EP76 Jesse Hisco | Adventure Wedding & Elopement Photographer

[00:00:18] Speaker A: Here we go. Good morning, everybody and welcome to the Camera Life podcast, beaming to you live from Victoria, Australia. It's the 8th of May. Where is the time going? And this is episode 76 of the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by the team at Lucky Straps, makers of fine handmade leather camera straps. Get yours now. Head to Luckystraps.com but that's enough about that. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Getting the ad read in early, that was cool. Smooth. [00:00:52] Speaker C: Check out now. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Well done. [00:00:54] Speaker A: I'll see you all later. But look, thank you. For those of you that have jumped on early, a little bit of a later start today, but we wanted to accommodate our special guest. We'll get to him in just a moment. If you're watching along live with us, welcome. Please make sure you drop your comments questions in the chat. If you're watching this later or listen to this later on available podcast platforms, feel free to comment. Make sure you like and subscribe to all of those bits. Tickle the bell icon so you get notifications. [00:01:28] Speaker B: Actually, you know what I was thinking about the other day? If you are listening on like Apple podcasts or something, leave us a review. I don't think we've got any. I don't even mind if it's a one star. Obviously five star would be better, but you know, whatever, we'll take anything, give us some attention. So, yeah, if you're, if you're on the podcasts, on the audios. Yeah, leave us a review. That'd be amazing. [00:01:50] Speaker A: Just before we jump into the good mornings from the chat, let's throw quickly to our guests now. We're joined today by, I'm going to say wedding photographer, but Jesse's approach to photography is so much more than that. So we're joined today by Jesse Hisco. Good morning from the beautiful location of Bright in Victoria, which is where the Bright Festival of Photography is held. Morning, Jesse. Welcome to the show. [00:02:16] Speaker D: Morning, legends. How are we? [00:02:18] Speaker C: Wonderful morning. [00:02:20] Speaker A: Doing all right. Doing all right. How are you? [00:02:22] Speaker D: You're all snacked up. You're all caffeine. [00:02:24] Speaker B: We're ready to roll. [00:02:25] Speaker A: I've had my double dose. [00:02:26] Speaker D: We're gonna be here a while. [00:02:28] Speaker B: You've got the perm machine. The perm machine ready to go? [00:02:31] Speaker D: Yeah, ready. Ready to burn me up? Yeah. [00:02:34] Speaker B: It's an epic lamp. That is. Does it. Can you move it around? Like, is it. Or is it just stuck there? Or is that thing like spring? [00:02:43] Speaker D: It's. It goes down to a big stone stand. That's extremely heavy. No. Yeah, it does not move. I mean, if you, if you walk into, has some movement which is you haven't been in the studio until you've walked into that lamp here. So nice. [00:03:01] Speaker B: I love this. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Well, welcome to the show, mate. [00:03:05] Speaker D: Thanks. [00:03:05] Speaker A: Can you just give us a quick, just a quick summary of who you are and what you do? [00:03:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay. So I'm a photographer. Obviously I photograph primarily. Well, for the last 17 years I've been photographing weddings more, more focused the last 10 years on adventure based weddings and elopements. But essentially I photograph people, people and people and the things that mean the most to them. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Yep, nice. [00:03:36] Speaker D: Succinct. I like. [00:03:38] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to dive into Jesse's story. We're going to look at some of his work. We're going to, you know, get in touch with what he's up to. But just before we do, Justin, you want to jump into the comments? [00:03:51] Speaker B: Well, the comments ran early because so this morning we start at 9:30 normally start at 9. Let us know in the comments or after the show in the other comments. Is 9:30 better for you guys or is 9 better? Tell us anyway. Philip Johnson says good morning all and then says oops, in early. Rodney Nicholson says, morning guys. David Mascaro says hello from the Bay. That's the San Francisco Bay area. You've been shooting today, David. He's always out street walking. He is with one of his nickons, Digifrog, which is Dave from Tassie says, welcome Jesse. [00:04:24] Speaker D: What's up Dave? [00:04:25] Speaker B: And Rodney Nicholson says the cone of light. Yeah, that's the cone of light over Jesse. [00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:33] Speaker D: It is. [00:04:33] Speaker B: It's very angelic. [00:04:35] Speaker D: Thanks guys. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Actually, no pressure, no pressure. [00:04:39] Speaker B: I've got a sound effect for that. Just not great. Anyway, I wasn't on it this morning. I gotta be ready with the sound effects. Yeah, David says yes, he's been out shooting with the F6 and the FM3A today. Love it, love it. [00:04:58] Speaker A: Anyway, so Jesse, time to start the grilling. We don't, we don't provide pre prepared questions for these, for these podcast folks. We just like to grill and grill until you break. But no, but in all seriousness, Jesse, I, you know, having researching your story and your website and your images for today's show. There's a statement that really stood out to me and that's to, you know, to document your most meaningful moments. And I attended your BFOP workshop. I think it was the first morning shoot that workshop that you did and I have to say being present at that and we've talked about it a number of Times it was a very emotional experience. So for those of you. [00:05:45] Speaker D: The vulnerability. [00:05:47] Speaker A: The vulnerability, yeah. Vulnerable couple portraiture. [00:05:50] Speaker D: Oh yeah. [00:05:51] Speaker A: That was quite a morning. I think almost half of the participants of the workshop were in tears. And just to set the scene for you folk that are watching and listening along, so Jesse ran a workshop around intimate couples portraiture. We had a couple there who were very young and very clearly in love. And it was fascinating to watch you, Jesse, navigate not just the couple and. [00:06:16] Speaker D: How you. [00:06:19] Speaker A: How you worked within that setting of their intimacy, but also how you then guided us through that process. And I have to say it's something that will stay with me. It was quite an amazing thought provoking and emotional experience. [00:06:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:06:36] Speaker A: And in fact, I think we, we had a participant there who, whose mother had recently passed and she had to step away because she just couldn't deal with the, the rawness of the situation. It was too soon for her. [00:06:47] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So actually helped me having that experience with her having to sort of duck out gave me, it gave me an opportunity to rethink how I started it and for, for the workshop the following morning. Just to give people a bit of a, a warning. [00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:08] Speaker D: Because yeah, I mean, look, photographing people is an intimate experience. You can do it, you can do it without going deep. But for me, I believe everybody can photograph phenomenally if they're given the right space to feel themselves. And yeah, so, yeah, that's what I wanted. I really wanted to touch on that, how to create that space between you and your couples. [00:07:35] Speaker A: Yep. No, it was definitely, you know, I learned a lot. I'm not a portrait photographer, but I learned a hell of a lot and made some great connections while we were there. But anyway, enough about that. Let's dial it back. I want you to talk us through what some of your earlier inspirations were into photography or perhaps into an artistic lifestyle. Yeah, I want to talk about your, your influences, your mentors and even your early education in the field. So over to you, mate. [00:08:03] Speaker D: Cool. Okay. So I mean I, I guess I'd attribute a lot of my creativity in my early years to. I did Steiner education for my, my earliest years of school, if anyone knows much about that. But they, they really nurture in those first few, few years of, of primary school. They really gave me the right space to sort of comfort creativity as, as a lifestyle. [00:08:34] Speaker B: Just quickly, for those of us that don't, like. I've heard the word and I know a little bit about it. But what, like what, how is a Steiner school different to, you know, the traditional primary schools that we have in Australia so much. [00:08:51] Speaker D: Well, I mean, some of the, some of the things that really stuck with me in, in the early years because I, I, so I did Steiner for my early years up to grade four and then from grade four I got put into a state school. So I got to see two sides of the coin. Some of the things that really stuck with me were things like you call your teachers by their first name, not their last name. So there was no superiority. They, they identified early what sort of learning style the, the kids are and adapt the learning to that. So for me, I'm a, I'm a real kinetic learner. I've got to touch it and feel a visual learner too. So I've got to see it, I've got to touch it, I've got to do it. I'm not a very audible learner. So I can sit in a lecture and I can understand it and, but it just sort of seems to go in one ear and out the other. So they adapt that to my learning style. They also found areas that the children are interested in and then adapt some of the classes around that. So I've always been a fairly active person. I love sport. So when we did Japanese, she would teach me about Japanese sports idea being if you're engaged on the subject that you'd want to learn more about it. [00:10:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:07] Speaker D: But even like at a grassroots level too. Like we, we, we knitted our backpacks, we tied out our T shirts, our school portraits. Actually this is something my school portrait was in in grade three is they have this little waterfall that we built with the teachers. We built our classroom without, with our parents too, one of the mud brick buildings. But we built this little sort of water feature and then they would bring the kids in and they would give you the choice of having a little lamb or a little, a little, a little cow to sort of cuddle up and get your portrait next to. Literally the next year when I got put into state school, it was metal pews, everyone was in uniform, everyone looked the same, Everyone just get into the box sort of thing. I sort of, I rebelled a little bit going, going into that box, but, but also met the love of my life there quite early in grade four. No, five, six, seven. [00:11:10] Speaker A: You don't mess around, do you? [00:11:12] Speaker D: Wow, that's something I can thank for state school, but I didn't actually end up finishing it. So my later education, I didn't, I think I finished year nine and then left. [00:11:27] Speaker B: Okay. Interesting. [00:11:29] Speaker D: Yeah. The early years of Steiner Definitely helped to. Yeah. Not beat the creativity out of me. Yep. [00:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very much the opposite. We looked at Steiner for our eldest. This was a very long time ago. He's 27 now. Editor said, in case you're watching. And yeah, we didn't end up going there because it was too far away from where we lived. But, you know. Yeah, similar to what you said, it was very much about creativity, about exploring the natural world. All the toys were made of natural materials. There was no plastic, there was no battery operated toys. The kids did gardening, they grew their own vegetables and made their own meals. So yeah, it's a really alternative education setting that I think there needs to be more of to accommodate the way that kids learn differently. But that's a whole. [00:12:23] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Look, some kids, some kids thrive in it. Some kids, some kids need a bit more structure. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:30] Speaker D: But I guess a big part of the Steiner philosophy is that they work on this seven year cycle, the first seven years. They, they don't. We don't sort of dive too deeply into academics. It's a lot about like they'll teach us about the seasons, how photosynthesis works rather than getting into the mass, the ABCs and that sort of stuff. So no screens. You do have computers as you get older in that. But I didn't get to that stage before going to a state school and. [00:13:03] Speaker A: So you left, as you've said, you left state school in year nine. [00:13:06] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:13:07] Speaker A: And so what was next for you? [00:13:11] Speaker D: I, I moved out of home pretty early. Just that family situation. Just. It went like that. I moved out when I was about 14 with my younger brother. Kept him in school and, and yeah, just started working. I didn't sort of touch on photography until I was so 2005. So I was early 20s and I just purely bought a camera because I was going on holiday to Canada. So I want to take some good pictures of my holiday. My, my holiday. And, and, and then, and then I photographed my first wedding in 2007, just helping out a, a French Canadian photographer over there. His, his English. Hey, Eric, how you going? His English was not. He was, he's from Montreal, so he just moved out to the Rockies where, where we'd moved to. His English wasn't as good as mine, but my photos were nowhere near as good as his. So I helped him a little bit to communicate with these couples. Then he gave me a wedding and, and, and got another and another. And then I couldn't do my other job at the ski hill. And then eventually I, to get A website, and then I guess I'm a wedding photographer, and that's been. I've been full time for weddings for the last 17 years now. [00:14:32] Speaker C: Wow, that's great. [00:14:33] Speaker A: It's a decent wicket. That puts you boys to shame. [00:14:37] Speaker B: I know. [00:14:38] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a while. Yeah, I know. Like, it's. It's literally, it's taken me over. I've had to reinvent and really fall in love with weddings as. As a genre, but absolutely love it for. For what it gives me as a lifestyle. For what. For what I get to create. For that has something that has longevity outside of the memory of me. Yeah. [00:15:07] Speaker B: Can we. Can we dive in? I mean, we're probably skipping forward, but we can skip back, you know, flexible podcast. Can we dive into the reinvention? Can. Like what? So 17 years is a long time. [00:15:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:15:20] Speaker B: Did you. Did you get burnt out? [00:15:23] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look. So when I first started weddings in, in. I was living in Canada in the. In the Rocky Mountains. I. I didn't have a lot of outside inspiration other than who I was working with, which. Which was great because I've always been a really inquisitive person. I always ask a lot of questions. I've always been really interested in the things that I do. Otherwise, I just don't do them anymore. And thankfully, I had someone who was willing to give me the patience of answering all my silly questions. So as I photographed with. With Eric for maybe the best part of three or four years, and then I kind of got to a point, I was like, I'm in a bit of a bubble. I was living in Banff in the middle of the Rockies, which is an amazing place, but it is a bit of a. A bubble. The town itself is sort of built for tourism on its own, so there's a lot of weddings coming in. There's a lot of people coming from all over the world. So I got exposed to a lot of different styles of weddings. But it kind of got to a point where I just was lacking any sort of inspiration inside the valley. So I started looking online, and at that stage, I think I was following. This is early, early, early days. Maybe it was in before Instagram. Yeah, it would have been. It would have been Tumblr. I followed a photographer. Her name escapes me now. Oh, man. The reason I'm trying to remember this name is because after a little while of following her, I thought her photos were great. She posted that she was getting married, and I thought, oh, I wonder who she's going to get to Photograph this one. And that's where I came across. She posted that she was going to be getting Jose beer. So I was like, okay, who's this guy? And just like he was my first big like oh wow. I didn't know weddings could look like this at that stage. He was a medium format film photographer. You, I, I don't know if you've heard the name before, but he's now he's, I mean he photographed Justin Bieber's wedding. He photographed a lot of, a lot of big celebrity weddings. So anyway, I, I, I saw at that stage, I just, I really loved his photos. I didn't know anything about him. I didn't know he had such notoriety. I didn't know he was so big in the industry. I didn't know, I didn't know the industry at all. And with my naivety I just sort of how I do it. I just found his phone number and just called him with my green as is and, and thankfully he sat on the phone with me for May. I phoned him and I told him that I loved his work. I told him why I loved his work and that I'd not seen any work like it before. And just we, we just chatted it out. That was that. I didn't expect anything from it. I just wanted to let him know that from my little island of in Bath he inspired me and that sort of gave me a bit of influence. And then I don't know, maybe about six, eight, nine months later I got, I saw an Instagram post actually that he was going to be shooting a wedding in Banff. And I was like, oh sweet. So I showed him a quick message. At that stage I'd cottoned on to who he was and that he was, he'd won Wedding Photographer of the Year. And I was like. So I was, I was pretty nervous. So I wrote him an email and then I scratched them out and then I wrote it again and then I scratched them out and I wrote it again and then I sent it and then realized that I had left half of what I was going to say and then want to say no, very embarrassing. And then anyway he wrote back this email very quickly. He wrote, I see you're excited. How about you show me around town when you, when you get in, When I get into town. I thought I'd love that. No worries. Anyway, this is early days when people had just had start, get started to get Facebook accounts and one of my friends, just as a joke delinquent wrote, what did he write? So you Know how you used to have your Facebook status? Interested. Jesse Hisco is interested in. He changed my Facebook status to Men I didn't know. I also didn't know that was, was, was gay. And, and then I got this email that he was coming into town. I thought great, let's meet up. I'll bring my partner along. And then we, we went out for dinner and, and I said, oh, this. It's my partner Alina. And he said, oh. And so he, he thought that I was what I, I was also gay because my, my, my Facebook status. Little awkward. Hey, hey, hey. But anyway, we, we hit it off and, and we ended up. I showed him around town. He told me to come along to the wedding he was photographing. I'm going to bring a camera and just see what happens, see if I can help him out throughout the day. And it was like that was a huge turning point for me because I'd only ever seen weddings photographed one way and that was the way that I was shown and the way that, that I'd sort of adapted my style and seeing the way that he moved, the way he interacted with people, the way he used his words to create environments and he's a fairly introverted person, so he, the way that he would create these spaces for people to present in front of the camera without, without, without waffling on. He was very careful with his words and what he said was what needed to be said to be able to create this space but not to be able to direct where the day was going. And I just found that was really artful the way that he used light and his, his words and his presence to be able to make things so dang beautiful. And the fact that he was shooting on medium format film was just pretty mind blowing to me because I grew up in digital. I do now shoot a bit of film. I take a, a Hasselbladder 66 and a, and an FM2 to weddings that if the light's good and the energy's right, I'll, I'll shoot a little. A bit of that. But I've always been a bit scared to, to shoot the entire thing on film and also like finding the right clientele for that. But yeah, so he was, he was a big, big inspiration for me and, and directed my work towards that more of a fine art documentary in the early days. And I really loved the way that his, his, his color was really clean. [00:22:30] Speaker B: Can you, can you remember some of the sorts of things like that he used to say or the way that he Used to act around the couples and his subjects to create those spaces that you were talking about. Like what, what did he do? [00:22:43] Speaker D: Yeah, so I mean he's fairly soft spoken. I mean at least in this sc he was, he's, he's, his, his personality is very big. But in, in the space that I saw him, especially when we were in the, the prep part of the morning, he would walk in, do the pleasantries. Wasn't a whole lot of chit chat. But then he, he was immediately observing what the layout, making sure that like where's the light coming from? Is there any clutter? And without sort of making a big fuss, he would go over and draw a blind open, pull a shear across, grab a couple of things, move them over there, make sure the space was, was nice for, for her to move around and get ready in. So obviously in the morning it's often just absolute chaos for us when we walk into a bride getting ready. There's, there's just stuff everywhere and we're generally the only person giving any thought to like how is this going to look aesthetic? Aesthetically, how is this going to photograph? How are they going to want to remember this, this mark? [00:23:57] Speaker B: So anyway, yeah, if, if any listeners have never been in the room where bridal particularly actually no the boys are worse actually. So girls or boys are getting ready. It doesn't look like the photos when, especially before the photographer gets there. That's generally not what it looks like. [00:24:18] Speaker D: Yeah. So a lot of that experience for me gave me opportunity. I mean every opportunity I've had, like that has been a big learning curve that I've, that I've adapted into my, my process so that I can try and avoid a lot of those hurdles come the day. So like in the, in the, the, the days leading up or the week leading up, I'd send out an email or have a chat with the bride about what, like what time I'm obviously going to be arriving and what to look out for in the morning if there's any, if there's any clutter that you, you don't want to be photographed, that we just put that into a side room. So often like the spaces that I turn up to now are like minimal, minimal amount of work that I have to do to be able to make it look really beautiful. [00:25:06] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Jesse, can I just, can I just go back a little bit where you talked about, you know, you picked up a camera because you were traveling and. Yeah, this is a story we hear happening a lot with it's, I call it a Happy accident that people that turn out to be amazing photographers didn't necessarily set out on that path, but one day they picked up a camera and it just clicked. Pardon the pun. [00:25:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:25:36] Speaker A: What was that first experience like for you, traveling with your camera? How did you discover that actually you've got a good eye that you, there's something here that you can explore further. [00:25:46] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay, so, okay, so prior to me leaving for Canada, one of the big motivations for us leaving is I, I had a, A, a home security business. It's my first business out of, out of like well into adulthood. And I kind of got to a point where I was like, yeah, look, this is good money, But I'm working 100 hours, 80 hours a week. And I, I just, I, I wasn't content with like where I was at. And my uncle told me this thing, he said, look, find something that you absolutely love and people will just open doors for you. And so I thought, I thought about what, like, what do I really love? And at that stage, early early twenties, I didn't know anything other than like, I love to snowboard, I love being outdoors, and I enjoy taking pictures. So we packed up, sold the business, bought a flights to Canada, and the initial idea was that we would do a ski season, stay for a little bit of the summer, do a bit of hiking. I'll buy a decent SLR so I can get some good pictures of it and then just sort of see what doors open from that. And yeah, look, a lot of doors open. I'm not as good a snowboarder as I thought I was. Despite doing it for the last 20 years. I've just had my, my third knee surgery on my left knee. But being in Canada, it just look, traveling for. If you're an early, early stage, like photographer or early stage human moving into adulthood, traveling is like one of the best things to just blow your brain apart. It'll just like step you completely outside of your comfort zone and show you that the way that we were raised is not the way that 99 of the world lives and, or looks or behaves. So yeah, moving to Canada was just a really great. It was the first time I'd left at the continent of Australia. It's the first time I'd been sort of completely. Well, I want, I say alone. I went with Elena, my, my better half now fiance. But being, being overseas without sort of all of our support network just gave us an opportunity to sort of explore all the things that did. We thought we'd like without sort of any Any pressure. I, so at that stage I was really just enjoying taking pictures of like, mountains, landscapes, and, and I thought, to be honest, like, yeah, maybe I could be a travel photographer. Like, I could take landscape photos. And then I just found that process really lonely being out in the mountains. Like, I mean, it's beautiful, like waking up for sunrise and doing a little hike and seeing these scenes. But I'm a, I'm a people person, so. But yeah, it was truly a happy accident. I had an opportunity to come along to a wedding and I thought, look, I'll give it a try. And to be honest, for the first two years of being a photographer, I felt a wedding photographer. I felt like if I looked that way, I missed everything that way, and if I look that way, I missed everything that way in my brain was just absolute chaos. And a wedding itself by nature is, is fairly chaotic. You have no control over the light, you have no control over how people interact with each other. You have, you have not much control at all. You're just a witness to it until you sort of, sort of grapple your head around it. So, so I, I, I, I battled around in that. I find whenever I'm given a challenge, I like to chew on it a bit and, and everybody has a different way of interacting with people. But that's something that I've always enjoyed and, and I love that, that it exposed me to people that I wouldn't otherwise bump into in my daily life. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I don't know at what stage I decided, look, this is what I wanted to do. I just kind of got to a point where I couldn't do my other job because I was booked for weddings. And then I had a Tumblr at that stage and then I thought, well, I better get a website. So I built a website on wix. Please don't use wayback on that. [00:30:21] Speaker B: Let's go. [00:30:23] Speaker C: We have to. [00:30:25] Speaker D: Yeah. When I say I had to re, fall in love with photography is I kind of got to a point where I was photographing weddings and noticing that there was these consistent trends that people were doing, whether it being in the styling or the photos that they wanted, or they were like doing these same poses that I saw other brides doing. And I saw best men and dads doing speeches that I'd heard other best men and dad swing speeches on that I just kind of got to a point, I'm like, there's got to be another way that people can do this that feels a little bit more like their story. If that makes sense. So, so I sort of started exploring that and, and realizing that, like, it doesn't matter how weird it is. The thing that I like, there's people out there that will probably like it enough to want to get me to come and photograph it. So I sort of started to try and push the boundaries a little bit and, and changing, giving them suggestions on different things that they could do throughout the day that weren't, that wasn't what they saw online so that you could, they could have a little bit more personal expression in there. [00:31:42] Speaker A: Jesse, we're going to bring up some of your images soon, but can you recall one of the, I guess one of the styles of the genre that you like to do or you have done, I should say, is elopements. [00:31:58] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Get to the adventure wedding stuff in a moment. But the elopement stuff really fascinates me because elopements is such an old, it's kind of like an old school mentality around, you know, the bride and the groom running dirty. [00:32:12] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:32:13] Speaker A: Because the parents disagree or they, you know, there's cultural issues or, you know, status issues or whatever it may be, but love, you know, has to persist. So do you remember your first elopement and how did that come to be? [00:32:27] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay. So again, often when I'm, when I speak to couples for the very first time, unless we're, I mean, I can sometimes be a bit of a stick in the spokes. So, so to speak is they've, they've got this idea of they're getting married and they don't quite know how it all works. So they've taken a bit of inspiration from their friend that got married and swears that's the best way. And, and then grandma's got in on it and then mum's got in on and all of a sudden it's become this thing that just feels incredibly foreign to, to, to both of them. So I often will have this conversation with couples that a wedding, if we stripped away all of the, the so to speak, from a wedding. At the core, what a wedding is is two people looking each other in the face and saying what they really mean to each other. It's a vow exchange. Right. Outside of that, I, I recommend basically building it from. Invite only the people you can imagine not doing it without. Weddings. Weddings can often go from like, yeah, I want to have this cool little intimate garden party with my, my closest friends. And then mom says, ah, look, I want to invite one of my, one of my close friends, your, your second auntie, sort of thing and then someone says they want to bring their partner and then, oh, I've got a child. And then, okay. And then all of a sudden it becomes this 150 people. You've got to cater for everyone, you've got to book a venue and then all of a sudden you've spent 50, 60, 100, 150k on, on one day that often you barely get much time to even interact with people. So it becomes more of a performance rather than it does a personal experience. And that's fine. I'm not saying it's right or right or wrong, but not everybody has a really beautiful, well connected community surrounding them. Often it's a, a fractured and unfortunately more and more these days that often it's a big fractured situation. Like I don't speak to this part of my family and oh, whenever my dad gets with this cousin, they always end up in a, in a, in a, in a row. And, and it just becomes a big, you know, ball of, ball of stress. So, so, so we have this conversation and for some people who one, don't like being the center of attention, don't like being, don't. Don't have the means or the want to, to, to throw a massive celebration. They've got different priorities in life, whether they want to start a business, start a family, go on holiday, buy a house. Spending that sort of money on one day party is just out of the question. So where are they left? Go to a registry building, sign some, some paperwork in front of a stranger and, and, and that's it. You get a piece, piece of paper, you're saying you're married. So I wanted to explore giving people another way to sort of celebrate their story. I love being outdoors and for me, I mean, life's one big adventure. At the end of the day, you're gonna have a bunch of good stories or you're gonna have a bunch of stories. And there's, so there's some experiences in life that, that are going to mark as fairly massive milestones. Like the first time you fell in love, the first time you bought a house, the first time you start a business, the first time you have a, you child. Those sorts of things. They, they're big milestones. So I wanted to give them a way to sort of get married, but make it an experience that is worthy of a really great story down the line. And I literally did1just2, 3 weeks ago up on top of Mount Buffalo here. Same situation with the couple. They've already got two kids. Life started fairly early for them. They love camping. They didn't have the means or the want to do a big celebration. She, they sort of came to me and, and just said look, we want to get married. What do you suggest? So we had a huge conversation about what, where, what do they value, what do they want to remember, what sort of message do they want to send to their kids and, and what sort of legacy do they want to leave behind to their family and the future generations going forward? I've already got a couple of kids, I've got a third one on the way, so, and that sort of folded out in that they love camping. They wanted to do it in the winter in, in the Snow, which I'm 100 down for. But then a few months into their, their planning, we'd plan it for the middle of winter, some, some snow camping. They got pregnant with their third one. She really wanted to fit into her dress. So we pivoted really quickly, which we can, because it's that sort of, we can throw a big week. And it, it shook out that I would. I built a sort of a bougie campsite for them up on top of Mount Buffalo like Lake Katani. I came up and stayed with them the night before. We woke up at sunrise. We took the kids down. I'd made some birch and muesli for the, the kids. We watched sunrise over the front side of Mount Buffalo. They woke up slowly, had some coffee, then we went back, we went for a little bit of a hike. We did some fishing in Lake Katani there. He loves, loves a fish. We didn't catch anything. He's pretty disappointed in that. And then they got changed, they got the kids dressed up, they got into their wedding kit. We went for a hike, actually the same spot, Greg, where I did the, the adventure spot on the backside of Buffalo and we, we hiked out to a spot where you've got the sun sitting in the background and they exchanged their vows and it was beautiful. The kids got to say congratulations, Mum and Dad, you married. The kids gave them the rings, they're three and five and it was, it was beautiful. I mean it's one of those things that it will, will stay with the kids, hopefully as a core memory. But for Mum and Dad it was exactly what they wanted. We hiked it back to the campsite and I'd organized a chef that's down in town here to put on some slow cooked meats that he put in a Souve bag and I just heated it, heated it up and, and put some color on the pan and plated it for them. He showed, showed me how to plate it up for them so that it looked nice and that was it. We stayed the night up on the mountain and then next morning came down and so their whole wedding experience is now wrapped up in this beautiful little camping experience on top of Mount Buffalo. [00:39:34] Speaker B: Sounds amazing. Can, can we just like, do we have to get married to get that or can we just. Can we just book you to take us away for the weekend? That's it. [00:39:41] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean that's another little side business to explore that we take people on these small scale intimate experiences and document it and then turn it into a book. [00:39:57] Speaker B: I think that's actually, that's something that I don't know how to tap into it. I've thought about it in the past as well. For families that are going on some sort of adventure, so they just go into the snow for the, the week or whatever to, to get them to invest in a photographer, just cruising around with them for the day like from breakfast through to, to dinner kind of thing. To get all the in between moments and some stuff out on the snow and just. But the, the tricky thing always is. Yeah, people struggle to justify the cost of that until it's tied to some big event like a wedding. [00:40:34] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:40:35] Speaker B: You know what I mean? [00:40:37] Speaker D: That's how I advertise as my, my legacy session. So that family sessions again. Initially when I first started doing portraits, my goal was put them somewhere beautiful, make them look good. And then that just sort of became quite empty for me and I sort of started thinking about liking for me what are the photos that I really value from my childhood and from my early years. And there were always things like. So like my childhood photos for example. The things that I really value are the ones that show like the inside of my bedroom, my childhood bedroom, the inside of my house, the backyard my, my mum had knitted out of sort of macrame. She knitted this hammock for us. I remember having this big peppercorn tree that had a basketball ring on it and, and so they're the things that I really valued. And then I thought, well, why am I taking people out into these like nondescript fields with, with beautiful sunset that in 10 years time that's it's not going to mean anywhere near as much as if I met them at their house on a Sunday morning and they made some toast and, and played with the dog and bang on the drum kit and then get a photo out front of the letterbox in with the house in the back and no one ever takes photos in the house that they live in. So. So this is where I start with our legacy sessions, is we, we wrap it up in an experience that's going to have some longevity for their story. [00:42:11] Speaker A: Yep. It's a very thoughtful and mindful approach to what, you know, can be a cookie cutter session for a lot of couples or a lot of families. And I think it's a really unique way to, to offer something that's different and real and raw and, And I think, you know, there's that sort of documentary. It's almost a street style of just watching people go through their day and looking for those moments that might mean something, as you've said. [00:42:42] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:42:44] Speaker C: Jesse, with the, that elopement that you were talking about earlier with on Mount Buffalo. [00:42:49] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:42:50] Speaker C: Are you bring. You taking a celebrant up with you as well? [00:42:53] Speaker D: No. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I probably should touch on that. Again, the legal side of getting married really is just for the government to recognize that it's, it's something that you legally did. But yeah, again, anytime you add more people to that experience, it changes. And for some people, that legal part of it really is just that. It's just the legal part of it. So it's not, it has nothing to do the. Interfere with the, the, the exchange between people. Celebrants, don't get me wrong, they are fantastic at, at getting right into people's story and, and weeding out the parts so that they can put it into a sort of something that they can present to a bunch of people that. [00:43:40] Speaker C: Might not know it's a presentation. Yeah. [00:43:44] Speaker D: But for two people who really know each other, they know their story. They just want to look at each other and say, this is, this is it. This is what I want. This is what I want forever. And this is what you mean to me, and this is what I'm excited about. It's. That's. It was just something else that you could spend a thousand bucks on that for them didn't have any value. So I would say maybe 60, maybe 70% would have a celebrant. [00:44:10] Speaker A: And. [00:44:11] Speaker D: But that 30 to 40%, that doesn't find that legal to be deeply meaningful. We just, they just will register it later at the. Yeah, yeah. It's not the meaningful part of it for them. [00:44:24] Speaker A: And then. [00:44:24] Speaker C: Sorry, like, second part of that how, like, how are you pricing how you're working at a price to take him camping for, you know, two nights. [00:44:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And the tent. Do you already have the Tent or did you have to buy a tent or hire a tent? [00:44:36] Speaker D: Yeah, no. So I, I mean it's, I mean it's different every time. Like so for, so for this one particular I, I have a day rate that I don't have a time cap on. So I basically I spend the day and look for, for right or for wrong. I invest. I invest as much as I feel like I'm going to get out of it personally, not, not. Money's never been a massive motivator. I mean it's been great that I've been able to afford to live this lifestyle and, and be present from, for my son growing up and work for myself and all that sort of stuff, but I have to take something away from this. Why I've had to refall in love with it so many times is I have to take something away deeply personal from the experience myself for me to continue to want to do this. One of my love languages has always been acts of service. So for me, whenever I can find someone who we align on, on basic core values and that through my experience I can elevate an experience above what they could have done on their own, I will always go above and beyond for that. Obviously I have to charge for my time. So if it goes outside of that day, then it's a conversation that we have with, with this couple. They, I mean right from the very first interaction that I had with the groom Mark, I knew this guy not only understands what I do, but truly values what I do. Like right from the very first interaction I was like, this guy, this is a guy that's gonna get everything from me. Like all of 150 of what I can do. So I pulled out all stops. Like obviously I'm not a cook, but I, but I, I, I wanted to make sure that this dinner was, was, was great for him. They were just going to do camping food. He was happy setting up in a swag. I have a really beautiful tent from, from the guys at home camp in, in Melbourne. Shout out to you guys and I a really comfortable camp setup. I, I love camping. It's a big passion of mine so, so and I wanted to, I wanted them to have a good night's sleep. I wanted them to be comfortable, I wanted to be warm. So I brought my, my tent set up for them. I set it up for them and they brought that they, I, I brought some swags because we did have his, his mum and her partner come along just as an extra set of hands to sort of help make things happen. Yeah. With two little kids and a third in the oven it was. So it's going to be a bit to keep the kids comfortable and interested and engaged and, and think they were, I mean shout out to your kids, Mark. They were phenomenal, like really beautiful kids and that's, that stands a lot says a lot about their, their parenting. Anyway, so we, we, we I, I, I, I provided the tent for that set up the, the tent. And I have a really good friend that owns a couple of restaurants here in town. Shout out Kurt for He owns Hometown and Tomahawks with his beautiful wife. Oh, Tomahawks is the best. [00:47:53] Speaker A: We went Tomahawks lunch for dinner, didn't we? [00:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah, we did. Every time, Every time we're in Bright we go to Tomahawks. I used to go to Hometown. I have a bone to pick with him about Hometown. He changed one of the pizzas and I'm not, he changed whatever that, what that one is and now it's like version two or whatever and it's just, it's not as good. [00:48:12] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:48:13] Speaker B: But Tomahawks is we've never had a bad experience there and I, I'm sure, I'm sure I've eaten there 10 times. [00:48:20] Speaker D: And they get it, they get it. And he's another person that I attract a lot of these people in my life because when I find someone who's look, I mean it's how I got where I am. When you find someone who loves what they do, doors open and, and he's, they're a perfect case of that. He absolutely loves cooking. He loves so much so that I, I proposed to Elena my other half out the front of his house after he did a degustation sort of dinner for us that's pretty planned as a, as a private dinner that I sprung on the other half. But yeah, he's a phenomenal cook. He's a great person to take camping. So here anyway he understands my inability to cook and my, my, my want to give people great experiences. So I approached him and I said hey look, what, what would you charge for, for this sort of spread? They'll have slow cooked meats. And he just said I got you gave me a price which are then on charge to the client and make any profit from that. But I just again these are just things that I just wanted to 1. I mean it photographs great when, when, when things, things look nice and, and they have a great experience. But more so I just wanted these guys to like walk away from it going holy Cow. That was epic. So, so he prepared everything. He even photographed, told me to take a photograph of how to plate it and told me exactly how to souve it, like to heat it up and, and then just give it a bit of color. And, and there's, I mean, this, two different types of meats and a whole bunch of grilled veggies and sides. And, and so I, I put on my chef cap on my, my, my sous chef cap and, and plated it up and, and, and they were just like, wow. Just wow. How did that happen? Camping. So, and look, I had, I had an amazing experience. I mean watching these guys move through that and see, see them be so engaged and excited and, and, and showing them photographs of when someone's never been photographed with, with, with care and thought given to like, composition and, and what, what the meaning of a moment means and, and seeing their reaction to, to them seeing themselves that way. I mean often that's, that's, that's what they hire me for. I give them the gift of being, of showing them how I see them. [00:50:59] Speaker B: Let's, let's dig into the, the photography side of it a little bit. So, yeah, we'll get, we'll get to like, more in depth weddings and stuff maybe a little bit later on, but for this particular situation, this shoot, you know, you're hanging out with them, you make, they're making coffee and then, you know, like, you go for a hike, they go for a fish. What, what are you doing in those situations? How interactive are you? How much do you sort of back away and let the scene happen? And then also like how much gear are you, are you lugging around when you guys go for a hike or something or you know, talk us through your process from, to document these moments the way. [00:51:39] Speaker D: Yeah, okay, cool. So I mean, how, how we sort of get to like what, what we're doing throughout the day may seem sort of on the day. It happens very loosely and very sort of go with the flow, but it, it's quite coordinated leading up to it in that, like I'm looking at, okay, the location we're going to be. What. What's the light doing? Where, like how, how long is it going to take to get there? What, what are we going to need? What are, what, what are they going to wear to be comfortable in? And then all of this sort of comes together in a bit of a plan for me prior to the day so that when they come, I want the day to be effortless. Like they don't have to give any Thought to like we have to be there at this time, we have to do this. But I've got some light suggestions in my brain about how these places will work better. I know that the front side of Mount Buffalo is, is where you want to be early light, it's where the sun rises. The backside of Buffalo is where you want to be at sunset during the middle of the day it can be a bit high. So if we can, if we can find some areas that are nicely shaded or if we have a bit of cloud then we can have a bit of diffusion in the light. But I'm giving a good, good amount of thought like particularly light because obviously that's what I'm capturing. But then I give a bit of thought about to how the flow of that day might feel. Are the kids going to be absolutely spent? Are they going to have time to relax? Are they going to be fed in time? Is everyone got enough snacks? So all these things are sort of built into and I guess it's just a bit of experience like I mean I, I know what it takes to, to do a bit of adventure like to do, I mean we probably did maybe 20, 29, 30,000 steps in that day. So with their little legs I want to make sure that they're not going to be absolutely packed and by the end of the day at sunset they're just going to be like cold and wanting to go home. So things like that I, I, we prepared with little heat packs that we can pop in the kids pockets and making sure that the kids had some thermal layers on underneath because I know, I know get quite cold up there especially at this time of year it drops down below zero. Yeah I mean I guess for the way that I document that I've always had a fairly mobile kit. I, I wear a harness which I don't have any today that allows me to sort of have my hands free with two bodies, one on either side. I've always shot with solely with prime lenses so I can carry a, a 50 and a 35. I have an 85 and a 24 always on me. Two bodies I can swap quite easily in them. I've got a little satchel bag, my harness, two bodies on there and for the most part I'm just using just the, what I have on my harness and then I'll pop my bag down. It's a small little satchel bag by peak, peak design and yeah, I mean I work quite mobile again I want, I want people to be truly engaged in the experience so I don't direct too much unless I feel like it's, it's going to really benefit the situation. Often I can just move and, and get a better, better angle for the light. But that one thing that I did learn by, from actually from Jose touching back to that is one thing he was really good at was, was creating scenarios for things to unfold world naturally without a lot of interaction. So he would notice this really beautiful patch of light, a great backdrop. He'd envisioned the image already. And then he would slowly direct the couple, just through organic interaction into that space rather than say, hey, stop what you're doing. Let's go over here and do a pose in front of this thing. Because the light's really beautiful. He, he would just sort of in his body language, he'd be slowly walking towards that area. He might invite them over with a little wave, keep them engaged, keep them walking, keep them interacting with each other and then just lift up his camera in, in between. And often it was the times where they thought maybe he was either switching out a film back or like getting something from his bag where they would sort of drop their guard a bit and, and, and become the, the scene just sort of unfold naturally. Oh, look, if people are happy, they're comfortable, they're engaged, they're not thinking about, oh, like, dude, is this my good side? Do I have fat arms? Do I have a double chin? If, if that, all that stuff's out of their brain and they're, they're engaged in an experience, that's when stuff just happens naturally. Just kind of. Yeah, I don't put a whole lot of effort into that, into, into the posing stuff. That's, I mean, I can do it. I'm confident in it. I just find it doesn't have as much longevity down the line. If I had to sort of mannequin them into an into, into a pose 10 years down the line, they're probably not going to remember me. But they will remember being poked and prodded and, and chin moved and stuff just to look that particular way rather than look back and go, wow, I, I didn't know I could look that good. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Yep. [00:57:11] Speaker C: Whereas, yeah, they might even remember what they were saying potentially. And if there was a, you know, they said something funny or there was a real moment like that, they'll remember when they look back at that photo. That's when you said that. [00:57:23] Speaker D: Yeah, Yeah. I don't know if you've had this experience with, with, with early, early photos, but photos, photos are like, like wine. They change a lot over time, like a photo that you might look at immediately after the wedding and think, oh, yeah, this is my hero photo. Doesn't in fact end up being the photo that you keep revisiting. It might be a photograph that was just a sort of off the cuff sort of moment that made you look at and just you remembered a whole bunch of other things around that, but that was the moment that just invoked that, that memory. You might remember like something that you smelled or like the way that food tasted on that day. Not necessarily like, oh, how amazing is my jawline in this picture? Yeah. My favorite photographs when I'm from my childhood aren't particularly sharp. They're not greatly composed. The lights like all over the place. But the, the moment was so real that, that, that it unfolds all these other memories for me. So, yeah, so I, I kind of. This happens often at a wedding that if I haven't had enough time to sort of really get on to the same page with a couple and, and we've had that sort of those guards drop down. I'll often do this with, with couples or with, with models. I did this at the vulnerability workshop where I, I'll put the gear down, get the couple. I mean, if I noticed both, both of the, the bride and the groom are both giving me just one generic sort of look and it's very, it's very, very guarded, then I'll get them to do this. Or if it's just the bride, she's, she's just continually giving me this same sort of teacup pose. Look, I'll, I'll get her to put the, I'll put the camera down and I'll get them to spend at least three minutes, but ideally five minutes just looking at each other. No, no talking. Just. Just five minutes of just getting super awkward with each other. At the end of five minutes, yeah, it gets weird. And as Greg can attest to, it brings up all kinds of stuff. I mean, it makes some people cry, some people laugh, but it's a really human experience. I think sometimes words can be one of the worst forms of communication. [00:59:57] Speaker B: So when you do this, do you photograph this? [01:00:01] Speaker D: Sometimes. Sometimes I purely use that as an exercise just to get the guards down. For example, if it's the bride only doing it and the groom's just like, absolutely killing game, I'll. I'll put the camera down and, and I'll have a chat to the bride and we'll do it, me and her. [01:00:20] Speaker B: Really? You do it? [01:00:22] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's between her and me that, I mean, this is why, this is why the guards up is because she's, she's not yet comfortable enough to be seen for who she really is in front of me. [01:00:35] Speaker B: So where did this, where did this technique come from? Or like, did you come up with it or did you learn it somewhere? [01:00:42] Speaker D: I'm, I like, I like leaning into weirdness. And, and I, I, I, I don't very, I don't have a lot of time for surface talk. I don't, I don't enjoy it. No, I don't think anyone enjoys it. But like, I really don't tolerate it. I don't have time for it. And I just. Look, at the end of the day, they don't, I know they don't want it. She doesn't want to feel stiff. She doesn't want to feel awkward. She doesn't want to feel judged or she doesn't want to not feel beautiful on a day. And I certainly don't want to be the person giving, giving that experience to her. So I've always taken a lot of responsibility for the way I show up in the world. And, and I want to make sure that if, if I'm going to be there, it's my job to do this. I want to do it in the best way possible. So, and if that means getting a bit weird, let's, let's get it on, let's do it. And, and sometimes in, I have to, I have to really, I mean, it takes a bit to get them to just like, shut up and just, just take it in. I don't know if you've ever done this with anybody before. I, I. Did I make you do. Did you do it, Greg? Did I make you do it? [01:01:58] Speaker A: Sorry, I'm not sure what we're talking about before I agree to me doing it with someone. I was offline. I was offline for a second. Sorry, guys, I had to take a call. But are we talking about the breathing exercises? [01:02:10] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So the eye contact with someone? Yeah, yeah, we did that. Five minutes silence. Yeah, you did. Okay. [01:02:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:02:20] Speaker B: How did you find it? [01:02:22] Speaker A: Well, it, it really connected with me. Jesse's whole approach really connected with me. And it taught me a lot about how to interact with subjects, which is really interesting. It's an interesting term, subjects, because during that workshop, it didn't feel like the couple were subjects. It just felt like they were there with us. We were standing in the middle of a wooded field. The sun was coming in at a beautiful angle. There was enough stuff in the atmosphere to create golden shafts of light. It was all a bit magical really. [01:02:57] Speaker D: And, and that was all started intentional too, Greg, that. [01:03:05] Speaker A: Well played. [01:03:09] Speaker D: To give you some context what that, that experience was, it was, it was quite simple. I wanted to make people. I wanted to take people outside of their normal environment of what they expect portraiture to be. I wanted them to, to feel a little bit more connected to the experience and connected to the subject. So part of the, that workshop was around vulnerability and portraits is we, we did a small little breath work session at the start of the, the. The day just to sort of level everybody onto the same, same field. And then I made them pair off with a stranger. And the idea is that they would spend five minutes, no talking, just eye contact with a complete stranger. At the end of that five minutes, they would lift a camera and take a photograph of the person they spent that time with. And then after that they would swap and then be on the receiving end of the camera to see what it felt like be photographed. Because I think that's also really important too. If you're gonna, if you're gonna put people in that situation, you need to know what it feels like. So essentially you would, you would spend five minutes without talking to someone, looking at them, analyzing their, their face, their body language. And, and if, if there was something that you wanted to communicate to them, you say it with your eyes or you say it with your, with your, your vibration. And then at the end of that, that five minutes, you know, it's like, I mean, it can get weird. It can get beautiful too. Like, I mean, it can go any one of which way. And that's where a couple of girls or that one, one, one lady had to step out because she knew that that was going to be too raw for her, having someone pass away really recently. But yeah, so, yeah, often, like I would, I would photograph that if it's, if it's happening because it's really beautiful. I'd give them a first, at least the first minute or so to just settle into it. I would step back so I'm not within that sort of space and just see how it naturally unfolds. Sometimes, you know, like I said, you'll get tears and sometimes you'll get laughs. And, and, and I, I just think it's a really beautiful thing. And, but at the end of five minutes of doing that with a stranger, there's not many places you can hide. In fact, there's nowhere you can hide. And at the end of the day, you realize that, look, we're all human. None of us really have any idea what we're doing. We're just moving through life trying to. Trying to. Trying to have a good experience and create some cool stories and. Yeah, so, yeah, I do that with couples. I do it with commercial models if they're just not giving me anything. And I don't mind getting weird. [01:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I love that. It would be tough. Would be tough for me to think about initiating that as the photographer with someone that, like, it's kind of different on a workshop because everyone's there to learn, and they're like, oh, this is Jesse's thing. So we'll give it a go. Whereas when it's. Yeah, say with a model there that you've paid to be there and you're like, hey, I want to do this. I would be worried that they'd be like, no, or this is weird. Or, you know. [01:06:51] Speaker D: Yeah, they're absolutely welcome to say no if they don't want to do it. I've never actually had someone say no to doing it. I believe people like new experiences. And again, given the right space for it. I mean, if I just sort of bailed someone up on the street and say, hey, yo, give me five minutes of your time to just stare at me. No talking. Let's just see where this goes. That would be really different than. [01:07:24] Speaker B: I admit that's weird, but do you reckon you could pull that off with the right approach? [01:07:28] Speaker D: I would. [01:07:29] Speaker B: You reckon you could. You could get someone to do it? [01:07:31] Speaker D: Yeah, I reckon. [01:07:32] Speaker B: You. [01:07:33] Speaker D: I don't mind doing it, but I just think that, like, given the right space, again, that experience can have, like, it can create profound change in the way that people present themselves. Like, there's another thing that I really love about traveling is sometimes, I don't know, have you ever. Have you guys ever traveled solo before anyone? Yep. [01:07:56] Speaker B: Yep. [01:07:57] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay. So I have to travel solo quite a bit for. For work. I do weddings, so all over the world. And. And one of the things that I really love about that being taken outside of my environment and plonked in this completely different environment is that something happens in your brain that just. It just cracks open. And because you're not around people who, like, have this one idea of what you are, you can be anything. Traveling. Nobody knows you. So you can sort of explore these different parts of your personality that you would otherwise maybe not tease out in front of people that have a pretty conformed idea of what they think you are and how you should act and. And what you should say and how you should look and, and what you should dress in, all that sort of things. Like I, I, I really love that part of traveling because you can really open up in front of a stranger. So I would often say that this experience is going to be easier with me than it will be with your mum or your dad. I would, I would deeply encourage people to do it with, with people that they think they're really intimate with because you, you'll tap into some things that you probably wouldn't have found. Like I said, words are sometimes one of the worst forms of communication. Spending time in silence with someone is, it says a lot to be comfortable in that space. That's very true. [01:09:35] Speaker B: I love it. There's some cool, cool thoughts coming through in the chat from Nev. Morning. Nev. Nev. Clark from wa. It's probably very early there. I would say. He says, wonderful. Listening to the ideas and how you capture it. It's almost like you're not the focus of what's happening. The experiences. I don't know if that makes sense. Nevada the experiences and you just happen to capture it. It's wonderful. Basically that was when we're chatting about Buffalo and, and that kind of stuff about how you sort of, you're setting up a, you're setting up a framework for them to have a great time and then you're just there to, to document it. Ideally, yeah. [01:10:15] Speaker D: Look, the experience is, is that's key. That, that's, that's everything. Like, I mean, 10 years time, look, if they remember me, great. But what they will remember is how that experience felt. And for me, that's the thing that I want, want to last is. I mean, this is their story, this is their legacy. [01:10:34] Speaker B: So I've, I've got some more questions about your, the way you build your experience in your business. But unless Greg and Jim, do you have anything you wanted to loop back on, on what we were just chatting about before? I. [01:10:47] Speaker C: No, no, I've got, yeah, I got some on that. [01:10:50] Speaker B: But you go, well, I just want to like. So it sounds like your shoots and the way that you work with couples is all very considered, but ideally to produce really natural photographs and great experiences. But you've spent a lot of time considering how that's going to work and how to build that experience. What about like expanding that out to your entire business? So for example, like the workflow, let's say, like, I just, I want you to talk us through basically the entire process that a client would go through literally from like how they find you, your Website and that kind of thing and the sort of impression that you try and make through your, your website and socials and then how that flows, how you work with them all the way through to like the shoot and beyond when they get their images, what sort of things are you doing? How does that process work? [01:11:48] Speaker D: Yeah, okay, so like from, from an eagle view it would be the couple inquires. Often that inquiry would come, I'd say, I mean maybe 90% of that is going to come from referral. They've either been at a wedding as a guest or as a part of the bridal party or they, they know someone who's had, had their wedding photographed by me and then they've come in through a referral. The first thing I'm finding out in that contact form is what, what, what sort of celebration they're looking for. Is it, is it small and intimate? Is it big? Invite all of your favorite people or is it something blended, something in between? From that we'll start a conversation. I don't let anybody book me without us having at least a chance to have a conversation, often over zoom or in person, given the location. A lot of the weddings, especially international ones, that's, that's not possible. So we zoom and from that we just sort of have a bit of a brainstorm, sort of see what shakes out of it. Sometimes they come to me with an already fairly formed vision of what the day looks like. But if it's, if it's more on the elopement or adventure based side, then it's more of a brainstorming session that we sort of see what shakes out of the tree from then they'll get some pricing from me based on what sort of experience they're looking for. And then we just sort of get into the weeds about bringing that vision to life. And if that means, look, sometimes I'm working with a wedding planner and they do a lot of the heavy lifting but obviously, I mean I can't, I can't leave people empty handed and I, I kind of feel like sometimes my job. Photography. Yeah, look, that's the, the, the product that I'm offering as, as an end result. But I've been doing it a long time and I've seen it done a lot of different ways and I feel like that knowledge base, that's, that's what they're paying for is for me to sort of expand what they thought the idea could be into what, what it, what, what it could be for them and then, and then help make that happen. I Don't expect people to know how to plan a wedding, but particularly when I do it every weekend, just like I wouldn't. Kurt wouldn't come to me and ask me how to cook him a meal. I don't, I don't do that a lot. So, so I use that knowledge base to sort of create something that is, is actionable and then we go about putting it into place. We, we book in what we need to, whether it's a helicopter or organizing national park permits, finding a local hairdresser or whatever it may be just sort of helping to sort of bring that into. I don't necessarily have that as a, a service, a planning service. I just have a flat rate for me to be part of their wedding experience, which I've kept that right probably for the, for the best part of the last 10 years. We should now raise it given the cost of living. But I mean it affords me a, a nice lifestyle and I enjoy it. I do quite a bit of commercial work too. But that sort of. From a wedding aspect, that's how the, the wedding would come to play. Obviously we, we do the wedding and then often this is where people become part of my inner circle and then I end up being just their guy for anything that needs to be photographed. Like, like I say over and over on my website, the thing that I'm really inspired about photographing is deeply meaningful personal experiences, human experiences. So, so I end up with photo like that they might start a family which, like in what are we here? In another eight days I'll be photographing another birth and, and the arrival of their second child and their siblings meeting each other. I might be photographing. They've just opened a new business and they're really proud of it. So I'm doing some head shots for it. Or they might be moving into a new house and, and I'm coming to photograph them getting the keys and that sort of thing. So. But from, from a wedding aspect, it's the, they come in through the planning. So this is why I'm talking about tangents. It can go any one of which way. But so that the inquiry would come in. I'll help them shape it, how they want it, we action it, we put it into place, we photograph it for between sort of three to four weeks later is when they'll get their full gallery. Prior to that they'll get a little teaser, often something to share on socials. And then if, if they're interested in turning it into a, a book, I always recommend that they, they do some form of printing, whether it be a, a big print on the wall or, or a beautiful fine art book. Yeah, yeah. Any other part of it you, you want to understand? [01:17:17] Speaker B: Well, I, I guess so. Nitty gritty wise in. Let's, let's. All right, let's start with the easy question. Roughly how many. I know you do lots of other stuff as well, but let's just talk weddings and elopements. Roughly how many of those a year would you do? [01:17:35] Speaker D: This sort of fluctuated over the years. I mean, at the absolute top end, I mean I was probably pulling maybe 50 to 60 weddings a year. That's when I was a little. I was charging a bit less, probably giving too bit too much of my time. And then now I kind of, I'm comfortable at around the 30, maybe 35. There's only so many weekends that, that you have in the year. And, and again with allotments, they're a lot more flexible. I can run them midweek, which I enjoy. And, and obviously international ones, they tend to take up a bit more time for traveling. There's one I did in Canada. It was three days. We basically, we spent three days doing all the things that they love. Snowboarding, sledding, tubing, ice skating, snowshoeing, hot tubbing. And then on the last day, we went up in a heli and she picked out the peak that we wanted to land on and we did the valves and. And so I road tripped around with the couple for three days, just sort of doing all the things that, that, that she would love doing. He look so that that wedding kind of came about. She loves, she loves surprises and he's really at doing them. So I helped him build this itinerary that would just absolutely blow her socks off. And I know one of the things she's always wanted to go in is, is a helicopter. He's a, he's in, he's in the military, so he goes in them all the time, but she'd never been in one. So. So we built, built this itinerary and every morning we would tell her to hop in the car. We put a blindfold on and we would drive her somewhere. And it. When we got there, he'd either be in his adventure kit or in his wedding kit. And, and so she would get them be like, okay, this is what we're doing. And on the last day I told her, look, you got to get in your dress now. We blindfolded, we put some headphones on. I was able to get us clearance to drive the car onto Kelowna Runway in British Columbia and at sunrise and playing some really heavy metal. I stood her on the Runway and she pulled the blindfold off and he was standing in his wedding kit next to a helicopter and we jumped in and, and took a little flight and plunked down and did the ceremony. And then. Yeah, so, so her, her wedding experience is wrapped up in this epic three day road trip that she just had no idea what was going on at any stage. [01:20:25] Speaker C: This is on your website, isn't it? I think I'm looking at it now. [01:20:28] Speaker B: I was gonna say, oh yeah, we. [01:20:29] Speaker C: Probably should bring it up. [01:20:30] Speaker B: I was like, we need to see this. I'll find I can bring it out. [01:20:33] Speaker D: It's, it's. [01:20:35] Speaker C: You go to offerings and then scroll down to elopements. [01:20:42] Speaker B: Uhhuh. I'm on it. [01:20:46] Speaker C: And then it's the end of the. [01:20:49] Speaker D: Three. [01:20:51] Speaker B: Multi day Canadian adventure. Elopement. Yeah, I want that package. Yeah, that's what I. [01:20:58] Speaker D: So initially when, when she contacted me, Yana contacted me. She was a guest at a wedding that I did up in Karajong Heights in New South Wales in, in the Blue Mountains. And so I saw them dancing on the dance floor, Mitchana. And often as I do, I would slide up and pop a little, pop a little business card in his pocket and just say, look, when this, when this thing goes next level, just give me a, give me a, give me a bell. And then a few years later she phoned me and said, look, we're getting married, but we're, we're not doing it the normal way. We're just gonna elope in Canada. I'm gonna go do a ski season and he's going to go off to the military and then we're just going to have a party up in Townsville where she's from. So I told her to look, wait one back. What's this? Eloping in Canada? And they said, oh, we're just going to do the, the legals over there. And anyway, the conversation shook out. I spent a lot of time in Canada and then we talked about doing this sort of elopement experience. We started the conversation with Mitch and, and how she really loves surprises and, and yeah, so this is what it ended up being. [01:22:19] Speaker C: Yeah. So can. Are you charging for the full like three or four days that you shot? Are you charging? [01:22:24] Speaker D: Yeah. So I was there for three days. I'll always take any opportunity I can to, to revisit Canada. So I tacked on a few extra days. Yeah, the omens mustache. [01:22:40] Speaker B: These photos are so good. [01:22:42] Speaker D: Yeah. And so, yeah, look and look. There was a full circle moment that happened here actually at their wedding. And you'll see it way down. I think it might have been day two or day three, but actually it might have been four days that were there. But so my. When we, when we, When I first moved to Canada, I did a ski season at Silver Star and we ended up on this road trip which we met in Vancouver. We went right through the Rockies and one of the ski hills that we went past was big white and Silver Star. And my job at that stage that ski season was to work on this tube tube park, like throwing people down this sort of ice ramp on a tube. [01:23:30] Speaker B: Throwing them down. [01:23:31] Speaker D: Yeah. Were you like you basically you grabbed it on a tube and he just, just, just yeet them down the hill and I mean it was super fun. It sort of, it got to. Anyway, so we did that and the idea of doing that ski season is we'll just sort of see what doors open and then. So what are we, 11 years later I'm back at that same hill as a wedding photographer that I've been for the last decade throwing them. They let me, they let me throw them down the hill at that, that tube park. [01:24:05] Speaker C: That's cool. [01:24:06] Speaker D: And I just had this real full circle moment, I guess that like. Yeah, like one. I can't believe I'm back here and doing this. But like I'm doing this for like I'm getting paid to take pictures and yeet people down a hill. Like this is, this is crazy. This is pretty cool. [01:24:24] Speaker B: These photos are beautiful. There's no way you're shooting on Nikon, are you? [01:24:27] Speaker D: That's all Nick on. Yeah, yeah, of course. [01:24:30] Speaker B: There must be some sort of Nikon to Canon filter you've applied or something. These are. [01:24:34] Speaker D: Yeah, no, no, look, Nikon just gets it right. We don't have to filter. [01:24:38] Speaker C: Yeah, that's right. [01:24:41] Speaker B: Yeah. These are the. I love the black. [01:24:43] Speaker D: Oh yeah. So yeah, this is Silver Star here. This is where I did my ski my first ski season in Canada. And so you'll see a little bit further down here, you'll see them in the, at the tube park. This is cool. I mean like getting, getting to go over and snowboard with a couple was just, I mean at the hill that I spent my first season was just, it was just a mind blowing experience. It really was. [01:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah, they look. [01:25:10] Speaker D: So I also got, I was able to, to get them a lodge right on the hill for nothing because I, I had, I had made some friends There. That they owned a chalet on the hill. And yes, somehow swindled them to give me. Give me the place for free for the night. [01:25:40] Speaker C: That's awesome. [01:25:41] Speaker D: Which again, you'll see here. Like, I think we've got pictures in there where I surprised them with that. That on. On the hill lodge. They'd never stayed in a. On a ski hill, particularly like skiing ski out. So you'll see. See that a little further down with the. With the tube. That's the tube part. [01:26:01] Speaker A: Oh, there it is. [01:26:02] Speaker D: That was my full circle moment there. I actually ended up. So at the end of that ski season, the end of my ski season was we. When. When that part gets too fast, we have a speedo down the bottom. And when it goes over 60ks, we have to close the park because we can't slow them down at the end before they end up on the ski hill. And that's when we. We often will then wax up the bottom of the tubes and just the staff would just go hell for leather. And then. And. And so we did this one night. We built. See the haze. Just try and slow them down. And we built a jump on the last kicker. I built it with a bit too much whoop and I went down on my stomach and I hit the jump. It compressed it shot me off. And anyway, I ended up in hospital. I put my teeth through my top of my lip and ice burn over my side of my face. My face swell up. It was nuts. So, yeah, so this is me surprising him with the lodge. Coming into the lodge and then we had a hot tub and things got a little heated. [01:27:11] Speaker B: What does that mean? [01:27:14] Speaker D: I mean, I left him. [01:27:15] Speaker A: There you go. There's a photo of it. You don't need to ask. [01:27:17] Speaker B: I can see why you're like. Anyway, I might head to bed, guys. [01:27:22] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:27:23] Speaker C: Were you staying in a different lodge or the same. [01:27:25] Speaker D: Yeah, same lodge, different bedroom. Different bedroom. [01:27:32] Speaker A: See, if that was. If that was Justin, he would jump in the tub with the camera with them. Yeah. [01:27:37] Speaker B: And then accidentally. Accidentally destroy my camera. [01:27:41] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. [01:27:43] Speaker B: These photos are amazing. How many. How do you know roughly how many you delivered to them from. From this adventure? It just ball. [01:27:51] Speaker D: Yeah. About 3,300 over the four days. Whoa. There's a lot. Yeah. [01:28:00] Speaker B: Do you deliver them? Oh, here's a nuts and bolts question. Do you deliver them all, all in color and all in black and white, or do you do. [01:28:06] Speaker D: Yeah, that's something I probably spend a bit too much time on. I. I photograph everything for color. And if an image works really well, in black and white. I'll just give them a black and white color copy of it. [01:28:18] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So you don't give them everything in both. [01:28:22] Speaker D: No, not everything works in black and white, particularly things that like food. I mean, no one wants to see food in black and white. Like we. So we. [01:28:32] Speaker B: When I say we, it's not so much me anymore, but Jim and I. So we ran. You probably. I don't know if you know, Jim and I ran a wedding business together for, I don't even know, 10 years. [01:28:44] Speaker C: 10 years literally now. [01:28:48] Speaker B: But Jim, Jim does all the weddings now. I, I maybe get wrangled into one a year if he's lucky. But we, we very early. We did a mixture of photos, black and white, but the decision making and then also the clients were like, oh, you know, can we get these all in color or these all in black and white or whatever, because we want to put them on the wall. So we very quickly changed to we just do it. An entire set in black and white. And yes, maybe some don't work great, but it meant we didn't have to make any decisions. It was just like, we just have to quickly whip through and tweak. We would spend more time on a photo that looks great in black and white, but any of the other ones, it was basically like, just make sure it looks exposed correctly and a nice black and white conversion and then just move on kind of thing. Yeah, so that's, that's how we, that's how we've sort of done it. [01:29:38] Speaker D: Yeah. Look, I've always been. I've always been not, not fantastic at the culling process of. I just. Look, man, there's so many things that happen on a wedding day that are just, to me, insanely beautiful like this. Yeah. And like, if I photographed it, it's no point at just dying on my hard drive or getting deleted. So I just, I just, I mean, I, I don't really have much plan about how. How it photographs. I just, I. I just photograph it. Yeah, look, sometimes they just dorks and they get a bit weird. And like, I mean, this. I think it's a bit picture of. I was taking that portrait and he. She picked. Picked his nose. And I was like, this is. Yeah, it's all part of me. Little, little butt grab. [01:30:29] Speaker C: But it's like those, those are the in between moments. [01:30:32] Speaker D: That's the, like a little nose pick, a little boob grab. I mean, there's a way for everything to look interesting. And, and yeah, so I, I just, I often don't ask questions. I just document and, and move on. [01:30:53] Speaker A: Yeah, just on that. You mentioned earlier that, you know, we talked about photography being that happy accident. So you're completely self trained. [01:31:02] Speaker D: Yeah, I didn't, I, I'm not educated in, in all sense of the word. I, I mean, look, when I say I'm self taught, I'm only self taught to the extent that I asked a lot of questions to people that I really admired and they were extremely open. So let me expand. So again, Jose Beer, one of the reasons why he has, I keep coming back to him is from that experience that I had with him. Meeting him in Banff a few months later, out of the blue, I got a package in the mail and when I opened it, it was, it was a signed book from Jose of his fine art wedding photography book. Which when, so when he came up to Banff, one of the things that he showed me was he was working on putting together this book, this fine art wedding photography book and he was like tossing and turning about a couple of the, the COVID image and blah, blah, blah. And so I got to, to see that while it was in sort of draft stages. And then, anyway, so a few months later, I get that book in the mail. It's signed and then there was two prints, three prints, two prints in there that are just two random prints that I commented on on his website or his Instagram or something that I really loved. They were of, of horses. And he, so he'd taken the time to print those out. He wrote a little letter. There was a postcard in there from where he, where he was in Mexico at that time. He was doing a workshop. It was a postcard of a donkey. And he wrote a little note and there was a note inside the book. And I just thought, hang on, wait a minute, I'm a nobody. Like a literal nobody. If anything, I took up his time on his adventure to the Rockies. He's one wedding photographer of the year and he gave not just the, the time to me, but he gave, he gave me a gift from it, gave me a book, gave me a print. He, he like even tracked down the two prints that I'd commented on on his website and, and then printed them and boxed it and sent it to me. And I thought, look, if someone at the absolute top of their game can give that much to someone at the bottom of their game, then that to me set a standard of how you can be in the industry. You don't. Just because you're the best in the industry doesn't mean that you can. You have to be an absolute rock star to everyone else in the industry. He gave me that time and that patience and that gift and that's carried through my business so much that I. Now, that's one of the reasons why I love doing workshops is the knowledge that I've got has not. I didn't earn it, it was given it to me. I asked for it and they gave it. So I've had some really great mentors in my time, but all of it's come from just being curious and asking questions and, and, and then giving me the time. [01:34:24] Speaker A: Nice. It's a beautiful, It's a beautiful mindset to have. And I think, you know, we, I'm sure that we've all come across peers and, and people that we would like to be mentors who have given us zero time and zero respect and even zero acknowledgment. But it is great to hear of that, that sort of, you know, free giving of, of knowledge and insight and, and I think it makes a difference, especially because if you're not someone, like you said, if you're not someone who can sit down and, and read a textbook on how to be a photographer or sit through a class, that have someone that can actually mentor you in a way that works for you is priceless. [01:35:09] Speaker B: It actually, it reminded me of that. I had to Google it because I couldn't remember the exact quote, but it's a, It's a Maya Angelou quote and it says, I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. [01:35:26] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah, my Angela, she's a, She's a queen, man. [01:35:32] Speaker B: It. It reminded. Just reminded me so much of that. The way that him sending you that care package and everything like, it, it's stuck with you for so long and probably influenced then how you want to have an impact on others. And, and it's not even. Yeah, it's not, it's not the exact act of what he did. It's just the fact that he took time to think about what, you know, what would be meaningful for you to show that he took something out of the interaction as well. Yeah, I just reckon that's. [01:36:03] Speaker D: Well, he also got me down to WPPI with a, with a VRP ticket and got me into his workshop and, and oh, Jessica Claire was the, the, the photographer that he photographed her wedding. She was the girl that I was following. And yeah, like, again, I mean, he pulled out so many stops for an absolute nobody that I, I, I mean I can never pay him for that often still tell him that how thankful I am for that. And yeah, I mean my style is somewhat moved away from just that. I mean he does very high end, very clean, very refined images. Very, very big weddings and, and mine are often not that but I've been very lucky that again part of my, part of my business values I guess is that I, I, I've been very lucky to not photograph just a particular style of wedding. I've done in, in literally in the inside the same month I've done $650,000 wedding in Jogjakarta to the next weekend. A wedding with three people on top of a mountain and with just mum and dad. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I've really, I've really tried to drill down on core values rather than a core style of, of wedding and from that I've been rewarded with some really varied, varied experiences. I mean I've been part of a wedding where I, I was in the bridal party and I photographed it. That was, that was a whole new set of challenges which I love a challenge. And look, I mean I've had, I've had, I mean there's literally every shape of wedding at every wedding. I always say that there's always one thing that I've never seen before and we'll probably never see again. So I'm, I guess I'm constantly on the lookout for that at weddings. So yeah, I've seen some stuff I cannot unsee some stuff. Yeah. [01:38:10] Speaker B: I want to ask you about the state of wedding photography particularly with when it comes to the business of wedding photography in 2025 you mentioned that your prices haven't increased in, in quite a while. [01:38:24] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [01:38:26] Speaker B: How do you, how do you see, you know, how hard is it to run a business in 2025 and, and how do you see pricing? Has it, is it kind of reached out ceiling where people are like that's about as much as I'm willing to pay. And, and once you push past that it's very hard to attract clients or what are your thoughts? [01:38:43] Speaker D: Look, I look the landscape certainly changed. That's, there's no, no doubt in that. Postco everything changed. The world changed, people changed, the behavior changed, the way they spend money changed, the types of experiences they value changed. And look, I mean I've always been a big believer that we're often the trap of our own limits that we set on, on ourselves. And yeah, we're in a recession and people Spend money differently. But I'm trying not to sort of put myself in position where I blame the world for, for, for my results. Again, I've always been fairly responsible for the way I show up in the world and for the result I get from my efforts. And weddings, Weddings have changed for me. Not just, I mean the way that they're happening and the types of weddings that are happening. Definitely 20, 25. I've noticed that people, it just in my experience have been spending less, but the people that have money are still doing it. I mean the, the big ones and the people that don't have money have, have just had to rethink it. A remodel. They're still falling in love. They're still still wanting to spend the rest of their life with people. They just need a different way to be able to make that happen in, in their own way. You know, it's never been more expensive to be a human in Australia than, than now. I mean I, we earn a fairly good wicket and buying a house is just like, it feels like a pipe dream right now. But, and, and look, I understand that and I want people to still have an amazing experience and, and which is why I think this adventure elopement is definitely a really great option for people who particularly don't have the means but still want the experience. It doesn't cost a lot to have a great experience. It doesn't, it doesn't cost much to go outside. You don't have to have a thousand dollars of flowers. You don't have to buy a ten thousand dollar dress. You don't even have to wear white. Like that's. Yeah, I mean it's. You literally just have to find an environment that is going to have some longevity for your story, for your legacy. And, and then we, we plan experience that they can create a space that they can share what they really want to say to each other. So I've been, I've been quite lucky that that's happened. One challenge I have had is after Covid, I moved my business full time from Melbourne up to where I am here in Bright. I absolutely love the mountain life. I mean my, been coming up to Bright my whole life. My parents built a ski lodge when we were babies up in Mount Hatham and I've never lived here full time, but I've always traveled here. I've got a lot of core memories here. So I moved here up after, after Covid happened. I had had a little baby boy, Odin, just before COVID sort of happened, which was a bit of a blessing for us because we got to take a couple of years off and just roll around on the lounge room floor and get used to being a mom and dad. [01:42:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:42:13] Speaker D: You mentioned Alina and I have been together since we were 11. So we, we had our 30 year anniversary last July. [01:42:22] Speaker A: That's phenomenal. [01:42:26] Speaker D: Mind blowing. But we'd never seen each other become parents and that was, that was a really special experience. Experience and great that we were able to do it in such a. I mean, I mean no one's ever been able to take two years off of work and, and still survive and get used to being a parent and we found that was amazing for us. But living in the city and raising a parent when we're both country kids didn't feel right. So we moved up here but, and look, living rural, it is a really beautiful place but there's obviously less people, less people getting married. I'm three hours from an airport so I have to travel a lot more which means more time away from my family. So that's, that's something I have to factor in. I've got weddings that still happen in Melbourne so that's combined, that's another seven hours of driving at the very least for me to get to and from Melbourne plus a full day shooting. So I have to stay a couple of nights. So that's had to change a bit. And ranking for weddings up in Bright and someone out there in the SEO world has some solutions for this. I found trying to rank as a keyword for bright wedding photographer. If you type in bright wedding photography it doesn't bring up a single photographer from bright. It just thinks you're talking about bright wedding photography photos. Yeah. So that's, that's been a new challenge. [01:43:49] Speaker B: Can I give you some, can I give you some advice immediately? [01:43:52] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah sure. [01:43:53] Speaker B: The title like the page title for your homepage is homepage dash Jesse Hiscophotography. That should be bright wedding photographer Jesse Hisco. [01:44:08] Speaker D: I'm going to be drilling that's something again. I've had to. I mean I've spent so much time trying to perfect getting the right website. [01:44:18] Speaker B: It's beautiful. I love your website. It is beautiful. I really like the it it it immediately. [01:44:24] Speaker D: I'm not a web designer but I did build this one which this probably goes against what a lot of photographers should be doing. [01:44:32] Speaker B: What, what platform? You did not wix for this one. [01:44:36] Speaker D: No, no. So after the collapse collapse of flow themes which I had flow themes for a long time on and WordPress when that sort of collapsed and became Pixie set. And that whole show happened, which I know a lot of you are in that same boat. I started looking for other WordPress options and why am I forgetting this? Who, what platform? It's another block builder one. Oh man, I feel really bad. It was two years ago that we put this website into place. It's another jog my memory. [01:45:19] Speaker C: What's a couple of squarespace? Is it? [01:45:21] Speaker D: No, not Squarespace, it's a WordPress based one. [01:45:23] Speaker B: WordPress based. I can't remember. I'm not up to date with, with the current sort of like WordPress options. [01:45:30] Speaker D: Let me see. No, look, it just gave out. I'd spend 10 minutes trying to find it. But I said what I wanted was something that I had control over. I didn't have to go keep going to a web developer, something that I could, that I could change colors and fonts and I've got a pretty clear vision for what, what I wanted. And I did spend quite a bit of money on the, on the actual branding side of it and had a copywriter which didn't go so well. So I got another copywriter and then that didn't go so well. So I even went to RMIT and I studied copywriting for a year and then realized that that's a whole nother skill and then hired up someone again. So I spent a lot of money on copy and at the end of the day I just, I found it really hard to find someone that would agree that I didn't have to niche down on a style of photography, which is what the industry kept telling me that I had to do. I had to just do this one thing and be the, be the owner of that space. It occurred to me that I could probably niche down on my core values rather than my style and, and, and, and hopefully basically what I wanted to try and create is a space that people could agree with me on these core values and then could apply that to any style of photography. I think one of the reasons, one of the things I really like about wedding photography is because it is so chaotic and you have little control over it. You have to learn to be everything. You have to learn to be able to create something beautiful with what you've got. So I find jobs like, like I do quite a bit of tourism work, I do quite a bit of commercial, a little bit of advertising. My other half, Elena, she's an interior designer, so she's. We love beautiful spaces, so I love doing architecture and interiors. And I apply the same approach that I do with. With weddings, it is a little bit more of a technical brain, and there's different parts of my skill set that I have to use a little bit differently. A bit slower with. With commercial work, and I mean, things like model casting and wardrobe and lots of stuff that I enjoy that. So the challenge, it's less photos and a bit more planning. [01:48:03] Speaker C: It's probably nice to have a bit more direct, slowing it down, having. Having some direction as well. [01:48:09] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's again, something with, like, With. With. One of the reasons why I take film is. Is often just bringing out a film camera at a wedding somehow slows couples down. It's like bringing out a. Like a. A neat toy. Like you bring out a Polaroid at a wedding and. And people just tend to let their guard down a bit more. [01:48:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:30] Speaker D: And so. But yeah, commercial is very much like 80 of the work is done prior to the shoot. And then it's a matter of, like, putting all those pieces together. And often I'm not sort of working. I mean, I have to blend a little bit of my creative flair with what the client wants. I mean, at the end of the day, when I'm doing commercial, I'm trying to solve a problem from someone. It's not so much an emotional investment for the couple. It's a business exchange. [01:49:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Different selling points, different needs, but still working in the same way to create work. That's not like, I'm just having a look at your commercial work at the moment. It's. It's definitely stands out from your average commercial photographer. And that style is going to appeal to a particular client, and I think that's great. And that's. That's why putting it all on one website makes sense. Because you're not. You're not just saying, oh, I'm a commercial photographer, I'm a wedding photographer. You're saying this is my, like, say your values. My style. [01:49:38] Speaker D: Yeah. And often it's a hard thing to kind of translate, which is why, I guess I spent so much time on how I sort of show. Show up in the world. I mean, I still think there is some hurdles that I need to jump. A commercial client doesn't want to see couples getting married, and couples getting married don't necessarily want to see the interior of. Of an architecturally designed house. They want to see how I photograph emotion and people and. And, yeah, so it is somewhat a challenge that I'm constantly sort of working on. I. I'm. I'm the first one to say that I've I mean if you've dug into my Instagram, you've noticed probably the last post I did was maybe five months ago. [01:50:21] Speaker B: I haven't, I have a note written down here about that and I'd say yeah, okay, I have a question which. [01:50:27] Speaker D: Is have at it man. [01:50:28] Speaker B: He's, here's my, he's my, my question and you've already kind of answered it. But I do want to dig into it a bit more. Which was, my question was you don't post much. How do you get clients? [01:50:37] Speaker D: It's referral. I mean it's always been referral. I, I know, I know I'm missing out on opportunities by not being more engaged on social media. I have, I have friends, industry friends that have 80%, 90% of the inquiries come from Instagram. And look, I have reasons that I say in my brain that give me justification that like, I mean I don't want to have to rely on a platform that I have no control over the algorithm for that to be my sole bringer of income. Google has been somewhat kind to me. I have made some mistakes with SEO. Like I mean when flow themes changed I lost all of my SEO ranking because I just shifted. I just started a new website. I didn't know about SEO migration or anything like that. So I like my ranking just absolutely tanked and I moved location too which, which, which hurt me and, and look I don't want to just do. I mean it's hard as I want everything but not a lot of the same. Like I get bored quickly. I have a very active brain so I don't want to just, I don't like shooting at the same venue twice unless it's absolutely mind blowingly epic. And so like I, I've never leaned in really hard to, I mean I, I've sent, I've been published in magazines, I've been published on blogs but I've, I'm really bad at the self promotion stuff on online. I, I feel like most of my, the only reason my business has, has survived is because of the relationships I have with my clients and, and the flow on effect from people being at weddings, witnessing that in that, that interaction happen with couples and then going I want that, that, that, that feels right. I've not seen it done that way before and I, I don't, I don't know what brings people to me but I'm thankful for each and every one of them that has knocked on my door and, and brought their eye game. [01:52:47] Speaker C: How do you, have you thought about getting like so Obviously, recently there's been a big boom in, you know, people having 360 cams, having, running their phone while they're supposed to be shooting. [01:52:59] Speaker D: Having a creator on my camera just above me right now. I, I, and I literally just put it on there yesterday as a little phone mount. Just a way that I can get some sort of behind the scenes y again. I, I mean I've done all these things like I, I, I've talked to camera and then I've just gone, I don't want to be that guy. Yeah, put it on there. I mean, I want, I want to be that guy. But I also like, I, I don't know, I mean I'm, I'm probably, I'm probably not doing it because deep down I'm, I'm, I'm scared about how it's going to be perceived and sometimes I end up like writing these really big long posts and then I go, ah, look, that's just, I mean, I don't know how that's going to come off. And I know, look, deep down I should just put it out. Good is better than perfect. Good and done is better than perfect. But my business just kept sort of parting along so I just kept avoiding that. [01:54:02] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I, I feel you, I. [01:54:04] Speaker B: Yes, I feel you too. [01:54:06] Speaker C: Like, I guess like for a long time like Justin and I, we, we just put out what we thought were good photos. We obviously had good referrals as well. And you know, and back in the day, like a Facebook gallery would, you know, we'd, after a wedding, that was the main, the main thing, we'd put up a gallery. A sneak peek from the wedding. [01:54:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:24] Speaker C: You know, it would get comments and likes and now like nothing on, you know, crickets on Facebook, crickets on Instagram. [01:54:34] Speaker D: I'll be blatantly honest here. I've had maybe four inquiries in my whole time of Instagram. [01:54:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:54:39] Speaker D: That have come from Instagram. I just kind of look at that as just another touch point that, that people can look at online that should somewhat reflect. Look, when I first started, Instagram was kind of, when it first came out for me, Instagram was just instant photos that I took on my phone. [01:55:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:01] Speaker D: And then I started putting a few professional photos and had to go back and delete some of the older just like badly filtered phone photos. [01:55:10] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:55:11] Speaker D: And then I thought, oh, I mean, I should probably get serious about this. And I changed my tagline and put it as a business one. But none of them have yielded me great results. I've kind of looked at it as a social media that if I'm, unless I'm willing to play the game like spend the time on there and engage with people I have to pay to, to, to, to get the engagement on there. And, and both I've not done. So yeah, like I put, I put time in there when, when I have it. I probably spend too much time on there looking for different forms of inspiration outside of the photography world. I have like a whole bunch of folders that I've saved for things about early, early childhood development and, and interiors and traveling in new locations and, and sort of inspirations that have come up along the way. But yeah, I, I don't use it as well as I should as a business tool. [01:56:11] Speaker C: Yeah, fair enough. [01:56:13] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:56:15] Speaker B: So, okay, so you say that like, like you would like to do you just feel the pressure to use it more because other people do or. [01:56:24] Speaker D: I constantly feel the pressure, the pressure for not being on it. And the thing. [01:56:31] Speaker B: Is that. Sorry to just, I just want to double check why like is that because you, you would actively like to have more clients or is it purely just because other people are sort of saying oh, you should post more, you should post more and it's just for the sake of posting or would you like to get, get a bit more business? [01:56:48] Speaker D: There's a few things is like I know that, that, that couples, the younger couples getting married, they, they look on Instagram probably more so than they would look on Google. That's one. Anytime I tried to attack sort of the, the elopement market, I have to get, I have to reach them before they start booking venues because once they book venues they're going down that traditional wedding route. So I have to reach them immediately as soon as they've got engaged. So that, that could be one platform. Some of them use tick tock and some of them use Instagram and some use Pinterest. And in the early days of Instagram I feel like it was quite easy to gain a fairly substantial following. And that substantial following I've, I found does definitely help within industry for, for if you wanted to start running workshops and stuff. I mean I like, I don't, I'm not one of those accounts that has 15, 20, 50, 60, 100,000. I've got some friends on Instagram that have the 3, 23 400,000 followers and they have a great business from Instagram because they spent the time on there, they engage with people on there. They, they do all the right things. They, they followed the trends, they've talked, done the talking to camera. They've done all the things and I've just not done those. And I, I think, I mean I use it as justification that that's why I haven't. Is because I know the amount of time that it would take me to get the reward that I want from it could probably be well better spent investing in the experiences with my clients and, and building more organic following from that. That's. I guess it's. I mean I've. I could probably reel up a hundred people that if anybody asks them anything to do with photography, my name is going to come out of their mouth within the first couple of minutes. And that I feel like what, what's built my business. That's why. Yeah. Past brides let me photograph them having babies and is. Is all from that. That relationship building thing. So like, I mean Instagram could probably help me and, or TikTok or Pinterest or whatever it is. It helps me to sort of find new clients, but it doesn't do. Yeah. Benefit. Benefit over time spent. I mean I. We're only here for a short time. We only get to be humans for like a literal blip. And I don't, I just, I just, I didn't want to do that. [01:59:38] Speaker A: Yep. [01:59:39] Speaker D: But I just didn't want to. [01:59:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Makes total sense. I'm the, I'm the same. I don't, I'm not. I don't really enjoy Instagram and even from the, from the lucky straps point of view, it's a, it's a super important, important part of the business. But like we, we were able to grow. I think our following was at like 18 or 19,000 probably by 2016 and then, or maybe 17 and then it's, it's been, it's been the same since, you know, like, like that growth that there was a sort of like you say an easier growth period back then where it seemed like if you were sort of doing the work, the followers followed. People don't follow anymore. Really? They. [02:00:25] Speaker D: Yeah. I think I've been on 3,000 followers for about 10 years. [02:00:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And now people just, they don't. They just accept what gets delivered to them as opposed to sort of going and being like, I want to follow that and follow that. Because the way the feed works now. [02:00:40] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean that was. Again, I was far more active on Instagram when the people that I followed were the people that I saw and I saw them in order of the way that when they posted something. So I knew like there was people that I was following in. In North America that I knew I would see their posts at a different time than the people in Australia because they were posting on a different time zone. But I always got to see every post of all the people that I was following. And now, like, I don't see. I mean, I spend most of my time on the Explore page because I just. My feed is garbage. Like, what, what, what, what, what Instagram thinks I want to see and even look the Explore page now. Like, yeah, it's. It's not, it's not the. It's not the tool that I started with. I mean, that they've gamified it so much so that it. It just. It sucks time, it sucks. It sucks life from people. And then I. I don't. I don't. I don't. I don't want to be a part of it. And it's probably hurt my business in some ways for it, but I also don't think that. I mean, the people that I'm gonna truly align with on. On, like, deep personal values, they also have the same values. They don't want to spend time on that garbage platform. Sorry, Instagram, don't ban me. [02:02:08] Speaker B: Hey, no, we don't. We don't need Instagram for this either. [02:02:11] Speaker D: They literally couldn't make it any harder for people to find my work anyway, so. [02:02:16] Speaker B: Seems like a perfect time to interject with a little. A little ad for the podcast. If you've listened this far, because we're two hours in, it's an amazing interview with Jesse. If you're this far in and you haven't subscribed or follow like this on YouTube, and because the thing is, with YouTube, if you actually follow us and do the subscribey notification bell thing. Tickle the bell, he says. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try that. Tickle the bell. It's fun. It's fun to say if you do that, you'll actually get a notification when we go live and you'll. You'll see our new videos and stuff because that. The way that YouTube works is actually not too bad. So do that, please. Likewise, Apple podcast, Spotify, give us a follow. [02:02:57] Speaker C: And. And speaking of lucky, I'm gonna have to head off. Thank you, Jesse. [02:03:01] Speaker D: Pleasure, Jim. Nice to meet you. [02:03:03] Speaker C: Nice to meet you too. Have a good night, Jack. Guys. [02:03:05] Speaker D: Yes. [02:03:06] Speaker B: All right, catch you, Jim. [02:03:07] Speaker D: Thanks, Jim. [02:03:11] Speaker B: We won't. We won't hold you up for too much longer, Jesse, but I got a couple of other questions. And Greg, jump in if you've got. Got anything that you've Been burning to ask, but I wanted to find out about. What did I have written down here? Let's do, let's do gear first. You already said that you, you shoot with primes. 24, 35, 50, 85. What camera bodies are you using? [02:03:38] Speaker D: So I have Z6, Z9. I still carry around a D5. [02:03:46] Speaker B: Oh, nice. I love the D5. [02:03:48] Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's, it's a workhorse. And look, the only reason I'm sort of stuck in this kind of limbo, hoping Nikon or whoever the Powers will be listen to this is that when, when the lights get dark and, and people start moving quickly, I. E. Dance floor. I. I mean, maybe I'm not using my camera properly. I know Juliet Nikon will probably belt me for not saying use use. Figure out how to use star mode to grab focus at night. But I find the focus assist using the infrared light on my, on my, on my mirrored camera is far, far more effective than my mirrorless cameras have ever been at. [02:04:33] Speaker B: It's so funny that Jim just jumped off. Hopefully he's still listening. Otherwise I'll have to. He's literally been battling this problem with his. He's got two Z8s and came from two D850s and has been battling this same issue, particularly on the dance floor when he does a lot of, you know, like on camera flash, drag, shutter stuff on the dance floor when it gets dark. You know, like that kind of party. Party style stuff when the night gets a bit crazy. [02:05:02] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:05:02] Speaker B: And he, he was even struggling to get focus in that situation, which is always pretty straightforward. Like you're shooting wide angle, usually like F8 or something because you're using flash and dragging the shutter. So it was usually like. [02:05:14] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:05:14] Speaker B: Or you'd almost never miss focus. And he was missing focus with the Z8s. [02:05:19] Speaker D: Yeah, well, I mean, I put myself in a position like, because I have to hit focus. I shoot almost all of my dance floor stuff at 1.8. [02:05:27] Speaker B: Nice. [02:05:28] Speaker D: So I'm having to hit focus. I really like including all that beautiful ambient light. I don't do a lot of flashing. Well actually, I don't know any. I did experiment with it, but for me I want it to be a fairly, a fairly true representation of what it looked like for them. So I. So I often bounce flash off a roof if I've got a white roof and keep that scene so nicely lit. But I have to hit focus at 1.8. So using that infrared laser. Bang. It hits it. But obviously mirrored cameras, mirrorless cameras don't recognize red. Infrared. [02:06:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:06:11] Speaker D: Took me forever to try and figure that out. Apparently there is a starlight mode in Nikon that I can use that is supposed to grab focus. But I know basically for me, I just carry around the two kits. As soon as it gets a dance floor, I pack away my mirrorless cameras and I have a full set of lenses for my DSLR still. [02:06:31] Speaker B: That's what I was going to ask. So you're using native Z mount lenses on your mirrorless and you're using F mount, obviously on the, on the older stuff. [02:06:41] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:06:41] Speaker B: You're not adapting older lenses onto the. [02:06:45] Speaker D: No, I think I have one. Yeah, I have one. I do. I do have like a. The. The adapter mount because I have a couple of lenses that I don't have on like, I think my 24. It's a, an F mount that. Because. Because of how much I use it. And 85, actually it's. That's a. I probably should get a Zed mount. But for how much I use it, I spend most of my time in the 35 to 50. For a big part of my career, actually at the start, I shot everything on almost everything solely on a 50 mil. Just because it's like probably the closest aspect that you can get to the way that you see a scene. And one of the reasons why I like shooting on primes, apart from that, I mean, they're nice and sharp and great blur in the background when you're shooting portraits is I find when I'm. When I'm restrained with options, I'm more. I'm more creative. Yeah, I went through a period of going, oh, I gotta get this tilt shift lens. This is going to be the thing that changes the game for me. Oh, no, I've got to get this 70 to 200. This will change the game for me. And all of them just made me more confused. And particularly zoom lenses like 70 to 200, I'll probably use that maybe. And if I shot a hundred thousand photos, I would say less than a couple hundred of them will be shot on a 70 to 200. I use it when I have to or when I feel like using. That will enhance the experience for a couple. Or it can give me something that I otherwise can't get from an 85 or a 50 or a 35. But yeah, when I have less options, I find I'm more creative. I learned to push those lenses to their boundaries and. And then I start noticing little things in there that probably I obsess over a little bit more. That the clients don't notice things like the fringing that happens on some lenses, like and, or distortion in. Or the way the bock is on this lens or how sharp this is in the corners when I close it down to F8. [02:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:09:04] Speaker D: They're the sort of nuances that I pick up on lenses that I don't think I otherwise would have got if I just went, oh, this isn't working. I'll just grab another lens or, or just move rather than just say stationary in a spot. [02:09:18] Speaker A: Yep. [02:09:19] Speaker B: Well, that's a, That's a great jumping. Jumping Point to the question we ask a lot of our guests, which is if it was the end of the world and the zombie APS. Was. Was it. [02:09:32] Speaker D: Ah, there. [02:09:33] Speaker B: 35. Hang on. On. On what camera? [02:09:38] Speaker D: Look. So I had an experience that will stay with me for a long time. I had an opportunity to go to Vietnam for an assignment for Leica and I had a. What was. It was 2017 or something. But they gave me a. It wasn't an M9, but they, they gave you a beautiful 35 mil. And a. [02:10:07] Speaker B: Did I, did I see on your Instagram it was an M240, maybe? Something like that? [02:10:12] Speaker D: Yes. [02:10:13] Speaker B: Is that a thing? [02:10:14] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. And a 35 mil. And I've never, I'd never shot Rangefinder before, but I basically, I photographed. And I probably should have shared that gallery with you because it was a really great. It changed. It changed me and it changed the way that I documented scenes from, from. From doing that. Oh, yeah, there's. There's one. One image. So one of the things that I really loved about that experience is the, the. Okay, the type of gear that you photograph with is gonna, Is gonna definitely dictate the way that you, you, you, you present in front of your subjects. Right. And me being someone that's used to carrying around these big D5, D4, Z9. Those cameras, they're really hard to hide. They're really hard to, like, not to get in and get out before people take much notice of you being there and having, having something so small that takes, takes a bit of forethought to create moments because you don't. Obviously don't have the luxury of autofocus and, and a camera that is so good at rendering color and the lenses, I mean, are phenomenal themselves of the optics in them, I, I, That I really enjoyed. So I would probably say, I mean, my dream body would be like, for my own personal work would be a lacquer. Although I've never treated myself to owning. Owning one would probably be a range finder with a 35 mil. I mean I use my hassle blade for some personal, personal stuff. But the six. Six. I enjoy it, but I'm. It's hard for me to see the world in Square. But 35 mil I think is a great way to be able to capture a scene but also highlight subjects when, when you need to. It's not particularly great for portraits, but for traveling and for just daily life stuff, I think 35 mil is really versatile. [02:12:37] Speaker B: I love it. I love it. One final question I had before we let you go. You mentioned you're engaged to Elena. [02:12:50] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. Yeah. [02:12:51] Speaker B: Who's shoot? [02:12:51] Speaker D: Who's shooting? I, I finally look, it's again, I've been doing weddings for a long, long time as you know, 17 years and we always get asked, are you married? And it's just, I mean we've done so many things in our life together. Uh, we've been together together since before puberty that getting married doesn't change much or anything for, for us. But we got to 30 years, we kind of ran out of things to celebrate and so I popped the question and, and her reaction was. Are you kidding me? Are you serious? And so yeah, I mean we are engaged now. Yeah. [02:13:35] Speaker B: Who's shooting your wedding? [02:13:37] Speaker D: Yeah, look, that's a hot question. Again. It might take another 30 years for it to happen again. Life moves on and we, we, there's, I mean there's the. Again, even what it's going to look like is still up in the air. Justin wants to do it. [02:13:56] Speaker B: I would be petrified to try and you know. No. Now. [02:14:01] Speaker D: Yeah, it's a hard question too because like I have, I, I, in the early part of my career I used to engage quite a lot with the community and I still do have some people that I, I have great interactions with. But I, I found it to somewhat be some of the big industry mates just kind of ended up being a little bit of a surface talk circle jerk and I didn't, I didn't, I didn't take a lot away personally from it. So I have some people that I have some inspiration from, but I don't interact with a lot of wedding photographers just because I'm just sort of busy and doing life and, and I don't go to a lot of the industry meets and so I would probably have to revisit that. It might not even be a wedding photographer that does it. But yeah, our big next goal is to, to try and build this, this house we really want to make our, our life like permanent up here in the mountains. We love being here. We always have loved being here. So that's, that's probably the next on the cards. But if, ideally if, if the, we get the place that we, we want and it's on the property that we want, it'll, it'll most likely happen there. [02:15:22] Speaker B: Oh, nice. [02:15:23] Speaker A: Nice. [02:15:23] Speaker D: Very great. [02:15:24] Speaker B: Yeah, very cool. Backyard wedding. [02:15:28] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There'll definitely be some, some adventure sprinkled in there and it'll definitely be more on the intimate side. I've met a lot of really beautiful people in my life, but some of which are clients. Some, some, yeah, they've, they've become so close that they, they're now in, entwined in my life. I've got some, I've got a bride and groom that's coming down with their two kids that's staying with us over the, the school holidays. I've got some that I've photographed multiple births if they're children in the, in the delivery room. And, and yeah, I've been, I've been really lucky with beautiful people in my life. But as far as a wedding, it's, I mean it's going to be a deeply intimate experience for me and Elena and, and my son and our, our core, core group. [02:16:26] Speaker A: Yep. [02:16:27] Speaker D: That's fair. [02:16:29] Speaker B: Anything. Anything else? Greg, before we let you know, you've been. [02:16:33] Speaker A: Jesse answered my question. I was going to say what's, what's next? And you talked about your, you know, your future plans to ground yourself where you live and build a home. And you know, I think that's a really worthy next step on the cards. I think we're going to wrap it up there. [02:16:55] Speaker B: Oh, oh, well, one more thing. There's always one more. So you ran some workshops at bfop? Are you running any other workshops? Where can people learn the, the Jesse Hisco stare? Like. [02:17:09] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean I've always, I've always done mentoring, like one on one mentoring, which is something I always really love. I find that's the, that's definitely the most valuable way that you'll get to engage with me if you do it. If I do do it in a workshop environment, it's probably going to be like BFOP was definitely on the larger side. I think the group. Group size got up to about 20 and I mean it was sort of a cut down version of what I would dive deeper into. Yeah. After doing that, I'd never, I'd never run a workshop on vulnerability before, but I knew it was a really important topic. And I knew that the demographic from that generally being on the older, more amateur side, the older generation tends to be a bit more stoic. And, and so I, I knew it was going to be a, a real challenge to get these people to, to really let their guard down. And so I, I jumped on that. I really wanted that up that, that challenge to see if it could be done. And then the adventure wedding. I went two workshops there, one around vulnerability and portraiture and the other one about adventure weddings. Because that, that, that sentence alone or that, that that genre in Australia is still very young. It's still something that every time I mention they say what do you do? I say photograph adventure weddings. It's always a conversation that never ends there. It's always what is that? And then I have to explain to people that what, what, what an adventure wedding looks like. This industry in with the adventure elopement market, destination allotment market in North America is, is really well established. I mean there's photographers that only do adventure elopements charging upwards of 15, 20,000 bucks for the day and, and booked out for like, like 50, 60, 100 weddings a year. Companies like Adventure instead. And I mean this, there's so many of them that have made a real niche for this type of style of photography. But in Australia it's still a really new kind of conversation. It's something that I'm always constantly trying to tinkering to try and find those people in the early stages of their, their like love stories, so to speak. Because it's still, I mean our industry very much here is they get engaged and then they go a lot. We're gonna have a wedding. And then their surrounding core community only knows one style of wedding. You either go to a church or you book a wedding venue. You get a celebrant and you invite everyone. So interrupting that conversation early in the piece is a challenge that I'm constantly trying to find new ways to do. So yeah, I mean I'm, I definitely want to pursue that more. After sort of 17 years now I'm finding more and more the big weddings. I move away from them a little bit more. I mean, unless it's right, like I mentioned the one in Jog Jakarta that was recent that I mean they spent the best part of a million bucks getting married. And we did two weddings, three shoots. We did a wedding, we, we did so that we did an elopement shoot in Mount Buffalo. I took this couple, they live in KL in Kuala Lumpur. I took them up on top of Mount Buffalo froze their absolute ring dingers off and gave him this really cool experience up there. And then we did something in the city. We did another shoot there. Then we went to their wedding was in Jogjakarta in Central Java, Indonesia. And but so he was a groomsman at a wedding that I did in Borneo, in Kuching. And that couple had. Did a wedding. Two. Two weddings. One in Kuala Lumpur, which, which we did there, and then another one in Kuching, which is where the two families are from. And then that bride was the sister of a bride that I did 10 years prior. And I've since been photographing everything from them from birthdays to brothers graduating from university, Grandma cooking family dishes and then sort of turning it into a bit of a home recipe. She's amma of their family, the Lao family. Hi guys. Love you. If you're watching, they've been beautiful clients of mine for over a decade and, and, and I often have a lot of our weddings come out. I've got a wedding coming up in Bali that has got a catamaran on it and that he was. She was a. She was a bridesmaid at that wedding in Jogjakarta. So again, it's. It's kind of like a bit of a spider web that goes out. [02:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:22:42] Speaker D: That I can, I can almost trace every wedding that I've ever photographed back to actually. I mean, it'd probably be a really great exercise to. [02:22:53] Speaker B: You should do that. Print out, print out six by fours of each wedding and try and. Yeah. Try and put it out on a, on a giant pinball and do the, the red string. Like a detective. [02:23:03] Speaker D: Yeah, it looked like a, like a, like a crime scene map or. Yeah, I, I mean, you did ask this question too. And I mean, there's so many things that I could dig into about the wedding, actual day experience and how I go about, like the things that I do that on the day. But it's what I encourage people to, to sort of really take away from. If you're going to be a wedding photographer, like, think about different all outside of photography. How, how can your presence elevate that sort of experience for people? But from using your knowledge base and yeah, like small things. Like, I mean, at every wedding that I take to, I have, I have a sewing kit in my car. Like a, like a sewing kit thread, like all different color threads and needles and whatnot. Because the amount of times that I've seen a button, a button pop or like a, A calf come undone or I've Had a dress, a, like a strapless dress pop in the middle. And the bride's dress Lou broke. And I was able to sew it up in like, like literally like three minutes. And we're back at shooting again in the middle of a portrait session. We were like 25 minutes walk down on a horse farm. And I was able to sew up her dress and she was like, what the. I've always got snacks in my bag because we often don't get to eat. And the couple starts losing energy. So I, I've got chopped up fruit and an esky in my, my car. Like, it's the small things that sort of make that experience of being in a really foreign environment, I. E. A wedding environment. They should only be doing it one time in their life if they do it right. And, and if I get to do it every weekend I see these p, these, these potholes and I know how to avoid them. So every, every wedding I go to, I sort of, I take that on as a bit of a learning experience and think, okay, well if this happens again, how am I gonna, how am I gonna get around this without, without it impacting the couple's experience? And it's a constant form of improvement. I mean, the, the actual photo side of it. I mean, this baby. Controversial for me to say this, but photos I'm not particularly passionate about, which is weird to say because I do it for a living. But for me, it's often just the result of, of the experience that I get to take out of it. And I mean, it takes me a long time to look at the photographs that I take and appreciate them for what they are. Often I just look at the photographs and think, what could I have done better? And there's always a list of like a thousand different things that I would have wished I had have done or that I didn't photograph or that man, I really should have closed down the aperture in that I, I, I, I missed focus on this that I mean, there's so many things that I obsess over that the couple doesn't know. I mean, the amount of nights that I've spent editing till 3am in the morning here, obsessing over the way that like the grass has reflected onto her skin and that I don't want that. [02:26:22] Speaker B: I know that I know that pain. [02:26:24] Speaker D: Yeah. Like it's constant and like, I mean I probably could slap a preset on there and, and walk away and the couple wouldn't know, but I know. And I just, there's something in my Brain that just doesn't allow me to like move past it until it's done. So I've had to find a way that I can price myself in a way that I'm comfortable to be able to spend that time to do what I have to do. Like, I don't, I don't know of another way that I can do it. I would feel like I was half assing it if I didn't do it that way. So I just. Yeah, do it. Yeah. So I mean, my package, look, I've kept my package for. I have a, a flat rate for Australian weddings for a day and have a flat rate for international weddings. And if I'm going to Croatia, I'll probably take a bit of a hit. There's an extra two grand I charge for flights. I'll take a bit of a hit going to Europe, but it'll shake out when I do weddings that are in Bali or a bit closer to home or New Zealand or something. So. Yeah. [02:27:30] Speaker A: Yep. [02:27:32] Speaker D: I probably could be a bit more strategic about my pricing to maximize profits, but that seemed to work and make it easy for the couples that if they want me, doesn't matter where it is in the world, it's just one flat rate. I'll handle my flights, my accommodation. If it's outside of that structure of being there for that one day, then that's a conversation we have. And, and some of them do blow out. Like the, the wedding I photographed in Kuala Lumpur and Kuching because they were two weeks apart. I ended up taking my family. It was over New Year's too, so I took, took Alina and my son and we were there for two weeks. We had a bunch of smaller other celebrations and adventures that we did in between those two weddings. But yeah, so it changes somewhat for destination weddings. [02:28:21] Speaker A: But yeah, yeah. [02:28:23] Speaker D: Sometimes local weddings end up blowing out to like multi day too. Yeah. Depending. Yeah. What they want out of the experience and what their budget's like and where they want to go with it. [02:28:33] Speaker B: Yeah, you got to be a bit flexible, but I like the idea of flat, flat rates. It probably helps you not, not overthink too much the costs and just enjoy the fact that. Yeah, like I say, you know, you go into Europe, take a bit of a hit, but it's going to be a cool experience and you don't have to think, oh well, I got to charge every dollar for the flight and then this and that. You're just like, no, it'll, it'll work out and it'll be a great overall Benefit to the business and, and to your experience. [02:29:01] Speaker D: So yeah, a lot of it ended up shaking out in that I, because I made that experience so, so seamless. They've then become long term clients and yeah, ended up booking 10, 15, 20 other shoots. I mean the loud families, I mean I couldn't even count the amount of times that they've booked me for random things. They've even booked me to photograph other people as, as a gift. They just gifted me to someone that I'm going to be photographing. A friend of theirs that's never had family photographs before. Before probably wouldn't ever do it. And we want, we want them to have that experience so they gift me. [02:29:49] Speaker B: I think that's about the, the ultimate compliment we've gifted you to someone that's. [02:29:53] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [02:29:54] Speaker B: That's amazing. That's amazing. [02:29:57] Speaker D: The greatest thing, the greatest compliment I've ever got. I told you that offline. The start my whole career, the greatest thing a client has ever said to me is P.S. i'm so sorry I pooped in front of you. [02:30:15] Speaker B: That is wild. [02:30:18] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. She was delivering the baby so it was fairly natural. [02:30:24] Speaker B: I was, I was gonna, I was going through my head. I'm like, wonder what this situation was. [02:30:29] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:30:33] Speaker B: That makes a lot more sense. We might have to save the. It would be interesting to dig into the birth stories and that side of things at some point. But I have a photo shoot in 26 minutes that's coming up quick, so we should probably call it. [02:30:51] Speaker A: Let's wrap it up. Let's wrap it up. Look. For those of you watching and listening along at home, this has been episode 76 of the camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps out of Bendigo, Victoria, makers of fine handmade leather camera straps. [02:31:08] Speaker B: Lucky Straps here in Australia. Right here in Australia. [02:31:11] Speaker A: If you use the code Greg at checkout, you'll get a discount. Only Greg. There's no other codes. [02:31:17] Speaker B: I'll let you have this one, Greg, because I sent out, I sent out my code in our email newsletter yesterday. If anyone scrolled to the bottom of it, like, use code Justin. We're having a bit of a. We're having a competition about whose code can get used the most out of me. Oh, you got a poster. You better go soon too. You're right. Anyway, so use code Justin. Get you 15% off any camera strap you want on the Luckystraps.com website or if you're watching this on a TV and you don't want to type the website and the code in you can, you can. Where is it? Where is our stuff? Oh, it's gone. Oh, well, never mind. No QR code for you today. Anyway, with that. What else? Anything else, Greg? [02:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah, well, look, just obviously thank Jesse for your time, for sharing so much about yourself, so much about your journey and your work and your approach to engaging people and connecting at a real level, regardless of whether you have a camera in your hand or not. So on behalf of, of Justin, Jim and myself and all of our listeners and viewers, thank you. Jesse, it's been an absolute pleasure. [02:32:29] Speaker D: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. [02:32:32] Speaker B: Anytime, anytime. [02:32:34] Speaker D: Thanks for listening. Thanks for sticking in with me there. I, I derailed you a few times on conversation, so we love it. [02:32:41] Speaker A: It's all gold. We Quick, quick question. Will you be at be up this year? [02:32:47] Speaker D: Yeah, more than likely it's in November at this stage. I, I'm free on the date, so if it works out and Nikon wants to have me back, I, I, I'd love to be a part of it. It was a, it was a wild experience. I mean, I've not been, it's actually probably, it's the first time that I've, I've done any sort of coaching for people that are not professional photographers. And I loved it. I really, I really enjoyed it. I think I've got a lot of takeaways for people that early in their career. So, yeah, I enjoyed that. [02:33:26] Speaker A: Very cool. [02:33:27] Speaker B: Hopefully we see you there. [02:33:28] Speaker D: Yeah, sweet. [02:33:30] Speaker A: All right, well, look on that note, everybody, thank you once again and make sure you stick around for Monday night's show. We don't have any guests this coming Monday night. We've got a bit of news and some stuff. [02:33:41] Speaker B: The Random show is back. It'll be back. [02:33:43] Speaker A: Random shall be back next week. Matt Crummons is joining us for a chat about him and his work and his journey. So make sure that you are subscribed for that. [02:33:58] Speaker B: Yeah, so he'll be on Thursday next week. Yeah. Just to really dig into his life. [02:34:03] Speaker A: Story and we may, may or may not have an argument about Fujifilm cameras. So we'll just see how that plays out. [02:34:09] Speaker B: We will. [02:34:09] Speaker A: But look, on that note, we'll play out the music and have a great day. Everybody get out and shoot. [02:34:15] Speaker B: Thanks, guys. Thanks for listening. Thanks for the chat. You guys are a little bit quiet, but I'll give you the morning off. We'll see you on the next one. Speaking of the chat, Philip Johnson says thanks, Greg and Justin, and thank you, Jesse. [02:34:28] Speaker D: My pleasure. Thanks, guys. Take care. [02:34:30] Speaker B: Well, that wasn't my music. Dang it. It's on the wrong button. Well. Oh, no. Let the team down there anyway. Here we go. Music. [02:34:46] Speaker A: Bye, everybody.