EP80 Andrew Rovenko | Backyard Space Travel Photography Project

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Oh yeah. Radio Greg. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Good morning everybody and welcome to a chilly, chilly episode of the Camera Life podcast. It's the 22nd of May, 2025 and this is episode 80. We've hit the eight zero. What does that make us? Octogenarians. Yeah, I think, I think that's an octogenarian YouTube channel, so we should put that on our business cards. So this is the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. We make absolutely amazing handcrafted premium leather camera straps right here in Victoria, Australia. The world. And of course we. It wouldn't be the Camera Life Podcast. The man who pays the bills. G' day, Justin. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Good morning, everyone. Morning, Greg. [00:01:05] Speaker B: How are you, mate? Good day. And that's good. It's good. And of course we, we have a special guest today and our guest is fine art, Melbourne based fine art photographer, Andrew Ravenko. Is that pronounced correctly? Andrew? [00:01:19] Speaker C: Ah, perfect. Cheers, Greg. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah, welcome to the show. Great to have you on board. [00:01:25] Speaker C: Thanks. [00:01:27] Speaker B: We are going to unravel your whole story on a topic that I'm particularly interested in around a project that you created during one of the many COVID pandemic lockdowns here in Victoria. And. But before we get into that, can you just give us a little snippet of who you are and what it is that you do? [00:01:51] Speaker C: Thanks for having guys. It's an honor to be, I guess to have my story heard. I was born in Ukraine originally. I came to Australia over 20 years ago now, time flies. It feels pretty crazy. I'm not really a proper photographer. You know, photography is not something I make money with or make living with, so I always feel awkward like calling myself that because there are people who actually do this properly. But I dabbled in photography on and off and I'm almost, I guess got sucked back into it by accident. And yeah, that Covid project that you mentioned is something that put my hobby on a bit of a, I guess, bigger, bigger scale and it just went from there. So I am the author of the Rocket Girl Chronicles and it, it's something that kind of blew out way bigger than I could have ever imagined. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it certainly did. Researching yourself and that period of time where you created the Rocket Girl Chronicles, amazing response globally. But of course we'll get into all of that. But before we do, Justin, you want. [00:03:11] Speaker A: To jump to the comments, see who's joining us live. We've got Philip Johnson. He says good morning, Justin, Greg and Andrew from a very damp new south wa. Yeah, you got a little bit of rain up there. [00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, just A tad. [00:03:24] Speaker A: We need some down here. And we've also got Glenn Lavender from Creative Photo Workshops and Jim from Lucky Straps from Jim. [00:03:32] Speaker B: Hey, mate. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Jim is Jim. He's. He's probably busy doing his editing or something. He's busy doing stuff. [00:03:38] Speaker B: What is. What is Glenn's chili emoji? What does that mean? That this is hot? Maybe spicy. [00:03:45] Speaker A: Spicy. We'll see. [00:03:47] Speaker B: What do you mean, spicy? [00:03:48] Speaker C: It's my jumper. [00:03:49] Speaker B: Maybe. [00:03:50] Speaker A: It could be the jumper. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:53] Speaker A: So if you're joining us live, make sure you jump in the live chat and ask any questions that you want for Andrew. Any comments or anything like that. We'll pull them up through the show in bits and pieces. Just trying to try not to derail the interview too much. But, yeah, jump in the live chat and join us. Or if you're listening later on Spotify or Apple podcasts or on YouTube later, you can always add comments to this show on YouTube later on and we'll pull them up on next week's show. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, or on a Monday night, random photography show. So just a reminder, we do have a second show every week on a Monday where we just talk all things photography. Sometimes we'll have people on board, sometimes we won't. Sometimes Jim and Grant will be there, sometimes they won't. This week, however, we are going. Oh, sorry. Next week, Monday, we are going to be joined by Mark. I can't say his name. Mark Hoot. I can't say it. [00:04:43] Speaker A: Which. Who is it? [00:04:45] Speaker B: Blue Hoofed. [00:04:47] Speaker A: I don't know who you mean. [00:04:48] Speaker B: I. I got them mixed up. I'm sorry, I. I just had a moment of mental spasm. [00:04:53] Speaker A: Hoot. Bloofed. [00:04:54] Speaker B: I was gonna say hoop. Loofed. Sorry. Mark, if you're listening, he'll love that. I got stumbled a little bit. [00:05:01] Speaker C: All right. [00:05:02] Speaker B: But we are here to talk about Andrew and. And his work. So let's. Let's roll back the clock, which I like to do. Angie, let's talk about. You were born and raised in Ukraine. That's right, Yep. And talk to us a little bit about what were the earliest inspiration for you? Because obviously you've got a great eye for photography, but what were some of the early inspirations for you around being a creative person? Were there any? Or was it something that came later in life? [00:05:37] Speaker C: It's an interesting question, I guess, because I, you know, usually we get inspired by someone like our parents or something we get exposed to as children and we kind of get passed on certain hobbies or things like that. In my family, we didn't really have a camera or anything like that. So my earliest memory was actually my grandfather's camera. My earliest memory of like photography magic was my grandpa coming over with his kit. It was quite a poor quality half frame seagull camera, but it looked like absolutely magical device. And he had like a little flash and he used to come over like maybe a couple of times a year just to take family pictures. Because in my family we obviously didn't do that. And every time he came I was like, how is this, how does this work? And then he would obviously print pictures in his dark room and show them to us. As a kid I just couldn't really grasp how is it even possible to capture something like that and do it like all by yourself. And I was never allowed to touch camera or any of the equipment because you know, things. I was born still at the Soviet times so everything was like pretty scarce and expensive. So like no, Andy, like you're not touching the camera because like 5, 6 year old, who knows what you might do with it. So I grew up with this kind of, I guess we always long things that we don't have, especially as kids. And it was like this one piece of mystery that kind of stayed with me since early days. And when I grew older and things opened up a little bit and we could kind of afford, I could afford to buy my own camera which was quite late in life. I think I was in my late teens then I'm like, oh, finally I can go and crack this, this mystery and try it myself. So that's what I did. And I just started kind of playing around with it and I enjoyed it so much. And that was like my first, first I guess intro. It's. It wasn't really kind of passed on as a. Something like here's something that we do. Like you get exposed to it and pick it up. It was done. Yeah, yeah. It was something like, oh, I never, I never had this thing, I want it. And I think this grandpa, grandpa always. [00:08:10] Speaker B: Said no, I can't touch it, but now I want to touch it. [00:08:13] Speaker C: That's it. That's exactly right. Yeah. [00:08:15] Speaker B: So just you mentioned that, you know, you grew up under, in Ukraine and at the time it was under the former Soviet Republic. What was that like from an arts perspective? I know you didn't have those influences in your home because having access to that sort of equipment wasn't always possible. But what was it like in general growing up in the former Soviet Union during that period of time? Were there photographers around that you Knew of were people publishing art, photography and art in the ussr. [00:08:50] Speaker C: Yeah, there definitely were. But I was first of all too, I guess, little to really understand it properly. So I think for me the big influence rather than the particular talent or like people who I consciously. Whose work I consciously consumed, it was general, I guess, backdrop of me growing up. So you just were surrounded by this, I guess, Soviet architecture. You grew up seeing those like, I guess, brutalistic murals and this kind of classic 80s art scene. So it was something that was kind of natural. It's something that you kind of grow up with and it stays with you like as you grow older as something. It became a nostalgia for me. Like it. I can relate to this because those are my early childhood memories. So I guess with the interesting thing about visual aesthetic, something that we don't necessarily get like firsthand. What is the beauty of it? What? Like it. The more you consume, over consume a particular style or particular type of art, the more you start to see the patterns and understand it. So that back. That backdrop was something that I kind of saw weird beauty in. Like, even in boring gray concrete buildings, you could see the lines and shapes. So that I guess was my first influence and I guess brutalist architecture too is. [00:10:29] Speaker B: Sorry, Andrew. Just cut you off. Sorry, mate. I was just going to say brutalist architecture is, you know, despite it being huge slabs of concrete and you know, big overarching geometric shapes, there is power in that beauty of that style. [00:10:43] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And I think people who actually constructed these buildings, they tried to make something. Something interesting with what they were giving. Like they didn't always, I guess, have a choice. That was the. Always instructed, like the. The style was often instructed from above, but they still tried to make something, something cool with. Within the constraints that they had. And yeah, please feel free to interrupt me because like when I start going, it's hard to shut up. Sorry. [00:11:16] Speaker A: That's good. [00:11:17] Speaker C: So very good. But yeah, that, that was one thing. And another thing is we had. I think what's interesting is that when people are constrained by like either political landscape or some kind of restrictions in general, they try to find an outlet to express themselves nevertheless. And it's a very, I guess, creative way of constructing narratives when you cannot say certain things, but you still want to say them. So like authors like Tarkovsky, like the movies of Tarkovsky, you can see there's a lot of like philosophy and depth and amazing visuals and storytelling that's like universal to humanity. And it's. It almost, I guess, my, I guess, ongoing line with this is that the limitation really enables you to think something non standard to make to, to make you more creative. You have to like overcome those boundaries and find a new way to do something. And that kind of seems to be the ongoing like motive of what, what my work is about. Because it started in, in lockdowns when we were forced to not do things. And I now almost turned this into a bit of a. Like I consciously try to limit myself in certain ways because that what makes you go outside, outside the box, think a bit differently. [00:12:49] Speaker B: Yep, I think that's a really valid point. And we'll get to the Rocket Girl Chronicles and the lockdown element soon. So you were a late teen or you're in your teen years I think you mentioned, and you, you got your first camera. Do you remember what your first camera was? [00:13:07] Speaker C: I got inherited the, I think the Seagull, but it wasn't actually working. So my partner, she had a fed, which is like a Leica copy, Soviet Leica copy, which was an excellent camera. But then, and of course I had those, you know, soapboxes, those little like plasticky instant cameras when the things started to open up like it was a flood of those like cheap codecs like you know, that made a bit of a comeback with a hipster scene lately. Like just like instant, fast, fast shooting. So those images were kind of, yeah, horrendous and you couldn't really shoot much with them. But then I got my hands, I think it was in the 2000s at my workplace. They bought one of the first digital cameras in our city. I think it was like Canon something. It was like Canon. I don't even remember the name now but it was one of the first digital DSLRs. I think it was like year 2002 that came out there and it was kind of mind blowing how easy it became to use compared to all the film stuff. And I that kind of made my introduction into a bit of a weirdly career photography in a way because I started compared to the film stuff, it was so easy to use that camera that they okay, Andy, go and shoot like all the stuff for our company. And I basically got my job title extended to be an unofficial photographer for them. They well like a big company that owned a chain of like high end restaurants and food outlets. So I did a lot of food photography for them. And obviously there were some events, et cetera, et cetera. So that was like my first unofficial job. And maybe I'm kind of jumping ahead to the next question, but it's. They had, they Made advertisements for the magazines because back in the day magazines were everything. Like digital didn't really exist to the extent that it is now. So everything was magazines. And I was shooting just like product photography and ads for the magazines for that company. That's like our company because you know what, they basically said, why should we hire like professional photographers if we got you? I was very honored to hear that. But I think in reality they tried to save some costs and like ah, we have the guy who just does it on the payroll. Why, why pay professionals? So I'm not taking any credit for the skill there because those photographs weren't any good. But funny enough, the editor of that photographer at that magazine where we were making ads, they saw the ads themselves and like, oh, who showed them? Like they're really good and they're like ah, we got Andy here and that editor contacted me and like would you like to freelance for us? And that was like, that was the dream because yeah, I was, the magazine was like a little lifestyle magazine. Oh, it was like the biggest lifestyle magazine in our city. I was born in Odessa so I pretty much got a window into a world of like editorial photography. And that was huge. Like that was. They had everything proper, they had cameras, you could get film if you wanted to. You could shoot digital. Yeah. And you could see your images shot not just as ads in the magazine. So that, that was kind of my foray into. Into commercial photography. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Interesting. What, what was that experience like working in that, that team? Was it scary? [00:17:07] Speaker C: Oh it was bloody scary because you know, you get one shot at something you don't really get. You know, if it's an. First of all it was exhilarating because you like, you get to meet celebrities. As a 19 year old you get to go like to the gigs for free. You just run around like crazy. You just, you basically learn to think on your feet very quickly and if that chance of like taking good picture is gone, you are in trouble because basically they don't have anything good to put into the magazine. So like it's a very high pressure environment. But it also makes you like learn very quickly to come up with decent result because like, and just the variety of situation where you have to shoot because obviously if you go out every venue have different lighting, different color, different environment, sometimes it's crowded, some different time frame as well because sometimes all you have like, if it's a, I guess, interview, post concert interview with some artist, you literally have like five minute window after they wrap up and before they jump on the bus so you have a journal doing the interview itself. In this time, you need to figure out where you want to place them, where's the light? What do you do? Like what? And then try and capture this. So, yeah, it was exhilarating, very stressful. But I think as a kind of young, hungry person, it was very, very good. Yeah, it was great. [00:18:54] Speaker B: It sounds like an amazing opportunity. [00:18:57] Speaker C: It is, it is. I think it's. And for someone who never had a formal training, like I never really like accomplished a formal degree or anything like that. It was really practical, think on your feet type of school. And yeah, as a young person, it was, it was probably like the best thing that could have happened to you in terms of learning things on the go. [00:19:19] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, sounds like an amazing opportunity. But yeah, certainly when you first said that, like would be. I would feel very. Sounds daunting, you know, getting thrown into this professional world of like, hey, you gotta, you gotta get results quick, even though you're, you're new to this. Yeah. I don't know, it just sounds. Were you shooting film or digital mostly during this time? [00:19:42] Speaker C: A bit of, yeah, mostly digital. A bit of film. Not as much though, because funny enough, I should film now, but the, I think for the commercial outcome, digital is the way to go. Just because you can see where you went wrong immediately. But funny enough, I was the greenest on the roster and we had proper editorial photographers with tens years of experience and they shot film at the time and I was just. And they, they preferred film. Like they were very kind of digital, like, like it's not good enough at the time. And I was just amazed the stuff that they were coming back with, like, with the film photography because obviously with their experience and with their eye and. Yeah, so I was very. It was quite nerve wracking, you know, to compare what you come back with versus what they come back with. [00:20:45] Speaker A: So. [00:20:45] Speaker C: And in the beginning I didn't get very important assignments, but if someone is sick or overstretched, you get to feel for that person and then the pressure is double because, like, you know how they would have done it and now you have to deliver to the same standard. So. Yeah, yeah, it was quite, quite an experience. Yeah. [00:21:09] Speaker A: How long were you in that role? [00:21:11] Speaker C: For a few years. Yeah, I think. And yeah, I think it was probably three to four years. Yeah. And then pretty much it wrapped up when I made a move to Australia. So that's kind of. That wrapped up my magazine editorial career as well. [00:21:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:21:31] Speaker B: And so you, you made. Sorry, Justin, do you want to go? [00:21:35] Speaker A: I was going to probably say the same thing like the, the move. What, what, what brought it on? And yeah, and, and how did that unfold? [00:21:42] Speaker B: And you couldn't. Other than going to Antarctica or maybe Tasmania, I don't think you could possibly get any further away from Ukraine than Melbourne. [00:21:51] Speaker C: I think it's a long way. Like I have, I have a weird. Maybe it's a family gene, like some kind of a vagabond or like adventure type of thing. I don't know because all my family, they moved different places before me. So yeah, my parents moved away within Europe and I was like, no, I want to go to Australia and like this is so far away. But to me it felt, I think it's another thing that's when I post rationalize it and I try to explain it. As a kid I didn't really travel much. Obviously the Soviet Union was quite a closed country and you couldn't really go anywhere. And then even when the things opened up where quite opposite of being well off, let's put it that way because obviously after the USR collapsed and it all kind of went pear shape, inflation was so kind of rife. Yeah, you couldn't really afford anything. So I didn't have a chance to travel. So by the time I was ready to like I wanted to go somewhere, I was 24 maybe and I felt like, you know what, I want to travel the world. I want to go somewhere that's like so far away and adventurous and who would like where could I go? And there were a few options to be honest, because you wanted to go for a longer time and like experience something rather than just, you know, scratching the surface. And weirdly my, I did negotiate as a, I had a degree, I have a degree in applied mathematics strangely which I don't use and I don't remember anything from, from that many years ago. But at the time there was a skills shortage in Australia for like people who are good at maths and computer science and whatnot. So someone told me like, look, there's a pathway you could try and apply and see what happens. And I'm like, you know what, why not? Like I'll give it a shot. And I filled out the form which ended up being like a two year long process. But I guess once you start, once you put something in motion, you kind of go through it. And yeah, luckily my application got approved and I became permanent resident without ever being in Australia, which is like unheard of now. Like they literally stamped my passport at the embassy and say, you're A permanent resident. Come. Just come here and like, why not? All right, we'll give it a shot. So, yeah, it's. I don't know, some kind of a destiny type of thing, I guess. Things just fell. Fell into place and yeah, we came. I was married then already with my wife, and we came with two suitcases, like, not really knowing what to expect. And 20 years on, I haven't been back home since. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Really. Wow, that is amazing. So, so you arrived having never been here before and you weren't on any kind of like, you know, a lot of people have a visa that's, you know, maybe they can work and it's one year or two years or whatever, and then they have to figure out the next step. You didn't have to do that. You. You were. You could stay as long as you want. Yeah, it's amazing. So. [00:25:14] Speaker C: And yeah, yeah, it's. It's crazy. I. I don't know how it happened. I, like, I count myself very lucky, but, yeah, things. Things work out in mysterious ways sometimes. So, yeah, yeah, destiny. [00:25:27] Speaker B: And so you arrive. You arrive in Australia with you said two suitcases, and I, you know, I can't. I think about all the stuff that I own now. I couldn't possibly imagine uprooting my life, traveling the other side of the world with nothing but what I can fit into a bag. You know, I don't have any space for Lego, for video games, for any of my other hobbies. [00:25:48] Speaker A: The cats. What about the cats? [00:25:49] Speaker B: Oh, the cats. Jesus, what are we gonna do with them? You know, what was that like, arriving in Australia, you know, with your wife? Very little, you know, had you developed some. Some basic English skills by that point? Or was English speaking English a common thing at home? Or. [00:26:11] Speaker C: Maybe it's more common now, but not at the time for sure. But being a bit of a nerd, I loved playing computer games. So my English, I guess development, this English skill development came from playing a lot of computer games and to really understand dialogues and what is going on, I pretty much had to learn it from practice because our teacher wasn't amazing at school. Like, I hope she doesn't hear me now. So, yeah, that was that. And I had to pass the test. Part of the condition of getting that permanent residency, I had to, like, go to our capital city back in Ukraine and pass a pretty rigorous test. And luckily I did go and prepare for that. So. Because that, that was, that was good. But still it doesn't, it doesn't make you any readier for the real life. So even Though you did things on paper and you think that you're equipped, like when you land here and you're just. We came to Sydney first and yeah, especially the way traders spoke back then. Maybe, like, I just remember now, I understand them perfectly well. But back in the day, like, I just like, what. What is this? Like, yeah, it was interesting, like a different language. It is like, we are. [00:27:39] Speaker B: We are a land of cosm. So, you know, she'll be right, mate. And bonsa. Yeah, all those sorts of things just mean nothing to foreign visitors. [00:27:50] Speaker C: I was cheating. Beaks. [00:27:52] Speaker B: Oh, nice one. Hey, there you go. [00:27:54] Speaker C: Well played. [00:27:55] Speaker B: Well played. [00:27:56] Speaker A: I love it. Very cool. What, what else, what else about that, the first few weeks, like, can you remember or first months or whatever, can you remember anything that was kind of a bit of a shock or like something you weren't prepared for? [00:28:11] Speaker C: I remember a funny one. Like, I was. Stayed for the first couple of weeks in like a little, I guess, hostel. I didn't know any of the areas really in Sydney and we found like a cheap hostel in Kirribilli. And like, I didn't know that Kirribley is like the, you know, up up marketplace where there's a Prime Minister's residence. And it was John Howard at the time. And one morning, like, I went out for one of my walks and I pretty much bumped into him doing his morning run with a bit of a posse, like, of. I guess they were security detail that was dressed in activewear and oh, was. [00:28:50] Speaker B: He in his green and gold? [00:28:52] Speaker C: Not, not that day, but yeah, then, yeah, not on that day, but yeah, it was, it was pretty funny. And I'm like, hold on a second. I think I saw this guy on TV just recently and sure enough, like, it was him. And to me that was a shock because, like, it's impossible to imagine, like, bumping into someone who is so high up, like in the, you know, government hierarchy back in Ukraine. So to me, that was like, this is democracy. You know, when you bump into Prime Minister on your morning walk, this is what democracy looks like. [00:29:25] Speaker B: That's a good point. Connecting with the people. And so Sydney, at this point in time, your. You've left your, your job, your career, your family behind in Ukraine or wherever they had moved to themselves. And so what, what did you do? So you had this mathematics degree that obviously Australia found attractive at the time. What was the, what was the job that you managed to land when you first got to Australia? [00:29:58] Speaker C: So I was pretty much. I became a bit of a web developer, software engineer, and without the Local experience. It was still a challenge to land a job at the time. Lucky to be given a bit of a contract to work for a company that was a vendor for Telstra. And they were developing at the time, like streaming video solutions because, believe it or not, back in 2004, YouTube wasn't much of a thing. So you had to develop your own video streaming services with whole bunch of like different formats and like mathematics, mumbo jumbo, streaming numbers, whatever. So they needed someone to help them out with this and some learning education platforms. Because in Australia, as I found out, the distances are pretty huge and in some remote areas, companies piloted remote learning through video services. So I kind of managed to get a job working on bunch of, I guess, digital video platforms and creating services for that. There was big pond part of tails to work there at the time, which was quite big. And they did streaming for AFL, V8, Supercars, NRL, all bunch of sports. And I got exposure to a bit of a culture as well because, yeah, we had like, in New South Wales, footy isn't as big, unfortunately. So we had like one guy who knew like all the teams, all the players. So he was like inducting me into, into the game. Nice. [00:31:43] Speaker A: Took you under his wing and taught you the ropes of afl. [00:31:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:48] Speaker A: Did you, did you bring a camera with you? Because I assume went. So when you were shooting the editorial stuff for the magazine, you were using their kits, but then you were going to make this big move to Australia. I assume you wanted to take some photos of your travels. Did you have a camera with you when you left or did you get one when you were here? [00:32:10] Speaker C: I didn't have anything decent, no. So I think we came with just like little tiny digital camera, like a, you know, not a high quality, just something disposable just to kind of get a few snaps. Because guess what? There was no phone cameras then as well. So it was like, I guess an equivalent of a phone camera at the time. But yeah, it was always. I didn't really know whether I would get into photography, but it was always on the radar to kind of try and like just do it for myself. So when I landed the job and I got my first few paychecks, I immediately kind of started putting some money aside to get. To get something better. And I think the first camera that I bought in Australia was a Canon 20D. I think if, if you remember those, and without having a lot of money for, for the lenses. I think one of the first lenses I got was 50 mil 1.8, which was I think 150 bucks and it was a. Yeah, it took beautiful pictures for that price point. [00:33:20] Speaker B: That was a cracker of a nifty 50. And it was just fun and cheap and I, I remember walking into JB hi Fi and picking up one of those and it was right when JB hi Fi had only just started selling camera gear and that was like the first lens that I bought for my Canon. One of the first sort of cheap lenses. Yeah, interesting. [00:33:39] Speaker C: Yeah. So yeah, that, that was kind of the first and I didn't really make a move to. I guess after editorial stuff it's hard to start looking at other opportunities seriously and making the editorial photography like a career pathway. It just didn't seem safe enough perhaps after I landed a job in, in I T, you know, so it was, it just didn't happen. So. Yeah, yeah. [00:34:15] Speaker B: And so you're working away. You've. You've picked up your first camera here in Australia. What did you start shooting when you did what caught your eye? [00:34:27] Speaker C: I shot a lot of. Yeah, I shot a lot of travel and a bit of street stuff because like that hunger for travel, it didn't really subside. We first traveled around a little bit, just kind of saw a bit of a local scene. And once we figured out that kind of we get it like we get Australia a bit more now we try to pretty much put aside a decent portion of our income to try and like go overseas as much as we could. Which was perhaps a stupid move because with like real estate skyrocketing since then now I think maybe I should have bought house back then, especially in Sydney. Now I would have been rich instead of still renting here in Melbourne. So. But you know what, I don't regret it because I think travel really makes you look at the world a different way and like the wider you travel and the more you absorb, it kind of shapes you better as a more all around human being. So I don't think it was a poor investment. It was a poor investment financially, but was great investment personally and for the soul. So yeah, that was pretty much it. And I just shot a lot of it. Just shot a lot of travel stuff. Yeah. [00:35:52] Speaker A: I want to fast forward a little bit. Do you know when. Do you want to. Do you know when Instagram started? When Instagram first became a thing? [00:36:03] Speaker B: No, wouldn't have a clue. Just always been there as far as I'm concerned. [00:36:08] Speaker C: I remember. You know what, I remember the predecessor. So first there was an app called Hipstamatic. [00:36:14] Speaker A: Oh, I remember Hipstamatic. Yeah, that had the filters and everything built in. [00:36:19] Speaker C: I remember that, yeah. [00:36:21] Speaker A: Did you use that? [00:36:23] Speaker C: Yeah. Because, you know, when you're in the environment, when you're surrounded by people, and that's another important thing. Like, you need to surround yourself with people who you want to learn from as well, even if it's hypsomatic, you know, because whatever new comes your way, it expands you a little bit. So all the younger blokes, like, around where, around the workplace, they're like, oh, yeah, Hipstamatic, that's the thing. And I'm like, that's cool. That's interesting. And in a way, that almost brought back a bit of a, I guess, film aesthetic, because there's a bit of a cycle when we fall out of love with something that becomes daggy and outdated. But then after a certain time, things that are genuinely cool, they make a comeback. And I think that's perhaps put a bit of comeback to a film as well, because, like, Hipstamatic tried to replicate a bit of a grungy film looks. And like, you know, those few things then Instagram pretty much took. I don't remember if they acquired them or not, but they kind of came up with same model of filters, but put it on the social platform and that really. Yeah, exploded. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Which was just. Just to close that loop, which was. Which was October 2010 is when Instagram launched. [00:37:49] Speaker C: Wow. [00:37:50] Speaker A: So that. That's when it first started, which. And obviously it took a little while to gain adoption. Started off with a lot of people like us, just like, I want to post photos, usually photos of, you know, coffee with a filter on it or something like that, taken straight off the phone before it evolved into, you know, into what we have today or. But I'm just going to share this. This is. Oh, how am I going to know which one's which? Yeah, there we go. This is one of your first posts on Instagram. I think it's about the fourth post from April 8, 2012, which I. I think is pretty early in terms of Instagram. They launched in October 2010, so. So, you know, within a year and a half, you were. You were already on the platform and posting. And do you remember. Take this photo? [00:38:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:41] Speaker A: You do? [00:38:42] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember it vividly. Yeah. That's Port Melbourne and that's Lil. You know, where the Spirit of Tassie used to just Earth before it moved to Geelong. So that's that area. And I remember it vividly because I. I'm pretty sure it was some of the weekends and I took a bike Ride down the beach road, just along the bike path and I saw this like shopping trolley, which is a very out of play just like on the side. And I don't remember having any supermarkets like on this stretch of like Middle park slash Fort Melbourne area. And like, where did that come from? And then I saw like there. That kind of angle when it's almost like a mouth eating. Eating a boat. And like, yeah, that, that's a good instant, like instant snap. And yeah, I. It's not really like a photography, but you just see some like little quirky scenes and yeah, it was one of those things that just, you know, stayed. [00:39:48] Speaker B: It's. [00:39:48] Speaker C: It's a vision that kind of stayed in my head and like. Okay, I have to, I have to remember it. [00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, very cool. And just. Sorry, for those of you watching or listening along at home, you're wondering if that noise is, is like distortion or feedback or something. It's not. It's just Justin's ground staff cleaning up the yards. [00:40:09] Speaker A: Ground stuff. They're not ground staff. It's one dude, his name's Al. He's lovely and sometimes he helps me manage the insane amount of leaves that are dropping out of my trees at the moment. And so I apologize for that. Hopefully he'll be, he'll be done in a second. I'll try and mute it when I, when I can. So this, this shot, looking back on it now and sort of those early days of Instagram, did that. Was this an outlet for, for your photo? Like, did you have any other outlets for images that you would take? Or was this like, okay, cool, this is where my photos live now. This is when I, when I take a photo, whether it's just of daily life or something a bit more creative, this is where it's going to go. [00:40:55] Speaker C: Yeah, this is like a disposable stuff. So like Instagram was like really a disposable day. Day snaps that you don't. Because in the older days you couldn't really get images of your camera posted instantly. Like, there was no digital connection to the phone or to the Internet as it is now. So like the life cycle and the workflow was very different. Like with a proper camera, you would obviously come back home, download stuff, process stuff, select, and then decide where it should go. So Instagram, for me, it was like the real value of it was to give like a super quick glimpse into what you like. It's like a diary. I get diary of whatever you come across that kind of got. Got into your eye and that's it. So that was like very, very easy, easy way to show a glimpse of your day. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Did it, did it impact your photography in terms of like, did Instagram have an influence on how you approach photography in the years to come? [00:42:10] Speaker C: Not necessarily in a good way because you. Oh, it's hard. It's hard to tell the good or bad because it, because it's so quick and it's like instant. You do not think, think too much about what and how. You just see it. You take a quick snap. You don't really spend a lot of time on it. So in a way, it's a very different way of recording something to what I love doing more consciously. So it's very, I guess, visceral. Not like visceral. It's very instinctive. Like Instagram is opposite of thought. It's like an instinct at the time when you just took a picture with your phone and you posted instantly. Now I just use Instagram because this is where people are. So if I wanted to share something, this, this is what you do. And like, I would still obviously shooting on film, I would have to develop it and scan it and like format it is and get, get it up. But at the time it really gave you this very, very kind of instinctive way of shooting and not thinking a lot. [00:43:25] Speaker B: Just seeing the moment, grabbing it and moving on. [00:43:28] Speaker C: Exactly right, yeah. [00:43:31] Speaker A: When it comes to photography that you were, you know, when you were making images with your, with your main camera, whether it was the 20D with the 51.8 or whatever sort of followed after that, what sort of photos were you trying to take with that camera? Was it mainly travel? Travel and street still and like, and, and did that stuff progressing towards, you know, obviously you, you ended up with this, this amazing project through Covid. Did you have other projects ever or themes or genres that you were exploring with your photography? [00:44:12] Speaker C: Only something that just landed on my lap because people knew that I can do photography because I tried like consciously not to get into a commercial photography too much, purely because I started getting assignments like for ad shoots and things like that. And like, I registered ABN to be able to charge people for that. And just, it was just because people knew that I can take images and when there was a need, they would come and approach me and like, ask to shoot certain things. And it seemed like an attractive side income at the time. So, like, even before you make a full movie into photography, you could perhaps build that base and you could obviously expand upon it. And I think I did have a real opportunity to make It a job. But what I also found especially with digital is that when you go out and. And I did a lot of those assignments, like I did quite a few like from weddings to event photography to advertising photography. So that was like, it's great. You get lots of money, like four days work. But everything that goes behind the scenes of that day, like the you needing to prepare so much, you're needing to then process sometimes thousands of images. Because my wife, she is quite good as a photography as well. So when we, when it was like something like an event photography would go with two cameras, me having a bit of a more telephoto lens and she might have a wide angle and like we would end up with this cache of loot. And then you need to go through it and like process and deliver. And even with advertising the output is a lot tighter but you still have like client vision and perhaps expectation of what they think the output should look like. And after doing that quite a bit, despite the income, it doesn't feel like a thing. I really enjoy doing like because yeah, there's so many facets to photography and unfortunately that commercial on or mass production kind of side, it kills a lot of creativity and joy in it. And I found that I stopped really getting good, good feels from what I do after a while. You just feel the burnout. Especially when you come back from a big day and you have south of thousands of photos to go through and like select them. And yeah, that's why I almost, I don't touch my digital cameras anymore. Even though I still have like my Mark III and like lenses that I love. Like I have some amazing canon lenses like 85 mil 1.2 and 50 mil f 1.2. They're like amazing. I love them but I don't really do that almost as like that burnout is still still then like instead I would just take my. I have it here instead I take this, this little beast which is extremely unwieldy. So that's like old Mamiya RZ67. [00:47:46] Speaker B: Oh wow. [00:47:47] Speaker C: And yeah, it's. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Yeah, you can see just the sound popping up the. [00:47:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. [00:47:54] Speaker A: Yeah, do that again. It sounds so good. [00:48:03] Speaker B: You can set up an only fans account just with that sound. [00:48:06] Speaker A: Yeah, just different cameras. Yeah, that's. Yeah. [00:48:10] Speaker C: You're a businessman, Greg. [00:48:21] Speaker A: You, you cruise around with that. That's like your, your, your fun camera. [00:48:27] Speaker C: Yeah, that's my fun camera. And believe it or not, this is easy. This is easy because this gives you like instant preview. Like it, it still has, it doesn't have light metering like, or anything like that. You need like there's a prism attachment that you can use for light metering. But I don't use it. I just use the top view manual, focus manual, everything. But you really kind of need to set it up and think. But you know why this is easy? Because what I really started shooting with like during COVID days was this. And this was hard. [00:49:07] Speaker A: It's even bigger. [00:49:09] Speaker C: Yeah, this is like, this is an old 4x5 Graphlex Speed Graphic. And yeah, it's because it has this kind of project kind of thing. So you need to have a dashboard to be able to see anything. So after, after this, going back to old Mamiya was. Yeah, was light and easy. [00:49:37] Speaker A: It's a walk around point and shoot. [00:49:40] Speaker C: This lens, this is a aerial. World War II aerial. Aerial photography. It's a Dalmay Piantech 1.9. Yeah. So when they used to do the air reconnaissance, they used to use those kind of in a. In a different casing. Yeah. [00:49:57] Speaker B: So our friend of the show, Greg Carrick. Greg, if you're watching along, he's probably drooling over that lens. He loves adapting odd and old and weird lenses to a whole range of cameras. [00:50:09] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:50:11] Speaker B: So just before we jump to the next section about your, your journey as a visual creative, I just want to set the scene so at the very end of 2019, this is no surprise to anyone watching along at home, the rumor started spreading of a pandemic. At first it was downplayed, but it very quickly escalated in. I think it was around February, March 2020, it was officially declared that COVID 19 was a real thing. It was a problem. And it was a problem that wasn't going to go away. We live in Victoria here in Australia and Victoria actually endured some of the world's longest and most strenuous lockdowns ever seen in, especially in Australia's history. I don't think we've ever experienced anything quite like that. But lockdowns. We had multiple lockdowns. We had nighttime curfews. We had limitations to when we could go out, how far we could travel away from home. And there were police patrolling and checking how far people had traveled. It was quite extreme. [00:51:25] Speaker A: I think one of the unique things too, maybe not unique, I don't know what, what other countries and cities experience, but one of the things that really, I think psychologically made it difficult was the, the constant changing of rules and the in and out, you know, and just when you think, oh, okay, we're through it now again, and then even worse for even longer. And then, you know, I think that yo yoing really messed with. With people's mindsets that, you know, your sanity a little bit. It was hard. So anyway, yeah, the scene is most definitely. [00:52:00] Speaker B: The scene is set. So it's. We're. We're setting this scene because during lockdown, you embarked on a new project. And I want to understand what triggered that for you. You created eventually the. The Rocket Girl Chronicles. And we're going to have a look at some of those images in a minute, but talk to us about that lead up to you picking up your camera and deciding to start this project during, you know, one of the most historically important times for Victoria. [00:52:34] Speaker C: Yeah. Well done setting the scene. I. That's exactly how I remember it. And like, those things, you know, being in and out of lockdowns and this kind of constant change, it was. Yeah, it was a bit of a drainer, definitely. But try homeschooling, man, I can't even imagine. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's. What's interesting is that humans are pretty good at trying to find a way to kind of circumvent whatever they're thrown at. And for people who are creative, I think going creative ways is natural thing to try. And those, like, big cameras that you see that I showed, like, large format, that was one of the things that I found as an outlet. So I didn't start shooting Rocket Girl Chronicles consciously as a project. So first of all, it was whole bunch of different things that everyone, and myself included, tried because everyone started getting, like, into craft, into Lego. I baked shitload of sourdough like you did. [00:53:48] Speaker B: I was gonna ask if you got into the sourdough thing. A lot of people. [00:53:52] Speaker C: Yeah, I loved it, like, because I. And I recognized I got pretty good at it, like, anyway, but with those things, you suddenly get a lot of time. Oh. Oh, man, there it is. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Look at that. I like the caption. Lockdown habits die hard. So this was August 12, 2021. [00:54:17] Speaker C: Yeah, it's just going back. Yeah, yeah, that. That was one of the things. Yeah, I got onto it like, full. Yeah, absolutely. And whole bunch of other things. And one of the things that I started doing is I always wanted to try large format and I never done it before, so I only shot like, medium format previously. Like, ah. I got lots of time and everything. So I went and found, like on Facebook, Marketplace and ebay, a few old cameras and some of the. A few old lenses. And what I really kind of. I just started tinkering And I think I have a bit of a thing about trying to rescue old broken things. I love like restoring things that look interesting to a working condition. So I spent a lot of time just like finding old lenses, adapting them and playing around with them and quite a few, quite a lot of time during lockdown. So I just played around with that and just taking pictures at home. So that kind of was big comeback to like large format film photography for me. And you could easily get chemicals now for color and develop at home because now you have those cooking implements for the like cooking sticks that control the temperature and you can just set it up and instead of needing to have like a processing tank that controls your temperature, you just could use those. So I just kind of bought a bunch of random stuff and started playing around with film. But at the same time, our daughter, who I she was I think four year old by the time the sixth lockdown was announced. And she was obviously with us in this two bedroom unit like for, throughout the whole, the whole experience and now it's whatever lockdown number six. I think it was like over 180 days under restrictions and we pretty much tried everything. But she was always like really curious about stuff. And as kids go through like obsession phases for that time in particular, her obsession was all things space. And she was like just, she could like recite me the exact temperature of the sun in Fahrenheit. I'm like, what? How? Anyway, like she's, she's a bit of a widow in the best possible way because like she just remembers stuff and goes real deep into, into topics that she's interested in. And my wife, she originally graduated as a theater costume designer. So she's like really good at making stuff like outfits. And so we're like, ah, she's really into space. What about we just make a little astronaut suit just for fun. And I think it was in, just in between the lock, in between the restrictions. They had a sale at Spotlight and you could go to Spotlight and buy some fabric. So we're like, oh yeah, that's a good way to restock when you just were allowed to go to the shops. So we just went and bought some stuff, came back, started the project. Next thing you know another lockdown gets announced. So we're just plowing away with that. And we also be made her a helmet obviously because like astronaut without a helmet, like seriously. So we just inflated a little like ball and stuck some pieces of paper over it. And yeah, the best thing is like when you involve your kid into Something and make them a part of the project. It sticks to them a lot better and it, like, it stays with them rather than like, you know, buying a plastic sword, like, give them a stick and make them craft the sword for themselves and they will, like, appreciate it a lot better. So we tried to kind of get her involved into that as much. And when the suit was ready, she just like, loved it so much she didn't want to take it off. So when it was, you know, this two hour daily exercise, walked type of thing, she was like, you know what? I'm. I'm going in the suit. And I'm like, you know what, what's, what's a better time to do that? Because there's no one around. Like, everyone dropped their standards. Like, I, everyone just kind of does whatever they can and I haven't lifted. [00:58:47] Speaker B: My standards since that's. [00:58:50] Speaker A: Is that when you started growing the beard, Greg? [00:58:52] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much. And I still wear tracksuit pants every day. [00:58:56] Speaker C: Yeah, you know what? They're comfy. Like I. [00:58:58] Speaker B: Exactly. I'm allowed to be comfy. [00:59:03] Speaker C: So, yeah, that was pretty much it. And it wasn't really a photography project. It was just kind of the way to just keep her entertained and she really like, you know, when you, I think even as adults, when we put on like some kind of bold piece of clothes, like when we go out on the wedding and put black tie, we feel like, you know, glamorous and important. So especially for the kid, when you put on an astronaut suit, you feel like an astronaut. [00:59:32] Speaker B: So she, you know what, can I just, can I just jump in with a quick little segue? I feel that way every time I put on my lucky straps hoodie, which is available on the website. [00:59:42] Speaker A: You're turning this into an ad? [00:59:44] Speaker B: I am turning this into an ad. [00:59:47] Speaker A: Sorry. Such a professional, professional podcast. [00:59:55] Speaker B: Sorry I cut you off. [00:59:56] Speaker A: So anyway, winter is coming. Grab a hoodie. [00:59:58] Speaker C: No, no. Nice. Yeah, she, she grabbed a spacesuit, like, And I like, yep, fine. And we started to just like go out like this. And just because the film photography side coincided with the astronaut suit side, I'm like, you know what? I'll. I want to capture some memories. And the first, first pictures where they weren't on the film camera because were going out, I just took those like disposable phone pictures. So the first pictures from the series, they are not even like photography per se, but you want to bring up. [01:00:35] Speaker B: The Instagram there, Justin? [01:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I was actually just trying to find. I think I found the first photo that you've Posted on Instagram. [01:00:43] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe it wasn't a post. Yeah, it was probably in a story, the one that's on the phone. So the. [01:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. Because yeah, I think this is, this is the first one I could find on Instagram. I don't know if that's early in the season. [01:00:58] Speaker C: Yeah, that was on the. Yeah, that was on the camera. That's very early days. So that's our neighbors. Neighbor at the time because like the old place got sold. We got kicked out. But at the time, during COVID that was the. Like the big house and this car, I went past it like so many times, like on the way from the train station. Like it was just always parked there. And yeah, it was one of the first shots taken on, on the camera, on Mamiya on the proper camera. And yeah, it was literally on the way. When you go from our place to the beach, like along, along the street, you just go past this house. So that was on the way back, back from the walk. And yeah, I just took the. Took the bigger camera, took some pictures and developed them in my laundry, scanned them and yeah, that. That's on the beach probably the day later. I remember this day being pretty cold and like she had some layers underneath. But also like as an astronaut you feel. I think it gives you this kind of a bit of a other. Other planet to look. And those lights in the back, I think it's the sandy footy oval. So I'm not sure if they were allowed to have games back then. Maybe they did because like some sports and exercise. Yeah, but yeah, it was definitely still during. During lockdowns and yeah, I remember that day very vividly. Another good thing about taking pictures with slow manual cameras, that you are a lot more in the environment. And I, I literally remember it kind of gives you a much better snapshot of the place and time because you are a lot more present and aware. So I pretty much remember very well every single picture that I took. Unlike my digital camera images because from some of the travels digital images, I'm like, I don't even remember taking that picture because you just go and take so many. But when you need to like set things up and measure and compose, you just. It stays with you a lot better. So yeah. [01:03:13] Speaker A: While I was looking at the series, I love that. So like this image, so much of the series seems to have these, these poses and these looks and stares that really conveys the. The astronaut feel to me, you know. And I wondered how much of that was aided from the fact that you were using Such manual gear and film that, that you sort of had to say, hey, stand over there, I'll get this set up. And, and just. And then that I guess evolved into these looks and these poses that are quite, I don't know what the word is, but rather than. So, so say you were shooting with fast digital gear, maybe your daughter would have been running around a bit more in the photos or something like that. But I don't know, is it like did that, did that happen consciously or did that happen because of the gear you chose or. Talk to me about that at the very start before it evolved into what it has now? [01:04:18] Speaker C: I think it's a bit of everything because as a four year old, like anyone who has had a, has or had a four year old, they would know that you can't really instruct them very well. They don't really, they don't really like standing still at all. And I, with the camera that I used, I almost needed to know when to shoot and like when to release the trigger. And with the cost of film, especially now, if you can't keep shooting, like you can't just do that. So it teaches you a lot of patience. I basically knew the situations where I shouldn't take pictures or try to take pictures or where it will be like blur and just out of focus sometimes it can be to a good effect, but like not, not something that I wanted to capture. So my secret to this was let them do what they want to do for as long as they can. And kids eventually do get tired, they get settled. So like when they come to a new place, they run around and they want to try everything, but then there is this kind of moment when they kind of had their burst, their energy burst and then they become a bit more, I guess, contemplative and they start to go a little bit kind of quieter and deeper on the environment. And I had to basically try and spot that moment and the place where it would work and then take that picture. And a lot of the times it didn't work and I don't have shots. So what you see is something that actually worked. And that's like with any profession, I guess you never see the bad shots. You never see the stuff that is out of focus or blurry or things didn't work out. What you see is perhaps 5%, 5% of what I took pictures of. And that 5% seems to have been good enough to kind of make difference. But I figured out that I need to wait. I kind of, I can't make people you can't make your kid just, you know, just go and do things. You can aid them, obviously. Like, do you want to check this out? Like, do you want to have some rest? And it has to, like, if. If it doesn't come from a place where you're shooting a project, which is again, a massive point of difference to the editorial thing, because for the editorial, you have to come back with an output. You have to make something. If you didn't, it's a fail. But if you're just doing this for your own. And like, I had no idea that this will blow out and people will see it like there was no project as such. I didn't have a pressure of needing to come back with the result. So I'm like, you know what if I get a good memory of the place that we went, something that we would enjoy looking back to, that's great. If we didn't, it was still a good day. Like, we had. We had fun. We had play. Those two hours, they didn't really kind of get into mundane four walls type of thing. So like, it came from a place of play first. And if something works out and I manage to take a shot, it's great. And if I don't, it's fine as well. So that gives you a lot of freedom and like, I think makes you feel a lot more liberated in not having to do things or like not pursuing necessarily a shot. So, yeah, that. That was another place next to our. I don't think those. Yeah, it's funny, I'm kind of jumping around because when I look at these pictures, I can see so many places that are not the same. Like those barrels. They're not. No longer there. So this place is actually a taxi repair shop that was like on the road, like just in another direction. And we walked past and we saw whole bunch of like yellow cabs just parked there because maybe taxi wasn't. And you can see start. Still see some yellow panels behind the barrel. Like, if you see that yellow. That's like old, old cabs. And like Mia saw so many yellow cabs and like, oh, what's that? Like, I want to go and check it out. Like, because you don't normally see them just parked somewhere, like in the. In the yard. So we just went in. Obviously everything shut down, Nobody there. She saw the barrels and as kids do, she wanted to climb up and yeah, it just happened. So I. I managed to took this picture when she was playing. And yeah, I. I still look back at it. I can't believe it just. I managed to capture this because, yeah, the next. The next second, she wasn't. She wasn't like this anymore. And I have another shot when she's stands just next to the barrel, but that was the one that really kind of struck me. [01:09:26] Speaker B: It's a very striking photo. And I think, having looked through your images, I think another thing that is really compelling about them is just the abscess, the sort of abscess, the absence of other people that, you know, because we were in lockdown, often you'd go out and it would be eerie, quiet, and there'd just be no one anywhere. And I think that really plays well into this. In. Into this theme of, you know, Rocket girl exploring a world. What's happened? Where is everybody? Why is it so quiet? You know? [01:09:58] Speaker C: Yeah, it really did feel quite special and, like, it's very hard to. Because for some people, it was a terrible time. But I really, in a way, in a weird way, enjoyed the quiet because you felt like the world was yours and maybe a few other people that maybe try to cross to the other street, to the other side of the street when they see you. You know, you remember that when someone. [01:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:10:27] Speaker C: Avoid and cross, the avoidance. [01:10:31] Speaker A: But, yeah, it felt like, don't sneeze when anyone's walking past. [01:10:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:10:40] Speaker B: You were still allowed in supermarkets, and you'd hear someone cough and 30 people would turn around and look where the cough was coming from. And, yeah, it was really. It was quite a time of paranoia as well. [01:10:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. It was indeed. Yeah. But funny enough, I could. I could remember. One thing that I remember is that obviously people were wearing masks, and when they. Someone would come across us walking and Mia was in her spacesuit. You could see, like, the eyes will, like, squint as they're smiling from underneath the mask. Yeah, that's cool. We brightened up a day for some people that we came across, I hope, because. Yeah, it's not every day you come across. [01:11:19] Speaker A: Well, I mean, almost every image that I like, go to, almost every image that you look at makes you smile. So I can only imagine what it would be like in real life when you're dealing with, you know, lockdowns, and then you just see this little. Little space girl just cruising along. Yeah. It would brighten your day, that's for sure. [01:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:39] Speaker C: Yeah. And, yeah, I kind of miss. I miss the quiet of lockdowns and, like, the absence of traffic. Just. Yeah. The world was still. [01:11:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting. It was a very interesting time. Now, Rocket Girl, quite literally Took off the Rocket Girl Chronicles. In 2021, you were named Australian Photographer of the Year. Tell us about how, how that came about. [01:12:14] Speaker C: What? [01:12:15] Speaker B: You know, how did that build up to that amazing accolade? [01:12:24] Speaker C: A bit of a chance perhaps, because as I think everything in life is a bit of a chance because things just line up sometimes. [01:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:12:34] Speaker C: But I was posting these images on Instagram and like, I believe one of my friends said that they're like really special and they need to be seen and someone shared it to Broadsheet from what I remember. So, like the digital, digital outlet that covers Melbourne culture. And I believe that, yeah, the journalists just saw my Instagram and they got in touch and they asked to do a little interview. So I'm like, yeah, sure, sounds great. And I think everyone at the time, it was still like throughout that sixth lockdown when everyone's spirits were really down. And I think people really needed a bit of a feel good story. So perhaps that that's why it got picked up in the first place, because there was something a bit of a narrative that's a bit more positive after all the time. So they published a little article online and posted it on their Instagram. I think it was like October, October 2021, something like that. And I'm like, oh yeah, amazing. My little project got seen by the audience of Broadsheet and the feedback was really positive. I go to sleep, wake up the next morning and see my phone is full of messages and call requests from Channel 7, I believe, journalists and producers. And I'm like, hold on a second. What, what is happening here? And essentially they saw the Broadsheet article and they wanted to run a little news segment about this project. I'm like, okay, and can we come with a, with a like TV crew, like operator and the journalist to like capture your story we want to put into the news. And I'm like. And like, it's all allowed because we are essential service. Like you can get us into your house at the time because you're never sure what is, what is the go. And the house is obviously a terrible mess. So it's like, you know your 200 days in lockdowns, you didn't have any guests forever. [01:15:02] Speaker B: So the sourdough starter everywhere. [01:15:05] Speaker C: That's right. And like, when do you want to come? And they're like, we can be there in half an hour. And like, okay, so what I do is I take pretty much we take frantically everything out of the living room, dump it into one of the bedrooms, like bring the door, is Barely being closed, but okay, living room seems a bit presentable now. So yeah, they turn up and they film this whole kind of new segment type of thing and they ask the obvious thing like, show us the sewing machine, do the thing, do the dance. So we did the dance, they did the segment and it went out on tv and I think then that put the wheels in motion and like it just kind of became big and lots of people saw it and a lot of people jumped on my insta and just started commenting really positive things about it. And you know, Internet can be a dark place and a bad place sometimes, but somehow like this seems to have attracted the right kind of, the good kind of people that saw it for what it was. And yeah, that was really. It's something that gave me a bit of a confidence that this work is something that people enjoyed seeing and worth trying to put it out there and like make it kind of shine a bit of a spotlight. So that, that almost. [01:16:37] Speaker B: I think, I think it was also a bit of a. Sorry, Andrew, I just want to comment there because I remember that time quite vividly, you know, yet another lockdown unknowing when it was going to stop because often they would say three more days and then they'd extend it and you know, it'd be, we're going to push it out again. And then something would pop up in the news because some limo driver had driven from Queensland through Melbourne to Adelaide with COVID And you know, it was quite a stressful time. But I think there was also a perfect storm of not necessarily opportunity but maybe happenstance where, you know, people's spirits were low. As you said, it was, you know, six, six lockdown. It was, you know, what were we in lockdown for like 170 days or 80 days in total. It was a lot, a long time over a two year period. And a little ray of sunshine popped out, you know, with Rocket, with the Rocket Girl Chronicles. Because at that stage all that we were really tuning into the television for was Dan Andrews, which was our premier at the time. Daily briefings to work out what our new rules were, you know, and, and you know, and the news to see what was going on around the world because it, it was fascinating. It was like watching a train wreck. But I think for something like Rocket Girl Chronicles to pop up in the midst of that, you know, it's like a flower sprouting amongst weeds. It draws attention and it provides people with maybe a little bit of, I must say, hope because I don't know that that's necessarily the right word, but it gives people a little bit of inspiration and, you know, a bit of light. So Rocket Girl Chronicles wasn't just popular in Australia. All of a sudden you had international attention. [01:18:21] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. And that's kind of weird. Weird how it happened. I think that's. That's your power of inst. Of Instagram, perhaps. Because when, when the snowball started rolling, a lot of people picked it up and I guess it kind of was another proof point that we managed to create something worthy and special because it wasn't, you know, there's always like one off blimp, like one hit wonder that happens and then that blip wears out and goes away. And like I was fully prepared for that. Like, I wasn't expecting anything because it wasn't a purpose of this. But somehow that snowball kept rolling and people kept fighting this. And even to this day, when we're way past this time, there seems to be a value beyond the original narrative. I guess what people told me is that we've captured, I guess, the perseverance of human spirit in a way that is universal. Beyond lockdown or not lockdown, we as humans just try to, I guess, go and find silver linings, find the ways to be creative, find. So yeah, there's something universal about it. And I didn't. It wasn't planned, it wasn't. We just did what we did as a family. But it just somehow managed to just capture a bit of an ethical sense that resonates with people. And I'm, to this day, I'm like surprised. Recently I had an. It's still going, actually exhibition in Argentina. All done remotely because it's easy now. You can just send digital files and they will take care of printing and do the rest. But it's mind blowing. Completely different speaking language, different continent. Couldn't. Yeah. And lots of positive feedback and resonance from Argentina. And it still blows my mind to this day how far, how far it reached. So some things I guess you just. [01:20:35] Speaker B: Stumble across and I think it's something also that, you know, that kind of reminds us that photography is universal. It kind of skips those boundaries, those traditional boundaries of culture and language and, you know, and even circumstance to tell a story and to, you know, highlight what the rest of the world maybe is doing or, you know, a moment in time or whatever it may be. [01:21:01] Speaker C: So, yeah, you're right. [01:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah, Rocket Girl, you're getting attention from local and international. Tell us about the call or the notification. You got to say that you were in the Running for Australian Photographer of the Year or that you'd won. Tell us about that. That time. [01:21:26] Speaker C: That was through Australian Photography Magazine. So I consciously entered a few images into the competition because it's basically, it's ran by the Australian photography magazine and anyone can submit imagery in there. So. And that's. I never really participated in the competitions before because photography wasn't my main pursuit. I mostly did it for myself. But this kind of exposure and this interest, it almost prompted me, you know, what, what, what if I try and, like, more people will see it and maybe it will. It will create even bigger impact. So I just, you know, what, why not? So I just put together, I think it was like five images or something that I have submitted and then I get. I think the first note. Note that I got was that I was shortlisted and like, oh, amazing. But I've learned not to get my hopes up for anything too much to avoid disappointment. So you're always like, oh, yeah, yeah, nothing will ever happen. You know, shortlisted doesn't mean much. You know, lots of people get shortlisted and then someday, one day, it was via email as well. I get. I get notification that you've been selected as a top. Yeah, as a top place. And I had to, like, reread it like five times, I think, because it didn't seem real. You know, when, when something just nonchalantly lands in your inbox, you're like, is it a scam? Are they going to ask me to, you know, put your credit card details into. [01:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah, to get your award? [01:23:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And I'm like. And then, yeah, then there was an email from the editor and, yeah, that, that was quite mind blowing and it was still. I'm pretty sure we still weren't allowed to go to work. So, yeah, you could just share the news online and you feel like it's super exciting. It's super exciting, but you can't tell anyone, like, firsthand. You're just sitting at home like, oh, yeah, you're a Photographer of the Year. Like, yeah, good on you, Andy. [01:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And did your. Did Rocket Girl get any. Was Rocket Girl excited? Did she understand what had happened or was she too young? [01:24:00] Speaker C: Definitely too young. Like, even to this day, I think the concept of, like, fame is not really. It's interesting because kids, they get something that's tangible, they need like this immediate reward kind of thing. Like if it's a toy, if it's a TV show, I don't know if it's a treat. It makes sense. You, like, lots of people saw your pictures what does it mean? Nothing like you know what I mean? Like it's. [01:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:29] Speaker C: It doesn't translate to real life and I think it's a very honest perspective on like any sort of fame, you know, like you have to be real. [01:24:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. [01:24:40] Speaker A: Jim asked that question in the chat. What does your daughter think now that she's a little bit older? I, I guess what, just what, what about the project overall, the images and stuff like that? Not, not so much the you being a mega famous photographer now but more just, just the images themselves. Does she have any sort of connection to those? Does she haven't. Do you've got any prints up around the house or anything like that? [01:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah, I got a couple of prints and like speaking of plugging. Plugging the work. I'll, I'll show you one thing. [01:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, go for it. Just while Andrew's grabbing his stuff. Oh, sorry, you going boss? [01:25:19] Speaker A: Well I was just going to pull up a couple of, a couple of comments like the guys we'll get back to it. I will get back to the cameras later because I would. I am going to ask about the, the large format camera but shots by Jeremy was, was pretty keen on the ASMR camera stuff and David Mascara. Hey David, what's up? Said camera porn. So yeah we will get back to the cameras after we talk about the project a little bit more. And speaking of the project JS Hanny Jason says the, the depth of field control is really well done. It adds to the ambience perfectly. I agree. [01:25:53] Speaker B: Is that a different bike in Jason's profile picture? Didn't he have a red Ducati? That doesn't look like a red Ducati. You got a new bike Jason? [01:26:01] Speaker A: Maybe that is a new bike. You've been shopping. [01:26:03] Speaker B: He had a red. [01:26:04] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:26:05] Speaker B: What's going on? [01:26:05] Speaker A: Anyway, anyway what, what do you got there for us? [01:26:09] Speaker C: So I, I managed to make this which is a little like artifact from the, from the journey and I think like photographers like making photo books. Yeah in general but I think that puts a bit of a. It's called almost like gives you a closure onto the project. At least that's what it felt like because a lot of people asked me to make a book from this and basically when she looks at the pictures back she looks at the book because I try not to give her too much screen time and it's a nice way to go through the journey rather than see individual snaps. So when she looks back at the pictures funny enough she remembers those places and some of the places she Wants to go back to now. And she's like, oh, I remember this. Let's go there now. Like, you know, kids. I remember that playground. I want to go to that playground again. And that's a bit of. Sometimes we do. And often I found that the places, how we captured them, they're no longer there. And it's a bit of a. Some of it is a bit sad because this one in particular. So we took this after. After the lockdowns have ended, or we were allowed to explore a bit further. So this is the old Atari headquarters in Clayton. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Like you, I'm a gamer. I never knew that place existed. [01:27:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it was just. Just like, on the way. Yeah, it was like old UFO building. I. I love this. I loved. Like, every time I drove past it before. Before the lockdowns, I always wanted to stop. There's, like an old skating rink next to it. Oh, like, not old. I think it's, like, fully functional, but. And I always wanted to stop and take a picture. And one day I think we were coming back from. From. From some place, and obviously she was in a suit, and I had a helmet in the back. And I'm like, you know what? It's now or never. I like, let's stop here. Let's just take a picture. And it was obviously closed, the. The roller door. It was rainy day. But something made me like, let's go out and check it out. And obviously, as she does, she just went and kind of said, there. I ran to the road. I remember camera getting quite wet as well with the raindrops on the viewfinder. I took a couple of snaps, we packed away and we ran. And the next time I passed this place, it was demolished. So I think there's now, like, some warehouse conversions are being built. And. Yeah, it was built. The original building was built at the top of, like, Atari fame in the 80s when, like, they were expanding to Australia. So, yeah, and, like, what a better. What a better connection than, like, Space Invaders, the company and Rocket Girl. [01:29:25] Speaker B: And that's pretty. [01:29:25] Speaker C: Another thing I found for this. So in the book I got. I don't know if I'll find it now, but there's a famous. Or one of the. Yeah, the most famous incident, UFO sighting. So that was not too far. Like, it was a Western. Western sighting in the 60s, and it was not too far from the place of those Atari headquarters. And as a nerd, I just needed to put a bit of a narrative from this historic incident into the book. So I had to trace the copyright owner of that newspaper article and was the Dandenong Journal. So I had to go through like historic society to find who now owns the 1950 Something newspaper thing and ask for permission and luckily they, they provided me one to include into the book and I couldn't be happier. But yeah, it was whole. Another whole nother story of how you try and package something as a narrative that's dear to you and you just jump through the obstacles. But yeah, that's pretty much how we consume the images now. [01:30:42] Speaker A: That's very cool. Well, just to bring this comment up from 151weeks ago, Phil Captures says, would you ever do a coffee table book showcasing all or most of Rocket Girl's adventures? Yes, it's here and you can buy it. [01:30:58] Speaker C: That's exactly. [01:30:58] Speaker B: Just dropped in the chat everybody. Sorry Andrew, I was just gonna say I've just dropped in the chat for everybody watching now or later. The, the link to Andrew's site and the Rocket Girl Chronicles photo book which you can purchase. And there's some sample images obviously on the side as well. So check that out. [01:31:20] Speaker C: Thank you. And that's kind of the. I'm being dragged in a way throughout this journey because when people see the value in this, it's hard to say no, but you also want to keep it yours and do it justice. So the book thing, it took me well over a year to come to this point and I had a publisher that approached me and wanted to make it for me without like any expense. But their, I guess creative vision was a bit more commercial with obviously they need to make profit from it. So I was lucky to be able to crowdfund the whole project. And yeah, I managed to make the book the way I wanted. [01:32:03] Speaker B: The book itself has won some awards, Andrew. So You've got the 2024 Prix de la Photographie Paris Photo Book of the Year, the 2024 International Photography Awards Best Fine Art Publication and the 2023 Tokyo International Photo Awards Gold Winner for Fine Art. I mean the book itself is. Is drawing accolades quite a remarkable. You know, maybe it is a. I often use the term happy accident, but you know, it's amazing how all of these kind of elements lined up from an unexpected restriction and limitations such as lockdown and Covid to, you know, to a point where you've actually been able to publish a book from it. And that book itself has won awards. I think you should take a lot of pride and, and self satisfaction in, in that achievement. It's. It's quite remarkable. [01:32:58] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:32:58] Speaker B: And I know you said that you've been dragged through, dragged through this journey. But at the end of the day, it was your images and your skills that captured those moments that documented that. That time. [01:33:10] Speaker C: Like, I'm very happy that I was. Like, I'm very privileged to have people see value in this because it takes a lot of confidence to put something personal out there. You know, if it's a commercial work, you don't really own it. Like, yeah, I did it, but I did it because client asked me to. When you do something that's your own, like, you kind of. You show part of yourself and if it's not good enough, you take it personally. So I wanted to be at least, you know, know that if I put something out there and especially if people, If I ask people to pay for it, at least I need to know myself that it's good enough. I don't know if it's good enough for everyone, but at least I, like, my conscience is clear in a way. So that's why it took. It took a while. Like, the hardest part was how do you turn something that wasn't shot for a book into something that has a flow and that was like whole learning itself. So I bought this, like, plastic rails from Bunnings. I stuck them on bluetech on my wall. And like, for, I think six months, I was coming to this wall twice a day. One in the morning before and before I go to sleep. And I printed out every single picture, every single photograph, and I put them on the rails and I would come there and just like, do the little swapping around what makes sense. And it's like a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't have the right or wrong. It's just something that works or doesn't. And finally I was in a place. But it was very hard to do. Like, for someone with a mathematics background, when you need to have an answer like, is it right? Is it wrong when you. When there's no tangible, like, tick box, when it's all by feel? Yeah, it was. It was big learning. [01:35:06] Speaker A: I love that. I love that method of, of having physical prints out and being able to just pick. Pick them up and move them and just swap them and have a look. It definitely. It's something that digitally, I struggle with, with things like that. When, especially like if you were doing, you know, we used to do. I used to do a little bit like wedding album layouts and stuff like that, which is obviously a lot easier because it's usually chronological start to the finish of the day. So it's not you know, it's not like you're saying where the photo could be at the end of the book or the start of the book, it could be anywhere. Whereas this had a. More of a formula to it. But it still was tricky when you can't see the whole thing. Thing. You could only see one spread in front of you when you're digitally designing it. Whereas I love that. That idea that you had a wall of everything and you could. Yeah, that's brilliant. [01:35:57] Speaker C: As a book, you consume images, like, in a completely different fashion. And it's almost like when you look at the spreads, it's how your eye travels throughout the page as well. Like, where does it stop from this spread and when you go to the next spread, where do you pick it up? And. Yeah, it's. Yeah, yeah, it was a lot. [01:36:19] Speaker A: I love. [01:36:19] Speaker B: Now, Justin, I. I can feel that you've got some gear questions. [01:36:22] Speaker A: I do. Before I do that, I did just want. I want to bring this image up before we do that. Maybe it'll lead into the gear. There's so many images, actually, that. Before the gear as well. I want to ask you about some other images, but this one, this is the one that we used for the thumbnail of the show. And I love this. And I think what I wanted to touch on was the fact that this project for you has obviously a very strong connection to. To the lockdowns and Covid, and it being the limitation that I guess gave birth to this creativity for this series. But I didn't spend a lot of time on social media during the lockdown, so I actually didn't. I didn't see this series when it was becoming what it. You know, when it was growing in popularity. And so for me, it stands completely on its own as a series that has no connection to lockdowns. For me, I love the. The, I guess cinematic but whimsical feel of sort of this rocket girl exploring a land without anyone in it and just kind of experiencing the different spaces and. What. I don't know. I'm struggling to explain it, but it's. Yeah, it's otherworldly, like. Like. And it wouldn't matter whether it was produced during COVID or produced right now. I love the feeling that it gives me when I look at each image. And like I said before, almost every. Every single one makes me smile for some reason when I bring it up. Especially where's. Where's the one? I don't know if it's up or down. There's. So. I can't believe how many as well you've produced. But there's one in a telephone booth. This one I've done a lot. So much. [01:38:19] Speaker B: Yeah, that's very cool. [01:38:23] Speaker A: It's so good. And I. I just wanted to ask. [01:38:26] Speaker C: And a lot of them. [01:38:28] Speaker A: Sorry, go on. [01:38:29] Speaker C: A lot of them were shot at dusk because I still had a day job just being on calls and whatnot. So we would usually go out like after 5pm and yeah, that. That sport informed a lot of the color as well because. And I'm. I'm sorry, shooting in daylight, just like sun doesn't play well. I don't see images when to. Too late. So. Yeah, that was perfect. [01:38:56] Speaker A: What are some of your favorite images from the series? I want to. I want to see if I can pull them up if there any that you. That are really kind of extra special to you for whatever reason. [01:39:07] Speaker C: I know the one that's the most popular perhaps and like got the most accolades. It's the shuttle. It's when she sits on the bus. I think it might be further, further up when she looks. Maybe. [01:39:25] Speaker A: This one. [01:39:25] Speaker C: Not this one. It's when she sits inside. But yeah, somehow that image. Yeah. Just kind of on the right. Yeah. You see Portrait of Humanity. Now that's. That's the. In the old. It's actually in similar place, but yeah. Okay. It's kind of. There's no composition, but yeah, there's one that just kind of resonated with people. It's. You see the quality of humanity just overlayed with a copy. [01:39:54] Speaker A: No, no, still not. Wow. I'm. I was so good at this. [01:39:57] Speaker B: Down. It's down the bottom left. [01:39:59] Speaker A: Oh, there it is. Okay. I. I was going past the. [01:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:03] Speaker A: Because they had the text on it. [01:40:05] Speaker B: So. [01:40:06] Speaker C: Yeah, this one was. It's a wider image. Everything is basically six by seven. So they cropped it because it was made into a. Of a book, Portrait of Humanity, which is I think produced by British Journal of Photography. But somehow this particular image attracted the most attention. I think it was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize as well here in Australia back in 2021. So this one, I think it kind of just received the most. The most accolades and attention. I quite like it as well because a lot of people think that it was posed and like I made her like sit there and do this. But if you make a large print of this, you'll be able to see streaks of rain on the windows. So this was in the old bus. There's a Moorabbin Air Museum and we used to Just walk around the place when it was shut down during lockdowns, and just look at all the airplanes parked, like, on the ground throughout the fence, through the fence. And one of the images actually shot like that when she's, like, next to the fence and there's a plane inside. And people from the museum, they saw these images and they invited us over as soon as they open up to, like, go and explore like before, before anyone else. And like, oh, yeah, first thing that we'll do, we'll do that. So as soon as they were open, they're like, come in. Like, come on over. So we did, and it was a very rainy day. And we went outside into the, like, open area. The rain started. We got into this bus, I think it's like old Koma bus. And she didn't really want to play in it too much. She was just waiting for the rain to pass. So she just sat there looking out the window as the rain was just going. And I took the picture from the front, and I had to compensate for the light being, like, from the windows and from behind. So, like, overexposed it by a stop or two. And this is another bit of magic that happened to, I guess, shooting on film. And this particular film stock, this film stock is. It's Fuji Pro 400h. They don't make it anymore. I still have a few rolls left. But, yeah, they don't make it since 2022, I believe. And if you overexpose it, this particular stock, it brings out the highlights. And it's known. It's well known for its rich greens. So this bus interior is actually more gray than greenish, bluish. But somehow with this kind of yellow light coming through the window and this film stock being overexposed, it created the color that you don't really see with the naked eye, but it just came through and feel. Maybe I developed it wrong as well. But it, it, yeah, it was, it was magic. So. [01:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yet another happy accident. [01:43:16] Speaker C: I just. Yeah, one of those. But later I learned almost to use this to my advantage to bring out those, like, rich greens. Because essentially you have, like, sun going slightly behind the subject on the angle. Yeah. Some of the images you might, you might see when you have really rich saturated greens, it's almost like using. Using this effect. [01:43:47] Speaker A: So tell me then about post production. Like, you're. You're getting the film scanned once it's been developed. Do. Do you take it into Lightroom or Photoshop? Do you do much editing? How's that part? [01:44:01] Speaker C: Yeah, so I, I, first of all, Yeah, I take. Speaking of camera porn. So I take the back off. This is the thing you. Now, there's no roll, so you just open it up, you pull out your little, little thingy. You can pretty much do anything without having too much of a dark room. These days all I need is dark place to put it into the dev tank, everything else, because the dev tank is daylight safe, so you can pretty much do the rest out in the open. I develop it in my laundry. In the new place, I don't have a good dark area to change. Back in the old place, I just boarded up the little toilet window, just put a piece of. Piece of MDF over it. Now I actually have to wait until it's dark outside to change the film because. Yeah, there's no. Yeah, there are windows everywhere. Then you might see maybe there's. Over there in the corner, I have a little scanner, this one. So when, when the film is dry and ready to go. Yeah, I just load it up. So, yeah, this is. These are like remnants of my latest development. So just when I develop it, it hangs out to dry in the bathroom. Because you need a low dust place. You don't want it to dry up anywhere where you have dust. So, like, basics that anyone from the older days still remembers. [01:45:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:45:45] Speaker C: Then it goes to the scanner, gets into the lightroom, and then. It depends. Most of the shots, I try not to edit too much because it almost defeats the purpose. Like, why would you shoot on film if you were to edit them in terms of color or what's in there? But sometimes if I have an artifact, if I have either a piece of dust or like little object, like, I don't know, random. Let's put it like a rag that I didn't notice and I took pictures, I might actually stamp it out just for the aesthetics, but I think maybe I've done this three, four times out of 150 images. So most of the time you try to do this before you shoot. So, like, if, if I shot something that I need to deal with later, it's. It's my fault essentially. Like, I. I need to correct that mistake. And it's good to have the tool that you can. It's like, it's never anything really major. It's something that's like, you think will improve the inception, but. And on Instagram, honestly, you probably wouldn't even notice it in the first place. But because I sometimes print quite large format prints, you don't want it to spoil, spoil the, like, meter, meter by meter piece. So, yeah, that's something I do. And in terms of color, this film, I try to preserve as much, as much color that it gives as I can. Unless again, it's a mistake and it has multiple looks. So one is it has this cyan look, which it does very well when it's like overcast days. It gives you a very cool, like, cyan look. Another thing, some of the images come very magenta and I keep them. So like the image with the UFO building it, like has magenta all over it. And I still keep it because you know what, that's how it came out. And another one that is famous for is green. So like cyan green and magenta. This is, this is the film, you know, Portra stock is known for. Like, it's warmer, yellower kind of tones. But this Fuji Pro, perhaps if I shot more on sunny days, it would have that look as well. But yeah, mostly, yeah, those kind of cooler, cooler colors and greens. Something that comes out and I almost just learned to use it to my advantage. [01:48:25] Speaker B: Yep. [01:48:28] Speaker A: It's so cool hearing you say that because I. This, maybe this will show my, my limited knowledge of both film stocks and color grading. But when I, when I was looking through your images, I was like, wow, he's. He's really learned how to color grade these to. To get the look that he was after. And I, I assume that you were doing that in post production, but it's very cool to hear that it was more so through the process and the film stock chosen and what you learned throughout as, as far as how to manipulate it to work for what for the image and for what you're trying to get. [01:49:09] Speaker C: Yeah. The biggest correction actually that I had to do was when I was making a book because what I didn't realize, and again, I had to learn on the fly from that, what I didn't realize is that how different color comes through on offset and on paper as well because, like, we are so used to the screen. And again, this is a knowledge that everyone knew back in the day in publishing, but it's kind of gone now when you, you know, in digital, it's an additive process when you just add color to the screen, starting from black and you just enable them. But with print, you almost filter out color because you start with the white and depending on the, you start with hundred percent color and then you reduce. So what I tried to do first, I tried to, when I was doing the test for the book, I was trying to pump up the colors, pump out the percentages and intensity, and it did like messy, horrible job. And then like I started learning and going deep on that and it's like. Hold on a second. It's a completely different process. You almost overlay filters like an essentially like cmyk. Offset printing is like four filters that you put over white that just make the reflected light. Anyway, I can talk about forever because I spent like six months just trying to. Trying to make it. Make it good. [01:50:38] Speaker A: There's so much more to books and stuff than people. People realize. I'm sure it's. Yeah, it's crazy. The last thing you want is a. Is a giant run of books that don't look quite right. Quick comment from Roger Hyland. Hey, Rog, love this project. Great talk. Love the way using color for mood. I agree. Yeah, there's. There's so many great images. We could go through this all day, back and forth, but it has been. Has been almost two hours. But we're not done yet because I want to ask you about that large format camera. [01:51:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I got. [01:51:21] Speaker A: You got, you got a few large Ford show everybody. Everyone, everyone just wants to see cameras in here and make sounds. So any. Anything you got, show it us. [01:51:29] Speaker C: Yeah, the cool thing about large format is that it's fully modular. So it's. Honestly, large format is the purest way you can take images because you literally have a lens that just takes in the light. It's like a projector. So lens takes in the light. You got the focal plane where the image goes to where it reflects. So this is another one. One that's a speed graphic. So this one is more modern. But. And with this one, the cool thing about this is that I actually have a lens with a shutter on it. So I can actually control my shutter speeds. Apertures you can control on any lens almost these days. But with this one, I can actually, you know, wind it and release it because maybe I'll. Okay, if you guys are interested in full crazy nerdery, just give me one second. [01:52:27] Speaker A: Let's go. We are. That's what this podcast is for. Plus, I've googled. I've googled large format cameras so many times, thinking that it might be just an interesting kind of different experience as a hobby. Very different to any kind of other photography that I do. But then I, I start looking into them and it just seems so daunting and I don't. I don't know where to and whether I would even be able to use them. [01:52:55] Speaker C: It is pretty daunting. It has a place, I think still these days, extremely slow, extremely cumbersome heavy. If you wanted to go out, like, impossible. But it's the purest form, I reckon, that you can have in photography because it doesn't have anything. And you could do certain things that you still cannot do with modern gear. Like if you wanted, let's say, to have. This is like a classic example. If you wanted to have a mirror shot straight without any distortion around the mirror frame, but you don't want to have yourself reflected in the mirror. How do you do this with digital like, or any modern. Any kind of camera that's not large format, there's no way. But with large format, if you have movements, proper movements, you'll just shift your focal plane sideways so your lens is here and your focal plane is behind. And the mirror will get projected like this. So you shoot from this perspective and you shifted your lens here and the mirror is here. So the light from the mirror will get reflected at the angle to the focal plane. You still have your vertical straight. And that's why they use them for like architecture so much. Or let's say you wanted to run a focus along the fence that goes away somewhere far, far away, and you wanted to have a focus throughout the fence, but not anywhere else. So you would just tilt your either front plane or rear plane and you'll basically change the line of the depth of field. Because like, we are used to the depth of field being square all the time. Not because that's how it is. Just because cameras these days don't have movements, you cannot really modify that. So it just gives you a whole bunch of new creative tools to play with. But it's expensive and it's slow and yeah, it's cumbersome. So the lens, my favorite lens for the large format is this. So this is like old kook lens. I think it's F 4.5 something. Something. I don't even know what is the equivalent. And this is pretty much it. It's like two pieces of glass through and through. There's no shutter, there's no nothing. But to shoot on this kind of stuff, you have to either use very slow film or like back in the day, they just remove the cap, give it a couple of seconds, put the cap back in. But I still shoot on like ISO 100, 200 film stock. So for that I had to come up with my own way of doing shutters. And that was another Covid project to kind of put back into this. I hope I have it here. Just give me one second. [01:56:03] Speaker A: Meanwhile, still here, I'm googling intrepid Cameras. I'm gonna ask you about those because I've seen they're like the modern, the modern kind of large format camera things. I just don't know what the, what the deal is, whether they're, whether they're legit or if you're supposed to just find an old one. Anyway. Oh, Andrew's back. I'll ask him in a minute. [01:56:20] Speaker C: So welcome. Let me introduce you the Andy Rovenko shutter system. I don't think it's patented, so please feel free to copy. You get one piece of MDF in front, another piece of MDF in the back. A bit of a layer. This is a cutout from the notepad cover. It still has some like over it. This is just like some piece of random hardware. So what it does is the size of this slit is your shutter speed. And it's called the gravity pull shutter because it works. Guess what? Using gravity. So what you do is it has this little thing for toothpick. So if I had a toothpick, basically what I do is when I get ready, I put this on my lens and I think this one, this angle actual shot is for this particular cook lens in particular. Yeah. Perfect. So this is what my large format setup looks like. And I have a little toothpick that holds this contraption here. And when I focus, I obviously have to keep it open because you set up your shot, you have to have a projection, your like frame. Then when I put on the film hold, pull out the thing and I made it shoot. I'm looking the subject. When the subject goes, I just pull out the toothpick. Boom. Done. So this is your shot. [01:57:50] Speaker B: But that's so cool. [01:57:53] Speaker C: Thanks. I faced an interesting problem. How do I actually know what speed I'm shooting with? Like. [01:58:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I was about to ask. I was like, what shutter speed is that? It's. Well, it's one, one and one end yet. [01:58:09] Speaker C: For that I had to come up with the next contraption. If I haven't broken it yet. Let me just see. I hope I didn't. Yeah, I just need to connect this little wire. Maybe I break it anyway. So what I did is I made a little shutter speed tester. So this is where the mathematics and engineering degree came, came into play. So I have a little 9 volt battery here. I connect it. Hopefully, hopefully it will give me a little introduction. Yeah. Knows that it's me. [01:59:00] Speaker A: Yes, master. [01:59:02] Speaker C: Yes, master. [01:59:05] Speaker A: I could even see that bit. Oh. Oh, wow. [01:59:10] Speaker C: What it does is it's getting ready to measure and when I need to Measure what speed, what shutter speed it is. So first you put in your thing in between those two sensors. It gets ready to measure. Then it counts the time that passes between and gives me my setting for exposure. Essentially when I need to test this, I put it in between these, I drop the shutter and it tells me exactly how much time passed since these two sensors were able to see each other, if it makes any sense. So your opening is how much time it takes for the sensor to be able to see the light, which is exactly the amount of time that my film will see the light, which is your shutter speed. [02:00:06] Speaker B: That's for. [02:00:07] Speaker C: Anyway. [02:00:09] Speaker A: That's insane. Okay, that's answered my question. I'm not buying a large format camera. I do not have the skills required. Do use one of those. [02:00:21] Speaker C: Look, this one, this one has this inbuilt. So I only needed to do this because I didn't have a focal plane shutter. But this camera in particular, what it does, it has this rewinder. So you wind it up and depending on amount of times and what you do with it, you release it. And little curtain that has the same type of slits. And that's the reason why I have those different cameras because for different types of like I couldn't build a good enough curtain gravity shutter for this big boy. It's just too unwieldy. Like it's. It's massive. [02:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:01:03] Speaker C: So that's why I. This camera is for the big boy because I have a focal plane shutter. So it's essentially shutter that sits in front of the film rather than in front of the dance. So yeah, that's. That's the nerd. The nerd talk. [02:01:19] Speaker B: Wow. That's pretty nerdy. [02:01:21] Speaker A: I love it. I love it now. Okay, so. So Rocket girl, the project is finished because you've capped it off with a book. Is is it officially the project is wrapped up in your mind? It's. [02:01:33] Speaker C: Yeah, I'd say so. The. I still have a few rolls of that future stock so I want to try and put it into good use. Yeah. My daughter is definitely much bigger than she was back in the day and I might be like lifting on a lid on something that I'm not ready to. But okay. I took a few images on our trip to Japan recently. I don't think that any more than three or four images will come out of this project because it wasn't the purpose. We just went for a bit of a holiday. But it just felt fitting to like you feel a bit alien in a place like this. So that felt Natural. And I saw so many places where I wanted to take pictures, but, like, it wasn't. It wasn't the plan. So we didn't. So I. I have a few, so maybe. Maybe I'll put them out soon enough. But. Yeah, it's. Yeah. [02:02:36] Speaker B: Other than that. [02:02:36] Speaker C: Yeah, the Rocket Girls are wrapped up, so. Okay. [02:02:40] Speaker A: Well, I'm excited to see those. I actually saw it was way back in your Instagram, I think it was. This was way before Rocket Girl. There was. I think it looked like Japan. Maybe it wasn't. There was some sort of like an old. What do you call them, Temple palace thing. What are they called in Japan? [02:02:58] Speaker B: Like a shrine. [02:02:59] Speaker A: Shrine thing. Yeah. And I think your daughter. Daughter might have been in front of it. And I was actually like, this is. This has that same kind of vibe, but no spacesuit, no helmet. So it's very interesting that. That we might see a little sneak peek of that in Japan at some point. But so what. So these large format cameras, what sort of work are you making with them outside of Rocket Girl now? Do you have any projects planned or is it mainly just seeing what comes to you over. Over the next few years? [02:03:29] Speaker C: They are underutilized, unfortunately, since COVID in particular, because when. When I obtained them and did all that stuff, I had a lot more time on my hands, as we all did, I guess, because we were stuck inside. I really wish I. I still have plans to use them. As anyone would say. Anyone who hoards gear, they would say, oh, I need this. I'm gonna use it. I hope. I hope that I will. But yeah, I actually now I resort myself to this. Like, it still looks big and like, unwieldy, but compared to the large format, at least I can take it out. So for large format, I keep almost for around the house kind of stuff. So if. If there's something in the backyard, like, it's not like we have a big backyard or anything, but like, if there's something, I can take it out there and like, take a snap off, I will. It just needs a lot more thought and setup. It's not. It's easy to fling out and there are people like, historically that did crazy good photography with this kind of gear and I want to. I want to get closer to their level someday maybe. So that's. That's why I'm keeping them. And I'm hoping. I'm hoping that I'll get time later to try that. So. Yeah. [02:05:00] Speaker B: Nice. Very cool. [02:05:03] Speaker A: This might be a very tough question for you, but I'm going to Ask it anyway. Do you have any advice for the photographers out there, including me, that are hoping to come across their own project in the future that they can really lean into? I know your project come out of sort of circumstance and constraints and a bit of serendipity, but do you have any advice for the photographers like us that are searching for a project that we could really sink our teeth into? [02:05:42] Speaker C: I think you need to, like, it's hard advice because I am. I'm in the same spot. Expect, expect, may. Except maybe I'm in a even tougher spot because I. I've built something that there's almost like an expectation now in a way, like, oh, what's next, Andy? And I have to tell myself that actually I don't have to make anything. Like, it's not a job. It's fine if nothing ever comes beyond this. It's fine. Like, this project came naturally and people try to, you know, repeat the high or chase the high. And some people consciously can do this and produce these results, but everyone is different. And I think if you. If it didn't come to you yet, it might. Some people are very purposeful about how they approach things and they are very good at doing commercial stuff, usually because there's a method to it. I'd say the only part of advice is you just need to keep shooting and experimenting. You cannot do the same stuff all the time. You need to build upon and like, almost scrutinize what you come back with and do you like it. And you need to perhaps look wider than yourself and like your work and just try and expand, expand your field of view, like. Because if you only look at particular style or particular type of photography, you will be in the same mindset and circle. So that's why perhaps limitation or, like, going outside your comfort zone, it forces you to almost like, think maybe different, a little bit different. So, yeah, it's a tricky one because I don't have the next project myself. And like, I don't know, I don't have method of. If I wanted to make it big. I actually thought about this as well because, you know, as, as humans, the first natural thought, when people ask you what's next? You're like, oh, I need to do something next. I need to. And a few thoughts that I had, I took out, like, took the camera out, I shot a few pictures and they were the same images as I always saw that other people did. And like, do I really want to still do the same thing? Do I want to repeat other people's Work. Maybe I could do it a bit better. But, you know, you still see your influences in your images, but there's nothing that expands upon it. So, yeah, it's a tricky one. You just. I reckon the only, like, formula is, like, to go, show up, do it, show up, do it, and, like, explore and see where it takes you. Because if you don't do it, nothing will happen. But if you keep moving somewhere, maybe it's not a specific goal post, but you just kind of traveling along with it, maybe you'll stumble on something. I'm sorry, it's not a very helpful piece of advice. [02:08:57] Speaker B: No, no, it's a really. I think it's a really important piece of advice you've given because, you know, for some people, they can come up with projects, as you said, you know, they can just come up with it because they have a mindset like that and they have a process and a, you know, maybe a process of elimination, but for other people, that creative inspiration just has to come when it's ready. [02:09:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [02:09:17] Speaker B: Sometimes searching for that project is harder than just letting it. [02:09:20] Speaker C: That's right. Yeah, you're right. Someone told me, like, when camera speaks to you, you will know it. So it's almost like. Yeah. When. When you, when you feel that kind of. I felt like when I shot this before any. Any of that happened, I felt joy from taking those images, like, for myself. And I think when that happens, when you see that magic, like, when you feel it, you'll know it, perhaps. [02:09:52] Speaker B: Yep. No, that's good. [02:09:54] Speaker A: Great advice. Great advice. And I think it's also very, very good advice in terms of when you say you've seen some success from a project, but not necessarily thinking that, oh, now I have to do something similar again. I have to try and. Try and make something that everyone likes or whatever, rather just going back to pursuing the things that interest you and seeing what comes out of it. [02:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. [02:10:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it's. It's a benefit. It's the luxury of not having photographer, really, as a title or a job because, you know, not being a real photographer, I don't have that pressure, really. So you're. Yeah. People put pressure on you, like, just from the circumstance, but it's, it's. You always. Right. [02:10:45] Speaker A: I love that you keep saying I'm not a real photographer, but you've. You've created a body of work that. [02:10:50] Speaker B: That's internationally acclaimed. [02:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah. That lots of us would. Would dream of having. But it was just something I did when I was born. [02:10:59] Speaker B: Very humble. Andrew Very humble. [02:11:04] Speaker C: Weirdly, I, I feel like a fraud, honestly, like. But it's, you know. [02:11:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it is what you should, you shouldn't, you shouldn't. The work speaks for itself. [02:11:14] Speaker B: So the fact that you feel that way is actually quite magical in itself. You know, the fact that you actually feel like, oh, yeah, okay, all right. I did this thing, you know, I think it's. I think it's wonderful. [02:11:27] Speaker C: You know what? I think I know what it is. It's almost like a shame because people strive for something and they work so hard to land there and they put in so much effort and for many people who are very talented, it doesn't often happen or never. And I didn't pursue it really. And it happened somehow to me and that maybe that's where it comes from that, you know. Yeah. It's just almost like a bit of a shame that I didn't really plan it, but now I'm here talking to you. [02:12:03] Speaker A: That's how our world works. And you. There were a lot of things in your story that led you to that moment. It was, it wasn't just like, oh, I'd never touched a camera before and then one day I picked it up and didn't put any effort in and struck gold. You know, like you put a lot of effort in and there was a lot of work in the lead up to that to build the skills required to do what you have done. [02:12:27] Speaker B: So. Yeah, and you put in the, the hard yards to learn and master. You know, film cameras that are older than you, technology that is older than you, and you produce something magical that, that should never be discounted, that you actually did put in the effort and the, the learning and you. It was all self taught. I mean, that in itself is magical. That also we could sing your praises all day. [02:12:53] Speaker A: We could. Result. Results don't lie. You can't fake the photos. You know, I mean, let's. Unless you use AI you didn't use. [02:12:59] Speaker C: AI Becoming the color of my jumper. [02:13:03] Speaker A: Good. [02:13:03] Speaker B: That's. [02:13:03] Speaker C: All right. [02:13:04] Speaker A: We've succeeded. One question I do try and ask most guests, which I think I. We've already got the answer to, but if it was the end of the world and it was, it was just you and you and the family rocket girl running away from, I don't know, a zombie apocalypse or something. What. What camera? If you could just grab one camera and lens to document the end of the. I feel like you've already done this. Like you're. Your whole project is. Is documenting the. The end of the world kind of. [02:13:37] Speaker B: As we knew it would. [02:13:39] Speaker A: Would you stick with the. [02:13:42] Speaker C: The Mamiya if I was running away? Never. Because you're like, like zombie apocalypse and this. They just don't play well with each other. Absolutely not. But if it was, I guess more like a plague. Plague scenario kind of like. [02:14:04] Speaker A: Kind of like. I don't know. Covid. [02:14:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Once more of a like slow burn when you. When you like have time to. Yeah, definitely. [02:14:14] Speaker B: I bet you're secretly watching the World Health Organization website just waiting for bird. [02:14:19] Speaker A: Flu to take off for their next project. Come on, come on, come on. [02:14:24] Speaker B: Someone spread it. [02:14:25] Speaker C: Finally. [02:14:28] Speaker A: What focal length did you change it up? [02:14:36] Speaker C: It. [02:14:37] Speaker A: Oh, because you're out of Fuji stock. [02:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:14:41] Speaker A: Damn. What focal length did you mainly use? Was it just the one focal length the whole time? [02:14:49] Speaker C: I love like this lens. Like this. I don't like speaking about gear, but like this Mamiya Seko 110 lens is absolute magic. Like, this is hands down my favorite like lens because it replicates. It's very close to the look of old large format lenses, to the way it just renders depth of field. And like it's, well, nothing new here, but like the bigger the focal plane is, like the bigger your film stock, the narrower the depth of field is. So like this 2.8 is perhaps like 1.4, 1.8 equivalent to 35 mil. And this is what gives me like this really, I guess, dreamy, shallow depth of field look, which I love because I struggle with complex scenes. I struggle with when there's too much going on with this, too much noise in the image when there are too many distractions. So like, nice way to filter it out is just like narrow your depth of field. And this lens and this, yeah, this lens on medium format just does it beautifully. But on the downside of that is my like 46 year old vision. Eyesight is not suited for it as much anymore. So I miss focus quite a bit as well with like manual focusing. Not by a lot, but when you scan it to like huge format, you can see. Oh man, this is excellent for like Instagram and screen. But I almost had to accept the imperfection. And like a lot of images might be tad forward or back because I use 2.8 almost everywhere. That's like my favorite focal length. And I had to accept that they might not be sharp, they might not be. And that's perhaps what you inherit from the digital era is like, oh, you scrutinize pixels, you like, look up. Is it focus perfect? It doesn't matter that much. You Know, unless it's like, total mistake, let it go. [02:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's something. We, we saw Greg firsthand the other week when we went to the Rennie Alice exhibition in Melbourne. [02:17:19] Speaker B: Yes. [02:17:20] Speaker A: These. These amazing film images from like the 80s, a lot of them. [02:17:25] Speaker B: 70S, 60s, 70s and 80s, 80s, 90s. [02:17:29] Speaker A: Projected huge on the wall, like massive projections. It was, it was an awesome exhibition. And a lot of them weren't critically sharp, but the content of the images just spoke way over the top of that stuff. You didn't even think about it. [02:17:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:17:46] Speaker A: And they were projected bigger than I'll ever see one of my images. You know, they were taking up the entire wall. [02:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Inside a gallery. [02:17:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think you're right. It's something where I'll look at images from some of my shoots and be like, well, that's no good. It's not, it's not critically sharp, but yeah, there's more to it than that. [02:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:18:09] Speaker C: That's again like a big learning of. When you shoot something for yourself, you set your own standards of what's possible. And it's not the standards that are told to you by the editor or someone. It's like your vision in terms of an artist. Does lack of focus here affect what you're trying to say? And if it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't matter. [02:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, move on. [02:18:39] Speaker C: Like, there's one, there's one image where actually like I. In the book. I discarded it from the book first, but I think it was because it wasn't sharp. I shot it handheld and yeah, you could see it like blurry all over the place. And it's. This one is called Mars and you can see like it's, it's, it's, ah. It's doesn't have that kind of sharpness to it. But you know what? When I saw it like in, in this spread, this blur almost added the otherworldliness to it. You know, like as you see like something coming from an instrument that. Affected by a noise or. Yeah. Some kind of distortion. And I thought, you know what, for this particular image, just, it plays to it, it works well. And you don't have to think the same checkpoint for everything. Like, you don't have to apply the same lens to everything because when you're trying to tell the story and give vision, blur is a tool as well. And in this particular instance, it wasn't planned, but it works for it. [02:19:52] Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. [02:19:55] Speaker A: I love this one. When I saw it was. It was this one, I think I couldn't quite Tell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:20:00] Speaker C: It was this one. Yeah. [02:20:01] Speaker A: Yeah, this. It. It looks like another planet. [02:20:04] Speaker B: Yeah. And the colors are just so beautiful. [02:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just amazing. [02:20:10] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's. It's literally was 10 minutes from. From our place. I was very lucky to be living close to the. Close to the beach at the time. So. Yeah, it was very nice to be able to have this getaway, which I guess not many people had at the time. [02:20:27] Speaker B: Y. Yeah. [02:20:28] Speaker A: Well, you certainly made the most of it. So what do you think, Greg? You got any other questions? [02:20:35] Speaker B: No, I think it might be time to wrap. We've gone over the two hour mark, but effortlessly. [02:20:39] Speaker A: Effortlessly. [02:20:40] Speaker B: So I should say. [02:20:41] Speaker A: Yeah, the chat's been pretty quiet. They've just been listening. Still lots of people listening, but shots by Jeremy. Hey. Jeremy says that Mamiya could be a weapon as well at the end of the world. So, you know, that's a benefit of a big heavy camera. [02:20:54] Speaker C: Yeah, very good. Jeremy knows his stuff. [02:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah, he's. He's shot with a few. A few medium format film cameras in his time, so hopefully he hasn't been using them as weapons. Yeah. Okay. So people can find your work on your website, on your Instagram. Is there anything else people need to know about you? [02:21:16] Speaker C: Nah, just. [02:21:17] Speaker A: No. [02:21:18] Speaker C: Yeah. Thanks for being around. Yeah. Get a book if you. If you feel like it. I don't like shoving. Shoving products down. Yeah, if you feel like it. Yeah, I'd appreciate it. [02:21:29] Speaker B: Yep. Nice. Well, look on that. On that note, folks, I'd like to thank Andrew for Andrew, your time and your. Your input today. I think anyone listening or watching this episode will have learned a lot just about the art of image making that, you know, sharpness isn't everything that sometimes moments present themselves. And I think you mentioned partway through our chat that, you know, just show up, just be present, have your camera with you and you know, the world is a magical, beautiful place. It is unfolding and it's ever changing. You've just got to be there at the right time to capture something magical. So thank you so much for sharing not only a project with, with us with Rocket Girl Chronicles, but also your. Your story. I think there's a lot to take away from today's episode. [02:22:20] Speaker C: Thanks for having me, guys. [02:22:22] Speaker B: Drops. Oh, no, you're very welcome. Very welcome. We'll drop your links to your sites in the chat, but on that note, we're going to say farewell. Boss, have you got anything you want to finish on? [02:22:34] Speaker A: No, no, that's it. Philip Johnson says many thanks, Andrew. Justin and Greg, good show. Thanks, Philip. Thanks for being here. You were here early today. [02:22:42] Speaker B: It was here early. [02:22:43] Speaker A: We appreciate it. We appreciate it. [02:22:44] Speaker B: I didn't get the memo. [02:22:45] Speaker A: If you are listening and you got a second hit a like on the, on the video, it helps the youtubes know that we're putting out good stuff and otherwise. Yeah, we appreciate you all sticking with us. [02:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah. We'll see you on Monday night, 7:30pm Australian Eastern Time. And then obviously again next week back for yet another interview. [02:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:23:08] Speaker B: Lucinda Goodwin, I think next week is going to be joining us with live. [02:23:12] Speaker A: Music photographer from Melbourne as well. [02:23:15] Speaker B: I believe so. [02:23:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:23:17] Speaker B: From memory. [02:23:17] Speaker A: So that'll be fun. [02:23:19] Speaker B: Yeah. But look on that note, Justin's going to play us a jingle. Not, not personally, he's just going to hit a button, but one day we'll get him to get the guitar out and play something, probably. [02:23:28] Speaker A: Oh, and finally Jim has one last comment. He says if you do want to buy any lucky strap stuff, use code Justin for 15 off because it's the best code. He says don't use code Jim. That won't work. Use code Justin. Andy, Jim, Justin, me, Justin and Greg are having a discount code code competition. See whose code gets used the most. And currently Jim's is winning purely because his name is three letters and it's easy to type in. So yeah, stupid name. Use code Justin, please. Thank you. [02:24:04] Speaker B: I'll give it up. [02:24:05] Speaker C: Thanks everyone. [02:24:05] Speaker B: I'm going to choke you out anyway, you have your trip. But look on that note, everybody, this has been the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. Please head to luckystraps. Com. Grab yourself a strap or a belt or hoodie or it's cold. Get some gloves. [02:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah, winter gloves. [02:24:23] Speaker B: Yeah, winter gloves. We do those as well. But, but look on that note, thanks again, Andrew. Thanks, Justin, and thanks everyone in the chat. See you Monday. [02:24:33] Speaker A: See yas. [02:24:33] Speaker C: Thanks, guys.