that they needed to have. And the real estate section, we go and have a house of the week that we would have to photograph as well. We couldn't just use supplied images that were coming in. So sort of bit of editor kind of work there. So I was doing that for a while and also working with another wedding photographer who was running her own business and needed another photographer to come on as a second shooter and when she needed somebody to cover a wedding, so I was working with her for a little bit and we were doing a little bit of sort of some portrait work in the studio as well. And we both kind of started gravitating towards. Because we were both sort of new mums and all the rest of it. We were both gravitating towards baby photography, so maternity and newborn photography. And that was when it was sort of just kind of starting to take, you know, gain traction within the world of, like, these posed, beautiful, you know, pristine baby photos. [00:36:14] Speaker C: When you used to put them in pots and stuff, that was the pot. [00:36:22] Speaker B: We blame Angettis for all of it. It wasn't quite. It wasn't quite, but it was. And we. Yeah, so we were moving towards that. And we both did a workshop with some American girls that came over who were kind of the early rock stars of that kind of stuff. And so we would. We started to move towards that. And she was the one that kind of suggested, well, why don't you just do it? Why don't you just leave your job? Because you clearly like doing this. You can photograph families. You know how to do that. We've learned a new skill. Why don't you do it? And I was really worried about, like, stepping on her toes. I was like, oh, I don't want to take away business from her. Turns out we shoot completely different anyway. Like, she's much more colorful and vibrant and I'm much more earthy tones and all the rest of it. So, yeah, I just went, okay, I guess I can just put in my resignation. Had a chat to the husband about it. He was happy that I was going to be home more. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Who would have thought? [00:37:35] Speaker B: Well, you kind of. You kind of. Not when you're running a business. Right. You're kind of working harder than you ever were before. It's just. So it was a bit hectic, but because I'd been working at the newspaper for so long I had a good payout, so I had super. Not super. I had long service leave and all of that kind of stuff still owing to me. So I was able to take a bit of a chunk of money, which was great to set me up with all of my gear and to then sort of move into it. And it was a little bit of a, again, a bit of a baptism of fire in a way of. I'd never run a business before, I didn't know how to set all of this stuff up, how was I going to do it and all the rest of it in my website, what do I do there, you know, and moved through all of that. So yeah, kind of. It was a very clunky process once I made the leap. But I certainly don't regret it because not long after that they. Well, in hindsight maybe if I had to stuck it out another 18 months, I would have got an even better payout because they made bad voluntary redundancies and things like that. [00:38:43] Speaker C: But, oh, wow, you can't, you can't predict the future. You gotta just go for it. [00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, then just ran with that and then, yeah, it started moving into. I was going to people's homes and shooting on location and all that kind of stuff to save, save, you know, the costs of the overheads of all the rest of it. And slowly started chugging away. Definitely wasn't charging what I was really worth because of fear and then just started chugging away at that and building a good client base. [00:39:21] Speaker C: And I have a question about the gear just quickly before we get too deep into it, so. Oh, actually before that. Hi, Jim. Jim's in the comments. He's jump on later but say, yeah, Jim says, hi Emily and frog from Tasmania says, rose between the thorns. Hello, Emily and the boys. That's nice of you to call me a rose. [00:39:40] Speaker A: No, I'm a rose. [00:39:41] Speaker C: Oh, okay, sorry. Greg's the rose. So you had to swap from essentially having a pool of unlimited gear, you know, like, I know even Jim at the Bennu Advertiser, like he had the, you know, flagship Nikon bodies all the time, 400 mil, 2.8 if he wanted it and he could just take it and use it and you, that was life. So you had to go from that to then setting yourself up with your own gear for your own business. Did you go, did you go crazy and you're like, I need everything or were you like, I'm keeping this as cheap as possible. I'm just going to get like one body and one Lens. And that's. That's it. How did you approach it? [00:40:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I was lucky in that. Well, never buy X press. [00:40:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:34] Speaker B: Just don't do it. Having said that, I did buy some of my own X gear. So occasionally when they upgraded things, they would be like, well, look, we're going to upgrade this, this and this. Do you, you know, here's a pool of stuff. Have a look at it. See what you want to buy. And so you'd buy a lens, like a, you know, 1.8 50 mil lens for 50 bucks. [00:40:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:40:58] Speaker B: Because they just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had a few little bits and pieces. I already had some of my own gear anyway, so it was really just upgrading some of it. And because it was. I was shooting with Nikon in the paper and I was shooting with Nikon personally. Probably the major loser was my husband because I transferred him from Canon to Nikon because he had a Canon body and he changed over to Nikon thinking, we've got access to all of these things. And so, yeah, he lost out. So we. I bought. Maybe I bought a 50 mil, a macro and a 70 to 200. So I knew the three lenses that I wanted and I had. And I. I already had a film body. I've got a couple. Like, I had an F5 and then I transferred over to a D800. Yeah, mine doesn't look as pretty as that, though. Mine's kind of held together with, like, electric. [00:42:03] Speaker A: Dustin's. Never used. [00:42:03] Speaker C: It works. I'm trying to get. The screen won't turn on on the back. [00:42:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:42:10] Speaker C: I can't see any of my photos. [00:42:13] Speaker B: Oh, how good are they? Yeah, I. Yeah, mine's. Yeah, the whole. The. Yeah. The top part of mine's kind of held together with tape, but still works. [00:42:25] Speaker C: They're a brick. You could take them to the end of the world there. Yeah. It's so solid. [00:42:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. That's what I keep telling Julie. From Nick on, I'm like just, you should. I'm your sponsorship chick. Like, seriously, the gear I've got is years old. It works forever. You don't need to give me much. Yeah. So I just bought the few lenses that I knew I would need that was going to give me the versatility that I wanted. So because I was going to be potentially shooting, you know, weddings from time to time, 70 to 200 was a great asset. 50 mil was always perfect because you just had your prime. And my macro lens, that 105 macro gave me the ability to be long but also go really Close for the baby stuff and things like that and get details and stuff. Still got that same lens. I still got the 50 mil lens, don't have the 70 to 200 anymore. And it's the biggest regret of my, my life because I was so heavily involved in just doing one thing for so long. I just gave up using it and it was just weighing down my camera, camera bag and I got rid of it and then maybe six months later I'm like, why did I do that? [00:43:32] Speaker A: That's the stupid. I bought the same lens twice a couple of times. [00:43:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. But the beauty was that even going across to digital, all of the lenses came across with me. Never had to worry about transferring from one to the other. So, yeah, it was an outlay, but because I'd had a bit of a payout, it meant that I could actually like work out exactly what I needed and just go with that and just get it. Yeah, that's great. [00:44:04] Speaker C: The drunk writing photographer who's from somewhere in California, I can't remember where, says the F. He's also David. Oh yeah, that's right, he's a David. The F5 is his main camera for wedding, so he currently shoots weddings on film with the F5. Still. Are you shooting with it at all still? [00:44:23] Speaker B: Not really. [00:44:25] Speaker C: Not for professional work. [00:44:27] Speaker B: No. I. Well, I've got a few old film cameras, I've got a. An Olympus, a couple of other bits and pieces and stuff that I've. I've just play around with from time to time. But I love the idea of shooting film, but I'm so freaking lazy in going and getting it processed and stuff that I'm. A lot of the time I'll just back up whatever I've shot on the film. I'll just back it up with the camera. I'll just edit that later. But my, it's, it's the beauty of like, whenever I pick it up, I'm like, bang. Know exactly what I need to be on and I know how to do it all. Yeah. Yeah. [00:45:03] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah. We talked to Joel Elston from BFOP the Beautiful. He caught up with us. Sorry. [00:45:12] Speaker B: He loves his film. [00:45:13] Speaker A: He loves his film. For anyone that was at beef up, you can recognize Joel because he was running around in a pair of flares with a, with a rangefinder camera and I think also a medium format. Didn't he also have that medium format? [00:45:28] Speaker C: He had a few, a few cameras kicking around. [00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:45:31] Speaker B: There was a flash that was going off. It was generally his. Yeah. [00:45:34] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Yeah. And even in the minivan the way back from the. From the. The after party, he was. He was taking shots of us in the minivan and I was worried he was going to blind the driver and the driver would drive off the cliff. [00:45:47] Speaker B: But. [00:45:50] Speaker A: I was. I was in the cyber in the van. So I think we're losing you a bit there, Emily. [00:45:59] Speaker C: We've lost you a bit. The Internet will come back. It's comes and goes in waves over here in Australia. [00:46:04] Speaker A: It's a fickle piece. [00:46:05] Speaker C: Gotta stick with it. [00:46:07] Speaker A: Jim's also having technical difficulties. [00:46:09] Speaker C: He says, yeah, everyone, he's gonna try and jump on, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. [00:46:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:46:13] Speaker C: I want to find out when. When Emily comes back from her Internet break, I want to find out what, like, roughly what year this was that she. That she jumped into that business. I reckon that'd be interesting to know because if she was still using the F5 a little bit, it must be a while ago she had digital too. Anyway, we'll find out. [00:46:32] Speaker A: We will find out. Just while we're waiting for Emily, Tim's just said, sorry, team, it's not looking like I can get on at the moment. I might try jump on when Justin does his photo challenge. [00:46:42] Speaker C: No worries. I'm a bit worried about my photo challenge today. That's coming up later. If anyone has been following along, I've got another set of images. Oh, hello, you're back. [00:46:52] Speaker B: I don't know what's going on. [00:46:56] Speaker C: It's that Internet down in Melbourne. [00:46:58] Speaker A: No, it's. You know what it is? It's. I have five. We have five kids here at home, all living at home. They all have multiple devices. I think in my daughter's room alone, there's like four monitors connected to her computer and the Internet. [00:47:16] Speaker C: Different streaming. Different. [00:47:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Watching Netflix while playing a game. While live. Recording something. Yeah. So, yeah, sometimes I just have to talk. Everyone, please just get off the Internet. [00:47:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like a. Get off the phone that just cuts everyone off except for you. [00:47:33] Speaker A: Yep, that would be nice. [00:47:36] Speaker B: You just have to fill in. Fill in with banter when I disappear and I'll come back, I promise. [00:47:40] Speaker A: No, we just silently because we don't really get along. What was I. Greg, Justin had a question about what. What sort of. What year this all happened with coffee business. [00:47:51] Speaker C: How long ago Was this? Roughly? [00:47:53] Speaker B: 2012. [00:47:55] Speaker C: Oh, nice. [00:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I started. I started working at the newspaper on Valentine's Day 2000. And then. Such a romantic day. No. Yeah. Day of inductions. This is where you will sit. This is what you will do. This is where you can park your car. This. Yeah. And yeah, meeting the boss was interesting. So we, yeah, so 2012, I kicked. [00:48:25] Speaker A: Over into working for myself, Emily Black Photography. So you went down the Angetti's path, but with your own autumnal flavor. We'll say what was next on the cards for you in terms of expanding the business? Obviously, babies have maternity, there are other children, there are partners. Did that naturally evolve into family photography for you? [00:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, when I sort of started, it was mostly because I had a lot of friends with young kids, because my kids were young kids. I sort of used that pool of resources, promoted myself amongst them. I'm like, I need to build the folio. I've got to get some photos. You happy to, you know, we'll give you a free shoot. You can buy a couple of photos and stuff. And most people are happy with that. They're like, yeah, yeah, we'll take a photo you can put on the website, no worries. So I did a bit of that. A lot of family stuff, moving into the babies and a few weddings. Now there's people that I have photographed pretty much every milestone from their engagement to their wedding, to the birth of their children, to the baby photos, to the subsequent family photos, to the graduating grade six kind of stuff. Like it's, you know, that kind of, that full, really full circle kind of stuff. It's really, it's really lovely. And it's one of those things that I think, and I think I might have. I don't know if I mentioned it in my opening at BFOP when I was talking to the group, but if there's one piece of information I can give anyone is it is just to be genuine to who you are and who you are as a photographer and how you shoot, you will attract people that are attracted to you and how you shoot. And if you work, if you know how to connect with people, people, they'll be your clients for life because they've built a relationship with you. When someone says, oh yeah, I've got a photographer, go to this person. We've been seeing them for years. You build this relationship with them and you do see them again and again and again. And if you're, if you're trying to be another photographer in another style, photograph a different way, constantly changing, and people aren't moving and avoiding evolving with you, then they're gonna just see that you're not really solid and they're gonna, you know, you're trying to be something that maybe you're not. And you haven't quite found who you are yet. So I'm very much about building that genuine connection, and that's how I sort of approach all of the people that I work with, whether it's. It's not a hustle, it's an alignment. [00:51:07] Speaker A: So, yeah, that's a great way to look at it. You know what's really interesting, Emily. Emily, speaking to other photographers over the BFOP weekend, and I engaged with a lot because we wanted to get some people on the show like yourself and Joel and Chris Hopkins is going to join us early next year. And we had Dennis Smith weeks ago, but every photographer that I interacted with had a very similar, I guess ethos is the term around. Just be genuine. Be true to yourself in how you create your work. Yeah, sure, you're gonna. You're gonna replicate some other people from time to time as you learn, but I think there's something about that that, you know, strive for real engagement and genuine connection with your clients and they stop kind of being clients so much. [00:51:56] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:51:57] Speaker A: You know, which I think is lovely to hear. I think it's. It takes away that churn and burn aspect of. This is just another shoot. I'm going to treat you like I treat every other client that's walked in the door. Here's the pose that I give for every other client. That's what, you know, you. You build yourself a relationship with that person. You know how they feel about sitting in photos, standing in photos, you know, whatever it may be. And I think that's really important, learning for a lot of people that the cookie cutter approach. We've talked about cookie cutter approaches a few times. I think that's another T shirt. Justin. Lucky straps more than a cookie cutter approach. But, you know, we've talked about cookie cutter approaches and how they can be soulless and. And I think it's. It's really encouraging to hear from someone who's, you know, built success and built a business and, you know, learned in the trenches. Really? Yeah. But that's. That's what you've been able to form around your art and. And your productivity and your work and your output. So. [00:53:02] Speaker B: Yeah, and bringing. Bringing that kind of full circle in what I'm doing now in contracting out and shooting the debutante balls and things like that. So I still strive for that connection. Every single person that steps onto that background, you've got to get the best from them in that moment. So if you're your genuine self now, there's a. There's a formula that you're working to. But you need to get the best from them. So if they can see that you genuinely love connecting with people and you can work with them and you can talk with them, their interaction with you might only be three minutes. But if your goal is that when they've left that background, they know that their photos are going to be good and they've had a good experience, so they're positive, they're walking away going, oh, thank you so much for that. We can't wait. And you're like, yeah, that's it. That's how I know that I'm doing a good job. [00:53:47] Speaker A: It also makes a job easier, doesn't it? [00:53:49] Speaker B: Yeah. If they already know the photos are going to be good before they've even seen them, like, they just. They've put their faith in you. They know what they get. [00:53:56] Speaker C: It's funny. It's exactly the same. So, Jim, the guy that's not on here, but usually is him. [00:54:03] Speaker A: And I have Justin's imaginary friend, Emily. [00:54:06] Speaker C: He's my imaginary friend. [00:54:07] Speaker B: He was typing in the chat before. [00:54:10] Speaker C: It's just me. Our business name is actually as creative as yours. When we joined together, we joined forces and we workshopped a few name ideas for our business and we ended up with Justin and Jim. Photography or photographers? Anyway, creative. But. So when we would shoot weddings, like, our goal was to work so hard through the day that everyone would thank us at the end of the night and most people would say, you guys are such great photographers. Thank you so much. And we're like, you haven't seen any photos yet. We might have been doing nothing, but obviously we were working hard. But, you know, that was. The goal is like, do such a good job on the day that they already happy with the result before seeing a photo. And it's the same thing. We just had 12 hours to do it, not three minutes. So it's a little bit easier to do it across a wedding day than it is. Three minutes is. That's a short amount of time to get someone on your side and believing in what you're doing. That's. Yeah, that's impressive. [00:55:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:06] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, that's. I couldn't have done that 20 years ago either. So I know exactly what I'm doing now. I know the formula and I know how to connect. And I'm not trying to change my approach to how I present myself to them because, you know, I could be. Hello, welcome to the photo shoot. And you can stand over there now and you can do this, but that's not how I'm like, come on, let's get in. Let's, you know, your vibe attracts your tribe. The energy you put out is the energy you get back. If you're giving good energy to them, they're gonna, they're gonna move with that. I mean, sure, sometimes you get like a 16 year old teenager that's like really not keen on having their photo taken, but if you can get a smile from them that mum's gonna be happy with, you're like, excellent. Yeah, I've got that one shot. [00:55:49] Speaker A: The day is one. [00:55:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:55:51] Speaker A: Now speaking of your work, I want to jump, just quickly bring up your website. So for those of you listening on audio podcasts and just reminder that the Camera Life podcast, all of our episodes are available on all the best audio podcast channels. We are looking at Emily Black photography. So you can have a look for yourself either later on the YouTube, on the YouTubes, with your eyeballs or you can just jump straight into Google and look for Emily Black Photography. We've, we've talked a little about your child and family work and I want to bring up some of those, some of those examples before we move into sort of the next, I guess the next phase of your transition. But we've got some absolutely gorgeous examples of family work that are very natural and candid and I love this that they're not. You haven't told them to stand in a certain way or to move their head out of the way. You've just catched the family interacting. That's what I can see. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. [00:56:55] Speaker B: But I mean you always have to pose them in a certain. Yeah, of course, in the beginning. So we're working with that. And then it's like we get the shot that grandma wants right where they're all standing there looking at the camera and then we start to have a cuddle, have a tickle, move in, have a play. I'm, you know, especially with kids, I love the energy that comes from that. And I'm like, and I have a chat to the, the clients that I photograph families and stuff and I, if your kid's not feeling it that day, that's how you are on that day. If you guys are happy for me to keep shooting, I'm going to keep shooting. Let's get all of the emotion because children will flip on a dime. They will be happy one minute and they will be upset that, you know, that piece of grass touched their leg or, you know, things will change. [00:57:41] Speaker A: Sounds like my kids. [00:57:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, right. [00:57:43] Speaker A: I haven't touched grass in years. [00:57:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's like things just change and we just get them to move. And it's a high energy kind of shoot. It's a quick shoot. But I'm shooting so much and that's what I love about some of the family photos and stuff that I do. I will hear back from the client after. And they're like, oh, we're so sorry. It just didn't go to plan. We just, we don't know. I'm like, trust me. We have a gallery full of images that you are going to love. They come back afterwards and they're like, oh, my gosh, we didn't even know that you took that photo. [00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:14] Speaker B: And again, that's the photojournalistic side as well. So you sort of. You're always looking for this moment and capturing. Capturing one thing or another. [00:58:21] Speaker C: So this is, this is probably a presupposition, but I assume you don't stop and look at the back of your camera much. You've got it up to your eye. Waiting for those in between moments, in between shots, which is one of the biggest mistakes people can make, I think, is you're trying to get a shot so you keep looking to see if you've got it and you're missing the other shots that are unfolding in front of you. [00:58:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, that's. I don't know if that's just the amount of time that I've been doing it. And when I learned to take photos. So when I was at uni, we had to shoot everything on transparency. There's no forgiving about exposure in transparency. Like, you have to shoot and you have to get the shot. And you sometimes you might bracket, but you have to, you have to get the shot. [00:59:11] Speaker C: Can you explain to those of us that didn't get an education in film, what's the difference between transparency and is. Is the. Is. Is it. What's what Is it okay? Is it a negative? What's it. [00:59:23] Speaker B: What's okay? So it's a. It's an actual positive. So you are, it's. So you are shooting on film, but it's a transparency film that would then be projected or. Yeah, shown. So everything. There's no dodging and burning later. There's no, oh, I blew out the highlight or I didn't quite get the darks there. You. You have to figure out what you're going to sacrifice and what you're going to keep. So you're constantly balancing that out and making sure that you're you're right. Right in that middle ground and getting that perfect exposure. So we. We were given assignments in the photojournalism year, in the third year of uni, that you were given your film. Here's your 35 shots, 36 shots. You have to go out. We want three environmental portraits, one action shot, and whatever. And you had to get those shots, come back, process the film, and then you would go through it. Okay, so you missed your exposure here. You. It was a real. Yeah, it was a really great learning curve. Like, I guess now the closest you could do is, like, shoot everything in jpeg because you just can't save it the same way as you can in raw. But, yeah, that kind of thing. So I had to shoot correctly. And so now I sort of. It's just second nature. I. A lot of the time I'm flicking through, just changing settings. It's just second nature. It's like, oh, I've got to shoot on that. Yep. Okay, I've changed the f. Stop. I know I need to move that one down. And, you know. So you're constantly flicking between things and just thinking straight. Yes, I do still stuff it up from time to time, but. But I'm human, so we all do. [01:01:16] Speaker A: So what was the next evolution for you? You've got. You've got the family photography and the baby photography moving along nicely. What came next? [01:01:27] Speaker B: Covid. [01:01:29] Speaker C: That'll do it. [01:01:30] Speaker B: Yep. I. Yeah, I was at the time. So at the time, the Aipple was still in existence, and I was the. I was the Victorian president for Victoria aipp. And so I was very busy at that time advocating to get photographers back to work. So there was a lot of stuff going on there. But photography and the outdoors have always been very connected for me. And I just. I started taking my camera on walks, and I started just photographing stuff around the house. And we all know through Covid, like, baking was, like, a thing. I am a really terrible cook. Like, I joke that my mother taught my brothers how to cook because she knew that they had to look after themselves. But it was just a given that I would know what I was doing. She could not be more further from the truth. [01:02:31] Speaker A: Talk about neglect. [01:02:32] Speaker B: Yeah, like, I figured that out, too. I can feed myself and I can feed my family, but things like baking just don't. I don't love it, but I love eating it, and I love experimenting and I love taking photos. So I would just see how the light was falling in the house, and I'd start photographing things. You Know, I'd photograph the scones that I made that tasted terrible but looked good. I'd go to the, you know, we'd go to the supermarket, we'd buy like a carrot cake and I'd just throw some extra icing on it and things and take some photos and do all of that. And so started to move a bit more into food photography. Just as a bit of fun, but that sort of, through that built relationships with a couple of the local businesses, the food businesses. So the local cafe. And I started photographing for them, did some photos for them, had a chat about doing an exhibition with them as well, you know, in their space. That never sort of eventuated through Covid and everything as well, but. And then just through some other connections that needed a photographer, was then photographing new businesses that were kind of starting up because there was a few new businesses that were kind of kicking off through Covid and after Covid and they needed product photos. And so I started moving into that and I quite liked the pace of it because I didn't have to run around and be chaotic and pull on the energy that I didn't really have at the time either. So it was, it was, it was lovely in being able to be in a space and okay, I can just zone in on this thing and we can photograph this product and we can, you know, do things from home if we have to and we can adapt to that while. Yeah, while actively navigating government websites and restrictions and all of these things with getting photographers back to work. Because we were sort of a forgotten little subgroup within retail. You know, you're not really retail. No, you're not really personal fitness because you can't really do it outside, but you can't do the. So we had to sort of navigate that. So I was very heavily involved in making some very solid pieces of document that actually got us working within some guidelines, so. [01:05:02] Speaker A: Oh, wow, that's wonderful. For those of you listening and watching along who aren't from Victoria, Victoria endured some of the toughest lockdowns of in the whole world during the COVID pandemic. I can't remember how many days. It was something like 170 something days. [01:05:23] Speaker B: It's like something that we kind of just block out of our memory, right? [01:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we do because it was quite traumatic at the time and. And some of the complications that Emily's referring to is that there were stages where there were police blockades at major intersections because you weren't allowed to leave home unless you were designated as being an essential worker. You actually had to have a work permit. There was a self employed person. That was really challenging. [01:05:47] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:49] Speaker A: Your business organized it. But a self employed person or even a small business owner. Work permits were. [01:05:56] Speaker B: Yeah. What we were finding was that a photographer wasn't really falling anywhere within any of that. Like, are you an artist? Are you a retail person? Do you have a premises where you work? Like, it was, it. It was a really weird. And depending on what you were photographing too. So real estate photographers could go and photograph real estate. And that was, you know, promoted because, you know, we need to get the photos sold and this is the only way we can sell the houses now. Yeah, so there was all of that, but then there was guidelines within that and where did we fit? So there was a lot of red tape that we had to work through with all of that to get everyone back. [01:06:35] Speaker A: Can I say it was a crazy time. [01:06:37] Speaker C: A horrible story about. [01:06:39] Speaker A: Let's hear it. [01:06:40] Speaker C: So it was a. It was a bad time to own a gym, I can tell you that. Our gym was closed for eight months in total. Not, not one block, but, you know, in and out and open and close and all that kind of stuff. And at one point we were. So at one point we were still closed. Pubs were open again, gyms were closed because they're not safe. And you could exercise outside. Yeah, with a certain group, a number of people, like a limited number of people, you could exercise outside. So all of the gym members were desperate to do stuff. So we started running some classes of the right size in our front car park, which is on our property, behind our fence. And we got a call from the Bendigo council saying that. And if you guys remember, I don't know if it happened in Melbourne, but a lot of the pubs and stuff got given additional space in car parks. [01:07:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that happened here in the city too. Like Chapel street, they blocked off all the car parks and made them outdoor dining. [01:07:51] Speaker C: So for free they got additional outdoor space where people could come and drink and have a meal. We did this on our own property to all of the, all of the, you know, size guides and all that stuff. And they said, you do not have a permit to operate your business in the car park. We've checked your planning permit and your. Your business is supposed to operate inside. So please stop. We were like, this is crazy. I had quite a heated, heated conversation. Anyway, Covid was. It was weird. [01:08:26] Speaker A: It was. [01:08:26] Speaker B: It was a time. Yeah, absolutely. [01:08:29] Speaker A: Speaking of COVID Emily. And this will take us away from photography, but I guarantee for Listeners that we will swing back to photography because it does influence much of Emily's more recent story. Like me and like, you know, countless others in Victoria, homeschooling was one of the most. [01:08:52] Speaker B: Wasn't homeschooling, man. He was just watching him on screen, hoping for the best. [01:08:58] Speaker A: It was a horrible, horrible experience. It was hard. You know, many of us were trying to run businesses or work from home, yet we had children who needed education. And even if you chose not to a couple of times actually focus on the schoolwork that was being provided online, even just keeping them entertained, engaged, or as far away from you as you could possibly get them was a challenge because you. There were times where you couldn't leave the house. There were times where we had curfews. You couldn't go out at 9 o'clock even to take your bins out. Like, it was really, really intense. I'm sorry, I'm traumatizing everyone all over again. But you found some solace in a. In an unexpected way. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. I found the absolute limits of my 5k radius. [01:09:49] Speaker A: Tell us about your. Your decision to run away from it all. Quite literally. [01:09:54] Speaker B: Literally. [01:09:56] Speaker A: You were chasing something or something was chasing you. But tell us about that journey and where you're at today with it. [01:10:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so I have always found comfort in the natural world. I've always. If I need to reground myself and reconnect myself, then it's like feet on the earth and it's listen to the birds and all of that. And it was kind of one of those things. Oh, yeah. I'll get back out there, I'll go for a camping trip and we'll do all of these things. And obviously with COVID you know, you couldn't go on the camping trips and stuff just to not dwell on the COVID thing. Remember when there was a postcode lockdown? [01:10:35] Speaker A: Yes. [01:10:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:36] Speaker B: Okay. I'm on the edge of that postcode lockdown. [01:10:40] Speaker C: For you Americans, that's like a zip code. It's like. [01:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So they call this zip code postcode lockdown. We had a holiday booked to go camping the week that it started. And we were one of those postcodes that got locked down so we couldn't go anywhere. So my world fell apart. And I think that's probably when things started to shift for me. I'm like, okay, I've got to find some way to reconnect myself. Wait, I've got some walking tracks near me. There's a river, there's trees. Wonder what's out there. So I just started to walk, you know, every. Every morning. And, you know, we had an hour or two hours depending on whatever, you know, depends on how strict you wanted to be with it and how worried you were about the rules. But hopefully if you're going for a walk, you were not really coming in contact with too many people. So I would go out and start to walk and then I walked a bit further and found some places and, and found some trees and found some trails. Have we all frozen up again? [01:11:42] Speaker A: No. [01:11:42] Speaker C: Okay. [01:11:45] Speaker B: Okay. I'm like, I'm getting into a story now. Don't freeze. Yeah. And so I started to walk a little bit and then really quite enjoyed what that was bringing back as a part of my own reconnection to self. And amidst all of the chaos, I had control on how I could approach it. You know, I could let it. I could let all of the weight of everything weigh me down. Now, I also do understand the privilege I have in that my husband was an essential worker, so he was always going to work. I never had to worry about that financial constraint. We always were able to pay the bills, all of that kind of stuff. So I understand the privilege of that because not everybody had that luxury. And as much as I was sick of my family, I had people around me. I wasn't alone and isolated. So I would go for walks and I would come back. And then I'm like, oh, I can a bit further if I run a little bit. And then I'd jog a bit and then I'd be like, wow, that felt good. Maybe if I run a bit further, I wonder what's over that hill. And I just kept going a bit further. And then I discovered that there was like an app for that so I could track how far I was going and how fast I was going and all these things. And so before I knew it, I was running sort of 9 or 10K. And one of my brothers, who has a pretty interesting wife up to adulthood and did wear himself quite thin a lot of times, like, you know, got. Got quite into the rough parts of life and over over indulgence and all the rest of it. And he, he had run a half marathon at some point anyway, he saw that I'd run 10Ks. He's like, if you can run 10Ks, why don't you try a half marathon? I'm like, there's a seed. Okie dokie. And as luck would have it, there was as some of the outdoor kind of events were starting to kick off this, you know, over the course of maybe it was like 12 or 18 months. My local sort of parkrun area, there's a trail running group there that run a festival in the march. And so I was like, oh, look at that, they've got a half marathon. And that's the train. Like that's where I can train. I can train on those trails. This is really cool. So I signed up for that, did a half marathon and then it kind of snowballed quite rapidly from there. If you can run a half marathon, Emily, you can run a marathon. So the next year at the same event I ran a marathon and it's like 50ks is only a few kms more. Surely I can do an ultra marathon. So then I did a 50k. [01:14:43] Speaker A: How long does it take to run 50ks? How long does it take you? [01:14:47] Speaker B: Depends how hilly it is. The first 50k I did was about eight and a half hours, but there was about, about two or three thousand meters elevation. So there was quite a few hills. [01:15:01] Speaker A: You didn't stop there, did you? [01:15:03] Speaker B: No, no. I was the very last person across the line that day. Across the line, you know, across the line, yeah. Then it was like, well maybe I'll do 100k. So then the next year. [01:15:17] Speaker C: That's a big, that's a big jump though. Surely that wasn't like a, hey, if you can run 50, you can run a hundred. That's not. Surely that wasn't your thought process. [01:15:27] Speaker B: Well, sort of, but it was at the same event that I'd run the 50k. So I knew what the course was going to be. So there was a lot of knowns within it. And the people of that group are so lovely. So the people that organize that, it's kind of a mum and dad kind of trail run group. Like it's a trail run company in that the events aren't mega huge and they work with you. If, if you're like to be the last person across the line in that 50k, they're like, are you still moving? Okay, can you make it through? Are you aware that if you come across that finish line, pretty much everyone's going to be gone and there's just going to be the finish line there for you to run across. And I'm like, dude, I'm just here to finish. Like let me go. And so they'd work with you to do it. If they thought you were going to be able to finish, they would let you go. So knowing that I was like, well these people are my people. Like they, they're all about trying to Include people and make sure that we can achieve the goals that we have. So I. It was that event that I was going to be training for. So from the 50k to the 100k was a year and I had a lot of, you know, there was a few other, you know, shorter distance races that I did, marathons, shorter distance, you know, on trails and stuff. In the process of training for that, I did lose like a month of. A month of training in that. I got vertigo. When I was in the midst of my training program for 100k, I got vertigo and was like out really badly with it. Like I was in hospital for a few days and, you know, couldn't sit up. Had to sort of learn to balance and walk again. So it was, it was really, really rough. But there's something about the. That part of it where you kind of have to let go and release all of that as well and go, well, I've got a goal, this is what I want to do. But right now I have to do what my body's telling me to do. But I still was able to adapt and I, you know, changed a few of the. Maybe I won't be able to do it as fast. Maybe I won't be able to be as strong. Maybe, you know, maybe we'll just try and see how we go. And I still did it. So, you know, I ran 100 cat ran, ran, walked, hiked, climbed, cried, crawled 100k and yeah, and then I was like, legitimately, absolutely hooked on the endurance kind of side of things, like the places our minds can go and the places we can, can come back from and the conversations we have with ourselves and the dark places we go to and the cycles that we go on is what absolutely just has me like totally in on endurance stuff. [01:18:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I want to. That's a really, a lot more about that side of it and what impact it's had on your photography and work and just gent life mindset, all of that sort of thing. But very quickly there's a couple of comments rolling in and I want to give them a little, a little shout out. This is appropriate. Frog from Tassie says, I tried exercise during COVID but unfortunately had a reaction to it. Broke out in sweats and my heart rate increased, so I had to stop. [01:18:47] Speaker A: Gotta listen to your body. Emily said that if you have these health problems. [01:18:50] Speaker C: Yep, just stop. [01:18:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Well done. Well done, mate. [01:18:55] Speaker C: Tony from get off my Digital Lauren is here. He's back. He says, hi, everyone, sorry I'm late. Speaking of late, Matt Talks photography Who is Matt Palmer from the Alpine Light Gallery in Bright My Night. Matt, I realize this is way too late. We'll have to go back to the start later. M is a legend. Speaking of legends, if you. If you want a book, I got Matt's book which is pretty awesome and I don't know if there's any left but if there is, track it down at Alpine Light Gallery because it is amazing. It's. It's called Icelandic Echoes and it's just a heap of empty abandoned places in Iceland and the photos are amazing. It makes me want to go to Iceland and take the same shots and pretend I come up with them. They're beautiful. Anyway, a previous guest of the show. [01:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah he's an all round awesome guy and so is his wife Mika. [01:19:48] Speaker C: Yes. Yeah, we're trying to. She's on that. Our list. She's on our list of guests to track down for sure. [01:19:55] Speaker A: Good to get Matt back on too. [01:19:57] Speaker C: Yes, we'll definitely get him back on as well. I reckon he'll be good for some roundtable he shows on awards and stuff like that. Maybe we'll be able to get Emily back on with that sort of stuff as well. [01:20:09] Speaker B: I've done some awarding stuff too. [01:20:11] Speaker C: Yeah that side of the photo world. And finally, final coming comment for now is from David. I had photographed a trucker who I found out later had died from COVID and his wife was so happy to have the picture that he took because he was happy in that moment and I think that's why we all do what we do to be able to have that kind of impact. It's pretty special. [01:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. [01:20:38] Speaker C: Anyway, back to ultra running. Selfishly I signed up for a run. It's coming up in February. What training for it. [01:20:47] Speaker B: Which one? [01:20:48] Speaker C: Well, it's. It's. You'll probably laugh because it's a run broken up by a heap of obstacles but it's the. The 21 case Spartan in. So it does have. Yeah man hills which I'm a little scared. [01:21:01] Speaker B: Not hills man. [01:21:02] Speaker C: Yeah, mountains. There's. Yeah. So there's a lot of running uphill required and despite doing a fair bit of fitnessy type stuff, the longest I've ever ran is 10ks and usually after that my legs are sore for quite a while. So we've been building up slowly and running a couple of times a week, just 5k, 7ks, that kind of stuff. [01:21:25] Speaker B: I've. I've discovered a solution to doms. So delayed onset muscle soreness just run and do exist. Exercise every single Day and you never get done. Love it. [01:21:39] Speaker C: Well, you just. It only comes when you stop. So stop. [01:21:43] Speaker A: And is Yelena doing this run as well? [01:21:45] Speaker C: She is. Well, so we. Five of us got together and we were like, let's do this thing. And some. And a few people were like, yeah, let's do the 10K. And I was like, don't. We could all do the 10k tomorrow. We would get through it, whatever. I said, the 21K is enough that we're going to want to train for it. You know, like, it's a scary enough challenge that we need to actually work on it. And that was the whole point. The point isn't to do the thing. It's to motivate us to train and do something we don't normally do, which is running. But now that five people has turned into 20 people, so we've got a crew of 20 people going to Bright all to do this one run. [01:22:22] Speaker A: Wow. [01:22:23] Speaker B: How's that for some accountability? [01:22:25] Speaker C: Yeah, it's working very well. Is. Everyone's running on different days. Everyone's posting their little Strava things. One of the guys that's doing it with us who. I feel like he's in the wrong group of people. His name's Magnus. He just did. Have you heard of. There's a. He did a half marathon down in Tassie in the last month or so, and it's basically just uphill the whole time. [01:22:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:22:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:22:50] Speaker B: So is that the. Is. Yes. Yep. [01:22:54] Speaker C: I can't remember what it's called, but he just finished that. No problems. Didn't. Didn't have to stop and walk at all. And I'm like, dude, you're. You're. This isn't even a challenge for you. You should be doing something harder. He might have to. [01:23:05] Speaker B: Was it Bruneian? [01:23:07] Speaker C: I can't remember. [01:23:08] Speaker B: Anyway, there's plenty of hills in Tassie. [01:23:10] Speaker C: Anyway, people will be so excited about this photography. [01:23:14] Speaker A: We will get to that in a minute. Now, Emily, what's the furthest event that you've run? [01:23:21] Speaker B: Here we go. Because I'm fresh off the back. [01:23:25] Speaker C: I was stalking on your Instagram to find out about this race and there was nothing on there about it. [01:23:30] Speaker B: So I'm not on my photography one. On my running one. [01:23:33] Speaker A: There's a separate one. Yeah. [01:23:35] Speaker C: I didn't find that. Yeah, well, tell us what was the race and what happened? [01:23:41] Speaker B: Right. So anyway, earlier this year, I ran 100k in the blue Mountain Mountains, which was kind of like the. Can I do this one that I've just done. I 100 miles. Trained pretty much all year for 100 miles. [01:23:59] Speaker A: What's that in K is 100, 161 insane. [01:24:06] Speaker B: And the terrain, I kid you not, there is nothing like it in the world, and I can say that. But we had international people that have run all over the world at this event and they're like, we think this might be the hardest hundred miler. [01:24:25] Speaker C: Was this in the Grand Piano? Yeah, I thought so. [01:24:28] Speaker B: So from the north to the south of the Grampians, what's it called? [01:24:31] Speaker C: What's the race called? [01:24:32] Speaker B: It's called the Grampians peaks Trail or GPT 100 miler. [01:24:36] Speaker C: That's it. [01:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah. So I can't even explain the terrain that some of it is. So it's actually. It's the GPT, the Grampians Peaks Trail, full course. So that it's a new trail that kind of opened up in the last couple of years that you can hike for two weeks from start to finish. And we had like 53 hours. So 53 hours to go and finish this anyway. Well and truly possible, I have to say. And what we've discovered is that you can train for these things and you can be the strongest that you have ever been. But there's certain things that are out of your control, like the weather, which can really kick you in the backside. [01:25:26] Speaker C: Oh no. [01:25:27] Speaker B: So I have never been pushed so far to my limit in such a short. [01:25:41] Speaker C: Instagram. [01:25:43] Speaker B: Yeah, just if you go to. Also if you go to the underscore Accidental runner, that's me. And I've got a bit of a recappy bits in there too. Anywho. [01:25:55] Speaker C: Okay. [01:25:56] Speaker B: Just throwing it out there. So yeah, there is nothing like it. So we started the race on the Friday. Yeah. That kind of gives a really good understanding of what it felt like the whole time. And that dude in the middle is an absolute gun. He's a. He's a sherper and he's hardcore. So yeah, that dude there, he's such a genuinely beautiful human being. And he was within 8km of finishing the race and it got canceled due to extreme conditions. [01:26:37] Speaker A: Wow. [01:26:37] Speaker C: What. [01:26:38] Speaker B: So that gives you an idea of how insane this race was this year. So last year they had torrential downpours and thunderstorms and lightning and had to halt it for a little bit and restart it. This year the heat was so intense that the hospitals were getting overrun in the local areas with heat exhaustion and potentially other issues going on. I lasted all of 16km. [01:27:04] Speaker A: Oh no. [01:27:07] Speaker B: At the time I was ABS. I was yeah, I was really devastated, really upset. You invest so much of your life into this event and you know that you're physically capable of doing it. And my body felt really good, muscle wise, leg wise and all the rest of it. My heart rate was well over 180 for about four hours. The heat that was coming off the rock was phenomenal. It was 38 degrees when we were running when we started. It was the kind of heat that, yes, if you had ice, like when we had ice on us and all this, all that kind of stuff, and we had ice down our tops and things like that. But once that started to melt, once you were just getting bombarded by the heat. The last 2k of the 16k stint that I was doing, I got absolutely pummeled. Like, I couldn't step straight, I couldn't walk without stopping every five steps kind of thing. It was really, really, really brutal. But it's not the experience I wanted, but it's the experience I kind of had to have. And there's so many stories and this kind of comes to full circle. There's so many stories that come out of these experiences and so many stories from different people that are just so incredible and inspiring. And I kind of like the stories of the people at the back of the pack that the elite, they're a different breed of human. I'm really inspired and really into the stories of the people that I met at the finish. There was something like 35% of participants pulled out within the first 50k kind of thing. It was just that brutal. Our bodies couldn't handle it. It was. It was just intense. So they had to make the call safety wise. Just because of the amount of heat and the amount of time people had been out on the rock and stuff at the trails and some of the sections of. It was so difficult to be able to get to. Somebody had a problem that they had to just pull the pin. So that was devastating for everybody. But we all got to run again if we wanted to. There was pretty much the option to run on the last day, which was much nicer conditions. So we kind of got to get back on the trail. So I got to jump into a relay team from some friends in one of the run clubs that I'm in. One of the girls had to pull out because she broke her ankle. So I jumped in and took her place in the last couple of days. So I still got to run again, but I didn't get to complete my race. But you better believe that I've already booked accommodation and planning for the next year. [01:29:54] Speaker C: Really? [01:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:56] Speaker B: We're set. [01:29:57] Speaker C: Wow. [01:29:58] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's. And I got a. I just have a feeling that even if I wasn't there photographing it, even if I wasn't there running it, I'd want to be there telling some people's stories and getting things. Because in the checkpoint that I pulled out from, you know, I met two people and we're instant, you know, you build this instant bond through trauma. So, you know, we're having conversations about how it impacted us and what we wanted to do and all of these goals that we've got. And in hindsight, probably picking the hardest hundred miler in the world probably wasn't the smartest thing to do for the very first hundred mile race, but here we are. [01:30:40] Speaker A: Hey, look, you got up there and gave it a shot. Yeah, you know, I can't. I think I mentioned to this, this to you when we're in bright and we're talking about your ultra marathon work and the upcoming and the race, and I think I said I can't even drive that far without needing to stop and, you know, pick up a bag of chips and a Coke from the servo. So, yeah, it's really inspirational, Emily. And I think I'd like to hear more about how that. Then you talked very, very briefly at the end there about photography being there to document the stories and capture them. And so that's kind of sparked a whole new genre almost for you, hasn't it? [01:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's through the. So the smaller group that I started doing the long distance running with, so Trails plus they're called. I do some volunteer stuff with them and photograph their events. So I do some of the photography for them and I love it because there's so many stories that are unfolding in all. All these different spaces around the trail. And again, I'm really drawn to those back of the pack runners, those ones that are just out there for the longest and they've got so much invested in it emotionally and physically and financially, that they really want to finish and they really want to do it for some innate reason. So I'm drawn to these stories and the heartache and all the rest of it, and I love photographing it and there's just so much heartache that happens out on the trails and it's just, it's, you know, it's beautiful in its, in its horror in a sense. And you know, an endurance athlete, an ultra marathon runner, they're not signing up for these things because it's Going to be an easy ride. They know that. They're going to go to dark places. They know that. Like I broke down in training on some sections of this course. Like it was just my soul was stripped bare. And it's like. And you still want to come back because you're like, what's the growth from this? Who am I going to be on the other side of this, you know, and what I had to learn through this process of not finishing it was okay. This is a different kind of uncomfortable. We're sitting in a different kind of uncomfortable now. I was prepared for the physical, the discomfort, the running through the night, the absolute fatigue. I wasn't ready for the discomfort of things not working out the way I wanted. So what is the lesson in this process? What am I learning through all of this? And it's taking a hard look and going well. I, if I had have done that a bit better, maybe we could have done something a bit differently. Maybe the outcome wouldn't, wouldn't have necessarily been super different, but maybe we would have been better adapted. I put a lot of weight, like significant weight on myself that I didn't need to put on myself. I didn't really release the, all of that. I was, you know, hell bent on, I've got to finish it and it's got to be this outcome or it's not going to be a good one and all that kind of stuff. So lots of lessons that come from it, but the stories that just pop up through all of that is pretty, pretty amazing. And the people that I met through it as well. [01:34:09] Speaker C: So is this the first sort of significant race that you weren't able to complete? [01:34:15] Speaker B: It's my first race that I haven't been able to complete. Complete. [01:34:18] Speaker C: So it was, it was a big change in result for you. Yeah, because, because you, I guess you approach a race, you're not going to win it. Like you say, the elite people, they're kind of a different breed of humans. So you're not going out there with an expectation of some sort of performance goal. Usually it's like this is my challenge to complete. [01:34:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:39] Speaker C: So non completion was a huge sort of blow to what you were setting out to achieve. [01:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah. And you set personal goals. Like, it's like, I'd like to complete it in this amount of time, but if I can't, I've got this as a, you know, another option. Fully aware that some things aren't going to go to plan, but you know, I've never run in that kind of heat on that kind of terrain either, you know? So at the end of the day, it's like, well, I was able to walk away. I didn't end up in hospital. We were all okay, and I got to go to the pub at the end of the day, so, you know. [01:35:14] Speaker A: There'S nothing more Australian than that, you know? [01:35:16] Speaker B: And then I got to. And then I got to pivot, and I got to be a part of a team then, and I got to run with some friends, and I got to talk to people that I wouldn't have been able to talk to over that weekend. So, you know, there's. And I got to run another section of the course, which was just phenomenal and really just love it because all of that pressure had gone now, and I could just run this. This section of trail and just be fully immersed in it and cry a bit and climb a bit and smile a bit and talk to people on the trail. So, yeah, it was a very different. Very different approach, but totally hooked, man. Totally hooked. [01:36:02] Speaker A: Can I ask you, Emily, how do you think. Think, how has your experience actually being involved and those mental challenges that you're setting yourself? Obviously, there's the physical side, but how has that influenced how you approach the photography of running events? How does that influence that? How does that motivate you, inspire you? Tell us about that a bit. [01:36:29] Speaker B: I think there's a. An empathy to it or an understanding of being part of it as well as trying to document it. I'm not gonna go. I make sure that the people at the back of the pack have a good photo. I make sure that the people that. Each participant that's running, whether they're the first one across the line or I'm right there till the last person crosses the line. Because, you know, I've been that person that just by sheer luck, I had a friend there that was taking some photos. I wouldn't have had a finish line photo. Things like that, and telling the stories of the volunteers, the people that are putting in blood, sweat, and tears behind the scenes. You know, there's so many little stories that are unfolding throughout that whole process. And I think being a part of it, when you're in it, you're experiencing it and you're understanding how something is impacting you personally. But when you're able to just be part of it, but you've got that camera and you're documenting it, you're seeing all of these so many other little stories unfolding, but you know that something's going to happen because of the place you were in. You can see a look on someone's face. You know that a hill is going to break someone. You know there's going to be a good photo coming down that hill because people are going to be able to run a little bit and they're going to get a running photo even if they have barely run that day. So you've got, you're going to get a good photo for people and stuff like that. There are moments where I kind of live for the tears, you know, whether they're joy or absolute heartbreak or whatever. But there's beautiful moments within that and that's, you know, whether the person buys that photo or not. I know that if it was me, I would want that documented. So through GPT, I was actually getting followed by a sort of documentary dude or photo dude, that's the official name. Yep, he was. So there was a few stories were going to be followed over the course of the weekend. And so I knew like that was just an added pressure for me. I'm like, oh, I've got to finish because this dude's going to whatever anyway. And he's like a cool dude that runs fast and won last year and stuff. So, you know, you've got stupid pressure. But because he's a part of it, he knew what needed to be photographed and he knew what was good to get and all of that kind of stuff as well. And you know, there was a guy that was said because he wasn't there, he's like, oh, I have to capture. He just asked if I could just get a bit of a photo or you know, a bit of a talk to the camera. Are you okay with that? I'm like, dude, I live for this. If I'm crying and I'm upset, you gotta get it. Like this is where the story's at. So yeah, it's, it's knowing what I would want in that moment as well and being able to capture that, but with respect, with understanding. I think when it's someone that's in that world of ultra running, they're going to approach it differently than just someone who is just a standalone photojournalist. They don't know the moment that's going to happen. They don't know. They don't know the value in that heartbreak or that pain. So. [01:40:04] Speaker A: And I think you mentioned earlier, they like the com. Well, not. They lack. But you know, you're able to approach it with a level of compassion because you know, the experience, you know, you've lived it. [01:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:15] Speaker A: You've cried over it, you know, you've hurt for it. So it's like. [01:40:19] Speaker B: I mean, it's parenthood. It's like how. You know, it's all of. All of the different stories. Stories and all of the different parts of my life. I was a. You know, I photographed family the way I photographed family because I was a mother. I still am a mother. I'm a mother, and I capture the photos that I wish I had of myself with my kids. [01:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:40:39] Speaker B: You know, photographing anything. It's like, well, what would I want if it was me on the other side of the camera? You know, how. How would I want to be portrayed here? [01:40:47] Speaker C: Or what. [01:40:47] Speaker B: What's a special moment for me? And it is that whole full process. So I think, you know, a mother would photograph a family in a different way than just a portrait photographer that is ticking all of the boxes, you know, and there's value in both of them. But if I'm going for, you know, I'm going for that certain approach, then I'm gonna. I'm gonna capture what I would want captured. Yeah. Yeah. [01:41:16] Speaker A: Well, there's authenticity there too, isn't there? And the story isn't just of you photographing a person who's enduring this. This trial, this experience, but there's also the element that you bring to it, your emotions, because you are seeing the moments as they happen and you. You've lived them. And so your emotion is also invested in the photography and the art, the images that come out of the end of the day. Yeah. And so what's next on the cards for your. Your tired, sore little legs? [01:41:49] Speaker B: Well, they're not too tired and sore at the moment. That's the problem. [01:41:54] Speaker A: I want to keep going. [01:41:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they kind of. They're a bit itchy. They're like, they need to get back out there. Yeah. I have taken since the event. I did. So the last was it. I had a couple of days after the event, so the. The race and everything was over. And I actually got to get on some of the trail and just go and be alone on the trail with nobody else around. No worry of running into another runner or anything like that. And had an absolute at peace moment of. This is my. Why, this is what I love to do. These are, you know, what. What is it that's going to come from this? Now, the. The run that I was doing was also sort of. And this whole year has been about fundraising for Dementia Australia. So if we're talking about memories and all the rest of it, like photography plus trail running, so We've got this metaphor for life of ups and downs on trails and breaking spirits and things not going to plan. And we've got, you know, photography, which is like the memories. We're here to capture all of these memories, good and bad. So I was doing that, so I was feeling the weight of not sort of achieving the goal that I had for that. But it's like, okay, so we've stripped back. What is this going to be now? So it's sort of reignited an idea. And, you know, I'm going to document this. I'm going to document this next year and I'm going to put it towards, you know, it's going to be about raising awareness around dementia and Dementia Australia and getting funds towards that, but it's about documenting my journey with that. I think I was trying to be a little bit outside of that whole process. So it's like, you know, dementia's impacted my life. So how do I, I process things by, you know, being on the trails and through photography too. I have processed a lot of things through how I photograph things and what I photograph and it's okay. So the next year is going to be about being on the trails. What comes from that in photographing through that? Because another project has opened up with a group that I run with her trails. So telling stories of women on the trails. So things have opened up within that and really intertwining the running, the trails, the nature and the business and the, the photography and how that's all going to impact, but telling a much more personal story. So I'm trying to create my own documentary or how that, however that's going to evolve through the process of training and building for this next. Trying to run this race again, fully aware that that still may not happen, but what's, you know, the end goal kind of changes. But I am also, I'm going to Bright in May, sorry, March next year. And I'm running. I haven't quite decided yet. I'm either running what they call the Grand Slam at the Bright Festival of Running, or the Buffalo Stampede, sorry, Buffalo Stampede. So I know about the hills. So I'm either going to run the Grand Slam, which is the 10k, the 20k and the 42k, so the Friday, Saturday and Sunday running three different races, or the 100k. So haven't quite decided it's going to be one or the other. But the, the guys that run GPT are the same team that run Buffalo Stampede. So. Yeah. So you'll see what happens with that. But yes. So that's going to be like the first big challenge. [01:45:30] Speaker A: Wow. [01:45:31] Speaker C: Nice. [01:45:32] Speaker A: That's amazing. [01:45:33] Speaker B: Yes. I just saw a chat pop up from Mar. From Matt. Dude, I am just get the couch ready because I'm going to come up to Bright Bright for a few runs. So if you can just give me some meal. [01:45:46] Speaker C: Matt says, oh my God, we need to help you with your cheat meal after you've had your race in Bright. [01:45:50] Speaker B: Yeah, man, bring it on. [01:45:53] Speaker C: Are you going to do the race as well, Matt? [01:45:55] Speaker B: Yeah, he can photograph it. [01:46:00] Speaker A: You should have asked for more. He's. He's already conceded. [01:46:03] Speaker B: How about, how about you be my personal like photographer, Matt? [01:46:08] Speaker C: Well, it's funny. So I've, I've been thinking this is you. You'll probably tell me I'm. I'm crazy, but I've been thinking like, because this will get into. [01:46:15] Speaker B: No, no, no, you don't have to run away, just gotta. [01:46:19] Speaker C: I've. I've been thinking I'm doing a project at the moment which we'll get to in a minute and I've been thinking about for this run that I'm doing, which compared to the runs you do is you'd be like, why don't you just, just run it. Don't worry about it. Um, but we're training for it. [01:46:32] Speaker B: It's all relative. [01:46:33] Speaker C: It's exactly, it's all relative. And for me it's, it's, it's a big thing. Um, but I'd love to take a camera on it. Have you ever taken a camera on your, any of your runs, like training runs or anything like that? [01:46:45] Speaker B: Yep, yep. I've got a, I've got a GoPro now that I. [01:46:49] Speaker C: Okay. [01:46:50] Speaker B: And part of that was to prove to people just how horrendous something of the stuff is that I do. And it still doesn't give it justice. Yeah. [01:46:59] Speaker C: Have you ever taken a bigot, like a stills camera or anything like that or you just don't want the extra weight? [01:47:04] Speaker B: I have done on a couple of, a couple of runs that I've done with other people, like group runs and stuff like that where it's sort of about documenting it. I have carried the, you know, just the camera with the 50 mil on it or something like that and done a bit of a run around but. Which is fun but it's a bit cumbersome. Too cumbersome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's sort of like, well, how can I make this work for something a bit smaller? And. But that's probably the next thing I'm sort of trying to tweak, but, yeah, it's. Yeah, it's. It's frustrating because a lot of the time you're running along and just. Just the vistas that you come across and the. The views that you see and the. [01:47:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:47:45] Speaker B: You know, the wildlife and stuff, you just. Like, if I just had that, you know, that 105 right now, I just nail that. [01:47:57] Speaker C: I'll have to keep. Keep thinking about. I'd really like to do it, but I got to figure out a way. What camera might. I might have to buy a new camera. [01:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think I need just. I just need a smaller, lightweight camera. [01:48:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:11] Speaker B: Yeah. See, something along those lines from. Probably would work like just something little. I mean, I can just have in a. Not a pocket so much, but in. In my pocket or in a little thing. [01:48:21] Speaker C: I think it. If. What are they called, Greg? The one you want to try the GR. [01:48:26] Speaker A: Other Ricoh. GR3. [01:48:28] Speaker C: GR3. If they weren't so hideously expensive and hard to buy because the lens retracts on those, they would slip into a pocket. Pretty easy. [01:48:36] Speaker B: Quite. [01:48:37] Speaker C: Quite pocketable. I think that would be a good option. But they're just. I don't know why. They're just really hard to get and outrageously expensive at the moment. [01:48:44] Speaker B: But that out there and just go, well, you know, we've got this plan. We'd like to make this happen. Can you guys make it happen? [01:48:51] Speaker A: Hey, Rico. Imaging Australia. [01:48:54] Speaker C: Hey. We've got a pretty big podcast you could sponsor us. [01:49:02] Speaker A: Including ourselves. Speaking of challenges, I think it's time we have a look at. And I'm really pleased that Emily's here to judge Justin's work. [01:49:16] Speaker C: I was thinking about this in the. I should. Okay, I should preface. So I'm doing this weekly challenge that I come up with where each week on the podcast I submit 12 images. So a set of 12 images. Loosely, a photo essay, but certainly not a proper photo essay. But it's what I'm trying to do. 12 images that tell some sort of story or at least have some sort of connection that I can justify. And this all spurred from a bright festival of photography workshop that I did with Chris Hopkins and Harriet Tabach about photo essays and sequencing and all that sort of stuff. And I loved it. And I was like, I just need to do this. So 12 images every week on the show. The unfortunate thing is, every show we've got an amazing photographer on there, and I have to show my images in front of them. And today we've Got today we've got a photo awards. Just judge, which is even scarier. [01:50:25] Speaker B: International Photo Awards Judge. [01:50:27] Speaker A: Oh, international. [01:50:29] Speaker B: She's. She's judged the World Photographic Cup. Take that. Yeah. [01:50:33] Speaker C: Oh, now. Okay. [01:50:35] Speaker A: Sorry. Some of my images, I feel like. [01:50:40] Speaker C: I feel like I need to preface this week's set then a lot more than normal. Usually I just show them and. And let. Let everyone try and figure out if they know what the theme is or whatever. But I feel like I need to really. [01:50:52] Speaker A: No, no, don't eat chicken. [01:50:54] Speaker C: Make a lot of excuses. [01:50:56] Speaker A: Play it, play it even. Keep it the same and. [01:50:59] Speaker C: Okay. [01:51:00] Speaker A: Just accept your fate. [01:51:01] Speaker C: So you don't want me to tell you anything about what's going on with this week? [01:51:04] Speaker A: So we had it in the past. [01:51:05] Speaker B: Was there a theme at all? [01:51:07] Speaker C: There was. I did go into this one with a theme. [01:51:11] Speaker A: I think it's more interesting for us to try and work out the theme. Yeah, that's just me. [01:51:16] Speaker B: It's interesting what people bring to an image themselves and what they see when they see them. [01:51:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:51:22] Speaker A: All right, let's go for it. Come on. [01:51:23] Speaker C: Just preface this with no more prefacing. They're not the best photos ever. All right, one, One preface. One preface. These. These are from what we were talking about before. These are all straight out of camera JPEGs. Cool. Unedited, untouched. No even straightening or cropping. [01:51:46] Speaker A: All right, we'll allow that one. Let's see them. [01:51:51] Speaker C: Hang on. Is it working? That's not working. What happened there? [01:51:57] Speaker A: Sounds like our excuse. [01:51:58] Speaker C: No, this is actual. Actual technical difficulties. Oh, it couldn't. Yeah, it literally just come up with an error. Let me just try this again. Talk amongst yourselves. [01:52:10] Speaker A: So, Emily, we're going to have a look at Justin's amazing photos and then we're going to. We're going to wrap up the show. But before we get to that, what. Where can people find your work? [01:52:22] Speaker B: Well, I've got Emily Black photography on Instagram, which I'm pretty much. Wow. It sort of ebbs and flows as to what goes on there. I have my website, which is emilyblackphotography.com and they're probably the best places to see me pop up with what's going on in the world of me. The website does get refreshed and rejigged pretty frequently. I'm pretty good with new work kind of ticking over on there, partly because I get bored myself and I like to take some things off and what represents me the most at the moment. So that's a good one. And there's a Little bit of a blog in there as well. Yeah. Occasionally throw some things in which is a little bit personal at times. A little bit about what's going on in the personal world and the running world and a little bit about what I've been photographing recently. Or just a thought or random bubble. [01:53:21] Speaker A: No, it's an interesting read. It's, it's, it's very real and very genuine, which I think is important. [01:53:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:29] Speaker A: You know, especially with people that maybe want to, you know, book you in for a job. They want to know who you are as a person and how you're going to represent them. [01:53:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:38] Speaker A: And I think personal blogs are a good way to do that for photographers. But that's just me. I do one myself. Yeah. How are you going, Justin? [01:53:47] Speaker C: Because it keeps saying no, no dice. But I can share websites for some reason it's just not liking. [01:53:58] Speaker A: Have you tried sharing a slide instead of a page? [01:54:01] Speaker C: It's not. No, it's. I usually just share lightroom and it's usually fine. Which is quite weird that it's not loving it today. Just going to try one more thing. [01:54:13] Speaker A: While we're waiting for Justin to get his shit together. Just wanted to remind our viewers and our listeners that you're listening to the Camera Life podcast. This is episode 41 and we're talking live with Emily Black of Emily Black Photography. Make sure that you like and subscribe today's show and check out the channel. Our full 41 episode back catalog is there ready. And a lot of people have been commenting that they find because we are a long form podcast, that the audio podcast is especially good for people who, you know, while they're on a run, they like to listen to our show on journeys, you know, traveling to and from their day job, that sort of thing. So please make sure you like and subscribe and comment. Let us know what you're finding interesting about our shows. Let you know what if there's any topics that you'd like us to cover in the future request. Maybe we can try and hunt down people. But yeah, make sure you become active and involved in the channel. And we're also working more on converting our live shows into mini blog articles for the Lucky Straps Blog on their website too. You can check out the article about our chat with Joel Alston. Did I say that right? Austin or Elston, I can't remember now. [01:55:36] Speaker B: I've never actually said his last name. [01:55:38] Speaker A: Just Joel. [01:55:39] Speaker C: Yeah, just read it. [01:55:40] Speaker A: The beat of photographer. So yeah, you can, you know, if you don't want to watch the full two hour episode. I think we're doing a bit. You can, you can quickly read the blog and see some of. Some of Joel's photos on the Lucky Strap website. What else have we got coming up? We're less than three weeks till Christmas. Sorry, Emily, but as we all know, people, you know, there's so much going on, everyone wants to catch up. It's a crazy time. Everyone wants to do something. [01:56:08] Speaker B: Oh my gosh. [01:56:09] Speaker A: And it. [01:56:09] Speaker B: Actually my weekend is hectic. Like it's. [01:56:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:56:12] Speaker B: Christmas party presentation things for the kids. It's all of the, all of the things. [01:56:19] Speaker A: And speaking of Christmas parties, I. It does raise a very interesting question, Justin. When are we having the Lucky Straps Christmas party? Yeah, look, are you going to. You know what's happening, mate? [01:56:38] Speaker C: No plans yet. You just stay by the phone and don't call us. We'll call you. [01:56:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I get it. [01:56:44] Speaker B: Crack open a culprit on Friday. [01:56:47] Speaker C: Major, major problems with this today, but I have to do it. [01:56:51] Speaker A: What? [01:56:52] Speaker C: It keeps zooming in what is happening with my computer. This is crazy. [01:56:58] Speaker A: It's almost like you need a photographer with some editing skills. [01:57:01] Speaker C: That'd be one. [01:57:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe Lucky Straps can come up with a runner's camera strap. [01:57:05] Speaker C: That would be in my mind because it's also very similar to like a bike, a biking camera strap for bike packing and that kind of stuff. So, yes, it is on my mind. What is going on here? [01:57:18] Speaker B: I just don't want to hold something while I'm running. I want to tuck it in somewhere and pick it out if I need to. [01:57:25] Speaker A: Jim has said user error. [01:57:27] Speaker C: It often is, Jim. [01:57:29] Speaker A: It often is. And I think, you know, and it's interesting coming from Jim, who usually has the, the lion's share of user errors in the group, to now find that Justin is also struggling. You might have to buy something new, Justin, some new gear maybe to compensate. [01:57:46] Speaker C: And I'm, I'm really struggling. I'm sorry, everyone at home, but this hasn't happened. This is week six and this hasn't happened ever. [01:57:55] Speaker A: Look, don't worry, mate. You reach a certain age, it happens to all of us. Should we push on? [01:58:02] Speaker B: Just describe every image. [01:58:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll just tell you. [01:58:07] Speaker B: Draw us a picture. [01:58:09] Speaker C: What, what about how, how, how While I'm trying to figure this out, because I have to do it, otherwise I lose. My challenge is. Can we talk a little bit about how you got into judging awards and things? [01:58:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I find that interesting. Yeah, it was original. The original judging that I did was through aipp. So the Victorian Awards we did, and they had a really good program of training judges in what to look for, how to communicate clearly. I think it was like a pretty much a full day kind of course in, you know, being fair to an image and understanding, trying to read an image in a quick amount of time and understand what the story was or depending, you know, finding the good things and the things that needed working on and how to best communicate that. So I started doing that with at the Victorian level and then sort of built up from there. I was very vocal in how much I loved doing it. I love being able to look at images and talk about images and help other people through that process because again, it's something that I love to get. I get the value from it as well. When my work has been judged, I love to be able to listen to the input and hear how someone has seen something that I photographed because, you know, there's the person that took the photograph and what they were trying to convey. But then I'm going to come into an image with my story and my backstory and my values, and I'm going to see something different in that image that's going to pop out at me. And that's the beauty of photography. And then on a lot of the judging that I've done, there's been panels so we can talk about and we can hear something different from a story. So I've done that through what was the aipp, and then I've done some through the International Birth Photography Awards, which is an all and online live judging, which is like the nuts and bolts of like, photojournalism, which is just, you know, magic. And then just the more you do, the more you start to move in the circles where you get invited by certain people. And last year I was able to be the Team Australia judge for the World Photographic Cup. So didn't get to judge any of the Australian images, obviously, but got to judge images from around the world. [02:00:47] Speaker A: And what an incredible honor, too. [02:00:49] Speaker B: Oh, it was. I was so, so honored to be that person. But the weight was very real. Like, it's like, oh, I'm the representative of Australia judging these photos. But again, like the, the feast for the eyeballs was just unreal. Like how different trends are happening across the world and how a different country would look at, you know, would approach a commercial shoot versus family photography versus all these things. It was just phenomenal. So to be part of that was really, really cool. So I love it. I love it. I love. [02:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's a side that we often don't hear about. And, you know, if you, if you, if you interact with any camera club at a local level, if you interact with any camera club, they haven't. They have awards. And actually one of our upcoming guests is actually a camera club judge with, you know, obviously similar, maybe not at the same scale necessarily, but very similar interests and perspective on how to read and describe and provide feedback on an image, which is something I think a lot of us in the photography world take for granted. You know, we get feedback off our peers and mates and obviously on social media. But to have a true critique of your work is a next level altogether, isn't it? [02:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's one thing to go, you know, here's my photo and I'm going to show it to some people and you've got your friends going, oh, my God, that's amazing. That's incredible. Oh, that's so cool. And then you show it to your peers and it's okay. I love what you've done here, but have you considered this? Or have you considered this? And you go, oh, well, I've never thought of it that way. Or if I just move this way or move that way. And I think, yeah, I love. The thing I love the most about when you're in a panel or when you're doing live judging is the feedback that is so, so, so valuable. The score is one thing, but if you're getting some feedback that is going to better you as a photographer and you were going to be able to take away, but, you know, the weight is real too. You can't, you can't come into an image that maybe isn't fantastic, that is someone that's newer to photography, that doesn't have all of the skills of somebody else. They're showing you their best work, they're showing you what they're most proud of. And so how you approach that can make or break a person. And I remember when I was, you know, yay, first in awards too, it was the same thing. [02:03:31] Speaker A: Yep. Speaking of making or breaking someone, he's. [02:03:36] Speaker B: Made it, he's figured it out. [02:03:38] Speaker C: I just had to open every image in a different tab in Chrome to make this work, which was, in my opinion, that's a win in the troubleshooting because I didn't even think of that until just now. Okay, cool. All right, so it's a set of images. It's not each one image. The set is important. I'm going to make it. I wonder if I can turn that lucky straps overlay off. Let's do that. [02:04:06] Speaker B: Hide. [02:04:07] Speaker A: There we go. [02:04:08] Speaker C: That's better. All right, then. I can do this. All right. Thanks, Internet, for sticking with me. Here we go. Image 1. [02:04:19] Speaker A: Okay. [02:04:29] Speaker C: Image 3. Image 4. Image 5. If you're listening on Spotify right now, you will be very bored. [02:04:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Sorry, team. Oh. Oh, boy. [02:05:25] Speaker C: That is image number 12. [02:05:29] Speaker A: Now, just before we jump to Emily's thoughts, David from the San Fran Bay Area has said, in my room. Is that the theme? [02:05:39] Speaker C: Sort of. Not. Not so much, but it's heading in that direction. [02:05:43] Speaker A: I'm going to guess that it's. There's a life of a photographer, my space. Life of my photography space, how my photography exists in my home. [02:05:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I was sort of going along with that. There's photos within the photos and there's the story of a day in. Not a day in the life so much, but, you know, that kind of. On this day, these were the things I noticed kind of thing. [02:06:16] Speaker C: Exactly. That's definitely. I don't know. Like, I can't succinctly say what the theme was, but it was. I had this thought, and it's actually the seed of an idea, maybe for a bigger project, but I just decided to do it at my house. So this is my house, and it changes all the time. And I think a lot of people have. You know, if you were going to have photos taken in your house, you would tidy things up and put things where you want them to be, and you have this sort of idea of what you want your house to look like. But my house is never. It never stopped. It's always evolving and things are always moving around, and it's. It's. I don't know. This is what it looked like at this moment, on this day. So. So what I did was I wasn't able to touch anything. I could only open or close doors and turn lights on and off, but I could not touch any of the objects as this is exactly as they were at the time I decided to do this project. So there's. That's why I was a little bit worried, because I'm like, there's not. It's. These aren't amazing photos. They're just. They're just photos, but they're. It's. It's exactly as the house was in this moment. And it looks different today. Like, it's. It's not. It's not how you would photograph a house. So, like. Yeah, my passports are still out from when I was traveling over a month ago, you know, like that. And this is what our bathroom looks like with the photo of our dog. And obviously Ted, our dog, who we lost last year, is still a major theme of our house. So that was kind of what I wanted to do. And the idea that I thought might become a project is I had a neighbor who lived on our street called Martin, who was in his 90s and still lived at home. And his house was this, like. And his yard was. Is amazing. He'd been there for 50 years, and it was something that he'd spent so much time. There was little watering devices that he'd come up with himself to help water each plant. And everything was handmade. And he even. He would write the names of the neighbors that he met on the street on his front porch, behind his fence. The fence of his, like, front porch, so that he could remember people's names when they come along the street, because he'd sit out on the front porch. And one of my biggest regrets is I. And we. He. He passed away last year as well. And the family spent days packing up his house and telling us about the. All the sorts of stuff that he had hoarded away or inventions that he'd made. He built his own weight bench to do so he could keep doing exercises as he got older and all this sort of stuff. And I regret that I never went in and took photos of his house. And ideally him in his house, but even afterwards, I should have gone in there before they packed everything up and just taken photos because they had to throw so much of the stuff out because it's. Is what you have to do. You can't just take it all home. [02:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:09:31] Speaker C: But having images of this thing that he created over 50 years, I think would have been really cool. And that's kind of what. I don't know. That's. That's what I was playing with with this. But ideally, I'd really like to do it. Yeah. At other people's houses and potentially houses that. Where they've lost someone and the house is about to get packed up. Or if someone's going into assisted living and, you know, they've lived in their house for so long. I don't know. That's a beautiful. [02:10:04] Speaker B: Yes, beautiful, because we're going through the process. So my dad's in a. In a home and, you know, he's not likely to last much longer. And there's all these things around the house that, I mean, every so often I'll just take a photo of that. Oh, that photo wall. That was so special. I'm upset because he got rid of a bunch of stuff because he was, you know, just. He's that kind of guy. [02:10:26] Speaker C: Don't need it anymore. [02:10:27] Speaker B: It's going. That was Mum's. That's going. She's not around. So the idea of documenting that is like so cool because it's the house I grew up in as well and having all of these little memories that, you know, you can't take. You can't take everything with you because it's just not feasible. But to have those memories of all of those little things in a. [02:10:50] Speaker A: Well, it's kind of your last chance, isn't it? It's your last chance to preserve those memories. And you know, I mean, we carry memories, but being able to photograph them gives us kind of anchor points in time. I think especially documentary style photography gives us those anchor points of. I remember this. This is what the house was like just before dad moved in or, you know, moved out. [02:11:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:11:15] Speaker A: Or whatever it may be. Matt has just said in the comments, behind every documentary photographer is the regret of a project not undertaken. It's what drives us to be decisive the next time. I think it's really sage advice. [02:11:28] Speaker C: I've got another neighbor, Elsa, my next door neighbor, just going around Bendigo looking. [02:11:33] Speaker A: For all the old people. Now. [02:11:36] Speaker C: Elsa and I, we talk to each other quite regularly over the fence of our backyard because I'm. I'm living in for context, this is my grandparents house who have since passed away, but I'm living here and she used to be friends with my grandparents and now we're friends and she's. She. How old is she? 91 or something like that? No, 83. Anyway, she's old, she's awesome. But I've got to get. Because their houses, it's full of cool stuff. Just there's stuff everywhere and I just want to take photos of all this stuff. So anyway, that's where it came from. Now if you, if you want to roast the photos at all, go for it. Don't let the emotional story behind it stop you from just being like they were actually pretty bad. But I see what you were trying to do. [02:12:26] Speaker B: I like black and white as a storytelling device, so I love black and white the story in a different way. Sometimes color you really need it. But I think in this you'd get lost in some of the images if they were color. [02:12:37] Speaker C: For sure. [02:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:12:38] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. Because a lot of it was about this for me. I was like attracted to the shapes. [02:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And the contrast. [02:12:46] Speaker C: Yeah, you lose a lot of the shapes once you Introduce color but like the, yeah, the different. That one not so much but like the shapes. Yeah, and, and yeah, there's a lot of layout sort of style shapes. You would be really surprised. Oh as well. This was all shot on the Q3, so it was fixed lens too at 28 mil. So you'd be surprised at how many of these. I literally had to like flatten myself up against the wall to include what I wanted to include in the frame. And then the, another frustrating thing about trying to get straight lines when you're shooting jpeg, like with no cropping or straightening available and knowing that photographers are going to look at these like it's, it's not easy anyway, so that's what I did and I really liked the. This is, this is. If anyone wants to know what my life is like summed up between two photos, it's this and then this. Because within the same five minutes of time I'll be in here trying to do something, something that I've been working on or getting ready for a podcast or something. Then it's like, washing's done, gotta get the washing on, put it on the thing. And I stubbed my toe this week as well, which is why there's a band aid on my toe. Anyway, so that, anyway, yeah, that tells the story. Any harsh words? Hit me judge. [02:14:06] Speaker B: I like it. I love, I love a series of images that tells a little bit about someone's life. Like I think. And as you look at some of like some of the images you've got are like nice and minimalist which really give us an obvious we know what we're looking at. But then in other images, the more I sit there and look at it, I'm like, oh, I didn't notice that. Oh, I love that bit there. Like the photo that you've got of the wall and there's the photos on the thing in the door over on the right hand side. So that one right, I'm looking at, I'm going that photo that, that vertical photo of someone taking a photo. Is it so, so yeah, I'm pointing at it like you can see me but there's someone taking a photo and you're taking, yeah and you're taking a photo. It's like this little mirror reflected back to you. But also the little, the little keys on the door like yeah, well, old person keys. [02:14:58] Speaker C: My grandparents house. And this is, this is our closed. Like it all says something to me because I know a lot more about it. But like this is our closed up dog door that We. We don't use anymore, but it's all part of. And then there's. There's dog photos everywhere in my house. [02:15:11] Speaker A: I think you just kind of nailed it for me, Justin, when you said, this means something for me. [02:15:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:15:17] Speaker A: I think having watched you go through this challenge over the past few weeks and even prior to that, when you're doing a daily challenge for 30 days of taking JPEG straight out of camera, I think all too often. And look, it happens to all of us. It happens to me especially, and I've talked often about my imposter syndrome, that you're worrying too much about the end result and who's going to look at it. [02:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:15:43] Speaker A: And I think. And I know that that's part of you wanting to have a goal and a motivation to get feedback from other photographers. And I know that's important, but there's almost a nervousness from you about it, how other people are going to perceive your work and how that might actually impact how you. How you're taking it and what you're selecting. And I think maybe you need to be a bit gentler on yourself and a bit more forgiving of yourself because you've said, oh, these are bad photos. Didn't. No photo was a bad photo. It was a moment in time. That will never happen again. [02:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:16:18] Speaker A: You know, and you could. You could take your Q3 now and walk back into that room and try and get that same shot again, and you won't. You really won't. You won't frame it the same. You'll be at a slightly different angle. It will never be identical. [02:16:32] Speaker C: And solid chance one of these photos has fallen off that wall, because they do happen. That happens. [02:16:37] Speaker B: I reckon a cool thing to do is like, a couple of those photos getting the same spot for each, like, for a month or something in the same spot each day and take the same photo. And there's like a story of things that have moved in that image. [02:16:51] Speaker C: If I took a photo of this every day, oh, my God, it's. This is what, someone's shelf that's, I don't know, not super organized and doesn't have a YouTube channel with a backdrop or whatever. This is what it actually looks like. [02:17:07] Speaker A: Without the fancy laughs and the mood. [02:17:09] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:17:10] Speaker A: Let's come to a couple of comments. Let me just jump in here. Theme could have been chaos from David in San Fran. Yeah, I saw a bit of chaos, but then, you know, you see the empty basket and you think, oh, that's. [02:17:23] Speaker B: Order in the chaos. [02:17:24] Speaker C: Yeah. The camera Shelf, anyway. [02:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, true. And what else we got here? We've got Bruce. Hey, Bruce. I think we met Bruce, didn't we? [02:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah, Bruce. [02:17:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. You were too busy at the bar the whole time, Justin. You wouldn't remember. The feet in the frame actually make. Yeah, the feet in the frame actually make it more of a portrait than just the basket by itself. Let me just get rid of the comments so you can actually see Justin's feet and he's. Poor little banged up toe. [02:17:58] Speaker C: Played around with including myself in a couple of the shots because I took more images than this and. And then I took. I took them out because 12, that is the rule at 12. No more, no less, 12, 12. So I took them out and ended up. I just wanted to include something that had me in it in a few spots. And I just thought it was funny that my toe was stubbed. [02:18:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we'll get to that. Matt's. Matt's dropped a couple of comments. To be honest, it's looking pretty neat to me, Justin. [02:18:27] Speaker C: Really? This is. Is this what your workstation looks like, Matt? Really? [02:18:32] Speaker A: I've got a smaller space. You're like, you've got your own office. [02:18:35] Speaker C: I'm pushing the limits here. [02:18:38] Speaker A: And also Matt said, yeah, I agree. The laundry shop grabs me. The band aid is all important. Most definitely. [02:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:18:46] Speaker C: Well, thanks. [02:18:48] Speaker B: And those two guys that said about the laundry basket and stuff, and I'm like, yep, this would be something that if it popped up in a. In a category in, you know, one of the documentary series, in one of the awards, like, there'd be so many stories that would come from this. Why is the laundry basket empty? What is that trying to tell us? What is it that. That stubbed toe in the empty basket? What would have been in that basket? [02:19:09] Speaker A: You know what it is? It's Schrodinger's laundry basket. Where is the washing? Is it on the line? Is it in the machine? [02:19:19] Speaker C: Exactly. Is it coming or going? And. [02:19:22] Speaker B: Yep. [02:19:22] Speaker C: You know what's interesting, though, is you have all those conversations and then you're like 60 out of 100. Next. [02:19:32] Speaker B: I don't know, man. Sometimes just it takes one person to really talk someone around and suddenly can you talk to. [02:19:39] Speaker C: So for those listening, can you talk about that process? So there's a panel in some of the ways that these competitions run. So there's a panel. And I heard who talked about this maybe. Oh, might have been Jerry Jonas or something. Someone like that talked about advocating for an image and raising the panel. You can raise an image through the panel by advocating for one that really resonates with you. How does that work? [02:20:07] Speaker B: So you've got your panel of five, for example, and each person gives it a score. If it falls. There might be one person that has seen something in an image that speaks directly to their soul or is really obvious to them, but not as obvious to everybody else. So they might score that image 10 points higher than everybody else. Then there's the conversation. It's okay, well, I'm going to challenge what the overall score is that people have given, because I think you've missed something here that we need to discuss. And then there will be the conversation about that image. Now, there's nothing that raises my adrenaline more as an. As a participant. As a participant in entering the awards and hearing what someone has to say about an image, especially if it's yours and somebody wants to advocate for your image because they might have seen what you're trying to portray. But also, as a judge, there might be an initial reaction. Like, I would say, I'm a very emotive judge, so I get the technical. I understand all of that. But if the image speaks to me, I can see past a couple of other things because of that moment in time that's been caught. And so you can talk up the image. You can explain, okay, have we thought about, like, in an image, like the basket, right? You go, well, why is the basket empty? What. What is that trying to tell us about the image? We could have looked at an image without the toes, and the image would have been completely different. You know, all of those things. And so you will talk around that. And then people start to think, okay, so how does that impact me? And there might be a few technical points that need to be explained as well. And so somebody else will discuss, okay, well, I saw that, but I didn't see it in the way that you've seen it. And so it's. It's a collaborative process of discussing the image and discussing people's interaction with that image and whether then it deserves to move up higher in the award realm. It's actually. It's a really cool process to be part of, on every. Every facet of it as someone that sits in that middle range at times, and then someone that sees something so powerful that you just go, bang. This has got to get. This has to be right up there and to be able. But you've got to be able to articulate exactly what it is that you're trying to say as well. So it's just a good image. It's great. It's great because it's a different type of crop. It's not going to work. It's like you've got to really articulate why to that rest of that panel and then maybe justify. When they've had their say, you might have to then justify, well, okay, I see the fault that you've seen and this is why it isn't a problem or this is why I can overlook it and stuff like that. So it's a. Yeah, it's a really cool process. [02:22:49] Speaker C: How has judging impacted your own personal photography? [02:22:54] Speaker B: I definitely. Well, I think it's impacted how I enter rewards for sure. Because sometimes I do hear that banter in my head and I'm like, eh, it's not good enough. It's not going to go in. That's just going to be a 70. So it's not going to make it. Which is a shame because sometimes I may be missing things that go in, but it definitely. How I approach a shoot or how I'm approaching what I'm photographing, I'm definitely thinking of those technical components. And what's the message? I'm trying to say, is the message clear in this image? I know what I'm trying to say in this photo, but if somebody else saw it, would they be able to get that story as well? So, yeah, and it's particularly with the photojournalism side of things, sometimes you're putting yourself in a specific position, waiting for the action to actually happen because you know the light's hitting a certain way and something's happening. You know, you've got the backlight, you've got someone spraying someone with water and you've got that angle and you're just like waiting for that next person to come through and have that moment kind of thing. So you're, you're thinking about the elements that you need for a good image and then you're hoping for the extra action to elevate that image or something like that. [02:24:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:24:12] Speaker B: Cool process. [02:24:13] Speaker A: It is a cool process. [02:24:14] Speaker C: Sounds very. [02:24:15] Speaker B: It's a very different process judging just one person sitting there looking at an image and not being able to discuss it. Yeah. [02:24:23] Speaker C: Like if it's just all on you, if I'm like, hey, can you score these out of a hundred? [02:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:24:28] Speaker C: Is it, is that less fulfilling and is it sort of hot? Do you not enjoy it as much? [02:24:34] Speaker B: I've done it for some camera clubs, things like that, where you're scoring an image and it's just your feedback that they're getting. And I think, you know, in that, in that scene, it's in that sort of setting, it's, it is what it is. But it's great to have a couple of different feedbacks and a couple of different opinions into an image for anyone because, you know, it's just how I'm seeing the image and this is what I'm seeing as a fault and this is why I've marked it the way I've marked it kind of thing. But yeah, it's, it's, it's just a. Yeah, it is a little less fulfilling because I like having a discussion. [02:25:10] Speaker C: But yeah. [02:25:11] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Bruce just popped his little two cents in. [02:25:16] Speaker C: Bruce says judging in a group is way better than doing by yourself. The challenges he was talking about are amazing and a. Fun to be a part of. [02:25:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there's, and there's. Yeah, it, the conversation that we all have. And then. Yeah, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful collaborative process and it's. I think it's a really fair way to judge images as well because you're not just getting one person's take on it. So you are getting feedback. [02:25:42] Speaker A: And I think it's a lovely process if you take away even the score and a potential prize. It's just a lovely process to have other people evaluate your work and have a conversation about it. Because I think in itself that process is an extension of what you did when you took the shot. Yeah, you know, it's like a painter. It's like, you know, someone paints an image and then people stand in front of it in a gallery and throw back and forth what they think the artist was trying to achieve. And the line work or the structure of something, you know, it extends beyond what the original intent of the art was. And I think that's a really important aspect of photography that we losing now with social media is that we're putting postage size copies of our work out into the void and they get lost, they disappear or they get shredded to pieces by keyboard warriors with no compassion and no true understanding of what it is that we're trying to achieve and no dialogue with anyone about it. It. And I think having someone have a conversation about something that you've put effort into and enough effort to submit it for a competition, I think that in itself is a really rewarding outcome. Yeah. [02:26:57] Speaker B: To get it going viral or something. To get the fight. [02:27:00] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [02:27:01] Speaker B: You know, like. Yeah. [02:27:02] Speaker A: Yep. One last comment here before we maybe head towards a bit of a wrap up. What do you think, Justin? [02:27:08] Speaker C: It is it's almost two and a half hours. We better let Emily go and live her life. I feel like. [02:27:16] Speaker A: So last. Last comment on the live show anyway. But feel free to keep commenting and interacting with one another in the chat. You learn from these challenges. Learn more from these challenges than a score or award even if you agree or disagree. And it's a very good. [02:27:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:27:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:27:32] Speaker B: 100. [02:27:33] Speaker C: I think we might have to have Greg A. We'll try and round up a few of the. These awesome photographers that have had experience in awards. It'd be cool to get some people that have judged but also some people that have had a lot of experience entering like Matt and. And have like a. We'll do a show that's like everything you need to know about judging and or entering a photo competition for the first time. I've never entered one. You know, like me neither. I'm sure there's a ton of people that haven't and it would be cool to do an episode on like how to prepare. Yeah. Some tips. What to expect, how to deal with crushing failure. [02:28:10] Speaker B: It's a really interesting. It's. It's a really interesting thing to approach too because you know it's such a. Such a subjective thing and as photographers we kind of get a little bit insular in our own world and we're photographing how we photograph but then yeah it's, you know you put out something and there's five different. Five different opinions on an image and it's. It's a pretty full on thing. [02:28:37] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [02:28:38] Speaker B: Maybe we'll do a mental health mentally for putting. [02:28:45] Speaker C: Yeah. How to, how to deal with the fact that hey, the scores might not be great but that's not like that doesn't. [02:28:51] Speaker B: And it's, it's really hard to explain that. It's really hard to explain that to people. People in going the score is the icing on the cake. The gold is the feedback. The feedback that you are going to get is going to make you better. The very first time I entered awards I was absolutely torn to pieces. But there was a few little comments that were, you know that came out that like okay, okay, that's what I can run with. I can see and I can see now why that didn't work. Beautiful metaphor for life. You know, things don't always go to plan. No. They don't learn from your mistakes and. [02:29:24] Speaker A: Failures and happy accidents. [02:29:27] Speaker C: We'll get that episode coming, that's for sure. Matt's already said he's in if we'll have him of Course, we'll have. You can come on anytime you want. [02:29:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:29:34] Speaker C: Yep. All right, we should wrap this up. [02:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:29:37] Speaker A: On that, on that note, something to look forward to in the future. But right here, right now, I want to thank Emily Black. Emily, thank you so much for your time and your heartfelt story and messaging around more happy accidents and how the need to escape a homeschooling situation led to becoming an ultra marathon runner. Who would have thought? [02:30:02] Speaker C: Hey, amazing. [02:30:03] Speaker B: I used to say if I'm running, you should be running as well because something's chasing me. But now if I'm running, you probably don't want to run with me because I'll. [02:30:14] Speaker A: Yep. But look, thank you so much for sharing, you know, not only your work with your early work with photojournalism, your work with families and children and then moving into obviously commercial and events, but also just for sharing a little bit about yourself openly and genuinely and keeping it real and raw to. We're going to go for Hallmark moments. But yeah, look, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Oh, thanks, Justin. It was so so with you. [02:30:50] Speaker C: Thanks, Greg. [02:30:51] Speaker B: But yeah, that technical issue. [02:30:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's really. [02:30:55] Speaker C: I sorted out before next week. [02:30:56] Speaker A: I think we need to have a chat. [02:30:59] Speaker B: It's been great. Thank you for having me. It's been lovely to chat all things. [02:31:02] Speaker A: Well, that's everything and we would love to have you back on in the future to talk all manner of things with you and I think we're still awesome. I wasn't giving you a choice but, but yeah, look, thank you once again for those of you listening along and watching along, this is the Camera Life podcast, episode 41. Three weeks to Santa, if you're into Santa. Or three weeks until an extended holiday. [02:31:33] Speaker C: You got the reindeer? Reindeer all sorted out, Greg? [02:31:35] Speaker A: Yes, the elves have been busy. They're all a little neurodivergent. So the wrapping is going to be all over the shop, kids. But on that note, we'll wrap it up. [02:31:55] Speaker C: David says work on that runner's strap, guys. Just on that. We do have a business if anyone wants a camera strap. Lucky camera straps. Google it. You'll find us. Best camera straps on the planet. Leather. [02:32:05] Speaker B: Mine's still going strong. I got mine five years ago. [02:32:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, and also one very last quick thing. Jump on the channel and watch Justin's very short video on how to attach the camera strap safely. A grown man swing a ten thousand plus dollar camera around by the camera. [02:32:27] Speaker C: I. Anyway, no one's gonna understand. I published a video on Lucky Straps YouTube channel today. I actually made it just for. It was a response to an email I got and I was like, this will be easier just to show them on a video. And she was concerned about how strong the quick release system was for a Leica M10. And so I put the Leica Q3 on the strap and I was just swinging it around like this. I'm like, it's fine. I didn't. I forgot about that before I put it on YouTube. I probably should have anyway. Don't do that at home, but it can handle it anyway. [02:32:59] Speaker A: 50 kilos. [02:33:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:33:00] Speaker A: On a shoulder strap. 30 on a wrist strap. [02:33:03] Speaker C: Correct. [02:33:04] Speaker A: If you're carrying that much camera. On a. On a wrist strap. Well, well done. [02:33:07] Speaker C: Your arms are strong. [02:33:09] Speaker A: Your arms are strong. Anyway, we're going to. We're going to roll out from here. Thanks again, Emily. [02:33:14] Speaker B: Thank you. [02:33:15] Speaker A: Lovely chat. [02:33:15] Speaker C: Thank you. [02:33:16] Speaker A: Good to see you, Justin. [02:33:17] Speaker C: Nice to see you, Greg. [02:33:18] Speaker B: Going. [02:33:19] Speaker A: Well, everybody get out and shoot.