EP78 Matt Krumins | Underwater, Landscape, Wildlife and Photography Workshops

[00:00:19] Speaker A: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps, makers of fine leather camera straps out of Bendigo, Victoria. It is Thursday, the 15th of May. The year is marching along. Speaking of marches, we're on the march to 2,000 subscribers. So if you're watching or listening, make sure you hit the like button. Make sure you subscribe and tickle the bell so that you get notifications because sometimes we do random crazy stuff. Speaking of random crazy stuff, we are joined today by special guest who isn't new to the show because he's been on countless times sharing his opinions. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Counting. But that's okay. [00:01:04] Speaker C: Yeah, countless. I think it was two times, but there were two good times. [00:01:08] Speaker A: That feels countless, but, yeah. Matt, welcome. [00:01:13] Speaker B: Thanks, mate. How are you? [00:01:15] Speaker C: Good, good. [00:01:16] Speaker A: Good to have you on the show. Back on the show. Back on the show again. [00:01:21] Speaker B: I'm looking forward to the. The YouTube comments this time around as well. I might even get a chance to read them. [00:01:28] Speaker A: Yeah, we had some crackers on Monday night, that's for sure. [00:01:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Actually, there's one we talked about Monday night. We might have to bring that back up later in the show, but we'll save it. We'll save it. [00:01:36] Speaker A: I think we will. Obviously, Matt's with us, but we're also joined by our glorious leader, Justin Cassels. [00:01:45] Speaker C: Good morning, everybody. I'm great. How are you guys? I've got it. I've actually got an applause sound, Matt, if you want me to really get in there and. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Well, that would be. It would help to be my backup dancer support act. Yeah. [00:01:58] Speaker C: No, I've lost it. She gone. I don't know. Hang on. I got it. Morning, everybody. [00:02:09] Speaker A: I prefer the Scream. [00:02:11] Speaker C: I'll hold back on that one today. [00:02:15] Speaker A: We've got a few people joining us already in the chat. [00:02:19] Speaker C: Yelena wants to know if we'll be on time today. I think we're pretty close. Not too bad, she says. Good morning, all. Philip Johnson says, morning, chaps. Dennis Smith from the School of Light says, I took my kids out of school for this one. He also says. He says you've been working out, Matt. [00:02:39] Speaker B: Actually, no, I got a haircut which does dramatic wonders. I can highly recommend it. It's the easiest weight loss teacher technique around. [00:02:45] Speaker A: I might try that. [00:02:46] Speaker C: Nice. [00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. [00:02:48] Speaker A: I have a lot of hair to lose. [00:02:50] Speaker C: You might maybe a beard trim, Greg. A little beard. [00:02:55] Speaker B: If you. If you got dunked in the water, you'd come out looking like this little stick with just like, mounds of, like, wet hair. [00:03:02] Speaker C: Yeah, like A cat. When you give a cat a bath and they're like a long haired cat and they're just tiny. [00:03:08] Speaker A: Well, you know, if people want to pay good money to see that, just head to my only fans. [00:03:14] Speaker C: We've also got digi frog. Dave Clark in the, in the chat says morning all. He says gfx talk all day please. Because I didn't. [00:03:22] Speaker A: We will get to that. [00:03:23] Speaker C: I did tease that, that, that. Yeah, yeah, there it is. We will be. We'll be figuring out why Matt made the strange decision to change up his camera kit. But we'll save that for later in the show because that'll keep you guys watching for a while. That's how YouTube works. Hey, also if you are watching. Hey, hit the little like button. Apparently that really helps as well for this episode. [00:03:48] Speaker B: Also subscribe. Isn't it. Aren't you. Isn't that a thing? [00:03:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I said that. [00:03:51] Speaker C: Already done. I like because, because Greg's saying, Greg's saying we're on the march to 2000 but don't tell anyone. We're at 1050. So it's like it's a long way, you know when you know, I'm almost, I'm almost this and you're like, you're not quite. We're getting. [00:04:10] Speaker B: But you know what though, you've got a. This is called star wish thinking, isn't it? Where you just, you picture you, you think it, you envisage it and then it just happens. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's on my vision board. It's right here. Anyway, speaking of visionary people, we are joined today by Matt Crummons who is an award winning nature wildlife underwater commercial photographer. He also does a lot of workshops. He's also 50% of the brains, if you could say that behind befop. [00:04:40] Speaker B: That. But yeah, that's all right. [00:04:44] Speaker C: The bright festival of photography. Just for any of you, the guys that are new. [00:04:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:49] Speaker A: Or not. [00:04:50] Speaker C: That's what B F stands for. You'll probably hear that word a little bit in this show as well. Probably. We'll try and get some secrets out of Matt later in the show about what might be coming up for this year's bfop. We'll just make it. We'll just make it. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:05:05] Speaker A: So Matt, we're gonna, we're gonna dive into everything about you and I think I pre warned you prior to the show that we've all discovered when you last wet the bed. But aside from that, tell us a little bit about yourself. Just give us a brief introduction of who is Matt Crummins. [00:05:21] Speaker B: Me. My history in photography goes back a really, really, really long way. It's a very, very, very, very kind of long, drawn out story. But it can be condensed down to the fact that I was in video production. I was always one of those kids who loved techie stuff. You know, like when digital cameras, like digital video cameras first came out and they weren't digital really at all, they were kind of like those little tapes but you could digitize them into a computer. Like I thought that was just amazing. And so I sort of got very involved in video which led me to working straight out of school in the field in kind of like, what would you call it, like stage production. So like big concerts and events and stuff like that. Doing, you know, the audio visual stuff and then producing a lot of the video content that went in behind them. One of those kids that kind of like, you know, I was quite ambitious and always wanted to do something different and big. And so yeah, kind of went down that path. And yeah, throughout my career of, you know, snaking and weaving through things, I kind of realized that photography was a big part of it. I think the main factor in photography, the move to photography from videography was actually when I started scuba diving. I had a pretty bad relationship breakup when I was like 18 and the might have been older than that, probably older than that. Anyway, I started up scuba diving really seriously and all my mates thought I was crazy because Victoria's cold and they just didn't see what was in it. And so I thought, well hell, I've got to have a camera. And so that was kind of the start of it. And realizing I guess very soon after that social media was just becoming a thing. And Facebook didn't like video at the time, which is ironic, they only liked photos. And so I was very video unfriendly and so moved to photography and then yeah, I've sort of flip flopped backwards and forwards through and now I do both. But yeah, I worked for Olympus for a while. I was an ambassador for the underwater products for a while there. I've yeah, been around the block. I've shot on every camera brand except for Rico. Sorry, Rico. And that's not yet. [00:07:24] Speaker C: You haven't. [00:07:24] Speaker B: Not yet as well. But yeah, my passion's really in sort of nature photography and I think that that comes from the fact that it's more unpredictable, it's less repeatable. You know, there's something about looking, especially when you do this for a living, there's something bad about looking at photographs from really popular places. And realizing you've just shot the same album as someone else, because that was the place to stand for landscape and that was the time of day. And, you know, I look at Kara Genie, I'm actually looking at a photo of Kara Genie on my wall right now going, I've seen that photo like a thousand times. And whilst I'm kind of proud of my version, it doesn't really feel like it's kind of mine. It feels like it's a moment in time. It's a holiday shot now. Whereas, you know, the other wildlife stuff that I've got, irrespective of whether someone's seen that moment before or whatnot, the likelihood that they've caught that exact thing is so unlikely. And there's a uniqueness that comes with that which I really appreciate. [00:08:19] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah, I think it's a good point about. Sorry, I cut you off. [00:08:24] Speaker B: No, not at all like that. I could. As I said, this can go forever and I appreciate people's time. [00:08:29] Speaker A: Well, just as well I cut you off. So it's an interesting point about that moment in time and that, yes, we could all stand in the same place, even at a really popular landscape destination. But I think that sometimes the key difference is the experience that you had in the lead up to taking the photo and the after. It's not just about that final image on the wall, though, is it? I mean, that is obviously the end product. That's what we're aiming for, is that image on the wall. But there's also that experience of, well, I traveled to the middle of Africa to get this shot, and that was fucking amazing. You know, like, it's. [00:09:05] Speaker B: It does. Do you find that. [00:09:07] Speaker A: Does it elevate that experience for you or that the final product for you, that you can cast your mind back and recall where you were and who you were with when you took those shots. [00:09:17] Speaker B: I'll be honest with you, my memory is really bad. [00:09:22] Speaker A: They're gonna buy you and send you a notebook. [00:09:24] Speaker B: I totally agree with the idea of that, and I think for most people that is absolutely true. There is something that emotionally attaches you to those images. And certainly there are some photos I've got where I can go. Yeah, I really, really feel that. I think that something I'm realizing about myself, and this is probably going to bleed into our JFX conversation shortly. Something I've really noticed about myself in the last probably year or two, to be honest, is that life has actually stabilized a little bit. You know, I started my business full time 2016. I quit my job at Olympus at the Christmas party at about 2 in the morning, went out on my own the next morning going, oh, what do I do now? And that was a really interesting ride. For the first like three years. It was like, wow, this is a whole new world. I've always had a little business on the side, but never anything serious that was meant to be a full time wage. Things grew really quickly. They went really well. We started to hit into 2019. I really got my groove. I started running overseas trips. We hit Covid and that obviously like flipped everything on its head. Like, I don't need to even say lots of people, probably me, less than a lot of others. The years following was all kind of how do we rebuild? And how do we rebuild with all the new expectations that we've set? And it's probably only this year, maybe last year, mid last year to now, where I sort of gone, wow, things are actually normal now. Like, this is what normal looks like. And I've realized that I think that I have got to change the way that I see things because I realized that I've been so privileged and lucky to be to have been to all these places, done all these things, shot all these moments, you know, like photographing humpback whales, you know, point blank range in Tonga for seven days, you know, like I've done that twice. And yeah, I look at the photos and it brings me back to that place, but it sort of doesn't. My brain moves to the next thing because I'm in this problem solving mode still from day one where, you know, the startup phase, you're like, cool, that's working great. What next? Oh, cool, that's working. What next? Oh crap, Covid, what next? Oh no, we're getting back to normality. What next? And now I'm kind of popping out the other side going, oh my God. Like, I feel like I haven't lived through a lot of these things. I feel like I've collected a lot of souvenirs along the way. But I don't necessarily feel what you're talking about at this point. And that's probably why I've had a remarkable change in the last couple of months. Because I'm really trying to analyze this because it's quite terrifying when you, when you look back at, at all these moments and you go like, I don't have, you know, the whole picture there. My brain was moving too fast. I was always into the next thing already. And so maybe that's where photography has been a really big passion of mine. Is it's my way of actually looking back and having moments because I'm always, you know, two steps ahead of myself. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Yep. Follow up question on that. Matt, do you think that there's. Given how much you do, you know, and for other photographers, you know, we've talked to Tom and Dennis, both have traveled extensively and many of our other guests. Is there a level of desensitization to the wonders that you're experienced? Because you talk about a seven day underwater photography excursion to Tonga to photograph. Was it blue whales or humpbacks? [00:12:17] Speaker B: Humpbacks. Humpbacks, yeah, humpbacks. [00:12:20] Speaker A: And you know, and you've done it twice. For many people, just being able to get to that once might be at the top of their bucket list and they might be lucky to do it in their lifetime. But you have these sorts of adventures on an ongoing basis, moving from one thing to the next. Is there a level of desensitization there for you? [00:12:36] Speaker B: I'm reminded about that quite frequently by my wife. Yeah, I think that there is a decent. It's not, it's not desensitization. I think it just becomes a little bit more normal, which, yeah, I guess you could describe as desensitization. That doesn't mean it's less exciting and interesting and everything when you're there. That doesn't mean you don't go there and you're like more whales, like, that's not endangered species. Yeah, but I think as you say, it's, it's more that you'll go and do one of these amazing adventures and I highly recommend it to anyone who's, who's keen. You know, I went, I was lucky enough, Scott Portelli invited me along because he had a spot that I could jump in on. If you're ever keen on it, jump on one of Scott's trips. But like you, you do go there. And I think that for me it's not desensitization to the experience. I think it's more that in my mind I'm been lucky enough to have this situation where I don't ever feel like that's the last adventure. You know, the bucket list isn't a bucket list because I don't think the bucket just, you know, there's always me something more on the bucket or in the bucket or that I want to put in the bucket. I don't have that end goal in mind because I think as a photographer you are in a way forced to constantly chase new experiences. I mean, that's the nature of needing to produce new and different work. And then when you actually hit the point where you have the ability or you have the opportunities to go and make the most of these moments. Yeah, you could probably say it's desensitization because you're on those. That whale trip. And then the next thing I'm thinking is, cool, I'm here now, it's August, but what's happening next in like September or October? And so it's not that you don't appreciate what you're doing. I think it's more just that you need to be forward thinking. And I think when things start happening in a photographer's world, we discussed this a little bit on sort of Saturday night. When things actually start happening, you don't have time to just stop all the time. You don't have time to stop and process it all and analyze it all. And, you know, you can be grateful for it, but it doesn't rock your world every time. You know, you're always needing to think forwards. And I think that's probably where it comes from a little bit. And to me, that's where wildlife is really. You know, I think again, it kind of comes back to that importance of you can have moments that just happen out of nowhere. You can't plan them, you can't predict them. These things just happen. And they probably are those, like those little punctuations in my life where I go. Do I remember the whole of the first time I went to Africa? Absolutely not. Do I remember what day I shot that photo? Absolutely not. Do I remember exactly where we drove? No, I don't. Do I remember the place? No, not entirely. But there are certain moments that are attached to photos where I go. That was the punctuation in that trip. It might only have taken 1,640th of a second. That, that is my memory of that trip now. And so my experience is probably less of the. Oh, wow, seven whole days. I'm probably in my head going, there was probably like, you know, 47 seconds across seven days that I won't forget, you know. [00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, and I think that's important when you condense that experience into something really, really pure that will stick with you as well. [00:15:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:34] Speaker A: And just, just want to roll back a tiny bit for something you said about. We talked on Saturday night. People who are watching and listening, we're referring to the Beef Up Day event. Slash, Camera House. 40th Camera House, Croydon, 40th Birthday Festival. [00:15:51] Speaker C: Festival. [00:15:51] Speaker B: Because it's crazy. [00:15:54] Speaker A: But we talked a lot about that on Monday on our Random photography show Monday night. Justin and I unpack that whole crazy, wonderful, magical experience. [00:16:04] Speaker B: So please summarize unpacking it, because I haven't unpacked it yet, and that would save me a lot of time. [00:16:11] Speaker A: We'll send you some notes. But, yeah, go back and watch that or listen to that episode, guys, because it was such a phenomenal day. But we'll get to that in a little bit. [00:16:22] Speaker C: Just quickly, a couple more people in the chat. Tim Siamas, who was there on Saturday. David Mascara from San Francisco, who was not there. What's up, fellas? What's up, David? [00:16:33] Speaker B: I love that US Accent, though. Like I said, go accent. Give it a crack. [00:16:38] Speaker C: I can't really. No, I can't do it. I've got nothing. San Francisco. [00:16:44] Speaker A: You're asking one of the Aussiest blokes I know to put on an American accent. [00:16:48] Speaker C: San Francisco, mate. And David said. Did I miss the part where he said he uses Nikon? [00:16:53] Speaker B: You did. [00:16:54] Speaker C: He probably has used it in the past, but currently, no. Not a Nikon, man. [00:16:58] Speaker B: I was looking at the 8600, D700, D750 and D850 and D810 user for probably three or four years. 2.8. You know, all the. All the bells and whistles. [00:17:09] Speaker C: Yeah, Some of the finest cameras, the D850 especially, that was the biggest work. [00:17:14] Speaker B: You know what that has the one feature that all cameras are missing, and that is it had buttons with lights in them so you could turn the lights on and you could see all the buttons. And I'm like, yeah, why not just do that? That should just be a normal thing in every freaking camera. [00:17:25] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh, more people joining the chat. The drunk wedding photographer from la, Moshi Moshi. And David said he's. He's out. He's. He's only listens to Nick on photographer, so he's gone. Levin from Revue Photography says, g' day, guys. Finally made a live cast. Finally. [00:17:48] Speaker A: From a. From a trip overseas. [00:17:49] Speaker C: All right. [00:17:50] Speaker A: He's only just gotten back, and he shot me an email and he had catastrophic weather, I think, from memory the whole time. So great to have you on board living. [00:17:58] Speaker C: Yes. Good to see you. Fleur Ferguson is here and. Yeah, the drunk wedding photographer says I keep missing the lives because of all the time changes. Yeah. Daylight savings and all sorts of stuff. [00:18:10] Speaker A: Hit the notification bell, it'll tell you. [00:18:12] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And we're pretty. We've been a little bit random lately, which is kind of how we do things also. [00:18:17] Speaker B: What's the Most important episode. That's the important thing, isn't it? [00:18:21] Speaker C: That's right. This is the one. They're all here for you. I do, I want to, I want to go back a little bit, but first I also want to see Greg, is your mic working? You sound a little non. Mikey, give it a tap. I don't think that's on, buddy. No, you're on computer, audio. So while you fix that up, I'm going to ask Matt. So you were doing video stuff and then you, you bought a camera to document your scuba adventures. How did that, how did that evolve to starting from the, you know, taking a few shots underwater to the point where at some point in that you got, you, you built a relationship with Olympus for that underwater photography. Talk to us about that time. [00:19:10] Speaker A: Is that any better? Sorry to interrupt. [00:19:12] Speaker B: Give it a tap, give it a tap. [00:19:15] Speaker C: It is not. [00:19:16] Speaker B: No, but it's a good prop. [00:19:20] Speaker C: Yeah, it looks nice. [00:19:20] Speaker A: Yes, impressive. It's cardboard. It's actually 2D. [00:19:25] Speaker C: Craig said, can we get a mic? I was like, nah, just make one. [00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Tell us, Matt, how'd you go from basically like, all right, I just want to take some shots while I'm underwater to, to becoming essentially, I guess, a photographer. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a pretty, I mean, it was a long, long story in a way. Like I bought like a pretty rubbish camera at the beginning because at the time there's only rubbish cameras out there. You know, I shot a lot of stuff for the club and the, you know, this is over a long period of time as well. Right. So I shot a lot of photography for the dive club and at the time, because cameras were so expensive, like no one would have a DSLR underwater at the time, you know, it was like point and shoot sort of thing. If you're a full on pro, maybe like the guys in the Philippines and stuff, they would have a dslr, maybe some of the US guys, but it wasn't really a thing, at least not mainstream. Like if you went to all the camera clubs in Melbourne, the underwater, sorry, dive clubs in Melbourne, you'd maybe find one person who had enough to have a dslr. So my stuff looks pretty retrospectively embarrassing, so I got a bit of traction there and I was a dive instructor at the club and stuff. So there was already kind of this level of. I had a bit of a leadership role in that photography space because I was sort of one of the first ones in our club to take it somewhat seriously. I had a background in video already and I had, I guess an interest in that tech photography stuff. And so as time went on, you know, I bought myself a video camera. I moved to Thailand and for like it was only like six months or something, but I did my dive instructing over there and ended up doing a lot underwater photography over there. I kind of did my instructorship and then taught a little bit and then realized I'd like just diving every day, taking photos and videos again. Looking back, they're horrendously bad, but at the time I guess they were, they were good. And then came back to Melbourne after that stint and realized that actually I wanted to take something seriously. Like I was floating a little bit, you know, I had a job, I was working, I think I was working. When I came back I was working at Editel, which was like a. Is a post production firm doing TV production and stuff. And they had some photography opportunities but I wanted to start taking my own stuff a bit more seriously. And so I decided that I'd buy myself a camera, like a proper big person camera. And this was my first move into like adulthood, my mid-20s. [00:21:45] Speaker C: And I was gonna say you. So you're mid-20s at this point and you were. [00:21:49] Speaker B: Something like that. Yeah, it would have been. And so I basically bought a Panasonic GH2, which was one of the very first kind of serious mirrorless cameras, well known for its video at the time, which was a really big appeal to me. And I bought some nice lenses, bought a naughty cam housing which was a. It's like the Rolls Royce of underwater housings. Pretty incredible things. They're incredibly expensive though. [00:22:13] Speaker C: I was going to say, do you remember roughly what they cost back then? Like how big of an investment was the housing? [00:22:19] Speaker B: So I don't remember the exact of the housing, but I'm pretty sure the whole kit together, including a couple of flashes, the housing, the camera, the lenses, all the bells and whistles that went with it. I'm pretty sure it cost me like 15 or 16,000. Yeah, it wasn't at the time especially. It was a lot of money and especially for my age, it was a ridiculous amount of money. Like it was, it was an uncomfortable investment and I borrowed some money from the parents to do it, but I thought if I'm going to do it, do it properly. Because the thing with underwater housing is a bit like real, you know, other cameras. If you, if you buy the cheaper one, it probably costs you 50%. If you can rummage up the extra 50% of the money, you'll get the top end. It's sort of like, the entry level is such a high bar anyway, if you can afford to push it up, you get a lot more bang for your buck just by going that bit further. So the joke of this was that I actually then started shooting and of course it completely changed my photography. Like I was getting some really good shots, even shots that today I'm really proud of and even the first like three or four weeks of it. My mum sent me this. This. It must have been an email or something. I don't think we had the image text back then or maybe it was an image of MMS and it was of an article in the paper that was. Olympus had an underwater photography competition and they were looking for an ambassador. And so I thought, well, this is ridiculous, of course I've got no chance of winning this. I'm a bit of a hack. Like, you know, I might be a little experienced, but there's people out there who are like, been doing this a long time, really, you know, it's a pretty big thing. And the prize was an ambassadorship, a camera rig and a trip to the Solomon Islands on a private island just with yourself a week. And I know, I thought, well, stuff that I'll enter in anyway. So I put my stuff in. You had to have a portfolio of five shots, which I thought was clever rather than just being an image competition where you could luck it, you had to have a portfolio which sort of meant, yeah, you could stand up to, you know, different situations. Anyway, I got the call and yeah, I'd won this ambassadorship which was pretty exciting. I met up with the rep down in. Mel wasn't the rep, the marketing person who came down to Melbourne. We went to a pub and we got chatting and, you know, it was all congratulations and then they broke the fantastic news that I'd bought, I'd won this, you know, the camera. And the camera was their entry level, EPL3, which is like their lowest end mirrorless camera at the time and with the lowest end housing and really, really small flash units. And I had this really sort of instant regret of realizing I've just spent nearly, you know, 15, $16,000 on this Panasonic kit which I'm no longer allowed to use because I have to be shooting on Olympus. And the one they've given me is like about 10% of the capacity or capability of the. The one I've just bought. And so, yeah, I only sold that. I don't think I sold it. I think I gave it to someone like a few years ago because I just Couldn't bring myself to get rid of it straight away. And of course, I upgraded my Olympus stuff pretty quickly. You know, I said, can I chip in some money and get a bigger, you know, bigger camera, bigger housing with the e. M5 than a bigger housing for it and a dome port and you know, all the bells and whistles and they looked after me in that space. But yeah, that was kind of the conversion to Olympus was this, I guess, very sad kind of. Yeah, I mean, it was good. Like, don't get me wrong, without that I wouldn't. Wouldn't be doing what I am today. But it was a. It was an interesting concept because at the time I sort of felt like the world ended a little bit. [00:25:50] Speaker C: Was the, was the private island? Was the private island also, was it just like a small raft somewhere that they tied up or something? [00:25:58] Speaker B: You know, it was actually a swimming pool that was called the Solomon Island Resort. No, it was. No, it was actually. It was really good. I've been there of years a couple of times. It's a place called up. It is a private island that's run by some Aussies. And the reason it was a private island at the time was they were doing renovations on some of their. The cottages. So most of it was shut down. But from my experience, I still got to hang out and have the place myself. I had a private boat or there might have been one other guy on the island at the time because I took some shots with another dude in it. But, um, but yeah, anyway, it was, it was. That was magical and that was a really good opportunity. And it was sort of probably set off that. That time in my life where, you know, you could travel on someone else's dollar. You know, back in the days pre covered before influencers took over the world where you wanted to go somewhere in the world and you'd put on Facebook and you get resorts contacting you and then airline would tell you, I will pay for the flights if you take some photos of the airplane and you know, and all that. So it's been a really interesting ride through very, very changing times. You know, stuff that you can't replicate now. [00:26:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker B: Oh, there you go. Dennis says that I introduced him to Olympus. That's right. Because I. I wine and dined Dennis in Adelaide when Olympus rep and got him across the line. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. [00:27:16] Speaker A: He seems, he seems very happy. He seems very happy. [00:27:19] Speaker B: That's it. Yeah. [00:27:22] Speaker A: So, Matt, just, just want to dial back a little bit further. Did you have. Growing up, did you have an artistic family? Or an arts or business background because you're a very business savvy individual. Having, you know, gotten to know you, especially since bfop was there, was there that sort of influence in your, in your life or was it a mentor or someone that sort of pointed you in the right direction? [00:27:46] Speaker B: Yeah, probably a combination. Like I came from a really artistic family. Mum's an artist, a very well known oil painter. If you want to see her Instagram, it's like Gwendolyn Crummonds art on. Or if you look up Gwen Crummonds, you'll find her on there. Anyway, so she's an incredibly talented oil painter and runs classes as well. My dad was, he worked at Scotch, he was a music teacher. I wouldn't say that he's a passionate musician, but he was definitely. He's a, you know, he's a musician and so he had an artistic family which I think really gave me the license to say this is a valid career. I think that's a lot of people lack is that you don't need someone to say it, but it's growing up seeing that that's a really valid thing. I think most people probably grow up thinking that an art, a career in any kind of arts or creative space is like for the people who didn't make it in the other space. And I didn't grow up with that mentality at all. I grew up thinking that was totally normal and that, you know, that there's, you know, we had a great life growing up. We traveled a lot. My parents have been really successful with the way that they've built their lives and so it never felt like it was the back, what do you call it? The backstop, the second rate. So that was one thing. And from a business perspective, again, yeah, a lot of encouragement in that space. I think they kind of knew from an early age I was really interested in business. I had my first business at 12, which was one of my more successful businesses ironically. [00:29:14] Speaker C: And you're still, still chasing that thrill all these years later. [00:29:17] Speaker A: I had my first million at 13 year old self. [00:29:21] Speaker B: I actually did. So I got asked by family friend to convert some of their old Super 8 video footage back to. At the time was to VHS. And I said I don't know how to do that. But of course I was the techie kids. So they were like, well you can work it out. And we ended up working out that they had an old projector as well. I had a new video camera. It wasn't digital at the time, but I could Hook it up to the VCR. So I essentially projected their Super 8 videos onto my bedroom wall, which wasn't painted specially or smooth or anything. It was just projected onto a wall that was whitish. And I filmed it with a video camera and I plugged a CD player into the, you know, the RCA inputs. I had a CD player plugged into the audio and the camera's video plugged in. So I did these kind of like hack edit jobs of all their Super 8 films. And then their friends and their friends friends came out of the woodwork. Oh, we've got lots of those. And it kind of grew. My dad did a 5,000 copies at work of an ad that I made up in PowerPoint and we did a got picked from friends to do a mail drop in the area. And I ended up getting Kodak Australia as one of my clients. And they were sending Sydney to for a 12 year old to film on the wall, which they didn't realize at the time, but there was no one else really doing it. And yeah, it was only when mum answered the phone one day and they asked for me, it was like a Tuesday. And you know, she knew the, she knew the drill but and, and said no, he's not here, he's at school. And they said, what are you talking about school? And yeah, and she blew the lid that I was 12 years old and grade six and that. Anyway, I had a big box of film that was sitting in my bedroom ready to go. And I think that was the last bachelor I ever got sent down. But yeah, it kind of, I was always encouraged to do that kind of stuff. I think that, you know, there are some kids you can see have that interest in that, that entrepreneurial streak and then, you know, others are, you know, very fixated on a particular, a particular thing. And I was always the floater who would look for opportunities. So yeah, and then growing up, you know, I think you naturally start bumping into those people. I had some really awesome mentors in my first jobs that probably showed me that what's possible. Like, and the way that they carry, they carried themselves and the sort of conversations they had with people and the things that they said yes to. And then we'd get back to the office and I'd be like, why did you say yes to that? And they were like, well, we can work it out, can't we? And I was like, wow, okay, that's a thing. Adults do that too, right? And so yeah, that's probably the, the background. But yeah. Hi, Nick Fletcher. I know you've been. [00:31:53] Speaker C: Yeah, Nick's in the chat, he says don't panic, I'm here now. Has he mentioned me yet? Yeah, he has not. [00:32:00] Speaker B: There's another one in my life. Yeah, it's, you know, caused me no end of snake. [00:32:08] Speaker A: And just for those of you watching or listening along, Nick Fletcher is the, wouldn't say the other half but the, the other 50 of the BFOP brains trust and we'll get to BFOP in a little bit because we want to I guess discover more about that side of what you do. Justin, I think you've been scribbling down some questions for Matt. [00:32:30] Speaker C: I, I have notes number one. No, what I want to know because you. So okay, so basically you entrepreneurial spirit from a young age and then rocked around scuba and, and just living the dream for a while and then won a competition with Olympus for a very average camera kit and then parlayed that into a good camera kit and then a job. Parlayed that into a, into a full time job with them essentially, yeah. Is that, did that evolve naturally? [00:33:03] Speaker B: Not really, no. I pushed that pretty hard. I was worried I was working in, in a job that I enjoyed, I enjoyed. But I knew that it wasn't what I wanted to do. You know, like I've always known that I wanted to run my own thing and I think that Olympus was to me was kind of like getting into that space of that's where my passion is. I'm also, I think one thing I've been really fortunate is I'm pretty good at seeing a dead end road like I've been. I've managed to sort of see the writing on the wall for many, many businesses I've worked in and I have moved around a lot to sort of see what's happening in two years time, where is this going in five years and to know when to call it quits and find that new thing. Hence why I don't work for Olympus anymore. You know, I saw the writing on the wall, I saw the way that I was carrying myself where my passion was, where my passion wasn't. And so I started pushing Olympus pretty hard. The issue is that like my job that I wanted wasn't a real job. I wanted to just go and take pictures and that's not a real job. And so they kind of created a role at the time which was called a retail development manager. And it was a 5050 role managing the Adelaide or repping the Adelaide stores and then being this retail development manager which is essentially someone who comes up with interesting Ways to sell people kit, you know, like interesting ideas, very left of center, ways to promote stuff, kind of like marketing but more from a retailer perspective. How do we get retail staff on board with this rather than how do we get customers on board with it? And so my job was then to use that entrepreneurial brain to kind of go, well, how do we reimagine the way that we talk to people? Because Olympus at the, and probably still to this day I'm going to call them the underdogs in a way because you know, there's a lot of things that people can say about the Olympus system that is kind of that compromise. I certainly don't see it as a compromise but I think in the industry it's still seen as though it's the smaller sensor, it's the smaller kit, it's the, you can spin that to a positive thing or you can spin that into like the, oh, that doesn't sound as good. And so my job was to go how do we get retail staff to embrace this and realize that actually all the things that they might instinctively, instinctively say, how can we spin that into a positive and make them, you know, want to pick up the product and give it a shot? Because that, that's, they weren't doing it necessarily. And you know, hence with the. Dennis, you know, my, my project was great. How do we engage this person who's a really successful photographer who's got this style and they've got all these things and Olympus happened to have a tool we built into the camera that live composite and live time at that, that was there. And so, you know, how do I go and get him on board? Because if I get him on board then we can get the next guys on board and board. And yeah, it was an interesting time. Most of my life back then was, you know, we go hot air ballooning and go karting and boating and we did all sorts of crazy stuff. I had a very long leash which sounds familiar. [00:35:50] Speaker C: Yeah, right, yes. So, so that's where we're starting to see some of the, I guess the ideas evolve in your events that you and Nick organize that sort of come from this thinking outside the box to create great experiences for people. You're trying to create a great experience to I guess build a brand and build relationships with retailers and photographers and now it's just gone to just full on. Great experiences. [00:36:22] Speaker B: Yeah, great experiences though. I mean keep in mind, you know, what you said at the start Greg around like, you know, do you get desensitized to all these Cool trips and things like that that you get to do. And you know, I think in a way like this is almost a way of us bringing people along for that ride. People who live relatively, I'll call it normal lives, who don't necessarily do some of the cool stuff we get to do. This is our way of giving opportunity for people to kind of peek inside and go, wow, like this is. You can do this stuff. Like this is actually possible. It's just that most of us not brought up being told it's possible and most of us don't think to go and do the silly because women to be very serious adults and stuff. So yeah, I think that my, I've been given a lot of opportunities from very early on to be like, hey, find the most ridiculous thing. And you know, one of the best lines that I've ever been given was from Fuji. I think I said this last, last podcast that they said to me when I asked them, you know, what budget was for a certain project, they said, oh, how about you come up with the most ridiculous thing you can? And then at least we know what we're saying no to. And I love that concept where it's like, think really big and then work out what's possible. Don't think about what's possible and then work out what you can do within that box because you know you're always going to shortchange yourself. [00:37:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I love that. [00:37:39] Speaker C: And that that's an amazing thing for a brand to, to step up and say it's very cool. [00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:37:45] Speaker C: A couple of chats. Nick. Nick says he's drafting off my coolness. [00:37:51] Speaker B: The fact that you use the word anyway. [00:37:55] Speaker C: He also says I'm not 90 of the brains trust, not 50. And he says, love you like a brother. Brother. [00:38:04] Speaker B: Only. Only 10. Not. [00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah, 10 of love. [00:38:09] Speaker C: Dennis is in the chat and he says a long leash. Yeah, we had a. Referring to Olympus time. [00:38:17] Speaker B: So can I say the most, the longest leash we ever had at Olympus. And this is one I certainly wouldn't say. When I was working there, we at one point, you know, they had that live composite things, you know, light painting kind of stuff. I had one of our retailers standing on the bar inside of a pub doing the whole fire twirling with the, the, the steel wool in the whisk, but inside a pub and everyone was shooting them on the bar. And I'm thinking afterwards, I'm going, we. We probably would have burnt that place down. Like, yeah, yeah, that was dumb, wasn't it? And I'm not sure that Dennis may have been involved in that. [00:39:01] Speaker C: Okay, the, the, that was all leading into this question that I want to ask. So you worked with Olympus, had a great time obviously, but it came to a head at 2am one morning when you decided that's it, I'm going out on my own. Tell me about what did your business look like before that you said it was kind of side hustle sort of thing. You had a job so you had, you had a photography business on the side. What did it look like? And then what did those first, you know, six months of, of you being full time into your own business look like? [00:39:38] Speaker B: At the time, I mean I was doing a lot of training stuff for Olympus and my side hustle I guess was doing like private workshops on the side, you know, just one on ones. I had some underwater photography courses that I ran with the dive clubs because I already had a good relationship there. I shot some weddings and things because of obviously everyone, you know, you know when, you know people who work in camera land and they're like, oh, you do photography? You could photograph my auntie's dogs or something like that. So I was doing those kind of like I'll call them D grade shoots, you know, but it wasn't much. I think to me it was more around the quitting part was knowing that I knew that there was potential there. I also know that, you know, as I said from early on, I've got a family that's been very encouraging of all this and I'm lucky to probably had the comfort in my mind of a safety net. If this all went tits up, it would be okay. Like I was never in a situation where I was going to be homeless or something like that. So I think that's really important to say because not everyone has the benefit of that and I think that that is a huge contributor to what I get to do because I don't have to be as worried about the consequence. Not to say that I'm not careful about it and I have a lot of respect for that privilege but, but it does give you a peace of mind knowing that, you know, you quit your job and this doesn't go well. There's a more of an attitude in our household of well great, but you tried and let's work out how to make it work as opposed to well, aren't you stupid? [00:41:07] Speaker A: And look what you did, I told you so kind of thing. [00:41:09] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. So that's a really, really important part. The first few months of it had a look not great. It was at the time. Do you remember the show Shameless? It was on Netflix. Yeah. So I had. We had some friends that had moved from the UK and they were living with us. And it was during this period, which probably made it a bit easier because I had more like distractions. But one of them was watching the show Shameless. But I couldn't sit on the couch and watch it with them because I just saw my future. It was really, really weird. But, yeah, like, I mean, I started running workshops. The thing is, it was just. It was a hustle, like a straight up hustle. It was, you know, there was no marketing out there. Like Google Ads for me, wasn't a thing really at the time. I built a website, I built some branding. I got a friend of mine to do some logos. My biggest thing was probably realizing you have to leverage. Leverage relationships really quickly. And so I went and saw Peter Michael, who had run Michaels at the time and said, you guys don't really have much of a training repertoire. You've kind of got. He had Alwyn at the time doing some basic courses upstairs. But I said, I'm running these workshops. They're out in the field. We're going to do seas, gets going to do waterfalls. We do all these fun things. I'm just trying to channel all the Olympus stuff that I've done. And I said, why don't I sell the workshops? Or, sorry, why don't you sell my workshops alongside me? I'll give you guys a commission and I'll make the pickup and drop off point Michael's cameras. Because then it's like product that you need to pick at the start of the day, products you want. By the end of the day, we'll have this perfect synergy. And he was kind of open to it at the time. It never eventuated, but. But there was a good, strong relationship that started to form because of that. And I think that that support led me to kind of. I already knew the Michaels Team Olympus and they were supportive of the fact that I was going out on my own. So they would kind of recommend to people. And, you know, I worked with Peninsula Camera center for quite a while. Again, people who I had a lot of interaction with through my Olympus days. A lot of trust built there. So we started. They started sort of selling my courses and I started doing things back for them. And it was that relationship stuff that really kind of built it. But. But I remember I've still got people who come on my current workshops, like, regularly, who were on my very first workshop, which was called like Melbourne City Walk, and I think I charged like 50 bucks for it and I had like three people and I thought that was totally amazing, you know, so, yeah, and these days it's no different, you know, we still work. I still work really closely with brands. I make sure I touch base with people. I work, you know, through beef up as well, obviously, but. But it's those relationships, I think that they give you a bit of comfort because, you know, you've got a bigger team when you're just an individual doing this, you know, there's lots of people rooting for you. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Matt, I've got a. Oh, go on, Jay. [00:43:50] Speaker C: No, no, go on. [00:43:51] Speaker A: I've got a question for you. You're a multidisciplinary visual creative. [00:43:57] Speaker B: You know, you very, very water jack of all trades. [00:44:00] Speaker A: But yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I was trying to make it nice. Trying to use big words. You're a jack of all trades. And you know, where do you, where do you rank? I guess what you get out of the different genres that you shoot, whether it be underwater, wildlife, landscape, the commercial work that you do, you know, where do you rank those experiences in terms of what you love versus what you value in terms of, you know, for the business sake? [00:44:35] Speaker B: Good question. I mean, I really, I really love the wildlife stuff, like the wildlife and underwater. My big passion projects. Underwater is harder because it's got less. Logistically, it's difficult. So it takes up a lot of time, so it's harder to commit to. But wildlife's definitely where the passion is, you know, like I've come back from two weeks in bright. The last two weeks I've had my five day workshops up there and I come back and I've got all these, you know, photos because obviously we're shooting side by side a lot of the time to, you know, do demos and stuff. We had some really awesome conditions and I look at them and they're great landscapes, great sunsets, great colors, great this, great that. My passion though is, you know, I've got a couple of shots I've taken, you know, with some of the, the gang gangs up there. Like, that's a much more exciting situation because it's, it's more unique. So I value that stuff very highly. Personally, I don't value it very highly from a business perspective. You know, I think that there's, I don't know that there's much of a market for fun things. I'll put it that way. I think that that's the reality, you know, I Hear a lot of people wanting to become photographers, professional photographers and, and I say what do you want to do? And they go, I'm going to be do waterfall. And I'm like, well how do you commercialize waterfalls? Like that is not physically possible. The way you can commercialize a waterfall is by bringing people along to that experience. Workshops, tours, trips and encouraging them to get better out of their stuff. Because what you're essentially, you know, doing is going on holidays and wanting to be paid for it really, aren't you? Like, so how do you make that into an experience? And that's where the workshop part comes into it. You can add a lot of value being and that's where there's, you know, when it turns into business value. But if you just want to do stuff that's fun like that, that's not going to happen. So even when people say they're going to do prints, it's like I know some very successful photographers who, they don't struggle to sell prints. But that's a very hard full time business to run. That's a very hard thing to crack where you make enough money to make it worthwhile. [00:46:31] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, we've spoken in the past too, Matt and Mika on, on our show and we've also recently had Tom Putt on both of which group, both of which run a gallery. They're an independent, like separate galleries, they both sell wall art. But they have spoken quite frankly about the reality of that, you know, and, and just how rare it is for someone to actually get to that ultimate goal of opening a gallery and selling waterfalls. [00:47:00] Speaker B: Yeah, and you know what though? Look at the people who have really made it in that space. And when I say really made it, I'm not, not, I'm not talking about people who have got a gallery who are selling them and I don't need working with anyone's business. But look at the big, big, big names out there. You know, look at Aqua Bumps as an example. You know, phenomenal photographer for a start. But it's not about the photography. That is entirely, I believe, a business driven gallery. You know, not that I know them from a bar of soap making a huge assumption here, but you open a gallery in an incredibly wealthy area that is incredibly, iconically Australian, you go out every single day and show everyone how bloody amazing it is and then you sell things that remind people of how amazing it is. That's a business decision. You know, if you just go and took photographs around the world and said look at all these amazing places around the World, no one's going to buy that because it has no connection to them. And so you look at the guys up in the Northern Territory who have made it. I don't actually know any of their names, but. Or in Western Australia up in Broome, there's some really good galleries up there. What do they sell? Stuff that reminds people of that spot where it's a really emotionally connective area. You know, Brooms are classic. You know, that's, that's the biggest stop on someone's round Australia trip. It's a life changing moment for most people. So memories of those areas are going to sell. You take photographs, you know, look at Tom down at the Peninsula. You know, people have their beach houses down there. They want to be reminded of that because when they work so hard to own a beach house in Portsea, they want to come home to their house in Toorak and see Portsey on the wall so that they remember where they've got to go on the weekend. You know, there's, there's destinations work like that. But I think if you just want to be a waterfall photographer or something, it's like how big is the market really for people who go, I want some random walk I've never heard of before on my wall. It's like it's not real. And so, yeah, that's, I think, where that there's a big separation between creative passion and business because you've got to be sensible about what you think people want and where the market is. And just because 10 people tell you that you should do it, because I would buy one that doesn't make a business, that means you probably found that 10 people who would buy one and then when they're gone, who else? [00:49:10] Speaker A: Crickets. Crickets. [00:49:12] Speaker C: Can we do, can we do something fun then? Can we, can we do a fun exercise? No. Well, yeah. Okay, yeah, let's start. Let's make waterfalls. No, let's just turn taps on around Bendigo and see if we can make a waterfall in bendigo. So it's 20, 25. There are a lot of people that still would love to make a business out of their photography, whether it's part time or full time in many disciplines. You've just explained one, that it's almost impossible to make a business photographing waterfalls. But then you've simply laid out the formula for. I'm not saying it's easy. I said it's a simple formula for creating a successful gallery. Simple, not easy, not the same thing. [00:49:56] Speaker B: Simple formula which have a gallery, by the way. So I'm talking out of depth here, but. [00:50:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like. And Hypothetically, though, in 2025, let's play around with some various photography, whether it's styles or business models, and talk about how if you were starting over in 2025, how you would go about trying to get that off the ground. Like grassroots, just getting it going. Not building the world's biggest business on day one. But let's go with. [00:50:33] Speaker B: Anyone who's actually doing it at the moment yet. [00:50:35] Speaker C: No, because we're just talking about, like, hey, we're just. We're just giving it a go. Like, someone wants to give this a go. This is a way that you would give it a go in 2025. And let's start with something that you've got experience with, which I do want to talk to you about your business with it. But say for commercial photography, someone. Someone's a photographer, they've got some skills and they're like, I want to build a business being a commercial photographer. I've done a couple of jobs for a couple of mates who've got businesses and stuff. Now I don't know what to do. [00:51:02] Speaker B: Yep. [00:51:03] Speaker C: What would you do? [00:51:06] Speaker B: What's the. What commercial angle? Is it like. Are we talking, like, product photography? We're talking, like, interiors, we're talking architecture, we're talking. [00:51:13] Speaker A: That's the thing. They don't know. [00:51:15] Speaker C: Okay, so that's the thing. So you're probably saying the first thing would be to do is maybe focus in on an aspect of commercial photography rather than trying to be a generalist. [00:51:24] Speaker B: No, definitely not. I think. I think a generalist is the way to do it, but I think it's more. More about what you've done. Like, if I was it. Look at it. If I was starting that. That business today and I wanted to become a commercial photographer, the first thing I would do is I wouldn't do anything for free. That's probably the biggest, like, red flag in my world is. And I think this tied into something you sort of said last week where someone was maybe having a little tiny bit of a knife fight on YouTube in the comments about, you know, we probably never touched cameras we're talking about. And I go, and the reason was that we hadn't created a review video on YouTube. I don't have time in my life for a review video. Why? Because I'm busy actually working. I don't have time to do my Instagram account. My Instagram account's atrocious. My. My Facebook's even worse. My Website's kind of somewhat up to scratch, but it's because I'm busy doing stuff. And I think that the moment you start going and doing things for free, I think firstly, it doesn't do the industry any favors. And if you're new to the industry, you might not realize that yet, but you will when you start actually becoming successful in the industry. It sets up a real tone of devaluing the product that's created, because it sounds as though like we're not actually handing anything over. You're handing over digital stuff. And so therefore it's not tangible. Therefore if you didn't get paid, it doesn't really matter because you didn't lose anything. I mean, it didn't cost you money to take the photo. And I don't think that's true. There's a lot of money involved in taking that photo. I would also say, though, that when you start doing this stuff, it's important to know your worth, but also be realistic and find clever ways to bring your price down without bringing your worth down. So as an example, you know, approaching businesses that you have a vested interest in as an example. So let's say, for instance, you. I had one student a while ago, she was really interested in taking flights, flower photography and wanted to do something a bit more commercial. And she was buying like 50 bucks worth of flowers a week from the shop down the road to photograph them and doing interesting experiments with them. And then the shop started asking her for her photos and she wasn't sure what to charge them because they said, what do you. How much would you charge to use them on our gift cards and stuff like that. And my answer to her was, don't bother charging, because the best you'll get is maybe like 50 or 100 bucks a photo. And they're only going to probably buy like 5 or 10 off you at best, because that's all they need to fulfill their business purpose. Instead, why don't you say to them, ongoing, how about you give me that bouquet of flowers or off cuts or whatever it is that you're selling me every week? Why don't you give me something like that and I'll give you some photos in return? And so it wasn't that you're doing it for free because you're both getting something, you're both having to give up something and you're both getting something out of it. You've created a relationship that's now going to be ongoing, and at some point in time they're going to say, hey, we want you to do more because we really love your stuff, we got to know you, we've got a relationship and then that's when you can turn on and go, great, well, we can do more. But this is what it's going to cost and you've already built that relationship. And people like working with people who, that they know, who are easy, who are uncomplicated and who essentially have a really clear idea about what things cost and what they need. I think that when it's wishy washy or when it's overstated, that's when you scare clients off. I see. You know, I had someone recently, I won't name names and also the person will know who they are if they listen to this and credit to them because they've been really receptive to the feedback that I gave. But I looked at hiring someone to help me with some shoots and I said to them, they're fresh out of uni, essentially they did a photography diploma or advanced diploma or something like that. They're a great photographer, they're really good, they've got a good eye for things, they're really nice people person. And I said to them, what are your rates? And what they did was they jumped online and looked up the media rates for Australia's award rate for media or whatever it is and came back to me and said, this is my rates. And I said, yeah, but I can't really send you out on your own yet. I'm doing stuff you'd be sort of assisting mostly. And I said, even if I sent you out on your own, your rates are now actually almost on par with mine. So if I'm sending you out on a job, you know, there's nothing in it. They're asking for quite a lot of money, you know, one year out of uni and they wanted to earn what it was like $1,000 a day kind of thing. And I'm going, you've not done the research as to how this fits into your life. You've just looked at a chart and said, well, that's what it should be. But that doesn't, that chart doesn't take into account your years of experience, all these things that people give away for free. So find ways to make yourself appealing for people to hire without just saying, I'll do it cheap or I'll do it free. Find a compromise so you can start a good relationship, a good conversation with people, build the relationship and then they'll recommend you to friends and the friends are not going to have any expectation they're going to get a favor. So it's the tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 clients that are going to start paying top rate for it because they've had all these great recommendations. And yes, you might have done a bit of work for a bit cheaper than what you would have liked, but it still covered your costs and still made sure that you had a value. And by the time you get those extra two or three client referrals deep, now you're charging whatever you want because everyone relies on you and trusts you and you've shown that you can actually deliver. That's kind of where I'd take it if I was doing it from today. If I was doing commercial, I'd say yes to everything as well. Don't be ashamed of the fact that someone asks you to take photographs of toilet brushes to put on some random discount site. That's okay. It might not be a passion, it's not waterfalls. It's still a job. It's still someone who's going to refer you. I always look back and said that there is someone on the planet who works in a factory that makes nothing but calculator buttons, buttons. And that's their job and they've got to be proud of that job and they've got to embrace that. And I think as photographers, we've got to get our egos out of the way and be like, I shoot everything. I still shoot. Yesterday I did a whole day of headshots. I shoot kindergarten marketing shots. I mean, I shoot some cool stuff as well, but I do animation projects for clients, for internal communications. Some of this stuff's so dry. It's nothing like me going to Africa or Tonga or all that stuff. But that's part of it. You know, life's not meant to all be the highs. And I think we've got to get our ego out of the way and realize that if you're doing this as a business, you know, the business bits got to come first and you've got to put the other stuff aside sometimes. [00:57:39] Speaker C: Great advice. It's exactly what I wanted. And that was. That was commercial. Now we've got the rest of the photography genres that we're going to go through. Three day podcast by the end of it. [00:57:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I do. [00:57:56] Speaker C: I want to ask. I want to ask you some more questions about commercial photography, because I am. I do a bit of it. I don't do a lot of it. Is your commercial photography under Matt Crummonds? Matt Crummonds photography under the same brand as your Workshops and everything like that. [00:58:12] Speaker B: Currently everything is under just my name and I don't advertise any it anywhere. I don't. I've started to actually I've started advertising my drone shoots, my drone stuff. But that's because it was meant to be the first page of like six pages and then I just haven't done the other five I will put up on the website. But yeah, it's all under one name. I don't know that that's a great idea. I think retrospectively I probably would have chosen a business name that wasn't my own. [00:58:35] Speaker C: For the, for the commercial specifically or for the whole thing? [00:58:39] Speaker B: Just for the whole thing. You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with. I'll put it this way, one of my the reasons why I've got a lot of my clients because I don't have a lot of commercial clients, I've probably got like 10 or 15 clients that I work with. I don't do a lot of sort of one offs for people. You know, I've got good relationship long term clients, which is the way to do it. Because the admin goes right down and the trust goes right up and gives us a lot more flexibility to work with each other. But a lot of my inroads at the beginning were that I being a more of a photography instructor, those businesses approached me to come in and chat to their marketing teams to work out how we could insource some of their really basic event photography. So where, you know, businesses have got these small events, they're not going to pay $1,000 for a photographer to come out and photograph it because it's only going to be like two snaps that they need for their newsletter or something. And so I'd come in and teach them how to do it. I'd have like you know, three or four of them in a class. We'd do a whole day going through phones, videos, everything like that. And then inevitably they realize actually they got these slightly bigger projects and here's this person that's actually come in and we've got the trust. Because I'm not trying to make them fail, I'm not trying to pull the wool over their eyes. Like I've come in there and told them exactly how it is. This is exactly how you shoot it, no secrets. And then when they've got an actual shoot, who's the person you want to bring in? The person that you trust to teach you and the person who's had a trustworthy relationship, who's who's there to help and give you advice and tell you the times where you go, guys, you don't need me on this one. You can do this or this person can do this, or this is not going to be of any value. And giving that really honest feedback. So yeah, I kind of think that my teaching leads into a lot of my commercial work and I think having under one brand is actually quite a useful thing. It gives a lot more credibility where if it's just portfolios, I mean, you don't really stand out, do you? People don't hire portfolios, they hire people. Yeah, there was a good saying that I heard ages ago, I don't remember who the quote is attributed to, but it was, you only have to be good at two of three things. You either got to be a pleasure to work with, always on time, or produce amazing work. You don't need to do all three, you only ever need to do two. You can be horrible to work with, but produce really good work always on time, people will tolerate you. You can produce pretty average work, but if you're a really pleasurable to work with and you're always on time, people will tolerate that too. They'll work in those threes. And I think it's a really good piece of advice for people because you don't have to be perfect and it gives you a little bit more flexibility to say yes to big things you might not be expert at. Just be really on time with it, be a really nice person to deal with. And I promise you, people overlook maybe the slightly subpar work. And then of course you'll get experience over time and you'll fill that extra gap, but you'll get the experience or the opportunity at least at the beginning. [01:01:19] Speaker A: I think that's really good advice. Especially the, you know, people think, oh, but my, my work should carry me. My, my outcome output should carry me. But you know, I've been a, in a past life, I was a high level people manager and the amount of kids that I fired from mostly call center jobs that they just, they couldn't show up on time and they couldn't be nice people to be around. And it resulted in them, you know, having to explain to their next employer why they have a gap in their resume and you know, why they've suddenly lost their income. It's that whole. And I think I don't want to get on my, on my rocking chair on the front porch and start ranting at the clouds. But you know, I think, I think they're really core skills for what we do, but for any industry. And I think work ethic is a really important and valuable asset that people can carry through life. And I all too often I've seen people that just don't understand what work ethic is and how it can actually elevate what they do and how much they, they can produce. So it's a, it's really valuable feedback. [01:02:28] Speaker B: I think the classic in this is like a lot of my clients, we have such a good relationship that we, you know, a lot of the, the briefs that I get are by text message now. A lot of the, the feedback sessions that we do with imagery or with video and stuff like we text each other. It's not done through these, necessarily through the formal channels. And it shows you the relationship part where you make it easy rather than being like, no, you have to come onto my website where you review your images and select the ones you like and I'll touch those ones up and you're making more work for your client. You know, your client doesn't want more work. That's why they hired you. So if it takes you an extra hour, you don't have to bill that hour. You could just appreciate the fact that you're earning really good money for the other hours you've already billed and that this is a tiny bit above and beyond which will mean you'll guarantee yourself the next job. And I think that that's where that accountability of what do you, how do you treat your clients? How do you, how do you treat yourself and your own business when you're starting up? Don't be the person who tries to document every bloody line item. Be the person who makes someone's life simple because you'll be loved forever. I've working with some of my clients now for like the last 15 years. Even pre, pre Olympus, I worked with some of these guys doing some side projects. And the thing that I love about it is we have such a good relationship and trust now that when I tell them it's going to be a really expensive job, they don't turn around and go, oh, really? We're getting another quote. They turn around and go, yeah, you're probably right, you know, and it's not because it's, I'm not deliberately, you know, taking advantage of that. It's just that if it's a big job and it's a big project, they've now got trust that when it's a small thing, we just get it done. Often I'll give advice and I'll Give long phone calls and you know, read through things for them for free just because it helps to nurture those relationships. A lot of I think newer businesses, I won't pinpoint younger people because I don't think it's specifically younger people. But I think a lot of new businesses, they want to account for every minute of the time. Like their lawyers charging in five minute blocks. And it's like, that's not our industry. Our industry is about collaboration and making life easier, you know. [01:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah, Y feedback. [01:04:30] Speaker C: Can we talk? And we don't have to talk about your, your specific business details because that's not really what I'm trying to ask about. But I want to talk about pricing for commercial photography in 2025. [01:04:44] Speaker A: Just before you do that, I'm just going to take a quick break before I make my own waterfall. [01:04:49] Speaker C: Okay. If you got an N, if you got an ND filter, Greg, take an ND in there with you and see if you can get a nice stream. Smooth, smooth. [01:05:01] Speaker B: Do it in monochrome though, you know, keep it abstract. [01:05:03] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, we could. He might be able to start a gallery. Yeah, I want to, I want to find out because there was the whole, there was always the traditional commercial photography rates model that I never really understood that well, which was very much around like different levels of licensing for print versus a billboard versus this versus that and all that kind of stuff. And that was when I was coming up in photography. There's a lot of talk about that like, oh, people don't know how to price their work because you know, someone should pay you a lot more if they're going to print it versus they're going to use it on a digital flyer or whatever. I never really got into it because the clients I work with, I just kept it pretty simple. But I don't know where I work in a sort of a little siloed area. And I don't know what the rest of the industry is doing these days. Do you know what's happening? Okay, what's your philosophy on pricing? [01:05:57] Speaker B: My philosophy on pricing is really, really, really, really overly simple. And just to put a comment on that last bit, this is important to note is that there are some commercial photographers who need that complexity in their licensing because of the way that they shoot. So I definitely don't think it's a bad thing. I just think that it's a model that gets applied to the wrong businesses sometimes. So you go, if you're a commercial photographer doing like high end brand work, you know, talking like really, really, really well known brands and you're doing their above the line hero marketing campaigns. I can definitely appreciate that you're going to spend days and days and days just to get a shot that's going to be the COVID shot of that thing and therefore to price that accordingly is very difficult. And you may not have on top of that regular work, as in like every day you're booked, because these are very big hero projects, therefore you're going to rely on things like licensing. So I'm not dismissing the licensing thing. What I will say is that most of us, like 99.9% of us are not in that category. We shoot for small businesses or smaller businesses. They're usually not things that require licensing in my eyes. I think it adds a level of complexity that you also can't police. So as an example, I've seen brands before and in fact I've had one bad experience where I, the model that I was shooting with had some licensing things around their modeling, which is fair enough. And I can appreciate that a bit more because that's kind of their face being used in one brand and they might not be able to then work with a different brand because of that. But essentially this brand had agreed that it was for a online catalog and in the end they ended up using those images printed on all these pop up banners at trade shows and like it was everywhere. And I had a bit of a go at them and said like, guys, you've agreed with the model that this is for one campaign now you've made them your hero pin up person. And like that's not okay. I said, from a photographer's perspective, I'm not as fast, but I've now got a model who will never work with me again because they feel betrayed when it wasn't my call to do that. So that's probably my only experience in licensing space. But what I look at, my business model or pricing model is actually really, really, really simple. Simple as advice. And I think it will naturally find its own groove beyond this. When you're starting out, I encourage people to think about what do they want to earn a year? Like, what do you want to earn a year? If you're happy to earn $100,000 a year, great. That's your number. If you're happy to earn $200,000 a year, that's your number. Whatever that number is, you need to have a number, you know, because you're going to be coming from some sort of employment elsewhere. You need to go, what do you need in your life to Live with knowing that of course things will grow, but that's your baseline. Then you've got to work out roughly how many days a year could you feasibly work? Because it's not 365, I've learned. [01:08:51] Speaker C: And I'm sure you've tested that based on what I've seen. [01:08:56] Speaker B: So what we ended up doing is we. You then divided by the number that you had, of course add things like jst, superannuation, all that other junk that goes on that maybe people don't really see. Keeping in mind, also you have to pay tax. I know there's been a lot in the media recently about, you know, sole traders surprised they had to pay tax at the end of the year. Like that's a thing. It's pretty easy. [01:09:17] Speaker A: It's that influencer market. [01:09:19] Speaker C: Jesus. [01:09:21] Speaker B: Tax rate is like these are really simple calculations and that'll actually give you an end of year financial number. That, that should be your goal number. Then you go and divide that by the 52 weeks in the year, or 48 if you want to take some holidays. And then you work out per day and then you work out roughly on a daily basis. How many hours can you actually be working or how you're going to structure it? I like to structure things as either their half days or full days because charging for an hour or two means it's rooted up the rest of my day. I can't charge six clients one hour a day. That's not really going to work. So it's either half day or full day. And that will give you your rate. Screw what the industry is doing. I don't care what the industry is doing because some people in the industry are wildly experienced and have way more skill and talent than me. And I can't measure my skills against them. Some people are total hack jobs and I'm not going to measure myself against them. You don't know what they offer from a relationship perspective, a helpfulness perspective, an end product perspective, or maybe that end product is probably the only thing you maybe can measure. And even then it's very, very kind of, you know, smoke and mirrors. Work that out and suddenly you've got yourself a full time wage. Now that's your goal. That's what you got to start chasing rather than looking at the other way around and going, oh wow, if I charge this much and I do this many projects, this is what I learned. Think about it the other way around. Like this is a real job, it should have a wage. That's what the wage is. This is how much you're going to make. And now you've got a goal to chase. And that's where the hustle starts, you know. [01:10:42] Speaker C: Okay, so how does that fit into, how does editing and stuff, post production fit into your. Right, so basically, let's say, let's say Lucky Strap says, hey, Matt, need you for a half day shoot. [01:10:54] Speaker B: Fact, it is you. [01:10:55] Speaker C: So you build your everything into that half day. You would give me a price. You'd be like, hey, that half day is going to cost you $86,000. I'd be like, geez, Matt, sounds like a good deal. [01:11:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:06] Speaker C: And then, and then me as the client, I would hang on, you were. [01:11:09] Speaker A: Only going to charge me like 20 bucks an hour to photograph the products? [01:11:14] Speaker B: Well, it shouldn't include post, obviously. [01:11:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:20] Speaker C: Okay. [01:11:22] Speaker B: This is the simplification, isn't it? Like if you're a client, like, put yourself in my shoes. Sorry. Put yourself in the client's shoes for a second. Lucky Straps wants to get some promotional shots done. Now the reality is you want to hire someone, let's call it for a full day photography. Because you know, you want to do lots of different shots of people climbing mountains and doing all sorts of stuff with your straps. The moment you have to ask the question, how many images will I get? That to me says you don't trust the photograph. [01:11:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:11:47] Speaker B: And does it matter how many you get? Like at the end of the day you'll get what you get. You'd rather get quality rather than getting just everything. Because I have to make up a number. I mean, if the lighting conditions are great, we'll probably get a billion shots. If the lighting conditions are average, we'll get enough to get us by and make sure that you feel like you've got value. But we're not going to go and shoot more stuff just to fill a quota. That's ridiculous. [01:12:09] Speaker C: But so this day rate, let's call the day rate for interest sake and hopefully it's probably somewhere in the ballpark of commercial photography on a small scale for small business these days. Let's say the day rate's two grand. That gets you edited images. Would it get. So let's say it was either going to be, you know, we had tough lighting conditions and a lot of setup, so we got 10 finished images, or we had epic lighting conditions and everything was just kind of happening. A lot of, you know, a lot of shooting going on. There's 250 images you would deliver either like the editing, you, it's just, you Win some, you lose some. If you have to edit 250, you'll edit 250 and the client doesn't pay extra. You just, you just like, hey, that, that was the rate we agreed on. And I got all these great shots. Here they are. [01:12:56] Speaker B: Keep in mind that I don't my editing for commercial. I don't do like, you know, product photography where I have to touch everything up to a T. Like I don't pull it into Photoshop and go through that whole rewind role. I'm a lightroom editor for most of my projects. So most of the stuff that I would find myself shooting personally, they are things that I could very easily go and you know, edit one photo up, copy paste the edits across and then go through each of them and probably spend one minute doing a quick masking job or a quick touch up job. So it might take me 2 hours, 3 hours to edit it. But to be perfectly frank with you, you're earning $2,000 a day doing commercial photography and you're probably only working for eight hours that day. You're earning $220 an hour. I reckon you could sacrifice two hours to edit some photos. I think you'll be fine. Whereas I think culture comes from a bit where I see people going, oh, but I've got to edit for two hours. And I'm like, step back and think about what you charged them five seconds ago. Because the client isn't the client that you're, you're working for. They're not earning $2,000 a day. Generally you're talking to someone who's in marketing, who's got a really strict budget. They're probably earning $100,000 a year and they're seeing you walk around in their mind, they're like, you must be on $700,000 a year, right? Charge you. [01:14:07] Speaker C: They do the maths. They're like, hang on five days a week, 48 weeks a year. Holy. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah. You're trying to charge them for a couple of emails and some extra editing. Like that's so illogical. I mean, what's one way to make someone feel like shit is to put that in their face. So I think that the case here is that you're buying an end product. There's no hidden fees and charges. You do this, trust me, I'll get your job done. And if I give you 10 images, it's not because I'm lazy. It's because that was the best we could do with that day and the days behind me. And we get 250 images. Just count your stars that you got an amazing bargain that day. And you know what? That relationship will be nurtured and go on forever. [01:14:43] Speaker C: Yeah, I completely agree that. Now, that being said, just briefly, I am a lightroom editor. I'm very similar to you, but there have been times where extra attention has had to be paid back for an image with that. What I would normally do with a client is say I'd send them the 250 and say, hey, here's all the images. I think they turned out great. If you plan on using any of these for the side of a bus, let me know and I'll give them a quick once over just in case. Is that a. Does that make me look bad as a photographer that they all aren't ready for the side of a bus? Or is that a legitimate way to kind of be like, hey, you know, like I can't spend an hour on each photo because there's 250 of them. But I just want to double check if you plan on blowing this up enormous for some sort of thing, how would you approach that? Or do you ever approach that with clients? [01:15:31] Speaker B: No, I let. That's not, that's sort of, you know, once those images are handed over, I hand them over at the highest res that I can. Are there things I might do to a particular image? It's going to be a hero image, maybe, but also it's not my brand going on the side of that bus. If they've chosen do that, they'll probably put it through their own graphics team, you know, that would be my approach, to be honest. [01:15:50] Speaker C: Yeah. So you never, you never have that conversation with them or whatever. You just deliver it and in your mind, if that gets used for something massive, well, you're happy with that. Otherwise you wouldn't have given them that image. [01:16:01] Speaker B: Exactly. And like, I mean, the other thing is that they're not going to choose a crap image. And if they choose a crap image, well, that's awesome. [01:16:06] Speaker C: Sometimes. Sometimes they do. [01:16:10] Speaker B: That doesn't reflect on you. Do you know what I mean? I don't want to be blase about it, but that doesn't affect you at all. You are a photographer, you shot this stuff. As long as you're proud of what you've delivered. I mean, I wouldn't deliver an image that I don't like or I think it's rubbish. They might choose the wrong image for the wrong campaign. But you're not their marketing team, you're the photographer who shot for their marketing team. So knowing your place in this industry is pretty important as well. Just because you don't believe in what they're doing or how they're doing it, that. That doesn't mean that you know more. That's up to them, how they want to position themselves. [01:16:41] Speaker A: They paid for that right, haven't they? They've paid for the right to do what they want with the image. Within reason. [01:16:46] Speaker B: That's why I believe in the licensing thing, really, in my. In my level of photography, because they've bought my time at a good rate and I've delivered them a product at a good rate. We have an agreement. That was the agreement. If they want to, like, that image is now theirs, you know, like, I don't think. It's not something I have the right to go and on sale to a different client now. I mean, they didn't commission it, so I don't see the point in holding. You know, I hate that whole discussion around who owns the image. Doesn't bloody matter who owns it, really. At the end of the day, you shot it for someone in good faith, you gave it to them. If they use it for what they use it for, that's how they used it. Unless they put up a billboard saying, matt's a photographer. See this? Like, that's. That's. That's an exception. But. [01:17:26] Speaker A: But outside of that, then it's your lawyer's problem. [01:17:30] Speaker B: It's never going to be a lawyer's problem. It's going to be a problem that you're. You're going to beat yourself up over, probably completely ruin a relationship and no one's going to win. I just say expect that. That's how people operate in this world and that's. You might not like it, but if you go into it with that expectation, you're not going to get upset about it, you know? Yeah, yeah. [01:17:48] Speaker C: I've actually. I have a question. Follow up on that. But first, Nick Fletcher says they always choose a crap image. It drives me nuts. Yes, I. That's the thing. [01:17:56] Speaker B: Like in your portfolio, Nick, I hate to say it, but that's because you as a photographer. [01:18:06] Speaker A: Oh, dear. [01:18:08] Speaker C: Where's the I've lost my applause sounds? Oh, well, sorry. That was good. That was good. It was a scream. All right, so tell me this, because this one gets brought up a lot on the Internet and I would love to know your opinion on it. You've delivered the client the images and they reach out and they say, can we have the raw files from that shoot? Matt? [01:18:32] Speaker B: I'd probably say No, I don't hand over my whole bank of RAW files. But if they said there's a particular file that we want as a RAW file, my first question is, what for? Then usually it's a really legitimate answer. They come back with, I've had that happen to me a couple of times. I did some work with a four drive company and they wanted the RAW files and they said, oh, because we edit all of our files in a particular style so that when we use them commercially, they all match. And I was like, that's totally legit. Yep. The fact that they edit their files all the time means that they know what to expect from a RAW file. They're not going to look at it and go, oh, that's a bit weird. They're going to look at it and go, yeah, cool. That's a balanced shot that I need to go and touch up. So do I care? No. But if I had someone doing, let's say, personal photos, not that I do any personal photography, but or a small business who I knew didn't have a history in that, my answer would probably be, what changes do you need made? Let me work on them for you. And I'd do it. And I probably wouldn't charge them for it. I just try and maintain that relationship because there's probably something going on in their mind that they're thinking that they can't communicate. So let's have the conversation, work out what they need and next time I'll be a better photographer for it because I'll be able to deliver what they're after and we won't have to have that conversation again. Sacrifice a couple of hours and everyone's peachy and we've probably got the next job as well. [01:19:41] Speaker C: I love it. Do they? So if it was someone who just said, hey, you know, we just want to edit in a similar style to all of our other images, but blah, blah, blah, would you charge them for it or would you just be like, hey, now, here's the file. Can't wait to work with you on the next shoot. [01:19:55] Speaker B: Takes me 4 seconds to load it into Dropbox. If I'm charging by the second, then I'm unemployed in this industry. Love it. I just give it to them. Why not? Like, what, skin off your nose is it? I mean, are you going to use that image for something else? [01:20:07] Speaker C: Some people have this really die hard thing where it's like, no, these are my digital negatives. No one can have them except for the photographer and that. That's it. There's this staunch on it. And it's like we've. Yeah, yeah, David. Okay, David. Saying that's like giving your film away. I. I don't see it that way because it's not. It's a copy of a file. They're getting it. Yeah, they're getting a copy of it anyway. They're getting a finished copy. This is just a. More data. Essentially an unfinished copy. I don't know. I don't see it as. As. As giving away some sort of intrinsic copyright. [01:20:43] Speaker B: Like, you know, the difference here, Justin, is that this is where I was saying before. There's a wild difference between business and art and business. And if a photographer asks, like, I'll put it this way. When Fuji, I shot the campaign for the GFX system, they asked for the. They asked for a copy because it's a copy of a jpeg, because you can't send an actual jpeg, like, in an envelope or something. I sent them the copy I asked for, and they never asked me for the RAW files. If they asked me for the RAW files, my first question would be, okay, but what for? Because they're presenting me as a photographer, and that is a reflection on me as a photographer. What they present. Because people will look back at those images and be like, that's Matt's work. Why are they all edited like this? Because that's not him. That's a different situation. That's where the art comes into it. That's one of the very few projects that I've worked on, a paid project, where I go, that is an artistic project. Most of the stuff that I shoot for clients, I have no interest in that actual photograph. Like, I'm not. I'm invested in them as a client, but I'm not sitting there going, oh, my God, that was such an amazing shot of this. You know, headshot of this rando from marketing. You know, like, that's not amazing. Now I don't have to store the film like, it's. I've got no intimate connection with this stuff, so why on earth do I care about it? And I think that, you know, certainly not universally true, but where most photographers I see fail at being professionals is that they get so caught up that everything they do with their camera is art. And it's not. What you're doing is producing a piece of digital content for someone who just. That's what they need, you know, that's what they paid for. Give them what they paid for. If they take the digital files, if you want to be really nitpicky and be a bit of an ass about it. Be like, great, I'll give you the RAW files, but I'm deleting them on my end. You now own the RAW files, and I don't own them anymore. So if you come back to me in two years and you want the RAW files, I'll be like, I gave them to you, you know, but what's the value? Like, we're just getting nitpicky about having arguments with people. It doesn't make any sense to me. Like, would you work with that person again? [01:22:43] Speaker C: I shouldn't, like, yeah, like you say, everyone's just trying to get. Get their job done and you're trying to make their life easier. [01:22:49] Speaker B: So keep in mind, David there, he says, sorry, I know you're about to say, but that's your income. I agree, but you've already been paid for for it. That's the thing. You got paid to take the photos. The income is not loading a RAW file onto Dropbox. Like, that's not your income. That's what your job is. You're an admin assistant. You're not a photographer. [01:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah, I completely agree. And I can see how there's times where it's, yeah. Different levels, different things or whatever. But, yeah, I agree. It's like, yeah, okay, this is great. The chat's going nuts. This is obviously a good topic. So David says, following up, he's says, back in the day, wedding photographers made income on prints. Sold to a lot of the wedding party. Completely. It was a different. It was a different time. It was a completely different business model, different genre. [01:23:34] Speaker B: I would never hand my wedding photos over to a client because they're not editors, they're not professional. That's not a business, that's a commercial. That's a personal thing. That's not commercial photography. I think there's a very big difference there because you will see people butcher your shots and then be like, yeah, Matt shot this. And they've totally rooted it up. Like, that's not okay. I completely agree on that. Personal photography, very different situation. We're talking commercial stuff. [01:23:54] Speaker C: Yeah, but like, always, I have handed over RAWs for a wedding before. I, I, we don't. We would always go through the process. [01:24:03] Speaker B: Like you said, of law. What's that? Was it in a court of law? [01:24:08] Speaker C: No, no, it was not in a court of law. No, no. But it was like, you would, you would obviously always ask why? Like, what, what do you want? Is it, you know, do you want one image? You want all the Images, blah, blah. There was one person who was a bit of a passionate photographer and they literally just said, I want to have them, I want to store them. I just want to. I just want to store the raws myself for. [01:24:33] Speaker A: In case. [01:24:34] Speaker C: Yeah, in case I'm 70 and I want it. And I was like, sure, whatever. Like, I don't care. They, they weren't planning on re edit because I said, is there an issue with the edit or whatever? No, it was just, it was literally just. I just. They were sort of in their mind, they were treating him like negatives and they were like, I just want to safely store essentially the negatives from my wedding. And I was like, sure, I don't care. [01:24:57] Speaker B: And that's personal choice, you know, isn't it? [01:24:59] Speaker C: Because the thing is, at that point our business was strong enough that even if they put those images out, which I'm sure they weren't going to, but say they poorly edited and put them out and said, oh, these are all shot by. It was like, well, look at all of my work. None of it looks like that, so it wouldn't matter. Like it's not going to ding my reputation. And at that point I had a. [01:25:20] Speaker B: Reputation and arguably people are going to, you know, they go on to your. They've got their JPEGs off you and they load them on Instagram. Like a lot of photographers actually have it in their contracts now that you're not allowed to put filters over your images if you post them on social media. And that I actually. It sounds really harsh and if you're not a photographer, you probably go, what the hell? But I actually agree with that because what you're doing is you're re editing those images and that photographer is relying entirely on their brand because you'll tag them, they'll be tagged like, that's. There's a reputational part of that, but I think that when it comes to like, but again, it's the corporate or the business side of things, like people. I've never seen a business put the photographer's name in the corner of the image, like, and credit them. Because that's not what it's about. It's. It's. Yeah. So I know that's probably a very blurry line, but yeah, like, you'll find people on both camps very, very passionate. I just think that you make your life if you couldn't. I think you're going to find you'll. You'll lose clients. If they're business clients, you'll lose clients when you start Saying no to reasonable requests. [01:26:21] Speaker C: And I think that's the thing that I'm trying to get at from this discussion, I think we did get is, is don't, don't be a die Hard about it. As Dennis has said here, Die Hards. Die. You know, take, take any request, consider it. And don't just be like, oh, the Internet says I should charge 20 grand for the RAW file, so I'm going to hit them with that. You know, like just, just really think about what's going on and what the purpose is and have a conversation with the person and, and don't just be like, I never give the raws out or, or whatever. Just. [01:26:49] Speaker A: It's not the hill of righteousness you want to die on with a client, obviously. [01:26:52] Speaker C: No, no, Few, few good comments. Just circling back to clients picking images. Matt Palmer says as a designer before being a photographer, the client would always choose the worst thing you show them. So you have to be careful about showing them anything you don't like. [01:27:11] Speaker B: That I agree with. And that's what I was saying. Like, don't. If you, if they're going to put on a bus and you're worried about which one they'll put on a bus, that's where you've got to assess your own work first and be like, I better not deliver that in case it doesn't have bus. You know, I don't think you should moderate what they do, but you definitely want to be careful about what you give them. Yeah. [01:27:29] Speaker C: Yeah. Nev Clark, fellow GFX shooter from WA and fellow podcast guest, says if they want to have the RAW files from a GFX camera, they will soon discover how much work goes into editing and they probably won't even be able to upload them into their computer. Yeah, that's a fair point. [01:27:46] Speaker A: I had to upgrade my computer just to test the GFX 1/ hundreds Mark II. Like I just couldn't. [01:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:53] Speaker C: Cam Blake Photography. Hey, Cam says I'm just here for the good looks. Hashtag, Matt's a hottie. [01:27:59] Speaker B: I think what kind of means to say here for his own good looks as he gets published all over YouTube being the new pin up girl for the North Face. I saw that. [01:28:08] Speaker C: What's the deal with that? Is he. Is he an influencer now? [01:28:11] Speaker B: Well, he certainly made me go. I've sold all my camping gear and bought North Face, so yeah, definitely. [01:28:20] Speaker C: Oh, dear. John Pickett says sports photography is the same. I have no attachment to the photos I shoot. They just sit on my hard drives otherwise. [01:28:29] Speaker B: So therefore They've got no value on your drive. They got no value when they come to sell. Yeah. [01:28:33] Speaker C: Yep. Okay. What else? We got this. There's so much going on, we can't keep up with all this stuff. Blah, blah, blah. Cam Blake says, easy solve, just shoot JPEG only. Yeah. Problem solved. There are no rules. When the client asks for rules, you say, what? [01:28:50] Speaker A: What's a rule? [01:28:51] Speaker C: I don't know what I'm talking about. Shoot JPEG and Cam Blake says, I'm rolling in cash now. Being an influencer is da life. [01:29:02] Speaker B: I've got to say that happened well before. You're an influencer. I've seen you buy likers. I've seen you buy by gfx. I've seen you buy them all, mate. There's something going on there. It's. Yeah. You must be selling your raw files to your clients after you shoot them. I reckon for a premium. [01:29:18] Speaker A: For a premium, yeah. [01:29:21] Speaker C: Oh, dear. [01:29:22] Speaker A: I just want to take a quick break, just to. Not another break. No, the waterfall's done. The waterfall's fine. But I just wanted to remind everyone that you are watching and listening to the Camera Live podcast cast, proudly brought to you like by Lucky Camera Straps. Lucky Straps, makers of fine premium leather camera straps from Bendigo, Victoria. They're all 100 handmade, and they come from our hands to yours. So if you're looking for a new strap, hit up Luckystraps.com. we sell straps. We sell gloves here in the southern hemisphere. We're heading into winter eventually. [01:29:55] Speaker C: Focus. Your cannon's having trouble. Look at that. Yeah, yeah. [01:29:59] Speaker A: Nice smooth straps, belts, T shirts and hoodies. Get in there. [01:30:07] Speaker C: Winter's coming. Grab a hoodie. [01:30:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got my hoodie. [01:30:10] Speaker C: Relax, Fit hoodie. We'll send you one, man, you want a hoodie? [01:30:13] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll get you a hoodie. You should wear it. A beef flopping. [01:30:15] Speaker B: Always up for a hoodie. [01:30:16] Speaker A: Promote the brand for free. [01:30:20] Speaker C: Dennis. This is the second best episode ever, right behind yours, Dennis. [01:30:26] Speaker B: I think my first episode with you guys. [01:30:31] Speaker C: Now. So we've only. Greg, we've got a half. Well, maybe half an hour. Matt's probably got to go soon. You got a hard out time, Matt. [01:30:38] Speaker B: That you need to be, but I have to go and pick up a DJI Mavic 4 Pro. [01:30:44] Speaker C: Let's talk about that. [01:30:45] Speaker B: You know, there's that. I've got a toy shop going on this month, so. [01:30:48] Speaker A: Yeah, lots of interesting socials about it. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah, all right. All right. [01:30:53] Speaker C: Let's talk about that. Because I was like, what are we going to talk about. We still got to talk about your GFX stuff, but before we do that, let's talk about drones because. Okay, so first of all, you do commercial work with your drone? [01:31:03] Speaker B: Yes, I do, yes. That's a new thing. I got my qualification in October last year and so I'm slowly breaking into that as a space to again complement the whole. I'll take photos of toilet brushes if I have to. [01:31:19] Speaker C: Very briefly with a drone. [01:31:22] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got a pretty good zoom on it. So. [01:31:26] Speaker C: So earlier, actually, earlier in the chat, I won't go all the way back, but Dennis actually said just take really artistic shots of the toilet roll brush. Dennis, that's my challenge to you. I would like you to light paint artistically a toilet roll brush and then come on the show and talk us through the process. [01:31:44] Speaker A: You've got until Monday night. [01:31:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:48] Speaker C: All right, so you've been, you're trying to build drone work into it, into your commercial work. Tell us a little bit about that and tell us what are you using now and what do you like about the Mavic 4? [01:32:01] Speaker B: So I'm using currently I've got a Mavic 3, but any projects I've had in the commercial space, I've actually hit up my friend Tom Putt and borrowed his Mavic 3 Pro because it is a much better drone. And. Yeah, but upgrading, obviously, the technology has come a very long way. Mine is very much due for an upgrade from an image quality perspective. You know, I think it's important if you're going to deliver to clients and especially when you start shooting with good cameras on the ground, they're going to directly compare the quality of that to what they're getting from the sky. And whilst they're not going to match, you need to shrink that gap as much as possible. And yeah, I mean, it's a sensible upgrade, I think, to be honest. I think there's some stupid things in it. But, you know, on the whole, just the image quality upgrades are worth it. [01:32:46] Speaker C: One of the stupid things. Oh, sorry. [01:32:50] Speaker B: I think that the, you know, I've sort of said this about a lot of different cameras that are coming out recently, but there's a lot of that shift towards the whole influencer thing, no offense, cam, where, you know, like they've got like a spinning gimbal that can do 360 degree spins and you go, what's the value of that? Well, you think, well, great. You can shoot vertical content. Great. The only thing that's got is for social media. You can Crop that in any way. The other consideration is when you do go vertical, you can't tilt it down more than, like, 20 degrees. And so you can't actually get a lot of flexibility in those vertical shots. I saw a guy using it for stitching, which looked pretty cool. But on the whole, I'm not really convinced that that's a tool. That's a professional tool. I think it seems kind of cool, but ultimately it will never get used by professionals. And I'm sure it probably cost a lot of money to put into the drone and probably slowed the production down a lot. [01:33:38] Speaker C: But they're their teaser videos where the horizon spinning is worth every bit of research and development that went into that spinning drone. [01:33:46] Speaker B: Because it's like so many. What. And this is, you know, again, this will get me on a rant. But like, any commercial project that I've ever done, nearly any commercial project I've ever done, I should say, doesn't it all represent what you see on a YouTube channel? Like, businesses actually don't want that. Like, I've done. I've tried before. I had very, very serious client, and they wanted to do something a bit more upbeat and a bit more, you know, like, cool. And so I shot a piece that was shot in a really kind of like, fast transitions, you know, like lots of movement, you know, fast pace. And what they came back to me and said was, oh, like, that's great and all, but we need it to be accessible, so we need to slow it down by about 50%. We can't have this shot. We don't want these transitions. And by the time they actually strip it back, it looked exactly like every other boring corporate video. Why? Because in a corporate space where they're actually paying good money for this stuff, they don't need flashy or one flashy. What they want is a video that's in, you know, it's. It's good enough to watch and incentivizes people to watch it. But, my God, if I showed someone a drone shot in a corporate business of the horizon line moving, they'd say, I'm sorry, but HR says this makes some people feel seasick. I mean, it's not. Yeah, very novelty tool that you'll see a lot of travel bloggers using, but no one else. [01:35:00] Speaker C: I did. [01:35:01] Speaker A: I did just think, because the. The DJI Mavic 4 sorry, Justin 4 Pro, they are selling a creator combo bundle. [01:35:07] Speaker B: Well, that's the word. Yeah. [01:35:08] Speaker C: Everything is a creator combo. [01:35:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:35:11] Speaker A: Sorry, Joe. [01:35:12] Speaker C: I was just gonna say I did it. I Did a commercial shoot on Tuesday and drones, I. I never like unless they want it. I don't normally discuss it beforehand, but if it works on the day, I'll often say, hey, I've got the drone. Would you like me to put it up? Because I never know. [01:35:27] Speaker B: Of course, your insurance company and your licensing with CASA would be like, you know, obviously approve of that in there. Justin, you don't say this on YouTube. [01:35:36] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. Hey, I've got all of the appropriate accreditations and whatnot. [01:35:42] Speaker B: Actually do. [01:35:44] Speaker C: It's registered and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I don't have. I'm going to ask you about the course that you did. I don't know if I have that. [01:35:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll go into a whole big wormhole. [01:35:52] Speaker C: Yeah, okay. All right, we'll save that for another. Maybe we'll do a drone episode. Maybe we'll get a few drone drones on a Monday night. Drone. [01:35:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you have a fun. [01:36:01] Speaker C: Anyway, so I did. I put the drone up and. Yeah. What would you imagine that I got? It was basically a work site. Big hole in the ground, replacing a giant bit of like a 1.2 meter diameter pipe for bar and water or whatever. Big crane on site. And basically you keep your distance and you slowly work your way around in a semicircle, very, very slowly, and film that. And then you work your way back, take a few photos. Then you move a little further away and you do the same thing again. And you know, like, it's not. There's no. Yeah, there's nothing exciting. [01:36:33] Speaker B: Also, to be honest, nothing you see on YouTube is technically. Like, when I say legal, I don't want to be a wet blanket, but at the end of the day, if you're doing commercial work and you're doing stuff that's not actually within spec or scope, you're asking for a nightmare. Like, you want to lose everything you've got, go and have an insurance issue with an unregistered, uninsured drone doing flying through fog in the middle of a city over people, and, you know, something happens. It's like there's. Yeah, a bit of risk mitigation there. So what you can actually legally do with the drone mostly doesn't involve these novelty features, you know, and clients don't want you to do illegal stuff because it's their ass as well. [01:37:07] Speaker C: That's actually a really good point. A lot of the. The night features where they're like, hey, you can, you know, this beautiful shot of Hong Kong at night or whatever. It's like, how many people can. Are actually allowed to do that? [01:37:18] Speaker B: Well, yeah. I mean, especially over people like, I mean, you can do your cam. You can do. So for instance, like, I've got night approval. I've got my reoc. So you can do night. You can't. But you can't, still can't fly through fog. It's got to be within direct line of sight. And when you fly at night, technically you need to have like light patterns put on the ground to light up your launch area. You need to have, have permits. Wherever you're flying it, you have to have a whole flight plan with it. Because of course at night time as well, you're. You're not really able to get the same depth perceptions and stuff. There's a lot that goes with it. So I actually find, again, this kind of comes back to what we said before about, you know, doing jobs for free with drone stuff. If you're pulling a drone out and you're not charging good money for that drone and doing it by the book, you're doing yourself a disservice because there's a lot of money in drone work. But big companies will not hire, you know, the teenager who went down to JB hi Fi and bought one. They're going to hire the company that specializes in drones who are going to go through all the paperwork and all the permits and all the bullshit that's going to take you forever. But you get paid for it. You know, you just put it up for free. It won't ensure you any more work. They'd rather you. I think most of my clients would rather me say, actually, sorry, we're not illegally allowed to do that. That's not possible here. We would need to do all these permits. And what they usually say is, okay, great, can we get those permits? And I say, yes, it's going to bump our project by month. That's okay. They're actually fine with it. But they would rather you be that honest person rather than just, you know, anyway you get. Stuff is such a nightmare because most people just play ignorant. And the reality is it's actually regulated by a ridiculously strict regulator. And so, yeah, the moment something goes wrong, you. Yeah, no, it's. It's all fun and games until someone. [01:38:51] Speaker A: Gets hurt, you know, so there's a reason and answer. So I was just going to ask a dumb question because I've never been looked into buying a drone. I've never considered the, you know, the background of, you know, being licensed and all that sort of stuff. So you can just walk into jb, hi Fi or Walmart. If you're in the states and you can pick up a drone and there's no need for certification beforehand, you can just walk out the store with a box. [01:39:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So you don't need a license to play with a drone. There's still rules that govern what you can, can and can't do. And I think when you open the box, it's got like an Australian, like a Casa flyer and you scan the code and it takes you to like the top 10 rules, which are, you know, don't fly like within 30 meters of people, buildings, roads, infrastructure, which limits your options. You can't fly in national parks, you can't fly. There's a lot of rules, right? Yeah, we're all bound to. The moment you do it commercially, though, like anything, that's when all the goalposts change. So the moment you get paid a cent to do drone work or things that involve a drone that you're handing people for over for a client. So for instance, if you as Lucky straps took some drone shots to promote Lucky Straps, you can do that without being licensed because you're not selling that service. But if you did a shoot for unlucky Straps and you hand that content over, you would then need to be licensed and insured and not just registered. But like, realistically, you should have your reoccurring, which takes quite a long time to get. It's quite involved and it's not particularly cheap. Like I've just put in a new. A new application to get. It's a. They call it a temporary maintenance order and it's when they don't have a rule for it yet or a way to break the rule yet. So they put these temporary things in place and it's called flying over or near people. So it actually allows you under certain conditions to fly your drone over crowds, but you have to have either a parachute system for emergencies or other drone that falls under a cat, a particular category and then a speed limit on that drone. And like this is taking. It's going to take four months to get approval and it's costing me about $2,000 just to get one line written into my operations manual to let me do it. So it's, it's. When you do it properly, it's a ridiculously difficult thing and. But I think in the future it's going to pay us back in a big way because it's. They will come down very hard when people start doing dumb stuff and when they do, it'll only be the people who did the right thing that are going to survive it from a business perspective. And businesses are going to come very aware that they can't just get, you know, Barry down the road to chuck a drone up. [01:41:21] Speaker A: Yep. [01:41:23] Speaker C: So just to clarify now, do not take this as fact, because it's my interpretation of what I think is correct and I could be 100% wrong, but you don't. You do need to be registered. [01:41:42] Speaker B: You. [01:41:42] Speaker C: Know, you need your rpa. But if your drone is under a certain size, you can use it for business work. Legally, insurance is a whole separate matter, so let's not talk about that. I would 100% be insured and have drone work listed in your insurance of what you do. Where the issue will be, where people probably don't realize is there are a lot of restrictions on where you can fly that for your work. And people will often be like, I'll just do some real estate photography and put it up around these streets and stuff. And that's where you're going to have issues when you're flying over people and roads and stuff like that. If you're out in the middle of nowhere and doing some work for a client. [01:42:23] Speaker B: That'S have. [01:42:25] Speaker C: No, no, no, not under two kilos. Not to do business work. You do not. [01:42:30] Speaker B: That's the difference though is doing business work. Right. For your own business or selling your services are two different things. That's where they clarify the difference in it. [01:42:38] Speaker C: Yeah. For business or as part of your job? For business or as part of your job. [01:42:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's part of his legal. Well, look, this my understanding anyway. Look, from when I did my course where we defined the line and it was for my job would be if you're a real estate agent. Right. And you're doing full year as a real estate agent, you can do it. But if you're selling your services to a real estate agent, that's no longer in that category. [01:43:04] Speaker C: I don't think so. Because it's for business. I don't know. I'm going to get a. [01:43:09] Speaker B: Definitely worth having a look into. But look, at the end of the day, I'll be honest, everyone does it. [01:43:14] Speaker C: Yeah, but you're right, though. I think a lot of people don't realize how much they might be skirting the lines or potentially stepping right over the top of them. And it's very risky if you're. [01:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I had a plumber. [01:43:28] Speaker A: Out the other day because I've got a roof leak and he sent up a drone rather than get Out a ladder. [01:43:33] Speaker B: So that's. So that's part of your job. That would be considered part of your job because you're not selling the product of I'm doing drone work for you. I'm doing it to help aid in my own job. And that's where they define the line in my course. And it was interesting because I queried a few things about what I wanted to do and actually they're very unhelpful. [01:43:50] Speaker C: Casa, the course operator was. [01:43:53] Speaker B: Or no, no, Casa. Because what you do is you inquiry and saying, this is my interpretation of what you've got in your regulations. Can you clarify this situation? Is how I'm interpreting it correctly. And their email back is, see this line in the, in the regulations, which is the same line that I sent them. And they basically have. They refuse to have an input. And so the, the premise that I've got from this is also the, the feedback I've got from the course that I did. They said, basically, you need to interpret lots of things. And it's Cass's way of saying, we're not going to put hard line rules on every situation because you can't. Instead, we're going to give you a set of things that if we believe you did the wrong thing, we're going to pull you up on it, we're going to drag you before our committee and you need to explain how you interpret that rule and how you logically thought through it. So, for instance, if you flew it for real estate and you sold your services to real estate and you put it up there and you didn't have an exclusion zone, you didn't take it off from a place that was more than 30 meters from people, you flew it over a busy road, you did all these things and you said, yeah, but I'm doing it for my job. And I didn't think I needed this. They'd turn around and say, well, here's the other six regulations you broke to do it. Yes, exactly. You know, the classic one at the moment I've heard a lot about is drones going missing in national parks. So one of the reasons I've heard that they don't let you fly in national parks, obviously that's a nuisance and it's wildlife and all that stuff. But one of them as well is that if your drone goes AWOL and it lands or falls out of the sky or hits a bird or something, you've got a lithium battery sitting in the middle of a dense forest, that when it goes through summer, winter, summer, winter and that battery decays. It can be the start of a bushfire. Now you go and fly in a national park, what are the odds of that happening? Very, very low. But even did one of the questions going to be asked is, did you consider this and what was your mitigation? And if you turn around and go, no, I didn't consider it, no mitigation, they're going to say, well, where's your jsa? And you go, what about my jsa? And they're going, well, in your regs it says that you've got to have a risk assessment of every flight. And so it's kind of that unraveling approach to it. I don't think it's about saying there's a strict, you can do this, can't do that. It's more about saying you can't. If you could, there's no ignorance in this. You can't sort of go, oh, I didn't really feel think of it like that. That's not good enough. They're going to say, no, no, here's all the rules. You should have applied every single step of this. You know, so there's a lot of, yeah, I don't want to, I'm not the authority on it, that's for sure. I mean, I've done the courts and I've done my, my fair share of inquiring and it's not been that helpful inquiring part. But I do think it's an area that it's a dangerous area. [01:46:26] Speaker A: I think it's, I think it's, it's all built so quickly. Drone photography. I mean, I know it's been going for a long time, but, you know, and especially now that you can buy drones from pretty much any toy store, any, you know, jb, hi fi, Walmart, all those sorts of things. It does make it very difficult for regulating bodies to manage it as well. I just want to jump to a comment from Cam, who raised a question. Are the punishments hard enough for those cowboys flowing drones without the proper licenses, you rarely hear of someone who has done the wrong thing being caught and punished. What are your thoughts on that one, Matt? [01:47:05] Speaker B: To be honest, I probably don't have much of an opinion on it because I think that that exists in all facets of life, doesn't it? No one. If you don't get caught, you don't get punished. Right. I think that in most cases the person you're getting caught by is probably your own conscience. You're also your risk for appetite. Your appetite for risk. I Mean, I'd say that for me, I know that I've probably done things in my droning that I'd look back at and go, that was probably really like skirting the line. And I got away with it. You know, I probably could have been more safe here. I could have not taken those shots there. Nothing serious. But I'd look at the national park thing as an example. I've got a really hard line on flying in those areas or doing anything that's got a real. The risk to it. So to me, the risk is not getting quite caught by casa, because that's bad, of course. Excuse me. The risk to me is that something actually goes wrong. [01:47:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:57] Speaker B: So, for instance, I look at, you know, I had some students last week on my boot camp who brought drones with them, and they said, can we bring drones? And I said, well, you can bring them, but technically we can't really fly them anywhere. Up around Bright. There's airports all over the place. It's national park all over the place. I said, realistically, I'm going to say you probably can't fly them, but bring them. If there's somewhere that we could fly, we will. And we didn't. And the reality was, as soon as we got up there, I sort of had that moment of going, they're on my workshop. For me to. They're not qualified. They're also under my instruction at the moment. I'm not licensed to instruct them in that. At the moment, in the way that I think I should. I haven't applied for permits to fly them anywhere, which means that suddenly I'm doing unpermitted activities on that land. Now, if something happened, they flew a drone into someone, they smashed into a house, they started a fire, anything, whatever. How would I say. What would I say in court? I'd be like, oh, I just thought it'd be fine. Like, that's not good enough, is it? [01:48:56] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:56] Speaker B: So to me, it's easy to go, don't. We just don't do it. We. We really just. You just avoid it at this point. And the cowboys who go out and do it and whatnot. I don't have an opinion on it. [01:49:06] Speaker C: Well, that's where. [01:49:10] Speaker A: Sorry, Matt. I was just gonna say, it brings me back to my. My question earlier about how you can walk into a big box store and buy a big drone without ever having to really be accountable for it. [01:49:21] Speaker B: Well, you are accountable for it, I think, but you. You're not commercially accountable. Do you mean it's the same way that if you are walking down the street like, there's a lot of public liability that comes in when you're doing things for money. Like, that changes the gold post with most aspects of life. [01:49:35] Speaker A: Yeah, true. [01:49:36] Speaker B: You may think about cooking a meal for someone. If you cook a meal for someone and give it to them for free and they get food poisoning, well, that's your bad. The moment you've been given a dollar for it and they get food poisoning, now you've lost your house. Like. So I think that's. That's exactly why, you know, at this point in time, until it gets better defined, I think I personally just think you stay away from it. You know, doing Things like online YouTube videos and online courses on how to fly drones. That's awesome because it detaches you from people's dumb behavior. But, yeah. [01:50:07] Speaker C: So my advice would be, if you have wandered into JB hi Fi and bought yourself a tiny little Mavic Mini or anything like that, go to the CASA website, go to the drone section, get your RPA operator accreditation. It's basically an online test that doesn't do anything really. But at the minimum, it'll give you the basic set of rules that you need to abide by. The do's and don'ts and don't do the don'ts. And then it'll give you your, like, aviation reference number. You can register your drone, and then at least if anything happens, you can say, well, I. I've done the. The bare minimum that's required by me to own this drone. Don't just buy the drone and fly it without doing that stuff. Because it. Yeah, you need to at least have. Have made an effort to learn the rules. Like, that's it. Ignorance isn't a excuse. [01:51:00] Speaker B: No. And I think that's the thing is people don't realize how dangerous these things can be as well. Like, there's been so many cases where drones have fallen out of the sky around the world, where it's a kilo of. Of, you know, battery and plastic that falls from 150 meters and it hits someone in the head. Like, there was a little girl who died in the States. She's 12 years old, a drone swarm. You know, the big, you know, new fireworks shows. Yeah, yeah, they lost 1500 drones or something came down, or 400 drones or something came down out of the sky, and one hit this little girl in the head and killed it. And you sort of go, what are the odds? Like, very, very low. But, yeah, these things happen, you know, so. [01:51:32] Speaker A: And during the LA wildfires, We saw a drone took out a. We didn't take it out, but it damaged one of the firefighting planes, the scoopers, the water planes. So put it out of commission that. [01:51:45] Speaker B: That person's now being sued not just by the firefighting guys, for damaging the plane. I think it was $180,000 of damage on the wing. But also now the people who lost their houses in that area are suing them because they decommissioned a firefighting plane that could have prevented the fire. And like, just an example of these knock on effects. It's extreme, but it's like, gosh, I don't want that. [01:52:08] Speaker C: You don't. You don't want to take the risk. Levin, from rearview photography. Actual pilot, not fake pilot. Says CASA work on the basis of if we think you've broken our interpreter interpretation of the rules. Will test it in court. Yeah, you don't want to be in that situation. [01:52:27] Speaker B: No, I think I agree entirely. And I think you'll probably lose because they wrote the rules. Yeah. [01:52:32] Speaker A: All right, let's jump to gfx. [01:52:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. We're a long way into this, this show. Yeah. Okay. Matt, you. You've shot every camera brand under the sun other than Rico and Pentax. [01:52:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:52:49] Speaker C: Let's not forget them. What were you shooting with up until recently? [01:52:54] Speaker B: So I've still got Sony. I've been shooting Sony since 2020. I changed across from. I was Panasonic, then Olympus, then Canon, then Nikon. Olympus, Nick, Sony and then Nikon, Sony and then Fuji. So, yeah, recently I purchased my gfx. It's not to replace my Sony gear. It's just a different purpose. So I'm going to have a. I'm going to have cam says I'm. I'm a bit of a camera whore. I think it's more that I've only going to have one. One camera at a time. Not all of them in my bag, but technically. [01:53:32] Speaker C: He said that you're a bigger camera whore than he is. That's true. [01:53:37] Speaker B: It's a different camera. I shot that campaign with Fuji last year, and ever since, I've been teetering with this idea of, like, should I just get something for myself? Because what you find is whatever camera you use for work, you always treat it like work. It's kind of. There's like that Pavlov's dog response. When I pick up my Sony, I kind of go into like, efficient work mode. And despite it being amazing image quality and no flaws there, I think doesn't slow me down. It speeds me up and I think I need to slow down in my life at the moment a little bit with my, my artistic stuff, not the business stuff. And so this purchase of the new JFX was really about going, I want a camera bag that when I go out shooting, that's the bag I pick up. And then when I've got commercial work, that's the bag that I pick up. Because I don't like to mix those two things up. Otherwise I find that even my pleasurable photography, that turns into work. And when you do such a fun genre of work for work, it becomes a blurry line where you often, often feel like you just lose. Everything becomes work, you know, not everything becomes pleasure. It goes the other way. Everything becomes work. And so I've toyed with this. I looked at buying some new lenses and the new Sigma 300-600-F4 Wildlife Lens. My Sony, I put that on order, actually. And then, you know, it was like days before it landed in Australia. I was like, no, that's, that's not going to fit the bill. It's a big lens, it's an amazing lens, but I won't carry it around. I did shoot some great stuff with the Fuji gear. I have played with it like a hundred times, I've borrowed it. And despite what people might think of my relationship with Fuji from our last episode, I do love the JFX system. And so this was going to be my, or is going to be my more artsy camera. [01:55:24] Speaker A: Nice. Good choice. [01:55:26] Speaker B: I say, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty. Like it's actually performs better than what I remember in terms of like auto focus, animal tracking and stuff. Like, it's wildly better than what I remember. And yeah, it's, it's something that ever since I've had it, it's only been a couple of weeks, I've actually had it delivered. I've been borrowing one for a couple of weeks before that, but I do notice I slow down. It doesn't shoot 15 frames a second. It doesn't, it doesn't do all the fancy stuff that some of the new cameras do, but I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's actually quite a good mindful way to shoot. [01:56:02] Speaker C: Okay, so. So it's mainly for your personal work, which is obviously heavily wildlife focused. Or is it. Is, is that, are you seeing that in the future that there is, or is it going to be less of that? Is that because I'm sort of wondering, like, GFX isn't really Specialized in, like, big long lenses. [01:56:21] Speaker A: They got a 500. [01:56:22] Speaker C: Okay. They got a 500. That's true. And it is pretty. It's pretty. Pretty. Nice and compact, actually. Okay, so maybe I'm wrong. Talk me through it. Like, tell me, tell me. [01:56:29] Speaker B: Yeah, so I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't have that lens. Like, it's a. It's the equivalent of a 400 millimeter equivalent, roughly f 5.6. But then the depth of field gives you roughly an F4. So it's a 400 F4. You can put a teleconverter in at 1.4. But also remember, you're 100 megapixels. So there's a lot of cropping ability in there. I think with my work in general, I don't shoot stuff that's really far away. So I don't. I'm not the sort of photographer who likes birds or, you know, those kind of, like, really small subjects that are way off in the distance that I need to get a shot of. Like, if we had a leopard sitting 200 meters away, I would probably not even bother taking a photo of it because I know that through the heat haze and everything, it won't be clear, it won't be sharp. Yeah, it's just. It's not close enough to get the depth of field. I'll wait until I've got a leopard that's closer, you know. [01:57:13] Speaker C: Okay. [01:57:14] Speaker B: So I'm a bit more fussy about my photography these days. And so I think this suits me down to the ground because I'm not really as much of an opportunity opportunistic photographers. What I used to be. I used to kind of want to shoot everything I saw. And coming back from my Africa trips, now I'm actually taking this approach where I'm booking these workshops in South Africa. They're all identical. We do the same trip each time. You know, it's a really accessible, easy part, more commercial part of Kruger. It's not as exciting as going to Chobe in Botswana and stuff like that. But what I love about it is that for me, it's been that desensitizing, that normal normalizing of it. So I get to spend my time, you know, concentrating on my students that are with me rather than my own photos. And when something really interesting happens, with all the right conditions, I've got a camera that I'll be happy capturing it with. But I'm not sitting there desperately needing to get a photograph of that secretary bird in a tree, you know, 200 meters away or you know, those, those cheaters that are on the ridgeline way over there. And so I'm a bit more comfortable going to places like that now and sort of watching things unfold. And if the shot comes up, great, and I'm really, really happy with it. But if it doesn't, it's actually nothing. Doesn't matter. For me, I don't need to have a sub par or sub quality shot because I've done it before. So I think this camera is giving me a bit of that freedom to step back and think I don't need to shoot everything. I can shoot the stuff that's going to be really great. And that way when I look at my portfolio, hopefully it'll be a little, little bit more, I guess, cohesive as a piece of work. Where I go, yeah, this is me. As opposed to like, these are all the moments I've seen, if that makes sense. [01:58:51] Speaker A: Yep, yep, Definitely. [01:58:54] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's also pretty bloody amazing. Like really, it's. The camera's kind of stupid. Like the dynamic range and even, you know, what is the biggest difference? It's something I find really hard to describe and one that's way too technical for me. But it's got 16 bit color and which means not very much to me at all until I started researching it. And what, what I've noticed like in the physical version of that is when you pull up shadows from really, really dark shadows, they actually have color in them. They're not just kind of gray washy, they've actually got full color through all the shadows, all the highlights. Like the actual range in the camera is the same as a lot of others. But when you recover the range in a lot of cameras is you get very gray, kind of grainy myth. Whereas this actually recovers the data and you're like, wow, that's actual real data. Like, that's really usable. [01:59:42] Speaker A: It's all there. [01:59:43] Speaker C: Stop it, man. You're making me want one. [01:59:45] Speaker A: You screwed up the shot. It's all there. The data's there. You just got to pull it out. That's amazing. [01:59:51] Speaker B: So I think that to me is a huge one. I've got a big art project that I'm going to start working on and when my brain slows down little bit, and that's something I'm really excited about. It's very much in line with gfx. Yeah. [02:00:06] Speaker C: Dennis Smith says I have some insane examples of dynamic range. GFX review incoming. [02:00:13] Speaker A: Forward to that. [02:00:15] Speaker C: Yeah. So give us a quick whip through of your GFX kit, like start to finish. What. What is it? [02:00:23] Speaker B: So I've got the GFX102, not the S2 and only because I thought I might use it for video at some point, so might as well have one video. And I also like the viewfinder better. [02:00:35] Speaker A: The S2 does have video just for people listening. [02:00:38] Speaker C: It does not fully featured. [02:00:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Not as featured in the video space. Also like the idea of the compact flash card. I. I think the S2 is just SD card. I think anyway, the. Yeah. Oh, there's one way. There you go. So you know, I got the 100, 102 and then I've got. I'm still waiting on some of the kit to come through. I've got the 20 to 35, which is my kind of only real zoom lens. That's gonna be my like that's the wide angle landscapey stuff. And I did some Astro with the other day, which was bonkers. That's an F4. I got the 55 millimeter 1.7, which is equivalent of 46 millimeters. [02:01:18] Speaker C: Have you shot. Have you shot with that much? [02:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that lens. [02:01:22] Speaker C: Is it crazy like the depth of field, is it just like field is like. [02:01:26] Speaker B: It's not really that much different from what you get on full frame because most full frame Primes are like 1.4 and 1.2s True. So true. Depth of field's the same. It's a different look than the depth of field, I think. But it's similar kind of blurriness. It's the sharpness comparison. So the sharp versus the blurry that just. You know that. That the gap between how sharp your in focus is compared to how blurry the back is. Also you can shoot further back and get shallow depth of field, so it can't give you different working distances. I got the 110mil F2. I'm waiting on the 250mil F4. I got the 505.6 and the teleconverter, which I'm waiting for. Still. Still. And a few batteries. So. [02:02:15] Speaker C: Okay, so just. Just one zoom and at the wide end and everything else. Primes. [02:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah, most. To be honest, most of my Sony kit when I shoot these days for my own personal stuff, I use mostly primes just because I do inherently are a bit faster. I also kind of like the fact that they. You don't have the zoom. It makes me less lazy. [02:02:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I love it. [02:02:36] Speaker B: So I've got kind of lens to cover all seasons though. Like it's not as Though I've got two primes and I'm stuck to like I've got something in each space. [02:02:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:02:45] Speaker B: I can work with. Yeah. [02:02:47] Speaker C: Talk to me about the, the weight of the system. I know you're only new to it, but is it noticeable compared to your Sony system? And you sort of like, you prepared for that. The weight, the weight of the overall, like the lenses are a little bit heavier, the body's a little bit heavier. Is it noticeable or not really? [02:03:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty huge. [02:03:07] Speaker A: Because you carried it around all day Saturday. [02:03:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:03:09] Speaker A: On a sling. [02:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah. But a swing certain certainly wouldn't. Yeah, it's. No, it's massive. Yeah, but, but that's like, it's massive. But I Look at this, the 4, the equivalent of a 400 mil F4 is way smaller than my 200 to 600 Sony and lighter. [02:03:29] Speaker A: It isn't terribly heavy. [02:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not, it's not heavy at all. So like there's that aspect of it. But I guess the thing is you don't buy this camera with the idea of being like, I want something small and light so I can carry it with me. This is a camera where you go, I have a bag with this stuff in it and when I take it out, I'm there for one reason. This is not like a travel camera. [02:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah, even what you're saying, what you're saying is if you want something small and light, get a GFX100RF. [02:03:53] Speaker C: He is not. [02:03:57] Speaker B: But I don't think it's not designed for that. And I think we're kidding ourselves. We think we can put in that basket. I even saw a review before I bought it. I looked up a lot of Reviews of Sony A1 vs. GFX just to be like, I've shot them both. But is my confirmation bias telling me it's better? And one of the things I noticed was that a lot of the professional review sites, not like the crappy, you know, AI generated ones that the ones that have real people writing real important, real information, they actually refuse to compare the two cameras. Like they just said that we simply will not do a comparison review between these two because they're actually not even remotely the same tool. They're not designed to do the same thing. They've not specced up to do the same thing. This is not even like, this is like comparing a Ferrari with a really high quality van, you know, like. [02:04:44] Speaker C: Yeah, hang on, which one's which? Which one's which? [02:04:47] Speaker B: Not important. But the thing is it's like it doesn't need to be. Or that the Sony's like, people go, oh, the autofocus isn't as fast. You're like, cool. But no one bought it for that. The. The file sizes are huge. Great. Well, that's why I bought it. The camera body is bigger. That's because it's got a bigger sensor and the lens, bloody huge. So it's not the same camera and it's not meant to be. [02:05:07] Speaker C: You want my hot take, though, My hot take on that situation right there is. It's a compliment to Fujifilm and GFX that there is that conversation about comparisons. Because previously we weren't saying, how does the. How does the Canon 5D Mark III compared to the latest phase one? [02:05:29] Speaker B: Exactly. [02:05:30] Speaker C: Because they were so different tools. That was not something that people weren't. I mean, maybe some weirdo wrote that review and good on them, because that's pretty funny. But it wasn't, it wasn't a mainstream sort of question. Now the Fujifilm have narrowed the gap so much with autofocus and. And that kind of stuff in these systems that, that it is becoming a question. And it's probably right to still say, hey, they're very different tools, they suit different purposes. But the fact that they could. You could do a comparison between those two cameras, it just says Fujifilm have made a lot of leaps forward in that tech. [02:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah. But also, like, I mean, you know, I said before, like, actually, I think the A1's actually got even a slightly better dynamic range than the GFX by like a hair, which is. Which is weird. And I thought that because I've not had that experience myself, my experience is actually the opposite. But it turns out that actually where you see the difference is not about what dynamic range specifically it captures, but it's how it captures it. It's about how it protects those shadows and how it protects the color and the detail in those shadows. How do you put that into a really tangible review? There's no tool that sort of measures that, I don't think. I mean, you can do the distribution of a dynamic range and stuff like that. But then you've got to add in the fact that, well, it's twice as many megapixels. So which one's got a better grain pattern? Well, are you comparing them at their original resolution or are you comparing them just visually side by side? You know, are you comparing the sharpness of that lens with the sharpness of this lens? Like, the thing I love about the Fuji lens is it's a Little bit like the Apple ecosystem where you go, you can't buy a crap lens for Fuji GFX because it was never. They only made them for cameras that can shoot 100 megapixels. But you can buy a crap Sony lens for your high end Sony camera. You can also buy ridiculously good lenses, but you don't have the choice with jfx. So it's kind of like when you start comparing these two tools, there's so many discrepancies, it's almost like it's just not worth it when you know that you want a camera like that, you know, and you shouldn't. I probably shouldn't have even been looking up that review because it was. Even if I got the answer that I wanted, it probably was completely irrelevant to what I was actually asking. If that makes sense. [02:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:07:33] Speaker C: So okay, can I ask a self serving question then? [02:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Show what. [02:07:41] Speaker C: What would make, what would make camera reviews great? Because we want to do, somehow do camera reviews on this channel in our camera life ecosystem and there's a lot out there already. We don't need to do the same stuff that's already being done. What value could we add here? [02:08:01] Speaker B: The only thing that I reckon that is actually a really, really genuinely useful one comparison of a camera or a review of a camera is to have a very consistent comparison shot between two models. One that's a relatable model and one that's not. So as an example, if you took a tripod and had a double head on it and you put your Sony A1 and your GFX camera with the same focal length, with the same settings, with the same spec lens, as in like you use the Pro, the most professional Sony version of that lens and the most professional GFX version of that lens. You shoot them side by side with the exact same exposures and you load those two photos onto somewhere where people can download them and play with them in lightroom and see the push and pull of that data because that lets you make actual decisions about what you're looking at. Whereas the amount of times I see people going, oh, I took the Sony out to do this and on this day it was a bit overcast, but still we got the idea and then this day we took the same, the Canon out and it was really sunny and you're like, well hold on a second. Yeah, wildly different. The motion blur, wildly different the contrast wildly different. The like a million variables that mean you can't compare it. So they have to literally be shot side by side. With the exact same everything to have any real valid view because otherwise, like as we've discovered with the 100, what are the GFX100RF? Is that like. I don't like that camera. I think it's rubbish. I think it's like a. Such a poor design that is the first iteration of what could be great. But then I know that other people don't believe that. They think it's amazing. They love it. They've got all these things. And the reason that we have this discrepancy in the view is that for me, I buy 100 megapixel camera because I want 100 megapixels. So the cropping part. And people go, oh, you can use zoom by cropping. Well, why would I do that when I've got. I want the 100 megapixels for them. It's not a problem. I want to shoot at 1.8of a second in street photography because I love that motion blur. They don't. So that's not a problem for them. It's so personalized as to why we like things. And the reality is no one makes a crap camera these days. You just simply can't afford to. So it's all a matter of subjectivity. So what you need to do is make it really objective and go, no, this is the exact same thing done the exact same way. You want to do a handheld, how slow can you hand hold it? With the IBIS test, they need to be shot not just at the same day at the same time. You need to have them set up on the same rig, you know, so that you've got the same level of handshake that exact same moment. Otherwise maybe you were just a little more stable in the next shot because that could be the difference between doubling or tripling its performance, you know, interesting that that would be my take on it. It has to be very scientific. That's what I used to love about imaging resource. They used to have such a great scientific method of looking at how sharp lenses were. There was no, I like this. I like that. It was all like a. No, this is what it does. This is how it performs. [02:10:43] Speaker A: And it was consistent every time. [02:10:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that. That's where I think it's, you know, that's where it's at. [02:10:50] Speaker C: Okay, I like it. [02:10:53] Speaker A: Nice. [02:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:10:56] Speaker C: What else? There's Dennis. Dennis says 97.6 of camera reviews are clickbait rubbish by people who don't use. [02:11:04] Speaker A: The gear, which we've been accused of doing. [02:11:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:11:10] Speaker C: Should I read that? Should I read that. I think I should read that comment out. You can respond to it specifically, Matt. All right, here we go. Sorry to this guy because we're calling him out again. But I Love it. David Walker2402 says a lot of BS here. People have been using the much loved X100 for many years without any IBIs. How did those photographers manage to. Are you now saying that cameras without IBIS are obsolete and have never produced sharp images? There is also real difference in detail and absolute sharp. In fact, I see more photographers dumbing down the sharpness because it's becoming ridiculous and the digital look is just awful. My guess is none of you have even tested the camera. [02:12:01] Speaker B: Cool. My answer would be that I did test the camera. I played with it for like a week just after Greg had it. In fact, he shipped it to me. [02:12:10] Speaker A: I've got a photo of your. Your name and address on the box. [02:12:13] Speaker B: Second, second part of that I'd say is that the, like, the reality is, is that you're probably right. A lot of photographers are dumbing down the sharpness. I mean, that's why we're getting lo fi cameras as well. I mean, hell, look how many cameras have, have. They're literally using lomography lenses on them to try and get. I think that's what's called lomography, isn't it? When they use the old shit. [02:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:12:33] Speaker B: So that they get these like vintage looks. [02:12:35] Speaker C: It's called the Greg Carrick effect. [02:12:38] Speaker B: You know what, that's awesome. You know what, if you're buying 100 megapixel camera, you're not buying it. So you can have unsharp versions of it. It doesn't make any sense. And yes, you have got tons of sharp images. In fact, I've got some spectacular images I'm really happy with. Out of the GFX RF, did it need IBIs? No, because I was a faster shutter speeds. But it does limit me when I want to use slow shutter speeds, which in my style, you know, if I'm doing nature stuff and I'll do some waterfalls, that's really detrimental to me. I can't do a handheld waterfall shot. I want to do street photography where I get motion. Can't do those handheld at 1/8 of a second. A colleague of mine, Nick Fletcher, he. [02:13:17] Speaker C: Before you say that, Nick, Nick just said, gosh, I went away and came back and he's still banging on two hours later. Welcome to my life. [02:13:25] Speaker B: Anyway, what about Nick VFX100RF on the weekend and, and I said to him, because he took it out for a walk around Croydon at the camera house thing, and he goes, no, I really love it. And I said, well, he goes, you can do slow shutters with it. I said, well, what's the slow shuttering? I shot at 160th, and for him that's exactly what he needs. He wants a 1/60 of a shot. I don't, I want, I want an eighth. So I don't think what the guy who was having that rant on, on YouTube is wrong. No. Yes, of course you can produce fantastic images without IBIs. That's, of course you can. But can you get the same versatility? And what I was saying is that in a camera that I'm spending that much money on, I want some versatility, you know, so, yeah, and see, Nick says, I'm so wrong. I'm so wrong because we have such a different style. I take really beautiful artistic shots and Nick takes like holiday snaps. And so there's obviously different cameras for different people. Yeah. [02:14:19] Speaker C: Oh, very nice. Oh, that's funny. I can't wait if we eventually will one day hope to get Nick on the podcast and he might be able. [02:14:27] Speaker B: To give us, he might qualify. [02:14:29] Speaker C: He won't be able to give us his hands on thoughts. [02:14:32] Speaker A: I worded him up on the weekend. He, he will be joining us soon. So. And then I think what we might do is get Nick and Matt on together. We'll set aside, you know, some appropriate buffer time should the show go over. [02:14:50] Speaker C: Yeah, Just, just to ease the tension between Matt, Nick, Cam. Blake says I shoot om system. What sharpness? I don't know. [02:15:00] Speaker B: You know what, though? Like, this is the other thing I'm going to throw out there is that, you know, this guy, whoever it was saying, is saying, you know, you, you know, everyone's dumbing the sharpness down. I, I think universally that is not true. I think that most cameras are going, wow, I want a lens that's ultra sharp. And I agree with that. Some lenses lack character. But I think that for most photographers, they want a sharp image still. I. You could over sharpen it, that's for sure. But you know what? You might have 10 friends out of a world of millions of people. That does not make an industry. And I think when we talk, when we comment on this kind of a podcast, I think we're probably talking about what does an industry, what is an industry talking about? What is the average user want? Because I'll be honest, camera brands can't afford to make a Camera for one or two people or for a million or for a thousand people. They need to make, you know, a hundred thousand of these cameras. And so, yeah, so and the other thing about, it's yeah, it's the broad big picture of going, yeah, at that price point, how many of these are going to sell? I think it was probably short sighted and I think version two will be better. [02:16:03] Speaker A: The other thing about, yeah, the other thing about dumbing down sharpness is that, yes, that's what we're seeing because it's that whole social media influencer effect. You know, we're getting these people with these mass followings that are putting out photos that are interesting and artistic because they're applying filters over them and they're softening them and whatever else. And that's what we see. We don't see a lot of. Unless you're specifically, you know, in that algorithm of seeing just solid photographers. You know, of course all we're going to see is this sort of unsharp filtered. [02:16:39] Speaker B: I've rarely seen someone go into a gallery and be like, wow, I love that landscape. It's so soft. Yeah. You know, I believe that most people, you're going to buy wall art or you're going to sell to a client, like a client, if you send them soft images, they're going to go, why is it out of focus? That's the reality. And so as a personal project, I mean I've seen, hell, I've been to the MGA who's got, they've got some weird art exhibitions with photographers and I'm like that why is, how is that art? That's not my call to make. Like in my brain, that's what I do. That doesn't mean I'm going to shoot that or aspire towards it, you know, yet they've won a $10,000 prize or $100,000 prize for it. We all shoot differently, we all have different opinions. I think when we talk about camera brands though, you just got to keep it high level. We're talking about what is the mass appeal to something. [02:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:17:25] Speaker C: Mindful of time because I know you've got a very, very busy life and lots of things probably to do today. [02:17:31] Speaker B: Talk about also running out of interesting. [02:17:37] Speaker C: No, never. There's actually a million things I want to talk about that we haven't got to. But what I would like to quickly talk about is what have you got going on this year? When it comes very quickly, you don't have to dig into too deep. When it comes to Workshops. Is there anything that's not booked out that people that are listening might want to check out on your website when it comes to workshops and stuff coming up come to mind. And then also can you give us any little teasers on the Bright photography festival for 2025 workshops? [02:18:06] Speaker B: Run them year round, tons up there. I think I've got my workshops planned out to the end of the year on the website so there's always stuff to look at. I've got a advanced lightroom workshop on Sunday. I think I've got one spot on that. 2026 South Africa, November. I've got a couple of spots left for that. The June July so the July August ones are sold out and this is November's out. Got some new workshops I'm working on at the moment but, but my focus at the moment is to start building the online platform as well. So that'll hopefully be coming thick and fast at some point befop wise. To be honest, I'm not sure there are that many tidbits to give away at this point. We're sort of in that we're in the phase now where we're getting some of our logistics down pat. Both Nick and I are reaching out to a lot of instructors both old and new. We've got a few new people that we're in chats with at the moment. Some really fantastic landscape photographers. Yep. Sony is coming as far as I know. Philip. [02:19:02] Speaker C: Good question. Philip. [02:19:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we have, yeah just, just, just in that early organization phase. I suspect by the time we hit like mid June, late June, we'll have a better idea as to some of the more specific things. But at this stage, you know where the festival sold out like late last year, there's about 150 tickets on backorder at the moment. So if you're joining the wait list now, you may probably be a little bit too late. The only other big news, yeah, Cam Blake isn't coming this year because he has found fame elsewhere and might be in jail for his drone workshops. So he's not coming either. But anyway the but, but most of our crews there, Mika Boynton's back. Matt Palmer's camera coming up this year I believe or coming up here. They live up there. We've got some new faces as well and some, some returning faces after a bit of an absence. So there's lots and lots and lots of people. Obviously Dennis is going to be there. It's an exciting festival. I think we've, Nick and I have both got a real focus this Year on trying to consolidate things a little bit and get a bit more structure as to how things sort of run within workshops. And so you can probably expect to see slightly more structured workshops in some cases. A lot of them are already quite well structured, but some of them getting a bit more around that. Speaking to a couple of filmy people as well, but. [02:20:22] Speaker C: But yeah, filmy people. [02:20:23] Speaker B: Specifics. Yeah, there's something really cool we're working on at the moment, but I don't have enough information to actually talk about it, to be honest. [02:20:29] Speaker C: Excellent, excellent. [02:20:33] Speaker B: But yeah, it should be fun. I'm really excited about the. About where it's all going with. Got a lot of industry support. Camera House has been a huge supporter. They're helping us with a lot of the brands and, you know, even the brands are really on board with it this year, which makes life a lot easier but also a lot more interesting for those who are attending because the opportunities that they're bringing now, the little internal competition that we've started between them all means that they're having to one up each other, which is good for good. [02:21:00] Speaker A: Nice. [02:21:05] Speaker C: What else? Is there anything else that we need to talk about? Brandon waits in the chat, says, get on the bus. [02:21:11] Speaker B: Yeah, there'll be a bus. There'll be the bus. [02:21:13] Speaker C: The big bus. The big bus trip. [02:21:16] Speaker B: I don't think so. Look, I think we've, you know, we've covered my life. Oh, we didn't last time I wet the bed probably would have been. Look, I probably was too drunk to remember, to be honest. [02:21:27] Speaker C: So last bfop maybe. [02:21:33] Speaker B: But yeah, it's really great to get on here and really great to have a chat with you guys and obviously thanks for everyone who's listening either live or in the future. But yeah, I think that the big call out for me at the moment, I'm trying to encourage people to look at their photography, look back at it, slow down a little bit. I will add my monthly challenge if you're interested in joining. I've got a free monthly challenge. You can access it by my website site under the Learn photography. You don't get put on mailing lists. You'll be on the list for that challenge, so you'll get the notifications. But it's not a big marketing system. We do that once a month. It's on. I think the next one's next Wednesday night or next Tuesday night, so you can join that if you like. But yeah, that's pretty much the only thing in my world. And just encourage people to slow down a bit with their photography. I think we're starting to get to that cutthroat breakneck pace with technology and you know, everything needing to be more and more on social media and you know, I think a lot of the topics we've discussed today kind of highlight the need to take it a bit slower, do the things that you're obviously passionate about and be a bit sensible about what you produce as well. Make sure what you do you're proud of. [02:22:38] Speaker C: I love it. [02:22:38] Speaker A: Stellar advice. [02:22:40] Speaker C: Final question on bfop, old Jay Shanny, who is actually JS Hanny. But you know, is Pentax going? [02:22:48] Speaker B: Look, not that I'm aware of, although I think Pentax is distributed by CR Kennedy and they are coming so I might be able to get them to bring up their infamous left handed camera to display museum piece. [02:23:03] Speaker A: Well, look, on that note, I think we'll wrap up. Yeah, boss. [02:23:07] Speaker C: That was. Yeah. What a show. Could keep going. It's been tons of people listening and watching and in the live chat. So thank you everyone for sticking with us. [02:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for coming. And look, if you are watching this later, you've missed the live show. You got other responsibilities. How dare you. And you do watch. Make sure you comment. We're going to get to comments on Monday nights random photography show. We've got some, some great guests coming up in the coming weeks. Let me just have a quick look about who we've got. We've got Andrew Ravenko, we've got Lucinda Goodwin, we've got Peter Mellows is also joining us, Craig Watson, I think. Was Craig commenting today? No, it was Craig Murphy. Sorry, Craig. Anyway, make sure you like and subscribe so that you and tickle the bell so that you get notifications for all of those upcoming guests as well as our Monday night random photography show where we talk news, industry news, we talk about what we're working on, we look at photos and we just unravel the mysteries of our craft. But look, on that note, this has been the Camera Life podcast proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps out of Bendigo, Victoria, makers of fine leather camera straps. The finest leather camera straps. Head to Luckystraps.com and use code Greg for a healthy discount. [02:24:27] Speaker C: No, use Code Justin. Don't use Code Greg. It is a competition. [02:24:32] Speaker A: And don't forget to get a discount. [02:24:35] Speaker B: That's the question. [02:24:37] Speaker C: They're the same. They're the same. But I can make mine more and I probably will because I'm currently losing Ridiculous. I've got the longest name and don't. [02:24:47] Speaker A: Forget to head to mattcrunman photography.com and just on that note, thank you, Matt, for joining us and, and giving so much of your time, advice and wisdom, hard earned advice and wisdom. I think I've certainly learned some stuff about I've always struggled with the business side of photography. And clearly, because my my office studio is in the corner of my son's room, I'm clearly not charging enough. But look, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you once again. So thank you so much for joining us today. [02:25:20] Speaker B: Thank you very much for having us. And thanks for everyone watching along. [02:25:24] Speaker C: Yes. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, Cam, Matt, thanks, Nick, Dennis, Philip, everybody. Thanks for joining us. [02:25:35] Speaker A: And we'll play out the music and we'll see you Monday night. Bye, everybody.