EP87 Craig "Watto" Watson - From Press Rooms to Fine Art Film

[00:00:25] Speaker A: Good morning, everybody. That's a nice groove to start a. A cold Thursday morning here in Victoria, Australia. Welcome to the Camera Life podcast. It's the 12th of June and this is episode 87. Thanks for joining along. If you're in the chat watching along live with us now, make sure you drop a comment to say hi. Say good morning, let us know where you are. If you're new to the channel, let us know where you're joining us from. We're always fascinated to find out where people are watching the camera live from. [00:01:02] Speaker B: So a few from the last episode from all over the place. It was, it was wild from New York to. I can't even remember, central, Central Iowa. Oh, yeah, that was. Yeah, I were in the States but there was, there was some overseas people as well, I think Germany. Anyway, it was cool. [00:01:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:18] Speaker B: So where are you from? [00:01:18] Speaker A: So, yeah, say good morning, say g' day, Let us know where you're from, let us know what time it is, where you are. Because we're always keen to understand what time people are actually watching our show. We are, obviously. We're joined today by Justin and Jim. Good morning, lads. [00:01:31] Speaker B: Morning. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Good to see you looking vibrant and colorful. And we are joined today by special guest Craig Watto Watson. Craig, welcome to the show. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Good morning. Thanks, Greg. Hi, Justin. Good morning, Good morning. [00:01:47] Speaker A: Thanks for joining us today. So, for those of you watching along and listening along at home, Craig has has an extensive career in history with photography, he's worked in press, he's obviously shot with film cameras, he's worked with motorsport photography, he's been involved in the Olympics, he's run a gallery, he runs a dark room, he has done it all. And we're going to unpack Craig's story, his journey, his inspirations and see what he's up to these days. But welcome, Craig. [00:02:21] Speaker C: Thanks, Greg. Yeah. [00:02:26] Speaker B: That was a pretty, pretty good summary of Craig's history. I was going to get Craig to give us a rundown, but that seems like a pretty. A pretty good overview. [00:02:35] Speaker A: I'm just reading my notes. [00:02:38] Speaker B: Is there anything you missed? [00:02:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Tell us about yourself. You know, who are you? What do you do? [00:02:45] Speaker C: You've covered it all. Press photographer for 20 plus years, specializing in motoring, motorsport, car magazines, that sort of thing. Did a lot of event photography. Worked for Sovereign Hill for four years doing their events. Yeah, Various magazines. I think I've been published in 40 magazines in Australia, UK and US, mostly UK, actually. I was SOL Australian contributor to six magazines in the UK for about 10 years and then, yeah, I had My own motoring magazine for 12 years, producing most of the content for that myself. But I also had some stringers and some writers and photographers working for me and then Bottom fell out of the market in 2016. We battled on for another year closer in 2017 and then I looked at what else to do and I wanted to get back into sort of my history, my photography, where it all started. So I opened up focal Point, darkroom and gallery in Geelong in 2019, February 2019. Just in time. We had one good year and then Covert hit. [00:04:05] Speaker A: What could go wrong? [00:04:06] Speaker C: Yeah, who would have guessed? Yeah, it could be worse. A friend of mine opened a dark room and gallery two months before COVID hit. So we were. But yeah, we got smashed by Covert and we just never recovered. You know they always said the recovery was coming, it never came. And then we got into financial crisis and housing crisis and cost of living crisis and everything. [00:04:32] Speaker A: Australia, the lucky country, the land of crisis. [00:04:37] Speaker C: Maybe we'll get there again. So yeah, look, then I had a whole heap of luck life challenges in 2023. So it was pretty much a no brainer. We've closed the place down. I closed it down in October 23rd and then spent a year sort of reorganizing and working out what I wanted to do and all that sort of stuff and, and now I'm back and I've got a small business working out of a small studio and I'm concentrating a lot now on my fine art photography and in terms of photographic work, I do a lot less than I used to. I'm doing almost no press, I'm doing virtually no commercial work. I do things like film scanning, archive scanning, you know, negative slides, prints. I do photo restorations, I do a bit of mentoring and teaching. That's predominantly it. Yeah, yeah, you're well and well and. [00:05:35] Speaker A: Truly keeping your, keeping your, your hat in the game. Just a couple of quick things before we jump to the comments to say good morning to the chat just for the kids watching along at home, a magazine is a glossy paper based product that contain pictures and words. It didn't have a screen and you had to actually physically turn the pages so it's worth a Google. Interesting. [00:06:00] Speaker B: You can actually see them often Greg. They often have them on display at airports. I've seen when you go to buy some snacks to get on the plane they'll have some of these old things, magazines on display there that you can just see what it used to be like back in the day. [00:06:15] Speaker A: It is interesting you bring that up Justin, because every Time I fly, which isn't very often but whenever I do I always go to one of those bigger news agencies at the airport and try to find like a photography magazine or something that I'm into and just. Yeah, it's just fun to flick through actually. I don't know if I have it here but I'm sorry to derail the show so early but one of my kids went to an op shop, she loves op shop clothes hunting and all sorts of stuff and she found like a photography magazine from like 1970 and it's absolutely fascinating. It's, I think it's an Australian photography magazine and everything is, you know, all the ads and you know, call now for a brochure and call now for a catalog and. Oh, it's just a, such a. What is it, like a time capsule of photographic history. [00:07:01] Speaker D: So anyway, did you get any good tips? [00:07:04] Speaker A: I did a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:07:07] Speaker B: Editing tips. [00:07:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:07:13] Speaker A: True. Justin, you want to jump to the chat? [00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah, Going crazy. Glenn Lavender's in the chat. He says, what a handsome guest. I have to agree. David Mascaro from San Francisco says, holla. Noel Butcher g' day from Melbourne. Is this our first time I've had Noel on the, on the show. He's obviously. [00:07:35] Speaker A: I love your, I love your icon. No, that's pretty cool. [00:07:38] Speaker B: It's obviously here for you, Craig. [00:07:40] Speaker C: Yeah, well, Noel, I worked with Noel way back in, Way, way back in the days of the Herald Sun. Hi, Noel. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Very cool. Hi. No, Paul says Good morning from minus 4 degrees Celsius. That is Canberra. I think I need new gloves. Yeah. Pa got a plan. I need to give you some advice on which gloves to get but I'm going to try and get, get you to do our first ever live, live calling onto the show on Monday night. I'm going to. I'll see if you. I'll see if you're available. We'll do some live glove advice. It's my dream to turn this podcast into a live call in show on Monday nights and have photographers be able to call in for advice. So this could be our, this is our start. Philip Johnson says. Morning, gents. Good morning, Philip. [00:08:25] Speaker C: Morning. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Rodney Nicholson is here. Good morning, boys. [00:08:29] Speaker A: Hey, Rodney, we're going to catch up with you next week I think, is it? [00:08:32] Speaker C: I think Rodney's next week. Yeah. [00:08:35] Speaker B: Dave Clark, digifrog from Tassie says morning Philip Lavo, Gimli, JC and Flanny, the Thursday Fellowship crew. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Oh, nice. [00:08:50] Speaker B: And he also says you need to get some magazines stocked up for your Lucky straps. Tokyo trip, Greg. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:08:56] Speaker D: Stop reminding him. [00:08:58] Speaker A: No, I need to know. [00:09:00] Speaker B: I need to hold out hope. Paul says there's a couple of magazines I still buy, ones that are focused on stories and locations rather than gear. Pete Eastway's better photography magazine. Plus ones from the UK like Black and White magazine. [00:09:14] Speaker A: Black and White mag is. Yeah, that's. That's gorgeous, isn't it? That's classic. I remember collecting that back in art school. [00:09:20] Speaker B: I've actually seen one that I've been contemplating. There's one called Frames that gets advertised a bit on social media. Have you guys seen that one? It's at the Frames magazine. I think it's quarterly print and then maybe they do monthly other things and then I think there's also a bit of a community associated with it as well, you know, so they've kind of bundled some digital and analog together to try and make it keep working in print and I think I'm going to get a subscription and check it out. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Have a look at it. [00:09:49] Speaker B: And finally Noel replies. G' day, Craig. All right, onwards. Onwards with the interview. [00:09:57] Speaker A: Onwards. So just before we dive into to Craig's story, question for you. First of all, Craig, do you prefer Watto or do you prefer Craig? [00:10:06] Speaker C: What's I prefer? What I actually. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Okay, what. Oh, it is. Whatever it is. Before we dive into to Watto's story, just a reminder that you are watching the Camera Life podcast. Please make sure you like and subscribe. If you're new to the channel, give us a like. It helps out a lot with the Al Gore rhythms and make sure you subscribe. Tickle the notification because every so often we drop a random episode and. And you get notified. [00:10:35] Speaker B: Are we dropping a random one tonight? [00:10:37] Speaker A: Little in Queen might be. [00:10:39] Speaker B: We're going to do a little live reaction to the Fujifilm X Summit release. That's so it'll. We'll probably go live at 6.45pm Australian Eastern Standard Time tonight. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:50] Speaker B: And just see. [00:10:51] Speaker A: And as many of you know, I. I hate talking about Fujifilm, you know, I mean Jim has to almost beg me to talk about Fujifilm anyway, so. [00:11:01] Speaker D: I can give you my. [00:11:02] Speaker A: Please do. It'll be fun. [00:11:04] Speaker B: Perfect. [00:11:04] Speaker A: A live reaction. That's really cool. Will that be our first live as it happens reaction with you? [00:11:10] Speaker B: It will be. We did it. When Nikon released the Z8, I made the. The greatest thumbnail for it because I think like everyone had been waiting for a while for that camera and anyway, so we jumped on there and we all watched because Jim was And then Jim bought two. [00:11:23] Speaker D: So worked out perfect six 12 months later. [00:11:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:11:28] Speaker A: It planted the seed. [00:11:29] Speaker B: That's right. [00:11:33] Speaker A: So Wado, let's roll back time. [00:11:37] Speaker C: Yep. [00:11:39] Speaker A: Let's go early days with you. Talk to us a little bit about your, what you consider to be your first, maybe insights, experience or inspiration with, say, a camera or photography. [00:11:53] Speaker C: Well, I, I never, I was never a photographer as a, as a kid. I wasn't one of these people that had a camera from very young age or anything. My first introduction to photography was, I guess, proper photography. When I left school, I went to Swinburne University, or Swinburne Tech as it was then, to study graphic design. I was going to be Australia's greatest graphic designer. Sadly, I failed the call. But that first year photography was a subject we were taught by a chap whose name escapes me at the moment, who had been the, had been the lead photographer with the Australian Antarctic division for about 30 years and he used to often start lectures with a slideshow from the Antarctic and just blew me away. The work that he was doing was just fantastic. And he. We had as our part of our book list a Pentax K1000. You had to have a Pentax K1000. If you turned up with a Canon A1, you were sent home, come back with a Pentax K1000. And there was a good reason for that, I guess, was because none of us were photographers as such. But we had to learn photography fully. Manual, mechanical camera, standard 50 mil lens. We weren't allowed anything else. We weren't allowed zooms or anything. And our very first assignment was to go and photograph an event somewhere just with that camera one lens. I went to. So this was 1980 and they had a march for returned servicemen from Vietnam. It was a. The first real acknowledgment of the, the soldiers from Vietnam. And they were having a, literally a welcome home parade sort of eight years too late. And so I went along to that and shot it photojournalist style sort of thing, everything I could with this standard 50 mil lens, getting as close as I could, photographing people, meeting each other. They hadn't seen each other for years and lots of smiles, lots of tears, that sort of stuff. I went, this is really cool. My photos weren't great, but when I looked at them I went, this is really cool. I'd love to do this. But various things happened. I said, I, I failed the first year of that graphic design course, so I was looking for what else to do. I ended up working at Ted's camera store and I worked there for four or five years, maybe longer, six years. And then from that, you know, I used to obviously borrow cameras from work and go and photograph whatever I could, whether it was landscapes or portraits or whatever and, and I wasn't into motorsport then. I wasn't doing anything like that, although I was a member of a car club, the Mini Moat Club, the Moke Owners association for those who know and they had a bit of motorsport and I used to photograph whatever I could to do with the mokes. And then 86 I started working for a company called Pix Industrial which was in South Melbourne. They weren't around a long time but while I was working there I met a lot of professional photographers because that was, that was our clientele, professional and government photographers. And it made me realize a lot of these guys who were really good photographers, like real cracker jack photographers, a lot of them knew nothing about the, the technicalities involved. You know, sometimes they were shooting on a wing and a prayer, thank God for Polaroid. You know, you'd take a shot and look at the Polaroid and decide whether was needed any changes, that sort of thing. And I thought, God, some of these guys, I mean some of them were really good, I knew their stuff but some of them were good photographers but just didn't know the technical. I thought anybody can be a photographer really. So I thought if I wanted to become a photographer I need to learn about it. So I actually signed up and started a course at rmit. I got in partly on the basis of my folio, partly on the fact that I was mature age student. So that was good. And so I started working, started studying at RMIT and I was only there three years, it was part time course. I was only there three years and I learned a lot to do with the technical stuff, the physics of photography, physics of lenses and cameras, the chemistry involved, particularly with darkroom work. And I love being in the dark room. I spent every minute I could in the dark rooms. Awesome. [00:16:47] Speaker A: And then let us jump in for a sec. Craig, I just want to roll back to a point you made earlier and I just want to get the feel from the room and also from the chat you talked about how a lot of photographers don't actually understand the technical aspects of their gear or even their craft. Do you think that that's still. Anyone can answer this, do you think? I think that that's still an issue where people are just picking up or buying a camera or using a camera on a little Bit of blind faith that it'll just do what it's supposed to do without understanding it. [00:17:18] Speaker C: It's more now because of digital, because you can see your results straight away. [00:17:24] Speaker B: And even more now that it's mirrorless because you can see it in the viewfinder before you even take the image. And it certainly doesn't mean it's probably. What do they, how do they call it? Like, the ends are probably more extreme. There's probably people as well that, that is so much more technically proficient and possibly faster now because it's so quick to learn. You can, you can dive in deep fast. Whereas, you know, in the days of film it took a lot longer, a lot more dedication to learn those, even the basics. But whereas now, yeah, now it's like you can, you can rapidly accelerate into technical proficiency or you can just let the camera do all the work and not even worry about it. [00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Because I remember when I studied film photography in art school, it was like a year 13 equivalent after I finished VCE or HSC back then. And yeah, we had to understand everything about how the camera worked. You know, the whole like, you know, we started with pinholes and then we. And you know, I think I had a Canon. I didn't have it, we borrowed it from the school. But I think it was a canon, a one with a 50 mil, like you talked about with the, the Pentax. Craig. [00:18:34] Speaker C: What? [00:18:34] Speaker A: I. Sorry. You know, we weren't really allowed to even load a film until we understood how the camera worked and how the whole end to end process. And I wonder whether today there's a gap and I'd be curious to know whether education places today that do degrees or certificates in photography, how deep they go into the technical understanding of why a camera does what it does. Curious to know that if anyone in. Knows or has done a course recently, let us know. [00:19:03] Speaker C: You could have asked Lucinda that last week. She. [00:19:05] Speaker A: I should have, yeah. She's the most recent, isn't she? [00:19:08] Speaker C: Yes, I was working at Oxygen College in Geelong. [00:19:11] Speaker A: So, Lucinda, if you're watching or you listen to this later, please let us know what's it like? Do you get to actually learn how a camera does what it does, digital or film? Thank you. [00:19:24] Speaker C: And also the history of photography that I teach that like, you know, the, the great photographers of the past. Ansel Adams, like that, yeah. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Was that in your course, Jim? A lot of photography history, yeah. [00:19:40] Speaker D: You know, and we did pinholes and we started on film and, and everything like that in the dark room. But it's It's. Well, that course isn't there anymore, I don't think. [00:19:48] Speaker A: And yeah, I wonder if there's many, many that still teach darkroom that's having access to that. [00:19:55] Speaker D: Like having a dark room is also. [00:19:57] Speaker A: Yeah, if only we knew someone with a dark room. Hey, whato. [00:20:03] Speaker C: My new dark room is tiny. It's, it's. My dark room I had at North Geelong was huge. It was a monster. Way bigger than it should have been. But the whole point of having it was I wanted to get school groups in. [00:20:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:18] Speaker C: That proved virtually impossible. The first school group I had in was about three months before I closed the place. It was just really difficult and, and partly because, as I found out, schools either had a dark room and so didn't need the facilities, even if it was a small dark room where they could only take, you know, four or five kids at a time, or they just didn't have an interest in it. So there was no halfway. There was no, yes, we've got an interest in it. We'd like to come and use your dark room. It was either, you know, the Geelong College, for example, has got a magnificent dark room, 20 enlarges and you know, they can have an entire school group in there at one time, whereas other schools, you know, progressively close their dark rooms down. I, I actually bought a lot of equipment from schools that have closed the dark rooms and, and got rid of all their equipment so they just didn't seem to be that halfway point. My dark room now is, is tiny. It's only got. Well, only it's got two enlarges. Two, five, four enlarges in it. And I can teach one on one. That's all there's room for. There's no room for group, seven small groups in there. So yes, you can all come and learn one at a time. [00:21:30] Speaker D: One at a time. [00:21:32] Speaker B: Way out the front. Glenn Lavender, he must have studied slightly earlier than you, Watto. He says we had to chisel our images onto SL before we were allowed to try film. We had it tough in those days. [00:21:45] Speaker C: Oh, you did, absolutely. [00:21:48] Speaker A: And then Paul, Paul, Paul responded to that with. They gave you a chisel. [00:21:54] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I remember when I was. [00:22:00] Speaker B: Back in. [00:22:01] Speaker A: My day, speaking of you being a lab before we move into, you know, post education, where you went from there, what, growing up, were there artistic influences around you? You know, obviously you've got a good eye, you've got a photographer's eye and I know that that takes time to develop, but I think at the, I think most photographers at. When you Strip back all of the learning and education. They still have a good eye for art. [00:22:25] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure. [00:22:26] Speaker A: What were your influences like growing up? [00:22:29] Speaker C: Honestly, there wasn't a lot. I mean, I always, always liked art galleries and that sort of thing. The only family member who was involved in art was my uncle. He was a painter, very successful painter. And he also taught graphic design in Ballarat. And so he, he would have been the only. He was certainly the only one in the family, including my immediate parents, my immediate family, who gave me any encouragement when I was doing graphic design and said that I wanted to go on and be a graphic designer. And he actually gave me a drawing board and a T square and a set of pens and, and that sort of stuff. But there was no. There was no photograph. Well, again, backtrack there. My father, when he was young, did a bit of, quite a bit of photography and darkroom work back in the 30s. And he had a homemade enlarger with a large format camera lens that was attached on some weird plate and it, it worked for him. And he. And, and actually, it's funny because in amongst all my odds and sods, I got out for today, I've got this camera. Now this is. This is not my father's camera, but he used one of these. A Voigtlander for Tessa. I love this camera. [00:24:01] Speaker A: What's the little sticky up bit? [00:24:02] Speaker B: Sorry, I'm zooming in. [00:24:05] Speaker C: That is the film advance. Isn't that cool? [00:24:09] Speaker A: God, I've never seen anything like that. [00:24:12] Speaker C: And that's the focus. So you turn that and it's. It's coupled rangefinder focus. So you focus like that, you take a shot and then you wind it on really, really quick to use. So, you know, good for. Good for photojournalism or whatever. And my dad used one of those. And it packs away. You just pack it away like that and then push that down. It's out of the way so it goes in a pocket. [00:24:39] Speaker D: That's a cool camera. [00:24:39] Speaker A: Wow. [00:24:40] Speaker C: It is. [00:24:41] Speaker A: How old is that one? When did that come out? [00:24:43] Speaker C: This would be 1950s. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Wow. [00:24:46] Speaker C: And it's main drawback is the, the film back. I'm pretty sure there's no film in. If there is, I'll lose it. But sort of open that, you do that and the back comes off. [00:25:00] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [00:25:01] Speaker C: The problem is it's this tiny little. Don't know if you can see that tiny little lug that holds the back on. And I've shot a lot with this camera in the past, but one day I reached into my camera Bag and pulled it out and left the back in the camera. [00:25:18] Speaker D: Oh, no. [00:25:20] Speaker C: So I went, okay, this is now just going on display. It's just gonna sit there. But I love, I love this, I love that sort of thing. I'm really into the cool sounds. [00:25:30] Speaker B: The sounds are so good. [00:25:33] Speaker C: Watch this when you open it up. Hang on, wrong one. Where's the button to open up? Hang on. Bear with me. [00:25:39] Speaker B: Oh, good. I'm going to zoom you. Yes, it happens. Show us. [00:25:45] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what you do. You press the shutter eyes. Isn't that cool? [00:25:52] Speaker A: That's awesome. [00:25:53] Speaker C: I love technology, like old technology, clever designs and that sort of thing. So I get a kick out of that. So camera like that and you know, we got used to him just being around taking photos, but I never took photos. The. My first camera, I think when I was 17, I went to. Went to Sydney with a mate. It was our celebration of the end of year 11. Great form 5. We went to Sydney for three weeks and when we got there I went, I need a camera. So I went and bought just a little Agfa 110 pocket camera. That was my first camera. So I progressed two years later from that to the Pentax K1000, which was a real camera. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Nice, very nice. I love a bit of gear talk. The chat's kind of going a bit crazy. Do you want to cover some of that off Justin? [00:26:49] Speaker B: Nah, they're just, they're just going back and forth about who had it harder back in the day, I think. I think Glenn's come up with it was he had to sharpen his own femur to grind into the slate anyway. Well, we'll let them keep going amongst themselves. But David Mascara does say, I've got a. What does he say? Just like my 1957 Nikon SP. Changing film takes a little longer. [00:27:16] Speaker C: Yeah. Yes. [00:27:17] Speaker A: I've never seen a film advance like that. [00:27:22] Speaker C: It's the only camera I've ever seen like it. And it was really accurate too. I always got really good spacing between the shots and. And no overlap. So it was good. But no, I've never seen German engineering. Yeah, it looks like a quite. [00:27:36] Speaker D: Yeah, a good way to do it too. [00:27:39] Speaker C: Yeah. It's so quick because literally, you know, you focus. Take the shot, wind on. Take a shot, wind on. So you can work really quickly with. [00:27:48] Speaker A: It and it's in such good condition. Like it. The fact that it's. [00:27:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:27:52] Speaker A: You know, all these years later, what did you say, the 50s? So, you know, maybe 75 plus years later, it's still. [00:28:00] Speaker C: It'S only got a standard lens on it, 50 mil but it is an F2, so it's pretty fast. Nice. Yeah, it's an F2 that's pretty fast. And for the day, not multi coated or anything like that. I think it did have single coating on it. No, it's got, yeah, it's got a little bit of coating on it, but yeah, but really nice quality. And yeah, lenses, German lenses can never beat them. Well, let's not go now. Everyone's gonna. Oh my God, the best lenses. [00:28:37] Speaker A: So here's a question, let's just do it. Here's a question for the chat. Rip off the band aid, which is better, Japanese or German lenses. [00:28:45] Speaker C: Comes back always. Horses for courses. [00:28:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:49] Speaker D: You know the lens that you've got. [00:28:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Just like the cameras. That's the best cameras. [00:28:56] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:28:56] Speaker A: So all Russian lenses. The Russians put out a lot of good lenses. A lot of ones, but a lot of good ones. [00:29:01] Speaker C: I was going to say a lot of ones. Yes. [00:29:04] Speaker A: Many of them glow in the dark. So, you know, go figure. [00:29:07] Speaker C: Only the ones made in Chernobyl. [00:29:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's jump back on track. Where were we? So you've, you've, you're doing a part time course. [00:29:18] Speaker C: Yep. [00:29:20] Speaker A: And you step out of the doors of RMIT at the end of your three years and. [00:29:25] Speaker C: No, because I didn't, I didn't finish that course. [00:29:28] Speaker A: I didn't finish that one either. [00:29:29] Speaker C: I did three years part time. I, I have absolutely zero qualifications. Okay, that's something. Yeah. No qualifications other than school of hard knocks as it were. But, but I, look, I, I don't, I don't have anything against the course that I did. It was a great course and I learned a lot and the, the technical side of things, you know, back in the day shooting film, it was really helpful to know how light worked and how film worked and how chemicals worked and all that sort of stuff. So that was really good. But then one of the, one of my fellow students, Ellen Smith, who is still working in the street, still working as a press photographer. She works for the Guardian now. Now. Hello, Ellen. If you're watching and if you're not. I know. Tell Ellen to watch. [00:30:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:30:18] Speaker B: And subscribe. And subscribe. [00:30:21] Speaker C: Ellen. It's all Ellen's fault. She came to work one day, she was working for, not to work to school. She, she was working for later newspapers in Blackburn and she came in and, and she asked me would I be interested in a job working for leader. Just a basic photography job, shooting Classified shooting cars. And I went, sure. I mean, I've always worked on the basis of just, just grab any opportunity that comes along. And my whole, my whole life in photography has been basically a series of not mistakes, but grabbing anything comes along, sort of. So it's all. My whole journey is sort of accidental, if you like. So somebody comes along and offers me something like, sure, let's, let's try it, see how it goes. So I went to leader and had an interview and started the next week working two days a week living in Melton, which was far west, and working in Blackburn, which was in the eastern suburbs. So two hours on the train or nearly two hours drive each way. And it was a mundane job photographing cars for the edge. You know, you'd see car yards advertising and they, the big car yards might have a whole page of cars, there might be 20 cars. And that was my job, go and photograph the cars. But the thing about it was it taught me how to get correct exposure first time, every time, because you'd only take one shot. You'd go up, they'd say, that car there, you take a shot, you'd move on to the next one. So it had to be right. And then in the processing side of things, I'd shoot for a day and a half and then I'd have half a day to print up to maybe 300 photos of cars. And it was all wet process in the dark room. So process the films, let them dry. If I had time, if I didn't have time, they'd go straight into the enlarge or wet. And then you'd print off an entire roll of film. And, and this was really good learning experience for learning how to print quickly and accurately, how to analyze the next. If your necks were good to start with, bonus. And then you knew, okay, I'm doing, I was doing five by seven prints off everything. And I knew, you know, if the negative was correctly exposed, which it should be, I would use, you know, grade two, five seconds, whatever, you know, whatever it was, and you just pump them out. You do 36 shots and then you chuck them in the developer and you be with your hands in the, in the developer, stirring them around, pull them out into the fixer. No, no stop, bath or rinse in between. Just stranded the fixer and you'd be shuffling them through. And then as soon as they're all in the fixer, wash your hands, go back to the enlarger, print the next slot, and then chuck those in the developer. And then while they're developing up, you'd be pulling the others out of the fixer and throwing them in the wash and then you'd repeat. And so it would take maybe four hours to print 300 photos. And it was fun, it was interesting and exciting in the fact of, of having to meet deadlines and that sort of thing. But it wasn't exciting photography. But geez, I learned a lot from it in terms of the technical side of things. So I don't denigrate that at all. You know, shooting that type of work, that repetitive type of work was really good, really good learning experience. [00:34:04] Speaker B: I'm interested about the dynamic like in the, in the offices. So you're like the new guy, you know, sort of lower on the totem pole in terms of the photographic team because you're out doing cars and stuff like that at this point. So you're in there working away. Is anyone ever coming in? And they're like, come on, what are we? You know, like we, where are these photos? We got to get this stuff together, you know. [00:34:32] Speaker C: Sometimes, but not look. Normally the deadline was the next day. I, I'd work trying to think what days I worked there. God, it's 40 years ago. I think I was working there Monday and Tuesday and I think deadline for the papers Wednesday. So it wasn't that bad. But because I was only there two days, I had to get it all finished in that second day. And I wasn't supposed to do overtime. But the dynamic in the dark room was fantastic because other photographers would be coming in, having shot real jobs, you know, local paper. So mayor, the mayor at a function or somebody handing over a check or you know, local kids sport something like that. You know, it wasn't hard hitting national news but it was interesting stuff and, and everyone was really, really good to work with and really helpful and happy to share their knowledge and, and talk about what they were shooting. So if I had a bit of time I might sort of look at, oh, that's an interesting shot. You know, how did you shoot that? And that sort of stuff. But then after I'd been there about six months and again, this is Ellen's fault. So Ellen had moved on. She got a job on the, I think the Herald. It was before the merger and, and she rang me up and she said there's a job going in the Herald sun dark room. Are you interested? I went, sure. You know, another opportunity. It's also closer to home. So I went in for an interview and this was funny and, and this is where I say I learned so much from, from processing and printing on mass. And I don't want to blow my own trumpet, but this was a great story. I went in for the interview. John Mitchell was the head of the darkroom there and, and sat down and chatted to John for a while. Talked about my experience, talked about the course I was doing. I was still doing the course then. And, and then he said, well, look, it all sounds good, but I need to know that you can actually print. So I've got two negatives here. And he took me into the dark room. And it was a fabulous dark room. Really well, for someone coming from. Coming from Leader, it was a great dark room. It was an okay dark room, but we had some great, great equipment in there. And he, he said, right, this enlarger here's a brand new box of paper. 250 sheets, 8 by 10 paper, multigrade. And he said, two negatives. I want to see the best print you can do from each negative. I don't care how long it takes you, I don't care how much paper you use, but I need to see every sheet of paper you. So don't throw anything away. Okay, so first negative I had a look at and it was atrocious. It was so thin, it was just almost nothing in. It was about three stops underexposed. All right. Oh my God. Okay, grade five. Stop it right down. Give it whatever, five seconds, whatever I decide to give it. Chucked it through the machine. We had an automatic processing machine for the prints. Came out the other side. And I went, well, I don't know how I can improve on that. Oh, well, that'll do. So put that to one side. And then the second negative was a perfect negative, beautifully exposed, nice tonal range, all that sort of stuff. So just chuck that through grade two. Gave it whatever time, put it through a little bit, light, whatever. So I did a second print, tiny bit of burning and dodging, and then went, that looks all right. So I'd been in there five, ten minutes, and I went back out to see John and he said, oh, is there a problem? I said, no, I'm done. He went, show me. So I gave him these three pieces of paper and he. And he looked at one and went, okay, where's your wastage? I said, no, there's no wastage. That's it. I said, but I got to be honest, I fluked the first one anyway. Well, I have never seen that negative printed that well. When do you want to start? Oh, wow, cool. [00:38:43] Speaker A: What a wonderful endorsement. [00:38:45] Speaker C: Started the next week as a dark room technician at the Herald sun. And I was there nearly two years and that was, I loved that job because I love being in the dark room. I love printing. Once a week on a Friday we'd have to print photo sales stuff so, you know, you could buy any photo out of the paper. And most of the guys in the dark room hated doing photo sales. And I loved it because you could print big. You know, people would order a 20 by 24 off something. It's awesome doing these big prints. It was all on resin coated. It was all, you know, turning it through and putting through the machine for processing that sort of stuff. But I love doing it and I, I remember that the one, the one photo we probably sold more of than anything else was Wayne Gardner on his motorbike with the Australian flag after he'd won the Australian Grand Prix going Island. We sold hundreds of that photo and I got so used to running it, I would, I would turn out poster size prints of that just, you know, one after the other. It was really cool. I loved it. And. But other things, you know, you'd have, photographers would come in and they might have had a problem. There were, there was one photographer who shall rename Nameless who was again a really, really good photographer with almost no technical knowledge. And the number of times he would stuff up his film and he'd come in, what are quick, I've got to process this film. I said, okay, what ISO did you shoot it at? I don't know. Well, I need to know that at least. I said, what's your camera set on now? No, no, I've put other films in. I've changed the ISO setting. So, you know, you do a quick test, you dunk it, you know, six inches of the film into the, into the wet process and get it out and go, okay. I think he's rated this at 1600 or something. So then you process the rest of the film and that was fun too. So we, we had an automatic film processing machine. Black and white films. We're shooting all black and white. Then if we shot any color, it was color slide. And I say we, they, it was color slide and that would be processed out by, you know, a third party. But in house was all black and white and thankfully we didn't have to mix up chemistry. That was the job of the cadets. So we had a few cadets who really enjoyed mixing chemistry every now and then. And, but again the photographers going in this and this was really good, important news stuff, national news kind of coming in you know, and you'd see stuff before anybody else in the world would see it and talk to the photographers and, you know, if they had time. It was always. It was always some people. Sorry. [00:41:49] Speaker A: So the news never stops. [00:41:51] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:41:52] Speaker A: There's always another job waiting or about to happen or. Hey, question for you. Because you were. You were a photojournalist as well in the early days of your career. Were photo sales a thing from your local rag? [00:42:06] Speaker D: Yeah, so, like the. We didn't really have anything to do with it, but the front desk deal dealt with it and it was all digital. But they would sell prints, they'd sell like canvases. They could kind of organize anything you wanted. They even had. They even sell like canvas of that. The full P page of the paper, like with the text as well, so. [00:42:30] Speaker A: Oh, wow. So if it was something like a significant day or birthday, you would. And did. Did you ever get feedback as a photographer that your print was being sold? Like, did you ever get numbers, like at the end of the month or. No, it just happened. [00:42:47] Speaker D: No, nothing like that? [00:42:48] Speaker C: No. [00:42:49] Speaker D: No, no kickbacks? Nothing. No, just. [00:42:52] Speaker B: You couldn't use code, Jim, when you bought the. [00:42:55] Speaker C: When you bought. [00:42:58] Speaker B: If, you know, you know the. Yeah, it's. It's so interesting. It's. Did the photographers ever enjoy, like, did they ever want to see their prints? You know, if someone bought a big one and. And this photographer's probably had stuff on the front page and stuff and things of the paper a lot. You know, they're a professional photographer for the Herald sun, but the front page of the paper doesn't look amazing. Did they ever get excited to see, you know, if someone's bought a big print of one of the images they took, did they want to see it before it went out? [00:43:28] Speaker C: Sometimes, yeah. And often we would do prints for them or they would do their own prints because most of the time, most of the photographers would print their own stuff. It was more a case of if they were in a hurry or, you know, some other news had dropped and they had to rush out or something like that, they'd leave you with their film. But most of the time they'd process and print their own film. Often, often if they did a shot that they thought was a cracker, they printed up big to keep, which was just as well because you. You lost control of it into the filing system. And if you have a print, you may never get a print. And in many cases that's what happened. And I'll talk about that later too. But yeah, again, it Was a really, really good working environment. Everyone was happy. Luckily, I started there after smoking had been banned from the dark room. So I was pleased about that. But we. We still had a lot of fumes and. And that sort of thing to deal with. Always go home smelling a chemistry. [00:44:33] Speaker A: Quite a unique smell, isn't it? [00:44:34] Speaker C: It is, yeah. [00:44:35] Speaker A: It's hard to describe. [00:44:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:38] Speaker A: I can't imagine they let people smoke in a dark room with all those chemicals, but I suppose people did lots of things. [00:44:44] Speaker C: Yeah. I've seen photos of dark rooms just full of smoke. You can hardly see what you were doing. I don't understand how do it. But anyway. [00:44:52] Speaker D: Have you been in a dark room, Justin? [00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Honestly, not much, though. Yeah. Like in high school. I'm trying to think if it was ever. If it was ever after high school. [00:45:01] Speaker C: School. [00:45:01] Speaker B: But where I went to high school, there was a dark room and I did. I think this was in like year 10. Did photography and stuff. But all I can remember is, you know, we did what we were told to do because it was an assignment and other than that, everyone was just mucking around. [00:45:19] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:20] Speaker B: You know, some. Some. The. The newest couple would be in the corner making out in the. Under the red light and everyone else would just be like talking and not. It wasn't no one, because, I don't know, year 10, it wasn't. I think it was a choice, but it was. You sort of got given a choice out of a few things to do, but it was no one in. There was like, hey, I want to be a photographer. It was. It was a class of kids doing it. So most of the people were just thinking about what they're gonna have for lunch, you know. [00:45:50] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:45:51] Speaker A: It's an interesting. It's an interesting take, isn't it? Because that was very much what our experience was like when I did art school, we did the assignment. We loved going out with the cameras. You know, the dark room stuff was really fun and interesting, but, you know. Yeah, a lot of people just fucked around. But, you know, then we look at people like, say, like Lucinda, who knew very early on that she wanted to combine her two hobbies of music, live music and photography, and persisted down that path from a really young age. So it's. I think that sort of elevates her journey even more when you think about what most kids were up to at that age. Scratching your head, bumping into things. [00:46:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it depends if you have an outlet for it. So at the same time, I was sort of getting into like, ow. The band that I played in started in year 10 and then so through year 10, 11 and 12, I was studying audio engineering at TAFE as like a program they had where we were sort of going out of high school and going to the TAFE and doing a TAFE course during high school hours as one of our subjects. And like we didn't, I mean, we didn't take it super seriously because we were still just dumb teenage boys, but because there was something I needed that information for the things we wanted to do on the weekend. So I was taking it a lot more seriously than just some random school subject like I wanted to learn because then I could go and make my band sound better on the weekends. Yeah. And I think it's, you know, I didn't have that with photography. I didn't start photography really till I was 30. [00:47:26] Speaker A: But having gotten to know you over the years, I think that character trait of yours still exists where you find interest in something and so you will research it to improve what you do. That's still very much a part of your character. I see that a lot. [00:47:41] Speaker B: Yes. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:43] Speaker B: Yes. I may research things a little too much. Too much for my own good. I've been looking at snowboards for about four hours a day for the last four days. I could just pick one. If only. If anyone out there knows what snowboard I should buy, please help me. [00:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to start a new podcast about snowboards. [00:48:04] Speaker C: Snowboard life. [00:48:06] Speaker A: Snowboard life. I just want to jump to this, this comment from day from Digifrog down in Tassie. I also started as a 15 year old dark room tech at a newspaper. What newspaper was it, Dave? What an experience and learning curve. I remember if a print was not quite developed enough, we would pull the print out and breathe hot air on it. [00:48:28] Speaker B: Was the hot air. Was the hot air. Cigarette smoke. I can just imagine. [00:48:35] Speaker A: To woo the film into, into, into, you know, whatever. [00:48:39] Speaker B: Anyway, is that, is that a technique, you know of Watto? [00:48:43] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes you would, particularly with wet processing. You can't do it when you've got a machine processing your print because it comes out dry. But when wet processing, you put in the developer and it's, it's nearly right but not quite right. And maybe if I burnt this area in here, so you'd rub it vigorously to warm it up and make that little bit develop up a bit quicker. Or you'd breathe on it just to warm it up, to make that bit develop up so that you didn't have to do another print. And I, I occasionally had that shooting the cars, even with, you'd shoot a white car on this bright day and just trying to get detail out of that car and sometimes you'd find I've almost got it. And you just, you just huff on the print just a little bit where the, where the car was or rub it vigorously and bring up a little bit of almost fake detail and go that, that'll do to the fixer. So yeah, it's definitely a technique. It's more common with, with fiber based paper than it is with resin coated because fiber base has a lot more. I, I guess you got more time involved in the whole process and whereas resin coated, sort of two minutes, it's completely developed up. So. But yeah, you can do it. Nice. [00:50:01] Speaker D: It's, it's interesting how doing such like a mundane process of the shooting cars, developing those cars and doing such big batches kind of set you up for a career of being a, you know, quite proficient at something that maybe started out as not so interesting but then got super, super interesting. [00:50:26] Speaker C: And look, I love doing it. I love doing the cars because I knew I was learning and, and I knew it was going to be long term. As it turned out it was only six months. But it was a fabulous learning curve. And, and you also learn an awful lot about the used car industry. Not to trust, which is most of them. But. Oh, I shouldn't say that. [00:50:45] Speaker B: Hey, hey, I sold used cars once. No, but it is, it is a funny, it's a funny industry. That is for sure. There's characters in it. Did you have to. So tell me this, when you went there, you'd rock up to a car yard. They're all just, you know, hanging out, waiting to pounce on a customer. And then you would be like, all right, I got to take photos of these cars. Often the cars would be so cram packed in there you probably have to move them around. Did you ever have to, with the salesman, play those games of car Tetris where there's literally millimeters between each car? [00:51:24] Speaker C: No, I never had that option and I never had that time. So you had to shoot it. So if it was crammed in amongst other cars, you might put on a 28 mil lens or, or even wider. I think 28 was about the widest I had then and, and just try and get to the shot without too much of the other cars in it. But the funniest I had was I got to a car yard, again, I won't mention names and, and the guy said, oh, it's up the back there against the fence. But you can only shoot it from the driver's side. [00:51:54] Speaker B: Oh, that's a red flag. [00:51:59] Speaker C: I took my photo of it and then I went around the other side just to have a look and it was all brown rust and the whole side of the car. This car was going into paper that week? [00:52:12] Speaker B: Oh, no, no. [00:52:16] Speaker D: With the cars, did they have like a process of. You always shot like the same kind of. Was it like front three quarter view? [00:52:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. The only, the only times you wouldn't. Would be if. If the car was jammed in and you couldn't get to it or. And you'd have to shoot from a weird angle. Always the front or the side. You couldn't, you wouldn't shoot the back. But yeah, it was, it was almost exclusively three quarter front from, you know, just below eye level sort of thing. So very standard sort of thing. And you'd look at the ads and they'd all be the same angle. [00:52:54] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:52:54] Speaker C: Occasionally you'd see one well that's been shot on a wide angle or. But you almost never went wider than a 50 mil. It was not, not something you could get back and shoot. Something to make the car look a bit, you know, more muscly or something. [00:53:08] Speaker A: And was it just a single shot for each car? There was no interiors. It was just that one. [00:53:12] Speaker C: One shot. Yeah, yeah. And you know, you go to one yard, might have one car, so you go to the next yard and they might have 30 cars. And so you rattle off a roll of film at the 1 yard. You had to keep good notes. You had to know which. Which car was which yard. And then after processing them all, you had to match all the prints to the notes. And that took. That probably took us almost as long as doing the printing because. [00:53:37] Speaker A: And were you taking the notes as well? Yeah, on the vehicles. [00:53:41] Speaker C: There were no, there were no journalists with. It was just. Yeah. I'd take a photo, take a note of what the car was. Often the registration would be enough and, and write down what the car yard was. If it was unregistered, have to write down what type of car it was. And it was all black and white, so there's no point riding yellow car. [00:54:03] Speaker D: Medium gray. [00:54:04] Speaker C: Well, yeah, light color or, or black or something, you know, but whatever, whatever works. You know, you might write station wagon or four wheel drive or something. But yeah, just very few notes, just enough to identify the car for the photos. So get into the right page, the right ad and then let the advertiser worry about the description and that Sort of thing. So yeah, I didn't have to write any descriptions or anything. [00:54:31] Speaker A: Okay, that's fascinating. [00:54:34] Speaker B: A couple of comments here about. Because, because film is, is new to a lot of us photographers that didn't start in the film days and it also has nostalgia for a lot of people. But then when you see comments like this from David Dare Parker. As much as I love black and white years in non ventilated dark rooms, added to the fact that, that I have no nostalgia for shooting film and then no. No butcher follows up. No nostalgia for film here either. [00:55:04] Speaker C: So I get it, I really do. I get it. But I, I love it and, and I love working in the dark room and I, and I don't mind the smells and, and I love shooting film and I love shooting black and white. And there's a, I got to tell you this, this quote from Max Dupain and I mentioned this all the time. It's my, my favorite quote about black and white photography. And as you can see behind me, I love shooting black and white. Max Dupain wrote color tells everything. Black and white tells just enough to stir the imagination. [00:55:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:41] Speaker C: And I reckon that that really nails it. So. And, and you can shoot any subject with black and white and use and portraits in black and white. Just fabulous. I love it. So can I show you my first news photo I ever took? Yeah, please. I was, I think I was working in the dark room and a mate of mine rang me and he said I've just heard this big explosion. It's down on the highway, you better get down there. So I, I tootled off in my moke, my mini moke and got down towards Bacchus Marsh and there was a great line of cars on the freeway and I just went down onto the embankment and drove all the way up to the front. But yeah, I must have been working, I must have been working at Harold sun at this time because I had my Herald of Weekly Times pass. I got out and I got as far as I could and I got out and walked up to Copper there and just showed him my HWT pass and he let me through. And I'm going to click on this image and see if it works. If I go, how do I, how do I get. [00:56:47] Speaker A: If you hover over it and click add to stage or I can do it for you. [00:56:52] Speaker C: Yeah, can you see those photos down the bottom? There you go. So that one there. And so being a press photographer, even though I wasn't taking these photos nice and close and that, that was shot on A wide angle lens, I think about a 28 mil. I love shooting wide angle. And the fire chief came up to me after I'd taken a few photos after I'd taken this one and he said, I'll get you to move back a little bit. I said, why? He said, because that thing's still half full of fuel. I'll move back. [00:57:27] Speaker B: Fair enough. [00:57:32] Speaker C: That photo got into the sun and into the local paper as well. And that, that really, I guess drove me to think, wow, this is fantastic. I'd love to be a news photographer, which I never actually really became. Press photographer? Yes. Not, not really a hard news photographer because of again, the way it all happened. I, I was working in the dark room, as I said, for about two years and then a job came up on the Weekly Times and you know, a lot of, a lot of the photographers, particularly on the Herald and the sun were saying, oh, don't take it. It's a dead end job. You know, you're just going to shoot cow, sheep and horses all the time and, and all that. And I'm like, yeah, but it's, you know, it's a step, it's a step on the, on the way to go from the dark room to actually working on a paper as a photographer and, and they're all advising me against it and everything, but I went for the job interview, I got offered the job and started work. And the very first job I did out on the, out on the road is this next one. Can you see that? I don't. Can you click on that? [00:58:45] Speaker A: Which one is it now? 19. 19, yeah. [00:58:49] Speaker C: News. That one. So that was my first job on the Weekly Times. [00:58:54] Speaker A: Wow. [00:58:55] Speaker C: And this was where learning how to expose properly was so important. I got up there, this, this guy was a farmer, that's why we were covering it. And he was three times Australian National Gliding Champion. And that was at Tokenwall. And I got up there and, and I took, I took two and a half rolls of film of him standing next to the plane on the ground, kneeling next to it, sitting on it, sitting in it, looking up in the sky, looking down at the plane or everything I could think of and it just wasn't working. I just wasn't happy. Like, how do you show a glider pilot on the ground with his plane? It was just boring. It was, yeah, just working. And he said, do you want to go up? And I went, cool. So it's a two seater, I'm sitting in the front. I had my 20 mil lens on, I worked out my exposure and Then I pointed the camera over my shoulder and I said to him, is the camera pointing at you? And he said, yes. And I said, okay, do some twists and turns, don't go upside down. And so he started twisting and turning and I just fired off because the camera had motor drive and just shooting off a few shots. Finished the roll of film. So half a roll of film, because I'd shot two and a half rolls on the ground and I had this half roll of film of the stuff in the air and then. And you know, wearing those jackets with all the pockets and everything. So I went to. Went to grab a next film and realized all my film was in my bag down on the ground. Oh, no. First job on the Weekly Times and I've ruined this. And I, I actually, I took the film out and then pretended and just kept shooting my shoulder. Yeah, we flew around for half an hour or so. [01:00:53] Speaker B: That's great. [01:00:55] Speaker C: So we landed and I'm driving back to work, all the way back I'm thinking, because this is tokenall, this is like 3 1/2 hours drive from work. All the way back. Oh my God, I've ruined this job. I'm gonna get sacked. One week on the paper and I've stuffed it up. And I got back and processed the film. And then I was putting this one through the enlarger and having a look at the next and I got to this shot and I went, oh, is that sharp? So I checked it. It is sharp. So I printed it and I actually, I did a print of it 12 by 16 inches and. Or 40, what's that, 40 by 50 centimeters for the new people. And I said, I've got your front page photo. And he went, why do I want that on the front page? They said, take it to Country Living, see if they'll, they'll put us in living. I went to June, who was the editor of the Country Living section, which was a lift out section in the paper. I said, hey, June, do you want to run this in Country Living? She went, oh my God, that's my front page photo. So it ran front page but. Or front page of the Country Living section. But they ran it as a horizontal instead of a vertical and they cropped almost square. So you lost most of the, Most of the town down the bottom. Yeah, but that shot as you see it there is uncropped. That's full frame. And that plane wing is corner to corner in the shot. It was just a fluke, a remarkable shot, but it was focused and it was correctly exposed. And I was so happy with it. But when I was printing it, this is the funny thing, when I was printing it, one of the photographers, and I don't even know who it was, might have been. No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't. No, I'm sure. Maybe it was. Anyway, one of the photographers came up to me, leaned over my shoulder and excuse the French, said it's not a cow, after saying to me, don't ever take this job because it's, it's just going to be cows, sheep and horses. And he saw that shot and he said, I've been working on the Herald sun for three years or something. I've never been in a glider. [01:03:13] Speaker B: For context. For those listening that aren't familiar with our glorious newspapers that we have here in Victoria, how would you describe the difference between the Herald sun and the Weekly Times to those listening around the world? And why would it be potentially be, you know, a bit of a strange move for a photographer to move from the Herald sun to the Weekly Times? [01:03:36] Speaker C: Well, first of all, it wasn't that strange because I was darkroom tech moving to being a photographer on the, on the weekly Time. So it wasn't like I moved from, you know, the big national daily to a weekly country paper. But the differences and at the time when I started the Herald and the sun were separate and there was a very photographic style between the Herald and the Sun. The Herald was, I guess, a lot more like the Age. It was more about mood and a lot of wide angle shots and a lot of environmental portraiture and that sort of thing. And obviously hard news and everything too. The Herald's son was much more like tight and bright and so, you know, tight head shots of, for portraits of the thing. Still some very good photography, there's no doubt, very good photography. I preferred the, the style of the Herald and when the two papers merged and became the Herald son, a lot of Herald photographers left because they didn't like being forced to shoot in a Sun style sort of thing. I don't know if Noel will back me up on that, but that's what I felt. And the Weekly Times was much more the. The sun style of thing. More light, tight and bright. My photography was more Herald or Age, sort of going for wide angles, moody environmental portraiture, that sort of thing. And I was influenced a lot by the Herald and, and by the, the Age. But in terms of the, the audience, the, the, the, the Weekly Times was a country newspaper. You know, it was the farmers. It's called the Bible of the Bush was the farmer's newspaper. It was. It was almost like a religion, reading the Weekly Times. And so all the jobs we did were farm related. Even if we did politics, we did sport, we did news, we did a lot of sheep, cattle and horses. You know, we did every sheep show, every cattle show, every. The Royal show was our biggest event of the year. You know, you'd spend every day out shooting at the Royal show, but it always had to have a country angle to it, so there were still opportunities. And because of that variety of work we did gardening, cooking, you know, everything. Because of that variety of work, you got to shoot everything. You weren't. You weren't a news photographer or a police rounds photographer or a portrait photographer. You got to shoot everything. And I know on the dailies they shot everything too, but I think. I think we had a broader spectrum, but we didn't have a lot of hard news stuff. Certainly occasionally there'd be a protest. I got. I got a great series of photos at a. At a meatworks process protest one time. So you got your occasions like that, but. And sport. I'll show you one of my fa. If you look on, if you click on the next one along the 1992 new shot, that favorite sports shots. And so, you know, we. We shot everything. And I loved it. I won't say I loved the politics in the office at the time. I shouldn't speak too loudly about that, but I get on well with the editor and I guess partly I've got to blame myself. Part of it was because of the style of shooting I was doing. I didn't like shooting the light tight and bright stuff. And I often would shoot against a brief instead of for a brief. So a classic example of that. While I'm talking, I'll see if I can find the photo. Actually, no, I don't have. I don't have it in this file. Oh, yes, I do. This one here. So if I go present. Bear with me. Image file. And it will be. [01:07:50] Speaker D: I feel like what are newsrooms and politics will be going until the end. [01:07:57] Speaker B: Of time at every paper, you reckon, Jim, it's just what it is. [01:08:01] Speaker D: I think that politics and newsrooms just. There's lots of chiefs, lots of opinions and. [01:08:10] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:08:13] Speaker D: Yeah, everyone's got their own agenda. [01:08:16] Speaker C: Or bias, I guess the whole. The whole world for press photography has changed so much. There's a lot less of the hard news because, you know, they used to listen to the police scanners and. And a job would come up and you'd jump in your car and race out and cover it before anybody else could. Now, before you even know about it, it's up on social media because everyone's, and everyone's got a camera. So I think the, the world of the press photographer is very different. They're more inclined to do the stuff that the general public can't do. A lot of the sports stuff, obviously being on the, on the outside of the fence and that sort of thing, inside the fence, the other side of the fence and you know, sort of custom feature jobs like you know, working in hospitals, the COVID stuff, working in the hospitals and that's of thing, places where the general public can't go and yeah, political things, press conferences, that sort of thing. But, but a lot of the hard news stuff unfortunately is, is not the, the realm of the press photographer anymore. I think again, some people might disagree with me, some might agree, I don't know. But anyway, that's my opinion. Anyway. This photo here, this, this got me in a lot of trouble with the editor because I was sent out the Weekly Times had a thing. They, they sponsored the Weekly Times Country Showgirl. And that's this girl here, Erin whatever her name is, she was that year's country showgirl winner. But I got sent out go and get a photo of the country show door winner. That was my brief. So when I got out there and I, they had a, a lady who was like chaperone for all these girls and, and she said, right, I've teed it up with the champion dairy cow. Three o' clock, you'll be able to get a photo of Lauren with the champion dairy cow. And I went, why would I want to do that? And she said, because we always do that. And I went, that's another reason not to do it. I said something different. I always try and shoot differently. It may not be better, but it's different. So she said, well, she went into panic. What are you going to do? And I said, I don't know, I'll, I'll, I'll meet you at the Grand Parade. We'll do something at Grand Parade. And she was like, but what sort of photo are we going to do? I said I don't know, I'll wing it. I'll see how we go. So this photo was during the Grand Parade, shot on the 20 mil lens. Again, I was hanging on the way she is with my left hand. So I'm hanging on and I'm hanging out with the, with the camera with the 20mm lens. And I said to her, just stand Up. Just wave. Just wave to the crowd. So she's doing that. And took. And look. Well, it's awesome. I would have been happy if they'd been in the background. There's not enough happening in the background. But anyway, I was happy. I was happy with the shot and I actually won that photo. Won. They had. They had awards every year for the. For the show. They had the Royal Melbourne Show Press Awards, which were a bit of a big deal at the time. And that show won Best Unpublished photo because my editor refused to publish it because I hadn't stuck to the brief and I hadn't photographed her with the champion dairy cow. So one of the other photographers, I think it was Mark Griffin, got sent out the next day to get the photo that I hadn't got, which was just a headshot of her derrick, which they ran on the front page. That was their front page every year. And. And my photo didn't get around. So then I stuck it in the. In the Show Awards and I won Best Unpublished photos. [01:12:01] Speaker D: It's quite unusual, isn't it, for. For awards to have, like, for news awards to have unpublished, like, normally they have to be published images. Is that correct from. [01:12:12] Speaker C: It depends on. It depends on the award. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And the Show Awards did have a. A specific section for unpublished. And they got a lot of. They got a lot of entries in that. And I think too, even things like the Walkleys and that sort of thing, if it's part of a sequence or you've shot it as part of your work, I think it's still eligible to go in. It hasn't been published. But if it's a series of photos, you know, they might. They might have run one or two photos. You might have a series of five them all in. So, yeah, there. There are. There are certainly some awards where you can put in unpublished stuff, which is just as well because a lot of the time the editor has no idea. The photographer will argue black and blue. This is the photo that has to go in. The editor goes, nah, I want this other one. Yeah, that's not my best shot. You go, no, doesn't matter. That's the one that's going in. Fits the space or whatever. Yeah. So I had a lot of arguments with my editor. Another. I'll show you another photo that got me in a bit of trouble. [01:13:16] Speaker D: Did you have a chief photographer, like. [01:13:20] Speaker C: Not on the Weekly Times? There were three of us and we all worked pretty much the same way. We all did the same jobs and this was a Stumbling block for me. This was why. One of the reasons I left among many. I was a D grade photographer, sorry C grade photographer. I started in the dark room as a D grade plus A, what they call D plus. That was D plus A an allowance or something and after you'd been on the paper two years you automatically could go to a C grade. So I was, by the time I was on the Weekly Times for six months I'd, I'd been at the paper effectively for, for two years. So I had to be upgraded to C grade and my editor refused to ever. He said he would never upgrade me again. But anyways that was over and, and he never did. So after six years there I was still a C grade and the two guys I was working with were both A grade or A grade plus us and we were doing the same work, the same hours, the same mileage, same number of front pages. [01:14:38] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:14:39] Speaker C: So yeah, that was, that was a good reason for me to leave. But if you click on the next photo. 1996 news. This was another one I had an argument with. This also won at the show awards best unpublished photo a couple of years later. [01:14:57] Speaker A: Oh wow. [01:14:58] Speaker C: Now that's. I had that an exhibition in March this year and a couple of people said that's not real, that's been photoshopped. And I said well. [01:15:09] Speaker B: Looks like AI to me. [01:15:11] Speaker C: Yeah. And that was. They were going to do a publicity stunt for the show they wanted to put. There was about a thousand sheep, three or four trucks load of shape in front of Flinders Street Station and get a photo of it. You know the, the country comes to the city and they unloaded all the sheep at the top end of Swanson straight near the, near the library and busted them all down. This is fairly early in the morning. Mustered them all down towards the station, got to Lonsdale street and one of the sheep turned right, the other 999 sheep followed. I did get one photo of the. Of a lone copper trying to stop a thousand sheep from running fast but. So it took them about two hours to finally corral the sheep into a, a dead end laneway and then it was a matter of taking them back to the trucks. They'd missed the window. They couldn't do the, the whole Flinders Station thing. So this was taking them back to the truck and, and I love the shot because you've got all the people at the top looking down and the signs in the window that's, that's across from Myers to Diamaru or something and signs on the Window actually say Melbourne show when the city comes. It was country comes to the city, something like that. So it just explains it all. And the guy on the horse in the middle of all the shape. I thought it just worked so well. Just after, after I took that photo, the stockman turned around and the sheep scattered. So I got a shot of the front of the stockman and you can see his face. But there's almost no sheep in the photo, so it didn't work. Anyway, I showed this to the editor and he looked at it and he thought about it. He said, have you got one where you can see the stockman's face? And I went, no. And he said, well, I can't use this. So he didn't run it. And I ran another shot, I think. I think they ran the shot of the copper trying to stop all the shape. So I entered this one in the Show Awards, the unpublished section, and I won. And the. The chief judge at the time was the picture editor of the Age. And so I've gone up on stage to get my little award and he said, you know, this, this was a fairly big deal. It was a dinner and every, you know, all the, all the media were there and at tables and everything, and my editor was there. And so the pick editor of the Age said to me, craig, this photo would have won, would have got front page of the Age. Why did your editor not run it? And I said, well, he's sitting down there, you ask him. So, yeah, we weren't friends. [01:18:05] Speaker A: Look, that's fair enough. You can't please everybody. [01:18:08] Speaker C: You can't. No. So anyway, so I, I survived six and a half years on the paper and before I decided to leave and I. I left partly because of the politics and partly because of the editor and that sort of thing. So. But also because about a year earlier, 1995, I'd got. I'd got a gig shooting motorsport. One of our journalists moonlighted on, on a motoring magazine and they wanted me to come down to Geelong and shoot the, the Geelong Speed Trials as it was back then. And I came down and did that and loved it. I just. Everything about it was great, the, the whole atmosphere and everything, particularly with the vintage cars. And so I just try to find you. Yeah, this photo here, it got to the point where I was shooting every kind. I'd shoot some sort of motorsport event and then working on the paper during the week and with all my editing and everything like that, I was. I was spending as long doing motorsport stuff as I was doing my Work stuff. And I spoke to my wife at the time and I said, I want to leave the paper, I want to do this full time. I want to be a motorsport photographer, motoring photographer. And she said, well, if you think you can make a go of it, do it. So I did, I left. And this was not at the first speed trials I did, but the second speed trials the following year. 96, Jack Brabham in his world championship winning car and I, I spent the next 20 years one way or another, shooting motoring, shooting cars. Going back to, going back to shooting cars like I did when I started, but this time magazine features and so. [01:20:15] Speaker A: And they were moving a lot faster. [01:20:17] Speaker C: They were moving a lot faster. Yes, I had a. Had a lot of fun shooting those, but I didn't enjoy so much shooting the big national events and I shot the F1 twice and hated it mainly because being a. Not, not being part of their group of photographers that travels the world photographing it, I was, I had what they called national accreditation rather than international accreditation, which really restricted what I could show shoot. And I wasn't allowed to shoot the F1s, I was only allowed to shoot all the support events, which was the Historics, the V8s, that sort of stuff, celebrity race, etc, but I enjoyed shooting that anyway, so. But the whole thing, if you weren't, if you weren't part of their international group, you, you were really on the outer and, and you felt like it too. So I only did the F1 twice and gave it away as a bad joke. But V8 Spathurst, I shot there, I think eight years in a row shooting for a Ford magazine and a Hold magazine. So it meant it didn't matter who won. I got a good story in. It was, yeah, one, one would run a congratulations story and the other would run a commiseration story. But I learned very early, I think the first job I did of the, the speed trials, I learned from that, that it was worth while me writing as well because otherwise you had to share the fee. So you know, you'd go out and you, you do the job and with a journalist and you get paid $450 for example, and you have to split that with the journo. And so it was always like, well, how much do I get and how much does he get? And I found that, well, if I write as well, I keep it all. So, so I started writing and I look back at some of the stuff I wrote in the early days and I think, my God, how did that ever get published? But yeah, I became quite proficient at it. And as I said earlier, by the sort of mid-90s I was, or late-90s, I was writing for eight magazines in the UK, and for six of those, I. I was the sole Australian contributor, traveling all over Australia shooting, not just motorsport, but shooting classic cars. And. And the English magazines paid basically double what the Australian magazines did. So having stuff in that many magazines, and I averaged probably 10 articles a year each magazine. So it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of money too. So I was. It was when I was actually making money out of my photography, which was great. So. [01:23:06] Speaker A: And so a question for you. So you, you. You're shooting for other magazines, you're traveling all over Australia, you're attending a lot of events. At what point did you think, actually, you know what? I want to do my own magazine, my own publication. How did that come about? Because not many people do that. [01:23:26] Speaker C: No. And maybe I shouldn't have done it either. But when I. One of the magazines I was writing for and shooting for in England was called Mini Magazine. And so anything and everything to do with Minis. And at the time, the, the BMW Mini wasn't around. It was. It was like the classic Mini. And so I was doing a lot of work for them. There had been a Mini magazine in Australia that only lasted five issues and then they canned it because it wasn't making enough money. I wouldn't say it wasn't making any money, but it was part of a big stable of magazines. They had like 20 or 30 motoring magazines and this one wasn't making enough, so they canned it. And by its fifth issue, I was writing sort of 80% of the magazine. And for years it was called Mini Magic. And for years people come up to me and say, when's Mini Magic coming back? I'm like, man, it's been years. It's been like five, six years since it was. Yeah, but it was such a great magazine. We really want to see it. And it got me thinking that there was a market for a Mini magazine in Australia. And then in 2001, they launched the new MINI here, the BMW Mini. And I thought, now's a good time. If anybody's going to start a Mini magazine, now's the time to do it. And I reckon if anybody's going to do it, I ought to do it. So I went again, spoke to my wife. What do you reckon? She said, if you reckon you can make a go of it, it. Poor girl, she trusted me with everything. So we gave it a Go. And. And it went well for 12 years. [01:25:00] Speaker A: We did change 12 years. [01:25:01] Speaker B: A long run. Yeah. That's amazing. [01:25:03] Speaker C: Yeah, we did change it halfway through. After six years it had. It had sort of flattened out. The. The numbers weren't growing, but. But we were getting good numbers. We had nearly a thousand subscribers plus, you know, three or 4,000 sales to news agents. So it was. It was doing well, but it flattened out and it looked like it was starting to decline. So I expanded it from just Mini to be anything to do with bmc, Leland. So that was Morris, Austin, mg, Austin Healey, Jaguar Rover, Land Rover, all sorts of stuff. We ran another six years like that, and then in 2017 or 2016, the bottom just fell out of the market, mainly because of the Internet. Everyone thought they could find anything they needed on the Internet. Advertisers started pulling their advertising because they had websites now and they didn't need to advertise in magazines. And the whole industry just suffered hugely. There are still car magazines out there, but a handful as compared to, you know, hundreds or so. Yeah, that was when we closed the magazine down. But, but it was, it was great while it, while it ran, we. We didn't make a lot of money, but. But we made enough to survive and keep going. And the funny thing was with the Mini magazine, with the Mini, it was called the Mini Experience. And then when I changed the name, it was called the BMC Experience. But when I was starting the Mini Experience, I rang a mate of mine who was a motoring journalist in Adelaide and a cartoonist, and an extremely good cartoonist, John Stoneham, otherwise known as Stoney. And his motoring cartoons are famous, world famous. And I rang him up, I said, hey, Stoney, I'm starting a Mini magazine. And he said, you idiot. Okay. He said, well, what do you want from me? And I said, do you want to do cartoons for me? I said, I can't pay you a lot, but I can pay you. And he said, sure. So we had Stoney Cartoons in our Mini Experience for the six years that we ran it like that. And. And the only reason he didn't keep doing them for me when I changed it to the BMC Experience was he was getting too much work from other places and just didn't have the time. So. And he was thinking of pulling the pin on me anyway, so he said that worked out well for him, not for me. So. And yeah, people love getting the Stoney cartoons. It was. It was a big feather in my cap to start off with him on board. So, yeah, so I. I photographed and wrote and. And I didn't do everything as I said, but I had a handful of stringers and it was. It was interesting. It was a lot of work. It was like 100 hours a week. But I loved. Was a shame to give it up, but sometimes we must. So that was. That was the end of that. And I'd still been doing a bit of work for other people when I had my magazine, still working for Minute World magazine in England and a couple of others. And so I thought, well, I'll just go back to freelance again. That'll be fine. Yeah. Well, like I said, the bottom hadn't fallen out of our market. It was the entire car market and magazines were closing. People were happy to see their stuff published for nothing. So those doing it for a living just weren't making anything and that. Look, there are still some. I know there's a woman photographer who specializes in motoring magazines that sort of stuff in England does a wonderful job. And there are still people who do make good money out of doing it, but they're few and far between now. Whereas there used to be a whole industry of us, but not anymore. Yeah. [01:28:57] Speaker A: So to a couple of other motorsport and car photographers. So Nick Dungan from the UK and. Oh, my gosh, my mind has gone completely blank. [01:29:11] Speaker B: Andrew. [01:29:12] Speaker A: Andrew Hall. Thank you. Sorry, Andrew. [01:29:14] Speaker B: I can't believe he didn't remember his foodie name. [01:29:17] Speaker A: I know Andrew hall from. He's also a Fujifilm ambassador. [01:29:21] Speaker C: I remember that part. [01:29:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, I know that bit. But they mostly shoot for. For clients like car brands and. Yeah, that sort of thing. Yeah. It's still a very interesting industry because, you know, this. I think there's probably maybe more competition now and more in terms of like, you know, more styles of cars coming out. Like, you know, there's a big push for evs and so people are trying to make those sexy and appealing and photographers get involved in that and so, yeah, it's an interesting industry you ought. [01:29:59] Speaker C: To get on to. I think it's Amy Shaw in England. Her career. I read her bio on her website and her career is very similar to mine, but 30 years later and. Yeah, and she's doing a fabulous job over there. And I'm not plugging it because I know I don't know her, but I've seen her work and to see somebody who still does a lot of magazine work and making a living out of it's great. [01:30:28] Speaker A: Yeah, she must be doing something right. [01:30:30] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:30:33] Speaker B: Very quickly, before we move on to the next Stage of your story. What? I just want to read a few comments. I'm pretty sure this comment from Noel is. I'm hoping not in reference to your magazine. Sound. Sounds like the editor was a idiot. No, I think. I think he's referring the Weekly Times there. [01:30:52] Speaker C: Yes, he is referring to that. [01:30:59] Speaker B: I assume you. You were the editor of your magazine, so surely Noel wouldn't say that. Nev Clark said as well on that. On that topic, the editor had no feels. This was about your image getting skipped over for the front page, which Rodney Nicholson said. Front page. Yes. Another one that I thought was funny from Noel was. Your shadows are a bit too deep, Watto. I think that was. That was the first black and white image you brought up with a. Yeah, my first try. [01:31:34] Speaker C: It was high contrast. It was evening. It was almost night. [01:31:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. [01:31:39] Speaker C: I got detail. Hey, I'm happy now. [01:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Samantha Olson. Good to see you, Sam. That says give me a dark room as long as it's not in my house and I don't have to pay to stock it. [01:31:55] Speaker A: Good luck with that. [01:31:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:31:59] Speaker B: And finally, Dave Digifrog says at the Huon Valley News we were wet processing. The boss hated wastage. I was only allowed one box of paper a month, no more. And I was only allowed one grade of paper to use. So rough days. Did you have to walk to work in the snow with no shoes on. [01:32:19] Speaker C: Dave, So you get a lot less weight. [01:32:26] Speaker B: You were you living the high life in the city, I tell you. Very cool. [01:32:31] Speaker C: Going back to that whole thing and shooting the cars and learning how to get correct exposure. First time, every time. That was really important when shooting for the magazines because they were insisting on slide film. You know, shooting. Shooting on the. On the newspapers. Even when shooting color, we were shooting negative film. So as in when. When the paper transferred to color. And that was sort of about 96 or thereabouts. Basically when we moved the. The whole business moved to south bank away from Flinders street where it had been. And from the moment we were in south bank, we were shooting color exclusively shooting color neg. And that was fine. So those shut up photos I showed you before, other than the motorsport one? Actually, no, that. That one of. That one of the motorsport one was Cullen egg as well. Barrel color. But shooting for the magazines was all color slide. And your exposure had to be spot on. [01:33:29] Speaker B: Everyone always says that. And I've never shot slide film. Can you explain to me a dummy? I understand the difference. That slide is essentially positive. So the color like it looks like the image as opposed to it looking like a negative of the image. Beyond that. And, and I also know that my parents used to put slides in a machine and that that machine would shine it like a torch at the thing and the wall and we could look at the pictures nice and big. That was fun. Beyond that, I have no idea what the difference is between neg and. And slide. Can you explain to me and the rest of us that don't really understand why that is such a difference and why it's harder to shoot slide film. [01:34:05] Speaker C: Negative film. Pardon me. Negative film generally has a fair amount of latitude, especially for overexposure. So if you're not sure overexposed, one or two stops is fine. The details there on the negative, you can get it out either scanning or printing. With a slide, there's not that much latitude. If you're half a stop overexposed, you'll lose your highlight details. If you're a stop underexposed, you'll lose your shadow details. So it's. It requires a lot more care in getting your exposures right. Yes, especially these days with scanning technology and that sort of stuff. A slide that's underexposed, you can probably get a bit more detail out of the shadows and that sort of stuff. But it's. It really does need to be spot on with your exposure if you want to get your full range of. Of details from your highlights to your shadows. And obviously it depends on the brightness of the scene to the contrast the scene, that sort of thing. But generally speaking, slide film will. Will give you a less to play with. So, you know, if you weren't sure, you might bracket your shots by a stop either side. Or sometimes I'd only do half a stop either side. Side. So it became really important to make sure. And also shooting freelance, I was paying for my film myself. I only got paid for what was published. So you were very conscious of how much film you used. So you wanted to get your exposures right. Spot on. So very little bracketing. If it was a really important shot or as an interior or something and you weren't sure, yeah, bracket by stop. But other than that, just, just take an exposure and go for it. Because you couldn't afford to get your exposures wrong. [01:35:52] Speaker B: So why then what's the. Well, first of all, I just want to explain bracketing to anyone. Anyone that started on mirrorless cameras will be like bracketing. What's that? Bracketing is basically you set the camera or you either do it manually or then as cameras become more professional, you could actually turn bracketing on and set it to one stop either direction. So you would set your exposure to your. What you think it's going to be. And then you would, you would take the photo, but then it would take also a photo one stop under if that had had it set to and one stop over. And pro bodies got to the point where this is when HDR photography and digital was all the rage. You could shoot, I think, a 7 bracket 7. What was it? I don't know. On the 1 DX Mark IV, you could set it to, I think it was 5 images either side on a scale of so 3 stops either side or. I can't even remember. It was massive. And you would hold it down, it would shoot like nine photos and it would basically be just in increments above and below the exposure you had it set to. And then you could throw it into a program and it would pull together the ugliest HDR image that you've ever seen of a sunset with full detail everywhere. And you were like, that looks ridiculous. [01:37:10] Speaker C: I thought I was the only one who hated hdr. [01:37:13] Speaker B: No, we all did, but we also all had to try it first because we were like, that looks cool. And then you do it and you're like, ah, it doesn't look that cool anyway. So. So that's what bracketing is. What I don't understand is why slide film then? What are so the negatives of negatives. The downsides of slide film are that it's. You have to be a much more precise photographer, more accurate with your exposure. There's less latitude. What are the upsides? Why would you use it? [01:37:40] Speaker C: Quality, much finer grain generally. And better color, you know, better representation of the. The natural colors definitely, and, and more vibrant colors too. Some of the slide film, particularly Fuji, I was shooting mostly Fuji. And again horses for courses. I shot a lot of weddings when I was younger too. And I shot almost exclusively on Kodak. But shooting slide film, I should almost exclusively on Fuji. I like Kodachrome, but it's too slow. And then by the time they brought that Kodachrome 200, I was shooting exclusively Fuji 100 and 400. So. And, and I'd shoot. If I was doing a, a car shoot like a magazine feature, I'd shoot 100. If I was shooting motorsport, I'd shoot 400 and occasionally push it to 800, but rarely. It was nearly always shot at box speed. So. But yeah, certainly finer grain. Better. Better reproduction in the, in the magazines. [01:38:53] Speaker B: So, okay, so it was, it was purely just A quality thing. It's like, hey, we want the best quality and we know it's going to make your life hard. So. Haha. [01:39:01] Speaker C: And newspapers, you know, not denigrating newspapers, but. But newsprint was nowhere near as fine detailed as magazines with paper. So you could get away with grainier images or that sort of thing. Flatter images were fine because they reproduce better on newsprint, but when you're talking glossy magazines, they want as much detail as possible and as little grain as possible and printed at 300dpi and all that sort of thing. So. Yeah. [01:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah, okay, cool. Thanks for educating me. I. Yeah, I've often wondered that and I hear people talk about slide film and I assumed that there was obviously benefits. I just wasn't 100% sure what the specific benefits were and why it was worth the extra hassle of. Of having to shoot more precisely and. Yeah, different processing and all that kind of stuff. Where to next? What else do we want to. I mean there's this. There's more, there's more story to go. [01:40:07] Speaker C: I also, yes, as I said, I. I opened focal point in 2019. [01:40:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:40:15] Speaker C: And pardon me, don't know where that came from. Edit that bit out. [01:40:26] Speaker B: We might be live. [01:40:29] Speaker A: It's there forever. [01:40:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Everyone forget what you just heard. Okay, so Focal Point. So that was 20. So the magazine closed in 2017. [01:40:41] Speaker C: Yeah, 2017. October. [01:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And Focal Point. [01:40:47] Speaker C: Yeah. I did a. I was actually on Centrelink for a little while there and. And I did a course, Cert 4. This is the only qualifications I have, Cert 4 in New Business Management through RMIT, paid for by Centrelink. Thank you very much. As part of a. What they call the nice scheme, the new enterprise incentive scheme. And it was to get people who are unemployed to start their own businesses. And. And I knew what I wanted to do. And by getting the subsidy from the government to do the course, they also paid my wage for nine months to do to open my business. It was a. It was a good scheme and for me it was unfortunate that that nine months ended just by. Before COVID hit. So. So my business was supposed to take over paying my wage right at the time that the business plummeted into an abyss. But despite that, we had with the. I've talked about the g. The dark room. I said about the dark room. We also had a massive gallery there. The gallery alone was 200 square meters. And my first exhibition, which opened in February 2019 was insane. I thought. My background is in press photography. My love is news photography. I'm going to have my first exhibition will be all press photography. So I contacted a couple of photojournalists that I knew from the day. In particular, Clive McKinnon who'd been a. Well, he'd been an age photographer and then a Sun photographer. He retired about a year after I started in the Dark Room. So I didn't know him well, but I knew him and he was living down here and just by chance we met and I told him what I was doing so he wanted to be part of it. He put me on to Bruce Possel, an age photographer and, and basically once I had those two and they, they also gave me other names and phone numbers and that sort of thing. But, but once I had Clive and Bruce in, you know, said that they'd be part of it, I, I'd bring other photographers and, and I'd say I'm putting together an exhibition of press photography. Do you want to be part of it? And they'd say who else have you got? And I'd say, well, so far, Clive McKinnon and Bruce Possle. And before I finish saying Bruce's name, they'd say I'm in. So then I was saying I got Clive, Clive and, and Bruce and John Lamb and you know, rattled off a list of names and people going, yeah, I'm part of it, I'm part of it. So we ended up, we had 23 photographers. [01:43:33] Speaker A: Wow. [01:43:33] Speaker C: Some of the best, best in the game from Victoria of all time and, and some too that weren't around, but we, but I'd managed to get some of their photos. So 23 photographers, 250 photos in my first exhibition. I'd never curated an exhibition before, I'd never hung an exhibition before. My family helped so much, my daughter in particular. We worked. Our opening was on the Sunday and we were going to a family wedding on the Saturday and on the Friday night my daughter and I worked all night and we finished at, on the, on the Saturday morning and we went home and got an hour's sleep and then had to get up and go to Melbourne for this wedding. We fell asleep during the, during the service, the two of us leaning on each other and then I fell asleep again in the gardens. I said to them, when you want me for family photos, wake me up. We got home from the wedding after the, after the ceremony, after the, what do you call it, the reception. Got home after midnight and then the two of us were up again at 6am to go back to the gallery to finish hanging the last of the photos and Our opening, our grand opening was at 2pm and we hung the last photo at 2:15. So we had people coming in going, that one's crooked. We go, I know, go away. And then had them all up on the wall. And I was walking around. We had most of the photographers, I think I had about 20 of them there, certainly, certainly at least 18 of them there. And. And I was going around and handing them their captions and saying, go and stick these on your own photo. Because I didn't, didn't have time to do it. But it was amazing. What an amazing exhibition. It was huge. We had so many people come and see that. Over a thousand people through in the month that it was on. And that was our start. But. And I said I would never hang that many photos again. But after that, our exhibitions averaged 150, 160photos, which was still. And. And I got in the swing of doing things. So we had a press photography exhibition every year. I had the Walkley exhibition, which was great. I. And that was on a week. I just rang up the Walkley foundation and this was before we even opened. I rang them up, I said, hey guys, I'm opening a gallery. What are the chances of getting. I said, I'm opening a gallery in Geelong. What are the chances of getting the Walkley exhibition? And the woman I spoke to, Barbara, she goes, we've never been to Geelong. We can do that. I'm like, oh, okay. She said, well, you'll need a bit of space. I said, I've got a lot of space. Oh, you'll need a lot of space. Space. I was like, I got a lot of space. And I told her about what was coming up. She went, okay. So we had the wall police, and we had them every year we're open five years in a row, even through Covert. We had the water. [01:46:43] Speaker A: Wow. [01:46:44] Speaker C: And it attracted people from Melbourne because it wasn't shown anywhere else in Victoria. And so again, we would have a thousand people through. Well, that first year we did. The last year was our best year. After that we had about 800, but during COVID it was down to around 200 if we were lucky. Yeah, everything got smashed. But other annual events that I did, I did a music photography exhibition. And the first, the first one of those, I actually rang Lucinda because she'd been in and seen some of the stuff and I'd got to know her and I contacted her and I said, are you interested in having an exhibition of your work here? And she said, oh, yeah, but I don't think I could fill the place. I said well that's all right if we, if we put your stuff in and then we'll build up the rest of the exhibition around it and so it'll be mostly yourself. We, we had 80 of her photos and then we had about another 80 or 90 photos from about another six or eight photographers. And I found that a lot of photographers would love to exhibit if they had the opportunity and the money so expensive to exhibit most places. So if it was by invitation I didn't charge them. I banked on the fact that we would sell some photos and when we started we did that first year we were averaging maybe 10 photos an exhibition that we sold which was great and plus we charged entry which some people didn't like. Some were like well why should I pay to go to a gallery? And I go well if you go to the Geelong Gallery you pay to go and see their special exhibitions like the, you know, when they had the Archibalds, you know, that's 20 bucks. So we used to charge 10 bucks ahead, so what? Eight bucks for concession. And very few people knocked that. So that was how we made money. We charged for the entry and we charged on sales, we charged a commission. And so I did like I, I rang, oh God. Names have just gone out of my head but I rang, I rang a couple of really well known music photographers in Sydney, told them what I was doing and, and they both said what's it going to cost us? And I told them nothing, you know, I'll print your photos, I'll display them, if we sell any, I'll take 25%. And they went cool. So because of that we had some of the most amazing photography exhibited and it really built, we really built up a name focal point in Geelong. It was sort of the go to place for photography exhibitions. The only place in Geelong that, that was specifically like the only gallery that was just specifically for photography. And every year, every month, except through Covid, it was every two months but every month we'd have some exciting exhibition. We had open call exhibitions that anybody could enter at 20 an entry. So you could put in one photo or 10 photos, whatever you wanted. Somebody said what if I put in 100 photos? I said fine, it cost you 2,000 bucks. And they went I'll put in five. So you know, and, and again, you know, we didn't always fill the place but we'd get over 100 photos easily enough and that, and that paid, you know, that's two, 2,000 bucks coming in. Whereas one photographer couldn't afford that, but 100 photographers could afford 20 bucks. So we did a lot, we did a lot of those. We did two a year of open call. One of the best exhibitions I had and I, I partly curated this one. A woman came in one time and she said her name was Joyce and she said, I've got an exhibition that I put on in the 1980s on stills Photography from Australian movies. Would you be interested in it? And I went, yeah. So she brought it in and it had been pretty much like all the photos been under her bed for 40 odd years. And so I basically reproduced most of the photos. Anything that was out of copyright I, I copied and reprinted so that we had the best possible quality for it and, and photoshopped out scratches and dust and things like that, so it's actually better. And then wrote these extensive captions for it all and put on this exhibition that was all on stills photography from Australian movies from 1896 to 1986. Wow. And it was phenomenal and it just attracted so many people. And again, out of the blue, I always work on the basis, you know, if you don't ask, you don't get. And I knew David Parker had been a stills photographer on a couple of films. So I rang him up out of the blue, just rang up his production company. He, he made, he and his wife Nadia Tass have made over 20 Australian films together, like Malcolm and the Big Steel, films like that. So I rang him up and I said I'm putting together an exhibition of stills photography and I know you were a stores photographer on a few films. What are the chances of getting some of your photos? And he said yeah, no problem. So he did man from Snow River, Burke and Wills, various others in the 80s. So I had those and then I said to him, would you be interested in opening the event? And he said sure. So I had Nadia Tass and David Parker, pretty much Australian movie royalty, come down to Geelong and open up my little exhibition on film photography. It's just fantastic. So yeah, it was, it was great. I loved it. I, I loved again, it was a lot of work putting, putting together those exhibitions so often was a lot of work, but they paid for themselves and they, they got the people in. You know, we had so many members because if you bought a membership to the gallery you got in for free for the expenses and that sort of stuff. So yeah, it was, it was okay. And because of COVID we like sales dropped by 80% so that, that was what really hit us and hurt us. And plus the numbers of people dropped right off. But you know, 20, 23 things were maybe sort of starting to pick up. We thought things were going well, not as well as we would have liked and we were toying with whether we shut the place down or keep going and, and that sort of thing. And then, then my wife died suddenly and unexpectedly and so that just made me realize it's a no brainer, I'll close it, I'm not going to run it on my own. So, so I had all that sorted out. I was going to close up and then a woman came and offered to basically take over my lease and buy all my equipment and she was going to run the dark room and the studio and that sort of stuff. So the while I didn't get anywhere near the money that I would have liked to have got. I got enough to walk out of there debt free. So the advantage was and, and with a little bit of insurance money I got from my wife I was able to spend a year just. Oh, and I gotta say I was. We were closing in the October and in September I had a heart attack. So that kind of bosch on anything after that. So yeah, so basically I had a year off working on my house, getting it ready to rent and just trying to get my head, get back in the game and work out what I wanted to do and did I still want to keep going with photography, did I want a gallery, all that sort of thing. And, and now I tried working from home for about three months and that just wasn't going to work because every time I thought right, I'll sit down, I'll do some work, I go, oh, that needs doing in the house, that room. So I wasn't getting anything done. So I went and saw the people, Harriet and Corey at Liminal. Well, it wasn't Liminal then, it was called something else but it's Liminal Gallery now and they have studios upstairs, they've got about eight or ten small studios and. And so I've got one of those and I work from there and I do my, my customer scanning and sometimes that can be pretty boring and other times it can be really interesting. I was scanning slides for somebody just last week and they're all from Vietnam in the 1960s. Their father a soldier over there and had taken all these photos and while they weren't award winning photos by any means, that was so interesting from the historical perspective and yeah, and that sort of thing. So yeah, it has some interesting aspects to it. And doing photo restorations, I love doing photo restorations. The More difficult, the more fun. As long as I don't have to rebuild people's faces, I'm happy. So. And, and as part of this whole sort of working out what I want to do with my head and, and get back into. I've started going back to shooting a lot more film shooting. Not so much darkroom printing. Like I process my own film, but then I scan it and, and do digital prints. And I've got into doing fine art stuff and I, I got into almost by accident again like so much of my stuff. Got onto a technique that I'm doing and loving and that's multiple exposures. But I'm doing in camera, multiple exposures on film and no Photoshop. The only Photoshop would be things like normal dark room techniques, you know, brightness contrast, dodging and burning. Although I don't even. Dodging and burning. It's. It's pretty much as it comes out of the camera and spotting off dust and my old camera and this, this behind me. I'll show you. This is, this is my camera. I use my multiple exposures. It's a 1950s press camera called a speed graphic and made by Graflex. And it's just got the standard Graflex press lens on it, which is a 135. So it's a slightly wide angle. It's a bit like a 35 mil on 35 mil and. But it's. It's 5, 4. So the film, film goes in the back there and that's how big the film is. And I can, if I want, I can. I can focus through the lens, but I don't use that. I use. I use it more like a press camera. I shoot handheld and it's got viewfinder there. And here is a coupled rangefinder. So focus it with the rangefinder and then frame the shot, compose the shot through that. If I wanted to go full 1950s press photographer, I can flip. Flip up the sports finder, which is a whole hole just. Just to shoot quickly. But I don't. I use the viewfinder and the, the range finder. So that's all I do. You. You focus it like that. I have this grip is. Some people recognize that's an old Mets flash gun and got rid of the battery pack or it's actually. It's in there, but it's all taped up and. And I have a shutter release here which I forgot to put in that just goes into the lens there and. And then I can take my shots like that. So I, I hold the camera like that. When I'm shooting, so it's nice and stable and to take a shot, you cock the shutter there and you fire the shutter with that, but that fires that. And that's it. Exposures, shutter speed and aperture all set around the lens, focus and shoot. And I'm doing. Yeah, it's fun. I love it. It's huge. [01:59:43] Speaker A: I've owned televisions that are smaller. [01:59:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a very cool camera. [01:59:49] Speaker C: It's heavy and not something most people would want to shoot with, but. But I love shooting with it and I'm going to show you. The first. The first shot I did with it, not surprisingly, was the Geelong Revival, which is the modern, modern take on the Geelong Speed trials, which is where I started shooting motorsport and that sort of thing. So what better place to shoot my first multiple exposure? And you can click on that one. 20, 25 multi. [02:00:22] Speaker A: You got that, Justin? [02:00:24] Speaker C: You got that, Justin? [02:00:26] Speaker B: Hang on, hang on. Oh, here we go. [02:00:29] Speaker C: That's it. So that's 10 exposures on one shade of film with no Photoshop. So that's what I love to do. I love to. You don't know what you've got until you process it. And that's. That's both beauty and the terror of film photography. I. I like it because it makes me think about what I'm shooting so much more. And I. People have asked me a lot and I did a talk to a camera club recently and they asked me how I go about composing the shots and that sort of thing, and I said, you know, do I. Do I plan where each shot's going to be and all that, and. And I said no. I tried doing that and it just didn't work. So now just wing it and hopefully I'll get something that works. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. My very favorite one that I did was in last year at the. Was it last year? Yeah, last year at the Geelong Show. And I'll find that one, this one. And I call this one Chaos of the Carnival. And it was shot at the show of all the. The rides and the show, the. The show bags and all that sort of stuff. And with that printed big or. Or zoomed in big on. On your screen, there's so much going on. That's another one that's 10 exposures and there's just so much going on, but it's all sharp. And, you know, you pick up things like birdie beetle show bags and an image of Marilyn Monroe and an image of Elvis Presley from some of the rides and that sort of thing. There's a sign at the top that says get lost and enjoy it and that sort of thing. And the more you look into it, the more you see. Yeah. And so I, I, I call this series Look Deeper. Because that's the whole point is the deeper you look into them, the more, the more you see. And, and I've, I've entered that one in a couple of competitions and hopefully we'll do okay. I don't know. I may not, they might not get it. They might not see what I see. This next one is familiar this year. And when it comes up, that's there, that's called Vertigo. And it's, it's the, the giant Ferris wheel that's down here at Eastern Beach. And you can see there's, even across the middle the words giant wheel if you zoom in on it. But I think that one's, I think that's eight exposures. I usually work between five and 10. Often things look better with not too many exposures. And, and I'll tell you how, how I go about my exposures, because everyone asks. Yeah, I kind of wing it. I, I shoot FP4, which is rated at 125 ISO and I rated at 400. So I underexposed by basically two stops. And then I just let it build up of its own accord. And some of the negatives end up four or five exposures overexposed. But the details there. And this is the whole beauty with the, the, the flexibility with film. With negative film, they're too dense to really print in the darkroom. You know, you'd be looking at an hour exposure sort of thing to get a print. So they scan up really well. So I scan them and then just clean up any dust or anything in Photoshop. And otherwise it's pretty much out of the camera. I might have lightened it or darkened it a little bit, but that's it. I don't, I don't play contrast so much and, and just take the dust off and I'll find you another one. [02:04:36] Speaker D: Super interesting. [02:04:37] Speaker C: Yeah, there's only so many I can put up on this thing. I have to keep deleting them so I can put the next one up. [02:04:43] Speaker B: Ah. [02:04:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, There's a limit. [02:04:45] Speaker B: I think I can. Oh, no, I can't. [02:04:47] Speaker C: No, that's all right. So this, this one I shot last month up in Ballarat. [02:04:53] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [02:04:54] Speaker C: And that's, that's, that's five exposures just of the trams up there. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. You know, I I get. I'm getting slightly better than 50 that work. And I'm really happy with that. Yeah, I'm really happy with that. When I did the show, the shot, the. The Chaos of the Carnival one, I actually went on the Thursday and spent. Spent about two hours there and took two photos, effectively I did two multiple exposures, went straight back to the dark room, processed them, had a look at them, went. They didn't work. So it was late in the day, so I went back on the Sunday and did it again. And that was when I got that shot. That was the second of the two I did that day. But then when I scanned all four of them in and looked at them and went, actually, some of these others aren't too bad. So they work. They're not as good as the other one. The. The Chaos of the Carnival is my pick. That's my favorite of all that I've done so far. [02:05:59] Speaker A: And so what. What is this? Is this a. A project that you plan to build a collection to then exhibit at some point? What's next for. For what am I working on? [02:06:12] Speaker C: Yeah, I've done. I've got 12 so far. I had an exhibition last month in Barwon Heads. Well over Easter. When was that? April. In June already? Yeah, over Easter I had an exhibition and it was one big wall, was these 12 multiple exposures and I had the camera on display so people could see the camera I use. And then the rest of the gallery, I. I put in another 40 or so of my photos. Just going back over my. My history. So it was a mixed bag. But yes, the idea is to exhibit more of these multiple exposures. I've entered the Ballarat Photo Biennale. I haven't yet heard about a venue, but the idea is to just have the multiple exposures and depending on the venue that I get, I want to print them big, even if it means fewer of them. They look awesome when they're big and I've just had four of them on display in Geelong. Here they've got a series of windows in Yarra Street. They're called the Yarra Straight Art Windows. Funny about that. By the council and you can make an application and if you get picked, you get to put some of your work on display there. Best part is they pay you for it. So actually get paid to exhibit. So that was good. So I had, I had one of the windows for March and April. No, it was. No, it was months. It was March to June, I think May to June, May, April, May, I don't know, three months okay. My head's working. That's okay. Month. It was March to May. March, April, May. Three months. Yes. So that coincided with the exhibition I was having down in our heads. So. Nice. So, yeah, this is, this is my big thing at the moment and I'm really excited about it and I'm really surprised when they work, I think. How did that work? I did. I did one of the Prime Minister's Avenue in Ballarat. After I did the trams, I went and I don't know if you know the Prime Minister's Avenue. It's. It's in the Botanical Gardens in Ballarat and it's busts of every Prime Minister and I shot six of them. And in typical politician style, they're all vying for prominence in the photo. And I think I've put that one in the, in this file. [02:08:56] Speaker D: No, I have actually all been vandalized recently too. [02:09:00] Speaker C: Quite a few of them have. [02:09:01] Speaker B: Not all of them. [02:09:02] Speaker C: Sorry, A few of them, About a dozen of them have been vandalized and they're. They've got little fences and shade cloth around them so you can't see them. [02:09:12] Speaker B: But. [02:09:13] Speaker C: So I photographed at the other end some of the early ones. And yeah, they're all vying for position. The one that comes out on top, the one that is most visible and you can actually read his plaque quite succinctly was our shortest serving Prime Minister, Francis Ford, who was Prime Minister for one week. [02:09:33] Speaker A: He's still got a statue. He's still got a statue. [02:09:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. Accounts. That's my thing now. So. [02:09:43] Speaker A: Yep, I think it's a good thing to have. And I think it's, you know, it's really heartening to hear that even after a personal tragedy such as losing your wife, that you took some time, worked out what was next for you and you've set a new course and a new path and. And you're still exploring, you know, the craft that, that sustained you for so long. I think that's really wonderful to see because a lot of people would give up creativity. You know, for me, when I lost my wife in 2013 to cancer, and it was photography that probably kept me alive after that, you know, And I think there's a lot to be said for creative pursuits in the wake of grief. [02:10:30] Speaker C: I have to say, a big part of it, a big part of getting my head around. Right. And everything, is my new partner. She's wonderful and yeah, she supports my creative endeavors and my work and everything. So that's. That's really helpful. Absolutely. [02:10:46] Speaker A: Oh, that's Lucky. That's lovely. Well played. Did you have any other questions, Justin? Anything else you wanted to. [02:10:54] Speaker B: I only. I mean, yeah, we're hitting. I gotta. I've got a photo shoot to get to soon actually, and then another podcast. Another podcast later tonight. But I just wanted to know if you had any other cool toys there that you were gonna show us because those cameras we've seen so far are amazing. So is there anything else that makes cool noises or opens and closes that you can show us? [02:11:22] Speaker C: Uhoh. [02:11:23] Speaker B: Oh yeah, I've done that before. String of cameras under the ground, bloody camera straps. What are you doing that? Another comment from. Another comment from Noel. Thanks for the show, guys. I'm really enjoying it. We're glad you're here, Noel. [02:11:39] Speaker C: Thanks. [02:11:40] Speaker B: Thank you. [02:11:41] Speaker C: Thanks Noel. You didn't say anything nasty about me. [02:11:45] Speaker D: You haven't read all the comments yet. [02:11:47] Speaker B: No, he did. He did say before when we said the editor sounds like an idiot. He said my comment was multi purpose. So maybe. Yeah. And David also echoes the sentiments. Nice chat, gents. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks for being here, David. Thanks everybody. Thanks for the chat. But yeah. So what have you got there? What camera is that? [02:12:04] Speaker C: This is a D1H. This was my first digital camera. It's Nikon D1I. It is a beast. Two and a half megapixels. [02:12:15] Speaker B: Oh, boom. [02:12:17] Speaker C: Isn't that amazing? And we were doing double page spreads in the magazine, so it's. [02:12:23] Speaker B: That's crazy. [02:12:24] Speaker C: I hear people talking about, oh, you've got to have 40 megapixels. You got to have this, you got. It's. It's about the camera. It's not about the camera, it's about the person using it. And you know, look how little the screen is on the back. It's tiny little. [02:12:38] Speaker A: That's really awesome. [02:12:39] Speaker C: Digital. I, I re. Tried not to go digital. I, I was putting it off as long as possible, but it was just getting the cost involved in shooting film all the time, especially as a. So I had to go digital and to keep my cost to a minimum, I was shooting Nikon on film. I've got my F4 there. I was shooting the F90s as well. And so to keep my cost down, I went to Nikon. I would have preferred going Canon. I. There are people who are going to scream at me. But I did a lot of research in it, Justin. I did a lot of research and I basically felt that the focus system on the Canon was far superior. But I had like eight lenses for my phones and I wasn't Gonna buy a whole Canon system. I couldn't afford it. So yeah, I got a body that would take all my old lenses. And it was funny. I still shoot. I've got a 403.5. That's manual focus. I still shoot motorsport with. Wow. I did shoot motorsport with that and I was at Bathurst one year and somebody came up to me, he goes, you shooting with that old thing for. And I went. I was taking good photos with it 20 years ago, I'm still taking good photos with it. Yeah, it's not as quick. I don't have autofocus on most of my lenses. I've got two autofocus lenses, 28 to 70 and an 8202.8. So they were great lenses. But for everything else, manual focus, it's like, no, I'll just slow down the work a bit. I still get good stuff. [02:14:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I've got the. I think I've got the successor to that Nick on, on my shelf somewhere. [02:14:26] Speaker D: So the F5. [02:14:30] Speaker C: Oh, F5, that's a film camera. [02:14:33] Speaker B: No, no, D2X. [02:14:36] Speaker C: And I've got a D3. [02:14:38] Speaker B: Oh, hang on, let me get my D4. I don't. I did have a D5 though. [02:14:46] Speaker D: Yeah, that you loved. [02:14:48] Speaker B: I did love that camera. That was amazing. It just felt. Everything just worked exactly the way it should work. It was responsive. The image quality felt just. The colors were great. I don't know what it was. It had some magic, magic dust in that camera. [02:15:02] Speaker C: Yeah, this, this day one, I was shooting a motorsport event historics at Phillip island and was standing right next to the track like I was on top of the embankment, on top of where the tires were, the tire embankment and a car collected, another car and came spearing off straight towards where I was and I dived out of the way and the camera ended up landing heavily with the 400 mil on it on the ground and it actually twisted the body. So that's. That was non functioning and unfortunately I was underinsured at the time and could only afford with the insurance to get a D200 but it was still a step up because it was like 12 megapixels and yeah frame or anything. But I was, it was a really good camera and I used the D200 for years and I only got the D3 secondhand probably two years ago. So yeah, I've shot a lot of stuff on the D200 and that was really good. And of course Nikon lenses are superb lenses. So Yeah, I, I haven't. I know there Are differences in the software, differences in the color balance and that sort of stuff. But I've always been quite happy shooting my Nikon. So there. [02:16:24] Speaker A: There you go. [02:16:26] Speaker C: They're all. [02:16:26] Speaker A: You have it. [02:16:27] Speaker B: They're all. I mean, anything. [02:16:28] Speaker D: I'm in your. [02:16:30] Speaker B: Anything that's full frame is. Is beautiful. Brilliant, in fact. Can't beat. [02:16:35] Speaker A: Doesn't have to be full frame. [02:16:37] Speaker B: I didn't say it had to be. I just said they're brilliant. [02:16:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:16:41] Speaker D: And if they're not. [02:16:43] Speaker C: But I shoot raw on it and I've got a Canon. [02:16:45] Speaker A: Wow. [02:16:54] Speaker B: We've descended into camera brand madness. [02:16:57] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:16:57] Speaker B: It's where these shows always end. [02:16:59] Speaker C: They do every time. I got my head. [02:17:05] Speaker B: I should. [02:17:05] Speaker C: Okay. [02:17:05] Speaker B: I should ask you before because it's. Yeah, it's quarter. Quarter past. What is it? Quarter past 11. Almost 11. Before I go and. And start packing for my shoot, I should ask you if you had to have just one camera and lens or, you know, camera and lens fixed, whatever to document the end of the world. Whatever end of the world pops into your head. I'm going to say zombies, but whatever. You know, it could be. I don't know, who knows? The end of the world. Yeah, it could be Covid 2, Covid 20, 25. Whatever we're up to. And it's the end of the world and you got to document it or at least use the camera as a weapon. What would you choose? If you were just running out the. [02:17:48] Speaker C: Door and you've got one camera, one. [02:17:51] Speaker A: Camera, one lens for the rest of time. [02:17:54] Speaker B: For the rest of the end of the world. However long you last before the zombies get you. [02:17:58] Speaker C: Okay, you're gonna hate me for this. I would probably grab the camera that I'm taking to England with me in a couple of months. I wanted to travel light, but I want something that's got a lot of flexibility. I've got an old Panasonic Lumix FZ50, which is tiny little micro thingy on it. CCD 1⅓ or whatever they call it. 12 times zoom. That big zoom. Not massive compared to some of the other hybrid cameras now, but it's lightweight, it weighs nothing and. [02:18:35] Speaker B: Hang on. Is it. Is it this? Is that what it looks like? [02:18:40] Speaker C: It's one of them. Yeah, that's it. Yep, that's it. [02:18:44] Speaker D: That's like my cool digital camera. [02:18:46] Speaker B: You say I had a. I had a Fuji. I actually had a Fujifilm. It was very similar. So I keep trying to remember what. What model it was, but it was, it was, yeah, the, you know, optical all built in zoom. [02:18:56] Speaker A: That's what. [02:18:58] Speaker D: Yeah, you had the Lumix Gym. Yeah, I had the Lumix and it shot raw as well. That was why I would use it at uni. [02:19:04] Speaker C: Because it's. [02:19:05] Speaker D: It shot raw. [02:19:06] Speaker A: Because it shot raw. [02:19:07] Speaker C: Wow. [02:19:07] Speaker A: I think they still make a. Is it FZ580 now? They've still got one. Well, one that's still in production. [02:19:16] Speaker B: Nikon still make that epic beast, whatever it is that the P 1100 or whatever that's. Yeah, it's, it's like 24 to 9000 mil equivalent lens. [02:19:26] Speaker A: Didn't they release one like last year or an update at least? [02:19:29] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, because. Because they've got a cult following because they, they perform well. So. So you use this, do you, have you used this recently? What are you gonna dusted off for the trip? [02:19:38] Speaker C: No, I, I've used it recently. I took it to Ballarat with me when I was doing the Maltese up there last week and I thought I better just check that. This is going to give me photos that I'm going to be happy with. Also got, I took a couple of other small travel type cameras. One is a, an Olympus pen half frame digital with a short zoom on it. And yeah, the, the image quality on both of them was really good. But the, the range on this with the, the lens is just fantastic and crazy. Isn't it really nice and sharp even. [02:20:13] Speaker B: At 35 to 420. [02:20:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And even at 420 that it's really nice and sharp. So I'm going for a holiday. I'm not working, you know, and it's lightweight. So if I was running away from the zombie apocalypse, you know, it'd be a good camera to, to run with and then quickly turn around and snap off some shots on and hope you still had electricity to run your computer to download them. So. [02:20:39] Speaker A: Very nice. [02:20:40] Speaker B: Very, very cool. We've even got David de Parker in the chat has cheated on his answer to this question. He said the Nikon F2 as a weapon and the ZF to carry around and shoot PCKs. Yeah, but it's one. You can't have two cameras. You have to. All right, you gotta pick. Do you want your weapon or you want to get some photos? Yeah, crazy. Crazy. And apparently JS Hanny Jason says the D200 has become a cult camera with its CCD sensor. What is old is new again. [02:21:13] Speaker C: There you go. I'm a cult photographer. [02:21:15] Speaker A: You are a cultist. [02:21:16] Speaker B: You're ahead of your time. [02:21:21] Speaker A: All right, well, I think on that note we might need to wrap because Justin's got a shoot and. Yeah, it's, it's coming up to sort of two and a half hours. [02:21:32] Speaker C: Yeah, sorry. [02:21:35] Speaker D: Thank you. Thanks for that. [02:21:36] Speaker A: Never apologize. Never apologize. We're here for it is what we're here for. Just a reminder for those of you that are watching or listening along either live with us now or later on on YouTube or audio podcast channels, this is the Camera live podcast. Please make sure you like today's video. It helps us out a lot. Hit subscribe, hit the bell notification so you get notified. Don't forget that we have a sneaky show coming up tonight to coincide with the Fujifilm X Summit Shanghai. We're going to be watching that live and responding to the the impending news from Camp Fujifilm. [02:22:15] Speaker B: I heard a rumor, I heard a rumor they're releasing the X quarter. It'll be a quarter frame triangular sensor camera. It'll take triangular photos and it's going to have that same film advance button like Watto's camera has, plunger, but it's about 30 centimeters tall. But the camera is only this big because it's an X quarter. It's going to be interesting. I'm very, very excited about it. [02:22:43] Speaker A: Right? [02:22:43] Speaker D: You guys are wasting the Internet again. [02:22:45] Speaker C: Okay? [02:22:46] Speaker A: We are wasting the Internet. We, we excel at wasting the Internet here on the camera life. And don't forget on Monday night, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time, we have our random photography show where we just talk about photography, basically. It's wonderful, a lot of fun and we want you there. We want you there to comment, to ask questions, to engage with one another. Even, even if you ignore us for the whole, you know, hour and a half, two hours, just talk to each other, that we're happy with that too. But we're here right now with Craig Watto, Watson Watto, thank you so much for your time. Such an amazing journey and being able to, you know, chat with someone who was around when televisions were still black and white and people shot film. [02:23:34] Speaker B: People shot film when magazines were still profitable. [02:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah, magazines were in a bit, but yeah. Once again, thank you so much for, for taking the time today to share your story with us. And I think that, you know, I think there was a lot to learn from today's podcast, hearing about the way things used to be done, but also inspiring in that we are seeing how you've morphed that into your current practice, that you're still getting out with a large or medium format film camera and experimenting, trying new things. And I think that's, that's what we're all about when it comes to photography is, you know, it. You just got to keep pressing that button and see what comes from it and learn from those experiences. So thank you for sharing that story with us today. [02:24:20] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks for having me, guys. [02:24:22] Speaker B: Thanks very much. [02:24:23] Speaker A: No worries at all. But look, on that note, thank you, Jim, for joining us from. Looks like sunny Miami from the way. [02:24:31] Speaker B: It really does. It's very. Yeah, the vibes are high. I look like I'm in some sort of weird gaming dungeon. You just look like you're coming straight off the beach. [02:24:41] Speaker C: Got a glow. And I've learned I need a darker background so you can see I've actually got hair. [02:24:50] Speaker A: You'll have to take your word for. [02:24:51] Speaker C: It, you've got hair. [02:24:53] Speaker A: I didn't even know. Wow. Who would have thought? But look, on that note, thanks again to everyone for watching, listening and. Yeah, we'll see you tonight. Join us for the Fujifilm X Summit. What time are we going live, Justin? [02:25:10] Speaker B: I think we're gonna go live at 6:45pm I'll schedule it up now after this show. So you'll be able to get a reminder if you want to check on, check on the subscriber thing and it'll tell you what, what time it is in your time zone. 6:45pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. Because I'm pretty sure the X Summit goes live at 7pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. So we'll jump on 15 minutes before. We'll speculate about the X quarter and the triangular sensor and then we'll be able to watch as it hopefully goes live on time and then. And then we'll know exactly what they're actually releasing. [02:25:43] Speaker A: Yep, wonderful. [02:25:45] Speaker B: There are a few actual rumors floating around that we'll, we'll go over in those 15 minutes, see if they're. If we think they're accurate or not. [02:25:52] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:25:53] Speaker B: There's a comment here from the Camera Life. I haven't heard of those guys before. And it says use code justin for 15 off if you need a camera strap. So that's a good idea. Or merch. We got some hoodies and stuff. Winter's coming down here in Australia. If you need a hoodie or a T shirt, you know, 15% off. Good deal. But they're pretty well priced anyway. [02:26:12] Speaker A: Yep. And they're really nice. They're comfy. They're one warm. [02:26:15] Speaker B: T shirts are good, too. [02:26:17] Speaker A: Australian as color is the brand and they're premium quality. [02:26:22] Speaker B: Well, they're printed in Melbourne, but I'm pretty sure the garments are made somewhere not in Australia. [02:26:29] Speaker A: I had a perfectly good liegoing. [02:26:31] Speaker B: Well, because it's. I try and, you know, I don't. [02:26:32] Speaker D: Think it's Australian as color. [02:26:35] Speaker A: Isn't as color Australian? [02:26:37] Speaker B: Yes, it's an Australian company, but they bring. They bring them. [02:26:40] Speaker A: Thank you very much, boys. [02:26:41] Speaker B: Overseas, you both life. [02:26:43] Speaker A: Let's roll the music. [02:26:44] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:26:45] Speaker B: Okay. Let's roll the music. Thanks. Thanks, Watto. Thanks. Thanks, Rodney. Thanks, David, Philip, Noel. Who else we got? Nev. Nev was there. Thanks, Nev. Thanks, Samantha. I don't know. Everybody. Thanks, everybody. [02:27:03] Speaker D: Thanks, everyone. [02:27:04] Speaker A: Thanks tonight. Bye.