EP61 Glynn Lavender | Creative Photo Workshops

[00:00:20] Speaker A: Good morning, everybody. This is the Camera Life podcast. My name is Justin and I'm here with Glynn Lavender this week. Oh, yeah, you. That's you, Glenn. How are you? [00:00:32] Speaker B: I thought you woke me up. Sorry. I was drifting off into the world of funky music. [00:00:38] Speaker A: I like this song. It's one of my favorites for our intro, really. I'm developing quite a little soundboard here with my special effects. It's fun. Yeah. What are we. I think we're episode 61 this week, and we've got a wonderful interview coming to you because. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Who are you interviewing? [00:00:54] Speaker A: Oh, he's joining us soon, Glenn. He's a really interesting photographer. [00:00:58] Speaker C: No pressure. [00:00:59] Speaker B: At least if it's interesting with me, you know, it's not a good sign. [00:01:05] Speaker A: We're going to be chatting with Glenn. I've listened to a few interviews with you on other podcasts already, and so I'm a little bit excited. I've even listened to you give some talks and you have some controversial opinions on photography equipment, photography awards, photography styles, all sorts of things. And we're going to. We're going to talk about all of that and it's going to be fun. [00:01:30] Speaker B: As I like to say, I have an opinion on everything and I'm more than happy to share it. I should get a T shirt made up. You know, that's my life. [00:01:39] Speaker A: It's actually, you should get a T shirt made up. It'd be good. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Ask me for my opinion on anything. On absolutely anything. Ghetto. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Wow. I'm looking forward to it. And we've already got some people joining us in the live chat, so before we get you to give us a little rundown of who you are and why. Why people should listen to you and your amazing controversial opinions. Let's see who we got here. We got Philip Johnson. He says, good morning, Justin, Greg, and g'day, Glenn. Unfortunately, Greg isn't with us this morning. He's feeling a little under the weather, so hopefully he's doing all right. Hopefully you're okay, Greg. You might have us as well. [00:02:13] Speaker B: He just wanted to sleep in. He just goes, I'm not going to do that podcast. Problem is he doesn't want to be associated with what may be controversial content and keeps his reputation clean. [00:02:22] Speaker A: He doesn't want to get cancelled. [00:02:23] Speaker B: He's going to sink you. [00:02:26] Speaker A: David Moscaro, Good afternoon. David's from San Francisco. Good to see you again, David. We've been missing you. I've been thinking about where you've been the last couple of shows, so it's good to have you back? What do you mean? [00:02:36] Speaker B: Hey, David, Mike's camera in. In San Francisco, best camera store. So if you look at the gear, Mike's cameras. [00:02:43] Speaker A: David has all the gear. He's fully loaded with a heap of old Nikon film cameras. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Yeah, there's no such thing as all the gear. [00:02:53] Speaker A: That's true. That's true. [00:02:54] Speaker B: You never have all the gear. [00:02:56] Speaker A: I bet you he's still got a wish list. But I think he did a headcount for us the other day. I think he's got 14 cameras and he' always getting out and rocking around San Francisco doing street photography. So it's good to see you here. Who's this guy? Cam. Blake Photography. It's too early for Glenn Energy. [00:03:12] Speaker B: There's no time. That's right, Cam. No time. [00:03:15] Speaker A: And whenever there's cam, there's always also Brendan Waits. Morning, lads. What's that? Oh, got your dulcet tones ringing out at my shop. Oh, that's awesome. [00:03:24] Speaker B: Trying to keep the customers away for the morning, are you, mate? Trying to keep it quiet. [00:03:27] Speaker A: If anyone comes in looking for something, just patch them in and we can give them some advice on what to buy. [00:03:31] Speaker B: Oh, we'll give advice. Happy to give advice. Always happy to give advice. [00:03:37] Speaker A: And finally, the frog here is here. Digi Frog from Tasty. Good to see you, Dave. [00:03:42] Speaker B: The dogs are doing okay. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Dave, are you down there? Is it cold down there, Dave? [00:03:47] Speaker B: It's kind of. It's always cold down there, Glenn. [00:03:51] Speaker A: Who are you? Who are you? [00:03:53] Speaker B: That's a great question. Is this a philosophical question? Why am I here? What's. What's the purpose of it all? [00:03:58] Speaker A: You can take it any direction. [00:04:00] Speaker B: You know, I am just a guy who, for lack of imagination, lack of ability to think outside the square, seriously, no ambition in life, who ended up being a photographer because his mum dragged him out of school and threw him into a camera store and said, this is my son. Employ him. And they did. And 43 years later, I'm still in the industry because I had so little imagination to think of doing anything else. [00:04:29] Speaker A: Wow. 43 years later, that is. That is epic. [00:04:35] Speaker B: And I still look this good. [00:04:37] Speaker A: You don't look a day over 60. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Ish. [00:04:40] Speaker A: I was gonna just leave that one. No, you look great. That's amazing. 43. [00:04:45] Speaker B: I've got all the fill front lighting in to fill in all the cracks. You know, if you want to look young, frontal lighting, that's the way to do it. [00:04:51] Speaker A: What do they do, stretch a pair of, like, pantyhose over the. [00:04:55] Speaker B: I tried Them. It made my face all smooshed up. [00:04:58] Speaker A: I think that's for burglary. Oh, wait, hang on. We've got a. We've got a. We've got a late starter of an additional co host. Jim. [00:05:07] Speaker B: Look at this. [00:05:08] Speaker C: Hey. [00:05:08] Speaker B: G'day, Jim. [00:05:10] Speaker A: You made it. [00:05:11] Speaker B: Good. Yeah, Good to see. How was the school run? Was it good? [00:05:15] Speaker C: There was more traffic this morning. It's been raining in Bendigo, so more traffic than usual and. [00:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah, isn't it. [00:05:22] Speaker A: I don't know. I don't know what it's like where you are, Glenn, but when. When it rains in Bendio, everyone just slows right down and pays really close attention to what they do, which is. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Good because I just drive. [00:05:32] Speaker A: We want to be safe. But yeah, it gets. It gets pretty slow out. [00:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a bit like that in Melbourne too, though. Yeah. There's a little drop of rain and people forget the basic skills. But I found that I used to live in Vancouver and in Canada and. Yeah, yeah, the 51st state of America and. And too soon and. Same thing. First sign of any sort of snow, bang, everyone forgot. People would stop their car in the middle of the road and get up and just leave it there. I'm not doing it. No. And just. You're driving on this car stopped right in the middle of the road because they couldn't handle it. So Bendigo is no different from Vancouver. It is. [00:06:09] Speaker C: It's probably just. It's just a smaller scale. Like when we say traffic in Bendigo, we mean, like there's eight cars in front of us and there's normally none. And we're not happy about it. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Of course not. Yeah. You make Adelaide look busy. [00:06:22] Speaker C: No. [00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Well. [00:06:27] Speaker A: We'Re kind of like Adelaide 10, 15 years before Adelaide, which is, I don't know, what, 50 years behind Melbourne, roughly. So whereabouts are you in Melbourne, Glenn? [00:06:40] Speaker B: I'm a place called Caroline Springs, which is only about an hour from Bendigo, so not too far from you guys. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's on our side of things. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:49] Speaker A: And before we dig into some of your story and some of these controversial opinions that I've got a whole heap of notes on, fancy my digital paper. So what sort of photography? 43 years. You've probably done a million things. What. What do you do now? What's your photography style and what sort of work do you do? [00:07:11] Speaker B: The only thing I do and I. Is people. I only photograph people. There's. There's zero interest in anything else. So if there's a building in my photos because There's a person standing in front of it. If there's a mountain in my photos because there's a person standing in front of it, it's people based only. And I tried macro once, but damn things too hard, you know, little thing moves in out of focus, you breathe and it's just. Yeah, I don't have the patience or the skill set for anything as clever as that. I don't like getting up early or staying up late. So, you know, astro and landscapes are no go. People you can sleep in, shoot from like 11 till 1 and go back to bed. And yeah, it's, it's pretty good. People, you can say, stand over there and sometimes they're willing and they do mountains. Never once. Yeah. [00:08:00] Speaker C: Harder to move. [00:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And with people. Yeah. If the light sucks, you make your own and you can see, you can shoot what you want when you want. And so it's a combination of laziness and, and, and I think the, the other reason is I'm a sometimes gregarious person. You know, I'm one of those typical introvert, extrovert types. So I enjoy meeting new people, but only for like four or five minutes and then I'm done with them. So it's great. You can walk up to strangers, meet them, have a great time, take their photo, have a lovely experience, but not have to carry it on. Yeah. So I went to like 14 schools in eight years, so I was always a new kid. I was always desperately trying to make new friends and I was always gone. So I think that sort of formulated my, my approach in life. I can't hold relationships with people beyond about five minutes. And so I'm sorry, I've got to go now, guys, I hate to, hate to break it to you, but this has been probably above my normal time frame. I think we've been going about eight minutes and that's probably a minute or two too long for me. [00:09:04] Speaker A: I love it. Work to your strengths, you know, Lean. [00:09:07] Speaker B: In, work to your weaknesses. Absolutely. Yep, yep. [00:09:11] Speaker A: Now, so you're a people photographer, a portrait photographer, but also looking through your work. You're also very much what I would call a travel photographer. [00:09:22] Speaker B: I would call it an over processor. Is that what you're going to say? [00:09:28] Speaker A: I love your, your processing style. It's actually on my list of things to ask you about, but yeah. Do you call it a travel photographer? [00:09:35] Speaker B: Well, I do, but only because that makes people want to come on tours. It's purely mercenary. Yeah. Where's the money at? Can I get them to come Along. Yeah, it's, it's morphed into that. So I mean I started teaching people photography 15 years ago, I guess doing workshops and I've done probably a thousand 1100 workshops in that time frame. Whoa. And then that morphed from, from doing that to well, what else can I do with taking photos of people? And you know, it sort of develops into well, let's go somewhere and take photos of people. And that worked out pretty well. So then we kept on going places and that became a travel photographer out of teaching people lighting skills to how to photograph a person. But it was really more I'd run a workshop and then to teaching skills. Then I'd run event where we do like weekend events where we set up models in a location and we do teaching lighting lessons and shooting. But it's just expanding on that. So it went from one day workshops, two or three day weekends to two week tours just to keep expanding the lessons and the experience. [00:10:46] Speaker A: Okay, so it was an evolution. Did you do much travel prior to teaching? [00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I always loved travel, but not, but not photography based. Okay. So I'd either travel for my own enjoyment to see places or I, I'm a mad fly fisherman, so I'd, I travel to fish. So that's why I went and lived in Canada for a year and a half. Just as a base to fish from. So very, very different. I, I don't tend to take many photographs when I'm not working really my own. My. I don't have a, I don't have a passion for photography. I don't really have an interest in photography. I don't like my own photos. I have no interest in them. If my hard drives melted tomorrow, I wouldn't care. The only photos that matter to me, the photos of my kids and my family and my mum and my dad who are no longer with us. So that stuff's important. That's not because it's photography, it's because of who's in, in the photo. But photography itself I'm not overly passionate about. [00:11:50] Speaker A: Really. Yeah, it's been your life for 43 years. [00:11:55] Speaker B: As I said when my mum dragged me by the ear into a camera store and said this is my son employee him. I had so little imagination to do anything else that 43 years later I'm still in industry. I do have one anecdote that from early days that did give me some interest in photography that sort of sparked my, my desire to continue doing photography. And that was about the age of 17. I was asked by this stunningly beautiful woman to do her wedding photos and you know we worked out a package and I agreed. I was working the photo retail in those days and she was getting married at the Windsor Hotel. She goes getting ready at the Windsor Hotel here in Melbourne which is a very fancy old fashioned hotel and 17 year old nervous boy knocks on the hotel room door and mum answers the door she says come on, come on in and. And then there's this stunningly beautiful woman steps out of the bathroom wearing just underwear and no top and nothing else and waves. This is going to be fabulous isn't it Glenn? And yeah. Yes. Yeah. I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. Yeah. If this is what photography is As a young 17 year old boy and it opened my eyes to a whole new world I didn't know existed and it's the only time it ever happened in my entire life. [00:13:09] Speaker A: I was gonna say the first and. [00:13:11] Speaker B: Only time but I'm still waiting. Yeah I'm still going is hoping to be another chance. Yeah but it's just funny that that just kind of it was. I was almost forced into working as a photographer by these people approaching me funnily enough and saying we'd really want you to do so I guess a lot of photographers start out that way is they take it up as a hobby. I didn't but they take it up as a hobby and then someone asked them to do a job for them and then somebody else asked them to do a job and it can morph into either a part time or full time. The only reason I took up taking photos in the first place is because my. I said I went to 18 schools in so 14 schools in eight years so I hadn't, didn't really have any friends. Yeah When I started working my work friends mates became my friends and in those days stores would Only open till 12 o'clock on the Saturday and then they'd all go out taking photos in the afternoon. So if I wanted to hang out with my new friends and have something in common to do is go take photos with them. So I bought camera gear and I went out and took photos with them but there was no that's. I said I've never had a passion per se for photo taking photos. It's always been a reason to do it. The and I always say that the, the doing is always the, the enjoyable part for me the end result not I don't really care about as much I do if I'm doing it for work and I need to produce A result that's important, but it's important not on a self fulfilling. Yeah. Enjoyment level. It's a few got the job done. But as far as the, the reason for taking photos is the, the doing. The doing is interesting, the doing is fun. It gives an excuse to walk up to people and introduce yourself and, and talk to them. So a very different mindset to what a lot of people have. [00:14:57] Speaker C: Yeah. Do you get like when you're shooting and you sort of know that you've gotten the shot, do you kind of get that feeling is there any enjoyment? Or you're just. It's just work. [00:15:09] Speaker B: It's not even just, it's not even just work because I don't think of it as work either. So it's, that's kind of the bizarre, bizarre side thing. Just to see how I can say this without sounding particularly arrogant, which is my normal state anyway. So I'm not sure I'm concerned but when you have a certain level of photography skills, you see every shot before you take it because you've done almost this thing a thousand times, you know. Yeah. So when you take the photo and it works, it's no surprise. It's not a joy. Oh my God, I got it. Because you knew you're going to get it. Yeah, it's just. Oh yeah, got it. What's the next one? Yeah, there's, there's a little bit of that disconnect. [00:15:50] Speaker A: What about that one? In a thousand times though, do you ever. Surely, surely you're not this good. There's never a time where you're like, I wonder if I can make this like work because. Because as you get better. Yes, you're right. You get. Things become obviously easier to pre visualize, easy to execute because you know what you're going to do before you do it. But there's still. Do you ever seek out images where you're like, oh, I wonder if I can make this work. [00:16:16] Speaker B: No, I don't have much imagination. [00:16:19] Speaker A: I'm sure you do. [00:16:20] Speaker B: I just do. Same shit, different day. Yeah. Just, just rinse leather, repeat. It worked last time, it'll work this time. And here's the thing that, because when I shoot, I'm usually shoot other people. So I'm, Yes, I'm, I'm, I'm, I've got a group of four, six, eight, whatever it may be with me. My job is to set up, shoot and get the hell out of the shot so they can. Yeah. So I have 30 seconds at the shot. You know, I don't have Long time. So ponder, wonder and experimenting for a group of people is probably not the best solution because that oneoff shot that you may make work, you can't make work for eight other people. [00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Because you, if you're lucky to get it yourself, they hate you because you got a shot they couldn't get and, and your shot's better than theirs which often is anyway. But that's just from repetition, not necessarily from skill. So. So yeah there's, there's not a lot of experience and because I don't shoot for myself I don't go and do personal projects very often. I don't experiment an awful lot. Yeah it's pretty and. But that's probably going to. That underlying not being passionate. Yeah. I don't want to sit across like I hate photography. I certainly don't hate photography but I don't really unless, unless I know someone, I don't follow them as photographers. Yeah. I don't read photography books, I don't watch documentaries. I don't watch YouTube videos on how to take photos or other people taking photos. It just. Yeah, it's just not a, a passion that way. [00:17:52] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Different. A bit different. Yeah. A funny, a semi funny anecdote is my eldest son is recently, about a year and a half ago being diagnosed autistic but he self diagnosed himself first. He came out with like a 14 page report and said mum, dad, I'm autistic, we need to deal with this. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Hang on a report that he read or report that. [00:18:15] Speaker B: No, he made. He wrote his own. Yeah that's amazing. He statistically went and looked at all this stuff got all the facts and figures and came out and he goes here's a 14 page report which, which when, when he went through the full analysis with psychologists and everything else he was pretty much spot on. But the funny thing is when he came out with his 14 page report he goes on by the way dad, here's your eight page report. Say you are too. So there could, there could be a, a barrier there somehow that, that makes me perceive the world in a way that's different. If he's correct and he seems to, he's. He's always seems to be correct. He's pretty smart kid. So he's probably got some, some, some level of accurateness when it comes to how I emotionally connect with some stuff. [00:19:02] Speaker A: I can't believe that your report was only, did only need to be eight pages. [00:19:06] Speaker B: I know, right? I mean he wasn't trying obviously. You know I think just that was just that was Just bullet points, though. Yeah. There was eight pages of just. He put. [00:19:14] Speaker A: He put more work into his own report. [00:19:15] Speaker B: A bit more. Absolutely. Because he was more concerned about himself. Fair. [00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah. All right, let's. Let's go to a couple of comments because this. [00:19:24] Speaker B: This podcast is not going anywhere near the way you thought it was going to, is it? It's. [00:19:28] Speaker A: It's going. [00:19:29] Speaker C: We have no plan. [00:19:30] Speaker A: It's exactly the way that I thought it would go in the comments. We're getting a bit of a weather report from around the place. [00:19:37] Speaker B: Excellent. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Dave Digifrog from Tassie says it's going to be 30 today. [00:19:42] Speaker B: What, Fahrenheit? Yeah. [00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Slightly below freezing. Brendan waits from Cameron. Photo says light drizzle in Ocean Grove. Beautiful one day, perfect the next. And Cam says 29 and sunny where he is in Tazzy. I don't know if him and. And Frog are in the same spot or not. Actually. Not sure it's the one place. Tassie. [00:20:06] Speaker B: It's pretty sad. I know almost everyone. They're made up in. In San Francisco. It's. It's. Yeah. The few. The few listeners you have are all people I know. Is this rather. So it says my podcast. It's. [00:20:18] Speaker A: We're going to talk about your podcast in a bit too. It's pretty impressive. Brendan says, Damn, I've got a lot of work to do. But I love listening to this guy. Just put it off. [00:20:27] Speaker B: He's talking about you. He's talking about you, Justin. [00:20:29] Speaker A: It's very rare that Glenn talks or goes on a podcast. So you've got to harness these moments and really hang on to them. It's not like he has one of the longest running podcasts in the history. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Of the longest podcasts. The longest running podcast photography podcast. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Photography podcast. Which is Shutters Inc. Shutters. [00:20:47] Speaker B: Shut it. Shut up. Or something like that. Yeah, shut up and listen. Or the stupid name. I didn't make it up. Yeah. [00:20:54] Speaker A: David from San Francis. Mike's in Pleasant Hill and Dublin and Sacramento. But I use Pleasant Hill all the time. [00:21:01] Speaker B: Good stuff. I did some workshops for those guys in. I think I did Pleasant Hill actually a few years ago and. And Sacramento too. Actually, I did. I did workshops over both of those stores. So. Good people. [00:21:13] Speaker A: We've also got Marie Phillip in the chat. First time watching live. Long time listener. Have to say your special guest was the draw card. Jim, she's here for you. That's cool. [00:21:23] Speaker B: On your mate. Thanks. I'm glad you can make it. Marie would have been so disappointed if it was Just us too. [00:21:31] Speaker A: Bruce Moyle says. Morning, gents. Hey, Bruce. Oh, my gosh. Cam's being paid to listen. Apparently checks in the mail. [00:21:41] Speaker B: And that's not just the name of my. My gay porn movie. And. [00:21:50] Speaker A: I'm reading the comments and I just heard porn. I'm like, yep. Okay, moving on. And there's a lot of discussion about who's related to who in Tassie. So we'll leave that there if you. [00:22:03] Speaker C: Want to check it out, have a look at the comments. [00:22:05] Speaker A: But the comment I did want to pull up, which was interesting, was David. [00:22:10] Speaker B: Interesting one. Excellent. [00:22:11] Speaker A: David from San Francisco. I like the image behind Glenn, and I wanted to ask about that image. [00:22:16] Speaker B: I hate it. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Okay, so this is what I want to know. [00:22:20] Speaker C: Why is it on your wall? [00:22:20] Speaker A: Why is it on your wall? You say you don't like photos. You've got this photo printed up. [00:22:24] Speaker B: That's the only photo of mine on my walls, and I only put it up for the podcast. And because it's the only photo I've got printed is because this, this. You can hear that. It's, it's. It's done by a company called Print two. The number two Metal, Print to Metal here in Melbourne. Lovely people. They gave it to me for free. And it was a last minute. It was for a photo show in Melbourne quite a few years ago, and they had a stall opposite mine and said, quick, send us an image. We'll print out a photo for you. So they did. And so I shove it up on the wall whenever there's a podcast, just because it's the only photo I've got printed. [00:22:58] Speaker A: Hang on. And then you take it off the wall. [00:23:00] Speaker B: Oh, you don't want to see it. They didn't like. It's a shot image. [00:23:07] Speaker A: All right, hang on, let's. Let's pull up your Instagram because anyone that's just listening is going to be like, oh, yeah, this. That's a high resolution shot of this photo. [00:23:16] Speaker B: Print to metal. There we go. Look at that. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Printed on Chromalux. [00:23:20] Speaker B: There we go. [00:23:21] Speaker A: I might have to get something done. [00:23:23] Speaker B: They do fabulous stuff, these guys. [00:23:25] Speaker C: Are you moving a laptop around with you? [00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I am, yeah. [00:23:28] Speaker C: Is that bad? Yeah, that's great. [00:23:31] Speaker A: Zoom in. [00:23:33] Speaker B: It was so smooth, too. It was seamless. You thought it. Thought it was on the dolly. Yeah, yeah. You got an assistant back there. [00:23:40] Speaker A: So these images that you take that you hate, like, is this an example of an image that you hate? [00:23:47] Speaker B: No, I don't hate that one. I hate this one. Yeah, it's no, it's. It's not so much a matter of. I've done this a thousand times. Yeah. I've got so many images. This is lovely image. I love the, you know, I love the framing, I love the lighting. I love the subject matter. It's fine as an image. Yeah. But you know, I don't know. It's okay. [00:24:15] Speaker A: It's okay. [00:24:16] Speaker B: Maybe, maybe it's, maybe it's not for us to judge our own work. Maybe, you know, if, if people like it, great. If people don't like it, that's fine too. That people, people don't have to like what I do. And I always say to people I teach and I've, you know, taught probably close to 10, 000 people over the years, photographers over the years. You don't want to shoot like I shoot and you don't want to. You, you don't want. You want. You take the skills I'm going to give you and bring it to your own, your own style. Yeah. To whatever floats your boat. And it's interesting for know. So garbage too. I'm not a fan of that one. [00:24:56] Speaker A: This. So you're not a fan of this one? No, I was drawn to that. I don't know why. I love, I love the composition. I love how simple it is. Okay, tell me, tell me about where you took this and, and what the situation was. [00:25:10] Speaker B: So this has taken out the window at my bedroom window of my hotel in. In Inlay Lake in Myanmar. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. It's an over. It's an over the water bungalow kind of thing. And I'm just sort of sitting there and this guy's pootling past. This is kind of. So the lake itself is beyond that green line of, of Noah's land, what it's called. So the main lakes on the other side of that. This is like a lagoon off the lake where the, the hotel's set up. So I'm just sitting there looking at my window and 6:00 in the morning, 7:00 in the morning or something. And this guy's pootling past. Now the, the fishermen of Inlay Lake are famous because they row with one leg so that you row with their leg, which is why it kind of looks like he's got his leg up in the air. So that's just going to stand there and kind of do this kind of strange motion with their leg to, to row along. And he was just going past and took the photo. Yeah, it's all about balance, you know, the two, the two the two. The one. Yeah. There's this. If the, the, the single. Single palm on the left because it's reflected is an element of two, then the. Down. The, the foreground weeds are two. The reflections are another two and two. There's a lot of symmetry in that. There's two islands. I know there's a, there's a symmetry. There's a simple symmetry to it. So, so that's kind of, kind of works. I think that's why it works as. [00:26:30] Speaker A: An image and he's perfectly framed. [00:26:33] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I probably took half a dozen images as he went past and that was the one that worked the best. Yeah. [00:26:39] Speaker C: I know you say you don't like it, but you obviously, like, you've, you've shot it, you've, you've picked it and then you've posted it. [00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:46] Speaker C: So like there's obviously, you know, that it's reasonable. [00:26:51] Speaker B: Oh, it's a fine image, fine enough image. But it's really. And it's consistent with my style. It's very consistent, I actually think, with my style. [00:27:00] Speaker A: I think David's hit the nail on the head here. I wish I hated photography as much. [00:27:04] Speaker B: As you're a lot cheaper for you, Dave. If we're looking, there's a photograph there of a. A woman's face up close in black, but next to it there's some people walking past the Taj Mahal. I kind of like that image because it's a funny story. [00:27:21] Speaker A: Tell us the story. [00:27:23] Speaker B: Well, this is from my last tour to India in November, and it was the last morning of the tour and we'd got, we'd got to the Taj Mahal at 5 o'clock in the morning is pristine clear sky. You can see it sitting there, all the stars around. It was gorgeous. About 5:30, this massive fog rolls in. This incredibly dense, thick fog rolls in. And so when you get inside to the Taj Mahal, which opens right on the dot of sunrise, you get to the famous shop where the reflecting pool is that everyone takes a photo of and you can't see the Taj. You can't see more than 5ft in front of you. And it's like that for a couple of hours. So there's all these people walking around just devastated. They can't take photos of the Taj Mahal. And I'm running around like a. How exciting is this? Because I've seen the Taj a bunch of times, but I've never seen it covered in fog. And it's, it's the mindset of. And this is the big problem with travel photography is you people go there with an expectation of the type of images they're going to capture, usually based on Internet searches they've done before they've gone there, they've seen a thousand photos of the location. And what tends to happen is people go there and try and recreate those photos that they're seeing because it's hard not to, because it's inside your head. It's, it's. I've seen this shot, I want to be in this spot. But when you're confronted with something completely different, and in this case a massive bank of fog, you have to change your, your philosophy. You can only shoot what's there and what's there is going to be different today, is going to be different tomorrow. The great New York photographer, Jay Maisel, street photographer, once said, you can't go to New York and photograph New York. You can only go to New York and photograph your New York. The one you saw on that one day. The people, the things that happened, the people you saw, the lighting, everything's different every single day. That's the only thing you can shoot. You can't shoot the iconic, you can shoot what's in front of you. So this is a classic example. You get there, it's full of fog, but fog always drifts. So the Taj is coming in and out as it was starting to lift a little bit, it's appearing and disappearing, appearing, disappearing. And they said, well, how can I make it interesting and how can you add some life and color to it? Well, you add people and you had colorful people. So you sit there and you, sometimes you have to get to a place and wait for something to happen. So I'm sat on this location for 15, 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. And, and as groups of people drifted past, hopefully not tourists or not Western tourists anyway, then you try and capture the mood and the feel as best as you can. So I think there's a, it's a, a good lesson for photographers is to, to try and shoot what's with an open eyes and see what's in front of you, not what's you're, you're hoping to take photos of. Is kind of my, that's what if I had an underlying philosophy, it's kind of that shoot the light, find the light and shoot it and, and you know, wait for something to happen. Don't, you know, don't try and f. Shoot something that's already happened a thousand times before. But we all take the cliche Shots, you have to, you know, we're all going to do the reflective pool shot of the Taj Mahal, for example. [00:30:28] Speaker A: But. [00:30:28] Speaker B: We want our own photo and we have to go search that out and think of it differently. [00:30:34] Speaker A: Do you have any. I completely agree. And it's certainly one of those things as well. Especially if you're not traveling. Like, say, if you're traveling and you're not on a photography tour, like, when you're on one of your tours, the trip to the Taj is specifically to. [00:30:50] Speaker B: Capture at the right time of day. At the right time of day. Perfect. [00:30:54] Speaker A: Exactly. But if you're just traveling, I think you can get lured into that, oh, I hope I can get a shot of the Taj Mahal. But you rock up there at like 11:30am and there's people everywhere and stuff like that. [00:31:05] Speaker B: There's a hundred thousand people there. Yeah, yeah. [00:31:08] Speaker A: And that's just the reality of it. And sometimes if you're, if you're just on a trip with your family, but you want to do a bit of photography too, or whatever, and that's just how it's going to unfold. Do you have any. Yeah. Any tips for how people can break away from that mindset of like, I need to get this, this perfect shot that I've seen on the Internet. Like you mentioned a few things before about sort of following the light and stuff, but is there anything else that people can do to try and break away from that and accept the reality that they're in and then enjoy capturing that reality? [00:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah, the, the thing is, how many. If you go look on the Taj Mahal on, on photos online, how many of them do you see that are full of thousands of people? How many, how many are craft. How many well crafted shots showing the Taj Mahal overrun with people do you see? Hardly any. Can you take the disadvantage of, oh my God, there's so many people here and make it something that stands out that, oh my God, look how many people are here. Take it from a negative to a positive by saying, how can I showcase this, this mass interest in this place, this reverence to this tomb, and, and show. Showcase that in the photograph. And that goes for every single time you hit a location that's not necessarily exactly as you hoped it would be. Well, how do I shoot the difference? How do I shoot the change? Yeah, you look at classic photos of places from 20, 30, 40 years ago. Well, no, none of these places look like that anymore. They're all completely different. So, you know, how do you try and photograph the Change. Show the new. That not the same thing over and over again. Yeah. Now, caveat. There are people on the Taj Mahal. So this is a photo with people in it. It's not a photo, just not a landscape shot. It's not an architectural shot. This is a paper shot. [00:32:50] Speaker A: It's funny, I've actually spotted another couple of one. I was like, there's a few bird photos here that I'm seeing. I don't see any people in those. I. I don't know. [00:32:57] Speaker B: I reckon you there's gonna be someone somewhere. The thing is, when you're leading a tour. When you're leading a tour, you've got to shoot for everybody. You can't just shoot for yourself. Yeah. You can try and give a broader range, which is why we go to the architectural places, why we go to the. The. The. The great places. Because, yeah, people want to see that. Given my choice, I wouldn't visit the Taj Mahal on a trip to India because I've seen it. I wouldn't go again. I would just walk the streets around it because that's where I'm going to get the. More life. But when you're. When you're traveling, you want to. So here's a classic example, though, about the Taj is how can you shoot it in a way that is not the common. That's not. That's not the same photo you always see of the Taj Mahal. And this is. This is taken from. There's a river just below the Taj Mahal just over that wall called the Yamuna River. And there's a park opposite the Taj Mahal, which all the tourists go to. That's one of the spots everyone goes to. But they all stand directly in front of the Taj in a whole group of people and either just sit there or take photos or whatever. And there is limitations. There is fences on either side, but you can walk to the left and you can walk to the right and find different angles and different perspectives. And there's a grove of trees that you can shoot through to get very different perspectives of the Taj Mahal. So it's again, that. That job of getting the easy shot, the. The stand to stand in front, get it all perfectly lined up shot. But then what's it like from this angle? What's it like from this angle? What's it like from this height? What's it like from this height? Yeah, with the four axes of. How can. How can I make this photograph not just the same as everybody else's? And sometimes you can't. Sometimes there is no other shot that really works or is interesting or. So I tend not to post those crap ones. But when, when you find something that is a little different, then you can hopefully showcase a different idea of the place. [00:34:50] Speaker A: Exactly. That's like I scroll through your images and obviously you've done, you've done so many trips. When we're looking through your Instagram on here, is this most like, is it generally recent stuff or do you. [00:35:04] Speaker B: These are all that. These are all the November trips. Yeah. [00:35:06] Speaker A: So. So you're not sort of posting stuff from years ago as well very often? [00:35:10] Speaker B: Sometimes I do, but depends if. If I've done a trip recently it won't. It'll all be current stuff. If I haven't done anything for a while, I'm trying to pimp out a tour that's coming. I mean what I'm trying to suggest people come on a tour. I might showcase some of the. I might, I might showcase some of the work from previous. But all this stuff's on the Pushkar Camel Fair which is. Oh, click on this one. You can see my arm in this shot. I kind of like. This is just on the. Oh, this one under there. There we are. The snake on my head. You know, you got to have fun. It's a cobra up on the head, but that's terrifying. You've got to have. You got to have this kind of light hearted stuff. You can't all be on a photography tour whilst we're focused very heavily on making sure people get shots. You've also got to have experience. It can't be just photos only. No experience or you don't have any warmth when you look at the photos. You've got to have a. You've got to have a feeling of. Which is why it's great talking to people before you photograph them. You know a little bit about them, you know a little bit. Maybe know the name, you know their job, you know, just something about them. And, and that warms you a little bit more when you look at the photographs of them. Yeah, some of these are just there. This is. So this is a lighting list Noah's doing on the, on the, on the, the banks of the Ganges. Just using. I use. I'm a Harlow creators ambassador using their new travel LED lights and Harlow used. [00:36:32] Speaker A: To be called Hobo. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Hobo light, yeah. [00:36:34] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:35] Speaker A: And. And they're not flashes, they're continuous. [00:36:38] Speaker B: It's continuous light. Yeah. So I'll. I do carry on tour flashes and triggers for every brand of camera. So in case I choose to do an off camera flash lesson. But for teaching LED lighting is an awful lot easier because people can see the. The result of the light before they shoot. It's a little bit harder to teach people who've never used flash to visualize where the light's going to hit. So but of course the LED has limitations as to when you can shoot as far as the amount of ambient light you've got to deal with. So it certainly works exceptionally well at dawn and dusk indoors, but not in a 36 degree day and blazing sun. [00:37:18] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of it. [00:37:20] Speaker B: You can use flash. [00:37:21] Speaker A: How often do you so like sort of switching gears into your. Your portraits which are often in your face. Well, I don't know what, what I would call them. Like they're. What do you call your portraits? What style these in your face. [00:37:38] Speaker B: I'm a kind of in your face kind of person for the four or five minutes I'm happy to talk to you. And so I guess it's paired down to their simplest story. I guess is probably the best way to describe all my photos. If there's anything in my photo, it's because it's being is that's other than the person's face a la this shot. It's because it's been considered and decided that it adds to the story for whatever reason I felt at the time. But waste no space, waste no words in the photos is probably the better way of looking at my photo. So if you show me any of my photos, I can tell you why every element's there. Simply because it would, it would make maybe to my autistic brain, I don't know but it makes sense for it to be. There's very, very rarely is there wasted space. [00:38:30] Speaker A: So therefore with it says here natural light portrait for this particular one. Therefore with your lighting. So you use natural light, you use continuous lights, you might use flash. Do you start with I want to make a portrait with this person and you start with natural light and then you add light only as required or are you looking at the scene first? What's your kind of workflow as far as how things unfold in your brain? [00:38:59] Speaker B: I like to call myself an available light shooter. As in I'll use any light available. So whatever it takes to get the shot is what. I don't care whether it's led, I don't care if it's a fluorescent light on the wall. I don't care if it's a spotlight on a building. Light is light is Light. So if anything else, I'm a light photographer. Yeah. So light is all. When I'm photographing a person. Light, light. That's another LED lighting shot. But it's light light first and foremost, always. So if I can do natural light, I will. Because that's the, that's the lighting kit just there. That's actually a little behind. So it's a little carry around kit. And then the next shot's my guide holding the light. Just to give you an example of, you know, this behind the scenes setup. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Looks like he's crutch is emitting some sort of glory. [00:39:46] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a powerful man, is my guide. He's a powerful man. Yeah, he's a. He's a strong and powerful. But yeah, so it's always. So give an example if I'm walking down the street looking to photograph people. And again, I don't really do street photography very much. I'm always looking to engage with someone and then try and capture a portrait of the person I've met. But as I'm seeing someone that I go, oh, there's a interesting character out of the corners of my eyes. I'm looking for where's the light? Because very rarely are people standing in great light or walking down the street in great light. So it's always there's a person I want to shoot. I'm trying to engage them with my eyes. I'm trying to have a big smile on my face because if they look at me and smile, we've already got a connection and that's always a good start. But at the corners of my eyes, I'm saying, is there a doorway? Is there an alleyway? Is there somewhere where the light can be controlled a little bit? So I'll always start off with, with natural light first. Because impromptu street portraits can't take a very long time. They have to be a couple of minute job at best. But then if needed, if I think the shot warrants it and the person's willing and I need to bring out extra lighting, I'll always bring out whatever's necessary. If it's middle of the bright day or if I want to bring out, let's say it's an overcast day, but I want to really enhance the clouds. I use flash because I can really control the ambient scene with flash where with. With led, they're just not powerful enough to allow me to underexpose the clouds and really get the mood and feel that I want and still be able to overpower the light on the Subject with an led. So I'll often use flash. But a shot like this where it's just, it just after the sun set, it's perfect time for led. Yeah. Even very low power they kick out a nice bit of light and you know, give you a good feel. [00:41:32] Speaker C: When you are shooting on the street, are you and obviously chatting to people, are you passing the photos on to them afterwards like you're getting their details? [00:41:40] Speaker B: Is it? Yeah, it's a good question. No. Yes and no. I never ever promise people photographs because it becomes beholden upon me to remember their details. So if someone passed me their, their name and number on a card, I'm going to lose that card. That's just my disorganization. I'll give them my card and say here's my details, get in touch with me, tell me where we met and, and when and what, what we're doing and I'll send you the photos. And I've had people up to eight years after I photographed them send me an email. Oh, I was in this coffee shop in New York and you asked to take my photo. Do you happen to have that photo? Sure, here it is. Yeah, I can, I can, I can access that. But these guys that we were just showing a second ago, the, the Sadhu's on, on the Ganges there. I'm in their WhatsApp group so yeah, they send me daily blessings and so via WhatsApp. Yeah. So them and, and there's a four or five other guys in this little group and so they, so because I've got their details straight away I could send them their photos and they send me photos of their family and the holy celebrations and now we have a, an ongoing connection with each other, funnily enough. And the other way of doing it. I also carry a little Hewlett Packard printer. Just a little, what's called a sprocket. It's about, you know, yay big and I can take a photo that's on my phone and print it out in about a minute flat and give them that. So I, I'm, I'm, I'm love doing that because the expression of giving someone a photo who's probably never had a photo of themselves in their life or not for many, many years is a, is a great experience. So that little printer is just none of the above. Yeah. [00:43:28] Speaker A: Oh okay. [00:43:30] Speaker B: Yeah, they're the ones at the bottom right there basically. Portable, Portable instant. Yeah. No. Oh yeah, they're all sold out. Yeah. On the left hand side. There you go. On the left hand side 99. [00:43:41] Speaker A: Right. Okay. So it's just a little. [00:43:48] Speaker B: Instant printers. Basically. It's like a Fuji Instax but in a printer form. Yeah. [00:43:53] Speaker A: All right. Sorry about that Music everyone. [00:43:55] Speaker B: Apparently Fuji have a fabulous new camera, reasonably new camera called a Fuji Instax Mini Evo. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Evo wide or something like that. [00:44:05] Speaker B: The wide's a newer version, but it's just the Evo by itself is used as a standard Fuji Instax Mini. This thing's got 10 different filter types and 10 different lens choices. You get up like a hundred little options you can play with on this camera. I bought one for my son for Christmas and just loves it to pieces. But the great thing is he can do instant photos from the camera, give to his friends, keep for himself. But it also stores digitally as well. So he then has them on a memory card. There's the one. Yeah, it's kind of a cool little retro look. Carrying something like that around would be a fabulous little travel camera to have you take a photo. You've got it, you've got the photo stored on the memory card. They've got a print job done. [00:44:43] Speaker A: Is this one of the ones as well where it can go the other direction and you can print off your phone or something? [00:44:48] Speaker B: You can, yeah. You can send from your phone to the printer as well? Yeah, yeah. [00:44:52] Speaker A: So it can just be a printer as well as being a camera and a printer? [00:44:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a pretty cool. And it's a cool looking little camera too, you know, So I think it's a. [00:45:00] Speaker A: It is cool looking camera. [00:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's a novel, a novel piece of kit and it bridges and so one of the other questions I get asked all the time is do you pay for photos? Yeah. Do you pay people? And, and that's a complex question to answer, but wherever possible, the answer is no. But I guarantee you giving someone a photo of themselves, it has far more value than any money you can give them. So be able to give someone who's never had either never had a photo of their child or never had a photo of themselves is a huge thing. I've seen people cry. I've seen people run around their village screaming, holding the photo in their hands in celebration of having something that they never thought they would have, that's worth more than a few shekels that will cover one meal or two meals will ever mean to them. That's something they'll, they'll treasure for the rest of their life and maybe for generations. Yeah. So having something like that on hand negates a lot of that. Having said that stuff like the sadhus, the, the babas there, who you might have for half an hour to do a lighting lesson and to be teaching eight people, you're asking a fair commitment to people. So I have no problem. And, and those guys, they're, they're a community. So if you donate some money to them, it's for the whole community. It's not just paying one guy. So it's a little bit different. What I'll say though, about people who, who do pay all the time for photos is I find it very hard to think that the photos you've captured give you the same warm fuzzy feel when you look at the photograph that you've taken that wasn't paid for. I think anytime you pay to have a photo of someone, it takes away some of the soul of the photo, some of the joy. Mr. Wu, the Chinese cormorant fisherman's a classic example. If you've ever seen Mr. Wu with the mountains behind him, he's holding his lantern, he's got his head on the cormorant's got his wings open at the front of the boat. And the story is Mr. Wu, a fifth generation cormorant fisherman's just returned from an eight hour trip fishing with his cormorants. Mr. Wu hasn't fished for 15 years. There's 15 Mr. Wu's lined up in the bank and it's 20 bucks a shot. [00:47:08] Speaker A: You know, I'll see if I can bring up an example. I don't know if Jim knows, he'll probably know like, but it's like there. [00:47:15] Speaker B: We are, all the Mr. Woos. [00:47:17] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like the sort of things that you see. [00:47:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So they're all pay to play and there's nothing wrong with that. As you said. That's. This one won some, some international Sony International travel photography award, I think that. [00:47:35] Speaker A: One there, this one, I remember one that got quite famous, that had the air like the blue hour and the perfect lantern and all that sort of stuff. [00:47:42] Speaker B: And look, it's good photography, it's good conceptual, it's a good art piece, but it's not, it's not travel photography. It's, it's, it's less authentic. Yeah. And so, so whilst they're fine to look at, I, I know from experience of shooting these kind of things that the photo will never mean as much to you. Yeah, it doesn't. As opposed to a, a photograph that's authentically captured will always, always give You a. A stronger feel in your soul when you look at the. There's more pride to be taken. Yeah, sure. You're showing your photo skills now. I see this. I saw this in Myanmar with a group of Thai. And these guys would spend two or three hours setting up a shot, then they'd all shoot it, then they'd all go back, spend two or three hours post processing it. And. Yeah, and they're all completely artificial, but that's. And that's the only type of photography they did. And, you know, if that's what floats your boat, it's fine. But if you're. If you're out there trying to capture photos that actually mean something in the world, they're not them. Yeah, And I'll say the same for my own. Photos of that are set up with. With. They don't. They don't mean as much to me as the photo of the people I've genuinely met, though I love those photos. The barbers, there's the statues. Because I had a great experience with. If we just pop back to my Instagram for a sec, if we can. That's possible. [00:49:11] Speaker A: I can do anything. [00:49:15] Speaker B: Because the guy we just showed sitting with his. With his legs crossed, where was it? [00:49:20] Speaker A: I was down a bit further, I. [00:49:22] Speaker B: Think it might have been. Yeah, so a bit further. Yeah, this guy here on the left. Don't have to open it up again. Now if we go further up, up the stream again. Keep going up a little bit. There's a guy lighting a. Keep a little bit further, I think. A fair bit further up, I think. Okay, going. Keep going, keep going. Great podcasting. Keep going. I know it might have been lower. Keep going down. What? You're going that way. We can do this. [00:49:44] Speaker A: My bad. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Doing the other. The real. Up you go. Keep going, keep going. Yeah, right in the middle there. So the guy, the one that was right above this is the same guy. This is the same guy. But five minutes later, after he's. We're finished shooting him, he's now sitting talking to his friends. He's lighting up a joint. Yeah, but this is a genuine captured moment that happens in a fraction of a second. And it means something because it's real. The other one is prettier but hollow. [00:50:15] Speaker A: So, yeah, this. This means a lot more to you. The other one was kind of like a. More of a lighting workshop. Exactly. [00:50:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And this is a. [00:50:25] Speaker A: You could do it. [00:50:27] Speaker B: Exactly. And this is once. I know I can do this. Capturing that fraction of a second literally where the. Where the flame lights up and. And I didn't even know who's going to be lighting his joint. So this all happened in the space of about four or five seconds. So you've got to be ready. You've got to have your settings right. You've got to. This is night time. Get everything spot on in a fraction. There's more reward in getting a shot that is really quite difficult to take, that's real that than one that's might be difficult to set up like Mr. Wu. That could be a difficult, complex setup. But there's not the reward or, or, or emotional feel. I believe in the end result. [00:51:08] Speaker C: It's repeatable though. [00:51:09] Speaker A: You love photography. Hear it pouring out of your soul while you're talking about this photo. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Teaching photography. [00:51:16] Speaker A: I love talking. [00:51:17] Speaker B: No, I don't. [00:51:18] Speaker A: You love this image. [00:51:20] Speaker B: I like this image. I think it's a good image. [00:51:22] Speaker A: We caught you out. [00:51:24] Speaker B: No, I think it's a good image but if I lost it, if it got deleted, I wouldn't care. That's. [00:51:30] Speaker C: You've already put, you've put on your Instagram. It's there. [00:51:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's there for, there for life now. But yeah, it's, it's. It. You know, I'm, I'm past it. But. But it's a but as a lesson. It's a good lesson. Yeah, I do, I do love sharing know. Okay. I do love sharing opinions. Yeah. I do love pontificating about what I think about stuff. And I think there's a. In between there. Oh and actually just below there's me with the guys just having a. It's an iPhone shot. Just me, me and the guy. So this is the group. So now we sit and spent some time with these guys and the money we, we donated to take their photographs goes to their community and. Yeah. And set up that they send me daily blessings still. You know. [00:52:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:14] Speaker B: Good people. So that's. So that experience when you can connect with people like that and it's an ongoing experience. I think it's, it's quite, quite rewarding. [00:52:25] Speaker A: I love that you were, despite the fact that you had just finished sort of setting up this complex posed environmental portrait, whatever you would call it, slash lighting workshop, all in one. But you were still ready to capture a fleeting moment, not just with your gear being ready, but your mindset looking for that you were aware of the situation and you were ready to go. And that's what I mean by you love photography. Because if you were purely just teaching photography and running a workshop and stuff, you would not, you wouldn't you wouldn't have taken that photo and you wouldn't have been aware to take it. [00:53:01] Speaker B: I think you do because you want to show off. So you want to be able to show. Yeah, it's a matter of content, so it's a matter of having the content you need to be. There's an expectation, especially if you lead tours, an expectation that you produce X amount of quality images at any given time. So you. But here's the thing about, especially in places like India, you can never switch off because something's happening all the time. If you, the minute you relax is the minute you miss a photograph. And it may be a once a lifetime opportunity that you've just missed. And I think photography is a little bit like fishing in that you never really think about the ones that you've captured so much as the ones that you miss. Yeah. The fish that got away is always bigger than the fish you caught. And I still to this day remember this guy, Dan and Hobart, who had the best face in the world I've ever seen and the most amazing ears and his face looked like he just came out of a coal mine and he was sitting on the side of the road and I can still perfectly visualize him and he wouldn't let me take his photo. And I respect that. I'm not going to go across and sneakily take his photo. I remember. I respect that. But to this day I, I think about the missed opportunity, the lost fish more than the ones I did capture that trip, which I caught. Lots of good ones, but that's one that stands out the most. I think that's what drives people to keep shooting as well, is, is that next opportunity, that next chance to capture something hopefully good or great. Yeah. [00:54:24] Speaker A: David says he sees a photo in your Instagram that reminds him of Steve McCurry. She's got a yellow. [00:54:32] Speaker B: I think you'll find Steve McCurry's reminiscent of my work. [00:54:36] Speaker A: I think that's what I was gonna say if, if anyone's copying anyone is this. [00:54:42] Speaker B: There was a little bit of the Afghan Girl in that, only because of the intensity of the, the stare and the, and, and the, and the eyes, I guess is, is, is of course the fact that the face is covered. So there certainly is. Again, I've. I've seen A dozen Steve McCarry images probably over the years. I've never actually, I don't really follow. There's only one photographer in the world that I don't know that I. Well, I've interviewed on a podcast, but I can't say that means I know him. It was a Canadian called David Duchemin. D U C H E M I N and not necessarily because I find his photography fascinating, but I do like the way he thinks about photography. And I think that's. I would rather be influenced by people's words about how they feel about the art that they do, then be influenced by their photos. Because their photo. If I, if I get two influence in their photos, it might influence how I shoot to make me kind of mirror what they do rather than just shoot what I feel. But if I can, if I can think their, their lessons, their, their thought processes, their. Their philosophies are in my head, then you know that, that kind of, that kind of works when you're out shooting it, you're gonna. Ticks long in the back of the brain and stuff. Stuff. But yeah, I think, I think anytime you photograph people, cultural type photographs and you, you shoot in tight like I do a lot of my photos are. You just head. You. I do get that Steve McCurry comparison a bit because it's a similar kind of frame and subject matter and color. Yeah, yeah. And that Afghan Girl image is, is beautiful. But if we dissect it, in fact it's the only. In all the workshops I run, the only photograph I ever showed that's not mine is the Afghan girl of Steve McCurry. Because I talk about the. What I believe one of the strong elements that make that photograph work is the repetition of color. So she has, under her red shawl, she has a green cloth on. She has green eyes as a green background. So that, that repetition of three greens, I think strengthens the image beyond what would have been if it was a different color under here and different colored wall. I think if we didn't have that three greens, we wouldn't know that image as anywhere near as well as we do. So I think, I think. Why? Yeah, why. Why does the. Yeah. So if you look here, the green. The green. The green. Yeah. We've really only got. Other than skin color, we've got green and red and they're the color contrast with each other. But I think that repetition of color really strengthens the image. So it's not about the girls, not about the face. I think there's something inherent in, in the way we see color and makes us feel that though that, that that element really helps lift the shot. Yeah. But if you analyze it, it's other than. Obviously her eyes and expression make the photo pretty strong. But the lighting's Fairly simple, you know, the compositions. There's not a lot of words being wasted. Again, there's a lot of similarity in, in that. In the way I shoot. But the other photos I've seen of Steve's, there's. This is more, more of an outlier in some ways to his shots than, than a lot of his work which tends to be a bit more inclusive to environment. [00:57:51] Speaker A: He does, he does a bit of this style of thing but you're right, he's. It's very. He's got a very broad career as well. [00:57:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:57:58] Speaker A: So many different things. So it's like this becomes a super well known shot. But yeah, I've got one of his books. I know you don't know, you don't have books but I've got one of his books and I've been flicking through it a lot and yeah, it's. He's done so much work over the years and, and it's not all just like this. It's not like it's a book full of close up headshots, you know, it's. [00:58:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think I can imagine if I put myself into Steve's brain that he doesn't set out to shoot that shot the same way. I don't said I don't set out to shoot an isolated shot. I said that to shoot the least complex. Store this story and if the story is complex with lots of things going on, then I'm going to include it as best as I can. If it's a thing with only one or two things going on then I'll try and include those two or three elements. If it's just a person. Yeah. You'll always be paring it down to the tightest, strongest story you possibly can. It's like writing a book. You're not going to put extra words in just for the sake of making. Fleshing out the book. It needs to be concise and well written story. And I think a photo has to be the same. You need to get rid of any of the words that sort of add fluff to it. I think the, the simpler you make the story more. It's more accessible to more people because more people will read the Dr. Seuss book than they will read War and Peace. Because one is an accessible, easy book. One is a commitment to get involved and I think, I think if we want to make our photos more accessible, we need to cater to an audience from that is as broad a range as possible. Yeah. If that makes sense. [00:59:36] Speaker A: It does, it does. Cam Blake wants to know if it was Noel Blake was the guy with, I think the guy from Tassie that you couldn't photograph, I'm pretty sure. [00:59:50] Speaker B: Well, no, no, used to be my Olympus rep. So Cam, I. I've known Cam's dad for before Cam was born and so my, my mother used to run my photographics photographic department in, in the, in the city in Melbourne here for many years and so, so no, Cam's dad was her Olympus rapper. And then when she dragged me into the industry she. I was thrown out of school the age of 14, so I was a bit of a disruptive influence apparently. And so she dragged me into a camera store as I said earlier. And so he became my Olympus rep. So for many years I knew, I knew Noel, he was a just a funny character. And then of course Cam was born and then years later I actually employed Cam Cam Cam came to work in the camera store I was running in those days. And so I've known Cam for, for many, many years. And yeah, I said I'm not. I don't love landscape photography per se, but I do love Cam's approach to landscape photography. Yeah, his no nonsense, no garbage approach is, is I find very appealing as well. So he's a good guy. So if you ever want to do a landscape tour, if you guys don't do them, pop on one of Cam's ones. They're pretty good. [01:01:05] Speaker A: They do run great tours. I think they've still got a few spots available for 20. So Cam's got tours. They've got the down south photo. [01:01:15] Speaker B: That's right. Show. Oh, tours as well. [01:01:17] Speaker A: No, I think they've got tours on that website so you can head there and check out what they've got coming up for 2025 and maybe they might even have some early 2026 ones on there as well, I'm not sure, but I think they did have a few spots left on a few of them. So go check it out if you're interested. [01:01:32] Speaker B: I think, I think if you're a younger, not younger, if you're a newer photographer, it's very easy to get bogged down with the complexities and you hear so much opinions on how to complicate photography. And I think one of my strengths and certainly one of Cam Cam strengths is to strip it back down to keep it as simple as possible, capture great images, simply not make it hard for yourself. And I think more people will, will progress in the photographic career because or the enjoyment in their hobby if they're introduced in a way that it's simple and accessible and they can get good results without feeling that they must have every single piece of equipment on the planet to do that shot. And I think that's what Cam does a lot in his landscape stuff, certainly what I do in, in my teaching of light. So. [01:02:27] Speaker A: Speaking of landscape photographers called Cam Blake, he did have a question earlier unrelated to landscape photography, which was, does Glenn have any advice on how to ask, slash, approach a subject to photograph them that doesn't come across as creepy or intimidating? [01:02:44] Speaker B: Yes, I've got the opinion on everything and I'm more than happy to share it. [01:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, share it. Tell us. [01:02:48] Speaker B: Yeah, so as I said, I sort of briefly alluded to earlier, I walk everywhere with a stupid grin on my face. Face. Yeah, Just, you know, walk along looking like an idiot. It sort of represents the enemy. And you walk along and just try and engage with people's eye, eye to eye. So as you're walking along, if you look at someone, you've got a big smile on your face and happy eyes and they look at you and they react with a smile or. Yeah, you can tell when someone's connecting with you, even just for a fraction of a second, that's a person you can probably approach. If you're looking at someone and they look at you with daggers in their eyes, you're going to stay away. So straight away, you're kind of sifting out the wheat from the chaff just by your walking. How you look at people and how they look back at you, the next thing is not to walk up. Hi, I'm Glenn, I'm a photographer. Can I take your photo? Because that's the last. Oh, what is that? Especially in, in the west where people are. Places like India, where personal space and personal boundaries is a very different concept than what we have in the west, you can get away with more of that sort of stuff. But in the west, if you're walking down the streets of no. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and just walk up to someone said, can I take your photo? They're gonna barrier is gonna come up straight away. So the first thing to say if someone smiled and looked at you is to walk up and say, hi, my name's Glenn. What's your name? And. And if, let's say they're running a food stall or something, they're gonna like a fruit and veg stall on the street. Have you been here long? Ask them a bit about himself. Find out something. If they're stationary and they're not busy with customers, if they're stationary in one spot, they've got time to talk to you. You know the same thing when you're walking down the street, if you see someone walking really fast down the street, you're not going to stop and approach them. Das take the photo because they're obviously in a hurry. If you get someone walking on the street and they're kind of doing a bit of this and they're strolling along, well, they've obviously got time. So you can get the vibe of people, but you walk up and you try and find out something about people. It only needs take a minute to do this. And then I will always say, look, I'm a photographer. I love photographing the people I meet. Is it okay if we. If I could take a photograph of you to remember this moment? And that's really what most of it is, is to remember the moment, remember the time I've shared. And, and here's the thing, they're either going to say yes or no. And the worst thing they can usually say to you is no. And that's not such a bad thing. Yeah, it's okay for someone to say no. You might like Mr. Coal Face down at Hobart. You might, might regret that for the rest of your life. But that's what keeps pushing you for the next one anyway, though. And look, I've got to say, it's hard to do. It's hard to walk up to complete strangers. But if you don't ask, you don't get. And you could, or you could stand back with your 200 mil lens and sneakily take photos and put your camera down. The second they turn around, look towards you because you feel guilty. But if you don't ask, you don't get. And the joy when it all works. Yeah. And here's the thing, when someone says yes, don't rush, don't, don't all of a sudden. Because they've said yes, they've said yes. They'll give you a couple of minutes and it's almost being. And once again, someone's just walking down the street and I've seen them and I want to photograph and I found a place I want to shoot. I'll say, look, I really want to take a beautiful photo of you. Do you mind if you just step to this doorway here, it'll be a better shot. Yeah, just move them to where the light's going to make them look good or bad if that's the kind of face they've got. And, and but to ask, don't be, don't be, don't be Afraid to do so. It's okay. If they say no, I'll. I'll have a bit of an anecdote. And people find this one a little bit hard to believe, but growing up as a teenager, I wasn't the most attractive of kids. I know, I know. Hard, I know. But I found out very early if I went to the Blue Light disco and which is the old underage no drinking one. And if I asked 10 girls to dance and nine said no, but one said yes, my night was made. Yeah, I only did one. One girl to say yes to a dance. And I'm having a good time. You know, I forget pretty quickly the nine that said no. Same. When you're out walking the streets to photograph people, it doesn't matter if half the people say no. If you get two or three people to say yes, you've got a chance to craft one really great image that day. And that's not something you can say always because you're shooting landscapes, everything's out of your control. Shooting people, everything's in your control. So you have a chance to craft one beautiful image because someone said yes. So take the chance. It's okay. But I'll. I'll tell you this. If your experience is anything like mine, the more you do it, the less easy it doesn't get. It does never get easy to walk up to a complete stranger and ask, take their photo. It's always hard. I've been doing it for decades. I struggle every single time I'm nervous, but if I don't ask, I don't get. Yeah, yeah. [01:07:47] Speaker A: Do you ever. I think that's amazing advice as well for those of us that, yeah. Maybe apprehensive about just chatting to strangers, because the other thing is too, you know, you can. You can practice this as well by chatting to strangers and maybe not asking them for a photo to start with. If you're scared, just go and chat to someone who's. Yeah. Selling something on the side of the road or whatever. Ask them about their day, ask them about whatever, and then move on. You know, like just baby steps. If you're worried about the ask. Yeah. Do you ever. [01:08:18] Speaker B: Every time we go shopping, we have an opportunity to do that. [01:08:21] Speaker A: Yes. [01:08:21] Speaker B: Every time you go into a shop, there's an opportunity. Yeah, yeah. [01:08:25] Speaker A: Connect with people a little bit. Yeah. Do you ever take photos of people without their permission? Like, obviously you do in wider shots, but when you're within proximity to someone, you know where. Where it's kind of. You're crossing that boundary of you Know where there's an edge of. Okay. Now that I'm kind of within whatever it might be, three or four meters of this person, I probably should talk to them first. Or do you sometimes capture a sneaky one? Like what are your rules, Your own personal ethics? [01:08:53] Speaker B: It's a true. It's always. Every situation is different. So I assess every situation. Funnily enough, that lady in yellow we just showed before was a semi surreptitious shot. I'm just a 200 mil lens shot from some distance. But I'm watching her for a while. She knows I'm watching her. There's actually a series of different shots of her taken. So she, she's aware, she's aware of me and, and that moment she's looked straight at me and bang, I've taken a shot. But if we just back out of the frame just for a sec. If we go to the, there should be, if we go to the full. So the one next to is her as well, but in a, in a bigger. So she's selling, she's selling these strands of string or I don't know what they are. They're on, they're on like a stick with a, another a T section. It's got all these things and she's just twirling it back and forth. So sometimes those strands are almost covering her face, sometimes they're not. So I'm just sort of shooting back and forward between this, this, this, this moment. So. But she's obviously, sometimes she's looking at me, sometimes she's not. When I'm shooting something like that, I tend to stick around for a few minutes, get. Let people get used to me being there. And once they're kind of over the shock of me standing at a 6 foot 2 fat white man standing in front of them with a camera, they, once, once they started relaxed, the photography becomes a lot easier. So my philosophy is this, I will stand back and shoot if what's happening in front of me is dynamically interesting enough that my connection or my introducing myself, that destroys the moment. [01:10:27] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:28] Speaker B: So shoot the things that are dynamically interesting. But if some guys just stand there leaning against the wall, it's not an interesting shot. So I'm going to walk up and talk to them. So it's always trying to find that balance all the time of knowing when to interact and when not to interact. And it's hard. It's kind of no right or wrong, I guess. It's, it's, it's, it's play it by Your own ethics. I will shoot from a distance, but if I, if that person turns and looks at me, I will never be the person who pull. I'm doing it with enough confidence that, that what I'm doing is not disrespectful. I find if you, if you, if you're pulling your camera down as soon as someone took you, you're not feeling right about what you're doing. Whereas I remember my early days, I'll be shooting people in the street with my 200 mil lens and I'd be. I want to shoot this guy. I'm shooting as they're walking towards me, but then as I walk past me, I'd keep shooting. I'd still be aiming through the camera and pretending to take photos beyond them. I wasn't taking a photo of you. I was taking a photo of that pole, you know, so. Yeah, because there was a guilt factor in what I was doing. So it was always a. Yeah. And sometimes you don't want to be seen to be taking photos because it also. Like this woman's stare. We've changed the, the, the scene completely from her just trying to find someone to buy her rope to being observed. Yeah. As soon as you're observed. Yes. Change. Change the, the story quite a lot. Which means it's going to change your approach to what the shot's going to be as well. Says lots. It's very complex. Yeah. As Paul says there, it's easier to photograph. Do street photography and people in other countries other than Australia. If you're as scared of photographing people, go to India. They'll call you over and say, come and take my photo. Yeah. They'll break you of your habit. But I do this in, in America, which is traditionally a, a more suspicious place at times, depending on the state you're in. And I find the approach works just the same there. If you just be a person first, you tend not to go too far astray. And, and I said but. And I do these, I do these shoots in, in, in Melbourne. I do them in all around Australia when I'm. We'll accost people in the streets all the time. In fact, one of my favorite images ever I've ever taken was taken by. Of a guy walking past a workshop and we've grabbed him and forced him to be the model. Yeah, it's, it's, it's take advantage of. As many a time have we discarded our model at a workshops to photograph some random walking guy walking past or person walking past because they're more, more Interesting than the subjects we've got in front of us. Yeah. [01:13:14] Speaker A: You go on. I've got a few other questions but they're going to derail what we're talking about. So keep, keep talking. [01:13:19] Speaker C: When you were talking earlier about chatting to people first rather than sort of just jumping in and trying to say like, let me take your photo. Are you doing that like with camera in your hand? Is the camera in locking your backpack? [01:13:31] Speaker B: Is it like. Yeah, the camera's never in the backpack as I always walk around with. I'm an ambassador for black rapid straps. So I always have two. Sorry about that. So I have two black rabbit straps around my, around my shirt. So a bandolero style and I have a camera with a 70 to 201 one side and a 15 to 30 on a camera on the other side. Yeah. [01:13:50] Speaker C: So it's quite obvious what you're doing. [01:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's no, no, there's no mistaking that what I'm doing because you can't afford in, especially in dynamically happening places, you can't afford your camera not to be in your hand because you will miss. You have seconds sometimes to take an interesting shot and it's gone. So it's got to be ready all the time. So I have very, very specific settings I, I have when I'm walking around and then I have, then I. So I don't. I shoot pretty much everything on auto. Auto ish except until I'm actually crafting a particular shot. Then I'll slow down and shoot manual. But I, I have, I basically ISO do all my, my lifting. For me, I said a fixed shutter speed, a fixed aperture and auto ISO for the majority of my walk around stuff. Yeah. [01:14:39] Speaker C: So. So probably what aperture? [01:14:42] Speaker B: F8 priority. Yeah, F8. No, I shoot manual, but it's 250 shutter speed. F8 and auto ISO. [01:14:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:14:51] Speaker B: So I've got a shutter speed I know I can generally be okay with. I've got an aperture that if I haven't quite nailed focus, it's going to be okay because literally you have fractions of a second. Some like the guy with this. And that's why the photograph with the guy lighting up the, the joint worked because the camera's ready for, to, to shoot with a fraction of a second notice and it's generally everything's going to work out okay. Yep. [01:15:16] Speaker A: We will dig into gear because I've got it listed here and there's been a few comments about not asking you what. So they said Cam and David from San Francisco were making Jokes earlier about who's gonna, who's gonna ask what camera brand is using? Not me. And then Cam said whatever brand it is, it must be a great camera because we were looking at some of your images which obviously it's all the camera. [01:15:40] Speaker B: It's not the tool, it's the tool using it, as I always say. Yeah, look, I, I, I personally I, I'm very non brand conscious. Okay. So first up, so to be clear, I'm a Tamron lens ambassador. I'm a global ambassador for Tamron lenses. So I do work for them around the world but because of they. So sometimes I'll be shooting Sony for them because they're launching a Sony camera. I might be shooting Nikon, but my normal camera gear is Canon. But Canon old school dslr, not Canon mirrorless. Because I got big hands. I want a big camera and I'm old and that's what I'm used to. So. But I don't honestly, the camera's a box. It goes click click. I don't really care about it. A lens is a lens. I don't care if it's a Tamara lens, a Sigma lens, Nikon, a Sony, a Canon. They're all within hair's breadth depth of doing the same kind of thing. There are exceptions of course, but I don't shoot primes, I only shoot zooms. So if you give me a 70, 202.8 in any brand, I'm probably going to get a pretty good image. Yeah, you Give me a 24 to 72.8 in any brand, I'm probably going to get a pretty good image. Unless you put the same image shot with two different lenses and maybe even two different cameras right next to each other blown up to 24 by 36 inches, you're not going to see the difference. So the gear itself isn't particularly important. The reason I use Tamron lenses though a is because I get them for free. Always good. But it's when I started out doing workshops 15 years ago or more 17 years ago, something like that. Now I was actually approached by a bunch of companies to say we'd like to. You'd be an ambassador. Will you use our gear? And Tamron came to me and said that and my philosophy has always been let's take a 70 to 202.8. In those days it was $3,000 for a, a Canon one, it's a thousand dollars for a Tamron one. Within a hair spread to being pretty good either way. And my philosophy has always been I'd Rather someone spend a thousand dollars on the camera and $2,000 to go somewhere to shoot, then $3,000 in the camera and sit at home and look at it, you're going to get better photos going. So if you have all the money in the world and buy whatever you damn well want. Buy, buy the most expensive good on you, I'm happy for you. But learn how to use it because the gear itself won't make you a better photographer. But, and, and you know, some people love driving. They might not be able to afford the best car but, but they'll find a way to save for it because that's what gives them joy. Same with the camera. If you want to shoot with a Canon R1 or whatever it is the most expensive Canon and it takes you two years to save up for it. But that's where your joy is. Do that. Do what makes you happy, shoot with what makes you happy. Don't shoot thinking the gear is going to make you better because it won't. If you shoot lots of low light. Maybe there's one camera that's better in certain circumstances than others. If you have specific needs by a specific tool. Yeah. If you don't have specific needs, get an adjustable wrench that kind of does a bit of everything. Yeah, well, brand, buy what makes you. And the worst thing is you can never buy. I would never recommend anyone buy anything brand wise because if you've got your heart set on a Sony and I convince you to buy a Canon, every photo you ever take you'll think could it have been better with Sony? Even if it's the best photo you've ever taken, you'll be thinking but it might have been even better with the Sony. Buy what? Buy what makes you happy. It doesn't matter what anyone else says. [01:19:17] Speaker A: That's good advice. I think there's always a bit of a push pull there with. There's obviously an entire industry trying to drive people towards buying the latest and greatest which can be a problem. But there is also that other way of like oh, the camera doesn't matter. You should just be a better photographer and stop worrying about your gear. And like you say, if you want it and you can afford it and it brings you joy, well get it, do it. You know, have fun. [01:19:44] Speaker B: But don't be the, don't be the, all the gear. No idea. [01:19:47] Speaker A: And, and don't think that that will magically make you a better photographer. [01:19:52] Speaker B: Use some of that money, some of that, lots of money that you've got to, to find out how to shoot better as well. [01:19:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Go on a photo to India. [01:20:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:20:04] Speaker C: When are you going to India, Justin? [01:20:05] Speaker A: Well, look, hey, I want to go. I probably can't afford a glen worth. [01:20:10] Speaker C: You could sell some gear. You could sell some gear. Justin has a lot of gear, Glenn. [01:20:16] Speaker B: I don't have that much. Yeah, just any. Anything on the shelf behind you. Sell a couple of those. In a way, India's cheap to go to. It's cheaper. Combat. Well, it's cheap. If you go. You can go cheap or you can come with me. [01:20:27] Speaker A: You can't have both. [01:20:30] Speaker B: Cheap, fast or good? Pick any. Two. [01:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah, Tell me two things. Are you running an India workshop this year? [01:20:38] Speaker B: Not at the moment. I'm battling some health issues that are keeping me off the road for the moment, but I'm hoping to be earlier early next year. I'm. I'm contemplating. I've got a specialist appointment tomorrow, funny enough, and that might give me the all clear to start thinking further ahead. [01:20:56] Speaker A: Well, hopefully we'll see. [01:20:59] Speaker B: But I'm also also looking at Bangladesh as well as another tour there as well. [01:21:05] Speaker A: And if people want to keep an eye on that, they can obviously follow you on Instagram. Glenn Lavender. [01:21:11] Speaker B: Instagram, Facebook photo. Blue Sky. Yeah, all of them. I'm the only person in the world with my name. There's no other person. So if you just search up my name, you'll find me. It's. It's not hard. Yeah, I'm the. Literally, I'm what's called a Google whack. So the only existence of me and the planets and some people say thank goodness for that. [01:21:32] Speaker A: There's also links to all this stuff in the show if you're looking for it. But there's also. The website is creativephotoworkshops.com so that's another place you can keep an eye. [01:21:42] Speaker B: But also what I like about Instagram and Facebook is if, if you want to reach out and just ask me a quick question. Yeah, do so. It's a very immediate way of connecting with people and so if you. Yeah, I'm always happy to. Yeah. And I was talking to a guy last night on the. The app Photo Foto. He's off to India in a couple of weeks. His first ever triumph. He was just asking me some questions about gear and, and what to expect and stuff. If people going somewhere like India and want just some advice or whatever, reach out, I'm happy to. Happy to help. [01:22:14] Speaker A: Perfect. That's why I've invited you on the show today. I'm thinking about going to India. Excellent. Sometime in the next 12 months, probably towards the back half of this year, I did a trip to Vietnam. And I'd been before, but we did a trip to Vietnam in October last year. Like last minute cheap flights, just cruising around. And I had a ball taking photos because. Because the environment and the people and everything is just so different. It stimulated my senses of wanting to take Absolutely. Photos. And I think India might provide a. [01:22:50] Speaker B: Similar, probably more overwhelming experience, probably a tenfold increase in. In. In the joy. And here's the thing I find about that. The. When you start getting that feeling and you start taking a couple of photos, that leads to you wanting to do more and more and more. It's like a snowball that just slightly builds and builds. So your. Your trip should just get better and better. Yeah. You're. Every day you start forgetting about the. The fear of shooting people and you start just to just get involved in the culture more. India is a fabulous place because Evan and I've shot in Vietnam. And not everyone is welcoming in Vietnam, especially in the cities. Especially because they have 500 cameras a day put in their face. Yeah. So you could get. If you're sitting there selling veggies on the side of the street every day, 500 cameras in your face every day. I'll get pissed off too. Yeah, it gets a bit much. Yeah. We're in India. You got 1.4 billion people. Yeah. I haven't sold all of them yet, but I'm trying. But yeah, there's so many people. And everyone. Every. Almost everybody wants to have their photo taken. Almost everyone. And. And they will call you over to shoot. To shoot them, which is a different experience as well. So it very quickly just frees you up to enjoy the art of shooting people. And. But as I always say, again, make sure you slow down. And yeah, the opportunity, it's. I always say engage, disengage. Re engage. So get excited. Oh, well, we're gonna do a shot. Disengage. Where should we shoot it? How should we set it up? What lens do I need? Where should we stand? What's the light like? Re. Engage. Oh, it's fabulous. And engage the shoot. But you've got to take that moment or two to disengage to solve all the problems that will happen if you don't. Yeah. So where you think about going in India? Tell me what your thoughts are. [01:24:38] Speaker A: No plans. I've got. I've got no idea. It's a massive country and I don't know where to start. [01:24:43] Speaker B: So reach out and I'll hook you up with my personal guide who's, who's a. He's, he's trained in the art of dealing with photographers because I've trained him. So I can hook you up if he's not available. He'll certainly recommend someone if he's not on tours already. But yeah, it all depends on how much time. Here's the thing. Delhi gets people flying to Delhi. Do like one or two days Delhi and disappear. I could shoot for a month in Delhi. Yeah, Delhi's a phenomenal place to shoot and there's so many opportunities to, to shoot. Are you going by yourself? Are you going with family? [01:25:19] Speaker A: No. So I'll take my partner Elena. We'll, we'll make it a trip. We, and, and the way we kind of work because we're like how we tend to travel, we're pretty active. Elaine is not a photographer so she won't want to be doing like mega photo shoot. And I'm not that either. So the way it worked in Vietnam is I'd usually take my camera out. Most of the times we go out on the street but. But definitely if it's like morning or evening, which is usually when we want to go for a decent length walk anyway in those kinds of weather wise. Weather wise. And then we kind of will find a, you know, cheap hotel with a rooftop pool to cover that middle of the day part. A bit of respite. So. So usually it's just cruising around in the morning or the evening with a camera and just seeing what excites me. And we very rarely go to like spots, tourist spots, tours and stuff. Every time we've done one where it's one of those like. Well, it's an eight hour tour and the bus will pick you up and it takes you to this temple or pyramid or something that's out yonder and then you end up. We've never had a good time. I don't know if it's just that we get on the wrong tours or whatever. [01:26:32] Speaker B: I don't they'll ever be catered for. Someone has a, a deeper. Want to know a bit more about the place and a deeper one. Have a bit of a deeper connection with the place. I think if you can go there in a small couple of group, a couple of people, whatever and explore yourself. There's a lot more connection to a place. Yeah, I like nothing more than I was going to tour a couple of days early just to walk around and just inhale the place and get familiar with. Just to reinvigorate that the experience of being in these places and they always seem to be the, the days that mean the most because it's just been your adventure of exploring an area. But, but yeah, I would always say you have to go to Varanasi. Varanasi is, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. And it's where all the, you know, the burning gaps where they burn the bodies on the, on the banks of the river and all the holy men are. And so it's an experience. It's, it's, it's brutal but it's an experience to, to have and, and, and, and Delhi. I said it's so underrated. There's so much to do. You could say there's so much life in this, you know, one of the busiest cities in the world. So if you just like walking around experiencing life, it's a hell of a place to shoot. Yeah. [01:27:46] Speaker A: Where would be the best place in Delhi area wise? This is something I always have trouble with and I do. I end up spending a lot of time trying to research like, like where do we stay where we're not constantly having to try and transport ourselves around. You know, like if you want to do a lot of walking and just, just cruising around, where's the best suburb or area to stay? [01:28:08] Speaker B: There's a central area called Chandi C H A D N I Chandi Chen. Yeah, it's N D I. Yeah. Chandi Chow C H O W K that's the, the main thoroughfare of downtown old, the old town the of Delhi. If you can find somewhere within a 10 or 15 minute walking spot of there. It's the hub and the hive of all, all of old India. Old Delhi. And it's a bit of a. But you can catch a tuk tuk and it might be a 30 minute or 40 minute tuk tuk out to some of the architectural, architectural archaeological sites which you'll want to see as well. But you can make it. You do two or three of those in a day and make a day trip out from Delhi. But if you want to be in embedded in the life of Delhi, that's the place to be. [01:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Now year wise yeah I and I think yourself and also a photographer we had on the podcast called John street who's a street photographer. I don't think it's his real name. [01:29:07] Speaker B: I should photograph lavenders. [01:29:11] Speaker A: Both had recently I recently talked about. I'm a, I'm a prime shooter. For a long time I photographed with primes. I love the constraints of A fixed focal length. That seems to make me more creative. I know that makes no sense because you can just leave us and stuck at one focal length. But I don't know what it is. [01:29:31] Speaker B: That's just got to work the way you got to work. [01:29:33] Speaker A: It started when Jim and I were shooting weddings together and I think we just got so amazingly good. We wanted to make it harder on ourselves by being able to zoom. [01:29:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:29:45] Speaker A: But no, but seriously, I think it was, it helped fuel our creativity a little bit when, you know, once you, once you, once you're sort of pretty comfortable with the way a wedding day flows and using your camera and that kind of stuff, you start looking at ways to progress your images. And buying a prime is just what the Internet tells you to do. So you do that. And then we. I really enjoy shooting with primes, but both yourself and John street had talked about zooms for travel. And I took a few different lenses and I even took a Leica Q3 to Vietnam, which, funnily enough, I did three months with the Leica Q3 as my only camera when we traveled through the US and I had a great time with it. Just one camera, fixed focal length. It was really minimal and I think I needed that. But in Vietnam, I actually ended up mostly using my Canon R5 Mark II and 24 to 105 zoom. It was just that everything was fast paced and I wanted to like, I want to be able to quickly do this, do that, and just capture fast moving action, candid stuff. So the zoom was great. [01:30:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, there's nothing wrong with prime lenses in travel photography. If you, if you want to miss shots. Yeah. Prime lenses are perfect for that. If you want to miss half. If you want to miss half the opportunity, shoot prime all you like. It's great. If you want to capture a lot, as many, maybe 80% of the opportunities you shoot. Zoom. Yeah. You got a choice. Would a golfer carry around a golf bag with one club in it or would he carry around all the clubs to do all the jobs? Yeah. [01:31:20] Speaker A: Would he find a club that, that changes variable clubs, A variable club. [01:31:26] Speaker B: You're hampering yourself. And it's fine. Constraints can be good, but not if your goal is to, is to get as many good shots as possible. [01:31:38] Speaker A: I think what was what, what the evolution is, and I think you're hinting at it, is that I, I liked primes when I was stuck in. This is going to sound negative. It's not meant to be negative, but like stuck shooting a wedding and in environments that I'M like, I'm familiar with. [01:31:55] Speaker B: Of course, you know the distances, you know all, all the angles you're working with. Yeah, of course. [01:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:31:59] Speaker B: And that's again a bit like a golfer. You look, a pro golfer can look at how far away you know exactly the club he needs for that distance he's going to hit the ball. And as a wedding photographer, you know, this is the lens I need for that shot because that is the lens. I completely get it. When you walk around the corner and then. And a thousand people walk all over you, you're not prepared for that. You're not. You can't plan the unplannable. And that's why a zoom. Yeah. And. But I said I don't shoot. I don't shoot between 24 and 100. The lens that you use the most. I, I never have on my camera ever. [01:32:34] Speaker A: That's so interesting. And it's where, it's where I found myself kind of living in that, that mid range. Well, I guess that's not. Yeah, but that sort of. I'm thinking about Canon actually released a really lightweight 28 to 72.8. Yeah, it's like weighs 400 grams and, and yeah, it's. Obviously that's the bit that you would throw away from your. [01:32:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:32:57] Speaker A: But I love, I love shooting at 28 and I love shooting at 50. It'd be great if it was a little bit longer because I actually do like getting a little bit of compression as well, which. So you use the 35 to 150 a lot? [01:33:09] Speaker B: No, no, no. I did in the last trip because that was, I was shooting for, for so many. Your Sony stuff. I, I normally shoot 15 to 30 and 70 to 200 and the 15 to 30 is usually on 15 and the 70. 200 is usually on 200. So most of my shots are at 15 or 200. I'm. I'm an extreme on either end. [01:33:26] Speaker A: So you should have two primes. [01:33:28] Speaker B: I could have two primes pretty much. Yeah. But occasionally you do need to pull back or zoom in a tiny bit. But do you think. [01:33:35] Speaker C: Sorry, Clint, go. Do you think, you know, like say you are shooting at 15 or you are shooting at 200. Do you often find that maybe you could be shooting slightly wider or slightly longer? [01:33:47] Speaker B: Oh, I, I carry. I shoot portraits up to 600mil and I love shooting portraits at 600mil. [01:33:56] Speaker A: Are they from the hotel room? [01:34:01] Speaker B: But there's, there's a, a feel. Like all lenses, they have a certain feel to how the image looks and I love the way a 600 mil. And I'm all about controlling background. So the zooms to me, because I'm a people photographer, I can move usually if the space I can move, I can stand anywhere I want. So it's not about being closer or further away from the subject, but it's about how much of the story the background's told. So I will shoot a 600 mil lens because I want to shoot a very, very narrow slice of the background as my entire background. Conversely, I'll shoot 15 because I want to tell the whole story of the background. And then I'm, you know, up in the. Up in someone's face to do that. So I. I'm the zoom effectively by where I stand. But to me, it's all about background. Every part of the background is a word. And how many words do I do I want to use? And I try and eliminate as many things that aren't necessary to the shop. So if I randomly meet some person walking down the street, I'll try and eliminate background as much as humanly possible, because that background has no context to who the person is. If I meet someone who's selling something at a stall, that foreground and background is everything about who they are as a person on that particular day. So I want to include that. So it's always what is the story? Always. And. And sometimes it's just the person, sometimes it's everything. [01:35:26] Speaker A: So. [01:35:28] Speaker B: So for your trip, take them all, Take it all, take it all, buy it all. [01:35:33] Speaker A: No, I do need to. I need to, like, I need to keep things simple when I'm traveling. And that's why I sort of. I end up just trying to pare myself down to the Leica Q3. And I did enjoy that very much for national parks and all that kind of stuff, cruising around the U.S. but yeah, just the pace of. In of Vietnam and the type of photos I was taking, the zoom just. It worked for me and I enjoyed it. [01:35:57] Speaker B: I have another slightly funny anecdote. Speaking of shooting things like the Leica Q3, I. I used to be sponsored a bit by Rico, and so I used to give. They used to give me GRD3 digital cameras. Nice. So I was. I was. And one of the great things about it is it's a. It's a fixed, wider 28 mil lens, so it's a reasonable range to work with, but it's completely silent shutter, so you could take photos when you didn't think people knew you were taking photos. So one day I was walking down Harlem in New York City and on the stoop with all these like thug looking guys, about eight or 10 guys who looked absolutely, just murderous criminals is the best description of them. And they look fabulous. They looked absolutely fabulous. So I've kind of got the GRD3 out down by my side and I'm casually walking past, paying no attention to them and going, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap. That. And because you can't hear and think it's the silent shutter. And all of a sudden I hear, oi, had the photo come out. And I've just kept on walking and then a couple seconds later this bang on my shoulder and I turned around and says, guys, and I'm 6 foot 2 and this guy's, you know, 6 foot 5 and 350 pounds. He's looking down on me and he goes, I know who you are. I'm gone. Really? Because you're a Hollywood scout, aren't you? Here looking for locations. I've gone, yes, yes I am. Because let me show you some spots. This guy took me around for the next hour, around these laneways, alleyways and these buildings where murders had happened and these buildings, all this awesome. It was a fabulous time. But all because I sneakily took as sneaky as I thought I was being. I was so completely obvious I was taking their photo. It always stands out in my head about try to be sneaky. We don't get away with it as often as we do. [01:37:41] Speaker A: You know, people are pretty, pretty intuitive with that sort of stuff these days. [01:37:45] Speaker B: Especially when people are photographing everything, you know, but, but, but funny if that, that, that fear and embarrassment turned into just a cool afternoon with a great. [01:37:54] Speaker A: Guy, you know, and it's funny too because it's probably, I mean, and you never know, you got to take each, each moment as it comes and make a judgment. But you probably could have just stopped and asked those guys if they mind if you took their photo and they probably would have said, yeah, no way. Exactly, you know, exactly. [01:38:07] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. But that was a bit more nervous back in those days, a bit more. And I wasn't, wasn't feeling in my safe element and all that kind of stuff and, but I had a kid come up to me in, in, in Delhi and put a gun against my head and, and he just stood there and I just stood there and his mate standing in front of him and like no one's saying a word. So I took my camera off around my neck, handed it to his friend, put my arm around the guy, said, take a photo. So he's got this photo of this gun against my head and took the. Came back and said, thanks, guys, and walked off. Yeah, funny things happen when you travel. My wife doesn't like that photo, funny enough, but I still have no idea. I think they were just mucking around. But it might not even a real gun. [01:38:49] Speaker A: I was gonna say, you don't know if it was just a really good replica or a real gun. Don't just act natural. Speaking of safety. All right, so when I do travel, I like to. I usually like to have the. The camera just slung across my body with a lucky camera strap. We're 139 minutes. No, an hour and 39 minutes into this podcast. It's time for an ad. If you guys want a camera strap. [01:39:18] Speaker B: Lucky. Lucky. There are guys. If they can't do it, no one can know. Doesn't work. [01:39:23] Speaker A: That's pretty good. We'll take that. We're going to take that. [01:39:25] Speaker B: Are you still lucky, punk? Well. Oh, yeah. [01:39:28] Speaker A: So if you want a leather camera strap. [01:39:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:39:33] Speaker A: Head over lucky straps. You can use Justin as a code. You can use Jim as a code. You can use Greg as a code even though he's not here. Any of those will work. [01:39:41] Speaker B: You can use Madam Lash as a code. [01:39:43] Speaker A: I'll give you 15% off. Hey, you can buy them and do whatever you want with them. That's no problem. They are not the camera straps that Glyn uses. But we can't talk about the camera straps he uses on here because we're sponsored by lucky strap. No, I'm just kidding. He uses Black Record, which are like more of a. What would you call it, like, sling style, where the camera moves along the strap. Whereas our straps attached to each side of the strap. And it's designed where you can still lift it up like a sling, but it moves. The strap moves with the camera as opposed to just the camera moving along the strap anyway. You'll figure it out. [01:40:18] Speaker B: Yours are pretty. [01:40:18] Speaker A: I like to. They are prettier. [01:40:20] Speaker B: Yours are much prettier. [01:40:22] Speaker A: They're leather. [01:40:23] Speaker B: Much cooler. [01:40:24] Speaker A: Forever. Forever and ever. You can hand them down to grandkids or something name put on them. It's pretty cool, huh? Bad for business. [01:40:34] Speaker B: Bad for business. [01:40:35] Speaker A: Nah, it's not. Not when there's people like David from San Francisco who's got 14 cameras because then he can just buy 14 of them and then hand them all down to a ton. [01:40:43] Speaker B: So don't have one of those easy clip attachment things because you just clip on. [01:40:48] Speaker C: Well, we do have a bad thing. [01:40:51] Speaker A: That should make them harder to attach. [01:40:55] Speaker C: There's just like a. One, like a cable tie one use only. [01:40:58] Speaker A: That's it. Once it's on, it's on. [01:40:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:41:00] Speaker A: I have actually thought of stitching a strap onto one of my cameras permanently because I want to get rid of like I'm minimal, minimal hardware. Like get rid of as much as possible. I just want it to be like the neatest, cleanest. I'm all about the way that it feels around your hands and stuff. I don't, I don't want any extra dangly bits or anything. [01:41:18] Speaker B: Ever been tested for autism? [01:41:21] Speaker C: Would you like a free report? [01:41:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:41:23] Speaker A: Can I get one of these reports done? [01:41:25] Speaker B: I'll get my, I'll get my head. [01:41:26] Speaker A: Onto it, see if he's got time. What was I gonna say? Yeah, so I like to walk around with the camera out most of the time. Is it safe to do that in India? Obviously there's your general like, hey, be aware of your surroundings and, and anywhere in the world can be safe or unsafe. You can go to Melbourne and sometimes it's not the right time to, to be just cruising around with a camera out. But in general, I've found most countries that, that we've traveled to that I feel pretty comfortable rocking around with a camera. What's India like? [01:41:56] Speaker B: I'll just preface this by saying the most unsafe city I've ever been in the world was Brisbane. The place I felt the least safe in the entire world. Brisbane on a Saturday night, downtown. Just crazy. India's perfectly fine. There's. Is the. There's, yeah, as you say, caveat with not being stupid. I mean, like one night about. I was walking down some laneways and market. Laneways about 11 o'clock at night, pitch black. Except those stores are open. Lots of people still buzzing around because they're open, you know, very late. I'm walking completely lost and I heard someone yelling out to me. And so you ignore them because you know they're trying to sell you stuff. So you keep walking and then eventually, after calling my name three times, this guy taps me on the shoulder and says, don't get in there, you'll get killed. So it's like, well, no worries, mate. I'm a big 6 foot 2 Australian. So I turned around, went straight back to the hotel. The only time, other than the kid with the gun against my head, where I felt, yeah, oh God, maybe this is a bit. So you just wander and you know, wandering aimlessly around dark, lame, enclosed laneways when you have no idea where you are by yourself. It's probably never a good idea anywhere, but I've never felt anything but safe in India. It's a. The people are beautiful. A caveat to us. But the 99.5 of the people are just beautiful people. They're welcoming, they're as curious. This is why I love going to places where people are as curious about you as you are about them. And you'll get that in India in spades. So when you go to a place and would they love to talk to you, they love to find out about you. They want to take you to their uncle's rug shop, all the good stuff, but that it is a beautiful place to travel around. And. Yeah. As you would anywhere in the world. Being. Being sensible, you should have no issues whatsoever. Yeah. Having said that, this is not. This is not a. A foolproof claim. [01:43:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:43:49] Speaker B: Anything can happen because 0.5 of 1.4 billion people. Still a lot of people. [01:43:53] Speaker A: That's right. [01:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:54] Speaker A: That's right. You always got to be. Yeah. Be wary and be safe in your own surroundings. But, yeah, I've found pretty much everywhere. The only place I felt more unsafe than normal was Mexico. And I still can't put my finger on why. I don't know if it was a story in my own head, but there was something about the vibe that made me less excited to take my camera to some places. And even just in general, it was. Maybe it was the small beach resort island that we went to that had constant patrols of people in the back of Utes with machine guns all day and all night. And I was like, you wouldn't have that if you didn't need it. [01:44:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:44:34] Speaker A: And that's what I think. That's what set me on edge, that kind of stuff. There was a lot of that. [01:44:37] Speaker B: But, yeah, if you can remain reasonably open, you can generally feel your intuition kind of saying, yeah, it's probably not a good idea. Yeah. It just. Yeah. And. And maybe not get so engrossed in shooting that you're not paying attention to surroundings and stuff like that. It's just reasonable common sense. But, yeah. I always say if. If you're. If you do feel a bit of an intuition about something, don't. It might be airy fairy, but don't disregard it. Yeah. Yeah. We're picking up stuff that we don't necessarily know what. Our brain is far more powerful than we use it for. So if it's kind of giving you a bit of a clue that, hey, just be on alert. Be on alert. Yeah. [01:45:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:45:16] Speaker B: What's the Worst that can happen, you're on alert. [01:45:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. Better to be a little bit safe than sorry. Roger Highland in the chat says when I'm in new places I like getting up really early, going out for an hour or two and then evening is great, especially when people are out eating or socializing on the street. Is that, how does that resonate with, with India and, and Delhi? [01:45:35] Speaker B: Spot on. My favorite thing to do is to get up. Yeah. Before dawn. If it especially we're not on tour. Get up before dawn, just go stand on the street corner and just watch, watch the place come. Especially when the streets, the street's got vendors, they're going to eventually show up and start selling stuff. Just stand there and watch the world come alive. Watch the, watch the city wake up and you get your street sweepers and, and your people heading to work and, and people opening up their shops and setting up their fruit store and it's just a fabulous place just to stand and feel. And if you're staying in this, a hotel for three or four days and you do that every single morning, again you become part of, they're used to seeing you and you start getting opportunities to, to shoot that you may have missed on the first day or two. But I think it's a fabulous thing to do is just to, to yes. Go and walk. My very, very first trip to India, I literally got off, off the plane, went straight to the hotel, put my stuff down, walked, walked out of the hotel, walked around the corner and this lady in, into a laneway and this lady invited me to sit, sit down and have chai tea with her. She was, she was born. So I sat down, she made me chai. Her brother was sitting next to me and he was a local politician and travel agent and he wanted me to sign a, sign a petition and go on a tour. And his uncle was ironing clothing about three, three, well, probably 10ft further up the laneway using an old coal powered iron. So within minutes you get out there, you walk in the streets and just, just feel the place and accept those sort of little opportunities and straight away you know, wow, this is a special place where everyone's so welcoming, everyone's so friendly and, and they were colorful people and they were interesting people and there was, I took half a dozen photos in my first five minutes there that I still, I still fondly remember, you know, and that's, I think to me that the, the most important thing about the photo is that it makes us remember fondly the experience we had. Not Just how good the photo is or isn't that. The photo doesn't have to be good. It has to be connected. [01:47:34] Speaker A: Well, you don't like any of you. [01:47:35] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. [01:47:36] Speaker C: So, but maybe do you like the connections in your photos? And the photos are just a reminder of the connections? [01:47:44] Speaker B: No, the photos remind me of the feelings and, and I remember every sound, every smell, every. Every moment. But when I look at the photo, it's. It's like a. It's like a door that opens up to. To that memory. And without the photo, you forget them. So the great thing about photography is it connects you with that. Sorry. [01:48:01] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's what I'm. [01:48:02] Speaker B: Yeah, but the photo itself, I'm not, I'm not enamored by the photo. [01:48:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:07] Speaker B: I'm enamored by what that connection does. Yeah. [01:48:10] Speaker C: So maybe that's where you're not love, but love of photography is that you don't necessarily love the image, but what it brings back as you're saying, the smells, the people, all of that. [01:48:23] Speaker B: Not the smelly people, but. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, that's probably, probably a great, great synopsis. Absolutely. [01:48:31] Speaker C: Yeah. So maybe you do love photography, but it's not the photo side of it. [01:48:35] Speaker B: It's. Yeah, it's all. Yeah. [01:48:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:39] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. I always say the cameras is a. As a reason to, for the experience to happen. Yeah. That gives me a justification to connect with people. I could probably do it without a camera in my hand, but I, I lead it as a crutch, as an excuse to randomly connect with people. [01:48:56] Speaker C: Yeah. But then it's all. But then also how would you remember Because. [01:48:59] Speaker B: Exactly. [01:48:59] Speaker C: You know, if you met 50 people, you, you wouldn't necessarily remember. [01:49:03] Speaker B: I can't remember half the. What, what half of my girlfriends in my life look like. You know, you know, the people I randomly meet on the street. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I carry photos of my kids in my wallet just to be on the safe side. Oh, yeah, that's it. [01:49:17] Speaker A: Before they get in the car, you hold the photo up. [01:49:19] Speaker B: You're like, yeah, you're right. Check. [01:49:26] Speaker A: I've got some notes written down from. Like I said, I listened to your. Actually listen to two podcasts that you did with Down South Photo Show. So if you guys want more Glenn, if you just haven't had enough Glenn, like I said, there's the Shutters Inc. Podcast, which is the longest running podcast in the history of photography podcast. It's probably in the top 100 longest running podcasts. [01:49:53] Speaker B: It's our 20th anniversary in May. I think we have 580 odd episodes and there's 15 minutes of good content in there, so have fun finding it. [01:50:04] Speaker C: Good luck. [01:50:05] Speaker A: It was in 2016 somewhere. [01:50:08] Speaker B: Yeah, no, not all in one podcast. Spread out over. [01:50:15] Speaker A: So there's obviously there's plenty of Glenn there and then there's. Yeah, there's two great episodes on. There might even be more, I don't know, on Down South photo show. So you can head over there and get more, probably more of Glenn's story. I decided not to dig into that side of it too much today because there's some great content out there about it already. But I wrote some notes down that I wanted to ask you about. One of them actually was about David Duchem. You already brought him up anyway, but I was going to ask you what specifically is it that that attracts you to his way of thinking or what. What could other people maybe look get out of it? Why should, why should people head over and see what he's got, what, what might be on offer? [01:50:58] Speaker B: Well, first, his philosophy of no gear is not important. Resonates with him because that's how I feel. So he reinforces my own beliefs, which is always a great reason for liking anybody if they make you feel better about yourself. No, it's, it's, it's trying to understand the, the, the. The con. Well, again, he's predominantly a people photographer. Well, it's actually sort of moving to animals these days, but it used to be predominantly a people photographer. It's really about getting to the soul without making it sound bad, the soul of the subject and which is the why we shoot the. The. The what. The what we want to get out of the shop. The what makes us feel good if we, if we can understand. If you don't understand what you want out of a photo, it's hard to get it and if you don't, and then it's hard to understand why you like a photo if you don't. Can't analyze the, the reasons behind what makes it good. It's got to be more than just surface. Oh, that's nice lighting. And there's an interesting subject. So learning more about storytelling, learning more about connection with people, learning more about understanding what, what. What light does to us, how we see different lights, how they make us feel. He does, he does great stuff on. Yeah. Understanding what the human eye sees in photographs. First, second, third, fourth. So when you know you see light before dark, you see warm before cold. You see big before small. You see human before you see an animal. There's all these elements that you unders. That you start to understand the psychology of looking at a photograph that you can then implement. The balance of your shots can change when you start to implement some of those concepts. So it sounds a lot drier than it actually is, but there's a lot of that kind of. Is that kind of philosophy around photography. More so than I would recommend. If anyone wants to. To start off into David Douche. I mean he's got a book called within the Frame and that would be my. As a travel photographer, that would be my recommendation of where to start. He's got many, many, many, many books. But he does. He does like weekly or little video chats as well, you know, exposing his thoughts. So there's a wealth of content out there on him. [01:53:21] Speaker A: But I can't buy it. I'll find it somewhere. [01:53:24] Speaker B: Amazon. Amazon.com Nor has his books. [01:53:28] Speaker A: So it's taken me to the wrong Amazon. I think that's the point. [01:53:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, within the frame. I recommend anyone who comes to one of my tours to buy that book and read it before they come. Yeah. To kind of get a. Just kind of to stretch their way of thinking about photography beyond the box of the camera and the lens and beyond. Oh, this is a great place. And here. This is one of the biggest fallacies of photography is we believe that if we go to a great place we'll get great photos and it's just not the case. It's a lot more to being in a good place that. To get a good photograph the same. Again. Just because the face of the person's great doesn't. It's gonna make a great photo. You've got to make it a great photo there within the frame. Don't like that photo. So I'm not, I'm not. Because my cdo, I really need that guy between the blue door and the blue window. [01:54:20] Speaker A: That would be. It would be better, wouldn't it? [01:54:22] Speaker C: Balance it. [01:54:22] Speaker A: It. Yeah, yeah. [01:54:24] Speaker B: I said I suffer quite badly from cdo, which I think is a pretty good thing for a photographer to have cdo, of course being OCD but in alphabetical order. [01:54:32] Speaker A: Because I was trying to figure it out while you were saying it. I'm like, there's something about this that's. [01:54:37] Speaker B: You know, who, who would put OC but out of order. I mean that's just two people's heads in. But yeah, so. So, so yeah, again, his, his photography. Some, some. Some of really like some of it okay. About. But his, his ex. His way of talking about photography is fabulous. So it's a. It's a. It's a. It's a funny. He does some nice animal stuff these days. He does underwater stuff and bears. And he was on a. Doing a. Leading a photo tour in India and he fell off a wall and almost died and lost. What part? His lower part of one of his legs. So it's kind of changed his. And the same wall he fell off. I think three people had died falling off that wall that year. So his stuff in Ethiopia, in Lalabella in Ethiopia is exceptionally good. But definitely, definitely a worthwhile. But I guess, again, it's not necessarily even about the image, but listen to him talk about the image. That's Varanasi in India. If you ever go there, just drying the. The laundry and the guy down there is washing. Washing the clothes. And so if you put your. You put your clothing at the hotel laundry, that's where it ends up one of the most polluted rivers in the world. I've shot this guy. I know this guy. [01:55:59] Speaker A: Really? [01:56:00] Speaker B: Is that funny? I've seen that. I haven't seen that photo before. It's funny. There's a. There's two. Now there's two photos of his that he's. He's photographed, that have photographed the same person, which is. Is kind of funny. [01:56:10] Speaker A: Wow. Okay, so this is all Varanasi or. [01:56:14] Speaker B: This is all very nice, these shots. [01:56:16] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, so I've definitely haven't seen these. [01:56:18] Speaker B: But these are all very nasty. For sure. [01:56:19] Speaker A: It's on the list. Okay. [01:56:22] Speaker B: Cool place. And with Varanasi, you just walk up and down, spend time, give yourself time to be there and to walk up and down the. What's called the gats, or the banks of the river, and enjoy the life as it happens. [01:56:35] Speaker A: How touristy is it? Like it like. [01:56:41] Speaker B: It's reasonably. [01:56:42] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like everywhere. [01:56:45] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's. It's more certain times of the day, it's touristy. Okay. So on the evening, this thing called an arty ceremony, which is a. To the. The river ceremony for the. For the river Ganges. And that gets. A lot of tourists come down for that. But a lot of the tourists are also local India or Indian tourists. People who travel from around India. India is fabulous for visiting their own country and seeing their own. Their own history and their own lives. That city is 6,000 years old. So early in the morning, you might get a bit of tourists. You mostly get photographers during the day, not many because it gets a bit warm. And over the evening you might get a few but not. Not many. Not, not many. It's not like. Wow. It's not. It's not like Delhi where you see a lot more. But even in Delhi, if you're walking the streets, you won't see an awful lot of foreigners because the foreigners arrive, they get in their bus, they go from A to B, B to C, C to D, D to E, then back to the hotel. So they're on the bus, walk around the location, get back on the bus. They're not walking the streets, they're not exploring the place. So you can certainly. Even in the incredibly busy place like Delhi, you can, you can explore no problem at all. That's one of the reasons I love going to Bangladesh. Bangladesh is. Very few Westerners go there. So you meet people who have never met a Westerner in real life and, and you're such a shock to them. It's such a. Such a great human experience to connect with people again. I said people who are as curious about you as you are about them always leads to great opportunities to shoot. [01:58:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:58:17] Speaker B: Bangladesh is a bit like India 50 years ago or 60 years ago, really. Yeah, yeah. If anyone wants to go to Bangladesh, let me know and I'll hook up with my mate who's a guide there. He's. He's is a fabulous photographer as well, so. [01:58:32] Speaker A: Wow. Well, it sounds like I want to go there, but I should probably go to India first because, you know. [01:58:38] Speaker B: Yeah, Bangladesh is, is a hard place to travel. It's. It's fairly brutal. It's not a place I would vacation. Yeah, it's a place I would go to shoot, but it's not a place I would take people to enjoy. Yeah, yeah. Because it's only. Because it's hard. Yeah, it's, it's. It. I'm sure India 50 or 60 years ago was quite the. The infrastructure is harder, the roads are harder to get around, the traffic's pretty bad. There's not as many safe places to eat. Not as inside as interest for our bellies. Yeah, yeah. It's just. Oh, because I love it. I love an anecdote. Last tour to Bangladesh, we were driving at one of our longest drive days. We're driving five hours down to Chittagong and a road bridge had collapsed in front of us and so the traffic was all banked up and it was the only main road into. Into town. And the bridge was gone. So we, we turned down this dirt track. There was a basically farmer's track. So we drove down these farmers tracks for like six hours to get around. But during that six hours, we had to drive through a fire that was going across the road. We had to drive through an elephant that wouldn't get off the road. It's just standing, blocking the road. It was a, let's say road. It was a track. And then all these guys came out the bush wearing military camouflage gear and machine guns and surrounded the vehicle and got us all out and would check and they were, they were. There were terrorists, a terrorist brigade of the army out doing maneuvers in the middle of nowhere and then saw this vehicle. So they thought check, see, make sure we weren't trying to smuggle drugs and stuff. So I've got all these selfies of me with these guys with the machine guns. [02:00:15] Speaker A: Oh my gosh. [02:00:16] Speaker C: Crazy. [02:00:17] Speaker B: But it was, it was a. But funny things. And I always say this, this is the first thing I say on every day of a tour. It's the things that go wrong is where your stories are when you travel. So I went to this place, we saw it and we left no story. I was going to this place. The bridge collapsed, we rode down here, there's a fire, there was an elephant, there was army. It took us six extra hours. There's a hell of a story and a memory in that moment because there's the stuff that goes wrong that, that really adds to. To trips. So celebrate the frustrations of. Of stuff going wrong. My worst ever trip to New York was when on the plane in Melbourne. I watched two full movies on the plane before we took off. And it took. Took my. Would have been a 24 hour trip to. If I think it was 38 hours door to door because of delays and missing planes. But that whole stuff going wrong is part of where your story is at. Not I got on the plane, we got there, it was fine. Yeah. Not quite as interesting. [02:01:11] Speaker A: I love it. It's the reason to travel. Isn't it just. [02:01:14] Speaker C: It is, yeah. [02:01:15] Speaker A: Have an experience, do something. [02:01:16] Speaker B: Something different happening. [02:01:18] Speaker A: Roger in the chat says don't be put off by tourist hotspots. There's a reason they're popular. Just go early or late and avoid the crush. That's a good point. [02:01:28] Speaker B: Like the Taj Mahal is a classic example though. You get that 5:30 in the morning, not the 11:00 in the day. 5:30, there's hundreds. 11:00, there's tens of thousands. Yeah. [02:01:38] Speaker A: And. And with some of the spots in Vietnam that were touristy, I found myself enjoying shooting the. The contrast actually did a series of 12 images on it. The contrast of the tourists and the local in that. Like, I've got these shots of, you know, there's locals going about their job, setting up stuff to like living life and then there's a, you know, tourists in their ponchos worried about the rain or whatever. And like it's just. There's some really good juxtaposition. Yeah, exactly. Because that is the life. It's like, I think sometimes we get tricked into being like, oh, I don't want to get tourists in my photos. Because then it doesn't look like it's India. [02:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:02:26] Speaker A: It's like, well, but that is, that is India. [02:02:28] Speaker B: Exactly. [02:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:02:30] Speaker B: And you're trying to photograph what was not. What is that whole thing again about. Yeah, the, the reality of this guy with his, his five thousand dollar clothes on, you know, is, is North Face everything against a guy with, you know, that juxtaposition is a great thing to shoot. And you know, we want, we don't all our shots to be like that, but we can't avoid it. We can't ignore it. [02:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah, no. So you might as well enjoy it rather than being like, oh, there's tourists everywhere. I can't get a shot where there's no tourists in it. [02:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Find a way to make it interesting. [02:03:02] Speaker A: Do you still. Do you still set your camera to black and white while you shoot? [02:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I mostly shoot jpeg. I don't shoot RAW a lot. And if I'm, if I want to shoot a black and white image, I'll. I'll have a customized black and white and white settings on my camera. Just change it to black and white and shoot that so it's black and white for life and that's it. [02:03:22] Speaker A: So you don't shoot raw? [02:03:24] Speaker B: Not often, yeah. [02:03:26] Speaker A: What's your, what, what's your post production workflow like? [02:03:30] Speaker B: Crap. I don't know. I'm not very good at post production. So I use the Luminar Neo software because I can press one button. It does a lot of stuff for me. [02:03:39] Speaker A: Yep. [02:03:40] Speaker B: And then I hit export, which that's pretty, that works pretty easy. And I do use Photoshop. I don't use Lightroom. I don't use any cataloging system whatsoever. I do use Photoshop when I want to do what I call more complex edits. And a complex edit for me is create another layer, maybe dark, use darken that layer using a multiplier or something like that, and then paint a little bit more light just to kind of get a bit more contrast in the scene. But most of my Shots are a fairly rudimentary. There might be a bit of contrast, there might be a bit of saturation or desaturation. Again. So colors are words. So if. If the color in the scene adds to the story because it tells you something about them, I'll include it. If the color is a distraction that takes your eyes away from the subject, I'll either eliminate it or desaturate it. So a bit like that David Duchemin that we talked before. Where your eye looks first in the photo, do you look at the color or do you look at the face? If you're looking at the color, that's a problem. I want you to look at the face first, and I want you to holistically look at the image. But what. Capture what captures your attention first. And if it's something that's not the face, then that's a distraction to me, and I'll find a way to minimize that some way. That might be with a vignette. It might be with desaturation or black and white. But I'm. But if I can't edit a photo in under five minutes, I'm not doing it. It's going in the bin. It's. There's too much work. Yeah. [02:05:10] Speaker A: It's just not worth it. [02:05:13] Speaker B: Try and get it right in camera. And you're not. You don't need quite as much post production. And again, if I want to have a really good cloudage in a photograph, maybe I'll use flash so I can control that in the camera to get it looking exactly the way I want. So most of the work's done, you know, not like I'm trying to create something that's not got either. I didn't capture properly. Yeah. And same with. With I. I craft people's. When I'm doing a portrait in light, I'm crafting people's faces within a centimeter, within a millimeter of where I want them to be. Even when I'm doing workshops and shooting with models, my models are never allowed to move the. I craft within a centimeter of where I want it to be. And they have to stay there for all eight people to shoot them or whatever. Because that centimeter difference is everything. Think between good and sucks. Yeah. And it's. It's super important. So. So there's a lot of that going on. If, if I'm. I'm shooting a portrait, it's crafted as best as humanly possible in the camera, and there shouldn't be a lot needs doing. And again, I'm mostly Shooting people. So there's not really a need for that. Dynamic range of landscapes for Raw and stuff like that anyway. And a JPEG file is already, well, surely big enough for Instagram. Yeah, but I said, don't do what I do. Do what makes you happy. Some people. Some people love spending hours on a single photograph and that's where their joys in photography. Good on them if that's what they love to do. All power to them. And I admire this skill and perseverance. I can't do it. So my photos will never get. I always look at my photos and go, well, this could be better, but I can't make it better. Yeah. And I'm not going to learn how to make it better. And I never have and I never will. If I knew how to edit, I know some of my photos would be phenomenal. But I can't edit and I'll never learn how to edit. Yeah. There's not enough drive to make me want to do it. [02:07:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a. It's a refreshing take. And I'm the same. I, I'm not a. I don't like editing stuff actually submitted. So Matt Palmer, who's a. A landscape photographer, he's got the Alpine Light Gallery in Bright. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Anyway, him and his partner Mika have got the. The Alpine Light Gallery in Bright. He's a very accomplished landscape photographer. [02:07:29] Speaker B: Does she take photos too? Yes. [02:07:31] Speaker A: And she's. [02:07:32] Speaker B: Okay. I might have heard her name. Yeah, I think I've heard of her. [02:07:34] Speaker A: Very accomplished as well. They both won all of the awards and done phenomenal work and their gallery is actually working, which is quite impressive. Like running a gallery these days would be so tough. [02:07:45] Speaker B: Absolutely. [02:07:45] Speaker A: So they're doing all that and. And they're also involved in judging. I think Matt's actually judging today. He said, and I know you hate photography judges. [02:07:56] Speaker B: I don't hate judges. [02:07:58] Speaker A: I'm putting words in your mouth. [02:07:59] Speaker B: I hate judging. Not the judges themselves. [02:08:02] Speaker A: I know, I know. But Matt. Matt's got a. I'm going. This is a long way to tell this story. Matt's got a new website that he's testing that he sort of built a new service called Photo Kaizen. Basically, it's. It's like the judging process, but with. Only with the idea of, of improving your work. It doesn't rank you against other photographers. It's just like, hey, here's what I'm seeing. Here's maybe what I would try to improve the. [02:08:34] Speaker B: I would rather Call that an a. An opinion website. Yeah. [02:08:37] Speaker A: I think. [02:08:38] Speaker B: Well, I guess because. Yeah. No one can judge someone's work. [02:08:43] Speaker A: No. And I don't think that's. [02:08:44] Speaker B: I can have an opinion. Yeah. And I would also say big philosopher in keeping things simple in Photo Kaizen. If I came across that it would tell me nothing about the business or the website or what to expect. I like lucky straps. Hey, I understand that, that I know what you do. You're strapped. I buy one of your straps. I get luckier. Again. My business. Creative photo workshops. It's pretty simple. We do workshops and they're about photography and they're somewhat creative. Yeah. Keep it simple. So. So I. I like things that are bright. Festival of photography. I know that works for me because it explains where it is and what it does. And it's a festival. [02:09:23] Speaker A: Kaizen's a Japanese word for continual improvement. [02:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And 1.0001% of people will know that. Yeah. So I told you I've got an opinion on everything. [02:09:34] Speaker A: But anyway, hang on, Long story short. Long story short was I needed to submit some images to this website so that he could test his service. And I was like, yeah, that'd be great. Like, I'll submit some images. And I edited them so fast that I was like, I hope he doesn't notice that I spent no time on, you know, like, because I'm submitting them, but I'm just. Yeah, I'm submitting him for review. And he. He's a. Does those reviews that you do when it's like, I can't remember what they're called now. It used to be the aipp, but now it's called something else or whatever. And it's like, I assume that people that submit stuff to those sort of competitions would spend an hour on a photo or something like that, or more. [02:10:16] Speaker B: Five hours. [02:10:17] Speaker A: Five hours. And I think I spent, I don't know, 15 minutes on 12 images. You know, like, oh, that's right. [02:10:23] Speaker B: They're good. Good. Yeah. [02:10:25] Speaker A: Not on one. No. And so I, I'm. I'll be interested to see if that's part of the critique or not. Where. If he's like, hey, you could have. [02:10:34] Speaker B: Put a bit of effort in some. Any. [02:10:38] Speaker A: Any would be good. [02:10:39] Speaker B: Are these straight out of camera? [02:10:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, what's funny is. Okay, that's. That's the point. So when I actually did originally did this set of 12 images, it was. They were shot straight out of camera to be shown on this podcast and stuff as part of a project I was doing. So they, they, in my mind they were done when I pressed the shutter. [02:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:10:59] Speaker A: And then I was like, ah, that one's a little bit crooked and stuff. [02:11:02] Speaker B: So I should probably tweak or tweak. [02:11:04] Speaker A: I should probably process them if I'm actually asking him to because he's going to spend, he's doing free. He's going to spend a bit of time critiquing me. [02:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:11:13] Speaker A: Should probably do this properly. But yeah, that's. So basically I'm waiting to, to see that and him be like, come on, try. But I don't, I don't like editing photos that much really. [02:11:25] Speaker B: Can I explain a little bit my, my thoughts on judging? Because I spend quite a lot of time talking to camera clubs. [02:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:11:32] Speaker B: And camera clubs have a vast range of skills levels, people in involved in them from newbies all the way up to shooting for 50, 60 years. The constant. Probably the most consistent comment I ever get is, we had a judge come in, they judged all our photos. He told us everything we're doing wrong with our photos. I did all the things he told me not to. It told me to, to fix up for my next competition. The next judge came in, said everything I just did was all wrong and I should have done probably the stuff I did that the other guy said was no good. And every single judge comes in and like, it's a law. This is the law of photography. You must do this, this and this and, and you're. This is a bad photo because you didn't do this, this and this. Your photo isn't as good as that one because you didn't do this, this and this. Hey, that's incredibly confusing for people trying to learn if, if you've just followed someone's advice and done everything they said and then told everything you just did was wrong, it's a bloody hard thing to learn. I think the only person you've got to please first and foremost is yourself. If you like it, it's a good image. If you don't like it, maybe chat with people to say, well, how. How would you have shot this is probably a better discussion than what should I have done better? How would you have approached this? How. What do you see in this that I'm not that's different than me? Find ways of discussing the approach to the photograph more in as many varied ways that might resonate with you. Then. This is the rule, like the rule of thirds. All these rules that people, people seem to have don't help Art. Yeah, art doesn't have a lot of rules. Photography has a ton of them for some reason, and it seems to be a strange juxtaposition. So I say, yes, get people to critique your photo, but take it all with a grain of salt. And just because someone said you should have done this and this doesn't mean you had to and doesn't mean it, they're right. And if the photo still speaks to you afterwards, then that's great. Photos that can be technically perfect can be artistically boring. You know, we've all heard the guy who plays the who, who's been to every music school on the planet and plays the violin with the most incredible skill you've ever seen, but has no soul. And then there's a kid who taught himself to play in plays on the street and it sounds amazing. It's because there's, there's emotion and life and soul in the playing, not technique and structure and formula. So try to find that balance. So what I would much rather see clubs do is Club A and Club B agree on a theme. Everyone goes out and shoots that theme, everyone prints out those images, then they hold an exhibition and everyone walks around, talks about their photos. Some people get up and talk about, this is what I saw, this is what I thought, oh, wow. And this is how I did it differently. And we discussed different ways of approaching shooting the same type of thing. I think we'll learn better and encourage more people and bring more people along and it won't get dispirited and they won't feel that they're never going to be good enough. My tagline is always Australia's most underwater photographer because I've never submitted a single photo to be. To be. To be judged. And funny, if I was doing one of my talks to the Australian Judges Associate Photographic Judges association at the end of last year and the first thing he says, I hate judges. To Australia's most prominent photographic judges, but only because of that reason, because it's. It. I think it leads people away from. From maybe developing as photographers rather than not always. It's a blanket statement. So it's some. There are some. I'm sure there are many phenomenal judges out there. And, And I say not so much judge, not so much opinion, but can share a different vision to how you could shoot the image that may be. Not be better, but at least be different and may open our eyes to how we might shoot the same thing differently the next time. I think that kind of growth is better than the best place, second best place, third best place. [02:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah, it's there's definitely, there's definitely both, both sides can be right and there's two different ways to look at it. And I think, you know, we've done interviews with both Matt and, and Mika and a lot. They attribute a lot of their, their growth as photographers to that process they invested in. But I can see 100 from that, that club side of things, how it can be demoralizing and particularly if puts everyone in the club at this point where you're like, okay, you're better than them, you're better than this one. [02:15:59] Speaker B: And if you've been shooting for 70 years, that guy's been shooting for six months. Why would you feel A, to want to join or B, to want to complete? [02:16:07] Speaker A: And it's like you say, it's also subjective to what that judge saw. Maybe that judge had time constraints too, so they were also just trying to do something for the club. But it's like, hey, I've got to judge all these images and I don't have time to like spend hours on each image. So it's like quick, all right, that one's better than that one. And they don't, you know, so it's like, like you say, it's, there's other ways to maybe help develop at that club level people's photography skills and eyes that, that's more, more conversational rather than, yeah, score based. [02:16:40] Speaker B: Let me give an example. I mean, I get asked to judge from time to time, much to my distress. But I was, I was in the rural arts Australia brought me up to Billoweela out in, in Far North Queensland as part of their royal show, doing some workshops. But they also wanted me to judge their, their royal shows, um, photo competition. And they had 16, 20 photos in 42 different categories submitted. They'd submit, they'd put out the entire day aside to, to judge for the judging process. I did it in 35 minutes and they within, I'm going, within seconds, I'm discarding, I'm choosing images within a set. And they're going, you can't, you can't do this. You can't just go bang. You don't. I said, why can't I look at 50 images and see the one I like? Like, yeah, it's opinion based. And out of this batch of images, there's two or three that stand out to my eyes straight away. So I select them because that's all judging is. It's my opinion. That's what I like. Yeah, there might have been better photos there. There may have been more interesting Better. Yeah, exactly. All that stuff. But for me, for this judge, at this moment, in the way I'm feeling and the way I like and what, what appeals to me, bang. I can, I can, I can discard six. Was it 15, 14, 72 images or whatever in no time bank. Because, you know, I know what I like. Yeah. And so all the photos, that one is just pictures that I liked. And that's, I think probably the, to me, the, the most democratic way of doing it is I know what I like and I know what I don't like. And there's no. But there's no, there's no formula behind it. There's no rules behind it or photographic laws behind. It's just. Oh, that's pretty. Oh, I like that one. Isn't that. Yeah, that's. I think maybe for better or worse. [02:18:31] Speaker A: That'S how I see photography makes total sense. And I mean, look, we, you, you might be. We might make up the podium of least awarded photographers because I don't think. [02:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:18:41] Speaker A: Oh, actually that's not true. Jim's won one. No, you have, you've won one. You've got that clear thing that you won for the taking a photo of the GoPro that you couldn't see. I don't think. I think we should take that off. You won like just disconnect him. What are they called? Like a pressy or something? Like a press photographer's portrait. [02:19:00] Speaker B: Oh, he's got the award. He's going for the award. [02:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah, he's gonna lean over. [02:19:04] Speaker B: Oh, this. [02:19:04] Speaker A: Oh, this little fella. I don't know about that. [02:19:07] Speaker B: I'm sure I've got it around here somewhere. [02:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah, he took photos of cricketers in a pool underwater and it got on the front cover of the Bendy Advertiser or the Herald sun or one of those ones. And he won an award for it. So you're out, Jim. You're only me and Glenn that are the unawarded photographers. [02:19:25] Speaker C: We actually got nominated the other day, Justin, for the wedding awards. Every year there's the wedding awards, Glenn, and it's not so every year there's the best photographer is awarded now the. And then and the best florist and the best celebrant and the best. The best buyer company like everything is awarded and it's. It's a popularity contest based down on votes. Now we've been awarded and I see all of my like colleagues that I work with at weddings and they're posting about it. Vote for me and vote for me. And I'm Like, I'm not, like, I don't vote. I almost want to post and say, do not vote for me. [02:20:08] Speaker B: Is this the same good way to do it? [02:20:11] Speaker A: See, because, because when you win, though, you have to pay to get your. [02:20:15] Speaker C: Reward, pay to play. So to get the award you've got. [02:20:18] Speaker B: It's like all these business awards, they're a con all the way around. Yeah. Yes. Seen many of them. Yeah. And. [02:20:23] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:20:23] Speaker B: And. [02:20:24] Speaker C: But people use it as a marketing tool, which is of course, and I understand it. It's great. Yeah. I was the, the whatever I won and I'm just like, no, it doesn't matter. [02:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Look at my photos. [02:20:36] Speaker C: Yeah, look at my photos. [02:20:36] Speaker B: Do you like my photos? I can do that for your wedding. Yeah, exactly. [02:20:40] Speaker C: Talk to me. You know, I offer far greater value than an award. [02:20:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:20:46] Speaker C: Would tell you just because you're a. [02:20:48] Speaker B: Lovely guy and you've got. On the day, on the other day. That's really important. [02:20:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. And like. And what else? And more than, you know, what else I can do more so than just a photographer? [02:21:00] Speaker B: Like what we do the buttonholes, you can do the tie properly, you can do all this stuff. Yeah. [02:21:05] Speaker C: And, and that happens like so often. [02:21:07] Speaker B: I know, I know that we, you. [02:21:08] Speaker C: Know, we're doing, we're doing all the extra things where you're the psychologist. [02:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah. You're the time manager, you're everything. [02:21:15] Speaker C: Yeah. You're kicking out people that you can. Because you're reading the room because you really, you've learned to read people and you've learned that they. Their mum's annoying them or whatever. And like you've got to. [02:21:26] Speaker B: I say the wedding photographers I, I really admire, I've done a share, but they really admire the. The broad range of skill sets required to shoot wedding is far beyond the photography. The day works or doesn't work often based around how good the wedding photographer is. The disasters that either happen or don't happen can often be based on you guys. And always had mad admiration for, for the work that's done. Yeah. As I said, being a psychologist is tantamount that before photography almost, you know, so important, so all power to you. [02:21:59] Speaker A: It's even the little things. We used to always have a six pack of beer in the car, in our car fridge because you get the boys out after the ceremony and you're taking some photos of the bridal party and stuff and no one's brought beer and they're all getting thirsty and they're like, how much longer for the photos? [02:22:16] Speaker B: Then they're getting antsy. [02:22:17] Speaker A: Do you just want a beer? And they're like, oh yeah. [02:22:20] Speaker B: And then that's a photo too. Then you've got photos. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. [02:22:24] Speaker A: Exactly. We did that multiple times. Always had a pack of beer in the, in the fridge. And then worst case, I'd drink it. We've kept you for a long time. It's 2 hours and 20 minutes in and I've actually got a. I've got a dog. I've got to dog sit today. But before I let you go, I've got a question. Actually, I have got a lot of question. We're gonna have to get you back. Excellent. Well, we do Monday night random shows, which I think bring in the random show. [02:22:53] Speaker B: Monday night's my, my, my best night of the week, funnily enough. So. [02:22:57] Speaker A: Perfect. [02:22:58] Speaker C: Well, you're in. [02:22:59] Speaker A: We'll put you on the rotation because basically all it is is talking crap about anything. I can do that new game that's come out or something or whatever. And it's just listen to my podcast. [02:23:08] Speaker B: If you want to hear crap, you know, we got that. [02:23:13] Speaker A: I doubt it. Now here's my question. You're in India. Oh, actually this doesn't really work anyway. You'll just have to suspend your reality anyway. You're in India. [02:23:23] Speaker B: I don't have much. [02:23:25] Speaker A: You're in India. And then the, the zombie apocalypse hits and there's zombies run around on the streets everywhere. [02:23:31] Speaker B: Zombies. [02:23:32] Speaker A: You've go one point how many billion? 1.4 billion. [02:23:36] Speaker B: That's a lot of billion zombies. [02:23:39] Speaker A: And you've got to quickly grab. Grab any camera and lens. Just one camera and one lens of anything throughout history up until now. No future cameras though. To document the end of the world zombie apocalypse. What do you grab? [02:23:55] Speaker B: 5D Mark IV and a 15 to 30 Tamron. [02:23:59] Speaker A: Nice. [02:24:01] Speaker B: Not that I ever dabble, but I can shoot some pretty amazing video if need. If we need to document some, some video footage, I know it's going to do a reasonable job on its own without me having to know what I'm doing. Also yeah, it's a low light beast if needs be because I'll be hiding somewhere for sure that's obviously dark. But yeah, like, hey, get. [02:24:21] Speaker A: I'll just get the, the, the light out. Just stay there, Mr. Zombie. I just really want the light just coming across your face as you come at me. [02:24:29] Speaker B: I am just starting to rethink my lens choice though. Maybe I should get the 150, 56. [02:24:34] Speaker C: You want to be further away? [02:24:36] Speaker B: 15 mil might be a bit close for. [02:24:38] Speaker A: But that's a heavy lens to lug around in the end of the world. [02:24:40] Speaker B: But you could also hit them with it. This is maybe 150, 600. [02:24:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:24:47] Speaker B: Plus it's also got the tripod, the tripod mount too. So that's a heavy piece of metal. You can just gouge and sell forehead. So yeah, I'm exactly 5D Mark IV with a 150 to 650. And, and a helicopter with unlimited fuel. [02:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that wasn't, wasn't part of the deal. So we don't have the budget for that. [02:25:14] Speaker C: Okay. There might be some free helicopters lying around. [02:25:17] Speaker B: There you go. Yeah, yeah. Having to land to refill is the problem though. So it's got to have unlimited fuel. Yeah. [02:25:25] Speaker A: That's the 150 to 600. I think you're the first person to say that. Yeah, I like it. [02:25:31] Speaker B: It's a multi purpose weapon. [02:25:32] Speaker A: It's a pretty good choice except for low light, but at that point you're hiding anyway. [02:25:38] Speaker B: If I'm going to shoot a zombie at 25,600 ISO, it's okay, you know. Yeah. [02:25:44] Speaker A: All right, we better wrap this thing up. David asked this a little while ago. Hopefully he's still listening. Jim. Question for Jim. Do you shoot your or candid reception photos RAW or jpeg? [02:25:55] Speaker C: Raw. Yeah, all wedding. All raw. Just don't want to change things and like. Don't change things. One set of cards. Sorry, one. Yeah, one set of two cards. But I mean like we're not changing cards in the camera. We're not changing stuff like that is just asking for. To make a mistake really. [02:26:18] Speaker A: And speaking of mistakes, they do happen. So when we're shooting weddings, like obviously you could shoot JPEG if, if you're on top of everything or whatever, but sometimes goes wrong and if you need to recover an image, it's not about us, it's about the client. [02:26:32] Speaker B: And if I was shooting weddings, I'd be shooting raw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I'm shooting for a client and the photos are important, I'd shoot raw. If I'm shooting for myself, it's jpeg. I don't care if I lose them. Exactly. Yeah. When you, when you're doing serious work, use the tool as most capable. [02:26:48] Speaker A: Exactly. You just never know what might happen. The camera might underexpose or something and you can just save the photo or whatever and it's worth the extra space. [02:26:57] Speaker B: And yeah, memory's cheap. [02:27:01] Speaker A: Exactly. [02:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:27:02] Speaker A: Well, it just keeps marching on though, making that hard drive array bigger. And bigger one day when it dies concern. Brendan says, great show, gents. Thank you. Philip Johnson's also says, great show, gents. And thanks, Glenn. [02:27:19] Speaker B: No worries, Phil. Good. Good to see you, mate. Hope you're well. [02:27:21] Speaker A: Thank you very much, Glenn. Anything you want to plug? You got any workshops or anything coming up? Anything. [02:27:28] Speaker B: Any stuff I. I'll plug. I've got a workshop at Brendan Stored and Ocean Grove in June or July or something. Something doing a natural. I can't remember because I don't pay much attention to stuff like that. He's selling it. So if you, if you want to come along to a natural, natural light workshop, come along to. To Ocean Grove. But I'll probably. If you keep an eye on my, my socials, I'll. I'll advertise all my events at the moment that are coming up are sold out. So anything new coming up. Keep an eye on the, on the socials and. But I said just reach out if anyone's got any questions. Always happy to have a chat. [02:28:00] Speaker A: As you notice, I will be reaching out once I. Once I start making some plans for India. I'll be trying to get your advice. [02:28:09] Speaker C: Just bring him back on the podcast. [02:28:11] Speaker A: Well, that'll be the other thing we'll be doing. [02:28:13] Speaker B: We'll go. We'll go through itinerary live. There we are. [02:28:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll book everything. Let's just live on the show. Be thrilling for people to listen to. [02:28:21] Speaker B: Oh, travel booking, website, podcast would be fabulous. Yeah. [02:28:26] Speaker A: Hey, I mean, whatever we can do to make some content. All right, well, we'll get out of here. Thanks very much. [02:28:33] Speaker B: Thanks for having me on, guys. I appreciate it. [02:28:36] Speaker A: Thanks, Jim, for coming along with Greg away. I needed Jim here with his purple background. I really like it. [02:28:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And he's got the right choice. [02:28:45] Speaker A: Is that why you did that? [02:28:47] Speaker C: No, I think I'm settled on this for a little bit. I don't know, I. I changed the colors quite often. [02:28:55] Speaker B: You're not a youtuber unless you've got neon in the background, so. [02:28:58] Speaker C: Yeah, well, look, Justin's is normally. Looks a lot better than it does. I don't like. [02:29:01] Speaker A: Mine is falling down. These are cheap ones off from Bunnings or something and they're just falling apart. I actually really like. I like the white. [02:29:09] Speaker C: No, it doesn't. It doesn't look good. [02:29:11] Speaker B: No, it makes you look washed out. [02:29:12] Speaker C: Yeah, it actually. It actually looks a lot better when you've got it colored. [02:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Then we could look at the color. Rather new. [02:29:19] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's all right. [02:29:21] Speaker A: Yelena says the answer is yes, Jim. I don't know what that means. Anyway, Jim's got a million camera straps to pack, so we better let him go as well. [02:29:30] Speaker B: Good stuff. [02:29:30] Speaker A: Stuff good for business. Yeah. And otherwise. Thanks. [02:29:35] Speaker B: Thank you. Hopefully we'll chat again sometime. [02:29:37] Speaker A: Absolutely. We'll let you know when we can get you on a Monday, because I think your opinion will be well received. [02:29:44] Speaker B: Easy, dude. Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. [02:29:46] Speaker A: Lavender for lavender. Yeah. Okay. Thanks very much. See you guys. Remember, lucky straps, use code Justin or Jim or Greg or whatever you want. I think you just type whatever you want there. [02:29:56] Speaker B: It'll work. Type the code Glenn, and you get 100 discount. [02:29:59] Speaker A: Oh, I should set that up for one order, see if anyone does it. [02:30:03] Speaker B: And, and, and, and, and the $300 shipping. [02:30:09] Speaker A: Exactly. It's like TEMU or whatever they get you on the shipping. All right with that, we'll see you guys later. Goodbye, everyone. [02:30:20] Speaker C: Thank you.