EP53 Alex Frayne | National Portrait Gallery Images & Published Art Books

[00:00:06] Speaker A: That's pretty groovy. [00:00:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:10] Speaker A: Is this the same as last week? [00:00:13] Speaker C: No, this is a new one. I'm keeping the. The fancy Monday show one for Mondays, the upbeat one, because it's a bit crazy. It's a bit too crazy for an interview, I think. [00:00:22] Speaker A: Is it? [00:00:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:00:23] Speaker A: All right, well, on that note, welcome to the Camera Life podcast. It is. What is it like the 20th of February? Something crazy. January felt like the longest month in existence and February is already 20 days through. This is episode 53 of the camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps out of Bendigo, Victoria, makers of fine handmade leather camera straps. You want yourself a strap? Check out the links. Episode 53. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. [00:00:55] Speaker C: Flying. We're flying through it. [00:00:56] Speaker A: We are flying. Now, don't forget, for those of you watching and listening along, we now run two weekly podcasts. We have our interview podcast every Thursday morning, 9am Australian Eastern Daylight Time at the moment. And then we also have the random photography show which is very, very random. And that's on a Monday night at 7:30pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time. [00:01:20] Speaker C: And. And now, and editor Seb, you know, we've got some little bite sized morsels coming out on the channel of little clips and things that we're getting out of the Editor Seb trolls through the hours of yapping that we do and finds the couple of good bits and puts them out. So it does plenty of content coming to you. [00:01:40] Speaker A: Plenty. But yes, but enough about that. Oh, also don't forget that we are on the audio podcast channels. You can watch our back catalog. You can watch editor Seb's clips on the lucky on the. Sorry, the camera live podcast YouTube channel. Go get it right eventually. It's only been 53 episodes and like and subscribe Tickle the Bell. So you get all the notifications, but we are joined today by landscape photographer award winning landscape photographer Alex Frain. Alex, welcome to the Camera Life podcast, Greg. [00:02:14] Speaker D: It's a pleasure to be here. [00:02:17] Speaker A: Brilliant. Now Alex, you've been a photographer for quite some time and we want to go through your story and learn a little bit about your journey because I think there's a lot of inspiration for, you know, people that are new to the craft or people that are looking for a change in direction. A lot of inspiration from hearing from people as old as yourself. Could you just give us a little rundown of who you are and what you currently do in the world of photography? [00:02:46] Speaker D: Adelaide based, born in England actually my parents were studying in London when I Came along and so first couple of years were spent in England and again when I was five or six years old back there. So I had a, I had a passport which I am proud to say I've never actually used. I've been to England but I've never had to use the passport. I've always gone on an Australian passport and I, I consider myself Australian and my parents are Aussie and I live and have lived in Adelaide since I was a kid. So. So it was at a pretty young age that my mother bought me an 8 millimeter movie camera. So we're talking mid-80s and this was the era where 8 millimeter was still a thing. Occasionally you'd find kids at school with wealthy parents who may have got a VHS camcorder or before that a Umat video machine, but 8 millimeter was still going and you would shoot little canisters of 3 minute, 3 minutes of 8 millimeter film and then send it off to Rochester, New York and wait a month and it would come back developed. [00:04:02] Speaker A: Was that the home of Kodak? [00:04:04] Speaker D: Yeah, that was the, the birthplace of Kodak and still remains a Kodak facility in Rochester. You'd send the stuff away in these little orange envelopes and you'd get them back a month later. It was, it was the wait time which was excruciating. [00:04:21] Speaker C: No one in Australia was, was developing that stuff. [00:04:25] Speaker D: I think there was, there was a lab in, in Melbourne. But I, I actually think there was such demand that they would actually send a lot of the material off to America. So you know, the weight was huge. And I think, you know, it sort of started me off on the idea that film photography or film movie making which, you know, which has carried through to my, you know, I use analog now. It dates back to those early days of being basically an analog shooter. I had a little camera that was Sankyo, not Sanyo Senkyo. You found that there were often companies in Japan making cameras that had names that were one letter different to the well known brand. So I had a Sankyo 8 millimeter film camera mute. Of course you could record sound with 8 mil. Yeah, little microphone plugged into the side of the movie camera. But I never, never did that and just shot mute and started making little short films down at our property near Strathalbon, which is in the Mallee. And you know, involving my family and myself and my friends and they were, you know, sort of the typical kind of plot of someone gets shot, you know, and there's a gun and one of the neighbors, one of the neighbors had lent us a gun and. And, you know, Alex gets shot, or Alex rides a horse and shoots someone dead. His mum, his mum shoots him. You know, there were a hundred different variations on a theme and the plots were very basic. But it did get me into, you know, the idea of filmmaking, which is my first career post school having done 8 millimeter. I went to Flinders Union, did a BA and part of that BA involved, you know, what, screen studies as it was. And that was partly theoretical and partly practical. And. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Can I just jump in there for a sec, Alex? Going back to the 8 millimeter. So you could only shoot 3 minutes total worth of clips. How did you find. I know it was some time ago, but how did you find those limitations? Because often nowadays we don't have those sorts of limitations. Like digital cameras especially, obviously, you know, they now say that you can have unlimited recording time in 4K, 6K, you know, provided you have an external monitor with enough storage, all that sort of thing. [00:06:55] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:06:56] Speaker A: How do you, how do you think those limitations influenced your art style? [00:07:03] Speaker D: I think they were pivotal and have carried through those lessons today when Instead of shooting three minutes on a roll, I'm shooting 12 frames on a roll of 120 film. And so, you know, there's a. There's a thought that has to go into the process of framing and setting things up and you become sort of more of a director, I think, when you're placed under those limitations because you have to really think things through. So we. With your 3 minute 8 millimeter cassette, you'd be thinking of the plot and how many shots you can do of mum holding a gun. You know, you can't just do mum holding a gun for, you know, hours and hours. You have to get it right. So those sort of slowdown, slowdown things were valuable lessons about, you know, forming narratives and framing a character and, you know, theme tone. All the things that I sort of still think about today when I'm shooting film. However, these days, you know, when it comes to shooting film, I don't really have those thought processes. If I'm into something, I don't care that there's 12 shots on a roll. I'll shoot 20 rolls if I have to get what I want. So, you know, it's not an economic, not an economics argument. Now, perhaps it was back then because each roll of Kodak film was, you know, 20 bucks. So, yeah, you have to think economically. And one of the arguments given by people these days about, you know, shooting film is that slows you down and Makes you, makes you think more about. About everything, which is true. But it's. For me, it's beyond that. I don't care about that. Those limitations, I'll work through them in order to get exactly what I'm after. [00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah, but you've got decades of experience under your belt. So if someone was, was new from digital to film, I think they'd find that overwhelming. And even, you know, Justin, you've said in the past that if you had to, if you had learned on film in the early days. [00:08:55] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:08:56] Speaker A: And worked on. Well, you tell the story. It's your story. [00:09:00] Speaker C: I just, and I don't know, I don't know this for sure, but like when I picked up photography later in life as a hobby and then a, you know, a job, a career and a business and I just. The instant gratification of digital is what spurred me on to learn and learn hope. Like what I think is, was fairly quickly and I just don't know if I would have put. Pushed through that hump. [00:09:25] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:09:26] Speaker C: With film, I don't know if I would have had the drive to wait and then try and, you know, take notes about what you did. I didn't take notes or anything like that because I could see it on the back of the screen and go, oh, that didn't work. Or that. Whereas I think he had to be maybe more disciplined and put a bit more time into learning the craft of photography when it was filmed because of the slower speed that everything was. [00:09:52] Speaker A: I don't know when I learned. Yeah, it wasn't just the, the taking of the shots that you had to slow down. You had to be careful in the dark room. You had to be careful when you were developing your roles. The whole end to end process required extra thought. I mean, you get the hang of it eventually, obviously. But you know, mixing chemicals, it's all chemistry. You've got to get it right, you know, so you can't just speed through that to get an instant result. You've got to really take your time and, and make sure you've shut the curtain so the light's not leaking in. [00:10:21] Speaker C: And you know, you can definitely damage. [00:10:23] Speaker B: It on the back end as well. [00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Or even just loading your spools, like, you know, loading your own 35 millimeter canisters, which I used to do in art school, you know, if you got that wrong and then you went out and thought you got the best shots of your life and came back only to decide that, oh, actually maybe I somehow light got in. [00:10:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:10:41] Speaker A: You know, It's a whole different kettle of fish, isn't it? [00:10:45] Speaker D: I always, I always take a digital camera, especially when traveling. I'll tell you a story that I've told a few times before, but I'll tell it again because it's a good one. I'd recently bought a Fuji GW2,6 9 camera. So 6 by 9,120 film, pretty much the biggest you can go, you know, with, with medium format before you're into the five by sevens and ten by eights. And I took it out to a place near Barmera which is on the Murray and it's an area which is a kind of artificial lake area. They, they made it a dam basically to attract tourists. And it's beautiful and it's got these lovely dead trees that died when it became, you know, flooded and you know, the, the beautiful to shoot because you can get up nice and close. They're not that far away from the bank of the lake so you can, you can spend time getting the right frame. It was the first time I'd ever used a range finder camera and was very excited. Loaded up the roll of film, drove the three hour journey out to Lake Barmera, got up to my waist in water. So I was right up nice and close to a big old tree and started shooting the, the eight shots that you get when you shoot six by nine. And you know, I was very pleased with myself and I was sort of printing the images, you know, before even sort of seeing them kind of thing in my head. You know, these are, these are, these are some of my best work, I'm thinking. So I'm driving home and the Fuji camera is sitting on the passenger seat and I just looked down at it and noticed that it had lens cap on. And I thought I was actually, you know, I was actually quite proud of myself. I thought, well, I didn't, I didn't lose the lens cap, you know, because often, often I lose lens caps. And I thought, well, good on you for not losing the lens cap. And then about an hour later I thought I probably wouldn't have put the lens cap back on. I usually stick the lens cap in my back pocket and you know, deal with it later when I'm home. And by the, by the second hour of driving back home I was pretty. [00:12:48] Speaker A: Anxiety's got into your brain, hasn't it. [00:12:50] Speaker D: That I hadn't actually taken the lens cap off. [00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:54] Speaker D: And of course with a range finder camera you don't know and you know, it's force of habit. That, you know, having shot rangefinder cameras, you would know that you would just take the lens cap off. But this was the first time for me. And so I, by the time I reached home, I was 100 certain that I had shot a dark roll and that the lens cap was on for each of the shots. And that indeed turned out to be true. I took the. I was shooting Fuji Velvia, so it was slide film. I took it to the lab just in case. And of course the next day I got that horrible phone call where they said, there's nothing on the roll, just to let you know. And, you know, my heart sank. But then the next day I thought, well, you know, I'll just go out there again and I've learned my lesson. And, you know, this is. These are the slings and arrows of shooting on analog film. And next time I will take the digital camera and I will, you know, make sure that the lens cap is off and I will respect the medium. [00:13:55] Speaker A: Yep, important lesson. [00:13:58] Speaker B: Didn't do that again. [00:14:00] Speaker D: Never did that again. It's a good camera. It's a, a big, big thing. It's not. It's not. The viewfinder is a bit too dark. I think if, if I was to get another 6 by 7 or 6 by 9 camera, I'd look at other options. And at the moment I am looking around for a new camera to take to America and I'm sort of leaning towards 645 as my new format. But yeah, it's one of those lessons. I went out and reshot the images a week later and they were perfectly fine. But I did, I did keep thinking that the light was better the first time around. You know, you never, you never can shoot the same image twice. And often when you return to locations hoping to milk the location or to get more of. Just isn't the same as the magic of the first time, so. Yeah, no, that's fair. [00:14:52] Speaker A: That is fair. Should we jump to a couple of quick comments? [00:14:57] Speaker C: Yeah, while we're, while we're rolling, a few, few quick. Good mornings, Good morning. Rick Nelson up in Brisbane. He said it's a bit. It's early. It's 8am for you guys up there. No daylight savings. That's okay. [00:15:08] Speaker B: The sun's been up to seven hours already. [00:15:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Elena says good morning. [00:15:13] Speaker A: Morning, Elena. [00:15:15] Speaker C: Digifrog day from Tasmania says morning, Elena and the boys. Where's the beard prop? No beard prop today. Thursdays are our professional show. I don't do silly gags like that on this show this is when we have guests on. I don't want to, you know, give. [00:15:28] Speaker A: Them the wrong impression. [00:15:29] Speaker C: That's right. Gonna make a good, good impression. [00:15:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Alex, you mentioned that you do take a digital camera with you now. What, what camera are you shooting with when you do shoot digital? [00:15:40] Speaker D: It's just the Nikon D700, which is my sort of workhorse backup camera that has rescued me occasionally. And I love it. It's, it's old and clunky and has a very loud shutter. But it, you know, I just love the, love this. The smaller size of the RAW files means my old Windows 7, you know, laptop doesn't show. And so I've got all my, all my gear is sort of retro to about 2004 or 5. You know, I've got an Epson 550 scanner which is very old D700 Windows 7 running on, you know, an 8. Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's a very naughty kind of setup. And you know, if ever someone needs to transfer their, you know, load latest Sony A7 III images to my computer, it just doesn't work. It's up, you know, you can't read the new RAW file and it just comes along pretty quickly. So at some point I'll have to upgrade. But you know, I, my dad's got a Windows 10 computer which I, I can't make head nor tail of. But, you know, I'm happy with my Windows 7. It's, it's, it's very me. [00:16:50] Speaker A: I think it's a really interesting story to hear because. About your love of retro technology or maybe your fear of moving into current gen technology because so many of us, you know, I was in a, I was on a photo walk last night with a camera club, Melbourne. Camera club in the city. [00:17:08] Speaker D: Yep. [00:17:09] Speaker A: And so many people were sporting. It was, it was a bit of a mix. Most of them were sporting new cameras and lenses. And yet I still had some questions about, you know, what ISO should I shoot and stop investing in glass and camera bodies, you know, go do some basic lessons. But you know, what do you think it is that. Because we're also. Often we get obsessed, especially Justin, we get obsessed with megapixels, light latest focus performance, the latest low light performance, the latest, you know, and that's just in cameras. And then glass is another story. And then obviously there's peripherals like computers and monitors and you know, needing a big BenQ1 with a hood over it so you can get the color right and people are attaching color correction Things to their screens and. Yeah, what, what do you think it is with you in particular that has allowed you to hold back from that and work within the limitations of, you know, previous generation technology. [00:18:11] Speaker D: It gets down to aesthetics and the look that you're after. And you know, in. For me having, having gone through those super eight years and then gone, gone through the years of developing film at the university, just in the, in the dark room, I became accustomed to a look and I guess also growing up in watching movies from the 70s and 80s and early 90s, you know, it's a, it's a look that, that I appreciate and, and I'm comfortable with that. That's really what it's to do with. And I guess the depth and tonality that you get with film is just something which, you know, makes my job easier because then I can, once I've got the aesthetic, I can then work on all the other stuff. You know, tone, theme, message, you know, story. These kind of things are all I think about now. The tech stuff is really set in stone. You know, I shoot mainly with a Hasselblad 501C which was one of the late model hasselblads from the 90s. And you know, for me it's the Rolls Royce of image quality. You know, under a good scan, either done by me or the lab, they have a flex tight scanner. You know, you're at the final frontier of quality. You know that. So that you don't have to worry anymore about that stuff. You know, you're relaxed about it and you're going to be just thinking about the sort of more head. Head stuff. Yeah, yep. [00:19:41] Speaker A: I think it's really inspirational to hear because we've, you know, we're at 53 episodes and, and especially in the last couple of months we've had a lot of people that have been shooting film. Yeah. And, and I, and I meet more people when I do things like photo walks and, and the like that actually shoot film, which is really great to see and we talked about it last week because we had John Yumena or your minor from Lumina Labs in Kyneton in Victoria. I don't know if you saw that episode, Alex, but he runs a lab and very passionate medium format film photographer, but also, you know, runs this lab as his, as his work life. [00:20:23] Speaker D: Yep. [00:20:25] Speaker A: We just, I think we're seeing more and more films related stories coming up, which is really great to see. [00:20:32] Speaker D: Yeah, I think I saw a statistic that the Head on competition, you know, which is one that I enter 50% of the finalists a year or two ago were originating on film. [00:20:45] Speaker A: And so in terms of shooting film around, you know, you live in Adelaide. We've talked last week about labs in Victoria. What, what's your go to? Do you have a lab in Victoria? Do you have to send them off? Do you have somewhere where you like that has a shop front? You can go to a brick and mortar store, so to speak. What, what do you do once you've shot your rolls and you're ready to. [00:21:09] Speaker D: I develop all my stuff. Stuff myself. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Oh, wow. Okay. [00:21:13] Speaker D: Color and black and white. So, you know, you know, I shoot more black and white than color. But you know, I, I have a dark bag where I switch the film out from the camera into a canister. I don't have a dark room, I have a dark bag. And once film is in the canister, it's, you know, bringing in the Kodak syrup and pouring it in. And six and a half minutes later you've developed and then you're fixing for four minutes and that's it. It's hung up and it's drying and it's, it's ready by, you know, two hours later you're ready to scan. So, you know, there's a huge cost saving there. So, you know, considering that if you were to take that to a lab in Adelaide, you'd be up for about 40 or 50 bucks. So, you know, I'm shooting three rolls a week, maybe five rolls a week. There's a big saving. But the more importantly, it's about control. So, you know, when I'm developing black and white film, I can control everything, you know, from the moment I shoot the thing to the moment that I'm developing it, how I develop it, how much I agitate the canister, how much time I give to the development, whether it's nine minutes or six. If you're pushing, it's going to be nine. If you're pulling, it's going to be four minutes. You know, you, each of these steps has a different effect on the look of the film. You know, if you're rougher, you can get higher contrast. If you change the temperature up and down, you can get higher contrast. If you overexpose the film and underdevelop the film, you get pretty much infinite latitude. You know, this is, you get huge amounts of shadow detail. So I don't do labs. I used to, but that would have been a good five or six years ago. [00:22:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:53] Speaker D: With color, there's a two step powder that I get from Walkins. It's called Cinestill, which is fairly simple, provided you have everything at 39 degrees. And you know, if you're above 2 degrees or below, your film is gone. So it's a little tougher color. You've got to be really careful to keep that, that temperature bang on. Yeah. So I do, I scan my own too. You know, I have an Epson 550, but if I'm, if I'm doing competition scanning or really, you know, high end scanning, I'll take it to the lab. Black and White Photographics is the name of the lab. They're in Stepney. I've used them for years. They do my printing and they do my high end scanning. A flex site. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Are you doing anything after scanning it? [00:23:40] Speaker D: Once it's scanned, it goes straight into Photoshop for just resizing. Not a lot of Photoshop required, you know, because you're shooting on film. So what would be the point? You know, often the scans are really kind of high key, quite bright because you've got all this latitude with film. So, you know, if anything, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm bringing it back a bit, darkening it, but not much, not, not a lot. And you know, it's interesting, you know, on, on Facebook and Instagram, you know, the question I often get is what post production, what post production am I doing? And because people are not familiar with, some people are not familiar with the film aesthetic and I just say, well, not much. It's shot on film. So yeah, perhaps, perhaps you're, you're talking about a look that is actually organic and you know, if you were looking at more film, you would see that it's just natural to look that way. It's not post produced to look that way. [00:24:37] Speaker A: Well, the other thing is. Sorry, go on, Justin. [00:24:40] Speaker C: I was just going to say, what's an example of not much? So like, obviously the look is baked into the film and that's the look that you're going for. But what if you did sort of tweak something just to make it okay, this is now ready for my purpose. What would be an example of a change you would make to a film scan in, in say Photoshop? [00:24:58] Speaker D: And that depends also on the outcome. Well, the delivery platform. So if, if I'm, if I'm posting on Instagram, I tend, I tend to go darker in the post production. I'll bring it back, I'll bring it back and you know, you'll see an increase in contrast and you'll see shadows slightly disappearing. So that's one outcome. Another outcome is collector has bought a print at a meter wide. I tend to sort of want it to be a little bit brighter because the printing tends to be a bit darker, you know, so you get to know all these things as you go. And you know, I've occasionally collectors say, well, what I saw on the Internet when I bought this image is, you know, bright brighter than what you've delivered to me, so I'll redo it for them. So how I post produce depends on, depends on the final destination of the image. If it's a website licensing agreement I've done, I can go a bit moodier and darker because the LED screens are so damn good looking. Images I think tend to be the backlit ones. [00:26:09] Speaker C: Yeah, this is actually the perfect question from Rick Nelson that I think you just answered, but I'm going to bring it up anyway. Do you change anything in Photoshop for film scan depending on whether you share on Instagram or print? I think you just summed it up perfectly. So it's mainly a matter of what's the medium that it's going to be shared in. And a backlit bright phone screen at a small size requires a bit of a different touch to a large format print that's backlit. [00:26:36] Speaker D: And then book printing is another thing. You've got to be really careful with book printing. The viewing distance that someone is looking at a book is it's half a meter, it's a couple of feet so they will see everything. So, you know, one thing I do do in Photoshop is I will, I will get rid of dust that's on the neck or on the slide and you know, occasionally if it's there, I'll say, well, that's just because it's film. But I tend not to have that argument. You know, I just want, I don't want to be asked about dust. So I, I'm grateful that Photoshop has the hill because that, you know, when you book printing you've got to be absolutely on top of your game because it's, you know, it's such a permanent record. And the viewing, the viewing distance is not even like gallery distance, which is, you know, a couple of meters. It's a couple of feet that. [00:27:32] Speaker A: And it's a different thing to posting it on Instagram versus someone paying for a book of photos. You know, expect a certain quality. There's a transaction. [00:27:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:43] Speaker B: And they can really take the time to like go over it quite finely. [00:27:47] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:27:49] Speaker A: Look at it for two and a half seconds on average. And that's about it. [00:27:52] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:27:52] Speaker C: If you're lucky, they give it a little double heart like. [00:27:55] Speaker B: And that's it. [00:27:56] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a different, you know, it's a different world. You know, the, the impermanency of images is. I mean, I'm not, I don't love the fact that, you know, you go to Barmer and shoot that tree on 6 by 9 analog medium format and it ends up being a couple of inches big on a screen on Instagram. So, you know, this gets down to why, you know, why myself and other artists want to go further. So books, you know, gallery showings, physical, physical exhibition. You know, it really is an attempt in part to combat that ephemeral nature of the Internet which, you know, we both love, we both love and loathe. You know, it helps us, but it, you know, who would have thought that, you know, you shoot these incredible formats with cameras and you end up with that size tiny. Reminds me of the Bill Leap card. I think it was Bill Leap cartoon of, you know, Paul Keating versus John Howard. You know, Paul Keating had the huge big, you know, 4 meter by 3 canvas on the wall and then you've got the, the cutaway of John Howard. You know, he's sort of, his vision is on a postage stamp. Famous cartoon from the 90s. Yeah. In the Australian. I think it was Bill Leak when he was, when he was cartoonist. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Let me just jump back to a couple of comments because Paul's. Sorry, not Paul. Good morning, Paul Henderson. But Rick has also said, I feel Instagram and such is the newsletter, if you. Is a newsletter, if you will, for prints and books to really showcase the artwork. So it's kind of like it's an advertisement basically is what Rick is saying. It's a sample, it's to catch your eye. And we will have a look at your latest book. Now your latest book is actually your fourth photography book. [00:29:44] Speaker D: Yes. [00:29:45] Speaker A: That you publish with Wakefield, Wakefield Press. For you, what goes into choosing a publisher? What goes into that relationship? Because obviously, I imagine obviously you need trust, you need understanding, you need to have creative freedom as well and control what goes into choosing a publisher. Because a lot of photographers and I've published my own books from travel through just a small offshore print place. But what goes into that process for you? [00:30:22] Speaker D: The first thing is to actually find a publisher that will do art books, you know, for them. It's often, you know, if you talk to publishers, it's not, not an appetizing equation that they look at when they do these kinds of things because they cost the publisher so much. So luckily in Adelaide we have Wakefield Press who do everything, you know, fiction, historical stuff. They do the sale of monograph every year. They often do stuff for Art Gallery of South Australia. So, you know, I think they have, it's almost part of their charter to, to, you know, cover local art in the way that they do, you know, I think so that's the first thing is to, to find a publisher that is actually open to doing this kind of thing. It'd be no point sending your work out to publishers who do fiction only, you know, and to find that out later, when they reject you, they say, well, we only do fiction. Better to do that research before you even approach these people. By going to book fairs, for example, or doing some pretty thorough Internet research. You know, it's the same with galleries. You know, if you want to approach a gallery in America, you better be sure they carry photography before you, you know, spend $200 sending your book, you know, through the, through airmail. So yeah, the first thing is, do they do it? The second thing is, you know, is there someone in the organization who is actually sympathetic to photography and art and if so, you know, form a relationship with that person and start sending them your work and start, you know, sort of proffering photography as, you know, viable for them and, and they, they may have an open mind to that. So, you know, once you've done one book, and I did my first book with Wakefield Press In 2014, it was called Adelaide Noir. It was, was a nighttime long exposure photography book of industrial areas and suburbs in the west of Adelaide. And you know, we had a great launch and you know, they probably only printed 2,000 copies of it, but you know, they had to go into a reprint. So once they do one, once they do a reprint, they've made their money back on the first print run, right? [00:32:35] Speaker A: Yep. [00:32:36] Speaker D: So, you know, that's what your aim should be when you do the deal with a publisher is you tell them that we will sell we as in you and them, because you know you're going to be a big part of that selling. We will make sure that you sell out your first print run of a thousand or two thousand books. And you know, if you can do that, they will, you know, they will respect that and you know, they'll be open to the next idea, which should come at three years later, which happened to be a portrait book. I did a book of street photography and portraiture and you know, they were open to that. So, you know, it's, it's A step by step. [00:33:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:13] Speaker D: Relationships, you know, that's. It's all about relationships when it comes to galleries and books. [00:33:19] Speaker A: I want to. Speaking of your books, I want to bring up your latest book, which you published last year. Is that correct? Distance and Desire. [00:33:26] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:33:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Is it easier if I. Is it easier if I bring it up? Greg, have you got two monitors running at the moment or. [00:33:32] Speaker A: I do. [00:33:32] Speaker C: Oh, sweet. You're all over it then. [00:33:35] Speaker A: All over it, mate. Let me just find it because I've. [00:33:39] Speaker C: Got it right in front of me and it's. [00:33:40] Speaker A: Well, that's lovely for you. It is freaking awesome. I. I've been scrolling through it all morning. For those of you that are listening to the audio podcast. Alex, can we put a link to this in. Is that possible to put a link to this in. In description, Justin? [00:34:00] Speaker C: I can put it in there, yeah. [00:34:02] Speaker D: For sure. [00:34:02] Speaker C: As long as it's happy with that. Unless you do. We want to try and make people buy this thing. Should we do that? Or. Or is it a bit of both? [00:34:08] Speaker D: Yeah. Wakefield Press. Yeah. [00:34:11] Speaker A: All right. [00:34:13] Speaker D: Distance and Desire. And you'll get. You'll get the link to the landing page for the book. [00:34:17] Speaker A: That's a good idea. [00:34:18] Speaker D: We'll. [00:34:18] Speaker A: We'll put that link in the description, Justin. [00:34:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:34:21] Speaker D: Thank you. [00:34:22] Speaker A: The Wakefield one. Yeah. So. Well, for everyone watching and listening, just rolling, scrolling through some of Alex's. These are all medium format. [00:34:35] Speaker D: Oh, no. I mean, there's. There's medium format, there's 35 mil. There's infrared. [00:34:42] Speaker A: This one on the right. [00:34:44] Speaker D: Yeah, infrared, which I enjoy shooting once in a while, but. Yeah, mainly. Mainly medium format. Such as that. That double page there. You know that the one on the left was shot with my Yashika. My one on the right was shot with a Hasselblad. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And we can see here that it's. It's got down the bottom of each photo, what sort of film it was. [00:35:05] Speaker C: That's what struck me so much, just looking through this now, while you've been talking, is that there's such a range of mediums and. And you've. You've. [00:35:14] Speaker B: And subjects too. [00:35:15] Speaker C: Yes, and mediums. And. And you've noted them there, that you, you know, some of them are shot on a phone, you know, slide film, negative film, digital slr. And it's all in there and it all works together. And if you. [00:35:28] Speaker D: Ha. [00:35:29] Speaker C: What. What was really interesting popping into my head was like, if you hadn't put that there, what would I be thinking, you know, if, if we. If we had. If we could have covered all those little notes up and I could go through and pick what, what this was shot on. What would my mind have told me that it was shot on? I love it. It's, it's quite amazing. [00:35:49] Speaker A: This photo here on the left is, is 120 negative. And this one on the right is digital SLR. But I, I love how that your, your digital photos have that film quality, Alex. [00:36:00] Speaker D: They, they have a very. Yeah, I mean, I shoot old lens. The, the series of lenses that I have for my Nikon D700 is the E series from about 1981. You know, they have a very film look, those lenses, you know, which, which helps me, you know, often, often I will have shot film that night as well. Like I said, I'll bring both. And you know, when it's digital slr, it means that it's a better image than the film image in my book, you know, and that could be aesthetics, it could be sharpness, it could be many things. But, you know, I'm not a film Nazi. I don't, you know, I don't, I don't shoot everything on film and tell people that this is the way it has to be. I'm much more pragmatic and, you know, if the iPhone pulls a better shot than the 6x9 Fuji, I'll use that in the book. And in the end, it's not really up to me. It's up to the designer of the book. And I give him 2,000 images and I say, I'll see you in three months time. And that's when he delivers the first rough draft. And you know, I don't have anything to do with how the book is laid up. I, you know, that's his. Nick Phillips is his name. He's a brilliant artist from Leeds in the uk. His partner is Heather Crow, who runs the Fringe here and he does the Fringe program every year. As well as just being an amazing artist, he worked at a design company in the UK called the Republic Design. They did a lot of the 90s, you know, music album covers of Apex Twins and you know, some of the really pop, you know, sort of underground music that came out of the place then. And he, he lays the thing up so he just has access to these 2000 images and I don't, I don't have anything to do with it. It's up to him. [00:37:56] Speaker C: Wow, that's cool. [00:37:58] Speaker D: I guess that comes from me being back in the day a filmmaker and, you know, having an editor. And, you know, that editor works, works alone there's no interference there. I think you have to be careful with separations of power. When it comes to, you know, when you're in an art form which is, you know, it is collaborative, making a book is just. Not me. It's 10 people. [00:38:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Yeah. The way the book is put together is beautiful. I as. I really enjoy looking through. And a lot of the horizons or lines will line up across multiple pages, but, like, you know. Exactly. This image that Greg's got up there. But they're two completely foreign places, you know, probably shot. [00:38:40] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:38:40] Speaker B: A long, you know, a long time apart. [00:38:42] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:38:43] Speaker B: But the way that they join is. It's beautiful. [00:38:47] Speaker D: Yes. And that, you know, he's. He's suturing images, you know, metaphorically to, you know, follow a theme. And if, you know, if you look at the whole book, you'll see that sections of the book carry a theme, and he's able to sort of speak to that theme through his design work. You know, I would never have thought of this kind of thing. I'm not a designer. I. I probably, you know, if it was left to me, I probably would have used all the, you know, shots that were shot on a Hasselblad. You know, all the shots. All the shots that. All the shots that got likes five years ago, whatever, you know. But he doesn't think like that. He just thinks, what is the story? What is the aesthetic? And what is, you know, what is it we're trying to pull out of the series? You know, much like a curator would do when you're working in a gallery scene. You know, a curator will. Will find things that, you know, that you benefit from his or her expertise, you know, and you. You better listen to that person because if you don't, you sort of end up, you know, people think you're a bit of an. Because you. I have a word. It's an ask hole. A S K H O an is someone who sort of asks for help and then doesn't do. Doesn't take the advice. And, you know, there are a lot of. In the arts, they will. They will sort of pretend. Pretend to want to have someone's expertise and then not do that person's suggestions. And I just think that's fatal. Fatal. A fatal mistake in the arts. I think it's a collaborative thing and, you know, you better listen to people who know more about something than you do and, you know, take their advice. I think it augurs well for you if you do that. [00:40:30] Speaker A: Yep. [00:40:30] Speaker B: Yeah. I think a lot of people would just be looking to Hear someone agree with what they thought initially. [00:40:37] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:40:40] Speaker C: Confirm my idea so that I can feel good about it and move forward. [00:40:43] Speaker D: Yeah. Validate me so I can then be. Keep going on my solo journey without you. [00:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing. I'm not going to go through any more images on the book because I think people need to take a moment to have a look at it themselves. And, and Justin's put some links on the, in the chat for anyone watching or listening along so you can have a look at it. [00:41:08] Speaker C: I actually. So the links in the chat, I'll put it in the description as well. But I, I just bought it. Hang on. The payment has been approved. Yeah, it's done. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Such a suck up. [00:41:19] Speaker C: No, I want to, I want to see it in person because. Yeah, seeing it, seeing it here is, is pretty epic, but I want to, I want to turn the pages, you know. [00:41:27] Speaker A: Yep. [00:41:27] Speaker D: It's getting around. I mean, last week, Nick Mitzovich from the National Gallery, the director, picked it up for the National Library at the Art Gallery, the National Gallery in Canberra. So congratulations. And, and, you know, this gets back to permanency because of the ephemeral nature of the Internet. You know, when you get a library or an art institution or a collecting institution, that actually takes the thing, you know what, you know, you know what that means. And that means that in a thousand years that book will be at the National Gallery in Canberra, you know. [00:41:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:59] Speaker D: And really, you know, this, this kind of beats back against this idea of, you know, art being ephemeral. And, you know, and it was something I was trying to get away from with filmmaking is that once a film was made and done and dusted, it kind of may never be seen again, you know, whereas with this kind of two, two dimensional work, it is in a gallery somewhere forever, you know, long after I'm gone, there will be work that, you know, a school child might see on a trip to the National Gallery and go, well, that was South Australia a thousand years ago. [00:42:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:34] Speaker D: You know, this is, this is the way to combat the blues of the Internet, the Internet blues, is to actually make stuff that, you know, is, is physical. [00:42:44] Speaker A: And, and would that be, would that be your advice to anyone that explores photography? To have a crack at making a book? [00:42:53] Speaker D: I would say the first Port of Call would be to, you know, have a group exhibition. I think a book, a book's a really hard thing to do. And I could spend, you know, two hours talking about how difficult it is to, to actually have a book published and work with publishers on A essentially a break even proposition. I, I think beginners, you know, we have a thing called Sailor in South Australia which is a month in August of exhibitions and anyone, and anyone, anything, you know, as long as it's art, it's a free festival. It was set up by Paul Greenaway who's one of the really big gallerists here in Adelaide. He set it up about 20 years ago and it's just taken off and whenever I get a question what should I do with, you know, my capacity to be an artist? I would say first thing first is to, you know, to have a group show and you know, produce your five works and frame them and have a show and have a big launch and you know, get people to see your work physically on the wall and sell it, you know, and, and don't be put a price that you think is reasonable on that work. You know, if it's a 75 by 50 frame, centimeter frame, you know, I tell them 500 bucks, you know, because it's going to cost you 100 and something to make the thing and then you're going to make a bit of money and you know, so I would say a group exhibition is really the first thing that I think, you know, photographers in common who, you know, who like to go out together and shoot similar things should put together a show and you know, see the work, see the work in, in real life on a wall. I think that's, that's essential. [00:44:26] Speaker A: I think it's a bucket list item for a lot of photographers to have some, you know, we've talked about goals and challenges and projects on the podcast quite a bit with various guests but you know, having my own experience but also talking to other photographers a lot in the community. Everyone has some sort of ultimate goal. Yeah, I'd love to do an exhibition one day or I'd love to put my work up in a cafe or you know, we were talking a few weeks ago to alumni of the show Nev Clark and you know, he's got a local cafe that he's created a relationship with and they sell his calendars and some of his works are up on the wall there and it's a, it's a, it's a nice little give and take proposition for them. You know, it's not excessive, it's just the cafe's got some nice art on the wall. Nev pops in there regularly for breakfast and coffee and you know, everyone's kind of happy. And Nev kind of has achieved a bit of his goal. Exhibitions can Be quite intimidating though, can't they? To put your work up there. [00:45:29] Speaker D: Yeah, to put your work up there and to, you know, to have people turning up at 6:00 with a, you know, a glass of wine in their hand and that's going to loosen them up anyway. They'll start to be honest, you know. Yeah, intimidating. But I guess, you know, having started the caper early and having put yourself out there many times, first through filmmaking and then, you know, through photographic work, I don't have those insecurities. However, I can appreciate and sympathize with people that do. And people who are in the arts may have a certain disposition in their character anyway, which makes them, you know, averse to putting themselves out there. My advice to that point would be that vulnerability, that shyness or that, that questioning you have is actually your strength and you should use that when shooting because really, what, what are we if not photographers who are trying to find out about the world and about ourselves? So see it as part of character building continuum rather than a, a one off, you know, frightening event. It all is useful. And that vulnerability, shyness that you feel on opening night is actually why you are doing the thing in the first place. If you were to drill down and get very granular, you would probably find that people who are nervous about art, which I think is normal, are actually trying to discover something about themselves through their art. I don't think it's an ego trip. I don't think it's a coolness thing. You know, I don't think it's a hip, hip thing. I just think it's actually a search for truth. And I think anyone who's out there taking photos on a regular basis are probably trying to psychoanalyze themselves at some point, you know, and what you find may not be nice, it might not be comfortable, but, you know, you're out there again the next week doing whatever you're doing, you know, you're trying to find something that is gnawing at you. It might be a bit annoying, it might be frightening on opening night, but, you know, I think the day after you probably feel pretty good. Yeah, fight through it. The next day you'll be taking phone calls from people saying, you know, they love your work and how much for this one, you know, how much for this. And once, once that happens and it becomes a commercial proposition, it makes it a lot easier next time. You know, it's amazing how much an EFT transfer to your bank account gets rid of a lot of the shyness. [00:48:07] Speaker C: The ultimate validation. [00:48:09] Speaker D: Yeah, that was a lot of worries. When you start to be able to, you know, pay off, pay off your credit card by selling your work. [00:48:17] Speaker A: Who needs anxiety medication when you've got. [00:48:21] Speaker D: Cash, when you've got a camera? [00:48:25] Speaker C: Yeah, I have just some camera questions. Oh, yeah, sorry, Greg, go on. [00:48:30] Speaker A: No, no, I'm just introducing you. You can speak. [00:48:32] Speaker B: Welcome to the show. [00:48:34] Speaker C: My turn. Thanks. I, Speaking of cameras, I have some camera questions because of the, the broad variety that you choose from to make your art. First question is, do you choose a camera for what you're shooting or is it literally what you, what you happen to be working with that day is the camera that captures that moment? Or, or do you walk up to a scene and you go, I'm gonna use the 35 mil for this because. Or whatever. Or is it, is it more serendipitous to. I took my 35 with me that day. That's what I shot this photo with because that's what I had and I was there. [00:49:11] Speaker D: It's almost always premeditated. So at the moment I'm halfway through a project in America. I've been three months to America in the last year, shooting from west coast to east coast. And you know, when, when the clock is ticking and you know that every day matters, you've, you've got to be very clear in your head about what you're going to shoot. So if I'm shooting street photography in downtown Los Angeles on a reasonably, you know, sunny day, which is more than likely in, in Los Angeles, it's sunny most of the year. I'm going to be shooting with my Nikon FE 35 mil film camera. That's just what I'm going to have. I'm going to have four rolls of Kodak Tri X in the bag. I'm going to have a 50 mil, a 28 mil, an 80 mil ready to go. And I'm going to be sitting on the, the tube heading towards Venice beach with my 35mil Nikon FB around my neck. And that's just my happy space. If I've got the Hasselblad in the bag too with a roll of film, well, that might be useful if, you know, if I'm shooting something vertical, if I'm near a building where the vertical extra height is a, is a big plus. But no, I'm gonna have my film camera with me. I'm going to be developing a role that night in the hotel room. [00:50:26] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:50:27] Speaker D: At 9:00 in the evening. Because labs, labs in America are a real hassle because the place is so big you've got to travel an hour to get the lab. So forget that. So I'm going to be processing using just black and white chemicals in the hotel. So premeditated. If I'm traveling across country through Nevada, you know, say so from LA to Vegas and then Vegas to New Mexico, I'm probably going to have the 6 by 9 Fuji because it's a landscape camera and it's a, a, it's a big landscape area. You know, there's not a lot of vertical height, there's a lot of flatness. So it's very South Australian. I'm used to it. And you're going to have mountains that are, you know, stark, that, you know that you can like, like we have here in the Flinders Ranges, you know, that I can use my 35, use my 6 by 9 Fuji. So again, premeditated. I'll probably have the D700. Just in case I leave the lens cap on the. But I've all done it. [00:51:28] Speaker C: That's the question. So do you shoot if you're, if you're at a perfect scene, let's say you're traveling through the U.S. you're not coming back there anytime soon. Do you shoot essentially backup shots with the D700 regardless, or would you only do that if you were like, oh, I just, I'm not sure what's happening with the film so I'll take some. Or do you do it every time? [00:51:47] Speaker D: I would only use the D700 as a backup if it was low light and I was using longer than normal exposures with my film cameras. And if I was, if I was hand holding, you know, because you're locked into an ISO when you're shooting film and I wasn't sure that the hand holding was not going to give a little bit of blur. That wasn't what I want. Then I would shoot digital as a backup. But if I'm shooting in plentiful light, you know, sunny 16s. No, I'm not going to shoot the D700. [00:52:16] Speaker C: Okay. You don't. Yeah. You don't whip it out and say, I'll just, I'll just get one just in case something goes wrong. In case I leave the lens cap on. [00:52:22] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:52:23] Speaker A: Trust in the process. Yeah, you've got to trust in the process. Trust in your skills, the camera, the film, that you've ticked all the boxes in prepping the film. [00:52:31] Speaker D: Yeah, all of that stuff. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:34] Speaker D: You're shooting a lot of roles, you start to not worry about those things. Because you're doing it so routinely. [00:52:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:52:42] Speaker D: You know. Yeah. You're going to have the. It's almost a reflex action and you're not worried, you know that. Yeah. It's muscle memory. That's it. That's the word. It's the visual memory and muscle memory. Yeah. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Justin, I think that you might have been beaten by Alex in terms of the amount of gear he travels with. [00:52:59] Speaker C: Well, that was another question I wanted to ask is. Yeah, so, so what, what do you take to the States also, Greg? I took one camera to the US for three months. One camera. [00:53:08] Speaker A: What did you take to the river? Everything. [00:53:12] Speaker C: I threw the whole bag in the car. But what did you take to Bright? [00:53:15] Speaker B: He had a van. [00:53:16] Speaker C: Where did I go to? Oh, of course, I took all the gear to be photography festival. [00:53:21] Speaker A: I just, you know, you like to hassle me. [00:53:24] Speaker C: I take less gear than you do. You have to. You take little lenses and stuff. I didn't even take those. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Shut up. [00:53:32] Speaker C: So I would, Yeah. I would like to know, though. So you go to the States, you've obviously got an itinerary planned and I can, I can, I can. What am I trying to say? I feel your pain of traveling in the US because it's not necessarily the clock is ticking, it's the wallet is ticking. Every day. Every day that we were there was like. It was like a dagger through my heart of buying food and, and everything. It's so expensive at the moment. [00:54:03] Speaker D: Yeah. You know, there was a time in the 80s, my dad went to a conference in Miami and I came when my mum came as well and everything was a dollar. You know, you could buy a burger and a Coke and, you know, taxi ride with a buck. Everything was a buck. But that was 35 years ago. Now America's very different. They've had the inflation crisis that we've had, plus the fact that our dollar is so weak versus theirs, means that, you know, that the clock is ticking, the wallet is ticking. And so you've got to find ways to, you know, mitigate, know, the huge expense that traveling across America entails. You know, I want to know. [00:54:40] Speaker C: Do you want to know what our food strategy was? It might come in handy if you get stuck, if you run out of money. [00:54:45] Speaker D: Did you just go and buy a whole lot of stuff at like a 711 and just live on that for a week? [00:54:49] Speaker C: No, no, no, no, no, no. Because we, we try not to eat the worst food ever, but this was still pretty bad. Go to. You go to a Walmart. [00:54:57] Speaker D: Yep. [00:54:58] Speaker C: You get a fresh roast chicken, which I'm sure are injected with all sorts of stuff, but we couldn't worry about that. It was food. So you get fresh roast chicken, hot, a giant bag of corn chips, and they actually have some really good fresh salsa. And that was, that's a meal that's like, that's, that's a, that's a really good meal for two people with a lot of calories for not too much money. And other than that, it was just like survive. [00:55:25] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, my partner Kate, she, she became very adept at knowing exactly how much to spend in order to, you know, not spend $100 per meal as you were driving across, you know, state. States that, you know, most people wouldn't know much about. And you know, economically you'd think that'd be a bit cheaper than California and New York, such as Oklahoma. But no, unfortunately, all states are expensive. The Midwest, the South, the towns that, you know, that are really kind of struggling, you know, with one shot. I mean, it just, it's amazing how America has changed since, since those days in the 80s when we went last time where it was a bucket meal and everything was a buck. [00:56:07] Speaker C: Not now a bit conscious of time. [00:56:10] Speaker A: Because you've only got a few minutes. [00:56:14] Speaker D: I've got another for another half an hour. I've got a. I'm in Adelaide time so I've got to leave it. I've got to leave at 10 Adelaide time so I can keep going. [00:56:25] Speaker C: All right. [00:56:26] Speaker A: Got a couple of questions in your chat. [00:56:27] Speaker C: Yeah, let's do it. [00:56:28] Speaker A: Let's bring up one. We've got one from Rick Nelson. So Rick asks, do you have a daily carry camera even when not traveling? So do you always carry a camera with you? What is it? [00:56:39] Speaker D: Yes, I, I am one of those people that probably feels like they're missing an arm or a leg if I don't have a camera on me at all time. So. So I think that camera would be the Nikon FE 35 mil camera. That's nice and small with a 28 mil lens. You know, I can basically fit that in my pocket. It's not very comfortable in the pocket, but you know, I can have that on me all the time. And I guess at the end of the day you've always got the mobile phone. And you know, my old Samsung S20, I think this, this is here S20 plus, it shoots a decent raw file. So, you know, yeah, I do, I do either have a mobile phone or a Nikon FP on me at all times. [00:57:21] Speaker C: Well, that kind of rolls straight into a question I try and ask most people, which is the world is ending, the zombies are here, it's full zombie apocalypse. And you can grab one camera and one lens to document the, the demise of civilization. What do you grab? Is it that? [00:57:41] Speaker D: No, it'll be the Hasselblad 501C with a, with an 80 mil prime. [00:57:47] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good. [00:57:49] Speaker D: That gets you through most situations. I've found that camera to be incredibly resilient. You can even shoot sort of two stops under and rescue it in the developing stage, you know, and so the shots might be grainy of zombies devouring, you know, shopping centers, but at least you've got a big, bigger format. So 6 by 6 centimeter and you know, it's robust. [00:58:16] Speaker A: Double as a weapon. [00:58:17] Speaker D: Yeah, probably you could. Yeah, yeah. I mean. [00:58:23] Speaker C: Isn'T it a waste? Is it a waist level viewfinder though? And, and, and they're the ones that are like backwards. Isn't that dangerous when you're looking down and you just, then you trying to line this thing up and then there's just, just there's zombies. [00:58:36] Speaker B: But then you can look up as well. You can just look up. [00:58:38] Speaker D: It can be, it can be waist high. But you know, there's an attachment that can make it into a sports finder. So I don't, I use the sports finder even when I'm doing street photography where I can, I can see waist high is very useful. I, the, the laterally inverted image tends to be a bit distracting. So I, I just use a sports finder. And it does give you quite a bit of protection. You know, if a zombie were to throw a, you know, a flat screen television at you, you can probably, you know, it protects you. It's a huge camera. You know, you feel safe, you know, you feel safe behind, behind the house. It's like a Volvo, it's a Swedish thing, you know. But they're good, you know. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Yeah, that's perfect. [00:59:21] Speaker C: I think that's the best answer we've had so far to that question. It's really good. [00:59:26] Speaker A: David has joined us. David's in the Bay Area. San Francisco, San Fran. [00:59:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:59:31] Speaker A: David's a street photographer with probably more cameras than Justin. They're all film, Almost all film. Sorry, just back from a city walk, but I've been listening on my phone. Question for Alex. What do you do with your chemicals when you're done and you just answered your question and 35 mil camera choice? Not sure. [00:59:53] Speaker D: The chemicals I use Kodak HC110 syrup, which is a one shot, one shot developer. So that goes straight down the drain and safely with the fixer. You're basically retaining the fixer for 8 to 10 goes and then you're taking it to the lab. And what the lab does is they have a silver retention process where they collect silver. And I always think they actually pay for the end of year Christmas party with the silver. You know, they can dispose of it and make some money out of it. So I don't put it in the backyard. Fixer is, is quite potent. You know, if you put fixer down the drain, you, you'll get. The local water authorities eventually will get onto you because you know, silver is a heavy metal and it's coming out into the street. So got to be, got to be careful. You can, you can, you know, I have actually put it into the dirt, but the tree that was there looks very silver now. It has actually changed color. I did it as a bit of a test and I have actually photographed the, the tree over three years and it's looking not well. Yeah, the silver has actually has actually yielded I think in some way. So yeah, be be aware of the chemical, you know, the, the drive chain with, you know, it's, you're, you're using quite potent chemicals. Nothing like the old days with the daguerreotypes in the 1890s and so, you know, where people had to suit up and with some of the arcane processes where mercury and cadmium were at play. It's not like that. But it's not 100 organic. It's, you know, it's, it's. Yeah. [01:01:34] Speaker A: And just a follow up point on that from David. He used the F3 and 28 TI today on his street walk. [01:01:42] Speaker D: Yeah, nice, nice camera. The Nikon F3, of course, the culminating with the F6 I think was there for final film camera before digital. But yeah, any of the F series FMS fes, you know, great, great cameras. Ah, there we go. Yeah. Beautiful. [01:02:00] Speaker B: F5, isn't it? Or is it F6? [01:02:02] Speaker C: F5. Yeah, it's this thing. You could beat a zombie's brain in with this thing. It's rock solid. [01:02:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, isn't there a nick on a Nikon where a Vietnam war journalist was protected by the, by the chassis of the thing, you know, the bullet caught into the Nikon and, and saved his life essentially, you know. And did it keep working? I, I think it didn't, but, but you wouldn't care. [01:02:33] Speaker B: He kept working. That was the point, I think. [01:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:35] Speaker D: Oh yeah. Well, I don't know. [01:02:37] Speaker C: I'm gonna look. [01:02:38] Speaker D: It's something for camera buffs to find out that, that camera. If you do an image search. You know, I think I saw it in relation to Kubrick documentary. Maybe one of his cameras or he bought a camera. It's. It's something for Sleuth to find out about the Nikon that saved a journalist life. [01:02:57] Speaker B: I think David's already got. [01:02:59] Speaker C: It was an F2. Yeah. Don McCullen was the name of the guy. Hang on, I'll bring it up. [01:03:06] Speaker A: There we go. [01:03:08] Speaker C: I'm on it. [01:03:10] Speaker B: David's our very own Google. [01:03:11] Speaker C: While I pull this up. Just, just. You do realize that earlier you made Jim's day when you said that you shoot with the D700. Yeah, Jim. That's Jim's version of an AU Falcon. He put a lot of kilometers on a D700 back in the day. [01:03:27] Speaker D: It's just a tank. I've dropped mine a couple of times and I've thought sort of in a liberated sense. Well, now. Now I have to get a new camera. But unfortunately it survived. You know, it survived the drop and I've had to keep using it because I don't have an excuse to replace it. But, yeah, it is a tank. It's, you know, no, no video. You know, it's just. Just stills. And I've, you know, I love that thing and I think it'll. It's one of those things that'll always have, always have. You know, no matter how hard I try and get rid of it, it'll still persist. Oh, there it is. That's the one that copped a bullet. [01:04:05] Speaker C: That's. That's apparently the camera that saved Don McCullen's life, the Nikon F. Wow. I would. I would read the whole story out to everyone, but I think you have to be a subscriber to this website to read the story. So. Sorry, I shan't be doing that. [01:04:20] Speaker D: But, yeah, I think the Pinzer prism saved him. I reckon it caught the clip, the top of the camera, I reckon. [01:04:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it looks like. [01:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's hard to. Yeah. [01:04:30] Speaker B: If you are. If you do need an Upgrade, Alex, the D850, if you wanted to keep with the DSLR, that would be a. Still a good robust camera, but obviously it's. I guess. Yeah. What, a decade newer, probably. [01:04:45] Speaker D: So the 850. Yeah. And that. That had video, didn't it? I think is that it did. [01:04:49] Speaker B: It wasn't. [01:04:50] Speaker C: It's it limit. [01:04:52] Speaker B: It's good. We don't use it, but it's not. [01:04:55] Speaker C: Yeah, no, you. [01:04:57] Speaker B: You would. [01:04:57] Speaker C: If you would go to Mirrorless, if you were going to shoot hybrid video as well, you would definitely go to Mirrorless. But if you. Yeah, if you wanted the best DS, even made the 850s. Is that for sure? [01:05:08] Speaker D: Interesting. [01:05:09] Speaker C: Yeah. Beautiful camera. [01:05:11] Speaker D: Smaller than the 700 or about the same size, I reckon. [01:05:15] Speaker C: Even bigger, maybe even tiny bit bigger. [01:05:17] Speaker B: But, yeah, it's. It's a good size, like. [01:05:20] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, all right. [01:05:22] Speaker B: Because the 700 wasn't huge. You know, when you compare it to like a D3 or something like that. [01:05:28] Speaker D: Of course, yeah, there's those ones too. Yeah, the. So early digital ones. Yeah. [01:05:34] Speaker A: Alex, what's on the cards for you next? Now, this afternoon, you're off to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, but I mean, broader, bigger projects. What have you got on the cards? What are you planning? [01:05:47] Speaker D: It's all about America at the moment. So I mentioned the three trips in the last year. I would say that constitutes about half of the project. So, you know, I do projects in long form over a year or two, and I think many, many photographic artists do that. So, you know, the piecemeal trips will continue and, you know, at the end of that, there'll be a show somewhere, I think a local show. We're in. We're in early discussions with a big venue here in adelaide for a 2006 launch. And so that might give me two more trips back to America to feel like I've actually done justice to the series. The series is really about American decline. You know, we are. We are in an era of empire decline, most clearly personified by America. I think, at the moment. You know, where will that lead? Is it a collapse? Is it a civil war? You know, there's all sorts of different outcomes that may occur. You know, I love the place, but I do feel that, you know, that we're seeing something major, you know, something worth photographing and emotional. And, you know, I mean, we have our problems here in Australia. If I walk into the city, I'm going to see 40 or 50 maybe homeless people. But if you walk into downtown Los Angeles, you're going to see 20 or 30,000 homeless people. And, you know, if you go to the Tenderloin in San Francisco, you're going to see Dante's Hell. You know, these are the things that are going on at the moment. So, you know, major problems. You know, I don't think the camera should revel in this environment. I think it's incumbent on the artist to be humble and to document and make sense of it all, rather than to, you know, come in with polemics and invective. You know, I leave that to the Facebook warriors, you know, the memes and stuff about America and Trump. I'm not interested. I'm interested in the human. The human aspect of it and to be close to it at pivotal times, such as last year at the election, I was in New Orleans and traveling through the spine of America, through the Deep south, which, you know, I learned a lot about. The curiosity of wanting to know what goes on in a certain place is, you know, a big impetus to make art. And you know what? I just love it. What I discovered about the south was completely different to what I had learned about the South. You know, reading the New York Times or Fox News, you know, the. The polemics. If you're talking polemics of left and right, the actual truth is, is. Is neither of those two things. So, you know, that that's what I'm doing it for. It's purely to learn and to be curious and to understand the place. And, you know, at the end of that, there'll be an exhibition, potentially a book. But like I said, books take forever and they're so hard to do. So, you know, I think physical exhibition is, you know, key. [01:08:43] Speaker C: I love the. I love the overall concept, the fact that there's something like something's happening, something's changing, and it needs to be documented. But it opens the question as to sort of, what. What is it? You know, what is happening? We're not 100% sure where it's going, but it's going somewhere. Yeah. And I love that you're tackling it, despite. Because in my mind, I would be too scared. I'd be like, oh, someone in the US Will do a far better job because they're there and they're, you know, they're there every day, so they can do so much more work. And. And so that would, you know, that would be, I guess, a limitation in my brain. I could never do that. That's for somebody who's on the ground, you know, 365 days a year. So I really admire the fact that you're taking it on and you can put your own perspective on that, documenting this. This process and this time in history. But what I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about is the specific planning for the photography side of. Of this project. How much planning do you do or do. Do you do planning around your trip and the locations, but the photography evolves on the ground. Once you're there or are you literally trying to plan in, in more precise. I want to go to this location to take photographs or are you going. I want to go to this city and immerse myself in it for a number of days and then see what photographs come out of it. Like, how does that process work for you? [01:10:12] Speaker D: It's, it's almost always both. It's a combination of geographic planning. So the overall project is I'm going to go from west to east. So that's the first thing. So how do you get there? So the second thing is what interests me about this time in American decline and how can that be visually represented? So the most obvious answer to that is ghost towns. And so if you travel through a state like Nevada, you are going to see everywhere the vestiges, the artifacts of the 20th century, the silver rush era, as it were, for Nevada was built on silver. You will find towns that are completely deserted which spoke of better times. So that's a very easy way in, is to, you know, to sort of find a metaphor, decline, you know, of decline and, and then make it so, you know, be very, be very linear, be very sort of obvious. So you go to a, you go to a ghost town and you, you get every visual metaphor for decline that you can think of. You know, you find old shops, you find old gas stations, you find one person living there, you find, you know, vestiges of a, a brighter past rather than a brighter future. So do those easy things, the harder things to do with people. So if you want to, you know, if I'm wanting to photograph gun culture, I'm going to organize that. So I'm going to ring people and, you know, maybe go on Craigslist. I've done that and, you know, put a question out to the hive mind. Does anyone know, you know, gun crazy people who are comfortable to talk about it and, you know, who won't be judged and that kind of thing. So when I got to Los Angeles, you know, I knew of these two Armenian women who were right into guns and owned guns and they hired guns out and they hired guns to movies and they had fake guns and prop guns and everything. [01:12:10] Speaker A: Wow. [01:12:11] Speaker D: Went to their place, having organized a meeting, and, you know, we chatted for an hour about Armenian politics, you know, and the Kardashians and all this sort of stuff before we got to the business of shooting them, holding guns. And even when we were doing that, they were talking about Hollywood, you know, movies. They liked Al Pacino that met in a lift. So you sort of double up and you, not only do you get the thing you, what you came for, the guns, you get their views on popular culture and their views on politics and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And so, you know, if you're listening, you can, you can really do a lot in a day. And it wasn't even a day, it was more like half a day. And we got a, you know, superb wee meeting. My partner, I, Kate, were there for half a day and I shot a whole lot of stuff with them with guns and without guns. And, you know, I got, I got a pretty good view of their, you know, take on guns. And you know, so I got images that I was happy with. And if I hadn't organized it, if I just sort of expect to meet people with guns, it isn't going to happen. Because even in places like Texas, you don't see people walking around with guns. They may have guns hid, you know, hidden, they may have open carry. Some states call it where you can actually walk around visibly with a gun, but you're not going to find it. You actually have to work harder. You've got to, you know, you've got to preempt and, and, and meet people and talk and then you're going to get what you're after. Just walking around won't do it. Occasionally you get lucky with something like, you know, hillbilly culture. For example, in Arkansas, the Ozarks, you know, I happened to pull into a service station, a gas station, and saw a pair of, you know, sort of check shirt wearing, you know, overall wearing, gun toting, Trump supporting, you know, no teeth, having, you know, sort of God, God fearing hillbillies, you know, and this is, I don't use the word pejoratively. This is the word that they would use about themselves in a kind of ironic and humorous maneuver, you know, to reclaim the word. So, you know, and we got on fine. And you know, if you, if you approach these people in the right way, I not by conforming to a sort of a Netflix stereotype and if you, you know, understand, you know, where they're coming from, you're going to have a chance of filming them. So, you know, next is, I'm back at their place and they repair cars, they're auto repairers and we're filming them just talking and, you know, sort of spitballing, you know, and it was great. And you know, these people, you know, what you understand when you speak to, you know, I'll use the word again, hillbillies, because they use it what you, you start to Understand is the major part that religion plays in their lives. And how religion informs American life far more than it does here in Australia and Western Europe, you know, is a. It is a key thing. And, you know, they will use religion in any way they can to, you know, talk about themselves, talk about their family, talk about where they were born and to, you know, to justify things that, you know, I may not agree with and that I might find reprehensible. But, you know, this is a. This is an honor to be able to shoot these things. And so, yeah, your role is not to be a journalist. And, you know, this is where photojournalism can differ from fine art photography, is that you are not beholden to an editorial bias. You know, I'm not there on behalf of the New York Times or Fox News or Murdoch. I'm there as Alex Frain. So I don't have to parrot any lines and stereotypes that, you know, that readers may find easy to read and enjoyable for you. And binaries, you know, so much more subtle. When you're working as an artist, you, you know, you. You're not editorially bound, which is liberating, but you're also. That doesn't mean that you have the freedom to be an. As a photographer as well. [01:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, true. [01:16:19] Speaker D: Take photos under false premises and then, you know, to then make fun of people by posting them on Instagram. You know, this is not the way to go. [01:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And how when you're, you know, you're making these trips and you're obviously shooting a lot of film, you're either processing them that night or later. What steps are you taking to document these moments other than taking photos? Are you taking notes? Do you keep a notebook? Are you documenting parts of the discussions that you have with people? [01:16:53] Speaker D: I think it's all the photo. The photograph does all those things, you know, so once you've done the processing and the scanning, you know, instantly you're. You have an impression of the time and it will always remind you of that time and how you got to meet these two people in the Ozarks and, you know, what an adventure that was. You know, I don't really take notes. I mean, I have my mobile phone, which, you know, occasionally I just use as a sort of a documentary tool. Yeah, but I think the process of being a photographer and one of the upsides to the art form is to. Is that you do all those vertically integrated things. You're creating a memory of a memory, in a sense, a memory of a memory, and that is that photography, a Memory of a memory. I don't know, maybe, you know, you are doing many things at once, which, you know, there are limitations to the medium in that there is just the frame and that's all you have. Unlike a film which has story and music and design. But there are other things that expand, you know, expand with the art form. Such as, you know, this idea that you, it burns itself into your brain. The image, you know, the image of the woman, the girl being napalmed in Vietnam. Who can forget that? And would it work as a film? Not as much. I think it. The power of photograph is. Is all, you know, that, that being. [01:18:14] Speaker C: Said, and I know it's probably not, well, not, not possible, but it would certainly change the nature of your. Probably your photography and your interactions with people. But man, this would make a. This is a YouTube series I would watch. You know, if someone, if someone was just following you around day to day while you're, while you're having these conversations and making these photos and then, and then developing them at night, I would watch those videos. But the extra presence would obviously change, probably change everything, having, you know, more cameras pointed at people and all that sort of stuff. But. [01:18:48] Speaker A: And it probably removes the intimacy that Alex develops between himself and the subject. [01:18:53] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a funny thing because so many times I've sort of wished that there was that third person, you know, that was actually documenting the documenting and you know, having watched quite a lot of vlogs and enjoyed, enjoyed watching them. I, you know, I, I think I wish that prop, you know, that that can be done. I mean that if that's an interesting thing because perhaps the final trip could be done that way. So I could actually get a grant or apply for some funding or you know, find an angelic investor to fund someone to come along on the trip and to document the documentation of, you know, the series. And you know, I. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Because I think it's just given me the idea that if this is my last year of America and I, you know, I always hope that I will go back more and more. It's addictive. America, you know, that, that I should actually do that. So, yeah, that's something I'll just sit down and keep in the back of my mind. [01:19:59] Speaker A: Would you document it in film or in stills? [01:20:03] Speaker D: Well, interesting. That's another interesting question because my favorite short film is the great La Jete, which is Chris Marquez Cannes Film Festival award winning short film, which Bruce Willis then did 12 Monkeys based on La Jete, but the original La Jete if you Find it on YouTube, Chris Marquette is a. Is a short film made up entirely of stills and it's entirely about the end of the world world and a nuclear accident that occurs. And it is one of the greatest short films of all time. And I've always thought that, you know, perhaps rather than having someone with their Canon 5 5D doing video, you know, is that what it was back then? Or maybe now It's a Sony A7 rather than having video actually have another still, a journalistic still photographer taking photos of me taking photos and putting together a montage in a sort of a narrative sense like La Jete, you know, one of the greatest pieces of filmmaking of all time. [01:21:03] Speaker C: If I could get over there, I would do that. If there's one thing that I'm found that I'm reasonable at, it's taking photos of other photographers doing their thing while I hide in the. In the background. Exactly, exactly. No, I do. I think it'd be amazing. Have you ever, even if you couldn't get a grant for like a full on film production, but have you ever watched on YouTube the, the channels like people like Peter Santanello that, that, that wanders around America with his GoPro and they're like hour long videos that. Yeah, like that style of one where it's like, hey, it doesn't have to have a high budget of it. It just needs a person that can do the job. But it does. You can use it. He uses a GoPro with a couple. [01:21:48] Speaker D: The images are amazing. And I think I saw his stuff that he did. Oklahoma, ghost towns. You know, guy got ideas from, you know, basically an old depression era dust bowl, you know, images in Oklahoma, which I spent time in last trip. So yeah, there is that scope, you know, especially in America because you can go into a town and have free reign. You know, you can go behind buildings and you'll see stuff and take photographs and there's just no one around. And you know, that happens a little bit here in Australia, but not as much. I think in Australia when I'm out photographing landscapes and towns and ghost towns, I always feel that there's a pair of eyes on you and like possums, you know, sort of hiding and watching. Yeah, yeah, they're kind of, I think it's a colonial, post colonial sort of chip on the shoulder where in America there is absolute free reign with cameras. I think that's also because Americans half think that if you photograph them they're going to be famous American psyche, that somehow they're going to have 15 minutes of fame or become a star. And if, you know, if they're photographed, that might just happen. So there's a. It's. That's why I sort of say that America is addictive because it's photograph. It's a photographer's paradise that you just don't have here. You know, walking around, doing street work here and you know, jetty photography and, you know, filming small towns, you're. I just always feel a little bit of apprehension, which I just don't feel in America. [01:23:29] Speaker C: So, you know, it's, it's interesting because I've had that exact same feeling and. But I've often wondered whether it's because I grew up in this, this culture, I'm more aware. But then when I go to other cultures, even a culture as similar as the US but is still quite different from us, you, you kind of almost like switch all those things off. You know, you're not looking for all these signals. You know, when I went to Vietnam, it's just like I just try to be respectful. But other than that, it's, it's all good, you know, Whereas in Australia I'm constantly thinking, oh, this person's going to be doing this or that. And it is maybe because I know too much, you know what I mean? So I'm overthinking it all. [01:24:11] Speaker D: I don't think so. I think there is an absolute difference in the cultures of post colonial Australia with America. I think there's a completely different through line there. And I've tried to sort of decipher what it is about Australians that make them a little bit averse to photography or, you know, and being grabbed and, you know, you having to be careful, much more careful in Australia, as a photographer, I haven't found the answer yet. It, you know, it may be down to something like, you know, the, the slaves who were freed and who were very suspicious of authority or someone who wielded a camera as it might be wielding a weapon or wielding power by having a camera that Australians are sort of scared of that perhaps. I do think it's to do with something colonial. Whereas America, remember post colonially, they were puritans who were actually thrown out of a place, Europe, and settled in America. And so they were used to sort of being victified, you know, in that moment of fleeing Europe and going to America. And of course there's thousands of years of pre colonial settlement in America. That is a fascinating topic in itself. I mean, one thing I still can't get used to in America is say driving around, you know, say Nevada and seeing reservations. That's, that is confronting and political and I also think part of this series of decline, you know, that's different to Australia. You know that, that's very different. You know, you know we have, we have similar things in South Australia. We have the Apylands, but we don't have reservations with mayors and a police force and a casino as they do in America. It was a big eye opener for how differently our nations have handled. [01:26:18] Speaker A: Oh, we've lost your audio. [01:26:20] Speaker D: Someone ringing. So, yeah, I, I, I think there is a big difference culturally between the two countries in a post colonial sense and how that informs walking around, filming and taking photos. [01:26:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is interesting. I, you know, I'm a street photographer and travel photographer and when I was in Japan doing street work, other than the fact that I'm a big guy and I've got a big orange beard, what was on back then, it's gray now, you know, people just ignored the fact that I had a camera in my hand. So many people in Japan were walking around doing street photography or just carrying a big ass cannon with a zoom on their, on their hip. You know, so many people were and no one really noticed it. But in here in Australia, yeah, almost every time I went on a street walk last night and someone walked out of a pub out of Young and Jackson's because it's a beautiful, you know, it's got glass tiles, nice reflections and good light and some guy walked out and then sort of followed me for a bit and said what are you doing? What are you taking photos of? You know, it. Yeah, that happens almost every, every excursion. Now. [01:27:29] Speaker D: That'S uniquely Australian I think, I don't like it, but I can't change it. What I, I think there might be a future photographic series in understanding that and deciphering it and sympathizing with it in order to create meaning. I think that, yeah, I, I think that we have to use that, that reticence somehow. I think in Australia we have to come to grips with it. In the Internet age especially, everyone's paranoid and, and, and know it and therefore not fear it anymore. I think that's what we have to do. [01:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it is an interesting, I think Australia is a bit, I think Australians, part of it is Australians are a bit sensitive to not technology but surveillance. Yeah, we all embraced it. We talked about this last week. Doorbell cams, dash cams, street cameras, shop cameras, atm. There's just cameras everywhere. But we pick up even me carrying A small Fujifilm, you know, point and shoot. [01:28:38] Speaker D: Yep. [01:28:39] Speaker A: I get challenged. Like I, for the most part, I look like a dad as a tourist, you know, I'm walking around with this little point shoot. It's not even a serious looking camera, but I still get challenged. [01:28:49] Speaker C: You guys might laugh at me. I didn't realize this, but there's, there's at the supermarket I go to now. It used to. When you like scan something and then you'd sit it on the thing and it would go by the weight of the item or whatever. [01:29:02] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:29:02] Speaker C: And then, and then there's a new one that doesn't have that way thing. And I was going through that and I was like scanning my stuff and then it said, you know, person required, like they come over and scope it out. And then she scanned her thing and watched a video of me scanning my stuff. [01:29:20] Speaker B: Camera at the top. [01:29:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:29:23] Speaker C: I didn't. I, I mean, I, I mean it's their store, whatever. But I didn't realize. And then. So the reason it called her over is because, yeah, it, it saw there was some anomaly with the way I was scanning things and obviously thought, oh, you might have stolen something. I was like, I don't like that. [01:29:40] Speaker A: The gates at the end. The gates at the end have cameras and sensors. [01:29:43] Speaker C: Well, they have cameras too. [01:29:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:29:45] Speaker A: They detect whether. And they'll shut if they think that you've nicked something. [01:29:49] Speaker D: Wow. [01:29:50] Speaker B: There's also a camera, like right in front of your face too, Justin. [01:29:53] Speaker D: Yeah, years ago I used to. [01:29:56] Speaker C: I'm gonna bring stickers. [01:30:00] Speaker A: Of course. [01:30:01] Speaker D: I used to be a cleaner years ago, and, you know, we're talking student days, and I'd go around to these horrible sort of wealthy people's mansions and, and vacuum and clean. And there was one particular guy who I. I just knew he was strange. And, you know, this is sort of early days of surveillance in houses. And in the end he sort of sat me down and he said, well, did you know that I've actually been watching you for the last three months, cleaning in every room? And I thought, oh God, no, I didn't know that. And he said, well, I just don't think you're cleaning hard enough. And I've got all the evidence and if you want me to show you where I don't think you've been cleaning enough, I will be happy to show you that. And I just thought, what an asshole, you know, What a dickhead. [01:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:30:49] Speaker D: So, yeah, there is this sort of surveillance fetish, I think, which, you know, people sort of sit at Work and during the lunch break they'll go online and look at their door, their doorbell cam, you know, and. [01:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah, cameras. [01:31:03] Speaker D: Yeah, baby cameras. All this. There's cameras. And it's. I think, I wonder if it's a malaise of some sort that people do that kind of stuff. I think it's silly. Yeah, but yeah, like I said, there is a, there's a room for a series there. Surveillance culture in the modern era, you know, sort of do a series of photos as if taken from surveillance cams of people in maybe compromising, you know, artists, actors, of course, doing things that are, you know, that are somehow fetishized. Yeah, interesting. Another one. Add to the list. I better get going. I've got to shoot. [01:31:39] Speaker C: I was gonna say. Yeah, you got, you got work to do. [01:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, just before you do head off, Alex, just on behalf of the Camera Live and the team at Lucky Straps, thank you so much for your time this morning. Fascinating and inspirational and pleasure. As a street photographer, I've, I've learned a lot, I think, just listening to you. And for anyone that's watching or listening along at home, don't forget to check out Alex's book, Distance and Desire. It's at Wakefield Press. Links are in the comments and we'll also put it in the description. And yeah, we hopefully one day we can have you back on in the not too distant future and we can get an update on, on the series, the American Series. I think it's fascinating and I think it's timely and, and I think there's, there's going to be a lot of interest in that. So we wish you all the very best. [01:32:31] Speaker D: Thanks, Greg, Justin and Jim, I'll speak to you soon. [01:32:34] Speaker C: Thanks. [01:32:35] Speaker D: Have a great show. [01:32:37] Speaker B: Thank you. [01:32:38] Speaker A: See ya. [01:32:40] Speaker C: Wow. So cool. Yeah, very cool. [01:32:44] Speaker B: Amazing work. [01:32:45] Speaker C: Yeah, I was, I can't believe how many images are in that book as well. I'm excited to get it now. Yeah, that's very cool. [01:32:52] Speaker B: And I think looking through it and then him explaining that he had a, like a designer, I guess, put it through, put it together. [01:33:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's also cool. I was just curator him laying it out. [01:33:04] Speaker B: Yeah, everything. [01:33:05] Speaker C: And then when he said that, I was like, oh, that's kind of the joke. Imagine handing, handing all of your work to someone and then, then just they make a book out of it. [01:33:11] Speaker B: You're like, yeah, but that's what proper like, you know, shows and, and exhibitions have is they have a professional curator who's just literally just sifting through because, you know, I guess as an artist, we're emotionally attached to something and yeah, it just might not be the best image, but it means something to us. Oh, I've got to have that in there. Like how often we done it with sneak peeks, Justin. Well, that's got to go in. And maybe it's not the. Maybe it's not the best shot. [01:33:38] Speaker C: Rarely is, but we get attached to it and we love it. Yeah, we are quick. Quickly, Rick Nelson says, wonderful show. Thank you, Alex, for the insight. It was a wonderful show. I was very excited. [01:33:48] Speaker A: Thanks. [01:33:49] Speaker C: By the conversation. But Rick, you mentioned you work in a camera store. I saw that in the comment up here. You said, where is it? I see a bit of a trend of people chasing the newest tech each year. I guess I work in a camera shop for context. Do you want to shout out what camera store it is in Brisbane? Where do you work? If you, if you want, you don't have to, you know, yourself on the Internet, but if it's a cool store and we'll come visit one day, let us know where it is. And road trip. Road trip. And he also said we're gonna have. [01:34:20] Speaker A: To do an Australian tour. Sorry, Justin. We'll have to do an Australian tour at some stage. [01:34:24] Speaker C: I mean, we could start with an east coast tour maybe, but this is the thing. So I was looking at that work in that book and I'm like, yeah, I could, I could enjoy taking these kind of images, you know, crossing the Nullarbor and like that. That would be fun. That would be. And then I was like, you know what? I need a GFX to shoot that stuff, otherwise it just won't be worth it. I'm kidding. No, seeing the variety of imagery and I was actually, when I was scrolling through that. The book, I'm excited to get it in print, but scrolling through the PDF, the ones that stood out to me the most, you know, it was interesting because I thought maybe I need to buy a medium format film camera. Obviously. No, they were all 35 mil film were all the ones that, that when I saw them I was like, I love that shot. And I'm sure it's got nothing to do with. Well, maybe he'd probably say it does have a lot to do with the medium that he chose for that shot or whatever. But yeah, it just shows that, you know, medium format's not necessarily better or worse or whatever. It's the photographer making the image and yeah, you know, doing the work. [01:35:30] Speaker A: Yep. Nick's replied. Nick, sorry. Rick, Rick, Rick. Thank you. Bentley's Bentley's camera house in Kandale. Would be great to meet you all sometime. [01:35:42] Speaker C: Nice. [01:35:43] Speaker A: You're, you're, you're, what do you call it? Like a sister store in Croydon. Camera house. [01:35:49] Speaker D: Croydon. [01:35:49] Speaker A: They're celebrating their 40th anniversary this weekend I think or next weekend. They're having a bit of a mini Beef up event apparently. [01:35:56] Speaker D: Are they? [01:35:57] Speaker A: There's something going on with BFOP Beef up offering limited tickets. [01:36:03] Speaker C: I should know because I just. There was so much going on that weekend and I met some wonderful people from the camera house was drinking. It wasn't the beer, it was just the. I get once there's too many inputs of like new people it just all goes out the other side of my, my brain. Was it Croydon that were the camera house for? Be they. They were the one that was there. Yeah. They were great with Nigel. Yes, that's. [01:36:29] Speaker A: So the public service announcement. This is on the be. For those of you don't know, BFOP is the bright festival of photography that Justin and I went to last year and hopefully Jim's going to join us this year. [01:36:41] Speaker C: Yeah, except he's got a shoot right now. [01:36:43] Speaker B: I'll be looking, I'll be there for some of it for sure. [01:36:48] Speaker A: What have we got here? Croydon camera house is turning 40 this year and to help celebrate, Beef up has decided to host our own little in inverted commas special event. Kicking off in the city for a wild series of activities and with a stroke of luck landing us at Cameron Croydon House for the afternoon festivities. We can't take all 600 of you so you must register for a ticket. [01:37:10] Speaker B: Cool. [01:37:11] Speaker A: That only just popped up this morning. So little bfop, little mini BFOP event, a mini fop. They're kind of ushering, they're kind of ushering it under the radar because I, I, yeah, I don't know why. I guess they can't have everyone from B flop showing up because everyone's so desperate for B fob activities. [01:37:31] Speaker B: I think, I think you missed that Justin. A cat. What was it went vertically up the corner of which way? [01:37:37] Speaker A: Oh, that's Biscuit. Yeah, she's gonna cat new up. [01:37:40] Speaker B: It went up like vertically climbed up. [01:37:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:43] Speaker B: Curtain or something. [01:37:44] Speaker A: Long story short, no, it's a mattress. It's a queen size. I'm in my son's room in Brendan's room and he's about to get a queen size bed because it's our old mattress. We got a new one and but we haven't got the frame yet so it's leaning against the wall. And she uses it like a. Like a bloody climbing frame. [01:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Talking of camera house, I've hopefully got a new, new flash arriving hopefully today. [01:38:08] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, you bought the. The Godox. [01:38:11] Speaker B: Yep. Go to V1 Pro. [01:38:13] Speaker C: The round head. [01:38:14] Speaker B: The round. [01:38:15] Speaker A: That's the new one, isn't it? [01:38:16] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:38:16] Speaker B: And the pro's got like a little, a little sub flash. [01:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:21] Speaker B: Underneath. So when you do portrait. Portrait flash that like doesn't cut off half your frame because the flash is obviously over the lens. So it's directs it down a bit, I think. [01:38:38] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll check it out, I'll bring it up. [01:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's got a subflash. [01:38:41] Speaker B: To be fair, I didn't actually. I just. I think that's what I wanted and I didn't do a lot of. [01:38:46] Speaker C: What do they call it? [01:38:47] Speaker A: They call it a beauty light, don't they? [01:38:49] Speaker D: I don't know. [01:38:50] Speaker B: I didn't really read. I was just like, I'm gonna get the pro. I'm gonna get. [01:38:53] Speaker C: I was surprised that you purchased something without checking with me first. You're really evolved. [01:38:58] Speaker B: I wrote it in the comments. And now. [01:38:59] Speaker A: Kind of a control freak of you. [01:39:01] Speaker C: No, no, no, it's not. I don't control it. It's just. Jim. Jim just outsources his gear research to me. Usually he would just say, I need a new flash. [01:39:12] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't Google it, Greg. I don't go, what's the best flash for me? I go, hey, Justin. [01:39:17] Speaker A: Yep. [01:39:18] Speaker B: What do I get? And he goes, oh, well, I've, I've already researched this, Jimbo. [01:39:23] Speaker C: I don't think this. [01:39:24] Speaker A: Copious notes, Jimbo. [01:39:26] Speaker C: The subflash isn't for portrait mode on camera flash shooting. It's. No, no, it's for fill flash. If you point it, if you're bouncing off the roof, it gives you a little bit of fill. It's like instead of having a bounce card, it's going to give you some forward fill. You might find I'm about to have. [01:39:43] Speaker A: A seizure from that video. Oh, sorry. [01:39:46] Speaker C: Moving on. Okay. It's got, it's got modern charging, finally, USB C charging. That's what, like we used to have to do DIY our own stuff to be able to charge these things in our cars, but we figured that out. But now you've got USB C. That's, that's a big plus. It's fearless against time and speed. Fearless, yeah, fearless. [01:40:06] Speaker A: I've never seen that market employed for a piece of camera gear. [01:40:10] Speaker B: Actually, Justin, I can plug that into. I've already Got that power pack. [01:40:14] Speaker C: I've got one of those power packs. Or have you got mine? [01:40:17] Speaker B: Well, if it's, if it's the same plug, I can plug it into the old 360. [01:40:21] Speaker C: Oh yeah, it was, it was a 361. Yeah. [01:40:23] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:40:24] Speaker C: And I actually owned, I owned one of these power packs from before the 360s because you used to be able to use them to make other flashes recycle faster. But yeah, you'll be able to do that to get a boost. You probably never will. Oh look, you could look like this. It does that. [01:40:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, see this is my research now. Is, is working out. [01:40:47] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:40:47] Speaker C: You've already bought it. [01:40:49] Speaker B: Well, I haven't paid for it yet, I suppose. [01:40:52] Speaker C: Legacy of expertise. Check out these. Oh, they're going to give it, Give Greg a seizure. Yeah. Okay, so it's not, it's because it's still going to get the angle from. [01:41:01] Speaker B: The side to give you the shadow. [01:41:03] Speaker C: But it's for bouncing. So this is a very specific application, guys. When you're outside and you want to bounce your flash off the, the sky, you can also get, you can also get a little bit of fill flash from the front. [01:41:18] Speaker B: Maybe, maybe we should, we should be. [01:41:20] Speaker C: In charge of people's marketing photos. [01:41:23] Speaker B: I was, I was watching a reel the other day on Instagram. It was a photographer talking about on camera bouncing flash. And she's like, I only use it this way or I use it this way. And I'm like, well, what if there's a wall to your left or your right or like, why are you own? Like that's not the only way it goes. [01:41:38] Speaker C: It was the first. [01:41:38] Speaker B: Designed it with a 360 degree thing almost. [01:41:42] Speaker C: That was. We went to a Jerry Jonas workshop way back in the day and that was the first thing he was like, all right, you would all do this. Because he took us into a room that was like a. Oh no, what have I done? This is Greg. Hey, big Greg. He took us into a room that was like a traditional, I guess not so much the wedding venues we shoot in gym, but like a Melbourne kind of wedding venue. So lowish roof, wide room or whatever. And he's like, you guys will all just bounce off this roof and whatever. And then he's like, watch this. And just boom. Shot it at a wall that was 20 meters away. And he come back and he's like, look at that light. Isn't that better? And we were like, yeah, that's better. You're right, you're right. Jerry Ever since then, it's like you're. You're constantly looking for a place to bounce off that's going to give you sort of a nice directional quality of light instead of just off the roof. [01:42:30] Speaker B: I don't think I ever bounce it straight up either. [01:42:32] Speaker C: Or off. Off the sky. [01:42:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:42:35] Speaker C: Like this guy, the God of sky. Yeah. [01:42:38] Speaker B: Maybe it was cloudy. Maybe it was cloudy. [01:42:42] Speaker A: Maybe there was a low flying something duck. [01:42:44] Speaker C: Maybe. Maybe. What else is new? [01:42:49] Speaker A: What's a good purchase? What have you purchased this week, Justin, other than Alex Fran's book? [01:42:55] Speaker C: So I bought Alex Fran's book. I'm excited to get that, add it to my book collection. I keep. So we get things like the book and then he says, stu, like, oh, you know, a group, a group exhibition is a great idea. And you know what I keep thinking? I'm like, I would love to have a space in Bendigo that was like little gallery, photo books, maybe coffee, maybe not. I don't know. That's a whole nother thing that I don't. I don't want to have to make the coffees. [01:43:25] Speaker B: There's the lovely house. [01:43:26] Speaker C: No, no, no. I'm talking like permanent. You know, it's like, it's like the, the lucky office. It's, it's got, it's got photos on the, on the wall. Like you could rotate. [01:43:36] Speaker A: What about the mezzanine level at the factory to get rid of all that. [01:43:39] Speaker C: Junk and just go upstairs? Look, it's, it's, it's. [01:43:45] Speaker B: I don't know if it's. [01:43:46] Speaker C: It's freaking hot in summer and cold in winter. It's not the most hospitable environment, particularly on that mezzanine and maybe a bit far out. Unless, Unless you wanted to sweat 20% of your body weight off. You wouldn't want to hang out up there. Up the top. [01:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's a great idea. There's something very, very appealing about that, I reckon, because you don't see those sorts of spaces much. [01:44:10] Speaker C: No. And it is appealing. And obviously if it was in Melbourne, it would be far more likely to be successful. Bigger population, blah, blah, blah. But Bendigo does have an arts culture and we're accessible by train. [01:44:20] Speaker A: Amazing you got Frida Kahlo coming this year. [01:44:23] Speaker C: Who's that? No, I'm kidding. [01:44:26] Speaker B: Justin didn't do an answer. [01:44:28] Speaker C: I went to Mexico. I know who Frida Kahlo is. Rick Nelson says a great comment. Hang on, I've wrecked my screen. Do you remember those speed lights that moved on their own, that died quickly? [01:44:40] Speaker B: No. What was that? [01:44:41] Speaker C: The canon ones, they were like robo flashes. [01:44:44] Speaker B: What you don't remember and what they. [01:44:46] Speaker A: Would find a space to bounce or. Yeah, they would point at the subject. [01:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah. Really Speed light, what do I call it? Moves on its own. Come on, Google. [01:44:57] Speaker B: And what did it work it out like for you? Was that when we were both shooting Nick on Justin? Like was that in that period? [01:45:04] Speaker C: Unless Nikon did it. I don't know. Is it? What was it? [01:45:08] Speaker B: Well, not in the last 15 years. [01:45:12] Speaker A: I misspoke earlier. Sorry. While you bring that the camera house thing is May 10th. [01:45:17] Speaker C: Was it? I thought it was Kenko. So what did you say? May 10th? [01:45:22] Speaker A: May 10th. Yep. [01:45:23] Speaker C: Yeah, Olympus also have an open day coming up in Mel or open day. [01:45:28] Speaker A: Yes, they do. [01:45:29] Speaker C: Can't remember what it's called. 16th maybe in March 16th for the. What do they call that? Om Day something day. [01:45:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:38] Speaker C: I don't know but yeah, get onto that. If you not Olympus OM Systems. What am I talking about? [01:45:43] Speaker A: And Fuji, you've got their one this weekend coming. [01:45:46] Speaker C: Oh, if you're in Sydney. Yeah, the Creator Summit. You can go back to one of our previous episodes if you want to find out what it's about. The Creator Summit. [01:45:55] Speaker A: February 48th. [01:45:56] Speaker C: Yeah, February 22nd and 23rd at Luna park in Sydney, which would be very cool. I can't find these flashes. [01:46:06] Speaker A: I think you dreamt it. [01:46:07] Speaker C: Cannon flash. [01:46:08] Speaker B: Here we go. [01:46:10] Speaker A: Robot AI also Canon Speed Light470EX. Yeah, try that one. [01:46:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:46:19] Speaker B: Rick's been super helpful today. [01:46:20] Speaker C: I think we need to get Rick on here. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah, let's get him on. [01:46:25] Speaker C: AI Flash. AI. Of course it's AI. Did it have a neural network as well? [01:46:31] Speaker B: Maybe it's a lowercase L. [01:46:38] Speaker C: Oh, here we go. Here we go. Hang on. Oh, check it out. [01:46:53] Speaker A: How is he controlling that? Is he controlling that? [01:46:55] Speaker C: He's doing. Does it based on when you move your camera from portrait like landscape to portrait. [01:47:01] Speaker A: That's dumb. [01:47:03] Speaker B: Yeah. How long would that last? [01:47:05] Speaker A: I think you're seriously that lazy that you can't work out where to point your point your speed light to take a shot. [01:47:12] Speaker C: Read, read this. I think this is a big deal. Namely because it represents a big step towards democratizing artificial light for people who aren't yet comfortable with it. Democratizing artificial light? [01:47:25] Speaker A: That's a stupid statement. [01:47:26] Speaker B: Could also make wedding and events photographers lives easier. It's harder. Look how slow it is. [01:47:32] Speaker C: I mean it could make it easy. You know what else could make it easier? Just learning how to use flash. [01:47:37] Speaker A: Don't take on A wedding if you don't know how to use a flash. [01:47:40] Speaker C: This was. This was. This was 2018. And it's now discontinued, I'm pretty sure. [01:47:45] Speaker A: Yeah. That must have cost a fortune to develop and develop. [01:47:51] Speaker C: Rick says it's heavier. Rick, do they still sell that flash or is it discontinued? Paul Henderson. Yeah, I saw this one come up while I was searching for the Canon one. I had the. I think it was a Kenko AI flash. Cheap but not great. As better as a manual flash. So did it move? It move around? Paul? Robo. Robo move. And was it any good? Comments are coming in thick and fast. David Mascara wants to know, do you guys know anything about substance? Looking for another option other than Instagram, I've heard. I don't go on substack, but I've heard it's. It's more for finding journalists and that kind of stuff, like independent journalism and. And you can sort of subscribe to your own curated journalism feed, kind of like, remember, Craig, do you remember blog feeds back in the day? Remember you used to be able to have, like, your own curated feed of blog articles? Yeah, yeah, like. And so I know you still can, but no one writes them anymore. You're the one person that's not just using AI to make content that hopefully works for SEO. [01:49:01] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:49:01] Speaker C: Try my best to keep the. [01:49:04] Speaker A: Literally raging against the machines. I am that song now speaking. [01:49:09] Speaker C: That's funny they mentioned that. So Rage against the Machine, Tom Morello, the guitarist, when you. When we were talking before with Alex about his kit, that basically he's locked into like 2008 or whatever he is, and he's just never. He said, like, all right, I'll just turn off the camera industry because I'm. I'm good, you know, like, I've got myself pretty admirable. Tom Morello from Rage against the Machine, one of the most iconic guitarists of all time. He was having so many issues, like, chasing us in the guitar world. We're always chasing a tone that we're looking for and we can never find it. So we buy more gear. That's just a thing. It's a guitar thing, just like it's a photography thing. But it's probably worse with guitars because there are thousands of pedals and stuff you can buy to, like, tweak your tone to change on your amp and stuff like that. Yeah, he one day just went, I'm not really happy with my tone. But it. That's what it is. From now on, I'm not changing anything. So he. He taped his settings on his guitar amp so he wouldn't twiddle with the knobs anymore. He stuck with a Marshall JCM800 2205 or whatever it was. Same everything, same pedals. And he was just like, well, that's it. That's what I've got to work with. And like, he evolved from there to be one of the best guitarists of all time with a tone. That's the funny thing, though, is now, or, you know, especially when he was more popular, when they were in their sort of heyday, everyone was trying to get his tone and he was like, I didn't even really like my tone. I just decided to stop fucking around with it and just go, okay, that's what I've got to work with. And he created a tone that everyone else wanted through that limitation. [01:50:53] Speaker A: Crazy. [01:50:53] Speaker C: You know, it's. Yeah, it was. It's a very cool mindset of an artist to be like, these. These are my tools. I'm sticking with them. [01:51:04] Speaker B: I think limiting yourself is, you know, same with gear. Same with photography gear. You don't need everything all the time. [01:51:11] Speaker A: Yeah, it is interesting, though. I ran a photo walk, as I mentioned, last night in Melbourne, and I had 25 people show up from his camera club, which is a great turnout, maybe more. I actually got a bit nervous because I thought, oh, man, it's all it's going to take is someone from city of Melbourne to say, do you have a permit? [01:51:27] Speaker C: But you're getting paid. Doesn't matter if you're not getting paid. Well, you know, you know, like, it's just a group of people on the street. Yeah, that's. [01:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I already had my cover story worked out in my head, but I don't know these people. It was interesting because I set challenges for them, you know, and I've often talked about this. I said, it has to be you. You know, I. I want you to set your camera, not worry about it later in Raw, set your camera to shoot one to one ratio. So square. [01:51:53] Speaker C: Yeah, square. [01:51:54] Speaker A: Get rid of that whole consideration about landscape and portrait and black and white, preferably jpeg. But I left that up to them and it really stumped them. It really. Applying limitation really stumped them. But at the end of the walk, they were like, oh, that was really cool. Yeah, no, you know, I. I found a lot of them going, oh, I keep going to do portrait by. But I see, but I don't need to. I was like, well, you just take that out. You just work with what you can see. Yeah. [01:52:24] Speaker B: One less thing to Think about. [01:52:26] Speaker A: Yeah, but it also. It also makes you to be more. It forces you to be more creative, I believe. [01:52:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:52:32] Speaker A: When you have limitations, it forces you to go, well, especially like, you know, when you did the JPEG Challenge, Justin, last year, midway through last year. You know, it makes you think differently about what you're doing. You're not just relying on the megapixels to. I'll crop it later. You got to get it right there and then. So anyway. [01:52:52] Speaker C: Yeah. And square is. It's just that little bit different that if you haven't shot with it, where you're like, okay, where do I put my subject? How do I frame this up? And it's just a fun puzzle for your brain to go through instead of falling back into your usual, you know, sort of style you frame photos with. [01:53:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very cool. We've got a few minutes. Should we just jump to a quick news item? [01:53:13] Speaker C: I mean, we can. Unless you want to leave that Monday. [01:53:16] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. [01:53:17] Speaker C: It depends how cool it is because. [01:53:20] Speaker A: I think it's been a very slow news week. The news item is about the CP plus camera and photo imaging show next week in Japan in Yokohama. [01:53:30] Speaker C: I think we should go there. [01:53:32] Speaker A: I think we should go there. I've got a friend there at the moment. He's gone there. He works for Adam. He works with Lauer. [01:53:42] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:53:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you've met him. We met at befop and. But he's. He's gone to Japan for a few weeks with his holidays and attending the show. So very jealous. He keeps sending me images and photos of Japan. I keep sending back one very pertinent word starting with C and ending with T because I hate him for it. [01:54:06] Speaker C: Cat. [01:54:07] Speaker A: Cat, yes. I call him a cat. [01:54:08] Speaker C: He's a stupid. [01:54:09] Speaker A: He's a silly bloody cat. Yeah. So he's over, but we can talk about that on Monday because we'll have more. So next week it's going to be a lot of gear announcements, rumors of some. [01:54:23] Speaker C: Some lenses and some stuff. [01:54:26] Speaker A: Mostly lenses. [01:54:27] Speaker C: Word on the streets, if you see. [01:54:29] Speaker A: A couple of cameras, word on the. [01:54:30] Speaker C: Street is the CEO of Om Systems will be rocking around CP. Is it CP+C+. CP+. [01:54:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:54:39] Speaker C: CP+. That's hard. CP+ he'll be rocking around with one of our camera straps. Hey, the new Owen 3 we sent, we sent a few over to the guys. Special care package to send over to CP plus. So that's pretty exciting. I said, see if you can get a snap of the CEO wearing Australia little sneaky phone photo. Or anything. I'll take it. [01:55:02] Speaker A: But you're right, we need to go next year. [01:55:04] Speaker C: Well, it's the perfect time because it's snowy. [01:55:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Maybe Justin. I'll go. [01:55:14] Speaker A: You guys go. I'll just do street photography and eat ramen. [01:55:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's. That's. Have you done snowy street photography in Japan? [01:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:55:23] Speaker C: You would, you would love that. Different. Yeah, yeah. Just that it looks completely different and all those signs glow and it's just. [01:55:31] Speaker B: Oh, the snow's dropping and. [01:55:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:33] Speaker A: Seen as Lucky Straps is paying for it. Sasha and I, we're happy to travel economy. [01:55:39] Speaker C: I'm not, I'll be doing, I'll be doing the sums and I'll be like, hang on. All three of us could go in economy or I could go by myself in premium economy. [01:55:52] Speaker A: So much for team Lucky Straps. [01:55:54] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, we're a team. You guys can swim over. Oh man, it would be amazing if we were cat. No. [01:56:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Rick Nelson has dropped a comment that Japan is the dream spot to photograph. It is interesting listening to Alex. [01:56:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:56:13] Speaker A: Talk about how, how he's addicted to the US I have no desire to travel to the, to the US Mostly because of what he's been talking. Talking about and what he's documenting. The decline which seems to be accelerating. But Japan is my addiction. [01:56:29] Speaker C: I have to say as someone who spent three months on the ground in the US while I did see the stuff that he was talking about, ghost towns, lot of homeless people. Even in some very, very well off places like Venice beach, you know. Yeah. Anyway, outside of some of that stuff, it has some of the most beautiful like scenery and landscapes you will ever see. It's 99. Just regular people living their lives who are super friendly. Yeah. It, I think you can get drawn into and that's why I do love that he's doing the project and I want to see what he comes out of it because there is something happening and whether that's a full on decline or whatever it is, but once you step away from that stuff, it is just people just like us living their life in a country that is spectacular with beauty and has such a variety of landscapes and even the variety of states. It's almost like countries. Whereas you don't get that as much in Australia. It's like. Yeah, you know, Darwin does have quite a different feel to, you know, Melbourne obviously. But in, in the U.S. it's like you go from state to state and it's almost like you're in Europe going from country to country with the differences and stuff. Like that. It is very cool, but value for money, it's hard to justify just spending too long there. Because it was expensive. [01:58:08] Speaker A: Yeah. But I'm glad I went to Japan when I did because now it's so popular. Like you look at. [01:58:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:58:13] Speaker A: Especially during peak seasons, you look at some of the. The images coming out of Japan and people are just wedged into tourist spots. Not that I'd always go to tourist spots. I tend to go back street country. [01:58:24] Speaker C: I think that's. That's the key and I think that's. [01:58:26] Speaker A: The way to do it now. [01:58:27] Speaker C: Yeah. Just to get out. [01:58:28] Speaker A: And I. I think the other part, it's not that I. Well, I am racist towards Americans. I will admit that. Sash calls me race. It's the only race I'm racist against. But, you know, I think I can't afford to travel a lot and I've had some health issues. I think if I can get back into travel, well, then why on earth wouldn't I go to Japan? I just can't think of anywhere else that I'd like to go. Other than Bendigo. [01:58:50] Speaker D: Of course. [01:58:51] Speaker C: Of course. But. But yeah, in terms of. Especially if you love it, there's probably still a ton of the country you haven't seen yet. So it's not like you're just going back to the same, you know, stuff. [01:59:02] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:59:03] Speaker C: And how long's it been since you've been there? [01:59:05] Speaker A: So it was 2019. It was late 2019. And then in. Well, obviously Covid hit. I was, upon my return on 2019, I was looking at booking, planning photography tours in Japan and running a business. And then Covid hit and so that all went to. For a couple of years and then I got unwell and so I, you know, I wasn't doing any photography, let alone travel. So Sasha and I want to go back probably, you know, the end of. [01:59:34] Speaker C: This year, going out of next year when C + + is. [01:59:40] Speaker A: Yeah, we could. [01:59:41] Speaker C: We could maybe. [01:59:42] Speaker A: We could, you know, make a bit of a tax thing. Tax slash, lucky strap. Sponsored travel. [01:59:50] Speaker C: If we can get this podcast to10,000 subscribers by then. [01:59:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's my job, isn't it? Yeah, well, we. We've already, you know, we crossed the. The 900 mark after. After the show with the down south photo show. Boys. [02:00:07] Speaker C: We're at 9:25 right now. [02:00:09] Speaker A: Yes. It's gone up like 30 in the last click. [02:00:13] Speaker C: Yeah, pretty much. [02:00:14] Speaker A: So if for anyone listening out there, David, Rick, Paul, any of you, Digifrog, if you want to see Greggy back In Japan. Please encourage your photography friends or non photography friends to subscribe and like. [02:00:26] Speaker D: And that would be great. [02:00:28] Speaker C: Share the show. Share the show with anyone if you can. If there's a photographer that you know that might get a kick out of it. Also, we're always looking for. We do have a pretty solid guest roster for the next couple of months, but we're always looking for guests. So if there's anyone that you're like, you know what this person, because that's what I see our role in the world is. And obviously it's great to get people on like Richard Taddy, who's already got 80,000 subscribers on YouTube and a million videos and so much access to his knowledge. But there's all these photographers out there that just don't have the time to make YouTube videos because it is a whole, like, it's a thing making YouTube videos. Doing what Richard does is, is a whole just, it's consuming. There's people just out there just doing great work and they don't have time to do that stuff. So we can get them on here and pick their brains and have a bit of fun for a couple of hours. Yeah, and hopefully get a little bit of access into the inner workings of brilliant photographers. So if you have anyone that in mind that you would love to see on the show, hit us up, throw it in the comments below and, and. [02:01:34] Speaker A: Tell us because I guess are booked up to the end of March. I've got a couple in April, but I will be sitting down and mapping out April to June. So I'm kind of doing it in quarters at the moment. Because if you go too far out, people's lives change. Yeah, but, but yeah, if anyone, you know, hit us up in the comments or email. Justin. We've had some of our past guests actually reach out to us and say, hey, have you thought about getting this person on? So we're gaining momentum. And don't forget everybody that we have two shows now. We have the Thursday morning Australian time and the Monday evening Australian time. We're playing around with the timing of the night, the Monday one, because we want to, you know, obviously also accommodate viewers in the U.S. because we have a lot of viewers in the U.S. but yeah, we are growing and you can expect more content from, from us here at the Camera Life. [02:02:26] Speaker D: Hmm. [02:02:26] Speaker C: Lots of ideas, maybe some YouTube videos at some stage. [02:02:31] Speaker A: We've got a few things. We've got a couple of road trips coming up. We want to go and meet, catch up with John in Kyneton, John Yumina who was on last week, runs Lumina Film Labs. We want to go and shoot some film and work with him developing and scanning our own films and getting that. And so we'll get some content for that street walk. These two idiots have said for months that they're coming to Melbourne, yet I never see them. But we will look. Whatever. We will organize. You spent a whole day the other day finding, like, three sounds for the soundboard for this podcast. [02:03:02] Speaker D: No. God, please, no. [02:03:04] Speaker A: See, it took him a whole day. [02:03:08] Speaker C: I'm trying to hold them back during the interviews. I'm like, I can't. I can't be like. But, oh, yeah, I got a good one for when. When, like, Leica release a new camera. [02:03:23] Speaker A: It's very vicar dibbly, but. Yeah. What were we talking about before? We talked about your lack of time management. [02:03:33] Speaker B: Shooting Melbourne. Photo walks. [02:03:35] Speaker C: Yeah, photo walks. [02:03:36] Speaker A: We've got content coming up, so it's. Yeah, there's more stuff coming. [02:03:44] Speaker B: It's a pretty good night. [02:03:47] Speaker C: Yeah, it's kind of. It's going that direction. I don't know. So this. Hopefully. Hopefully we'll have Grant on this Monday's show. Grant being in landscape photographer. Passionate. Yeah, Passionate. Amateur. We might even talk a little bit. I read an interesting article about being a pro versus being an amateur or hobbyist or whatever you want to call it. Photographer. And the perspective of this article I thoroughly disagree with. So that'll be fun. [02:04:15] Speaker A: Wow. [02:04:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I'm gonna go hard. Okay. And I don't know what else. If we get Grant on what else, we'll talk about how his photography's been going. And he shoots with Canon. I shoot with Canon. So we can gang up on you guys who don't shoot Canon. Whatever. [02:04:31] Speaker A: I must say, though, Jim's looking very angelic today. If you've got a new lens or some new lighting or something, Jim, you. [02:04:36] Speaker C: Look in the background is what I'm interested in. I can see. See, Hang on. There's red, blue, purple, and green. [02:04:44] Speaker A: Maybe green. [02:04:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:04:45] Speaker C: What is going on? Yellow, like the purple. [02:04:49] Speaker B: Hang on. Where is it? [02:04:50] Speaker C: Okay, you're backwards. [02:04:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:04:53] Speaker C: What are you doing? You're doing this. They can't do that on the Internet. [02:04:56] Speaker B: Okay. That little purple line is the lot. That's daylight and that's. I've got LEDs that go up and around the window frames, and then they also go along the bottom down there. [02:05:08] Speaker C: What is your Twitch streaming handle? [02:05:11] Speaker B: Hey, to be fair, if you look at my background and your background, we are very similar colors. You've got the Orange snowboard. [02:05:18] Speaker D: I've got the orange light. [02:05:20] Speaker C: You can actually see my LED strips just dangling. It's a very different setup. [02:05:25] Speaker A: All it's doing is highlighting your mess. [02:05:27] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I've just got. [02:05:29] Speaker B: There you go. [02:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. No, but I was talking more about the image quality. It looks very sharp and pristine. [02:05:35] Speaker B: It's the same as every other day. I think my Internet's just working better today. [02:05:39] Speaker A: Oh, maybe that's it. One last quick comment from David. Would love to hear from a conflict photographer. We do have Christopher Hopkins joining us. [02:05:46] Speaker C: No, what happened to. We put him on the list. What's his name? And Russell Ord, I think, said he was great because he was in the comments one day. He's a Nikon photographer. We need to reach. We've reached out to him. I think we need to reach out to him again. [02:06:09] Speaker A: But Chris Hopkins is going to be joining us. He was meant to join us sooner, but then he was called away to the bushfires to report on those, which is the nature of that sort of work is that often they're hopping planes from, you know, disaster to conflict, back to disaster. It's. It's quite. I'd imagine it's quite exhausting. [02:06:30] Speaker C: Can you please, Greg for me, please? Yes, sir. Make a note of this guest request. [02:06:36] Speaker A: Yes. [02:06:37] Speaker C: David Parker. [02:06:40] Speaker A: Is that a double name? Like a high favorite name? [02:06:45] Speaker C: No, it's just David Parker.comeven is his website. I've got his email and I think we did reach out to him and I think he's. Yeah, I'll forward it to you. It was a while ago. He got in touch via Lucky for camera straps and stuff. But he is a conflict photographer, but has also done a heap of other stuff and. Cool. I'm positive. He was in the comments for Russell Lord's episode and I think Russell Lord was like, that dude's a legend. Yeah. I think we'll have to follow up with him a fair bit because he's probably flat out similar to Chris Hopkins, you know, like, they're just working, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, we'll just see how we go. [02:07:30] Speaker A: We can do that. So, yeah, I think that's about it for. For this week's standard issue, the camera life. Yeah. What do you guys. [02:07:43] Speaker C: Um, I'm just looking to see if I've got any other sound effects that would suit this time right now? Not really. [02:07:50] Speaker A: Well, your timing is fantastic. [02:07:51] Speaker B: Are you shooting this arvo, Justin, with you? Yeah. [02:07:55] Speaker C: Yeah. But I think you might have to do the work and I might see if I can load this F5 up with Ektar 100 that I've been thinking about shooting and shoot film and just see what comes out of it, you know, and I'll just help you do your thing. Jim's got a car to shoot. Greg, you should see this. Can you, can you somehow show us a photo, Jim? Can I do that? I send it to myself and share the screen. I think I can. [02:08:21] Speaker A: What? [02:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah, give me one sec. I've got it in. I can. I can do one better. [02:08:27] Speaker C: Justin, there's one better. [02:08:32] Speaker B: Well, actually, you could actually. Have you got the Justin Jim Dropbox J? [02:08:37] Speaker C: Kind of. Actually. Maybe it's in my. If cloud works. No, that's not how that works. [02:08:43] Speaker A: You guys are amazing. You're such a slick machine. [02:08:46] Speaker B: Yeah, we're good. [02:08:50] Speaker A: Well, J Dog and Jimbo bring up the elusive car images. Just a reminder that this is the Camera Life podcast brought to you by Lucky Camera Straps from Bendigo, Australia. Make sure you look at. Head over to Luckystraps.com if you're interested in a handcrafted premium leather camera strap that's proudly Australian made. It even has a little proud Australian made logo. [02:09:16] Speaker C: You can actually get a. You can get a discount with one of three codes. You can save 15% off our camera straps or leather belts which are all made here in Bendigo in Victoria. Yeah, you can use the code Justin, you can use the code Greg or you can use the code Jim. Now just because Jim is only three letters, don't use it because you are voting with your discount code on who is the best host. Host with the most, some might say. [02:09:48] Speaker B: But remember that Jim is the one who packs them. So if you want them extra specially packed. [02:09:58] Speaker A: That's very low. That's a low blow. I'm using your privilege. [02:10:04] Speaker C: Anyway, anyway, so the codes are either Justin or Greg. Oh, he's back. Sorry, Jim, I don't know what happened there. You just dropped off. You dropped off the stream for a second. [02:10:19] Speaker A: Anyways, Jim's like, I, I packed this straps. And Justin's like, yeah, but I run the podcast. [02:10:24] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. See you. [02:10:26] Speaker B: Y. I emailed you a link of that. That car. Justin. [02:10:30] Speaker C: Did you? Okay, I'll try and bring it up because it's super relevant to everyone that's still watching if you're out there in the comments. Hang on. It's got David. [02:10:42] Speaker A: David said, how about closing Olivia Newton John? We would love to play physical but we would get copyrighted, unfortunately. You can listen to that in your own time, David. [02:10:57] Speaker B: And Justin doesn't have enough Time to search for it. [02:11:00] Speaker C: Yeah. No, it's got to be a non copyrighted song and that's why I spend so much time going through to find the awesome music. [02:11:09] Speaker D: Yep. [02:11:10] Speaker C: Days this days takes me days. [02:11:12] Speaker A: Oh, what is that? What sort of car is it, Jim? [02:11:16] Speaker B: Cadillac. [02:11:17] Speaker A: The Caddy. It's a boat, isn't it? [02:11:21] Speaker C: It is a boat, yeah. I bet it's around corners. [02:11:24] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:11:25] Speaker C: You were driving it. [02:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got a. [02:11:27] Speaker C: So what I thought, Jim, we could do is. Yeah, maybe I'll even get a few shots of you potentially driving it and like, I don't know, leaning on it with a camera strap or something. [02:11:39] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. [02:11:40] Speaker C: So wear your best flanny or something. [02:11:45] Speaker B: All right. [02:11:46] Speaker C: Or an appropriate outfit to get so. [02:11:48] Speaker A: Many to choose from. [02:11:50] Speaker C: Maybe they're black. Maybe the black flanny. Yeah, the black flag, you know, Classy. [02:11:54] Speaker A: Are you gonna do. [02:11:55] Speaker B: I got a white Funny actually. That'll go nicely with it. [02:11:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:11:58] Speaker A: Well, he's gonna do a night shot or just day shot. [02:12:01] Speaker B: I think dusk. I reckon I want to shoot just as sun's setting because it's black. Car trying. They don't like being shot in the sun. [02:12:09] Speaker C: Maybe bring a polarizer if it still work. [02:12:13] Speaker B: If it still fits any of my lenses. Yeah, I think it'd be really cool. [02:12:16] Speaker A: If you had that like parked in an alley with a single streetlight down on it. [02:12:19] Speaker C: Oh, and Jim's leaning on it. Smoking. [02:12:23] Speaker A: Yep. [02:12:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:12:25] Speaker B: Vaping. [02:12:25] Speaker C: You're smoking. [02:12:29] Speaker A: Vaping's not as. Not as romantic as. [02:12:33] Speaker C: Will that ever be a thing in smoke. Yeah. In some cool movie. [02:12:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:12:37] Speaker C: Well, hang on, what lens? What's that in reference to? What lens? [02:12:42] Speaker B: The photo maybe. [02:12:45] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:12:45] Speaker C: What. What do you mean, David? Which. Which lens? What. What lens will we shoot with tonight? What lens was this taken with? Yeah, what's my favorite lens is making. [02:12:54] Speaker A: Jim look smoking right now. [02:12:57] Speaker C: That's right. Anything. [02:12:59] Speaker A: The opportunities and the options are endless, David, for this shot. Okay. [02:13:06] Speaker C: Yeah. What lens was. Was that shot, Jim? Do you remember? [02:13:10] Speaker B: I think it's a 28. [02:13:11] Speaker C: It looks like a 28 to me. [02:13:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it was a 28.1.4. [02:13:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Otherwise, unless you happen to throw on, you still got your wide. Your 16. [02:13:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't use it and I don't think I would have used. I don't think I was using it then. I reckon I was on my 28, 58, 105 by then. [02:13:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:13:28] Speaker A: Nice. Well, look, I think on that note we're going to wrap it up, lads. [02:13:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:13:33] Speaker A: Once again, thank you. To everyone who's been watching and listening along, don't forget to subscribe to the camera life on YouTube or on your podcast channel if you're listening. Audio only. And keep an eye out for editor Seb's snippets and clips. He's been working very hard listening to us drone on for hours to find the glory. What a job amongst the trash. [02:14:00] Speaker C: I appreciate you, Seb, but he loves. [02:14:03] Speaker A: Doing it, which is great. And he's very excited to be part of the Lucky Straps team, which is even better. But on that note, from all of us here at the Camera Life, be safe, get out, take some photos. And it doesn't matter what camera, what lens, shoot with your smartphone if you need to, but just get out and hunt the light for a little while and enjoy the the fresh air and touching grass every now and then. [02:14:28] Speaker B: Thanks. [02:14:29] Speaker A: But thank you, Jim. Thank you, Justin. And thanks, Alex. [02:14:33] Speaker C: Find some music to bring us out on your time. [02:14:36] Speaker A: After all that time, you still don't know which button to press. [02:14:39] Speaker C: Catch you guys on Monday night. Let's try this one. I think this was so the intro song today. It was halfway through. I don't know what happened. I'm still figuring this out, but it was supposed to be this. Always a bit of Wickaway. Anyway, catch you guys. [02:15:00] Speaker A: Be good folks. See you Monday. [02:15:02] Speaker D: See you later.