EP44 Creating Photography Goals for 2025

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Music is so groovy. I had my eyes closed for a minute. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Forgot that we were podcasting. [00:00:12] Speaker A: I forgot where I was. Good morning. Good morning, Justin. Good morning, everybody. We're back. [00:00:20] Speaker B: We are back. [00:00:21] Speaker A: Kind of. Yeah, we're back. Mostly little foggy. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Yeah, we had a little bit of a break there. [00:00:27] Speaker A: Would we have a bit? Yeah. The 19th of December was the last podcast that we had live and obviously it's still available on YouTube if you want to go back and watch that or any of our arts past episodes. Well, I told you I was cloudy, but this is the Camera Life podcast And it's episode 44, the first episode of 2025. It is the. What is it, the 9th of January already? So. Yeah. Welcome back, Justin. Thanks. [00:00:59] Speaker B: It's good to be back. How was your. How was your everything? [00:01:03] Speaker A: Everything was good, actually. So I've got, you know, a fairly large family and my partner Sasha and I, we have five children, three of which are adults, all still living at home. And we've got two teenagers and our youngest two were on school holidays. So there was always someone around. But, yeah, good times, busy times, you know, just sort of everyone coming over. We had Christmas at our place, so I know that's not very woke to say Christmas, but I don't really care because it's Christmas to us. We celebrate Christmas in that we eat a lot of food. [00:01:43] Speaker B: Yeah, that's Christmas, really. [00:01:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Just having a great, great family day. We had all the family over because it's seven of us. We don't go to anyone else's house because transportation is impossible. So everyone comes to us, which is nice. So it's a very chilled day, Lots of food, little nap in the afternoon. Mind you, that's every day for me. How about you? You are. [00:02:06] Speaker B: You are getting to that age. We have to have a nap. Yeah. [00:02:09] Speaker A: Just before we went live, we were talking about how I need hearing aids. So if anyone wants to fund my. My gofundme page for hearing aids, we'll. [00:02:20] Speaker B: Get you the finest ones that money can buy. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Wow. Yeah, That's a lot of money. For the finest, even the cheapest are a lot of money. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Yelena's in the comments. Morning, Elena. If anyone else is out there in the Internet world, let us know in the chat because we need people to talk to. Today it's going to be just Greg and I chatting about 2025, and we. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Chatted two days ago for like two hours. So we don't. [00:02:43] Speaker B: That's right. [00:02:45] Speaker A: We have nothing in common. We have no shared interests. You know, and I spent most of the time going, what? Say that again. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Didn't hear you turn your headphones up. [00:02:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I did. But for those of you watching along, just a reminder that we're coming to you live from Victoria in Australia. It's, it's 9:00 in the morning here. Where are you? What time is it where you are? Speak up, have a say in the comments, let us know where you are, where you're watching from. We always love to find out where people are and what their interest in photography is. But yeah, it's been a hot minute and you know, I think we, we talked a little bit about this the other day, Justin, but also just before we went live about that, you know, finding your feet again at the start of a new year because Christmas for some, not for everyone, because not everyone celebrates Christmas and some people just work right through, you know, they don't get that sort of break that we chose to take. I guess that's part of the benefit of being self employed. But there's often a slump at this time of year, you know. [00:03:54] Speaker B: What do you mean a slump? Like a, like a creative slump or like an energy slump? What do we. [00:03:58] Speaker A: A little bit of both. Like maybe not a slump so much, definitely not a rut, unless you were already in one. But start of a new year, you know, you kind of, you're getting back into work. If you've got family, you've got to start thinking about when the kids are going back to school, you know, the holiday's over kind of thing for a. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Lot of us, I think. And again, like you say, not everyone has that, that kind of Christmas to New Year time off, but a lot of people do and the people that do. The other tough thing is that period of time where you like, you try and maximize your holiday so you're away to like Sunday afternoon and then you get home, maybe if you've got a family, you get home with a car full of everyone's crap and then you start unloading it just into the garage or whatever and then the next morning you're back to work and it's like, it's pretty hectic time I think for. [00:04:52] Speaker A: A lot of people. [00:04:54] Speaker B: Even though you try, you've had some holidays, it's not always the most relaxing period where you like transition from holiday back to work. [00:05:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. What did you do over your break, Justin? What did you get up to? [00:05:06] Speaker B: I, I went up the river, I took all my camera gear, so. Up to the river. [00:05:11] Speaker A: When you say the river, can you explain that to the folks who aren't near Echuca. [00:05:15] Speaker B: The Murray River. It's a very big river in Australia. It's the border between New South Wales and Victoria. [00:05:21] Speaker A: Forms most of the border, doesn't it? [00:05:22] Speaker B: It does most of the border. There's a lot of stats about how big it is, and I don't know any of them, but I've traveled a fair chunk of it. And the family goes up there just near Echuca, and we hang out and it's really nice. But my nephews were there and they're crazy. So a lot of the time was just spent entertaining them. And I ended up not taking any photos or using my cameras at all. I feel a bit crazy about it. Not once. Well, actually, no, that's not true. I got the drone out once to do a favor for our next door neighbor up there. [00:05:53] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. Yep. [00:05:54] Speaker B: Take some. Take some insurance photos for him. They weren't very creative. And so other than that, no, I didn't even, like the Leica just stayed tucked away. I thought I'd bring that out all the time and I didn't. And yeah, I don't know, I just wasn't feeling it. And then, yeah, like, like, do you do, like on Christmas, do you get the camera out? Do you take any family photos or any shots? [00:06:16] Speaker A: Sometimes I do. Like when it's the kids birthdays, we do a thing where, you know, because getting coordinating five adults and two teenagers to appear for a birthday celebration at the same time, like to get up in the morning and do presents before everyone goes off to do their thing is quite challenging. So often I'll get out the camera because it's a unique opportunity to get everyone together and get some family shots. Even though they're just candid. No one's posing. I'm just documenting the moment. But this time I didn't. I haven't gotten my camera out for probably a month. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:48] Speaker A: To use. I dropped it in my. I've got a crumpler, a fairly nice sized crumpler, and I put my little Fujifilm X70 in it, which takes up no room. You know, it's only a few hundred grams in weight. And I've put it in my bag a few times, thinking, I'll take it. And when I get down to the street, walking down to the main street down here at Chapel Street, Prahran, I think, yeah, I'll get it out at some point. And then I get home and realize I just completely ignored it. So it's it's an interesting. So when I tell you there's a little bit of a slump going back to that point, I think I've. Maybe I'm just out of practice. I'm out of the practice of going, okay, I'm going to go down to the street. Not to do chores, not to pick up Christmas presents, not to post things at the post office. I'm going down just to take photos, know. And I've fallen out of practice of making myself do that. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Over anything else. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Even the incidental stuff isn't happening. So. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that is certainly one of those things that it's like sometimes it's really hard to take photos whilst you're doing another activity. Sometimes it's easy because it just kind of all unfolds in front of you. But yeah, other times it's like I, I think that's what happened over this, these last few weeks is I was immersed in the activities and I think having a camera out would have kind of gotten the way of that. Yeah, yeah, it's. It's odd. I don't know. [00:08:15] Speaker A: It is odd. [00:08:17] Speaker B: David from California is here. He said he just walked in from the streets of San Francisco trying to empty a couple of film cameras. What we shooting with David? What film stock? Getting some cool shots. [00:08:31] Speaker A: We'd love to see some of your work. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Where can we see your work? [00:08:34] Speaker A: Yeah, please let us know. [00:08:36] Speaker B: Is it on the gram? You got a website? Show us. [00:08:38] Speaker A: Yep, show us. And it's. That goes for anyone that's listening. Let us know. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Actually, that's a good idea. If you're listening, tell us now and we'll look at your Instagram. [00:08:49] Speaker A: Right now. Right here, live. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, right here. Let's look at some of your work because I certainly don't post my work so we can't look at mine. [00:09:00] Speaker A: The only thing I've posted recently on my gram is my Christmas Day lunch preparation. [00:09:05] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:09:05] Speaker A: Which I must show you actually. It's quite impressive, I think. I don't know if you've seen it, Justin. [00:09:11] Speaker B: I don't believe so. [00:09:13] Speaker A: That's rude. I thought we were mates. [00:09:15] Speaker B: I don't spend a lot of time on social media or Greg's pulling that up. I guess the kind of the theme for the show is if you haven't seen this scrolling banner going across the bottom is 2025 photography goals. And maybe we'll do a little bit of a look back at 20. We might even have a sneak peek at some gear rumors that are floating around about new gear that's going to get released in the upcoming year. But mainly we want to talk about what. What we want to do in 2025 and ways that you can make a plan so that you don't get to the end of the year and think, I didn't use my camera much and I didn't get any great images because you've really got to. You got to make a plan and put the work in. It doesn't just happen for you. That's. That's how I've found it. Anyway, so, yeah, that's the theme of today's show. [00:10:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we just want to talk about that. Let me just bring up my Instagram quickly. I just want to show you the sort of stuff I've been doing with my photography recently. And it mostly has. Has just been with my iPhone. I'm not proud of this, but. Well, it's just because it's there, you know. Oh, look, there's Justin in Japan. [00:10:25] Speaker B: No, it's actually Jim. I took that photo. That is actually Jim in Japan. You can't tell because I made sure to cover his face with his hands and his camera. So that. [00:10:33] Speaker A: Yeah, he has such feminine fingers. So mostly food. [00:10:39] Speaker B: Okay. That is a lot of food. And then it came. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Here's Christmas Day. That's what I did for Christmas Day. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:10:45] Speaker A: We just had. We just had cold meats, seafood, lots of breads and cheese and dips, and we just went nuts. And that lasted for about. We. We didn't have to cook for about five days. [00:10:59] Speaker B: That's the best thing. It's like you just leftovers and overs and overs and overs. [00:11:04] Speaker A: But out of these, I don't think any of these. That's my son, Brendan Boogie, we call him Boogie. I don't think any of these. I terrible at. Keep being consistent. Up until about here, none of these. These are all just food shots of dinner. And that's all I've been doing. It's pretty slack. [00:11:23] Speaker B: So you've sort of gone full circle back to what Instagram started as just iPhone photos of food with filters on them. [00:11:30] Speaker A: Food and cats. [00:11:31] Speaker B: You're back. Yeah, it's back to OG Instagram. [00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah. But then looking at last year, these are some of the images that I took last year. There's Ian Tan, alumni of the show. Good man, Ian. Good friend. But, yeah, so I didn't. Yeah, I really didn't produce. I mean, I did do a lot more photos, but I didn't. I certainly didn't post as many of them here to. To the ground. This Is one of my favorites. Shot in Melbourne. She looks like a Bendigo mum to me. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Why Bendigo? Explain. [00:12:03] Speaker A: I don't know, she just looks like a Bendigo mum. She's a bit rough. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Ouch. [00:12:11] Speaker A: So David has replied. Sorry, we're waffling a bit here, everybody. But David has replied to say rotates about 13 film cameras. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Well, what. What are we shooting with today? [00:12:20] Speaker A: Yeah, let's hear about today. Yeah, cameras, film stock and please, if you want to let us know where we can see some of your stuff. [00:12:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Anyway, that's enough about me, enough about you, moving on. So you wrote an article about 2025 photography goals. [00:12:41] Speaker A: I did. Should I. Should I bring it up and have a look just quickly and then we can talk in more detail. [00:12:45] Speaker B: Send out to the lucky newsletter. I. I foolishly made a mistake and the first few people that were opening the email wouldn't have been able to even see the article, which is a bit sad. [00:12:55] Speaker A: But then here I am again. More about his life. [00:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it is all about you. [00:13:00] Speaker A: So I kicked off the year because some of you will know, but not everyone. I write articles for the Lucky Straps blog. Have done on and off for a number of years now, hasn't it? [00:13:13] Speaker B: It's been a while. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Since before COVID I think. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Yes. [00:13:17] Speaker A: And the first review I actually wrote, one of the first reviews I wrote for ShotKit.com was a lucky Straps leather strap review. Anyway, enough promotion. So I wrote this, I wrote this article about what are your photography goals for the new year for 2025? Because I wanted to quickly get in and address that, that kind of slump. I talked about a little bit at the start of today's show. We talked about, you know, I'm out of practice. I'm out of the habit of looking for an opportunity to take my camera out. And even the incidental stuff is passing me by. So I thought what a great time to reflect on last year and think about the year ahead. And I think it's a good opportunity for everybody, every visual creative or creative for that matter of any sort, to plan a little bit about what do I want to achieve, what do I want to learn and how do I want to make the most of my photography in the new year. And so I wrote an article to provide a little bit of inspiration to people around, I guess, different ways that you can motivate yourself, you can set yourself goals, short term, long term, lofty, quick wins the whole gamut. So it's a little bit of a longer article than I normally write, but I was saying to Justin this morning before we started this show how much fun it was to write this article. I write for a living, and sometimes articles can feel a little. You get to a point, you know, when you're writing articles that it's hard not to sound like you're saying the same things over. But this was a lot of fun because it gave me a really fresh perspective on the new year ahead. So I encourage everyone to have a quick look. We'll drop the link in the show notes and in the. In the comments at the end of the show. And it's also on the Lucky Straps website, so I encourage you to go and have a look. But we talked about, you know, what are the podcasts out there. Obviously, I mentioned our podcast because it is the greatest photography podcast in the world. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Clearly, I saw that was right at the start of the article. I was like, there's a shameless plug. You know, have a better 2025 for photography. Watch our podcast. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Well, the reason why I put that. It's a good point, Justin. And there's method to my madness. The reason why I put that first is that watching a podcast is a quick win, and it's something you can do on your way to work. It's something you can do in your downtime, in the evening after family's gone to bed, or, you know, or on your lunch break at work, or even while you're working, you can have the audio going. And no one needs to know, you know, no, your boss doesn't need to know you're listening to a podcast. Just do it, okay? It's good for you. But a podcast, it doesn't have to be ask. We want you to watch any podcast. We want you to watch them all. Because for us here at the Camera Life, one of our goals is that if we can motivate one person to pick up a camera and go out when they otherwise wouldn't have, then, you know, I think we've won the day. You know, if we obviously, if we motivate 100, that's better. But, you know, if we help people understand a bit more about their craft and feel a bit motivated or get some new ideas or hear from a guest and go, oh, you know what? I think I'm gonna. I'm gonna. I'm gonna book a photography tour. It. I'm gonna do it this year, you know, then that's. That's what we. That's what we're here to do. We're not here to shamelessly plug our podcast. We're not here to shamelessly plug Lucky Straps even, you know, we barely mention it. Proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. [00:16:50] Speaker B: I was waiting for that. [00:16:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:52] Speaker B: But, yeah, anyway, you can this. There's so many different podcasts out there, and you can, you can even use it as a way to dive into a genre that you haven't sort of had much experience with. Find a street photography podcast or a landscape photography podcast. Get excited by listening to a couple episodes and then get out there and give it a try yourself. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:11] Speaker B: Or otherwise just. I don't know that it's like you say, it's a low barrier to entry. Way to maybe get a few ideas percolating in your brain and inspire you to bring the camera on your next adventure. [00:17:29] Speaker A: And good things about podcasts is that, you know, I know at the moment, in some places, like, I don't know how, but currently in California, there's crazy fires burning in the Palisades area, while at the same time in other parts of America, they are experiencing some of the worst winter storms on record. It sounds a bit like Victoria, to be fair. Yeah, we often have those sorts of extremes. [00:17:55] Speaker B: Four seasons, you know. [00:17:56] Speaker A: Yeah. If, you know, if you're stuck at home or maybe you're recuperating from something or, you know, you really want to get out and shoot, but the weather's just not for it, then watch a podcast. You know, feel the time that you thought you were going to go out and shoot with something else creative. And like Justin said, it's a. It's a low barrier entry point into learning, getting inspired, all that sort of stuff. And there's heaps of photography podcasts out there. You don't have to watch long form stuff. There's heaps of short form stuff. Find some people you like and let us know in the comments who, who you're watching so that others, including us, may learn from that. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Speaking of comments, David, number two for today is in the house, the drunken photographer, also from California. Hope you're not near the fires. Hopefully everything's all good with you and the people that you know. [00:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:49] Speaker B: Stay safe. [00:18:51] Speaker A: And David's also a film photographer. [00:18:53] Speaker B: It's a dumb thing for me to say. I'm pretty sure if you were having some trouble with the giant fires that they're having there, you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast live. So hopefully you're all good and everything, you know, everyone you know is all good. [00:19:05] Speaker A: Unless you're incredibly dedicated. [00:19:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Which we appreciate. [00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah. We value. And, and David is also Shoots weddings with film. And he's gone on to say that. And this is high praise. This podcast is unintentional, asmr. [00:19:24] Speaker B: Is it unintentional or is it intentional? [00:19:27] Speaker A: Or are we planning this for you? [00:19:29] Speaker B: Hard to know. [00:19:30] Speaker A: How to know. I need to grab my nails long so we can do some unboxings. Have you seen those unboxings where the girls use their nails on the box and tap, tap, tap. They do asmr. It's so incredibly frustrating. And our other David, he's from Southern Cal. Oh, no, sorry. David, the drunk wedding photographer is from Southern Cal. And David, I hope I pronounced that right, mate. He's in Northern Cal. I don't know where the fires are. Justin, you've been to California? [00:19:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I believe they're in the Palisades, just like north of Santa Monica, south of Malibu. So to us Australians like Dalai, kind of. But yeah, it's so big and so spread out. I'm assuming that that David, the drunk wedding photographer is a little bit south of that area. So. [00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Either way, be safe. Yeah, Stay safe and watch a podcast. Now, once people have listened to a few episodes of podcast and they're ready to get out and use their camera, what are topics are we going to dive into? About 20, 25? [00:20:42] Speaker A: Well, if we use the. Should we use the article as a reference or should we just check Wooder's channel? All right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna shut this down. You guys can check out the article. It's on the Lucky Straps website. All the photos of mine, by the way. Finally got to pull out some of my photos. There's another Instagram photo. Cat. Look, Justin, I think, you know, you can go large or go home, or you can just set yourself some realistic stuff. You know, there's no point setting goals. That. And I find this with just the whole new resolution process. I see people set these really lofty goals for life. [00:21:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:25] Speaker A: And life doesn't work that way necessarily. You know, you've got to be flexible. You've got to float with it. It's good to have goals, but you've also got to have the room to flex. [00:21:35] Speaker B: Yes. [00:21:36] Speaker A: But having said that, I think one of the easiest ways to start off with new year goals is to set yourselves a challenge, a simple challenge. And this might be just to get you started for the year. Might just be the spark that kindles the flame. Sorry. For the Californian folks. So, you know, I think there's a whole bunch of different challenges that you can do. And Justin, You've been an exemplary role model for challenges over 20, 24 in that, you know, you found yourself at a point where you'd stopped, predominantly stopped doing your wedding photography business with Jim. It's still going, but you've stepped back from it. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Yes. [00:22:19] Speaker A: From the Justin and Jim wedding photography service out of Bendigo, Victoria. And you found yourself in a place where you had all of this camera gear but you didn't know what to do with it. What was next for you? Where were you going to hunt, like next? And how is that going to work, given that you'd spent so much time working in weddings, a decade working in weddings, that all of a sudden, you know, you might not necessarily have a, you know, a good looking couple that are willing to pose in every way that you ask them to, you know? [00:22:54] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And, and what it was, it was trying to figure out, like, what, what is it? Without someone telling me what they want and paying me to do it. You know what I mean? And even though there was still creativity in those jobs that once you take that thing away where there's a client to please and it opens up the door to, you can really do whatever you want. I don't know. I found it tricky and it was hard. So the first thing I did, really, obviously. So a couple of things we did since before COVID we'd been talking about traveling to doing a big trip to the US And Mexico, we did that. That wasn't a photo challenge. It was three months. That's not something that most people can do at the drop of a hat. We'd been planning it for a long time and saving up for it for a long time. [00:23:51] Speaker A: By the way, you mean you and Yelena, not you and me, we're not romantically involved. [00:23:55] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. Me and Yelena went. And while it wasn't a photo challenge, I did kind of make it a little bit of a photo challenge in the sense that I just took one camera, the Leica Q3, on that trip and pushed myself to find, I guess, a new way of traveling with very limited camera gear and enjoying the photos that I could take and letting go the photos that weren't possible with that camera, you know? Yep. You can't zoom right in on a dolphin swimming by one of the piers in California. But that's. That's just life, you know. So that was probably. That was the first thing that I did that was kind of freed me from my normal professional photography kit and I took on more of a personal photography kind of aspect to it, which is really good. And I can show you some of the images from that, actually. Have you seen any of those images? Maybe. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Yeah. I actually follow you on Instagram. I actually look at your photos. [00:25:09] Speaker B: Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. Let me pull some up. [00:25:13] Speaker A: But, yes, I have seen most of them, I think. [00:25:17] Speaker B: And this was. Let's go. Here we go. This was. I'll just get there. It posted all over the place because Yelena ended up having to post them for me. So most of them were posted by Elena three months after we did the trip, because that's how good I am. But basically, we just rocked around, and I took Images with the Q3, all unedited JPEG straight out of camera. And that's where that kind of unedited JPEG thing really came into play, because I found that images from trips were just getting left on hard drives because I didn't have a reason to post them. I was struggling with a reason to edit them, if that makes sense. [00:26:05] Speaker A: Yep. [00:26:06] Speaker B: So by just accepting, like, these are what they are, that's what I did. That's what I shot. And it was very freeing, that's for sure. Yeah. So these. [00:26:22] Speaker A: And I think also it's, you know, units. A JPEG. Sorry, the words unedited JPEGs out of a camera. Like a. Like. Like a Leica Q3. Man, I'm struggling. You know, like, the dynamic range is gorgeous, and as are the. The colors. [00:26:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:43] Speaker A: So it also makes that task easier, doesn't it? [00:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it does. A good camera certainly does make it easier, and that is one reason I often get a little tempted by the old Fujis. But, you know, that's a topic for another day, but it's a topic for every day. You could. You certainly could improve some of them. But, you know, why do we have that mindset with film where it's like, it is what it is, and we're cool with it, you know, you don't get your film scans back. Well, I guess a lot of people do edit film scans, but you know what I mean? Like, you're more comfortable with, like, oh, that's the photo. That. That is the look that it is. You don't try and squeeze out more out of the. You know, the processing or whatever. So it's just. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I really did. And then. And also, so it did help to the first part of the trip. Santa Monica and Venice Beach. That's what these photos are from. Like, look, the sunsets looked freaking epic. So I was getting shots in the camera. I Was like, okay, this is cool. I don't have to edit these. They can just be exactly like they are. And that's what I'm going to do for the whole trip. So I was. I was very happy with. With some of these images that we got, especially this bubba Gump Shrimp Company 1. I don't know why I like that. I think because it's Forrest Gump, but, you know. [00:28:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And the lighting's cool. [00:28:07] Speaker B: The lighting is very cool. And again, that was straight. Just straight out of camera. So I did. I did use white balance a lot as a tool. So when shooting JPEG straight out of camera, getting your white balance correct to try and match the feel of the scene that you're shooting is obviously way more important than shooting raw. [00:28:28] Speaker A: So what would you. In this example, for those following along at home, what would you have done with white balance to say in a shot like this? Would you have warmed it. Would you have gone red a little? [00:28:38] Speaker B: Yeah, warmed it. So it's probably. No, just. Just setting it to, like, cloudy, probably. [00:28:42] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:28:43] Speaker B: As opposed to. So locking it to some. So rather than it trying to find white. If you leave it on auto. White balance. And every camera handles that differently. Some of the really good at preserving, like the. The warm feel. Others try and make it white and they'll get rid of that warmth of the lighting. So, yeah, it was more just. Yeah. Not. Not going crazy. Tweaking in the deep menus. Like some of the. You can adjust tint and stuff like that. With white balance. Now it's more just like locking it to. On my Canon, I'll just use Kelvin and just. It's very easy to set it to a control ring and literally just dial it in with Kelvin. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. [00:29:23] Speaker B: Up and down. I really do enjoy shooting that way when I'm shooting JPEGs on the canon, but the Leica, I just use the cloudy daylight or whatever just to kind of lock it to the scene that I'm shooting. [00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Anyway, so there are a couple. And then jumping forward, it's all kind of more of the same. But we went to. Where does it start? Not there. [00:29:53] Speaker A: That's Vietnam, isn't it? [00:29:55] Speaker B: No, that was actually pendingo Vietnam. So we went to Mexico City, cruised around, obviously shot a lot of buildings because that's all that was there, really. And back into the States. It was wonderful having just one camera to get out. This was in Nashville. And just, you know, everyone, no one has any problem with you bringing a Leica into music venues and stuff like that. Yeah. So it's, it's makes it very easy and it makes it an easy decision to pick it up and take it out of the hotel room. I did have a little Bellroy satchel to put it in sometimes. Yeah, it was cool. I like a leather one, though. I like. I'd like a company to make a little leather satchel. [00:30:51] Speaker A: I think there was a company we knew that made leather camera products. [00:30:54] Speaker B: If only. [00:30:55] Speaker A: Jesus, sometimes you baffle me. Yeah, I think it's a good. It's a good point you raise about limiting. Again, I've written about this countless times and there's an article on Lucky Straps as well about it because I tend to recycle my articles and just charge multiple times. But the, you know, the benefit of walking out wherever you are, whether you're on holiday or at home, with just the one camera, one lens, or a fixed lens camera with nothing else, no other gear. Maybe in a little satchel, like you said, maybe a spare battery and just work with what you've got. There's a lot to learn from that experience, I think, because it forces you to consider composition and it forces you to work with the limitations of the lens you've got. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but not only that I found while traveling, it was. It reduced all of the decision making purely down to am I taking my camera out or not? And then if I really wanted to make it less of a decision, I would just tell myself I always take my camera. And because it was light enough and easy enough, because usually it would be all right, am I taking my camera out or not? Okay, which lens would I take? Or, you know, do I just take a camera and one lens and which one? Or do I take, you know, a bag with some stuff in it and all that sort of stuff. [00:32:20] Speaker A: So as a comparison, what gear did you take down to the river, to the Murray river over the holidays? [00:32:26] Speaker B: Well, that's a little bit different. I packed everything. But that's partially because I don't love leaving it at home unattended. So sometimes it's easier just to pack my, like my pelican case with the gear and put it in the van. And then it's kind of with me if I want to do something with it, but also it's with me in terms of safety. So a little bit different. Yeah, but yeah, it does. It then makes it a bigger decision of like, which camera, which what camera, what lens, what am I doing? So, yeah, it. I don't know. And I did, I did really enjoy shooting with the Q3, but I certainly missed a few shots that I would have liked to take that had autofocus, which. The trip to Vietnam. I took the Canon gear as well and enjoyed using autofocus again. [00:33:18] Speaker A: So you're like a Q3. What lens you've got the 28 mil? [00:33:22] Speaker B: Yeah, the 20. It's the 1.7. [00:33:26] Speaker A: And so how do you think that would have been on that same trip? [00:33:31] Speaker B: Yes. [00:33:31] Speaker A: How much different do you think having the 43 mil would have been? What would that have changed for you? [00:33:37] Speaker B: Everything. [00:33:38] Speaker A: It's 43, isn't it? Or 40. [00:33:40] Speaker B: 43. [00:33:41] Speaker A: 43 mil. The other Q3. [00:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah. It would have changed everything because if we have a look at. I don't know, what else have we got here? There's not much here. Hey, look. San Francisco, David, San Fran. These aren't the world's greatest photos of a bridge, but we were there, so we did it anyway. We just got in and out quickly so that they didn't steal the stuff out of our car. Is the. Is the word on the. On the street. But, you know, if you imagine this image with the 43, like, I know you can shoot. You can shoot vertically and stitch together, you know, three or four shots and shoot lighter while I was shooting jpeg. So the last thing I want to do is like, go from. From shooting JPEGs all the way to having to stitch panoramas. But, you know, that obviously could do that with a 43 no problem. This shot is actually shots of these seals just chilling out. They're all seals. You can't tell, but it was kind of cool. [00:34:38] Speaker A: So maybe with the 43, that would have been a little bit more obvious. [00:34:41] Speaker B: Could have been closer, could have been better. That one wouldn't have mattered. That one I probably could have done something with, but it would have been quite different. Yeah. [00:34:52] Speaker A: So it's interesting how. How a single lens change can. Can alter your photography experience so much. [00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:35:01] Speaker A: But having choice, if you. If at the time you had choice, you know, it might. It might have been a completely different creative experience for you because you would have spent more time fishing in your bag. [00:35:13] Speaker B: If I could. If I could have a Q3. I know they can't do this, but I'm just going to say it anyway. If I could have a Q3 where you just like. Like there's a mechanical aperture ring on the lens. If there was a mechanical ring. Actually, there is. There's a macro ring on the lens. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Which actually, that macro mode's pretty cool. But let's say we ditch the Macro mode. And you literally just turn it and it goes from 28 to 43. It doesn't zoom. You turn it and it like clicks into the other prime lens. Oh, that'd be cool. [00:35:40] Speaker A: Yeah. 28 to 50, I think would be better, but 50 would. [00:35:43] Speaker B: 50 would be better, but I'd accept 43. But imagine. And I did use the. So There's a digital 50 mil crop in the Q3 that still gets you, like, decent megapixels. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Because it's 60, isn't it? [00:35:58] Speaker B: It's 60. So it's got heaps of cropping power. Basically makes it a fuji in that 50. Or cropped crop. [00:36:08] Speaker A: Whatever. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Still more. Still high quality, but it's all about. [00:36:13] Speaker A: The mega pickles to you. [00:36:15] Speaker B: It is. [00:36:16] Speaker A: Just very quickly, David has just said that he has shot off both of those spans. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I bet you you've got way better images, too. [00:36:23] Speaker A: Does he mean from the foot of the upright or from the top of the span? [00:36:29] Speaker B: Oh, you mean up the top here? [00:36:31] Speaker A: Can you get up? [00:36:32] Speaker B: Taking photos up here, David? [00:36:35] Speaker A: I know I've seen Spider Man. [00:36:37] Speaker B: Can you get up there or do. [00:36:38] Speaker A: You just get to the feet? I don't know, David. Let us know. Yeah. [00:36:43] Speaker B: What do you mean? It's cool. [00:36:44] Speaker A: What are the options? [00:36:45] Speaker B: It is. It is quite amazing. [00:36:47] Speaker A: The top, off the top. Get out of town, Grant. Come on, man. Full frame for life. It's a very limited view. [00:36:59] Speaker B: Yeah. There's also medium format. [00:37:01] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:37:06] Speaker B: Okay, so. [00:37:07] Speaker A: Good morning, Grant. [00:37:08] Speaker B: Good morning, Grant. I didn't know you weren't working today. Or are you working? Certainly once we got into the national parks and stuff, 43 would have limited me a bit more. We've really sidetracked this show from photography goals to just looking through photos. Anyway, keep on moving. This is Lake Tahoe. And again, being able to capture a shot like this, I guess a 43 would work. I don't know. You definitely. I would have made it work just fine. I do really like the 28, especially for bringing people into the environment as well. So. [00:37:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you can make any lens work in the situation. It's just whether you get the composition that you'd prefer. [00:37:59] Speaker B: I tell you what, if, if, if Leica want to sponsor me and send me on exactly the same trip, but this time with the 43. And then I can. Yeah, we can do a bit of a comparison review. [00:38:09] Speaker A: You know, I think that's a fair. I think that's a fair request. I don't think that's out of, you. [00:38:15] Speaker B: Know, very valuable for them too. [00:38:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I think you know, and given your reach. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. My huge audience. Yeah. In the Yosemite and stuff. I mean you could go way wider in Yosemite but, but 28 seemed quite. It was definitely a good all rounder for a travel because remember too this wasn't. We weren't getting up at, you know, 5:00am to chase the light and stuff like that. Holidays, I wanted to take photos, but it wasn't a photo trip, it was a holiday. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:50] Speaker B: And I just wanted to be able to look back and be like, oh yeah, I remember we were there at that time. Like as you'll see with most of these shots, they're all just like midday because by the time you, you know, you got in, still gorgeous, went on a hike. That's just what what it was. [00:39:03] Speaker A: Oh, look at that. [00:39:05] Speaker B: It's insane. The terrain, crazy. So insane. Compared to. [00:39:09] Speaker A: See, I don't have. And I'm sorry for our American listeners, I don't have any desire to go to the US for photography other than to maybe go to some of the parks because you know, as a, as an early film photography student, Ansel Adams was, was my hero. Like I just thought the stuff he could do with the, the gear that he had is, was just phenomenal. [00:39:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:35] Speaker A: And, and it's always inspired me, you know, Monument Valley, Death Valley, Grand Canyon, Yosemite. [00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah, but yeah, Route 66. Oh yeah, I'm just kidding. But yeah, that's what, that's what some of these images are the perfect sort of camera. That kind of stuff just. [00:39:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:57] Speaker B: Just bopping around and getting, you know, snapshots. I guess if it's. This is probably the one spot that I think I did okay in which. [00:40:11] Speaker A: Was how many photographers, how many photographers were behind you? [00:40:15] Speaker B: Look, not many because this was. So this is one of the slot canyons, Antelope Canyon. But there's, there's multiple Antelope Canyons and this was Antelope Canyon X which is like the, the poor cousin of the other Antelope Canyons. So way less people and less photographers. But it was still pretty busy and it was still kind of like you, you move through in a group and everyone gets. Most people just got photos on iPhones of them in the canyon. I think I probably was the only person there with a. Maybe there was one other person with a non phone camera. But yeah, it wasn't, wasn't a big photography thing. I think it was also the wrong time of day to get the beautiful shot Though magical shots but and again. [00:41:01] Speaker A: The like of reds. You can't deny the like of reds. [00:41:04] Speaker B: Yeah well this is straight out of camera. Yeah and yeah I think some of the shots were were pretty good but I think but your I think it's also like you could go wider for sure in there but again it's like do you want to drag a whole bag of stuff around and yeah. I don't know. Anyway so interesting rounding around. A long freaking story short about challenges. This was while not a specifically a photo challenge. I found ways through like limitation and and make like gear limitation but also making gear easier to access. Yeah to then and the photo is easier to access to encourage me to take more images while I'm out and. [00:42:07] Speaker A: I think what's especially trip what's especially good in that situation. Whilst you don't always want to have and I'm not plugging lucky straps here necessarily but you don't always want to have your camera on a strap and that's fine because of safety. And you know if you're carrying a heavy even if it is just a single camera and lens it is a weight on you but having a lightweight bag like a sling or just having it tucked into your travel bag like just your regular day pack when you travel is great but I always found that when I traveled to Japan always having the camera in my hand made such a difference. Like I set myself that that strict guide or rule I guess it is that I didn't take much gear. Like on my last trip I took an X70 and an X E4 with one lens 23 mil f2 and the X70 has a fixed 18 mil lens. And and I just enforced myself to always have one of the cameras in my hand at all times. And that in itself they changed the way I looked at where I was and that was. They were photography holidays. They weren't just you know, tourist trips. I mean they were too but predominantly I was there to take photos and eat amazing ramen. Let's jump to some comments. [00:43:31] Speaker B: What do we got? [00:43:32] Speaker A: We've got to David talking about his being able to shoot from the top of the Golden Great Golden Gate Bridge spans. He said he's got connections. Laugh out loud. I know I didn't need to spell that out but once once top shoot Blue Angels and the other from. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah to shoot the Blue Angels which are the. The U.S. what Air Force precision kind of precision flying team thing. [00:44:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:01] Speaker B: I don't know what you call it. Those cool guys. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Yeah yeah they are pretty. They're Amazing. I saw a video of them the other day, just a sloppy segue. And in pre flight, they. They have their own kind of, you know, almost like a war room, I guess, where they're all got comfy chairs and they're all sitting in there around a big table. And they were all sitting there with their eyes closed and they. Their leader is calling out every action. [00:44:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:27] Speaker A: And they're visualizing and they're all using their hands and turning their head and, you know, because with the G forces and. And the. The barrel roll, all the stuff that they're doing, they need to be able to maintain where Horizon is. Yeah, you know, it was. Yeah, it was really fascinating. Anyway, segue. Grant, who's working from home, clearly working hard. Grant. Brighton, February. So we'll get up and take some photos around Mount Buffalo and maybe Mount Hoffman. So that's in regional Victoria for those of you not from the hood. And also it's where Justin and I went for the Bright Festival of Photography in October. Is that October? [00:45:10] Speaker B: It was October, Yeah. [00:45:13] Speaker A: One of the most beautiful parts of Victoria and Australia. I think it's just a stunning location. And it sits in the bright. Sits in the valley of kind of three mountain ranges in a way. Really incredible. And then Grant always also has April off, driving up to the Sunshine coast, along the coast, spots for every morning and night already planned. [00:45:40] Speaker B: This is where you and I are very, very different, Grant. I can't. I can't look at, like, photography spots and stuff really beforehand. It just. I don't know why. It seems hard to me to, like, search for them and pin them and go to them and stuff like that. I usually end up rocking up into an area and then walking along it, you know, a trail and just seeing what I see or what. Yeah, I'm really bad at it. Searching out for, I guess, a more iconic spot or something like that, or a special, you know, and I think that's probably what sets apart those really good landscape photographers that put so much work into, you know, into finding one special image at one special location, then they'll go back there over and over until they get the right conditions for what they're looking for. [00:46:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Or like Levin was saying, when they landed that small plane on the glacier with. And Pinky was on that tour. Pinky Spencer, one of our guests, past guests, and Levin Barrett, who runs photography tours, that they go to the same. They try to land in the same spot to get that because it's just got such a magical view. Anyway, let's get these Photos off the screen. Oh, well, actually I was. [00:46:54] Speaker B: What I was going to do. [00:46:56] Speaker A: Oh, you were getting the point. You got to tie a bow in it. Sorry. [00:46:58] Speaker B: Well, I was gonna open a little bit of a can of worms, but I'll tie a bow somewhat. Is that is to move from. Because this was kind of like. That was. That was a trying to use your camera on a trip and trying to encourage me to take it and use it and not sort of leave it in the hotel room, leave it in the bag, not end up using the photos or whatever. And I think I was reasonably successful. I certainly needed Yelena's help in posting the images. That was great that she did that. Because otherwise they might not have ever got posted, but at least they were viewable for us. I had them on our phones and all that sort of stuff, whereas normally they often get left on hard drives. [00:47:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:40] Speaker B: And I thought I would use that while this is up on the screen to segue into the thing that I did next, which was kind of the opposite, which was a 30 day challenge that I did. Making videos every day of me taking images. Similar in the sense that I think all of them, or most of them, a lot of them were JPEG straight out of camera. I think they were all JPEG straight out of camera. [00:48:02] Speaker A: I think you. Yeah, I think you stuck to that pretty well. [00:48:04] Speaker B: But. [00:48:05] Speaker A: And black and white. [00:48:06] Speaker B: Not all black and white like these. These are all. These are some of the sets here. But so, yeah, this was the first day. The difference being I did use different. I use different cameras and stuff like that. Often use just one camera and a lens. But it was different camera, different lens or whatever on. On different days to try and keep me excited. But it was more. It was the opposite. Instead of being on a trip and having all these new places and things to photograph, it was like, all right, every day I gotta find something to take photos of in my normal life. So whether it was family like this was, or just wandering around my town, which I almost never photograph. That was day two. Day three, flew the drone, which again, I don't ever fly the drone usually just to take photos around Bendigo, it's just not something that I'm that excited to do. But, you know, took photos of train stations and stuff at sunrise. It's stuff that I never did, but because I had to do it every day. Yeah, I just ended up taking photos of stuff that I guess whatever was around on that particular day. This was up at Mount Hotham. Obviously it's easier up there for a Snowboard trip, but it's easier when you are somewhere special at sunrise or something like that. But. And then some of it was just my regular work for Flow Mountain Bike. But yeah, it was just. Was a completely different kind of challenge and that might move us into the next style thing. So rather than being on a photography, on a trip and taking a camera with you and try to make the most of it, it's like, can you force yourself into some sort of photography challenge you can do anywhere at home, traveling in the house, outside the house. What are some ways that you can put some. Put some guidelines around it so that it's got some rules, I guess, and then set yourself towards it. [00:50:16] Speaker A: When I researched this topic, I had to obviously cast my mind back over the years of things I've done, things I've recommended people do, and things that I've seen friends and peers, you know, work on and. And for those of you watching or listening along at home, or Grant, who's working from home, you know, have a look at Justin's videos of the 30 day challenge because you see some of the, you know, he's. Justin explains his thought process as he goes through it. He doesn't just wander around taking shots. He's actually talking about what he's thinking and why. And you can actually see some of the hesitation in whether he thinks it's a good shot or not because he's been so used to, you know, doing what he's been asked to do by clients and working within a, you know, relative formula that all of a sudden being pushed into the back alleys of Bendigo at first thing in the morning and said, okay, go take some photos. It's a very different experience. And I think that Justin's videos demonstrate that struggle in some aspects in actually seeing the shots that are often right before you. So I think it's a really inspiring set of videos to look through. [00:51:31] Speaker B: There's certainly a few comments kicking around of people being like, it was right there. You walked right past the shot. What are you doing? [00:51:39] Speaker A: I said that a couple of times. I did. I did yell at my screen at one point. [00:51:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:43] Speaker A: Why are you walking away? It's just a digital file. You could delete it. Don't just. Yeah, but it was interesting because you were being selective, which was great. I think it's. Rather than just run and gun, you were being a little more thoughtful and mindful about what you were trying to achieve. And I think that's, that's part of the process, you know, and sometimes we don't see the shot. And that's, you know, that's just part of it too. In terms of other challenges that you can do. Sticking with the challenge topic, this will cover some bigger picture stuff in a minute, but I made a little list of some simple challenges that you can undertake. If you live anywhere near a convenience store or a supermarket or a department store or even a photo lab or anywhere that has like one of those print kiosks, then, you know, I recommend every week putting five of your images onto an SD card and, or a memory stick and going to your local print place. Whatever it is, even if it's just cheap, dirty prints, it doesn't matter. And just print five of your images, four by six or five by seven, whatever you want. It'll cost you a buck, two bucks at most, less than half a cost of a coffee. And just print them and see your images in a very different light blue. Tack them to a wall or stick them on the fridge for a bit. But put your photos up around you and just observe them from time to time at different times of the day, in different light, and just see the photos in a very different way. And I think it's a really, it's an interesting learning tool that you start to. Once you're away from digital technology, looking at your own photos, you start to see elements that you probably don't always pick up on a screen. You know, often on a screen, we're trying to achieve optimal sharpness and, and, and, you know, we're trying to enhance photos, you know, vibrancy and saturation a little to see how it looks on a screen. But yeah, just print some images and have a look at them and see what it teaches you about your work. So that's one, that's the first one. I think it's really easy while you're there, that one. [00:53:52] Speaker B: You're saying, don't even take photos. Just, just dig some out off your hard drive and print them. Like, don't even worry about it doesn't have to be five new photos or whatever, just any photos you've had sitting there for years and just look at them in real life. [00:54:07] Speaker A: And even if you find that you've taken some shots that you like on your smartphone because you didn't have your camera and you had your smartphone and you're out and about and you saw a great sunset or something, print your smartphone photos. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Just print something. Get it on a piece of paper. Either do it at home. Even if you do it at home, On a cheap bubble jet printer or inkjet printer or whatever they're called now. But preferably go to a lab, make yourself go to a space because while you're there, my second challenge is to grab yourself a very cheap disposable 35 millimeter film camera. Okay, what are they like? I was gonna say 15 bucks. [00:54:44] Speaker B: I thought they were more than that. [00:54:46] Speaker A: Well, you get. I think most of them now have like 36 or 27. [00:54:51] Speaker B: Film camera. Let's have a look. Kodak 28 bucks for. What's that? 27. 27 frames. [00:55:01] Speaker A: Is that a waterproof one? [00:55:03] Speaker B: Might be. It's a Kodak one, which obviously superior. No, it's got a flash, but it's a single use. Yep. 27 frame Kodak. 28 Australian dollars. That's about 6 US dollars. I think it's a little more than. [00:55:21] Speaker A: That, but you're close. Yeah, it's about 18 US dollars. [00:55:26] Speaker B: But what else, what else have we got here? JB hi fi. Disposable. Oh wow. They can't be. They're not disposable. [00:55:36] Speaker A: The cost of film has gone up. Oh, they're those reusable 35. [00:55:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Get those 2 millimeter CO. [00:55:43] Speaker A: Grab one of those if you're interested in continuing to use film. I mean they're really cheap and they often come with one or two rolls of film. So it's a, it's a quick, easy way to try something different. To try film photography for one and work within the limitations of a very, very rudimentary camera. You know, it's cheap, it's much cheaper than trying to find a decent new or second hand film camera. And it's an interesting experiment and it. [00:56:11] Speaker B: Has some, this has some good limitations in the sense that, you know, there's no settings or anything like that. So it really pulls it back to literally just like is this photo interesting? And let's see what the camera does. And it takes away any of the kind of, you know, you trying to make it make the scene look better than it is. [00:56:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it comes down to exposure and composition. That's all. All it comes down to. [00:56:39] Speaker B: Yeah, we actually. I did that as a gift for my family three or four years ago. I bought everybody disposable. Everyone got their own disposable camera at Christmas time. [00:56:50] Speaker A: That's a great idea. [00:56:51] Speaker B: Basically from Christmas Day through to. Most people blew theirs out in that sort of week after Christmas Day, heading up to New Year's when we're all spending a lot of time together and stuff like that. And then, yeah, like, some of them didn't turn out, but some of the photos are wonderful and the own. And I got them all printed. So part of the gift was I bought them all the cameras, and then I got them all developed and printed into six by fours and I got an album made. But still to this day, no one's stuck them all into the album. So I've got a blank album ready to go. The photos are all just sitting there in a stack, just. Anyway, we got close. [00:57:33] Speaker A: Yeah, the thought was there. [00:57:35] Speaker B: The thought was there. [00:57:35] Speaker A: And at the end of the day, I had the experience. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that idea. So you're thinking, like, you grab one. I mean, you can start with just one. A challenge. Might be like one a month or something like that, but. [00:57:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that could be a challenge, but just do one. Kickstart. Just go and get one. [00:57:51] Speaker B: Do one. [00:57:52] Speaker A: You know, if you're local, if you. If you do online groceries and your local supermarket sells them, drop one in the cart, it'll show up, you'll forget about it. It'll show up in a couple of days and. Or get one off Amazon if you don't want to go to the shops. I mean, at some point you have to leave the house to get it developed. Yeah. Unless you've got that stuff at home. But, yeah, I don't recommend opening disposable cameras because they do have a. What does it call it? Solenoid. That can explode. You've got to be careful because they have a battery and they have, like, a power thing. [00:58:23] Speaker B: Grant has a question for someone old enough to know whether this. What. What to do with this. Actually, maybe the drunk wedding photographer can tell us, too. Yeah, I film in my camera from, let's say, two years ago. Will it still be okay? Can I get it developed? Question mark? Yes, yes. [00:58:39] Speaker A: Yes to both. It should still be okay. Even if it's not, you'll still get some interesting visual stuff going on. [00:58:48] Speaker B: Just be careful. Depending on what camera it is, just be careful, you know, taking it out. [00:58:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Make sure it is actually fully rewound. [00:58:54] Speaker B: And fully wound in that you've shot the whole roll. I've. I reckon I've got one that I need to do at some stage as well. [00:59:02] Speaker A: Maybe I picked up a couple when I was in Japan. I picked up a couple and I would just every now and then pull it out and take some shots with it just for the hell of it, because it just, you know, and they're, you know, they're not the best film. And they're not. Certainly not the best cameras. They're grainy. They're. You know, what you see in the viewfinder isn't quite what you get on the image. [00:59:22] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:59:22] Speaker A: It's a lot of fun, and it's just a unique experiment. And, yeah, do it with your kids, do it with your partner, like Justin did. You don't have to buy one for the whole family. That's a bit excessive. But it was the big. [00:59:33] Speaker B: It was a big Christmas. It was everyone's gift, you know. [00:59:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's a good. The. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. [00:59:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:39] Speaker A: No, no, you're a very generous individual. [00:59:41] Speaker B: It was expensive, though. Like, by the time you added up the. The. The cameras, plus the development, plus the printing and the album, it was quite expensive, but it was. Yeah. I sort of also got out of having to get gifts for everybody by just getting one gift. So that was kind of cool. [00:59:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice and easy. But, yes, Grant, definitely develop it. See what there is, because from two years ago, do you remember what's on it? Do you remember what you shot it, shot with it? That itself is an experience. You know, we often see these little Internet stories of someone who finds a tin of unprocessed film, you know, from their grandparents or their estate or, you know, or just from an estate sale. They pick up a bunch of old film and cameras and they discover that there's these amazing historical moments captured on these. On these cameras. They've. I know they found them from. From war reporters, you know, from, you know, back in the day. So it's. It's definitely worth doing. The next one that I had was to shoot in black and white only. We talked about this as part of your. I know you didn't purely shoot in black and white JPEGs, but I think there's a lot to learn around tonal value and compositional elements when you remove color from the equation. And I don't just mean edit them in black and white. I mean set your camera so that when you look at the screen or through the viewfinder, it is black and white. [01:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And I did that a lot like you say it was. I didn't do it the whole time, but I did it for many of the full series. So I wouldn't be flicking back and forth between color and black and white. I'd be like, all right, today I'm shooting only black and white. And it does change the way you look at things. And it simplifies things, too, I think it. It's. It's like shooting with just one lens, you know, it has that same kind of effect where your brain gets to focus in more on shapes and light and textures and stuff because it forgets about color. And I think it can, it can be a good way to kickstart a bit of creativity. It also, this might sound a bit lame, but it can also just make boring things look a bit cooler in my sunlight. Exactly. It's like you take a photo of a laundry basket in black and white and people like, wow, that really says something. [01:01:48] Speaker A: Provocative. [01:01:49] Speaker B: Provocative in color. It's just boring. [01:01:52] Speaker A: Yeah. It is different because it's all about shade. It's all about light and shadow. It's. It's such a different way to see the world. Grant is saying, I cannot remember what was on the films. Maybe a couple of landscapes and my brother in law getting ready for his wedding. So imagine Grant, if you process that and develop it and you get some amazing prints that he hasn't seen before. Yes. [01:02:16] Speaker B: So yes, here as well. [01:02:19] Speaker A: Yes. [01:02:20] Speaker B: Drunk wedding photographer, film expert says as long as it wasn't exposed to X ray or direct sunlight should be fine. Especially if it's consumer film. It lasts a long time. I use expired fridge stored consumer film for my weddings. [01:02:35] Speaker A: Wow. [01:02:35] Speaker B: So, yeah, you should be all good, Grant. Get it, get it developed and then come on the podcast and show us what was on there. [01:02:41] Speaker A: Yes, please. I've got a fridge. I've got a box in my fridge full of unused film. So it's been there for about five years, I reckon. [01:02:48] Speaker B: I've got some Ektar 100 that I've really wanted to use. [01:02:53] Speaker A: You know, I bought a whole bunch for an article I wrote for Lucky Straps during the pandemic about film. [01:02:58] Speaker B: Really? And you haven't shot with it yet? [01:03:01] Speaker A: No, no, it's all props. I had the best intentions to shoot with it, but I just. Expensive props, but I just haven't taken it out and. Oh, you know, I like to like you. I like to shop for things. [01:03:14] Speaker B: Maybe we should kickstart our year off our 2025 because, I mean, we're sort of still working through some of this stuff here, but I haven't really figured out what my photography goals are for this year yet. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Me neither. [01:03:30] Speaker B: I was hoping this episode would clarify it for me and I mean, I kind of come into the back end of last year with a good challenge happening, the 12 photos every week thing. But I dropped the ball on that because things got very busy and I needed to clear some space in my brain by just hitting pause on that in December, I think I get to week eight and I'm not ready to. I'm not excited to start that again and I don't know whether I should just force myself to start again or maybe do we need something new? Do we get a bit filmy? [01:04:07] Speaker A: Well, yourself and Jim are going to cut you. Oh, words, Gregory. It's what you do for a living. Myself, you, yourself and Jim Self plan to meet up soon to do a bit of a street walk. Hopefully you're coming to Melbourne. We spoke the other day. I'm making plans to come to Bendigo soon and a couple of times this year for different things, but mostly to do lucky straps work and hang out and create that Fujifilm lucky straps that we've talked about. But maybe we should get some disposable film cameras. [01:04:43] Speaker B: Disposable, I mean that's a good like. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Single use film cameras. [01:04:47] Speaker B: Single use film cameras, yeah. [01:04:49] Speaker A: 27 exposure. That's our challenge for, for our street walk. We can still bring a digital, you know, maybe we set ourselves to bring one camera, one lens or a camera with a fixed lens and a disposable film cover because they weigh like 100 grams, if that. [01:05:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:07] Speaker A: You know, and we just really set some tight guidelines, but we have a crack at shooting film and we get them developed and. [01:05:15] Speaker B: But you've got some cool film sitting there. I've got some cool film sitting there, yeah. [01:05:19] Speaker A: Do you have a camera? [01:05:21] Speaker B: I've got a film camera. [01:05:22] Speaker A: I've got one of those. No, that was years ago. I had one, but I got rid of one. I've got one of those. It's a reusable film camera, but it's like one of those ones from JB that are really cheap. [01:05:33] Speaker B: I've got a ton kicking around. I just don't know how well they were. I've got, I've got a couple that work well. My Nikons, like the, the F5 and I've got an F100 too. But I've. I've only got a few, like one lens for those. Now Jim's still got lenses because these still. That's the cool thing. These still fit all the F mount Nikon lenses. [01:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, we can, you know, we could do either. We could. I like the idea of using the black and white. Yeah, that's true. Although I've got black and white film, so I don't know if you can get disposables in black and white. I don't think. [01:06:08] Speaker B: No, they should do that. They'd probably be Popular. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, they really should. Maybe we should market that. Maybe we should talk to lomography, get a lucky version. Get a lucky, lucky monochrome. [01:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, Maybe film. Maybe film's a good way to start. I don't know. [01:06:25] Speaker A: Either way. Either with a film camera or with a disposable. [01:06:29] Speaker B: Any excuse to. To eventually buy a, you know, an M series, like a film camera, another camera, whatever. [01:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah, we should get. We should get Joel up from. Joel down from Newcastle in Sydney. [01:06:43] Speaker B: Apparently there are black and white. [01:06:46] Speaker A: Oh, really? Oh, we need to get some of those. [01:06:48] Speaker B: Let's have a look. Oh, yeah. Ilford. Ilford do HB5 plus 23 bucks. [01:06:59] Speaker A: Is that Australian? [01:07:00] Speaker B: Yeah. Digi Direct. I'm kidding. You're great. Digi not. No, no, you are. [01:07:09] Speaker A: They're not. [01:07:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Ilford. So HP5 plus single use film camera, 27 exposure, black and white, HP5 negative film, ISO 400. [01:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we did offers. [01:07:23] Speaker B: It offers. How many times have you heard this when it comes to film? Fine grain, high sharpness, wide exposure, latitude. Ideal for every day, all day long shooting. [01:07:35] Speaker A: Well, not all day long because it's only got 27 exposures. [01:07:38] Speaker B: That's right. [01:07:39] Speaker A: Let's do that. [01:07:40] Speaker B: Oh, and Kodak do a tri x 401 as well. [01:07:44] Speaker A: Oh. [01:07:47] Speaker B: Hang on. This is a. Oh, yeah, there's a. [01:07:50] Speaker A: Can of worms one. [01:07:51] Speaker B: One time use. This one's double the price. [01:07:53] Speaker A: Oh, folks, we've got Justin shopping. We're never gonna finish this podcast. [01:07:58] Speaker B: Look, I'll be back with. I'll be back with you guys in a minute. [01:08:02] Speaker A: Next thing you know, he'll be on the bloody Fujifilm medium format GFX website. Did you guys know that for only eight and a half thousand dollars you can. [01:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah, they do tons of them. Ilf. Oh, no, that's back to color, but okay. Not tons of them, but I've found at least two. [01:08:20] Speaker A: That's all right. They're available. [01:08:22] Speaker B: Black and white options. Okay, thank you for that, David. Appreciate it. We had given up without even searching. We're like, oh, they don't do that. Apparently. [01:08:32] Speaker A: Clearly out of research. Yeah, clearly out of practice. Should we move on to the next idea for challenge? [01:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, look, what else. What else can people do in 2025? And by people, I mean maybe us too. [01:08:44] Speaker A: I've done this before, but I've changed my camera ratio in camera to one by one and shot square. [01:08:51] Speaker B: Ah, for Instagram? No, for your cats. [01:08:54] Speaker A: No, no, don't be rude, okay? I'm trying to be creative here. It changes the way you see the world. It does because we're so used to. Naturally we have a landscape orientation going on in our brains and our eyeballs and we use that to reference how we see the world. And when you condense that to a square view, it changes things. It just changes your outlook. And I think it's a really simple. It takes 30 seconds to do in camera menu. [01:09:25] Speaker B: It's free. You know, you don't have to buy anything, you don't have to buy new equipment. [01:09:29] Speaker A: And it just equally, you know, do some things like, you know, every camera has a panoramic option. How many of you have actually used it? I know I barely have. I think I've used it at the start. Do a couple of test shots. Well, that's cool. And then stopped. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:44] Speaker A: You know, and play around with those. [01:09:47] Speaker B: Camera modes and it could lead you in the direction of, you know, obviously there's medium format film cameras that shoot square. Obviously you don't want to go out and spend the insane money people are charging for old Hasselblads and stuff just to test it out. But you know, if you shoot square for a few months on your digital and you find that you're loving it, you know, there is, there is places to take that if you want to push your photography in that direction. And likewise those pano film cameras as well. There's heaps of different ones of those. [01:10:23] Speaker A: There's a new one coming soon. The Jeff Bridges one. [01:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. But then there's also cheap ones. I remember. Oh, what was the Sprocket rocket? Was it like Holger or someone made one and it was one that it exposed all the way to the edges of the film. [01:10:41] Speaker A: Okay. Not just within the Franken. [01:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah. On like a wider pano or something like that. So there's, there's many like. Yeah, there's a lot of those pano style cameras and there's options that are a bit cheaper. But yeah, do it on your digital and test it out. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Limit yourself, but don't do it in editing after. Do it while you're taking the shot. [01:11:01] Speaker B: Yep. Get it in camera. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Yep. It'll change the way you see composition. It will remove that need to determine do I do this shot, landscape or portrait? You're just working with a square. It's really simple. Which is cool. Next one. Document something, you know, anything. A new plant growth. [01:11:29] Speaker B: Okay. [01:11:30] Speaker A: If you're a gardener and you plant seeds at a certain time of year, document that, you know, a new pet or a new person in your house. If you've got, you know, You've got a baby, and it's a very. I know they sound simple and silly, but often we lose sight of them, especially in a busy life. And there's little simple things going on around you that are worth documenting. [01:11:56] Speaker B: So it's kind of like, you know, I'm sure a lot of people that have kids, especially photographers that have their first kid, probably take a ton of photos, you're saying it probably ends up being more in bursts, where it's like, you know, they'll take a ton at a milestone or a ton, but. But maybe forcing yourself to just do anything. A photo every day or something like that or something. A week or one. [01:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:23] Speaker B: You know, have a more of a regimented timeline. So it doesn't have to be some sort of milestone event, and it can just be one photo. It doesn't have to be, you know, this series of. It's. It's a first birthday, and I'm gonna take a thousand shots or combine it. [01:12:41] Speaker A: With our first challenge hint, which was to print five images a week. [01:12:45] Speaker B: Okay. [01:12:46] Speaker A: So let's say you've got a new baby and you're taking a, you know, a ton of photos of the baby and the mom and you. And you choose five a week and go and print them. Otherwise, they're going to just live on your phone. [01:12:58] Speaker B: You know. [01:13:01] Speaker A: It'S. It just. It's just to get those juices going, I guess. I know. It's a simple one. [01:13:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And extending the challenges all the way through the process to finished. Finished image in a form that's shareable. So rather than just like, stopping at taking the photo or stopping at editing the photo, like, the challenge can stop at making a book or whatever it is, printing them and delivering them to somebody. Yeah. [01:13:33] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. Put it. You know, do it for the first week or month or year of a child's life, and. Yeah. Put it in a book and put it away. And one day, that's going to come out and be priceless. [01:13:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:13:46] Speaker A: You know, to the family. I know it sounds simple, but it's. It's. And equally, you know, that you see those ones where people do take a photo of the same thing every day. It doesn't have to be a child's growth. It could be on your daily commute, you walk past a park and there's a fountain, and every day there's different people around it or, you know, dogs playing or. And you just take the same shot of the same space every day that you're going past it. It's not necessarily Creative. It's more habit forming that it forces you to see how the light, the weather, the temperature, the season, the people, changes, the same scene, to never be the same, you know, every time it's always different. But when you're commuting without a camera, it's, oh, there's the fountain. There's nothing different about it. But if you put a camera into that element and make it a challenge to photograph it every day you start to see why that fountain is important to all those people, why it's where it is, all that sort of stuff, just little simple things. We've talked about using the one camera, one lens. Yeah, extensively. So I won't go into that one anymore. Look, all of our modern cameras have video function. How many of you have actually hit that switch and shot a video? You don't have to know what you're doing. You don't have to worry about, you know, the shutter speed and anything like that. Just switch it to video mode and do it and upload it. Download some free editing software or whatever's already on your computer and just have a look, just see the world and what you've experienced in a slightly different way than still images. It's just another visual medium and it might teach you some stuff about your photography and you might discover that actually maybe I could do some hybrid work like Justin does. [01:15:48] Speaker B: It's definitely daunting at the start. There's so many rules that seem different and counterintuitive and there's so many things that are, you know, do you have to shoot in log or does it do. The shutter speed has to be twice the frames per second. What frames per second do you shoot in, for what situations and all that sort of stuff. And you can, you can Google all those things. But I wanted to do more video work. This was quite a few years ago now and I was looking into all the stabilizers and all the different bolt on things that you have to get that you see video guys with, you know, you'll see them have these rigs around their camera with all sorts of screens coming off there and all sorts of stuff. And I was talking to Jared Singh actually, who's a. He's an amazing photographer, but he's a very much in the music industry, follows a big band around on their tours and stuff like that, but also does a lot of creative directing and things. And he'd done a lot of video work as well as photo work. And I asked him, I was like, dude, what, like what gear do I need and stuff to be able to shoot video. And he's like, nothing. It's just. It's like shooting photos. It's just. They move. He's like, just don't worry about it. And I was like, what about. Yeah, I'm like, what about, like, stabilizers and stuff? He's like, nah, just hold it. It'll be all right. He's like, just do it. You'll figure out if you need more stuff once you start making the videos. [01:17:14] Speaker A: And I was like, yeah, it's a good point. [01:17:15] Speaker B: Oh, I was. I couldn't believe it. I was like, you sure there's not more to it? And he's like, no. He's like, they're just moving photos. Stop overthinking it. I was like, oh, thanks, man. [01:17:29] Speaker A: That's good advice. [01:17:30] Speaker B: Still, took me a few years after that to even get. Get going doing it. Yeah, but. [01:17:35] Speaker A: But I think. I think my point is, is that there's no. There's no harm, no foul. No, just like this. You've got nothing to lose. And it's just a digital file. It's. There's, you know, if you do it and you're absolutely disgusted with yourself, then delete it and. And tick that off your list. Well, I gave it a shot. Maybe I'll try it again next year, or maybe I'll wait until I actually do pick up that bit of camera that's got, you know, stability or whatever, but there's nothing stopping you from doing it right now. You know, don't overthink it. I think that's a good one. [01:18:09] Speaker B: I agree. [01:18:11] Speaker A: We talked about panorama modes. Yeah. Something I sometimes do with street photography is I. I will look for a color palette rather than light and composition first. So I'll look for color first. When I'm doing street, I'll be out and about and I'll say, okay, well, I'm looking for blue elements in my compositions, and it changes the way you see the world because you are very specifically looking for something. And then you quickly analyze whether the light and the composition and the exposure fall into place and the subjects and those sorts of things, you kind of develop a bit of an eye for it. But just by saying to yourself, okay, I'm going to shoot everything that's, you know, don't do green, especially if you live in rural areas, because that would just be too obvious. But, you know, set yourself just a simple little challenge. I'm going to shoot. I love purple, for example. I don't, but, you know, some do, and that's fine. But look for purple elements, look for green, look for blue, look for red, look for yellow. Like anything that just changes how you normally look at a scene because normally we're looking for composition and followed by exposure. But start off with looking for the color first and then let the rest fall into place. Simple little habit that you can, it costs nothing. It's a quick win. And you know, make sure you review your photos and have a look at it and think how. Okay, well I got the color, but I didn't get the composition. How would I do that differently next time? You know, what settings did I use? It's a bit blown out. Okay, well next time I'll have to, you know, do, do whatever. And the last thing which I kind of took from one of Justin's recent photography challenge was just a documented day in your life. Yeah, like a first person view of. This is what it looks like, me making my coffee in the morning. This is what it looks like, me, you know, sitting on the edge of the bed contemplating, you know, getting up. [01:20:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:12] Speaker A: It just, it doesn't have to be you taking photo of, you could be taking a photo of your feet hanging off the edge of the bed or, you know, just carry the camera with you and just be mindful that when things come up during your day, just regular day things, that you will just take a snap of it. [01:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:30] Speaker A: Simple little practices anyway. So there's some of the simpler challenges I think that anyone can undertake with, you know, a reasonable camera, any camera, or even with your smartphone if, if you, you know, if, if you're lacking a good camera or you're lacking a digital mirrorless or a dslr, you know, you've got a smartphone, many of these things apply to that as long as you're out looking for the light. [01:20:55] Speaker B: Well, I mean, if we're talking about, we're talking about shooting on a film disposable, I think it's probably pretty safe to say that the average smartphone has a higher image quality than a film disposable camera in terms of sharpness and blah, blah, blah, you know, so don't, don't let that hold you back, you know, if you don't want to carry a camera around. The downside I find to phones for me personally is they don't feel particularly mindful. [01:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:27] Speaker B: If that makes sense in terms of maybe getting lost in your photography and finding an image and sort of detaching a little bit from, from, you know, the busyness of everyday life. That's, that's the only downside I Find. Whereas obviously a disposable is almost the opposite to that, where it's like you've literally only got one button to press the shutter and then. [01:21:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:21:48] Speaker B: A tiny little viewfinder to look through that has no information in it. [01:21:53] Speaker A: But you've also only got 27 shots. [01:21:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is awesome. [01:21:56] Speaker A: Which is a smartphone. You know, it's endless. It's as much as your storage. And even then, if you've got cloud storage, it doesn't matter. [01:22:02] Speaker B: This is true. [01:22:03] Speaker A: You know, but, yeah, I agree. Using your smartphone. You know my problem with smartphone photography. One of them. I have many. I'm a salty old man. Actually. I just got a badge from a company that. Like a pin, a wearable pin. And it's a. You know the Australian saxa salt bottle? The red and white and yellow one. Yeah, Saxa salt. It's like this. [01:22:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:22:24] Speaker A: Got like a red lid and a red text on it. [01:22:27] Speaker B: Yes, it's that. [01:22:28] Speaker A: And it's got written on it. Salty as fuck. That's my badge. Anyway, what are we talking about? Smartphones. My problem with smartphones. [01:22:39] Speaker B: I want to derail you for one second. This is the guy who just told us that most of the photos on his Instagram are from his phone of food and cats. But. Go on, tell us about smartphones. [01:22:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true. Shameful. I carry so much shame. No, my issue is that, you know, I take. I see a moment and I'll take a photo because it's right there in my hand most of the time. Yeah, we all have it either in our hand or in our pocket or on our desk. So I'll take the shot, but then I. It just goes into the. The gallery and it's. I never look at it again. Yeah, you know, it's. It's different when you have a process with a digital camera where you take out the memory card or you plug your camera directly into your computer and you have to download your images or access them off the cloud or whatever you do. It's a different process to using a smartphone. [01:23:32] Speaker B: It is, it is, for sure. Although there are some things that are getting put into the Apple Photos app. You know, the. The albums that automatically find. [01:23:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:43] Speaker B: People and pets. Yeah, that's pretty cool. And even, like, I think I was looking through there, like the other day, there was some new stuff that was. I think it was something like summer memories or something like that. [01:23:57] Speaker A: Yeah. The way that it groups those. [01:23:58] Speaker B: Yeah. It's grouping things together that just aren't just trips or whatever or Dates. But, yeah, there's one in here called Surfs up and it's like grabbed all of my surfing shots from various years and stuff. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's quite interesting. And I. Yeah, I like that way that's going that it might encourage people more to look back on things that they've done because I'm. I've got a terrible memory. I forget stuff that I've done and photos that I've taken. So those little albums can help prompt me to have a quick flick through rather than having to remember the year that I did it or the place that I was in. I like that. [01:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:24:41] Speaker B: So, yeah, but I know what you mean. They do get lost in that endless camera roll when you just shoot on your iPhone. [01:24:47] Speaker A: The thing I like with the smartphone because I take a lot of photos of the pets because we've got so bloody many of them and the kids are at a stage where they don't want to be photographed anymore. Is it. When I'm in the gallery, it'll come and say, who is this? And I'll say, well, that's my cat. Like, I'll say, biscuit. That's one of my cats. Her name is Biscuit. And then it will just know that every photo that looks like that cat is named Biscuit. And so I can just go, well, find me photos of Biscuit. And it brings up all the ones that I haven't had to tag individual photos, which always used to be such a pain. [01:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty. Pretty clever. [01:25:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. [01:25:18] Speaker B: Anyway, crazy. [01:25:22] Speaker A: Before we jump into the next few kind of larger projects, I just want to remind people that you are listening to the Camera Life podcast and this is episode 44 and it's the 9th of January. This is our first 2025 episode. If you've just joined us recently or you're watching along at home and you've fallen asleep as we mutter our way through this topic brought to you by Lucky Straps out of Bendigo. Victoria. Justin is obviously the founder of Lucky Straps, and I am. I am part of the Lucky Straps team, too, and I do all of the. The content side of things. Not sure what Justin does yet, because Yelena does order fulfillment, Jim does customer service. I don't. Still trying to work out Justin's role in the business. Anyway, that's enough about that for now. Anyway, on to photography goals. 2025. Justin, you're a king of this one. Oh, you're an absolute king of this. And that is embark on a road trip. [01:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, you know What I'm not a king of, though, is probably making the most of the road trip with photos, because like Grant was saying, he gets ahead. He's like, mapped it out. These are the spots I'm going to stop. I'm going to get up at sunrise, take a photo here. I'm going to do sunset over there because it'll be a good angle and stuff. I'm not very good at that, but certainly am good at a road trip. We've got a van, thankfully, so we can stop and start and pop along the road. And even when we're in the States, we. We did 30 days just driving in a hire car from crappy motel to crappy motel. I really regret not taking photos of each motel, now that I think about it, because we stopped at a lot of them. Yeah. But it is. It is a great idea if you do have access to a car or a friend's car, even if the friend. You know, if you need to grab a friend and say, hey, I'll pay for petrol, let's go on a trip, I'll bring my camera and, you know, go on a trip with a friend somewhere. [01:27:24] Speaker A: Yeah. It doesn't have to be an overnighter. It can just purely be a day. And look, you know, in the article that I wrote about 2025 photography goals for the site, I talk about because I don't have a car. I. I do have a license. It's. There's nothing nefarious about that, but I choose not to have a car, live in a city. Sash doesn't drive, never has. And, you know, we have five. We're a family of seven. I couldn't afford the car that we would need to move all those people anyway. [01:27:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, you'd need like a Tarago or something. You. [01:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah, we used to have a Tarago. [01:27:56] Speaker B: When did you. [01:27:57] Speaker A: My late wife Isabelle and I bought a Tarago when we were foster carers because we had lots of kids in the house and, you know, on top of our two own children and. Yeah, we had a. We had a Tarago. [01:28:11] Speaker B: Very. [01:28:11] Speaker A: So we drove around in that. It was. It was like a bus. It was. And it was one of the fancy ones. It had like. Oh, was it the captain's chairs with the armrest come down and the pathway between. I remember if it had leather wasn't. No, it wasn't quite that fancy because we wouldn't have gone leather because we had kids. But it had like. You could walk between the two front seats into the back. [01:28:32] Speaker B: That's pretty cool. [01:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah. It was pretty cool. [01:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:34] Speaker A: The kids loved it because, you know, we'd go somewhere and we'd have like, you, you know, we have pulled over and parked, but they could just jump around in the back of the van. [01:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Like a limo. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Have you seen some of the vans that are coming out of Japan now? Some of the Toyotas, they make these, the luxury models of vans and they've got, like big screen tallies in them and bars and, you know, seats that fully recall. Like airline seats. [01:29:00] Speaker B: Yep. [01:29:01] Speaker A: Like, they're nuts. [01:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's crazy. [01:29:03] Speaker A: I love it. Yeah, it is crazy. Nothing like your van, that's for sure. [01:29:06] Speaker B: No, ours is not fancy, but it is functional. [01:29:09] Speaker A: It is good. Yeah. I really appreciate your van. Anyway, back on topic, road trips. If you don't have a car like me, jump on a train. Yeah, jump on a train. And this can be another challenge that you could wrap into this. Pick a train line in your local city and just get on with a ticket and get off at every single station. Take a five minute walk and take a photo of whatever you see. Walk back to the train station, get on, continue on your journey. Yeah, you know, it's just a simpler way or a simple way to. To meet the needs of a road trip. You know, sometimes I go out to Bendigo from Melbourne. So I'm in Melbourne and by train, Bendigo is about 1 hour, 10 minutes tops from Melbourne. And, you know, there's lots to see along the way. And the train does make a number of stops, depending which one you get. And you know, there's lots of photographic opportunities everywhere you go. So it's just a. A road trip is a good way to. Yes, you can plan. So you can be like Grant, you can plan all the things that you want to see because you might not get to do it very often. And so you want to make the most of an opportunity and you have some specific photography goals in mind or which is what I like to do. Head in a direction, go north, east, south. You can jump on a random train line. I did that in Japan a few times in Tokyo was some of my best days and best photographic experiences in Japan were getting on a random train line from Shibuya and just choosing to get off at a random stop 10 minutes later and just walking. Yeah, because, you know, I wasn't following a tourist route. I wasn't following a what's on Guide recommendation of places to go to do photos in Tokyo. Whilst I did reference those and I did have some starred places, specific things I wanted to see. My best days were just getting lost. Yeah. You know, so road trips are good. Make the most of it and, yeah, do it with a couple of mates. Even if you don't want to do a solo adventure or you don't think you'll be inspired to do that. Find a photography friend and. Or a couple, make a day of it. Stop for lunch somewhere. Go get a pie at a local pub or bakery. You know, explore. [01:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah, explore experiences that are. That are close enough that it doesn't have to be a big trip, doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Yeah, just get out and do it. [01:31:41] Speaker A: The flip side of that, which is our next photography goal is to travel. It's not possible for everyone. Okay. Health, physical limitations and finance often stop us from being able to do travel as much as we'd like or to the places we'd like. There's also a lot of going on in the world right now. Some places. Yeah, some places that you'd love to go to probably aren't really accessible or safe at the moment, but there's plenty of stuff out there to do. You know, we talked about the day trip. Make it an overnighter, you know, say the caravan park. If you're doing it on a budget, rent a cabin, pack a tent. If you've got a van, crash in the back of your van like Justin does. But travel somewhere. Travel interstate. And if you can afford it and you're able to take the time and the resources and travel overseas and see the world. I had no desire to travel overseas until my late wife passed away. She wanted to travel, we both did, but it just wasn't. But then I realized that life was too short and there were things that I wanted to see in the world that may not always be there. And so a couple years after that, I'd saved up some money and I went to Japan for the first time. And it was one of the most enriching experiences of my life. You know, I'm a different person now because of it. So travel has a lot to offer, both in terms of your personal growth, but also your creativity. As Justin talked about going to, you know, the States for almost three months, so much to see and experience that it's just different. And it's not just about the photo that you get when you get home at the end of the day and you finally edit it. It's about the experience of being there, holding the camera in a different location. [01:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Let the camera to somewhere new that you might not have explored as opposed to Worrying too much about the specific photos that you want to bring home. But yeah, and on that, too, vastly different price points. Going to the US For a decent length of time versus the trip that I took late last year to Vietnam for 10 days was a tiny fraction of the cost. [01:33:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:33:55] Speaker B: But photographically, obviously the national parks and stuff in the US were insane, but photographically, probably as much, if not more to explore in Vietnam. [01:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:08] Speaker B: At a fraction of the price. You know, wait for a flight deal to come up. I think our flights were under. They were definitely under $500 return. Yeah. Wait for a flight deal to come up. Have. Find five places that you'd be happy to go to. You know, if you. If you're just looking for something to do and explore, you don't have a specific destination in mind. Find five cities, you know, that you can fly into from your closest airport, international airport, and just keep an eye on the flights and wait for a deal to pop up. And when a deal pops up, if you've got the money popped aside and the time, just go for it. Do a week, do 10 days and just go and go and get lost in another country somewhere. [01:34:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:55] Speaker B: Episodes of Anthony Bourdain. [01:34:58] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good point. And if you can't get overseas for whatever reason, you know, make it an interstate travel, you know, fly to a, you know, just fly to your nearest state or to the other side of the country. I've got a friend who, who lives in Launceston. Sasha's family's from Launceston, so we have that as well now to visit. But I've got a friend. Before I knew Sash, but I've got a friend in Launceston and, and she would constantly begged me to come down Launceston south, so down. Come down and, and hang out. And so I'd always pack a camera and it was, you know, the flights were cheap because it was just, you know, one hour flight tops to Lonnie and I crashed with her and her husband and, you know, I just carried the camera with me at all times and, you know, got to see some new places and some amazing beaches and. And, you know, Lonnie's a really small city, but it's. It's surrounded by beautiful nature and it was really quick and easy to get to somewhere nice and, you know, just make a weekend of it. Go and go and visit a friend that you've been promising to hang out with for some time now and, you know, make it a. Make it a photographic experience as well. [01:36:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I Love it. [01:36:19] Speaker A: Hmm. Nice and easy. This one's a little bit more challenging. This is, it's a little more complex, but it doesn't have to be. It depends on how much you want to invest in it. But I suggest that a good, if you, if you, if you kind of have knocked off some of the smaller challenges off your bucket list, but you want something a bit meatier, then set yourself a year long photography challenge. Now that feels like a big overwhelming undertaking, but it depends on what you're going to do. You might know of a place nearby or live in an area where the changing seasons are very dramatic and you want to photograph your local area over the course of a year or perhaps a local national park or whatever it may be, or perhaps there's a new grand scale construction going on in your area and you know that over the course of the next year it's going to be nuts. There's going to be so much work going on and they're going to build something significant that will be, that will exist in your area for decades to come. Well, why not set yourself the challenge to go out and document that process over the course of the year? You know, there are lots of other things that you can do with annual photography challenges. It could be about documenting the people of your, your city. You know, a year in Melbourne or a year in Bendigo, or, you know, it doesn't have to be anything terribly complex in, in the subject matter, but it's more about how you document it and the experience that you have documenting it. I, I, there's a photographer who I followed and he lived in India and he would go to the same train platform every morning because every morning the light would be a little bit different. The haze coming through, the people waiting for one particular train to arrive. So it was his train that was, that went every day and he would go down there, it was nearby, he would wander down there every day and photograph this train platform and what was going on on it. And because it was in India, there was amazing color and vibrancy and, and a diverse mix of people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. And you know, it just created a compelling narrative that for him anyway. And at the end of the day that's all that really matters. If it's something that's compelling for you, it doesn't have to be something you're going to publish or put up on a gallery wall or show to, even to your photography friends. It could just be a satisfying experience for you about a place that you find interesting. Don't get bogged down in what other people will think. That's, that's the first, the first rule of creativity is to not worry about what other people think. [01:39:17] Speaker B: It's funny you say that because. Yeah, in, in the challenges that I've done, the 30 day challenge and then the week challenge towards the end of the year, that's a lot of it was. What I was thinking about was like, what. What's the Internet gonna think when I put this out there? Yeah, it's. Which kind of. I mean, it probably helped me a little bit try and push to make the images more interesting, I guess, because that was. [01:39:49] Speaker A: And there's a little motivation to be had in that too. [01:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah. But I see. I like what you're saying in terms of. Yeah. Don't let it. It doesn't have to be, you know, a banger. Doesn't have to be the perfect sunset with everything lined up in the right spot with birds flying off and, you know, like, just, just make something. [01:40:11] Speaker A: And it's the same with any of the ones that we've listed previously. So shooting your first video, going into one by one square mode, black and white only, you know, panoramics. Another soul doesn't have to see your work. Not another soul. You're doing it for you and your creative experience and your learning and your fulfillment. I mean, at the end of the day, why do we do hobbies? Because it fulfills us. We don't do it to fulfill other people or their thoughts or needs or desires or expectations. We should be doing it for ourselves. I think that gets lost a lot in photography because we now live in a world where everything, even the work of salty old fucks like me, sometimes you feel the need to publish it. You know, you don't have to. Don't let that stop you. [01:41:03] Speaker B: No, no. Don't let that stop you. Take some damn photos. [01:41:09] Speaker A: Just. Yeah, chase the light. Another one, which is really, really important. And it's something that I am a huge advocate of and thankfully, so is Justin. Which is why part of the reason why I'm here talking at your earballs and eyeballs every week is that. Join a photography community. It doesn't matter if it's a face to face camera club that has 20 members and you meet at your local church hall or the RSL or whatever it may be, or whether it's an online community with hundreds or thousands of people in it. Join a photography community because it allows you to see that you're not alone in your creative pursuits, that other people face challenges other People face dips, ruts, lows. Other people experience highs and periods of output where they're really, really impressed with what they're doing for themselves. Communities allow you to. I'll get to what you think about it in a sec, Justin, but for me a community is essential to creative growth because it gives you a safe place and a platform to express yourself, to explore your work, to get feedback from peers, to feel motivated by others. All of those things kind of fall into it, which is what I love the most about what we do. What are your thoughts on community, Justin? [01:42:34] Speaker B: It's hard to find at the moment the place in between these bigger online communities where you don't often know each other that well. You know, you do a good job of it with like the Fuji group, you know, it's a large Facebook group. [01:42:55] Speaker A: I think we're about five and a half thousand now. [01:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so it's massive, massive online group. But you do photo walks, in person meetups and things like that. That brings that group size down to something where you can really start to meet individual people. Not a lot of groups are like that. And then the other issue is, you know, that's in Melbourne, you know, where I live. Yeah, finding, finding a community of like minded people, it's tricky, tricky to find one that's small enough to be that little bit more meaningful, I think, you know, rather than being, you know, that one, the 16,000th person on a Facebook group or something like that. And, and that's where like camera clubs obviously do a great job of it. The Bendigo Camera Club's super active. The, yeah, it's, I don't know, for me I'd, I'd love to find a, a group of people that want to go on trips and do that kind of thing, you know, that have the time and stuff to go on some photography trips. But it's, yeah, it's hard to find. I don't know, it is super important. But I just, I see a bit of a gap there and I don't know how you fill that gap up. [01:44:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's a number of. I agree. You know, I live in a city. I've got a couple of great, a number of great camera clubs. I've got Melbourne Camera Club which is I think Victoria's or Australia's oldest and largest camera club. They own their own building that's in South Melbourne. I'm actually doing a talk for them in a few weeks. So I've got clubs around me. But if you don't, you know, there are other ways to feel connected. You know, you can sign up to some club newsletters. You might not be able to visit in person, but maybe you can stay engaged through newsletters. You can join a Facebook group. It doesn't have to be massive. My advice about joining online groups is this. Work with referrals of friends. Don't just dive into. Don't just do a Facebook search for astrophotography clubs. Talk to other astrophotographers that you may know. Get some recommendations. Because not all clubs are the same. The Fuji X Oz club, which I talk about in, in the article on the Lucky Straps website, we set that club up. There's two. Two guys that were the founders. One of them's still engaged with the club. The other one's just a silent partner. But they brought me on in about 2014, I think. 2015. When the club started, the group started. And we're quite small, you know, I remember celebrating our hundredth person. But we set out some really clear guidelines about how the group would be run and how we. And the expectations we placed on members. Because I've seen photography groups online that are a shambles. There is no regulation. There is no administration, There is no support. There's no recourse for poor behavior. It's kind of a bit of a, you know, Wildlands. But the. The group that I joined, and I think that with photography groups online, you get out of it what you put into it. And if it's not working for you, well, you go find another one. You know, there's plenty of them out there. But do some research, get some referrals. Make sure they've got a set of rules in place around behavior, around discrimination, bullying, harassment, because those sort of things can very quickly get ugly and can very quickly turn you away from your craft, Especially if you've got someone who is bagging out your work without constructive. [01:46:52] Speaker B: Criticism, which you do see a lot on social media. [01:46:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you do see it. So do your research. Find some. Find a club that works for you. But even if you don't want to join a club, you just want to get together every now and then with a group of people. People. Plenty of cities offer meetups, A whole range of meetups. The meetup movement's pretty big. You know, people. There's all sorts of meetups. There's, you know, queer meetups and. And craft meetups and. And there are also some people do organize photography meetups, like you were saying, just, you know, maybe catching up with a group of people that want to go and do something. You don't necessarily know them all, but over time you will get to develop relationships and, you know, with the Fuji X Oz group. Some of my best friendships were formed through that group. Ian, who is a much loved alumni of our show, he. I consider him to be obviously a friend, but also one of my best photography mentors. He's taught me so much about the craft and about myself and my creative output. So I think there's a lot to gain. Even if you're a bit of a introvert like me, there's still, there's still avenues out there for people to feel engaged and connected at a level that suits them. So that's it, that's it. [01:48:09] Speaker B: Local communities join it, Track him down and drop them. [01:48:17] Speaker A: My next 2025 photography goal for all of you out there is to build yourself a website. Now why on earth would people want to build themselves a website, Justin? [01:48:30] Speaker B: Well, here's a few reasons. [01:48:32] Speaker A: We didn't rehearse this, by the way. No, we didn't completely throw him in the. [01:48:36] Speaker B: Here are the reasons that I tell everyone, including there's probably someone who's not listening that should hear this. They've been working on their website for a long time is you don't own what you put on your social media platform. You don't own the platform, you don't own your little space. It'll probably be fine. Instagram probably be here forever, Facebook will probably be around forever. But it's not your spot, you don't own it. Put something on your own website that you've got control over, even if it's just to start with, just your 10 favorite photos and a little bit about you start with that. But it's something you can control the design of it, what goes on there, and it could be a place for your work to live from now into the future. And if you start now, it's like planting a seed. You start now, who knows what that website will look like in 10 years, what things you'll add to it, what work you might get from it. You know, even if you're just someone who's just a passionate amateur landscape photographer and then someone comes along and says, I love that photo, could I print it? You know, I'm happy to pay you or whatever. Like, you never know what might come from it. And obviously that same stuff can happen with social media, but I think having your own space that you can control is something that all photographers should have. There is a little bit of cost involved, it's not much, but you Get a domain name. You don't always need a domain name, but I think it's nice. Rather than having something that's at Squarespace something, have your own domain name. Might cost you 20 to $40 a year. And then depending on what website service you want to use, that could cost you a monthly fee or you can find free ones, but they're often a little bit limited. But I don't know, it's very worth it. [01:50:30] Speaker A: They often have advertising you have no control over. [01:50:33] Speaker B: That's right. You don't want advertising on there. [01:50:36] Speaker A: I think you're right and I'm sure you're pleased to hear that. I think that. But having your own website. I started my website in 2014, no, 2013. And I did it because I was musing, musing considering my trip, first trip to Japan, and I started writing about it. This is when I first started writing online. I wasn't working at that point as a writer. I was still recovering from grief. And I just started writing about that a little bit, but also about how photography was changing my outlook on life. And then I started talking about my plans for Japan and then I talked about my time while I was in Japan. And so I was adding photos to all of these elements. So every blog I wrote was my photos, my words. And that's how I discovered that actually I like writing, I like telling stories, I like documenting things and I like explaining them in a way that people find meaningful, maybe inspirational, who knows. And it was from that that someone picked up that I wrote blogs. And it was through that that Mark, who we've had on the show. A couple of months ago, Mark Condon from ShotKit discovered my work and asked if I would like to write for ShotKit. And now that's what I do for a living. I write photography related content just like I did on my blog and I take all my own photos still for those articles. Most, pretty much all of the articles I use my own photos. Some are supplied to me by brands, but you know, that's. That's what that led to for me. And whilst my blog is sorely lacking updates, I discovered a new path for myself through just building a website. Initially it didn't cost me much because I wasn't, you know, it was just a bit of a hobby. But now that it's a bit more about my brand, I'd pay a bit more for my own domain name and the amount of storage I have on it and all that sort of stuff. I don't use it. I think I've got one set of client work on there that's behind a password and that's for my friend in Launceston for their wedding and their engagement. But that just made it convenient for them to be able to access the photos. But it's purely for me to put my words and images on, just as a kind of, I guess a means of holding them in a safe place. [01:53:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:03] Speaker A: So I think there's a lot to say for it. And like you said, it doesn't have to be expensive. [01:53:07] Speaker B: It also doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn't have to be custom. And especially like if you look at Greg's website, you know, it doesn't. Just because he loves writing and is great at writing. You don't have to write a blog to go with your images, you know, like, no, if you're not into that. Literally just put the date you took the image or the metadata from the camera or three words, title the image something or don't put anything at all. It's, it's completely up to you. But don't let that stuff stop you from. Just put it. Getting it up there and getting it started. [01:53:40] Speaker A: Yeah. And there's plenty of sites like WordPress. WordPress is more Word. You can do photo sites, but Squarespace is probably the most user friendly. [01:53:48] Speaker B: It's the easiest. [01:53:49] Speaker A: And the easiest. [01:53:50] Speaker B: Yeah. To get started with. But it will. [01:53:53] Speaker A: And the plans are clear, they're not confusing. [01:53:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:53:56] Speaker A: And as you build, you know, over time, which is what I found with, with WordPress, even as I discovered that I want to use more of the features on offer, then that's when the price goes up. But that's fine. That's a choice that you get to make. You don't, you're not forced into anything, you know, but just make a start and to start with, you don't have to share it with anybody. [01:54:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:18] Speaker A: It comes back to that whole thing. Do it for you. Do it so that you have somewhere other than a postage size image of your favorite photo on a phone screen that you might forget you took. Put it on a website, make it so that you can click on it and it enlarges. You know, a lot of them offer templates like that. Oh, sorry, that was my bad. [01:54:37] Speaker B: Yeah. I think a couple of like the, the process as well of choosing, say to start with just your 12 best images to go on a gallery that lives on the homepage. Even that process can help you tell a little bit about yourself, where you're at at the moment as a photographer. What you enjoy taking images of the most. And that can help guide your, you know, your year ahead in terms of what you want to shoot. What. What other images would you like to see on your own website that you don't have yet? And yeah, what things, what images have brought you the most joy in the past? So the process of finding. Because don't. Don't put a million images up on your website. That's one thing I can definitely say. Yeah, it's. Start small, keep it refined. It can often be harder to refine down to a set of images than it is to just throw everything up on there. But it's worth the effort because the people that look at your website won't have the desire to sort through hundreds of images. Yeah, give them a nice concise set of what it is that you like. [01:55:47] Speaker A: To do and be mindful of that experience. Learn from it and then look back at stuff, you know, at the end of the year, go back and look, review your year and maybe make a new mini gallery of what you think are your best photos of 2025 and pick your 12 best one for each month maybe. Or, you know, set yourself some little parameters to work within. Have some fun with it. It doesn't have to be serious and strict. [01:56:15] Speaker B: You know, I should probably redo my website. [01:56:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I think you should. [01:56:20] Speaker B: It's been down for a long time. Currently it's just a homepage with a bit of a gallery that scrolls through and it's got my phone number on it and that's it. A couple of links to email me and camera straps and stuff like that. But it really doesn't say much about who I am or. And it hasn't got updated images. So I should take our advice and get onto that this year too. Yeah, but it's one of those things. I spend a lot of time on the Lucky Straps website, so this one kind of gets put on the back burner a little bit. [01:56:56] Speaker A: Same. I spend my career writing now, so doing personal blogs feels like it's a little more challenging than it used to be because I kind of find that I've used up all my words when I remember to do it. And it's like I've used up all my words and I haven't taken photos for a month and so I can start making excuses. [01:57:17] Speaker B: You could use chat GPT for your website. [01:57:19] Speaker A: Get fucked. I'm not doing that. There's no way that. [01:57:25] Speaker B: Oh, dear. So you don't use it for other client stuff, but use it for your own personal Website, just give it a prompt. [01:57:34] Speaker A: Not supporting that filth. [01:57:36] Speaker B: That filth. Oh, dear. [01:57:42] Speaker A: I'm already one. I'm only one step away from it replacing my career. So, you know, let's just. Let's just not mention it. [01:57:49] Speaker B: Never mind. [01:57:53] Speaker A: And that kind of. God. Sorry, you going? [01:57:56] Speaker B: I was going to say, what else have we got anything else? With hours in now, we're a couple of hours. [01:58:01] Speaker A: I will say this. The. The most important thing with like, with resolutions, if you kind of swing that way, is to make the plan and start today. You know, like, do one of the simplest things. Go onto Amazon now and order a couple of disposable film cameras right now while you're listening to us. Do it right now. Just go and do that and then that's one of your challenges already underway. [01:58:27] Speaker B: Start today and don't let a particular date or anything get you. You know, like, if you had thought, I really would have liked to do a 365 project for 2025, but it's already, you know, whatever. What are we on the 9th of January? You know, I've already missed. Who cares? Start today, start. And even if you want to do a photo a day for 365, just start with seven days and just get to the end of that week and look back and go, am I enjoying this or am I not? Or do I need to refine this to a different style of project or something like that? So don't overthink it, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Just get going on whatever idea appeals to you the most. Get going on it right now. You can always change. Doesn't matter. I paused my project. You can do whatever you want, but if you overthink it, never start. You won't do anything. [01:59:22] Speaker A: So, yeah, you've achieved nothing because, you know, life gets busy. We've all sort of just coming out of that. Well, not all, but a lot of people are now just coming out of that holiday period where we've got to start shifting our thinking into work and responsibilities and, you know what, whatever else is coming up in life. And before you know it, it'll be April, you know, and you'll have missed a season, you'll have missed growth, you'll miss time, and you'll have missed, you know, potentially great light for the subject that you were pondering, making a challenge. So, you know, do something today, you know, even if it is Google Squarespace and see how much their plans are. Do a Google search and find out where your local print kiosk is order some disposable cameras. Pick up your camera right now and set it to black and white JPEG or one to one square ratio or understand how to turn your camera to video. There's little, little steps you can do right now. So the next time you pick up your camera, whether it be tomorrow or on the weekend, you go, oh, that's right, I was going to shoot a video. I it, I'll just do it now. Yeah, and just do it, you know, you don't have to do it for anyone else but yourself. And I know that's easier said than done because I, I've been a bit flat with my photography. I haven't picked up my camera in a month and, you know, other stuff gets in the way and it's easy to lose sight of your creative needs over what you think are essential things in your life and many of them are. But just find a moment, even if it's five minutes in each day, to do something that's for your creative self and that hopefully will have a bit of a snowball effect and you'll start to build something, you know, and if it works for you, go and you know, get yourself a cheap notebook and a pencil and start making some notes, jot down some things, Keep that notebook in your camera bag. And so when you're out and about and you think, oh, I should do this, write it down in your notebook. Don't put it in your phone, it just gets lost with everything else. Put it in your notebook and title that page. Photography goals, inspiration, ideas, challenges. Have a separate page for each. But have a read of our blog on the Lucky Straps website and see if that. We've covered a lot of it today, most of it in fact, and that was the purpose of today's show. We don't have a guest so we thought, look, let's, let's start the year off right. But yeah. [02:01:59] Speaker B: Love it. Should we leave it there? [02:02:03] Speaker A: I think we should leave it there. We've just hit 11am here in Victoria, Australia. We've been chatting for a couple of hours. I think we've done pretty well without a guest. [02:02:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we've, we've wandered around for a couple hours. [02:02:18] Speaker A: What was that? [02:02:18] Speaker B: Found ourselves. [02:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean what was that non committal response? [02:02:22] Speaker B: Maybe six hours. [02:02:23] Speaker A: I poured my heart and soul into this article and I get a. Yeah, you see what I'm dealing with, folks, if you're watching along and you have an of a boss too, please let me know in the comments below and don't forget to like and subscribe. I'm joking. Justin's the best boss I've ever had. Not that he's my boss, but, you know, I'm my own boss. Was that crickets? [02:02:43] Speaker B: No. [02:02:44] Speaker A: Did you just play crickets? Oh, that is. [02:02:49] Speaker B: I may have actually used the sound effects before. I really love these. [02:02:55] Speaker A: Okay, okay. I like the crickets. That's. The crickets are good. Yeah. But rude. Anyway. [02:03:04] Speaker B: All right, no, let's, let's wrap it up. [02:03:07] Speaker A: Let's wrap it up. Folks at home, folks at work, Folks working from home, like Grant. Thanks for joining us. This is our first podcast of the, of the new year of 2025. We've got a lot planned for this year. We're just in the middle of a planning stage and we're looking at shaking things up a little. We're going to probably stick with our Thursday morning show because consistency is king and we love it and it works for most of our guests too, which is good. [02:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:03:39] Speaker A: So we're going to continue with our weekly show. You know, pretty much most of them will always have a guest. And don't forget to. We've also got some blogs coming out on the Lucky Straps website that talk about those episodes and go into detail about our guest and their experiences and influences and inspirations and work and all those sorts of things too. So stay tuned for those. But Justin, we've got some other plans. What are some of the things that you think we should do with this show moving into the new year? What are some of the ideas you've had? [02:04:10] Speaker B: We're playing with the idea of trying another time slot. Maybe an Australian time evening show earlier. [02:04:19] Speaker A: Second show. [02:04:20] Speaker B: Second show. That's a little bit more. Maybe we bring on a few past guests, keep it to more like an hour and just have a good time. Talk, talk, crap, talk about. So maybe we'll move rather than talking about any news or anything like that when we've got guests on. We'll save all of that for this other show. So news, rumors, maybe, maybe some photo critiques. [02:04:50] Speaker A: Yep. [02:04:50] Speaker B: Critique our own photos. Critique your photos if you want. Yeah, we're just playing around. It'll be kind of like the random show, the catch up show and hopefully we can get, you know, maybe even four or five people on it sometimes just to all come on and throw their two cents in. [02:05:08] Speaker A: And can we call it the double exposure? [02:05:12] Speaker B: Why? [02:05:13] Speaker A: I don't know. Just came to me. Okay. I have no reason. I have no understanding of how the words come, but they just do. Justin. And we. Yeah, it's the chat GPT here on my phone, Justin. I think we're also considering maybe some panel like shows every now and then just to talk about, you know, how to run a photography business, how to set up a photography business. So we might get some people that are just starting their photography business on the show as well as some people that have got some decades of photography business experience behind them. [02:05:48] Speaker B: Yes. [02:05:49] Speaker A: And it's not to have a debate necessarily, but it's to help others who are watching and listening understand some of the challenges, some of the ways to overcome those challenges and just some insights into. Because, you know, we've all considered it at some point. Can I make money out of this? [02:06:08] Speaker B: So, yeah, I think there's a lot we could do with that too. I'd love to do some. If people have the. Have the, what would you call it, Fortitude for it. We could do some website reviews if you've got a photography business website, you're trying to attract clients. If you want us and maybe a couple of other experts. I say experts loosely, just people that have been around and we don't know the right answers. But we can certainly give you some ideas. I've got a lot of website experience, so got a few ideas like that. But to start with more interviews, hopefully we've got a few good ones coming up and this new random show and hopefully this person won't be leaf blowing right outside my window in the next episode. [02:06:53] Speaker A: That's right. This seems to happen every week. Every week. Of course we don't all have ground staff. My place is perfectly silent, but. So stay tuned for that, folks. You know we're going to do some collaborations probably with some other podcast channels. Stay tuned for that. We've got a bunch of stuff on the burner. We're shimming through some ideas. The Lucky Straps team are catching up regularly to talk about this sort of stuff and work out what we can do. But on that note, I'd like to thank you all for listening and watching. Please be sure to like and subscribe. Let your friends know about it and please don't be afraid to comment either live or after the fact. Ask us your questions. Let us know if you've got an idea for a show that you'd like to see, a topic you'd like us. [02:07:41] Speaker B: To cover, or if you want to come on the show. Do you think you'd be a good guest? Come on our show. We'll take anyone. [02:07:47] Speaker A: Yeah, we are whores for photography. [02:07:50] Speaker B: Yep. Come and join us. [02:07:52] Speaker A: Come and join us. Let's just talk. No pressure, you know, and we'll just. We'll just chat. That itself is community. [02:08:02] Speaker B: That's right. [02:08:03] Speaker A: Yeah. See what I did there? I circled back. [02:08:05] Speaker B: Good job. Thanks. I'm gonna roll the music. And your favorite sound effect. Oh, no, not that one. [02:08:16] Speaker A: Let's just play them all. [02:08:19] Speaker B: Have a great week. Everyone. [02:08:20] Speaker A: Get out and shoot. Chase the light. [02:08:22] Speaker B: See you. [02:08:23] Speaker A: Peace.