EP57 Matt Nettheim | Portrait Photography

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Good morning or good afternoon, good evening or good night, depending on where you're watching from. This is the Camera Life podcast, episode 57, if you can believe it. And it's the 6th of March. Time marches on. Welcome to, to the Camera Life podcast. This is the greatest photography podcast on the Internet, obviously, and proudly brought to you by the team at Lucky Straps in Bendigo, Victoria. If you're looking for a premium leather camera strap, then head on over to Luckystraps.com or just send Justin an email. He might do you a deal. Don't forget that we are coming to you live today on, on the YouTubes, to your earballs and we're also sorry, to your eyeballs and to your earballs, where we'll be on Apple podcasts and Amazon. Is that right, Justin? [00:01:02] Speaker A: Everywhere. Everywhere. [00:01:03] Speaker B: Everywhere where? [00:01:04] Speaker C: Everywhere. [00:01:04] Speaker A: All the good podcasts, Spotify, all the. [00:01:07] Speaker B: All the ones, yeah, all the best ones. But that's enough preamble. Welcome. G'day, Justin. [00:01:14] Speaker A: Good morning. [00:01:15] Speaker C: Good morning. [00:01:17] Speaker B: And special welcome to our. To our guest today, Matt Netheim. Matt is a. Matt's been a photographer for, I won't say, you know, decades and decades. I don't want to humiliate you live, Matt, but Matt's been a. Still a cinema stills photographer for a big chunk of his career. But he's also dabbled in a wide range of other projects and genres and he's on the show today. Welcome, Matt. [00:01:47] Speaker C: Hey, guys. [00:01:49] Speaker A: Morning, Matt. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Good morning. Thanks for joining us on the Greatest. [00:01:53] Speaker A: So serene and calm. What a beautiful. Yeah. [00:01:58] Speaker B: And for those of you city kids like me watching along at home, that is not a digital backdrop. That's real. Matt is sitting in the middle of the trees and that is real grass. And I know that we tell our kids to touch grass, but Matt gets to touch grass every single day. Matt, where are you coming to us from at the moment? [00:02:16] Speaker C: I'm coming to you from Cobarga, New South Wales, south coast. Far south coast. Kind of near the town. Biggest town around here is Bega. Oh yeah, A little near Bermagui. It's a beautiful part of southern New South Wales. [00:02:30] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:31] Speaker A: How far, how far from the coast are you? Wait, like where you are? [00:02:35] Speaker C: I'm about 15 minute drive to the coast. And that would be Bermagui or the beaches around the area of Tilba. Tilba. I get there most days. I'm living nomadically at the moment, so this is my summer camp. It gets very cold here in winter, so I tend to move my caravan down to Bermagui and spend the winters down there, which puts me right on the coast and you've got whales passing and the temperature is a lot more manageable when you're living in a tent sort of lifestyle. That's my local beach, so I move around depending on the seasons and that's, that's beautiful luxury. [00:03:15] Speaker B: That sounds idyllic. [00:03:17] Speaker C: Very good. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Now just in a nutshell, we're obviously going to deep dive into your history and your inspirations and the extensive body of work, including some major films that you've worked on. But can you just give us a brief rundown of how you classify yourself as a creative. [00:03:35] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. Because I think especially these days I'm creatively spreading myself pretty wide. But it feels like it's all coming from the same place, the same sort of love of people and kind of a big heart sort of behind everything I do. But photography has been, you know, my career for 30 years and I still love it with a passion. But I've stepped back from kind of trying to make a, a living with it. I was. And I'm just spreading myself in other areas such as basket weaving which just came out of nowhere. It's so such a surprise that I, I was determined to listen and follow through. So I've been actually making more of a living as a, as a basket weaver than I am as a photographer these days. I do a little weekly market stall, I do workshops. So. Basket weaving? Yeah. Don't know where that came from but I listened and it's been a fun journey. But I'm also performing a lot of music these days, my live original music, piano based stuff and circus, which has always been there since I was a little kid. So I run a little circus school for homeschool kids around this area. I perform a couple of street shows, giant unicycles, I've got a stilt walking character and so that's kind of my, my creative offering at this point. [00:04:58] Speaker B: That's quite the pivot, Matt. [00:05:01] Speaker C: Yeah, it's quite a little quirky collection of little things. But photography is still my, my deep love. I, I've always got a little social document the go, but I'm very community focused in pretty much everything I do. I'm not trying to kind of change the world with this stuff or be famous or make a fortune. Just really enjoying being involved in my community and touching a smaller number of people with my work, with my creativity. So all my photography projects are very much community based and I'm just enjoying, you know, having seen the people that buy my baskets or or teaching kids to, to juggle or ride unicycles and, and just actually having a very strong connection with, with my world. [00:05:48] Speaker A: That's very cool. Before we dig into your world and, and your career, I'm just going to pull up a couple of comments. I can't remember if I told you about that so people can comment on this show live. I don't know if you can see them on your screen, but if, if people ask any questions and stuff, we'll bring them up on the screen anyway. But basically we've got this morning we've got Yelena as first. There seems to be a bit of a competition happening for morning Elena. The first comment and Digifrog, who's from Tasmania said just hey Dave. And the wonderful Dennis Smith is joining us. In the comments from School of Light, light painting extraordinaire said only just so there was a little bit of a race going on this morning. Obviously we need to get you back. [00:06:33] Speaker B: On Dennis, just quickly because we need to talk about your, your Dubai Porsche adventure and some of the work you've been putting out more recently that I've been viewing. [00:06:45] Speaker A: Join us on a Monday night, Dennis. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yeah, come and have a chat one night, mate. [00:06:49] Speaker A: 7:30Pm Eastern Time Mondays. Jump on. Let us know when you're free. Philip Johnson's in the comments. He says. Greetings morning gents. Greetings from the Blue Mountains. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Morning, Philip. [00:07:02] Speaker A: And Dennis is also a big fan of the birds in the background, which are quite beautiful, beautiful background noise for our podcast this morning. If you're listening on audio later on, those birds are real birds. From Matt. [00:07:17] Speaker B: Misplaced sound effects. [00:07:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not my terrible sound effects board. Anyway, let's, let's get into it. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So Matt, let's, let's roll back the years you know, you talked about and I've read some of your bio about, you know, inspiration, I think from your family members. But you mentioned that, you know, you were interested in creativity and community ever since you were a kid. Can you tell us about your earliest inspirations and what, what kind of inspired you to pick up a camera? Like was there, was it family, was it parental, was it school? Talk us through that. [00:07:57] Speaker C: Yeah, look, I was always attracted to the camera. Just loved getting my hands on my mum's camera. Little just, you know, instant camera, I mean compact cameras really always just was so excited getting the photos back and just having that creative process. But I come from a kind of creative family, a lot of thespians, you know, a fairly famous uncle who was always on television. My dad was in radio. The whole family seemed to be in radio theater growing up. So I kind of grew up in an environment of actors and performers. But really, I guess the key influence early on was my big brother Daniel, who was just an intensely creative guy, always bringing interesting stuff into the house. Great magazines, great art materials. And Dan was actually the first one that actually took me into a dark room. He was at Sydney College the arts. And I went in with him one day and. And just was found the whole place magic. And I remember the thing I found most magic was just how black this kind of. I think I'd walked out with a bit of photographic paper and then process and it was just loving the black, you know, how black this, this piece of photographic paper was. And so Dan kind of sparked my interest in photography early, but it was just a curious thing. And. And then I kind of, you know, I was a bit of, a, bit of a bad kid. I dropped out of school and was kind of just hoping to bum around for a while. But I did a free course for the unemployed in photography when I was 16 and just took to it. Very first roll of film I took was so excited and, and just was like, wow, this is. Is great. And I think it was a bit of a life raft in many ways for me. I'm a little bit kind of obsessive in my nature and I just latched onto photography with a huge passion and did the free course for the unemployed and. And really early in those very first rolls of film that I shot in process, pretty much had what would become my passion, my area in photography, which is portraits. I just loved these portraits. I tried everything. I was doing the nudes and the landscapes and the street photography and just getting around, really excited with the camera but always coming back to these portraits. I was getting with family and friends and loving kind of printing them and the whole magic of the process and giving them to my friends and seeing them on their wall and just found that really exciting. So that kicked off what would end up being five years of photography study. I did a couple of years at TAFE because I didn't have my year 12 exams. I did a couple of years at a great little art school in Adelaide where I was living at that point. I grew up in Sydney, but I was living in Adelaide for a while and that was a really open, free, sort of creative environment where I was really blessed to have a pretty inspiring first teach. And there's a lot to be said for those first teachers that you come across they can either kind of kill it for you or plant a deep creative seed for you. And this guy was. He was a quirky guy. He was really into surrealist photography and he exposed me to photographers like Arthur Tress and Ralph Gibson. And he would just bring these books in and really kind of planted some beautiful seeds there, but also just gave us a real free run. And I remember the first camera that he gave us, it was. We had to make a pinhole camera and it was right back to, right back to the basics. And he was good, like, you know, and so we made pinhole cameras and before we were even allowed to get our hands on it on a proper. [00:11:43] Speaker B: SL at that school, I, I grew up in a similar situation as you, Matt. Not, not the circus family necessarily, of thespians, definitely not. But that magic of the dark room. And yes, we weren't allowed to touch a camera until we made our own pinhole and used it and, you know, and processed it and saw the print. So it's, it is magical. And there's something really. I don't know, there is something very captivating about that whole chemistry. It's, it's a little bit arcane, it's a little bit magical. So, yeah, it's interesting to hear and from there and sorry, the other point I wanted to just touch on is a lot of the guests that we've had on the show who started in film have all mentioned that one teacher or that one person that motivated them, inspired them, encouraged them, believed in them even, and they're now, you know, much as yourself, very accomplished photographers in a whole, you know, doing a whole range of body of work. So it's, it is finding the right teacher is really important. And look, if you, if you are new to photography out there, for those of you watching and listening along, and you want to stick with photography and you're learning photography, but you haven't found that right person, then maybe reach out and find a mentor. Find someone that's an experienced photographer in the community and in your local community and hit them up and say, hey, look, I'm looking for a mentor. Could we maybe meet even just once a month for a coffee and talk shop? It's a really important part of that learning and encouragement process because you will come across hurdles, you know, you will come across hurdles and sometimes you need a wisened voice to guide you through them. But anyway, that's, that's my wisdom for the day. That's all I got. [00:13:29] Speaker A: People that, and, and also particularly Matt, that you mentioned that that Person that can open your mind beyond what you currently know. You know, like you say it was putting books in front of you and things that you, you know. Yeah. Opening doors that you didn't even know there was a door there to open. You know, that's what's super interesting. [00:13:48] Speaker B: You don't know what you don't know. [00:13:52] Speaker A: And so from there, quickly, at that point, the, when you did the course, the, the course for unemployed people that was like, that was essentially provided for you. Did they provide equipment for you to use during that course or did you have your own camera at that stage? [00:14:11] Speaker C: No, I had nothing. So they provided a camera that we could take home on the weekends. There was a couple of dark rooms there. They gave, they issued us like 20 sheets of photographic paper, you know, bulk loaded some film as much as we wanted. And it was very loose. You know, it just teach us the basics, how to use a camera, how to, how to do a print, how to process a film. But really very free for us all to just go out and shoot what we want and come back, you know, once or twice a week. And, and then they gave us access to these dark rooms. Even though it was, the course was on a particular day, we could, we could book into the dark rooms, which I did, you know, totally obsessed. And so I'll be going back in there every day and processing and just loving, loving the magic. Yeah. So I really honor that. It was just, you know, whatever the scheme was, these little government free course for the unemployed sort of thing. Great. [00:15:10] Speaker A: I wonder if anyone involved in that course had any idea that the seed that was getting planted at that point, you know. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, when you're that age, you don't think about it. I think you just, you're just scratching your head and bumping into things still. So it's, you know, it's. But it does take sometimes and it does germinate and become something greater. So, Matt, you. You're in Adelaide, you're doing a course. You're falling in love with film photography and photography in general. What was next for you? [00:15:41] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that course enabled me to develop a really strong portfolio. Kind of find my. Find my vision in this cool little art school. Developed a strong portfolio that I took to Sydney College of the Arts and Victoria College Prahran, which to me, I was reading all the photography books and that seemed to be where all the great art photographers in Australia were coming out of those two colleges. They were the good art, fine art, photography. So I applied to both of them and I Got into both of them with my little selection of images. And I decided to go to Victoria College, Prahran, because my best mate was living in Melbourne. And. And so that was the next three years of my life. Three of the hardest years ever. Total, kind of. I was this beautiful, free, creative spirit. It just shut that down. You know, suddenly it became very academic and intellectual. Suddenly these beautiful compositions, you know, they just worked visually for me, but suddenly I was told why they worked and it became very cerebral. And it was just probably the hardest three years of my life. I was a struggling photography student, you know, deciding between whether to buy a meal or whether to buy a roll of film. Living in crusty share houses that often will get demolished as soon as our little. [00:17:01] Speaker B: For any of you listening along at home, especially if you're not from Australia, that's a kookaburra. [00:17:07] Speaker C: That's a little posse of probably three kookaburras there. So, you know, they were tough years. And what you mentioned earlier, Justin, about like, you know, when you come up against hurdles and suddenly all my beautiful creative flow just died on its ass. And that was. It was hard work. You know, hundreds of hours in dark rooms and just kind of walking home late at night just reeking of fixer. And. But I had a really strong teacher there in John Cato. He was the end of an era for John. He was, I think I was his last generation of. Of. Of, you know, students going through. And he was always there with wisdom and a siggy hanging out of his mouth and. And to kind of guide me through these challenges. And he said to me, he said, basically, yeah, this is what happens. Your creative creativity is probably going to just bum right out, but it will come back. And yeah, so I really struggle. But looking back at that work, you know, it was. It was actually not as bad as I thought of it. In fact, I was probably doing some of my strongest work then, but really struggling in that education environment. But that's not an uncommon story. And it's, you know, something that I like to share with people who go to colleges and find it really hard work. [00:18:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just gonna ask, did you ever contemplate either giving up on it or like, did it ever get that bad? Or did you even. Did you sort of get the imposter syndrome of like, maybe this isn't for me, you know, it shouldn't be this hard. [00:18:40] Speaker C: I was so passionate about photography. I kind of recognize I'm probably a little bit OCD cd. I was just so passionate about it. What it taught me is I didn't want to be an art photographer. I was at an art school and, and, you know, you could just take a photo of anything and present it. I didn't want to be an art photographer. I emerged from that going, okay, I want to, I want a career. I want to be a documentary photographer. I wanted to be a photojournalist. So it helped me find my path, which was great. You know, you're shooting hundreds and hundreds of rolls of film and you're learning something from every frame. You know, a little, little lesson in every frame. And, and it steered me in the right direction pretty quickly, really. I was surrounded by art photographers who would just be photographing, you know, a blade of grass from 20 different angles and, and that, you know, that's great and stuff, but it wasn't my path. I, I wanted to make a career of it. And the school, I didn't really think prepared me for a career in photography. Barely got myself in a studio. Didn't know how to light anything. It took me probably a couple of decades to learn to get confident in a studio, but it prepared my mind, and I think that's all they really aspire to do. So, you know, I emerged from that and I got the hell out of Melbourne as quickly as I could. It was a tough time, and I still have kind of a bad taste in my mouth about my experience there, which is hard because my daughter lives in Melbourne. So I, to go back to this place that was. But I moved to Sydney and I got a job straight away on the Australian newspaper and got a chance to, to be the, the, the photojournalist that I thought I wanted to be. [00:20:17] Speaker B: So really interesting and, and, and I think really interesting to see that you've allowed your life to pivot in different directions, even at this early stage. You know, you've, you've, you've done sort of more of a fine art photography course, and you've gotten out of that and gone, actually, I don't want to do that, you know, and I think there's nothing wrong with university teaching us what we don't want out of life. I think that's actually a really valuable lesson because all too often we think, oh, I'm here now, I'll just do it. And we don't challenge that pathway. And. [00:20:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Which is really. It's quite interesting to hear your story. So you're at the Australian newspaper still shooting film at this stage, I presume. [00:21:01] Speaker C: Yep. [00:21:01] Speaker B: To begin with, tell us about how your creative self re. Like Found its. Did it find itself again? Did that seed continue to grow once you hit photojournalism, once you got a career in that space? [00:21:17] Speaker C: No, it was interesting, I should say. I was probably the last generation to go through art school purely with film. Digital, I think digital was, it was coming, we knew it was coming and there was rumors about it. But I think purely, you know, really old school zone system photography, Ansel Adams stuff, you know, using medium format cameras. I was really that last generation to go through, I reckon, purely. And I found that throughout my career. When I, when I got into photojournalism, I also found I was pretty creatively stifled by it's. I thought it, what was what I wanted to do. My instincts weren't great. I knew I loved portraiture, I loved photographing people and I didn't. I like the excitement of seeing my name, you know, in a paper, knowing that millions of people were seeing it. That was kind of wow, that's exciting. You know, people are seeing my work photography. Photojournalism was good for that. But I didn't go well on the Australian. I and I think I struggled with a part time career living there in Sydney. And then I decided to move back to Adelaide and try there and then it expanded more into magazine photography as well as continuing to work for the Australian down there. But it wasn't meant to be my path. But it was a good little bridge to get me to where I was going, which was really my own work, my own very social. Documentary photography was always there for me and I really loved these little collections of people who have something in common or documenting my friends and their environments and things like that. That's what I was really going towards as a documentary photographer more so than a photojournalist. So it definitely steered me in that right path. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah, just a couple of things before I jump to some comments for those kids watching or listening along. And we welcome anyone of any age to watch and listen to our podcast. But anyone that's that's young enough. A newspaper is a set of Internet memes on a sheet of paper usually gathered together in multiple sheets. And the paper comes from the things that are standing behind. Matt, just in case you weren't sure you can Google it, but just trust. Trust Uncle Greggy. Couple of comments, quick map just before we get back to your story. Dennis Smith from School of Light. Anyone that's watching along, check out Dennis's YouTube channel. Fascinating in instructional complete open book of how he takes his photos, which is wonderful. So Dennis has agreed to come on the Monday night show, which is great. I love this comment from Bem Aventuratos. Good morning, guys. Listening only, currently at work operating excavators in Sydney. [00:24:03] Speaker A: That's so cool. I hope you're still listening them. Drive safely. [00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah, move your dirt around. [00:24:09] Speaker A: That's pretty. [00:24:10] Speaker B: Keep your eye on the job. But one ear to the podcast and this popped up after the kookaburras laughed and Dennis said, that's the most beautiful thing. I think that is the most beautiful sound effect we've ever had on our. Apart from your shutter going off on your film camera, Justin. [00:24:25] Speaker A: Oh, that's true. That was pretty cool. [00:24:28] Speaker B: Just gotten excited again about film photography. He's just bought himself a new film camera and a lens. [00:24:34] Speaker A: This was. This was probably very futuristic, Matt, when you were working as a photojournalist. But this is a Canon EOS1N, which is in the later, later stages of film with the 51. [00:24:51] Speaker C: I'm loving seeing this generation of kids around here getting around with film cameras again and it. Having its little. Its little day and just all, you know, it's really sweet. I'm really enjoying seeing its reprisal and the fact that these old cameras are still clicking away and it's great. [00:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah, they're built to last forever, really, weren't they? I mean, they were, you know, and. Justin, did you hear that Matt called you a kid. [00:25:15] Speaker A: I'll take it. I turned. I turned 40 in less than 40 days, so I'll take that any day of the week. [00:25:22] Speaker B: Yeah, that's all downhill. [00:25:23] Speaker A: It's coming like a freight dream, actually. Well, should we take. Dennis has just popped a question in. He said for when it feels right. Does it feel right right now? Before we dig back into things, a question for when it feels right. I came to photography really late and I'm so inspired by the variety of avenues you follow. Was there a moment where you just allowed the river to take you away? [00:25:52] Speaker C: Good question. You know, I did get to a point in my life, you know, there was a long time in my career where I just had to say yes to every job I was offered. I was in South Australia, I was raising a little family, paying off a little house, and so I just had to say yes. By that point, I'd found my kind of, I guess my career as a stills photographer in feature film. But then I got to a point after that where I just didn't have to say yes to everything. And it was really liberating. And I remember the first job I said no to and I was like, wow. And then kind of I got to that point kind of after I'd raised the kid, after I'd paid off the house in Adelaide and. And kind of I had a lot more choices in my life and then all these other creative streams that have been bubbling away in the background. I'd always been a musician, I'd always been a circus boy. Basket weaving came out of nowhere, but I was able to just follow them, you know, it was a luxury that was given to me later in life once I'd kind of ticked all those kind of boxes early. [00:26:50] Speaker B: But it's a hard earned luxury, I imagine. [00:26:53] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, it was a. It was a great, beautiful romantic career I had, but it was never consistent. Like I might do an interesting film job and then there might be three months in between. So in those periods in between, I'd have to work and I tried to keep it relevant. I did a lot of landscape laboring, but I also would become a cinema projectionist. It seemed relevant. And I was really blessed like with my photography to just catch cinema projection right at the end of the film era. And I saw these big, beautiful projecting. I learned how to splice films and run shows and, and. And then I just saw these projectors getting ripped out as I was there. I was only doing it for about 18 months before my kind of. But I was really blessed to see that. And the same thing happened in my film industry, actually. I was. When I started working on big feature films, it was all on film. But then I saw these amazing new digital cameras sneak in the Arri Alexas, the. The black Whatever they hold, and suddenly these, you know, I saw that transition in front of my eyes and suddenly, you know, they were able to film by candlelight and it was amazing. So I've had a really interesting. My 55 years on the planet have been an interesting little transition time. Yeah. But, you know, the luxury to choose to be a circus performer professionally. I'm a yoga teacher now, so, you know, it's. It's come. It's come after having kind of done the hard yards and raised the kid and done stuff like that. [00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think it's a. Well, I. I believe it's a good place to be. Matt, before we get into your work as a stills. A cinema stills photographer on. On film and television, I assume, you know, you. We mentioned before we went live that you were an early adopter of digital, which is a really interesting move given your. We'll call it classical training in photography in analog photography. What how did you find that transition and experience? Because we have spoken to other photographers on the show who like you and I started in film. I came to digital much later but he was an early adopter of digital camera and he ended up going back to film because the resolution just wasn't there. So can you just talk us through a bit of your experience with that really, you know, groundbreaking transition? [00:29:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, thanks. Look, I took to it straight away. For me it wasn't so much the image was the important thing, not so much the process. I was always happy to work with a compact camera and I've had a, I have had a camera on my body physically for, for 45 years just trying for that moment and it was, I didn't mind if it was a compact or it was a top end digital or a medium format Hasselblad. The image was the important thing and getting that image was, you know, I just, yeah, it didn't matter how I got it as long as it was in focus and was workable. So when I was on photojournalism I was introduced to Photoshop. I was given a really clunky thing and then we would scan our film because we were sending these jobs off to Sydney and I'd scan film and then you do your basic Photoshop stuff and send it off. And that was my introduction to digital photography. And then the digital cameras. Photojournalists were probably some of the first people to get these cameras because we needed them. You're shooting a protest march and you want to get it to the international public papers straight away. So I had my hands on digital cameras probably in the mid-90s. And then when me, I was working with a film director called Rolf de Here and he was shooting a very remote job called the Tracker at the top of the Flinders Rangers and he decided I was working in a camera shop at that point, one of my in between jobs and seeing all the digital cameras come in and he decided to invest in a very expensive like 2 megapixel Olympus I think it was and take that up with him because he needed it up there. He wanted to be documenting landscapes and. And so I went hards with him in the camera and that was the first camera I'd shot feature film stills on. And it was just a revelation, you know, often if I was going away on a remote job, I wouldn't be able to see any of my photos till I got back to the city and is shooting two, you know, 100 rolls of film. What if there's an issue in Camera that you're not aware of, the mirror is not clicking. There's some crap going on. So all of a sudden I was able to see what I was shooting and I just loved it. You know, I loved the technology and playing with it. And another thing about it, it was, it was completely quiet, which was a revelation for stills photography in the past. We would, you know, I hadn't done a lot of stills photography at that point, but you'd have your camera in a box, a soundproof box called a blimp. And so you end up with this bloody tank of a camera with the. Totally encased, like an underwater housing, shooting your stills because you need it to be quiet. You know, you want to shoot because. [00:31:56] Speaker A: They'Re rolling, they're rolling sound. [00:31:57] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, they're rolling sound. But also the nature of stills photography, and we'll probably talk about this, is I've got to be invisible. You know, actors don't want to know about me, crews don't want to know about me. No one wants to know about me until it's time to, to publicize the film. And then they want to, you know, then I'm, then I'm king. I'm just busy just collecting images, as many as I can. And so I'm able to do that really, really great with, with these early digital cameras. And I, I just really loved it. So even though I had that foundation in film, it was like, nah, bring it on. And I know a lot of photographers, a lot of photographers around me and ones I bump into didn't make that transition. It was just too technical for them. They didn't want to go back to school. And a lot of photographers left the industry at that point. It was a big, big transition time. [00:32:51] Speaker A: Did you have any issues with the aesthetics of the digital files when you first sort of transitioned? Were you looking at them thinking, oh, they're not the colors that I normally like. And then you're trying to figure out how to get that color palette. Or did you just. Did you like the look of them more than film? [00:33:09] Speaker C: I've never been that fastidious about color. I'm actually quite colorblind, so it wasn't really important. I remember they were noisy files. The beginning digital cameras wouldn't have a RAW option or. And the TIFF files would like, take your whole card with one photo. So I remember they were noisy and so if the light was low, it was just like. No, they were a write off. You know, it had to be a bright, sunny day and these cameras were like, maybe 4 megapixel in those days. So unless the, the, the, the scenario, you know, it was absolute perfect conditions, they did look pretty crap. But color wise, it was just like, you know, that'll do. I'm happy with that. You know, I was, I was not too, not too fussed about that aspect of it. [00:33:56] Speaker B: And I guess in the early days it was black and white only anyway for newspapers. [00:34:01] Speaker C: Yeah, it was black and white only in film the early days I'd have to have two cameras. They wanted black and white and color. So you have two cameras on the go and that was what they wanted delivered. In the early days that, that was probably the first five years of my stores career, which was nice shooting black and white and color, but it was, you know, juggling cameras and lenses and, and stuff and, you know, I'd have a film. Photography was interesting. I'd like strap my bag on at the beginning of the day with two black and white cameras and often like a Hasselblad in there as well for those kind of landscape. And I'd lug this bag all day and take it off for an hour at lunch and put it back on and, and I got some serious shoulder issues from doing that lugging, which I've actually managed to iron out with, you know, 15 years of yoga. But it's, it's taken, you know, it takes a toll. Those big heavy cameras, all these lenses, strap in, strap in and go to work, you know. [00:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Now you mentioned briefly that you went Harvey's in a, you know, in an early digital camera with. [00:35:06] Speaker C: Was it Rolf, dear Rol de here. Yep. [00:35:10] Speaker B: So he's a film director. How was it, was it, was it through Ralph that you got into stills photography for films? [00:35:17] Speaker C: No. I need to once again be my big, big brother Dan and nod here. And I think he's actually listening today. Dan is a film director, a film and television director and he was at the Australian Film and Television and Radio School. And he invited me to come and do one of his student films. And that was my first experience doing stills on a film set. After that I approached Rolf. I'd met Rolf doing a magazine shoot and I approached him during a lean time and said, have you got anything going? And he gave me work experience, two weeks of work experience on a feature film, my first feature film, and then kept me on for the rest of the shoot after that. I think he was happy with what he was seeing with my work. And I mean, photography on a film set. It's one thing being a good photographer, but You've got to have the right personality for that sort of work. You've got to be able to work in a team and. And be invisible. I can't kind of stretch that enough. And a lot of photographers, established photographers, oh, I'll go and do a film. They don't survive. They're not the dude on a film set. And photographers often like, you know, I'm a photographer. I'm the guy. [00:36:24] Speaker B: Hello, I'm the dude. But that's how Justin shows up to all of his jobs. He's just got a teacher, says, I'm the dude. [00:36:33] Speaker A: It's funny, Greg, but, like, he's talking about. And I know we've talked about this before, but it's, it's. And I've never shot on a film set before. Never even been close to that, but it, it resonates so much with me with my style of photography. And I wanted to ask you more about what the process is like, but like, that sliding back into the background and just letting the scene unfold and trying to be not there as opposed to being, you know, in control of the situation. Definitely sounds. It sounds very appealing to me. But I'm sure there's. There's. I'm sure there's times where you need to be in control of the situation, and they're probably the highest pressure times as well. And that's what I was. I was sort of waiting to get to the right moment to talk about what that process is like, where it's like, all right, you know, you've got multiple days on a film set and. And some of that's going to be documenting what's happening. But then every now and then, I'm assuming they're tapping you and saying, we need this. You know, we need, you know, this. Now you've got six minutes with this, you know, famous actor or something luxury. Okay, so. So what is it like? How does, how does it. [00:37:39] Speaker C: Yeah, okay, well, like, you know, you're a small part of a, of. Of a big wheel on a film set, and we're all working together to get through these really challenging days where there's always too much to, to shoot in a day. You not want to slow, Slow things down. You know, I occasionally, maybe once a day, I would ask the first assistant director if I could jump in and get a photo, do my little thing on a set, and it would be like a really key scene in the film that I knew would make a great publicity still. And then I'll get 30 seconds to just, I'll Be ready to go jump in there. I might manipulate the actors a little bit because maybe one of them had back to me and I wanted a two shot and I'll go bang, bang, bang, bang quick and I'm out of there. And I actually got a good reputation for being super quick. Like, like before these guys had even kind of settled in, it was like, oh, we're done. And that, that's what worked on a film set. Then the crew can jump in, change the lights, move on and stuff. But I always had this thing if there was an actor just sitting around on set and there's a lot of that, I'd always just approach the actor and say, you want to, want to come and do a little portrait shoot and there might be some nice little fall of light that I'd found earlier. And I'd drag them over there and often drag the whole cast, you know, slowly over the afternoon to the same little spot and do a little studio shoot. And those were really useful shots for them to use. When you're shooting on a film, you're shooting for any number of possibilities. The film might be a complete flop and they'll use one image or maybe it will never even get released, or it could be a blockbuster. And there's books and there's websites and so you've always got to shoot for that. That option that it's going to be huge. And it doesn't happen very often. But I remember I worked on a film called the Babadook. Tiny budget film. We raced through it. It became like a legendary film. There was, there was, you know, all that stuff happened, all the books and the websites and, you know, they couldn't get enough of these images. So you've got to be ready for that. So I'll even, I'll be shooting 1 2,000 photos a day. Often walking away from a big shoot with like 60, 70,000 images. And people say, oh, that's a lot of editing. But I actually love that editing process. At the end of the week I'll sit down and I'll just go through it. And it was like panning for gold. You know, you go through these things. You know, I always leave a few days between the actual shoot and my editing day and I'll, you know, they'd pay me to edit and just go through it all and to separate the production stills, that's the ones of the crew from the, from the film stills. And I'd also be shooting landscapes and all these different stuff. And there was actually no one ever telling me what to do. That's what I liked about it. I was a department of one. There'll be a publicist that I had to answer to but basically I was a department of one. I was experienced enough to know what a useful shot was. I wasn't wasting their time. I, I knew the type of images that would get used and that was. That really worked for me. You know, I just did my thing. But I had to be. You can't be a dickhead on a film set, you know, because I needed to be. Often the camera department were my best friends, the focus puller and they would let me squeeze in with them if, you know, quite close to the front line of the action and you could just kind of. You'd wear black, you'd hide in there in the shadows, you'd get your shots. So. And then the sound guy, you know, that was often his spot next to the camera. So if I had a good relationship with the sound guy, he'll like, yeah, oh yeah, come on, you can join me. So those interpersonal relationships were really important. You see these boys would arrive and they'll just be like bump past you and weren't working in the team and they. You never saw them again. [00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Now your, your. The. The list of films that you've worked on is incredibly impressive and a couple of my personal favorites are in there. Rabbit Proof Fence for one from 2002. And you were also worked on Hot Fuzz. What year did that? I don't have that year here come out. [00:41:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I worked on about a hundred feature films over about 20 years. And those two films you mentioned are actually big career pivot points for me. Rabbit Proof Fence came to South Australia where I was living and they had all these celebrity photographers working on it. Mervyn Bishop, the indigenous photographer, was their first choice. It was an indigenous film. Phil Noyce was directing. He had no idea what to do. It wasn't his genre. The little girls working on it didn't like him. They were playing up, he wasn't getting his shot. So they let Mervyn go. Then they pulled in an ethnographic photographer called. I can't remember her name but she'd done wonderful books. Africa adorned beautiful kind of ethnographic photography. And I thought we'll bring her in, she's perfect for rabbit proof things. The girls didn't like her. She didn't know what she was doing. She wasn't getting the shots so she would. They let her go. I was just the local guy in Adelaide, so they thought we'll Bring, we'll bring Matt on for a week until we find someone good, someone experienced and better. And I went on set and immediately developed a really great rapport with the young actors. And I tribute that to the game of hacky sack, which I've always, always played on film sets, you know. And me, I had a little hack with the girls probably at lunchtime. We had a laugh, we had fun, they liked me, they kept me on. I was, I was delivering the photos and that was a huge career break. That was my big first feature film, you know, with a big budget. I just done a lot of little budget films before then and kind of found my style and my technique. But then immediately the director feel. And I said, oh, let's, let's, let's drag Matt over to Vietnam with us. And we're shooting the quiet American. And then suddenly I was working with Michael Kane and, and all of a sudden, like film photography is great for making your portfolio look stunning because all of a sudden it's like celebrities and, and exotic locations, Vietnam and then Michael Kane driving a car in Vietnam, you know, and so all of a sudden you've got this great portfolio of images which I was able to use as a portfolio. I was never own the copyright to these images, which is a film industry thing, but, you know, it's fine for me to have them in a portfolio and splash them around. So that was really what kicked off my, my big international career. And. Oh yeah, and, and then Hot Fuzz, you know, that I'd seen Shaun of the Dead and loved it. I had a British passport. The producers were making a film in Australia I worked on, they liked my work, they invited me back and Hot Fuzz was probably, probably the crown of my filmmaking journey. It was a, it was a really funny script, it was a, it was a great wild, wild shoot. And the end product was, you know, something I was really proud of. Just a very funny, iconic film. So this is a classic example of me just grabbing the actors on set and just doing my own little setup. [00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:47] Speaker C: With them. And I'll do that on every show. [00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so I read in your interview with Acme, I think it was that, you know, you, you grew up or, you know, you admired a lot of these actors because it's a big cast in Hot Fuzz, bigger than most people realize because there's so many little, you know, cameos and sub cameos going on from, you know, well known actors. But, but yeah, how was that working with people that, you know, you're a bit Of a fan of. Like, how does that. [00:45:21] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I mean, these were actors that I'd spent my life growing up and seeing on television. You know, really iconic British actors. A lot of old school actors, a lot of the new generation. You know, in that photo you've got, you know, these were early films for people. Like Olivia Coleman is in that photo. And. And, you know, all those actors, it was okay. You know, I've never. It was exciting, to say the least. They. They do it really well in Britain. Great costumes, amazing locations. They're. They're really slick filmmaking. My experiences working in the UK and especially on period films or costume films, they're just really good at it. And the acting talent, they're just very, very relaxed. And then just put on these stunning performances and it was. It was exciting. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:11] Speaker C: Working with all these icons. [00:46:14] Speaker A: This is. This is a hilarious movie for anyone that hasn't seen it. Was it hilarious on set as well? Like, is it fun to watch and funny? [00:46:24] Speaker C: Yes, it was. It was a really fun filmmaking experience. And, you know, most of the time there'll just be some, you know, actor hammering us with a machine. Machine gun and, like shells exploding everywhere. Just stuff that didn't happen on little Australian films. And. And a great script. So quirky and just waking up the towns with gunfire every morning in some crazy scenes. Cute little British towns. And. And it's fun. You know, when you're on a film set, you're traveling around like a little circus moving from town to town, and you might do a week there and you develop these relationships and sometimes we'll go out together and have meals or have a bit of a party. So, you know, it was fun. Fun. But as a general rule, I didn't really like to socialize with the actors. I like to keep it professional. So I'd go out with the crew, but generally I kind of keep the actors at arm's length. [00:47:21] Speaker B: Is that Willem Dafoe in? Yeah. That's another one of my favorite movies. [00:47:28] Speaker C: My brother made this film in Tasmania and I was really blessed to work with my brother Dan. We've done a couple of films together now, and so, yeah, my bro, who's a great director, got Willem on board and we had an amazing time shooting in the wilderness of Tab. Stunning film. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Sam Neill, the other actor. No. [00:47:52] Speaker C: Yep. [00:47:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. Yeah. Have you seen it, Justin? [00:47:55] Speaker A: I have. [00:47:56] Speaker B: Hunter. Yeah. It's great film. Beautiful. [00:47:58] Speaker A: So talk us through this. Like this shot. Do you remember taking this. This shot? Was this something that you set up or was this happening During a scene. [00:48:07] Speaker C: Not a setup, not a setup. I would have been squatting down next to camera and Willem Dafoe, I think, walk through frame and. And just throwing a look. And I've grabbed that and it's just been. And I generally tried to work with low depth of fields because that was the film look. So I'll generally try to be wide open and. And get my backgrounds out of focus. But, you know, I would shoot a lot on a film set and it was all about just finding moments like this, just where the actor, you know, there might be 20 photos in this little sequence and that's just that moment where he looked and it had the right feel and the focus was good and. And that would be the golden moment. But I was able to get lots of great moments like this by shooting a lot and just increasing my ratio as you do. And that's a very digital photography thing. That was something you couldn't do with film. [00:48:57] Speaker A: Any. Any idea what camera you were using at this time? [00:49:01] Speaker C: Let me think. I was very dedicated to as a still, as a film photographer. I was on the Nikon Family for a long time, but they were just very slow to uptake digital photography. So I reckon on this. I reckon I was probably using Sony cameras at this point. The Sony's been really looking after me for a while now with their cameras, the A7R series and even my compact cameras. The RX100V is a great little one with an optical. Yeah. Enjoyed. So that those. I've been using Sony pretty much consistently since I became digital. I. I had. Maybe I had a film blimp on this one. I mean a blimp on. On a Nikon camera. I'm not quite sure, but pretty much for the last ten years it's been. It's been Sony. [00:49:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So what are you shooting with now? [00:49:58] Speaker C: Just out of interest, I've still got Sony cameras. The RX100V is my compact camera. That's always on me. And Sony A7 R5,6 7. Probably the latest of them crazy pixels kind of camera. [00:50:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:50:16] Speaker C: But I, you know, every now and then I'll drag my Hasselblad out, which I did on every time that I can justify it. Like on the film down there on the bottom right hand corner. It was tracks. It was. Was set in the 70s. It was about a. It was about a, you know, a photographer following her along. So I thought, oh yeah, I'll use my film camera on this one. And. And so that's. That would have been shot on a Hasselblad. [00:50:42] Speaker B: Just to replicate the look and feel and the, the generation of the film. [00:50:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, to that. Yeah. And that was, that was probably 10, 10 years ago. I, I didn't really get into the digital backs of the Hasselblad. They were just always out of my price range. So I just. [00:51:00] Speaker B: We're out of everyone's price range. Don't worry about that. [00:51:04] Speaker A: I don't know who buys that stuff. [00:51:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know who does, but someone does. [00:51:08] Speaker C: The studio guys seem to have that stuff. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. That's very true. [00:51:14] Speaker C: But yeah, the Hasselblad will come out every 10 years and it always just worked immaculate and I've still got it. I still love using it. [00:51:25] Speaker A: While we're scrolling through these, this amazing. Which is available on your website. I'll link below your sort of your film portfolio, I guess. Are there any other. Hang on, I'm going to make that one bigger. Any other images that strike out to you in your own portfolio when we're sort of scrolling through them. This one, this is. [00:51:44] Speaker C: I love. This is the director of photography, Christopher Doyle. So being a, being a movie photographer you've really got a document crew as well and actually used to love. I was probably a little bit. Because when a documenting crew like this, it sort of was more my work on a film set. Often if I was documenting the scene, it was the work of the team. You know, they were dressed, they were lit. I was just a documentary photographer. When I got to documenting crew and behind the scenes stuff, it felt more like my, my work. I'll make these choices. And this is a wonderful cinematographer called Christopher Doyle, who is an Australian guy living in Hong Kong. He made a shot a lot of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Wong Kar wise films like in the Mood for Love and things like that. And this is right at the end of the film era. There's a Panavision camera and there's quirky Chris with his light meters around his neck in the desert on the other proof fence. And he was just a legend. You know. I was always more excited and star struck by the. The cinematographers than I were by the actors. These were, these were the legends to me. These guys who could light films and move cameras and create all that emotion in a film. It was just another level for me. [00:52:56] Speaker A: Now I don't know where this idea has been sort of planted in my brain, but I have this idea probably from Leica's marketing. I'd say this idea that Cinematographers like this also, you know, are cruising around with like a vintage M series Leica or something like that and they're photographers. Have you crossed paths with many cinematographers that, that do take stills themselves? [00:53:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I do, I do. I mean he's a classic example. He's a beautiful photographer in his own light and he'd always have a room testing camera around his neck. And I worked with Greg Frazier was another one. He was a photographer who moved into film and he really approached when I was working. He's now, you know, legendary shooting films like June. But he was always, he would always talk in the zone system when he was lighting films. He's you know, Zone four down here and I'll get to zone five and he would be another one. Sometimes I found other stills photographers interestingly would only grab their camera out when there was a pretty sunset and like suddenly there'll be this, the cinematography and click. A sunset. And then you'd never see his camera again. This guy here, Lance Accord, he's a wonderful New York based cinematographer. I don't know if he ever grabbed his camera out, I didn't see him. But it's definitely a thing for cinematographers to have a little compact camera in their belt and to grab their own stills. Those guys would actually have access that I would never have. They could just like light guys and, and set it up and then just directly ask some famous lead actor, oh, can I just grab a couple of photos and that always get a yes? Yeah, I have to. I had to be very reserved in my decision to ask an actor to work. But these guys, they could just shoot whatever they wanted and sometimes they did. Yeah, sometimes they did. [00:54:50] Speaker A: So cool. [00:54:51] Speaker B: So a question for you, Matt. It's a really interesting topic for me because it's a genre that I've never, I've seen some work, obviously we see more. So now with the digital era and social media, we're starting to see more kind of behind the scenes stuff that comes out of even older films. You know, like I follow a lot of Star wars stuff and more and more behind the scenes shots are emerging as time goes on. How does someone, how would you encourage or recommend someone make that first step into cinematic stills photography? Is it still an industry that warrants someone pursuing a career in. [00:55:30] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's. When I started it was difficult then to actually lift a frame from the footage and get a higher resolution in focus enough because the actual images were whizzing through pretty quickly so the individual images wouldn't actually be that sharp or high resolution. But these days with digital, I think they can quite effectively lift a frame off and blow it up into a poster. Yeah, but that's not the stills photographer's job. That's part of the job documenting the scenes that they're shooting. All the other stuff, the behind the scenes images, they want a photo of the, the director talking to the lead actor. They want a bunch of landscapes that might end up as the background plate for the poster shot. I was shooting behind the scenes video by the end because my cameras could. So I'd be getting all the making of stuff as part of my job. And so, you know, the job's not redundant yet. And sometimes the way they shoot a film, it doesn't lend itself to a good still. You're shooting over one actor's shoulder, then you're shooting over the other. You never actually see these two actors talking together. So it often requires a stills photographer to get in. Especially if there's like a big actor on for one day and you want to see them in a two shot, then you, you just need to get in there and just manipulate the scene a little bit. So that's still required of, of a photographer on set. [00:56:51] Speaker B: And so how would, how would someone get into the, into the genre? What, what would be. [00:56:57] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks for asking. I, I, it's tough. There's only a bunch of us out there working in this industry. You start with short films if you can, and you get your experience on a film set by doing that. If you're lucky, you might be able to jump straight onto a bigger film and be the assistant for a stills photographer and just get comfortable on a film set. You know, the, the way it all runs, the nature of the job, study what gets used. When a film comes out. There'll be often, I'll shoot 60,000 photos, but they'll condense that down to maybe 20 photos that, that do the rounds. Study what those photos are. Often there'll be a really beautiful portrait of the actor. There'll be a good action shot. We're trying to make this film look exciting. We're trying to sell this film. Stills photographers are in the publicity department. So we're trying to sell this product. We're not. So the actors need to look good, study that stuff. That's really important what gets used. But the short film, low budget film is a good access into that area and work experience is another good access into that area. If you can get on a film set and just, you know, just film sets are really boring. You know, people come, oh, this is good. You know, their first day on, it's, oh, wow, you know, end of day two, they're just like, you know, in their book, you know, they're boardship. It's a long day and so. But getting familiar with it, what happens on a film set is the way to do it. So that's what I say to people. I'm. I've had a. It's difficult to get work experience on a film set because if they're like me, they want to be invisible. So it's harder to be invisible if you've got like little Gary toying around with you, you know, holding you back and stuff. [00:58:40] Speaker B: So. [00:58:40] Speaker C: But you might be able to sit back and just be downloading for you or, or doing some editing for you. So that's good if you can get on there. But for most people it's the short film path or you can just get lucky. You know, your uncle Dave that's making a film and he'll give you a go. So work the family, work your friends in the industry. [00:59:02] Speaker B: Yep. [00:59:03] Speaker A: If you, if you were going the. Yeah. The short film path, which like you say, it's probably the most. It's probably the highest chance of being able to get some experience because like you say, you know, you reach out to people for work experience, but they're often, they're flat out, they've got a job to do and they're thinking, this is just going to make my day sort of more difficult or whatever. If. So if you were going for the short film route, like if it was me, I'd be thinking, all right, I had to find people making short films. Most likely going to be students. Find, find those students and offer your services for free, I would assume, and just say, I'm happy to do stills. And then the other thing I would be doing is like saying staying out of the way in the shoot. But I would also be trying to. Because there's not going to be, you're not going to need thousands of still photos for a short film. I would be trying to be as useful as possible. Is that something you'd recommend? As in like carrying gear, moving, you know, if someone needs a hand, moving light stands or whatever. And if there's no stills to be, be made at that moment, just be useful, help, help everybody really, because you'll learn more about. [01:00:10] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a really important point and that's actually really critical on, on low budget films and also small crew films. Everyone does everything and it doesn't happen in America. It's very unionized. You cannot pick up a light if you're a stills photographer. But in Australia, it's. It's all in. It's all in your help. You. You make, make someone a coffee, you know, you lug gear. [01:00:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:34] Speaker C: And I did seven or eight films with Rolf to here, and every time he just trimmed his film down to less and less people. So most of us had two or three departments that we're doing. We all carry gear, we all held the sound. Boom, we all did everything. So really Good point, Justin. That's a great way to do it. Some people come into stills via the camera department. They'll need a clapper loader. You know, camera departments are a bit bigger than me. There'll be six, seven, eight people on a camera department. Focus pullers, runners. Sometimes those guys can get experience by being in the camera department, doing some, some small job, but getting that experience and then they can kind of wiggle in that way. [01:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah, Great idea. [01:01:15] Speaker B: Brent Luki we had on a couple of weeks ago, he started off as a clapper, but he. [01:01:22] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:01:23] Speaker B: Was it Brent? No. Anyway, to go. We've been very busy. [01:01:32] Speaker A: Hours and hours of interviews. It's, it's, it's awesome. [01:01:35] Speaker C: 57, man. Guys, I'm proud of you. 57, that's great. [01:01:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm pretty happy too. Well, just on that note, speaking of which, good segue there, Matt. I did like a segue. For those of you watching along at home, this is the Camera Life podcast. Proudly brought lucky straps out of Bendigo, Victoria, makers of the finest handmade leather camera straps on the planet. Even the cows like them. And if you don't like and subscribe and tickle the bell so you get notifications. And just a reminder, this is the Camera Life podcast. This is our weekly Thursday morning Australian time show. But we also now have an afternoon or an evening show, 7:30pm on a Monday, Australian standard time or Eastern time, whichever it is. Australian Eastern time. Yep. Yeah. Where we just. It's a little, it's a little looser, it's a more random show, but we still get great people on to help us, you know, move the show along, which is great. And I'm going to hit up Dennis, Dennis Smith, as soon as we're finished on this show to get him on Monday to talk about his adventures in Dubai. [01:02:49] Speaker A: Speaking of, speaking of Dennis, he's commented here, I think, and see, I heard it differently when you were talking earlier about taking actors off into another spot to do some portraits. I believe he, he thinks you said ball of light. I believe you said fall of light and we're going to settle it. What did, what did you say? [01:03:10] Speaker C: I would have attempted to say fall of light. A pretty fall of light. [01:03:17] Speaker B: It's the accent all over Australia. Your accent's mixed up. [01:03:22] Speaker A: Dennis would have been very excited because he, he, he's sort of photography project and, and I guess brand is a ball of light. He does these sort of light painting balls in, in landscapes that are quite amazing and. Yeah, anyway, so he was very excited and I thought, oh, I think he said fall. But I don't know if I want to correct this. Dave from Tassie Digifrog says Dying Breed is another good Tassie film. Put that on your list, boys. You familiar with that one at all, Matt? [01:03:56] Speaker C: I've heard of it. I haven't seen Dying Breed. [01:03:59] Speaker B: We've all got some homework. [01:04:02] Speaker A: Dennis says I've emailed. He's emailed you a ball of light picture already. [01:04:06] Speaker C: Yeah, thanks. [01:04:07] Speaker B: It'll be in your inbox there, Matt. He's also emailed me three times while this is all happening, so I haven't got any. Dennis. Well, to be fair, Dennis has an amazing level of energy like unlike anyone I've ever seen in photography world. I love it. But. So Matt, what you're currently. Let me go, let me start again. Do you shoot today? What do you shoot these days? What are you doing with your creative eye? [01:04:41] Speaker C: Thank you for asking. I'm very focused on community and I always have been. So I've got two projects on the go at the moment, very portrait based. One is called the Sannyasins and it's in my community here. There's a whole lot of people from the Sannyasin community, Osho's communities in America and in India in the, in the 80s. You don't know if you know about the Osho and this kind of the Orange. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of some reason a lot of people who are involved with Osho, the Orange people movement in, are settled in this community and this is a generation that are now 70s and 80s and they had this huge play time, you know, living in this kind of community and, and doing these intense practices and so they're scattered throughout here and I'm doing a series of portraits of them. Although they're a very shy mob, you know, there's probably 40 of them here and slowly I'm meeting them and I'm doing a series of interior portraits of them. In their house. And I'm enjoying it conceptually because I'll go into their space and I'll find the little picture of Osho, their guru and I'll let that determine where the photo is going to happen. So that will be okay, where's the Osho? And that will be just hidden in the background somewhere. And it becomes a bit like where's Wally? It's like where's Osho? And in the frame. And so I'm doing a series of these interior portraits of them and I've got a second project on the go called the Old Family Piano. And it's, it's just people like me who have been lugging their old family piano around unable to get rid of this beautiful kind of family airlock. And, and so that's another series of interior portraits. Very wide 20 and it's kind of about interior spaces but very, very focused back. And it's kind of a. I've always done these little collections of people that have something in common. You know, when I was young I collected old men riding on old bicycles around the streets of Adelaide. That was a series I did and, and a bunch of other things. All my friends with their backyard marijuana crop. You know, I love these little urban collections of. Yeah, that's Old Men and I'll get around on Old Bikes. A series that I published as a poster and distributed sort of five or six hundred of these posters in the late 90s or early 90s. And I still get approached by people wanting one and I've got a few left and it's become a bit of a legendary sort of thing. But these little collections of people with something in common, common. And often I'll, I'll shoot very consistently. I'll keep the same lens, I'll keep the same focal distance, the, the, you know, and I have these really consistent little series of people that have got some common thread. So they're my, my two kind of major projects at the moment. But I've always got a camera on me and I'm always seem to be documenting other people's dogs and babies and rituals and birthdays and, and events. [01:07:42] Speaker B: The curse, it's the curse of the modern day photographer, isn't it? [01:07:46] Speaker C: But I, I love it, you know, and, and then someone dies and it happens and then I, they go, have you got any photos, Matt? And it's like, well yeah, I've got 600 photos of Gary's dog, you know, and then I'll be able to put, put you know, a little cluster together for the funeral. And I really love having this archive of snapshots. So the snapshot, I think is probably maybe my strongest work. I've always documented my immediate, my immediate circle. And I've got this huge archive now of snapshots. Yeah. So that's always. I love, I love just getting little local jobs here, just, you know, a little architectural job or I'm photographing my daughter's wedding in a couple of weeks. [01:08:28] Speaker A: Cool. [01:08:28] Speaker C: I, I just love, love photography so much still, even though I'm not forced to make a living with it. So, so, yeah, loving little jobs as well. [01:08:37] Speaker B: And do you have, you know, you're same age as me, pretty much, give or take. Do you have a vision yet of what you want history to say about you as a documentary style photographer and your work in the film industry and supporting local communities? What do you want that to be for you at your funeral? Perhaps not to, not to hurry the process along at all, but what do you want people to say about your creative vision? [01:09:10] Speaker C: Good question, Greg. Look, I'm very passionate in everything I do and I've always wanted, I've always tried to impress myself with my photography, you know, and I knew if I was really happy with it, then the client would be really happy with it. So just a lot of passion, a lot of playfulness and fun, I think is something that's consistent with my work. Technical excellence is important to me. Like things have to be really focused, really great exposures, which obviously is a lot easier this day with raw files. But technical excellence is, is, is something I want to be known for and for documenting my, my time. This is my era. And something I learned very early, that some really random photo of a street taken 20 years ago is suddenly it gets richer and richer and richer the older it gets. And so just to have an awareness, have an awareness of history now. So all these portraits. And I did a series of portraits of all my friends on Kangaroo island where I was living prior to this. And now, you know, half a dozen of them are dead. You know, relationships have broken up, dogs have died, history's moved on. So just to someone who's documented now with a sense of history, probably where I want to be. And in that series of old men on old bikes, they're not getting around on those old bikes with the upside down handlebars anymore. Those bikes are gone. They're now getting around old men, homeless men are getting around on fairly acceptable mountain bikes and things like that, probably electric bikes. That's the end of the year. So just, just to be. [01:10:45] Speaker B: But it's a good point. [01:10:46] Speaker A: Also a new era, though, for someone else to document, you know. [01:10:50] Speaker C: Yes. [01:10:50] Speaker A: People get people, old men getting around on electric bikes and. And then we'll look back or you're. [01:10:55] Speaker B: Documenting them there, Justin. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Remember when they had wheels? That was crazy. [01:11:01] Speaker C: Old men on drones. [01:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. We're not far away. [01:11:07] Speaker B: But I think it's a really good point you make, Matt, about documenting your era. And I think, you know, as a street photographer and a lover of doing my photography in Melbourne, I love nothing more than photographing Brown by home in South Yarra and my city in Melbourne. I've lived in Melbourne my whole life, you know, I know it well and it, you know, Melbourne is ever changing and I. Part of my. It's not why I do street photography, but I think part of my. It's a little arrogant for me to say that maybe my legacy will be that I've actually captured some, you know, a space in time that is no longer there or it's completely changed or something radical has happened to the city or, you know, and it's. And often we see. I know, I see on socials, I subscribe to a whole bunch of, you know, how Melbourne used to be in the 50s, 60s, 70s, you know, and so on. And you see. Come across these visions of, you know, even like Swanson street or Spencer street back in the day, like 50 years ago. And it's so radically different then. You go back 80 years and there's horse and carriages on the roads. You know, it's. And I think that's part of our responsibility, but I think it's a natural byproduct of what we do, is that in a thousand years time, people will rely on that information, that data or images or those negatives to piece together what the world used to be like. And I think it's just an unknown part that we play in as being photographers, especially if you, you know, you pursue a documentary style of photography. I think it's just a natural byproduct. Just a heads up to Matt, Dennis Smith, who is the ball of light, he has sent you a ball of light photo from Kangaroo island because he. [01:13:06] Speaker C: Was looking forward to checking that out. [01:13:10] Speaker B: That's one of the many emails that Dennis has sent me in the last hour, hour and 15 minutes. Love you, Dennis. You know, I do. [01:13:20] Speaker A: I have a question. Obviously, portraits and people have been, I guess what you would say, your primary focus in photography, in your career and your personal work, but you obviously seem very connected with nature. You know, you're sitting outside right now. You live very close to nature. Have you ever been sort of on a journey into either, like, landscape or wildlife photography? And if so, why not? Or. [01:13:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And it's like, no, I don't do landscape photography, but I experience the landscape and I just really feel that I can't know. I just. It's not an intellectual thing. I just, I'm. I'm present in landscapes and I enjoy them, and I. I just don't take landscape photography. I just don't do it, and I don't photograph sunsets and. [01:14:17] Speaker B: But your experience. [01:14:20] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't actually even enjoy landscape photography that much. I feel like for me, it's just, Yeah, I enjoy the experience of being in these environments and I don't feel the need to capture them, which will be a much inferior product on film. [01:14:38] Speaker B: And I wonder if that's a. That's a perk or a benefit of living where you do, you know, I guess maybe for someone. And even. I mean, Justin doesn't have to travel far to experience nature or find a spot. In fact, we're talking last week with Jim, who also helps us run this podcast from Tim, Lucky Straps and Grant, who's also been on the podcast a number of times before my appearance, talking about. We just traveled down to the epilogue. It's 20 minutes or however far away it is. But for a city kid like me, who is constantly surrounded by obstruction of the landscape or the view and even sunsets, I rarely see them because. Because there's lots of buildings around me. I think landscape photography has a different draw because I get to experience the beauty of something that I can't otherwise just quickly go and see for myself. Whereas when you live in it, it's no less special, but you don't need to capture it and record it in case you want to reference it, because you'll see it again tomorrow. But it'll be different and beautiful in its own way. So I think there's, you know, I wonder if that affects other genres, but how people, their living situations or their, you know, if they didn't grow up with a family, whether that inspires them to become a family photographer or for, you know, for some personal need, whether known or unknown, to fill that gap. You know, whether you're. Our environments influence how we approach our craft. It's just food for thought. I don't need anyone to necessarily answer those questions. [01:16:22] Speaker C: I think it's about what lights you up. And, yeah, I'm deep into yoga. These days I teach it, I practice it every day at dawn. And you get better at listening to your body and just sensing those little excited twitters and stuff. Stuff. And so if landscape lights you up, that's your thing. That's great. You go with it. For me, it's people stuff. It's people stuff. You know, life's short. Enjoy and, and, you know, find the thing that lights you up and do it. And for a lot of people like you, Greg, landscape would give you an excuse to get out of the city and get into that landscape with your camera. There's an opportunity there. [01:17:02] Speaker B: You think it would. [01:17:06] Speaker C: The urban landscape's interesting. You know, it sounds like you're all over that. [01:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's kind of my jam. But it is interesting because as I, as I age, street photography is becoming a different proposition now. There's, it's a little more risk involved, there's a little more tension in the community, especially around here. And so that's something to be mindful of. But, you know, it's actually a long term plan for my partner Sasha and I to maybe move back there, she's from Launceston, move back down to Tassie one day and, and take a much easier approach to life. [01:17:46] Speaker C: I'm surprised you're saying that. Street photography is harder because everyone's taken so many photos on their devices these days. It's almost like that, don't take a photo of me. Does it really exist anymore? And I remember it does. [01:17:59] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Because devices are one thing. Devices of, you know, the market has been flooded with devices. Everyone has at least one in their hand at all times pretty much, you know, you walk through the city, you sit on a train, no one is reading a newspaper, no one's flicking through a magazine, or very few people will be reading books. And I love those people when I see them. But most people are just the zone. And I noticed that even more so in Japan than I did in Melbourne. Melbourne's pretty much caught up now, but when I first traveled to Japan in 2015, I was shocked by this posture of one hand up, neck bent forward. But in Japan, they often carry two phones because they love the smartphone on the network, but they also have their own styles of phone that they use for commerce and business. And so they often will carry two phones. It's quite baffling. But in Melbourne, especially in the streets of Melbourne and through misleading media, I think social media especially, people feel that they know their rights when the natural fact they don't, you know, and people will protest if they think their rights are infringed, which is fine, you know, and I, I'm happy to politely and calmly educate someone on the street said, hey, I actually can take photos on the streets with a camera. You know, look over there. There's a security camera on that pole. There's one right above us from the Coles. That car has a, has a dash cam. And every person that's walking along this street could be taking your photo, video from the other side of the road. High resolution, you wouldn't even know it. And I'm just walking around with a very small Fujifilm street photography camera. And I will get. People stop me and have angry words with me and demand that I fulfill their rights by, you know, not. You're not allowed to do that. You don't have my permission. And, and I get that. I get that, you know, everyone has a right to privacy, but you can't expect it when you're in a public space. But for some reason, some people do. [01:20:05] Speaker C: And using what looks like a real camera, do you think if you did that same thing on a phone, you. [01:20:10] Speaker B: Would have that issue, it'd be less so? Yeah, for sure. [01:20:13] Speaker A: And I'm not trying to look, wouldn't notice. [01:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't think they'd notice. They think, oh, what's that weirdo doing now? Like, but when you hold a camera, even, even a little point and shoot, it's a very different experience. And so that's why, I mean, one of the reasons why I prefer to work with smaller cameras is because they're more discreet. I don't try to hide them. You know, you can buy, you know, you can buy cameras that look like a button on your jacket if you really want it to be discreet. [01:20:39] Speaker A: Discreet. [01:20:39] Speaker B: But, you know, I have a camera, I don't try to hide it. I have my own set of ethical rules that I follow when I do street photography. But, you know, I still get challenged. And there's a YouTuber who I've just started watching, who's a street photographer in the uk, and he was telling this story about how he was with a couple of friends doing street and he took a photo of this guy. It was a beautiful composition. And the guy absolutely lost it and became almost violent about having this photo taken in public. So there's a different set of expectations that are creeping into society. And. [01:21:14] Speaker A: We talk about this a bit. Greg, with like, which cameras are sort of more discreet for street photography and not trying to sort of raise too much attention, are you saying I rave. [01:21:22] Speaker B: On about street photography? [01:21:24] Speaker A: No, but when I was doing my 30 day challenge and shooting around Bendigo's tough because there's like, it'd be like two people on every street. So it's not like, it's not even a crowd. It's. It's basically like. It's pretty clear what, you know, if there's a photographer and one other person and you're pointing it at them, they're like, okay, they're taking a photo of me anyway. But Bendigo is also. It's a big town. 100000 people, but it's a small town compared to Melbourne. And I found that, yeah, you get quite a few sort of weird looks and stuff when I was shooting with a normal sized camera and lens. But one day I, I was shooting with my, my big R3 which is a like a pro size body but. And with a 70 to 200 white Canon lens on it and people come up and spoke to me and they were all like, oh, what are you shooting for you from the paper? And that, that was about it that I got. And I thought, I wonder if I could take this to the next level and maybe even put a high his top on next time or something. You know, like be, be very seen and very purposeful and people will probably ignore me. That's what I want to try test out. You know what I mean? If you look, if you're sort of look like you're trying to go unnoticed, people are very aware. But if you're. It's kind of like that thing where they say if you wear high vis and carry a ladder, you can sort of walk into anywhere you want. Yeah, I think I might be able to do the same with a really obnoxiously large camera setup and a high vis top and just sort of cruise around and take photos like I'm meant to be there. [01:22:55] Speaker B: Our good friend Greg, Greg Crackers Carrick has been known to wear a high vis vest and he's a street photographer. [01:23:02] Speaker A: I reckon it'll work. [01:23:03] Speaker B: He's not, he's nobody's fool. [01:23:05] Speaker A: He's. He's a clever fella. He's a very clever fella. [01:23:08] Speaker C: Anyway, hey guys, can I just go to a short intermission for just while I visit a tree Absolutely in the. [01:23:17] Speaker A: Background or are you going to go off? [01:23:19] Speaker B: Don't even turn the camera. [01:23:23] Speaker A: While he's gone. [01:23:23] Speaker C: I'll. [01:23:24] Speaker A: I'll bring up Paul Henderson's comment. He says, Justin, you could do a short film project on lucky straps from Cow to camera. I don't know if I would want to do that. [01:23:33] Speaker B: We might do brand identity. [01:23:36] Speaker A: No, we might do a short film that's more so on. Just the whole process. I was talking to our. The people that make our packaging yesterday. They're made in Melbourne. Our webbing is woven in Melbourne, obviously. Our straps are made here in Bendigo. And, yeah, I'm sort of thinking. I was like, maybe I need to visit some of the places that contribute to our packaging and components and stuff. [01:24:02] Speaker B: And we've talked about. We've talked about this in an article too, because I talked about sustainability, because that's big for brands now to talk about. Like, Peak Design just released a new roller case and their marketing on Kickstarter. A big chunk of it is about who they're subscribed to, who they're. What certifications they have for being, you know, ethically responsible for using recycled products. And, you know, their outer shell is 100% recycled with a sealed nylon. And, you know, like, they're using all of these clever marketing approaches to. Which I think is important. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if we want to go right from the cow. That might be a little messy. [01:24:45] Speaker A: No, no, no. I'm not that excited about that. [01:24:49] Speaker B: We don't want to visit a slaughterhouse. [01:24:52] Speaker A: Jim's mentioned here. Yeah, Hide in plain sight. That's what I'm thinking. I think there's. Once you just go further past. Yeah, once you go further past and just all the way to, hey, I'm obviously a photographer, obviously taking photos. People will probably just ignore me. I'm gonna try it. Yeah, maybe I'll wear my. Maybe haven't actually used this really properly yet. My. My custom. I made a custom camera strap with media on it. Just, you know, because then who's gonna. Who's gonna not let me in? I'm. I'm media. [01:25:27] Speaker C: That's very true. [01:25:28] Speaker B: Or you could wear your beef up one, Your colorful Beef up one, and then people will really leave you alone. [01:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah, that'll attract some attention. [01:25:39] Speaker B: Anyway, when I saw Jim's comment hide in plain sight, I thought that was the title of the Cow to Strap video. [01:25:46] Speaker A: No. Where were we? What were we talking about? [01:25:54] Speaker B: Very sidetracked there. [01:25:55] Speaker A: Oh, actually, I was gonna ask, because we. [01:25:58] Speaker B: Do. [01:25:58] Speaker A: We talk about gear a little bit on this. This podcast. We do get sidetracked into the. The technical or the gear side of photography. Matt, are there any cameras that have kind of resonated and stuck with you over the years, or are you Just it's whatever's the tool at the moment is the tool at the moment. You don't get too attached to it. Or is it this sort of one that you look back fondly and think, that was my camera. That was. I really kind of. That. That's me. [01:26:27] Speaker C: Yeah, good question. Look, I reckon My first Nikon F3 was a really. These really robust top end Nikon. You had the Canon F1 and the Nikon Nikon F3 and actually wrote a song about it. I was so passionate about these cameras, deciding between. And now just these. There were these very robust photojournalist cameras and they were, you know, I remember getting my first one and there was my first like really good camera, you know. [01:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:27:03] Speaker C: So that was the thing. I think I went with the, the Nikon F3 and you know, they could. I'm hard on my gear and film work is hard on gears. These things get dropped and wet and covered in sand. So they, they've got to be, they've got to be solid. It was definitely an excitement about getting my first Hasselblad. You know of the enigma of the Hasselblad and, and just being super cool and, and the times that I've dragged it out on film sets and photograph actors, they almost feel like a little bit privileged to be photographed. Not only on film, it's like. But on a Hasselblad and stuff. [01:27:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think Justin's T shirt that I am the dude must be. Should be your T shirt, Matt, now that I. [01:27:46] Speaker C: Those are big moments. Big moments for me. My first real proper pro little SLR and my first hassle. That were exciting. Yeah. [01:27:54] Speaker A: You haven't kept, you haven't kept either of those cameras. [01:27:57] Speaker C: I've got them both. [01:27:58] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. [01:28:00] Speaker C: That's a little kit of lenses and stuff. Yeah, absolutely. [01:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:06] Speaker C: I'm very attached to prime lenses these days with my, my Sony A7R series cameras which have been great for me in film work. They're, you know, and they just keep getting better. But I'm really, I don't do my zooms anymore. It's just little prime lenses. I've got a 28F2, a 55, 18 and 85 1.8 as well. And I'm really enjoying working with prime lenses again in, in a digital capacity and generally wide open. Although people ask me what, what settings I use my cameras on and I use them all, you know, every situation. And having been a photographer for 35 years, it's, it's wonderful that this Technical thing, it's just second nature. You know, you just, you don't really think about it. But I use every feature of a camera, you know, self timers and sometimes big depths of field. And you know, I really, I really use whatever it is that requires me. And when I was at college, there was all about pre visualization, visualizing the actual shot before you take it and then achieving it with your knowledge of the camera. And that. That's carried through. Yeah, yeah, that. That's getting a bit technical there. [01:29:13] Speaker B: No, no, I think it's a good. I think it's a really wonderful process that pre visualization that you. And I think it teaches people to look for the light and the composition and understand the timing of what's going on in front of them. Is everything moving fast? Is everything moving slow? And then that second nature kicks in where you adjust the tool for the job to meet what's going on in front of you, not hope that what's going on in front of you meets the tool. Go on, Justin, ask him the question. [01:29:45] Speaker A: I've got to do it. So if we ask everyone. Well, I forget sometimes we try and ask everyone this. It's the. It's the end of the world. The apocalypse is here. Zombies are coming. Like that. What, what's the movie with those same guys from Hot Fuzz? Shaun of the Dead. Yeah. [01:30:04] Speaker B: Yeah. I thought you were just reading the ABC news headlines for a second there. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Shaun of the Dead is happening. You've got time to grab one camera and one lens only to document the hilarious unfolding of that of Shaun of the Dead and the end of the world. What do you grab? [01:30:27] Speaker C: It'll be my Sony camera because it's got a really great battery life and it could probably, if I was conservative, I could get through, you know, a few weeks with it and it would be my 50 mil, a standard lens. I, I reckon it can cover it all. And the resolution's high enough that if I was really far back from the approaching zombies, I could, I could zoom in and so, you know, 50 mil Sony A7 R5, which is probably my highest resolution camera. Hopefully I've got time to grab a second battery because the world's over. But that would, that would get me through that, that would get me through that job and then I can shoot video as well, which will probably improve the experience of approaching zombies. And yeah, so that would be my choice. And if I'm lucky, I have my little, little microphone on top as well. [01:31:16] Speaker A: Yeah, really get the wind noise. [01:31:20] Speaker B: Sebi, clip that in the future. Can I expand on that question? [01:31:27] Speaker C: Yes. [01:31:28] Speaker B: What, what would be your hope for those photos that you've taken? [01:31:31] Speaker C: Ah, good question. That society, I was the only one who had their together to actually document it. And these would become a kind of iconic photographs of that event. You know, everyone else is running away in fear or shooting it on their phone, but I, I got the gold and they're probably just trying to find that. That key moment where, you know, that approach approaching zombies with mouth open, coming at me, trying to, you know, that would be, I guess if it's not a worldwide apocalypse that you know, that the world would see. What happened in Australia. [01:32:09] Speaker A: That's right. [01:32:09] Speaker C: Crazy summer. Yeah. [01:32:13] Speaker B: You've already got the plot. [01:32:18] Speaker C: Because it often will come down to one shot. You know, Trump getting shot. Know there was the one shot even though there was thousand to get that one shot. [01:32:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That. That photo was nuts. That's a, that's a career. Obviously that guy's probably got a million career photos, but that, yeah, that's obviously that's a career photo, but I think you're right. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Sort of like the girl of the. Sorry, the photo of the girl that survived the napalming in Vietnam. [01:32:43] Speaker C: Photo of. [01:32:44] Speaker B: Is it in Saigon where the guy's being shot by the. By the military forces in the head. Like these images that are historical and I know we're talking about a hypothetical situation, but I think the, I think the intent behind it is lovely. It's just to capture that moment so that other people can know what really took place here at this point time in history. And on that. Do you think that that means that in general that a lot of photographers probably without realizing are actually kind of quasi historians? [01:33:24] Speaker C: Certainly, certainly documentary photographers are, I think landscape photographers. I mean the landscape doesn't change that dramatically. So I guess there's no real sense of history there apart from what they're shooting it on. But certainly people documenting documentary photographers say certainly are documenting history. [01:33:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:33:48] Speaker A: Have you ever worked on a zombie movie? [01:33:52] Speaker C: I have, thank you. Good. Very. I did an Australian zombie movie shot in the Flinders Rangers called. It was called Cargo and it started starred Martin Freeman, the actor who played the hobbit, a fairly famous British actor. And we. They were there and they tried to do something different with the genre. I remember there was the zombie movement coordinator who tried to come up with her own little zombie walk and his own little zombie expressions. It was a pretty, pretty decent, pretty decent attempt. Actually. I think that was my only experience of the zombie genre was that 2017. That sounds right. Wow. [01:34:37] Speaker A: It's pretty recent. [01:34:38] Speaker C: Cargo. Yeah, I got, I got photos, I've got a page. I pub. I self published a book, my book about four years ago and I've got a whole double page spread called Celebrity Hacky Sack. And it's just people that I've played hacky sack with on film sets and Martin Freeman's in there playing hacky sack with me. There we go. Celebrity Hacky Sack is my big double page spread and you've got Kylie Minogue there and, and just wow, the challenge of playing hacky sack and photographing someone else and essentially I had to catch the ball in the air as well. That was my own little criteria. And we've got a, we've got Martin Freeman over here on, on that John Will film playing hack. [01:35:26] Speaker A: That's awesome. [01:35:27] Speaker B: Not many people can say that they, they played hacky sack with some of these celebrities and took their photo doing so I think that's a pretty unique. Speaking of that on your website, but. [01:35:41] Speaker A: That, that book is linked in the description below so you can purchase that book. [01:35:49] Speaker C: Yeah, self published. This, this is my covert project. Getting into my archive of well over a million photos and just finding my, my favorite portraits and finally putting this, this little baby together. And I had a great experience of my first edit. I showed it to a Melbourne publicist and he just tore it to pieces. He said, you know, it's like a catalog. Photographers make terrible editors of their own books. Get rid of half of it. And he was being kind of harsh and a bit mean, but I was, it was just such valuable feedback. And he said, just, just get it to that core. Very, you know, just the best of the best. And it was great feedback that he gave me and I had a little editing team and it's been good and I love having this book, especially as I'm doing less photography. It just reminds me of this amazing journey I've had as a photographer. It's been such a, a great journey. The places I've been, the people's homes I've been into and, and you know, the places I've gone. I've totally had a fun time, you know. [01:36:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's really, that's a really good point. I think we sometimes lose sight of what we've actually achieved over whether it be a decade or several decades in your case. And I recommend that anyone who's into photography just try to make a photo book at least once. Doesn't matter what genre you shoot. Just like you said, just boil down or even get someone else to do it for you. Boil down to the essence of what your photography is. Self publish. Yours is on blurb. I published on blurb as well. Not for public sale, just for my own. I did that after my trips to Japan. I made street photography books but I encourage anyone to do it. It just changes how you see the images that you're used to seeing on a screen or on your phone. It makes it a much more tangible, physical thing that you've created. [01:37:49] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good process to go through as well. It's just getting to know your own work and just having something out there in the world when it all crashes. I've got a physical beautiful product that is a lovely gift to share with people. I don't make any money on it. Self publishing is an expensive journey. I think I've sold 120 of them but they've been really nicely represented in some of the better portrait galleries around Australia. So it was good, you know and yeah it's nice seeing and I think. [01:38:19] Speaker B: It'S also available in acme. I think it's also in acne. [01:38:25] Speaker C: Portrait galleries. Got it. So just a few little places where it's around but like I've only sold 120 and I'm stoked with that, you know. Yeah, that's lovely because they're going to. [01:38:35] Speaker B: Be worth it and it's definitely something, you know, to be proud of. Matt. It's a huge achievement and it's a great way to celebrate what has been an extensive career, quite a, you know, wide arching career and quite an interesting journey. What was the comment from Dennis? [01:38:55] Speaker A: Well he said there's the answer already but he was just asking if you're comfortable sharing how was blurb to work with and especially have been an overall positive experience making the book. [01:39:04] Speaker C: Yeah. Are you happy for me to answer that or do you want to take that one? [01:39:07] Speaker A: Greg, Go for it. [01:39:08] Speaker B: No, no, you go for Please mate, please. [01:39:10] Speaker C: Look, I've been really happy with the self publishing experience with blurb 1point. I ordered 20 books and they're not cheap and they came back and they weren't great prints. The, the black and white stuff was blue and there was just a blue rinse over them and they totally took these very expensive, expensive back books back and reprinted and without much fuss at all, which is what you want with high resolution photography books. You know, the quality of the image and I've gone for really quality paper. The quality of the paper is good and just the, the control that we have to, you know, I update this book every now and then and, and that's my grandparents from my book. Nice black and white. So that was doing really good. Their service has been good. It arrives in good condition. The, the, the app that you use to design the books, pretty user friendly. It's been fine for me. It's, it's. And they do have these sales every now and then where it's 40 off and you wait around for these sales and you can pick up these books a lot cheaper and potentially make, make three or four dollars on them, you know, for sale. [01:40:22] Speaker B: I agree. I think Blurb, I found Blurb to be really useful. I didn't publish to market, I only just made them for myself but I found them incredible. And the, the book design tool is really simple but it gives you creative control. And yes, you're right, Blurb do give you options of paper choice, whether you want hardcover, soft cover, whether you want printing on the spine. And it provides really good feedback. If you do something wrong, you know it'll tell you highlight it. [01:40:52] Speaker C: Yep, it does. I'll often order a block of 20 books and then another 20 when I sell out and I'm selling these myself but then I've just, and then I've just updated it. You know, I've got some new series that I wanted to include a couple of photos that I didn't think were working and just having that control of a small order publication is great. [01:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't recommend anyone use Amazon for self publishing unless you're like a text based author. I wouldn't recommend a photographer go to Amazon for that sort of thing. It's incredibly, it's overly complex and not terribly user friendly. I've helped my sister self publish a couple of books. She's an author and yeah, I didn't enjoy the process at all. But yeah, blurry is good. So Dennis, we're looking forward to your book. [01:41:45] Speaker A: Yeah, obviously. Hopefully that means Dennis is going to make a book. [01:41:49] Speaker C: Yeah, I look forward to checking out this famous Dennis of yours. [01:41:55] Speaker A: Yeah, he's a great sport, amazing photographer, but a great sport too. There's actually he was at a workshop. I'll butcher this story because I've only heard the story but he was at a workshop at the Bright festival of Photography, a shibari workshop. Are you familiar with shibari? [01:42:16] Speaker C: This is fine Japanese time each other up technique. Yes, correct. I'm very familiar actually. [01:42:23] Speaker A: Okay, so they had a model organized to come and be in the photos and it was a workshop so people could take the Photos of the process and then also sort of the finished, I guess, shibari experience with this model, but the model didn't make it. And so Dennis stepped. Stepped up and, and was the model for the shoot. And, and here he's just commented here. He said it was one of the most emotional experiences of his life. [01:42:55] Speaker B: Amazing. [01:42:57] Speaker C: Dennis, proud of you. Hopefully someone photographed you in that. In that position and took your camera. [01:43:03] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe there was an entire. Yeah, an entire workshop of people capturing the experience. [01:43:10] Speaker C: It's a pretty magical experience, Shabari, when you perform safely in the right environment. [01:43:19] Speaker B: We first met Dennis at BFOP last year, 2024, at a workshop. It was in between workshops, wasn't it? And he was doing some light painting and just phenomenal to watch him work. So much energy and so much dedication and commitment. So, yeah, check out his work. Anyone that's listening along, have a look at Dennis's school of Light and especially his YouTube channel. [01:43:40] Speaker A: Or check out his interview on this channel. You can listen back to anytime you want. I can't remember what episode number it was, but yeah, it was great. [01:43:50] Speaker B: But Dennis is now committed to being with us on Monday night for our random photography show. [01:43:57] Speaker A: Perfect. [01:43:58] Speaker B: So what's on the. What's on the cards for you moving forward there, Matt? What have you got on? Anything else you want to plug or promote? [01:44:08] Speaker C: Look, I'm. Look, I'm pretty. I'm really pretty present these days. So I just look at the head of my. At my day. I'm. I've got the most wonderful life here at the moment. I, I moved down here to support my elderly parents who were recovering from the bushfires. Their. Their property got burnt down. And I found myself living in this beautiful community of very friendly, very caring people in Cabargo and recovering from bushfires. And my parents have just sold and moved back to Sydney, but I'm sticking around here. And I'm. I. I teach a men's yoga class in this community, and I also teach a great little class which is yoga for homeschool kids. Kids. And I get this big bunch of like 15 to 20 little feral and Christian kids coming up, and we do circus skills and then percussion and a really serious little yoga class with kids up to the, you know, two years old. And these, these little experiences are just make my life so rich, especially working with the kids. So, you know, we've just had a big cobargo folk festival in this town, and I did yoga and circus features kids there. And so I'm just really enjoying being part of this Community, sharing some of my good fortune around. You know, I'm very healthy, I'm very happy and not everyone is. So I'm, I'm there for, for people who, who need support in, in certain ways and it's nice to be 55 and in, and in pretty good shape. You know, I haven't always been so just, it's a good, it's a good time to be me at the moment and it hasn't always and I'm enjoying that so just enjoying this community, living in beautiful places. Yeah, just, yeah, life's been good. So just right in that way. [01:45:55] Speaker B: Stop, stop moving. [01:45:58] Speaker C: So that's, that's what I'm looking forward to. Just more of the same, you know. [01:46:01] Speaker A: Talk to us quickly about how you got into yoga in the first place. Where did that come from? [01:46:07] Speaker C: Look, I, my partner, I've done a little bit of yoga over the years, but my partner, I was with an amazing woman, Kyle ecto for about 10 years and she was, I recognized it quite early. But this was a great teacher who stepped into my life and she shared so many amazing things, including yoga with me. She'd started, she would, she had a daily practice and I joined her for that. And similar to the way that I took to photography just with a huge passion, almost OCD level obsession, I took to yoga and within a year I, of doing it, I was within a month doing it, I was doing it every day. And then I found my way to an ashram in India where I did a lot of photography. I, I, you know, part of my karma yoga practice they call it was, was to document the events and do all the port portrait work at the ashram. I've subsequently been back there three or four times to, to, to deepen my teacher training and it's just, it's just front and center of who I am and what I enjoy at this point in my life. So, but I credit this wonderful woman who stepped up and just shared with me not only yoga but a few other things. And I think any of us are lucky if they meet one or two great teachers in their life, people who are there. I talked about my early photography teacher who really planted that seed properly and, and my teacher in India is an amazing guru who's, you know, have had many amazing experiences and shared great teachings with me that have set me on this path and my partner Kai, former partner Kai, so you know, look out for these teachers, they come when they're meant to come and, and just, yes, just listen and, and learn when, when you when you recognize them. Have you guys had some important teachers in your life? [01:47:59] Speaker B: Wow, that's a very good question, Matt. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, there's been a couple. I had a teacher when I studied industrial design at Swinburne here in Prahran, which I think was. Your school, was on the same site previously when you studied photography originally. And he worked in the workshop. So part of our industrial design degree was an arts degree, Bachelor of arts. And we made a lot of practical models of things that we designed. We had a fully kitted out workshop. We did welding, we had table saws. We had everything you could imagine. It was like a cabinet maker's dream. And he taught me a lot about design and the actual application of moving something from paper into reality. Like, it was all very well that I could create these whimsical, fantastical drawings of furniture, but actually then taking it off the page and putting it into a practical application. He taught me more about design than any of my classroom teachers did. Did, because it was all hands on. And he taught me to weld and he taught me how to use all the tools. And, you know, we made land yachts the size of two cars. Like, you know, we. And so there was a lot of. There was a lot of learning done in that space. And it was a. It was kind of a. It was almost a secret space because it was. The other teachers never came down there. They didn't like the workshop. It was loud and noisy and dirty. So it was kind of a haven. And I think. And I've only. I've only just thought of that now, based on your question, Matt, I don't think I've ever reflected on the importance of his teachings before. So. Thank you. What about you, Justin? [01:49:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:49:50] Speaker A: No school teachers that I can remember, really. But my parents certainly, particularly in the world of business. My father, big, huge influence on my life and a teacher of all things. But yeah, very much also business and just sort of ethics in business and that kind of thing. And then also more recently, Yelena is probably my partner. She's one of the biggest influences on my life and teachers, especially with regards to. To what. What a woman can be, which is a pretty deep thing. And when I was younger, I don't think I understood what that was. And now I have a much better understanding of what that is. [01:50:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that's beautiful. [01:50:49] Speaker C: Teachers come in many forms. They're not necessarily like a teacher teacher, but. [01:50:53] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's very true. [01:50:55] Speaker C: People that step into your life at the right time. Exactly. What you said Justin, for me, she was my partner. And then it was like, whoa, you're actually my guru. And it's not uncommon. Guru. The official translation is someone who takes you from darkness to light. That's what it translates. And that's. That's, you know, someone who shares even just a simple teaching at that. At that right time is be huge for anyone. [01:51:21] Speaker B: It's a very good point. That's a beautiful point. [01:51:24] Speaker A: I don't know if there's much better way that we can finish the show up than that. [01:51:29] Speaker B: No, no. I. Feeling a bit emotional. [01:51:33] Speaker C: Matt. [01:51:36] Speaker B: For those of you watching and listening along, along at home or in the office or in an excavator in somewhere in Sydney, this has been the Camera Life podcast. We've been joined today by Matt Netheim. Don't forget that this episode will be on the channel in a few days and it will be on audio at some point. So stay tuned for that. But look, I guess on behalf of Justin and I always want to speak to Justin, but sometimes I have to thank you, Matt. It's been a true pleasure and honor listening to your journey and your story and the methodology, how you approach life and how that has influenced your creative sphere and the opportunities that have become available to you as a result. I think there's a lot to learn, a lot to take away from that sort of journey and storytelling, which I think is something that you're a master at. You're a master storyteller, whether that be through visualization, through imparting skills on children, whether it be basket weaving or circus or yoga. I think you will prove to be one of those important teachers for someone at some point, if you haven't already. We thank you on behalf of the team, everyone at Lucky Straps, thank you very much for your time today. Justin, did you want to say any parting words? [01:52:57] Speaker A: I'll just read some comments. It's been a great episode. Thanks again, Matt, for your time. I know it's a big, big chunk of time. Time out of your otherwise beautiful and serene. Jim says, thank you, Matt. Dennis says, thank you for your time, Matt. Genuinely inspirational on many levels. And Bem says, yeah, boys, still on the excavator. What a great episode. That is awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. [01:53:23] Speaker C: Great, guys. Great that you're doing this. Well done. Keep it up. [01:53:26] Speaker A: Thank you very much. [01:53:28] Speaker B: Thank you. We love what we do. It's, you know, it's. It's the highlight of my week anyway, getting to talk shop with people like yourself because as a creative person myself. I take a lot away from it and I process it, and some parts of it will seep through into my practice. I don't know about Justin. Justin's a little tight on the, you know, listening to what others have to say thing, but was the whole plan. [01:53:52] Speaker A: Setting this podcast up? It's basically just. It's like the way for me to learn. I was like, how can I learn from some of the best photographers around without having to pay them? And it's this. I just tricked them into coming on a podcast and then I ask the questions I want. Yeah, perfect. [01:54:11] Speaker C: As well. [01:54:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's another bonus. But look, on that note, we will say farewell to Matt. The comments obviously will remain open on the YouTube channel, so please feel free to add additional comments. We strive to get to them on our Monday night show or the following Thursday. It's not always possible because we are getting so incredibly popular that the comments sometimes overwhelm us. But don't stop doing it. But yeah, look, thanks once again, Matt, and trying to play out the music. [01:54:43] Speaker A: Boss, it's music time. [01:54:45] Speaker C: See you guys. [01:54:46] Speaker A: See you later. [01:54:47] Speaker B: Bye, everybody. Be safe.