EP99 Brett Wood | Life as a Landscape Photographer

[00:00:25] Speaker A: Well, well, well. [00:00:26] Speaker B: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Camera Life podcast. It's, if you could believe it, it's the 17th of July. I don't know how time has flown so quickly. And we're at episode 99. We're no longer on the march to 100. We're on this like a landslide to 100 at this stage. [00:00:41] Speaker A: Yep. [00:00:42] Speaker C: It's right around the corner Monday night. [00:00:44] Speaker B: That's a negative going down, but, you know, you get what I mean, we're on a. We're on a path, we're on a trajectory. But this is the. This is the Camera Live podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky straps. Head to Luckystraps.com if you're looking for a premium handmade leather camera strap Aussie made in Bendigo, Victoria, head there. But of course, being our Thursday morning show here in Australia, we have a guest with us today and like to say good morning to landscape photographer Brett Wood. G', day, Brett. [00:01:14] Speaker A: G', day, gentlemen. [00:01:15] Speaker C: How's it going? [00:01:17] Speaker A: Bright and early it is. Second coffee comfy? Good, good, good. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm on my second. Yeah, yeah, Nice. We're all on an even playing field. [00:01:25] Speaker C: I've got two for the podcast. That's how I. [00:01:28] Speaker B: Is that what Yelena just brought into you? [00:01:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So she brings me in a second one which is full and they're in these cups, these yeti cups that have like sealed sort of lids. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Must be nice having pa. [00:01:39] Speaker C: It's like a thermostat kind of thing. [00:01:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I've got one of those. I take it on workshops when. Yeah, I've taken on workshops when we're getting up at five o' clock in the morning. [00:01:49] Speaker C: I love them because you don't have to drink, you don't have to worry about it getting cold and stuff. If you get distracted and then you come back to it, it's still warm and if I remember to close the lid, if I drop it, yeah, it's not a disaster. So, yeah, it's a win. Win. [00:02:02] Speaker B: So whilst this is the Camera Life podcast, if you're in the chat or you're listening, let us know. What is your favorite coffee receptacle? It's an important poll. We'll reveal the details at the end of the show. Brett, thank you so much for joining us. Before we jump to the comments. Oh, g', day, Justin. By the way, thanks for showing up. Before we jump to the chat, Brett, just give us the very short, sweet, punchy version of who you are, what you do. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Okay. Together with my partner Lisa, we run Landscape photography workshops, that's probably our core business. We've been doing that now for over 10 years. We specialize in small group landscape photography workshops to New Zealand and Australia. New Zealand definitely is our specialty. That's what. We only just got back from New Zealand a couple of days ago. It was there for a month, so, yeah, that's what we do. Also do a bit of online teaching, photo editing, cell photos, all. It's all very much geared at landscape photography. So that's what I do. I'm a born and bred country boy and anything that's in the outdoors is going to get me there. So that. That's my thing, being outside in nature, basically. [00:03:17] Speaker B: Nice. Nice. [00:03:18] Speaker C: Very cool. [00:03:19] Speaker A: Welcome. [00:03:20] Speaker B: Welcome to the show. We're going to dive into your story in a bit more detail soon. But first I'm going to hand over to Justin to say some good mornings to people. [00:03:27] Speaker C: Yeah, the chat's going crazy. Philip Johnson, Good morning. He says, morning, chaps. G', day, Brett. Nick Fletcher in the chat. Hola. Good to see you again, you know. Do you ever sleep, Nick? Rodney. Good morning. Yelena says good morning. Kevin Morse, Good morning from Margate, Tasmania. Chilly down there, Kev. Neil with an extra l. Morning, gents. Are you new? Welcome. Lisa Leach. Good morning, guys. And a big hello to Brett. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Is that your Lisa? Is that your Lisa? [00:04:04] Speaker A: It's not my Lisa, No. My Lisa is sitting in the kitchen in pajamas editing photos. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Good bit of fan club of Lisa's going, mate. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, Lisa's been on a little workshop with us. [00:04:14] Speaker C: Oh, cool. [00:04:15] Speaker A: I think she's coming on another one next year, actually. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Nice work, Lisa. I want to talk to you about that too, about frequent flyers and workshops. But we'll get to that in a minute. [00:04:25] Speaker C: Paul says, morning, everyone. Unfortunately, once again, the office life has overruled the camera life, so we'll have to catch up later. [00:04:32] Speaker B: You know what the secret is, Paul, is that, you know, we've all got smartphones, we've all got 5G. Just complain of a stomach cramp loudly to a couple of colleagues around you and then dash off to the loo, find a nice quiet cubicle in the corner and you can just sit back and I'll get a coffee. [00:04:48] Speaker C: But yeah, I mean, if he listens. [00:04:50] Speaker A: To that profile photo. Paul, I've got the same photo, actually. Bryce Canyon. It looks like the same day I was there. But look, it looks. [00:05:00] Speaker C: It's epic. Bright ice canyon with snow. That's the dream. That is the dream. [00:05:06] Speaker B: You went there last year, though, didn't you? [00:05:08] Speaker A: Me? [00:05:09] Speaker B: No, no, no, Justin, sorry. [00:05:10] Speaker C: I did, I did, but there was no snow when I was there and I did not get a photo like that. I took some photos but they didn't look. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a cheap ass Leica that you carry around. [00:05:21] Speaker C: Exactly. That could have been the problem. Of course. We've got David Fluttersuk catching up on previous comments. I see that Womble David Clutterbuck thinks I'm a spoof account. He should know I come from a long line of Flutter sucks if you guys. [00:05:42] Speaker B: Anyway, it's a bit of a running joke, Brett. Sorry. And, and it all, all roads seem to point to Nick Fletcher. [00:05:48] Speaker C: They do. Speaking of Nick Fletcher, he wants to know where Jim's Portraits is today. I don't know where Jim's Portraits is. Lisa's booked in on 2026. New Zealand. [00:05:57] Speaker B: Nice. [00:05:58] Speaker A: Very cool, very cool. [00:06:02] Speaker C: Speaking of New Zealand, we'll get to it later in the show, but Brett actually asked me just before we went live, like what the purpose of this podcast is and I gave him some answers which were true. But one of the other answers is generally just trying to get great information for myself. And I do have a New Zealand trip coming up. We've got two and a half weeks in a camper south island from the middle of August. So I'll be, I'll say what's happening. Yeah, I'll be hammering Brett later for all of the inside tips and where we should go, where we shouldn't go. So. But we'll do that later in the show. [00:06:34] Speaker B: So you had Bruce Mo on Monday night to, to, you know, the info to talk lenses for New Zealand and now you've got Brett. It's almost like you're scheduling these guests. [00:06:45] Speaker C: But there's got to be, there's got to be some benefits, right? [00:06:47] Speaker B: A bit of magic. No, it's not, Rick. [00:06:51] Speaker C: Well, Paul just says, hey, Brett. Yes, it's Sunrise Point at Bryce. My shots from 2014 signing off now. The stomach cramps aren't going to cut it. Have a good day at work, Paul. Yeah, yeah, we'll be here. [00:07:04] Speaker B: We will be here. You can watch us back later. But anyone that's new in the chat or watching live or listening or down the track, please make sure that you give us a like. Because what that does, because we're so community minded here, it tells YouTube that people like this content and it shares it with like minded people, people that look for certain similar things that you look for. So please give it a like, please subscribe and tickle the bell. Notification button because that way you'll get notified of upcoming episodes of the camera Life, for example, when was it we did the Sony one yesterday morning, for example. [00:07:38] Speaker C: So you know what Jim said? The other guy that hosts this show sometimes said to me this morning, I didn't see that you did a show yesterday. And I said, that's interesting, Jim, because that means you don't notifications turned on because otherwise it would have come up on your phone when we went live. And he was like, no, I think I do. And then he went in there. He's like, oh no, I don't. So twice a week. Easy to miss. One last comment before we get into Brett's story. Brendan Waits from Cameron photo down on the great Ocean Road says photographers with the initial BW are all very talented. [00:08:13] Speaker A: Left handed. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Take your word for it there, Brendan, but good to hear from you, buddy. All right, Brett, let's dive in a little deeper to your story. We want to learn more from you other than what Justin needs to get through his New Zealand trip. We want to find out a little bit about your, your journey, your creative journey, your inspirations, what led you to where you are today. So we're gonna roll back the clock quite a bit. [00:08:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:40] Speaker B: So early inspirations know, was it family? Did you study photography? Were you, was your family creative? Or you, you know, what was it that led you to pick up a camera? [00:08:54] Speaker A: Well, if you want to wind the clock all the way back, I might as well give you the whole story. I grew up in, grew up in a country town called Wagga Wagga. I was always outside. I was never that inside kid. I hated school. I didn't learn anything at school except how to read and write and count. I couldn't wait to get out of school and just do stuff outside. So was taking photos from a young age when I was in the boy Scouts. Actually that's a long time ago. [00:09:20] Speaker B: I was too. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Had one of those little Hanimex cassette type cameras and I was always taking photos of random things. So it started a long time ago. But then I spent probably 25 years in jobs where I was on the road in sales jobs. So lots of driving, lots of traveling for 25 years and always had a camera. Something caught my eye, pull up on the side of the road out in western New South Wales or whatever it was and take photos. And then sort of about in the somewhere probably around 2013, 2012, I just got really into photography, like on a really serious level, like obsessive type thing and started, you know, shooting on tripods, filters, really taking. Taken it to another level. Went through a lot of life changes back then. I lost both my parents over a short period of time. Split up my ex wife, you know, all this sort of stuff. So it was time for a major change in life. So I quit my job. I had a really good sales job where I was earning, you know, lots of money and all that stuff, but just wasn't doing it for me anymore. So quit my job, started doing. By that stage I'd build up a bit of an audience on social media back when you could actually get a bit of traction on social media. And I just dived in the deep end and just started doing workshops. At the time I was living at Port Macquarie on the mid north coast in New South Wales. Yep. So I started doing a few workshops there around the coast and I'd already, by that stage had already been to New Zealand umpteen times. Originally first went to New Zealand, I was lured there by my second favorite hobby which is fly fishing. So fishing a lot. And so I already knew New Zealand pretty well. So then the next thing was to go to New Zealand and start doing some workshops there. And then it's pretty much just snowballed from there. It's been a long. That was. I've been doing workshops full time now for about 11 years and it's just gone from strength to strength really to the point now where it's like just full on. It's very busy. Yeah. [00:11:35] Speaker B: Life, it's a good place to be. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I can't complain and I still enjoy it. Yeah. It's like any job, it's got its ups and downs. You know those days where you've got to spend days in the office doing all that exciting admin stuff and you know, that's not the most fun part, but when you're actually out there out in nature, I still enjoy it very much. Yeah. [00:11:57] Speaker B: I think there's a lot to be said for, you know, for creatives, especially photographers obviously, because that's the world we live in that, you know, reach a point where they can actually sustain life for themselves, their partner, their family, based purely on their skills, their ability to see something that people would find compelling, take a shot of it, but also educate other people how to do it for themselves. I think there's something really profoundly special about that and I think. I don't think photographers get enough recognition for how hard it is to get to that point. You know, often we have to sustain a day job with a creative job and at some point, it reaches a tipping point where you either can't do the day job anymore because the creative has blossomed, and that's wonderful, but unfortunately, sometimes it tips the other way where it's. You're just not gonna. You just can't quite make that shift yet, and it takes even more work. But I think, you know, we often all kind of brush over or maybe gloss over the fact that, you know, what we can do with our hands and our eyes and our minds is actually, you know, creating income and a lifestyle that we. That suits us. I think that's really special. [00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:04] Speaker B: And 10 years you hadn't noticed I'm a touchy feely guy too, so. [00:13:07] Speaker A: No, no, that's good. That's true. [00:13:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm more of a numbers guy. And 10 years in business is. That's no joke. Like, to. To keep that going for 10 years. That's. [00:13:17] Speaker A: Especially when you throw Covid in the middle of it. Yeah, yeah, that's. [00:13:21] Speaker B: No, that's. That's trophy worthy on its own. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Should we. [00:13:25] Speaker C: Let's just derail the podcast right now. What. So did. Did anything crazy happen for you in terms of your business? Like, canceled trips last minute? Like, could tell us what? Anything. Anything. Any cool stories? [00:13:38] Speaker A: Oh, Covid was an absolute disaster for me. Like, I. I'd literally just moved to New Zealand. I. I moved over there to live there permanently. And I'd been living there for like, two or three weeks, and covert started. Oh. And within six weeks, I lost a year's. A year's work, so I had to refund people deposits, you know, all that kind of stuff. It cost me about 100 grand, so. Oh, gosh, it was a big hit. But, you know, I. I survived. The positive was that I spent a year in New Zealand and there was no one around because the Kiwis weren't letting anyone in. So. Yeah, I was there for like a whole year. And every day I just go out, either riding a mountain bike, taking photos or fly fishing. That's all. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Sounds terrible. [00:14:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Suffered through those years, Brett. That's not what I remember. Yeah, we had. We had the Ring of Steel. It wasn't quite Dan Andrews at every. [00:14:45] Speaker B: At every possible intersection, standing there, saying, you can't get on the beers. [00:14:49] Speaker C: Yeah, no, no mountain biking. No mountain bike. That was. There was. Anyway, it's very different. Let's not go down that road. But. So do you remember what it was? Like, did you have any workshops booked right around that time? Like, was there. Was there, like, a trip where you Were like watching the news, waiting to see what happens around that. Was it like March, April kind of time where. Yeah, we didn't really know what was going to unfold. Did you have to do like a last minute. Sorry, workshops off? [00:15:17] Speaker A: I. I done that about six or seven times, I think. [00:15:20] Speaker C: Oh, no. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah, no. We even had one workshop where the Kiwis opened the borders all of a sudden. And then we. So then some of our clients got on a plane and flew over and then like two days before the workshop was to start, they closed the borders again. So then half the clients couldn't get there and half were already there. And then we had all sorts of stuff going. [00:15:46] Speaker B: But anyway, you have a whole, whole bunch of people crashing on your couch because they couldn't get back to Australia. [00:15:52] Speaker A: Or some people just stayed. There was something going on in Sydney at the time. They had a. I don't know, an outburst of COVID or something. [00:16:01] Speaker C: I think a guy went to a lot of barbecue shops and then they were trying to figure out which shops he went. It wasn't me. Do you remember the new news with stuff like that where they were like, you know, this. This person and they've traced them and then they're like, yep. And then they went to Bunnings and then they went. And all these people online were like, how many shops does he need to go to to get a bloody barbecue? [00:16:22] Speaker A: He spread it all over them. [00:16:23] Speaker C: It was. [00:16:24] Speaker B: And the removalists that went to Adelaide and they stopped in Melbourne and dropped off covert there. [00:16:29] Speaker C: While they were there, everyone was like hyper analyzing someone's movements. Like, why would they get a big M? They don't need a big M. They could have brought their own lunch to work and then we wouldn't be locked out. It was. Oh, man, it was crazy. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it was pretty. It was a. It was a different stage in our life, that's for sure. [00:16:47] Speaker C: Y. [00:16:47] Speaker A: It definitely taught us some. It definitely, like, you've got to try and take positives out of everything in life. It definitely taught us. Taught us to appreciate life more, I reckon. Yeah, I agree. And to have. To have a little bit more forward thinking as well and to think about. Because I've got plans now. If it happens again, I've got plans to deal with it, you know? Yeah. So. Yeah, yeah. [00:17:09] Speaker B: Borderline prepper, but clever. [00:17:11] Speaker C: Did it have you think about your business in terms of, you know, if. If everything hinges on workshops. So you said you probably got plans for how you would deal with the workshop side of things. But it did. Did it make you think, oh, I need to come up with maybe other ways to have income. So it's not all solely resting on the, on the workshops. [00:17:31] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely 100%. Another thing, I don't know if you ever look at statistics on things, but online learning, during that 18 month period of COVID or two year period of COVID online learning, the online learning business globally increased by like 3,000%. So what does that tell you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:55] Speaker B: I think there's, there's a lot. You know, it was pretty dark times and there were some scary moments and all of that sort of stuff. And you know, financial impact was huge for most people, especially, you know, business owners. But you know, some of the takeaways, like you said, you know, extracting the good from the situation. You know, we all, we all kind of learned that things can be done online, you know, that there are, there are alternatives that we can actually rely on, you know, shifting focus on things. So yeah, there were some good things to come out of it. [00:18:24] Speaker C: But you know, what we learned. Just to fully get into this tangent, what we learned because we were running, we were running or Yelena was running a gym at the time. So. And it in Victoria, like it opened and closed and went through 10 times, open and closed. Multiple different stages of what you can and can't do. All sorts of crazy stuff and we tried to do. So online learning went crazy. You know what is terrible? Trying to exercise on the Internet with other people from the gym. We tried it. We tried to do like a zoom thing. It was horrible. It's like, it's just, it was just, it was like this. But you're like trying to exercise and you're like, g', day guys. And it was just like, nah, it's not worth it. We ended up just. People just ended up just catching up and not exercising. Just on the video calls, just so they. [00:19:13] Speaker B: Well, that's important too. [00:19:14] Speaker C: Felt like they had seen somebody, but yeah, so that didn't work. Anyway, well, congratulations on, on making it through. That's very impressive. And continuing your business even after Covid. What I wanted to find out about, I made a note here. So you said 2012, 2013, you really got excited about photography, dove deep into it and then you said you went full time in I think about 2015, full time, sort of running your own workshop business. 14, I think it was 14. [00:19:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:48] Speaker C: Okay, that. In between time, at what point did you. Do you remember when you first taught someone, like your first teaching experience? Where did you go from? Okay, I'm A photographer to. I'm going to help people learn this. Do you remember that first thing. Did someone ask you? Did they. Did someone offer to pay you for your help? [00:20:09] Speaker A: No, it was my idea. I just felt like I'd probably got to a point where I could help people. I'd learn a lot of stuff over a period of a few years. I was totally obsessed with it. I spent, you know, probably, to be fair, probably 10 hours a day on either learning Photoshop, editing, watching YouTube, talking to other photographers, you know, just learning. But I went on a few workshops as well, with other photographers as well. That was probably when I realized that I could do it because I went on workshops with other photographers and I thought, I can do this probably better than them. Well, that's not being. Not being cocky, but I felt I could, you know, so that's when I sort of thought, yeah, I'll give it a go. I was passionate about it, and I think passion determines success. Right. So if you're passionate about something, you. You can make it happen. Yeah. [00:21:12] Speaker C: Did you. Did you have any fear? Any or any of those. Those things that creep in, like that kind of impostor syndrome sort of thing or anything? Yeah, like. [00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, of course you still get that, but most of the time I think you've just got to back yourself. That's what it comes down to. Just about yourself. Yeah. Don't listen to the outside noise because there's lots of that. Just back yourself. Yeah. [00:21:38] Speaker C: What's obviously worked out. So that's great. [00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah. A lot of hard work's gone into it, but like, you. You guys have no. Yourself. Like, being in small business, you know, people think you just drive around the world taking photos and drinking coffee. They don't. Honestly, they do. They don't realize what's involved. You know, like, there wouldn't. Since I started my business, there wouldn't be a day that I'm not working in my business. And I mean, seven days a week. The amount, especially in those first probably five, six years, I would. The amount of hours I put into. It's phenomenal. Yeah, it's a lot of hours goes into it now. It's probably still pretty busy. Like, there's still like every day there's stuff going on, you know, but it's maybe a little bit easier now because I've got Lisa, my partner, and she helps out a lot and she sort of takes a bit of the workload, but it's still busy. And if you want to be successful in a small business, I think that's the number one thing. You've got to have that work ethic. You have to, you have to get things done, you know, and you've got to have that attention to detail. You've just got to go that extra, that those extra 1 or 2% things make all the difference. Yeah. [00:22:53] Speaker C: Can you give us an example of what those extra 1 percenters are in your business? What are the sorts of things that you, you push yourself to do that maybe other people don't? [00:23:07] Speaker A: Well, I think you've got to constantly keep in touch with people. So you've, as much as you might not like it, you know, social media, email marketing, you know, whatever it might be, you've got to just keep in touch with as many people as you can. So. And you can't stop doing that. You know, as soon as you fall off the, off the radar on, you know, social media or YouTube or whatever it is, people will forget about you in a week. So you've got to keep putting your name out there. You just. I call it constant contact. But this, all, this all stems back from my days working in sales for 25 years. Constant contact. If you keep in constant contact with a thousand people, at some point one or two or three or four of those people's gonna come back and get in contact with you. So yeah, you've got to do that. And I think the other thing we do is just try and have a, a real level of professionalism. We try and do everything at a high standard. We do everything legitimately, ethically, like, we do everything by the book. Like, you know, there's so many not mentioning any names, but there's a lot of cowboys out there, you know, that are operating the same sort of businesses. They don't have national parks permits, they don't have the right business insurances, those sorts of things. Yeah. So we've always make sure we do all that attention to detail on that sort of thing. The overall product that we give, give people, as in the learning experience, it's an overall experience. It's not just about going somewhere and taking photographs. It's the whole thing involved around, you know, it comes down to the vehicle we use that we drive, people in, the hotels they stay in, the restaurants we eat at, you know, we'll even go to. We're pretty experienced what we do now, so we know all the places, but we'll get the bet. We'll make sure they drink the best coffee in the town and eat at the best cafe in that town and you know, things like that. Yeah, it's attention to detail. Yeah. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, you know, and, and some markets can be pretty crowded and like you said, there can be cowboys that are offering, you know, we, you know, offering the same, but maybe cheaper, but there is not the same. So, yeah, you've got to differentiate yourself, don't you? And I think those, you know, some of those things that you mentioned around, you know, finding the best cafes and restaurants, knowing which hotels are going to be good, and knowing where and how to find a vehicle for a tour like that in itself is a. Is an admin, could be an admin nightmare if you didn't know what you were doing. And I think it's a lot of those little things that a lot of people don't realize. When you sign up for a workshop and you see the price, you don't realize that actually. Well, you know, obviously there's insurance, which is a big chunk of money no matter what you do these days. You know that it's, it's not just. It's not just lining your pockets, it's. It's actually paying for services and, and an experience for people that stands out from, you know, a cut above the rest, so to speak. I want to ask you about New Zealand. So you've obviously got a. A love of New Zealand. So, you know, you've just come back recently and what was it about New Zealand that called to you before you'd even been there? [00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one. There's a lot of people that have been to New Zealand and they'll. They just seem to get it. And once you've. It's not everyone, but it's one of those places to me, I don't know what it was the first time I went there would. I would have been there for two days and I said, this place is just unbelievable. There's something about this place that just absolutely draws you in. And it's. I don't know if it's a spiritual thing or what it is. It's just the, the raw beauty. There's not many people around. It's a bit like. In some instances, it's almost a bit like going back to when you're a teenager in the country. You know, it's got this real chilled vibe. There's doesn't seem to be many bad people around. You can leave your wallet on the dash in the car, you know, all this sort of thing. But not only that. Like, I've traveled the world extensively over the last, you know, 15 years or so, and I've been to all these places, the Iceland and Canada and you know, U. S National parks and Norway and all these places and New Zealand has got as far as like landscape goes, it's got as good a landscape as anywhere on the planet and but it's got everything. It's got the snow capped mountains and the glacial lakes, it's got the green mossy forests, the waterfalls, the black sand beaches. It's got all that and it's all compact this, it's all compact into this one little place that you can drive to once. [00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you can just drive around. [00:27:59] Speaker A: It's pretty easily accessible. It's very well looked after by the department of conservation there. The way they, they look after things and run, run the, the national parks is pretty admirable the way they do it. The Aussies could learn a lot from them. Yeah. So all that and not only that, if you take away the really well known places, you've obviously got places like the Wanaka tree, the church of the good Shepherd, Milford Sound, you know, these places that everyone goes to. But if you take those half a dozen places away, all the other locations we visit, there's no one there. We just did two workshops there in the last few weeks and probably three locations we've seen other people and then the rest. No one just, just us. [00:28:48] Speaker C: Locations out of you. [00:28:50] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Like even if you go to say Iceland for example, we're going there soon. We're there last year. It's, it's a stunning place but there's so many people there because it's, it's a, it's a very small Iceland. It's very, it's probably about a third the size of New Zealand. There's a, everywhere you go there's a lot of people. [00:29:08] Speaker C: It's gone, gone mental there in the last. Yeah, definitely 10 years. But even the last five years it seems like it's just, it's just accelerating every year. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And so on another place, let's say the Rocky Mountains in Canada for example, absolutely magnificent place. But most of the locations again it's going to be quite a few people there. Yeah, you don't, you don't get that in New Zealand. Very spoiled. I think the fact that New Zealand is so far south in the world, anyone from the northern hemisphere doesn't really want to go there because it takes them too long to get there. So that is almost a good thing because that eliminates how many people are going to be there. So yeah, that is, it's a combo of a lot of Things. But I'll be surprised. Justin, I don't know if you've been to New Zealand before. Yeah, yeah. I'll be surprised if you don't absolutely love the place and write it very highly. [00:30:02] Speaker C: Yeah, already love it. I was. I was lucky enough to. I'll bring up Nick's. Nick's comment in a second. I was lucky enough to go to do heli skiing. Like snowball boarding. Yeah. And that's what I'm going back to do this time. And then we're picking up the camper to do a road trip and going up in that chopper in the. The ragged ranges. Ragged and jagged ranges which. [00:30:25] Speaker A: The Harris Mountains. Helis game. [00:30:27] Speaker C: It's out of. Yes, out of. So out of Methven. [00:30:30] Speaker A: Oh, Methven. Up near Mount Hutt. [00:30:32] Speaker C: Yes, up near Mount Hut. So it flies out of Methven. It's that crew and they. Yeah. So Methvin Heliski, sorry, is the. Is the business that runs the heli ski operation. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Yep. [00:30:43] Speaker C: And just that that landscape of those mountain ranges blew my mind. I had no idea that that's what it looked like. That there was that. I thought we were going heli skiing and there would be like, three or four mountain peaks. It was endless. It's crazy. [00:31:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:00] Speaker C: Anyway, quite. [00:31:01] Speaker B: So, Brett, you know, I get what you mean when you talk about your spiritual place of a place. You know, in your bio, you said that New Zealand's a bit like your spiritual home. And it's interesting that, because I feel that about Tokyo. You know, I don't like crowds. I'm a fairly insular person. But something about being in Tokyo, you know, the biggest global metropolis in the world. The biggest metropolis in the world. [00:31:24] Speaker A: Sorry. [00:31:26] Speaker B: I. I find absolute inner peace standing in a crowd in the middle of Shibuya on the crossing, photographing 3,000 people cross in front of you every six minutes. Yeah, it just, you know, it sings to me. And. And the first time I went to Tokyo in 2015, I was compelled to go because I'd kind of surrounded myself with as much about Japanese culture here that I could, and I just needed to make it happen. Was your first trip to New Zealand kind of like that? Did you already have a bit of a calling to New Zealand? Was it because of your love of fly fishing, or was it for a photographic opportunity? You know, for a chance to go and actually document this amazing place? [00:32:07] Speaker A: I'll talk to you later about Tokyo because I want to go. I actually haven't been in Japan, but it's super high on the list. I definitely want to go. [00:32:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I could do a whole podcast just on that. [00:32:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not a big city person either, but I definitely want to go to Japan. I. Yeah, that sounds like amazing. And again, it's one of those places I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about. I love Japanese food. How good is it anyway? [00:32:32] Speaker B: Well, last night, last night I made Japanese curry because I was missing. I needed some sort of Japanese influence in my life. No, I didn't. No, I just. No, no, I just, I just threw some chicken in but. But yeah, just some Japanese curry with rice and. Oh, just. It gave me the feels, you know. Gave me the feels. So sorry I cut you off. [00:32:52] Speaker A: Yeah, no, sorry. No, that's all good. The first time I went to New Zealand, me and a good mate, I got a good mate that I grew up with as a kid. We've been best mates since we're 10 years old. We were crazy fly fishing and getting into that and that's what first took us to New Zealand. My mate Steve and I went there probably six or eight times over the first couple of years and we'd get the motorhome thing and just drive around with no plan and just go fishing and. But that the good thing of that is all these sort of off the beaten track places that we were going fishing that were, you know, away from tourists and down dirt roads and up back country valleys are also epic landscapes. So that. Yeah, yeah, I found a lot of places from that, but that's the first thing that got me to New Zealand. But I don't know, I just. Those backcountry valleys, if you can paint a picture, you know, you've got these valleys that run right up into the, into the back, back country or Alps. No one around except maybe a few sheep. Of course there's going to be sheep. It's New Zealand. You'll have this, you know, crystal clear braided river. You have snow capped mountains and it's pretty hard to be, you know, it's just something. Yeah. [00:34:05] Speaker B: How could you not stand and marvel and then take a shot of it? [00:34:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I have had instances and I still do where I'll just sit there in the grass or sit on a rock and just daydream and just admire, just admire the view, you know? [00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's an important element of it. We spoke with Levin Barrett who also runs some workshops to New Zealand and he's a pilot, he's been all over the world. He's a commercial pilot. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:28] Speaker B: And he Often talks about when he runs workshops. The last one, he went with another past guest, Pinky Spencer, and they landed on a glacier and he's a pilot and he was shitting himself. They landed on a glacier and he said, we did the workshop. And then I just told everyone to put their cameras away. And we all just sat and just stared at this phenomenal scene without thinking about photography. Just being in the moment, I think that's really powerful. [00:34:54] Speaker A: There's an old fashioned saying from some photographer in the old days, you take photos with your eyes so you don't always need to document everything you do. You know, sometimes just to see it for yourself is enough. Yeah, yeah. It's very true. Yeah. [00:35:14] Speaker C: Nick Fletcher just mentioned before, just looked at Brett's work. It is beautiful and it is. I thought maybe while we're chatting about New Zealand, I might bring up some of the work that's on your website, if that's all right. We can just kind of, I don't know, just see what takes our. Takes our eye. And you can tell us some stories behind some of the photos or whatever. I'm bringing up the. I don't know if there's a better gallery to bring up. This is the New Zealand 2024 gallery. I just saw this and I was like, these are. Every single shot in. This is epic. [00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:46] Speaker B: Just the color. [00:35:47] Speaker C: Every single shot in this gallery would be my favorite photo I've ever taken. [00:35:51] Speaker A: Yeah. The one thing that I. [00:35:53] Speaker B: The one thing that really stood out to me in your galleries, in your collection of work, Brett, is just how you. How you document the colors of nature. [00:36:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:04] Speaker B: You know, it's really compelling stuff. Like you just. You just fall into these moods because you're looking at something that might have, you know, maybe we can bring up a couple of images. Single images, Justin. You know, you just get pulled into the mood of this scene because the colors are so compelling. I mean, the landscapes are beautiful too, obviously, but yeah, really majestic work. [00:36:27] Speaker A: That one. There's one of my favorites. [00:36:29] Speaker C: That's beautiful. [00:36:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that one. Yeah, yeah. [00:36:32] Speaker C: Was. Was it from the. There's a video on your YouTube, actually, by the way, if you're listening, you've probably already seen it. Brett has a YouTube channel if you haven't seen it already. You. If you head over there after this show and check it out. Not now, not now, later. But there's a video you put up about 10 months ago. Is that where this photo's from? Or is this from an earlier. [00:36:57] Speaker A: That was last winter. Not this winter that we're in now, but last year, so 2020 bull. Yeah, that. There was a video on that. It probably was the video you're talking about, actually. [00:37:08] Speaker C: Okay. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah. That's actually what they call a hoar frost, which is basically just really thick frost. When I say thick frost, I mean it's about an inch and a half, two inches thick. So the frost forms on. On everything. On branches, on pieces of grass, on leaves, whatever it might be. And it's normally when you get super cold, super cold weather, and this sort of moisture in the air, like fog and things like that, but it lasts for a number of days. So it gets dark and the frost falls. And then the next day it gets dark and the frost falls again. And the frost builds and builds and builds and frost ends up about 2 inches thick and it's on everything and it almost looks like snow. But if you ever get the opportunity to see it, it is one hell of a spectacle. Yeah. [00:37:55] Speaker C: Does it happen at a certain time of the. Obviously winter, but like, is it. Does it happen in a certain like week or two of the year? You know, like the end of June, June or something every year? Or is it kind of bit more random than that? [00:38:06] Speaker A: It's pretty unpredictable. We actually had one. Lisa and I seem to have a lot of luck when it comes to New Zealand. We arrived in New Zealand on the. Whatever day it was early in June and the next day there was a hoar frost. So we had one night in Queenstown. The next morning we got in the car and drove up to Friesland. There was a whore frost as soon as we got there. So. But there's only been one this year. Last year there was two. Some years there's none. But normally if you were to draw a line in the middle of say if you drew a line at the beginning of June and at the end of July, so that eight week periods, that's probably where you're going to have the best chance of it. But it may happen, it may not. Yeah. [00:38:51] Speaker C: Nick Fletcher says, Brett, you should come to our little festival in October. [00:38:55] Speaker A: I don't know if you've heard of that festival. [00:38:56] Speaker C: Is it the Bright festival of photography? BFOp. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, I've heard of it. I can't. I mean Iceland. [00:39:03] Speaker C: Oh, dang. [00:39:04] Speaker A: Yeah, Next year. [00:39:05] Speaker B: Next year. [00:39:06] Speaker C: Yeah. Dang it. Yeah, Nick. Nick is one of the, the founders of that festival. [00:39:12] Speaker A: All right. Okay. Yeah, Yep. [00:39:16] Speaker C: It's cool. We're going. [00:39:17] Speaker A: It's. [00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it's going to be great. [00:39:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I know a bit about it. I was sort of interested in it. And then when I seen the dates, I thought, oh no. Well, because October is also the time of the year that we're normally doing workshops, so. [00:39:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:39:29] Speaker B: Makes it hard. [00:39:31] Speaker C: Maybe, maybe 20, 26, if you can. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we could check it out. I've heard good things about it. [00:39:36] Speaker C: So it's a. It's a wild weekend of awesome photography fun. [00:39:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Stuff like this that I don't know if I would think to stop and, and take this photo, but I love it. Do you remember what. What made you. You don't like it? [00:39:57] Speaker A: Did you say it? All right. It's an okay. It's all right. Okay. It's not. Jesus. It wouldn't be one of my favorite photos. I was just filming a video that day and we're just driving around some back roads and yeah, it was getting dark and I was. The light was really good and the clouds were really nice and I just thought I need to make a composition here. You're driving down some back road that you've never been on before before and you're trying to find something to. To make into a photo. So it was just. Well, there's nice light and nice cloud. So let's just go for the road shot. Yeah, but yeah, that's. That sky is those skies. That's that. I guess that's another thing. Very. Is very much New Zealand. You get some unbelievable skies over there with the cloud formations and the light. It's all got to do with having those sharp, sharp mountain peaks. So going from quite flat country to very fast elevation of mountains, that always creates certain. I'm not a weather expert, but it creates certain types of wind type currents and that also just makes epic clouds. Like you get some incredible, incredible cloud formations there. Normally when you get a north westerly wind is when you're going to get clouds like that. Yeah. [00:41:19] Speaker B: There's something really compelling about. Sorry, just. You want to read that one? [00:41:22] Speaker C: I was just going to say Jim says it's epic, so. And I agree. Two against one. [00:41:27] Speaker A: Thanks, Jim. [00:41:29] Speaker B: There's something really quite compelling about road trips with a camera. It's something that I miss. I don't own a car anymore because I live in a. In a city. So we just use public transport or Uber. But. And I do miss that, just jumping in the car, you know, with. With my partner or with a mate or with one of the kids when they were into photography and just, you know, just seeing where the road leads and seeing what you come across. I remember we talked to Mark Bluto and he is based in Geelong, but often travels throughout Victoria and sometimes in New South Wales with work. And he just always has a camera on the passenger seat. And, you know, he would just choose different roads to get to where he was going to. You know, there's something really compelling about. It's like those whole, you know, Route 66 photography. [00:42:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:16] Speaker B: You know, kind of not tours, but, you know, when you. You decide to do that stretch of stretch of road, there's something really powerful about it. And these sorts of shots kind of sing to that, don't they? [00:42:27] Speaker A: That's Lisa and I. That's probably one of our favorite things to do is to just take random drives and find whatever we can find. We no plan, just get in a car and drive. Take. There's a dirt road down there. Where does that go? Let's follow it and find out. You know, we. Yeah, we do that stuff all the time. Every time we go to New Zealand, we always allow extra time, normally an extra week or whatever it might be. And that's exactly what we do. We just drive down random places we've never been and go looking for stuff. We just did that a couple weeks ago. We had about eight or nine days break between two workshops. So we, we did a road trip. We filmed a heap of videos actually, which will be all going on my YouTube channel in the next few weeks. And we just went to random places and we found heaps of good stuff. [00:43:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's. That's what I'm excited about for this trip that I've got coming up is we've. We've made no plans. [00:43:23] Speaker A: That's a good idea. [00:43:24] Speaker C: Yeah. The only plans of the date we, we. Yeah, pick. Pick the motorhome up in Christchurch and when we have to drop it back in Christchurch. And other than that, we can figure out however we want to fill that. Two and a half weeks. [00:43:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Good plan. [00:43:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that because normally I would end up with far more. You know, there's always, oh, we got this thing. We got to be there on this date. Okay. And then it slowly starts filling in and then all of a sudden you don't have a lot of free time. [00:43:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's definitely a good way to do it. Yeah. [00:43:53] Speaker B: And traveling with the camper van means you just don't have to worry about accommodation. You've always got it right back, you know? [00:43:57] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:58] Speaker B: You don't have to. You don't have to worry that you're going to show up somewhere and it's all booked out or something's going on. You just find a. Find a safe place to park. [00:44:06] Speaker A: There's still plenty of free camping in New Zealand as well. You're not going to have electricity or anything like that, but there's places where you can just pull up in your camper van and just camp. [00:44:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that that's the thing we've got to. I think we've just got to make sure because it's not set up quite as well as our van that we've got here in Australia is for like power and stuff. So I think every two or three days we'll probably have to find somewhere that we can plug in. Yeah. To charge up. But we can keep it pretty. I mean, we'll need to shower probably. Oh, yeah, yeah. So we'll keep it pretty. Keep it pretty loose. But yeah, I'm very excited. [00:44:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:43] Speaker C: Man, these images really are. They're beautiful. And what I like too is they're not all the same style. No, I don't know how to explain that. Like, they're not all the same style of feel, of edit, of color, that kind of stuff. Do you do that intentionally? [00:45:02] Speaker A: I just try and shoot. I never have a plan when it comes to photography. There's never a plan. Like that photo there, for example. I was just driving along a road. Was not planning on shooting that at all. That scene was like way in the distance. It was probably 30k's away and I could just see it and I thought, I can get that shot with a 500 lens. So I just pulled up and oh, wow, side of the road and got a 500 lens. Just zoomed in and. [00:45:35] Speaker C: Yeah, you're not helping Justin's wallet. We did a whole show on Monday night trying to convince me as to whether I need to buy 100 to 500 to take two New Zealand or not. Oh, no, there it is. I talked myself out of it. Bruce was trying to talk me into it and I was like, no, I can get away with the 70 to 200. But after seeing this image. Yeah, Jim Sondor, do you need the 500? Oh, no. Yeah, so what. What lens? Should we. Can we talk about gear for a second? Do we just. Can we just flip, flop around and talk whatever we want? Well, I'm just trying to. Yep, there we go. So, all right, let's go to the beginning. What gear are you shooting with? What brand of cameras? [00:46:19] Speaker A: Canon. [00:46:20] Speaker C: Nice choice. [00:46:22] Speaker A: An R5 and an R6. [00:46:25] Speaker C: Okay. Look how excited Justin is, everyone. Look how stoked he is to get. [00:46:30] Speaker B: A cannon shooter on. [00:46:31] Speaker A: It's so bizarre. [00:46:32] Speaker C: Maybe it's because Greg books all of our guests, but we don't get a lot of cannon shooters on the show. [00:46:37] Speaker B: There's just not a lot out there, okay? [00:46:39] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:46:39] Speaker C: No, there's tons out there. They just. Greg doesn't allow them to be guests. It's all Fuji shooters. [00:46:44] Speaker B: I'm a Fuji shooter, so, you know. [00:46:45] Speaker A: Oh, Fuji's are good too. [00:46:49] Speaker C: Don't ruin it. Okay, so Canon R5, obviously the landscape, it's the. It's the go. An R6 for video and a backup or. [00:46:59] Speaker A: I don't really use the R6 much. I just bought it a few. I bought it a few years ago to shoot video. And the truth is it's. I don't like carrying two full size cameras around when I'm shooting video because it's just a pain in the backside. So now I shoot video on a little DJI Osmo. [00:47:18] Speaker C: Oh yeah, me too. [00:47:20] Speaker A: The R6 video camera is literally just a spare camera. [00:47:24] Speaker B: I think Justin just found his long lost brother. [00:47:26] Speaker C: I know. I've got the same set. I've got that Little Osmo Pocket 3. [00:47:29] Speaker A: And you can't beat that thing. It's amazing. [00:47:31] Speaker C: So good. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Yeah, just like if you're. You might. Like we might be shooting a video and we're climbing in a. In a rushing water canyon or you know, whatever it is. And you're trying to carry two tripods, two cameras, it's just. You can't do it. So the little osmos working in your pocket and you can go anywhere. It's just. So. Yeah. And that's really good video. Yeah, you let me. [00:47:58] Speaker C: So I made this. You might think it's dumb, but anyway, so sorry. So I cut a. This is like an iPhone mount, a neck mount thing. Have you seen these before? [00:48:09] Speaker A: That's a very good idea. [00:48:11] Speaker C: So you put it around your neck like that. Normally you put an iPhone on it, but I just cut it down. I cut the. There's one that you can buy. Come on, focus Canon. There's one you can buy that has a gap between the two bits of metal that sort of end up holding your iPhone that perfectly fits a tripod screw. And then you can just fit the thing that comes with your osmo, that little mount to it. And then it just clips straight on. So I can just clip it on, clip it off, clip it on. And so you can do hands free like pov. If you're operating your camera, focus is great on the back screen of the camera. So People can see what settings you're changing and stuff like that. I found it super handy. It was like $50. Yeah, I'll send you. [00:48:58] Speaker A: I need one. Yeah. [00:49:02] Speaker B: Let me just. Before we go any more with. Any further with Gili, just to say a quick couple of hellos. Morning, Sam. Sam. Sam's in the chat. G', Day, Sam. And just a reminder because Justin is going to New Zealand soon. What day do you leave? What. What day are you heading off? [00:49:19] Speaker C: 6Th. 6th of August, I think. [00:49:22] Speaker B: 6Th of August. We will continue with the camera live podcast. Jim and I will. Will obviously more than carry Justin's load, but we're also getting some guest hosts. Yeah, that sounded wrong, didn't it? [00:49:34] Speaker C: I was like, we'll just brush past that. [00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:37] Speaker B: When talking about Justin's load and. Good morning, Exe. [00:49:41] Speaker A: Hello. [00:49:41] Speaker C: Morning, Xe Olson. I'll hopefully catch up with you this weekend at Frame Fest in Sydney, so hope to see you there. [00:49:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:49] Speaker B: The point was Sam's going to be a guest host in the future. [00:49:52] Speaker C: Oh, cool. Awesome. I will try and still log on from New Zealand, but I'm not sure what the Internet's going to be like in the cool spots that we're trying to go to, so I doubt that I'll be able to say anything you guys can hear. All right, so, R5, R6. Let's talk lenses. What's your. What's your kit look like? [00:50:13] Speaker A: Well, I've owned just about every lens there is over the years and worked out a few years ago that when you're getting on and off airplanes like 30 times a year, you don't want to be carrying much stuff. So I now only own three lenses. Three. I sold most of them. So, yeah, I just take three lenses. I take the wide angle, the 15 to 35, and I got that. It's still a bit heavier than the 14 to 35. I'd like the 14 to 35 because it's lighter, but the 14 to 35 is an F4Y and the 15 to 35 is an F 2.8. So I carry that 15 to 35 to have the 2.8, just in case I want to do any Aurora or Astro or something like that. Not that I do that stuff much, but occasionally. And then the 24 to 105 and then the 100 to 500. So I've got every. Every millimeter covered from 15 to 500 with three lenses. I find I just can't beat that. [00:51:15] Speaker C: Have you tried this one yet? 16 to 28, 2.8 no, I haven't. It's a newer lens. It's. It's not as good as the 15 to 35. [00:51:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:51:27] Speaker C: But it's a lot cheaper and it's a ton lighter. It is weather sealed, but it's, you know, it relies a little bit more heavily on software corrections. So it's close. So you know what the, have you used the 14 to the 14? [00:51:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Lisa's product. It's on that. This is, this is probably there behind me. [00:51:49] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. This is probably closer to that in terms of image quality, in terms of like reliance on software corrections, you know, the vignetting and stuff that it tends to get. This is like that. But, but I'm gonna sell my 15 to 35 just because of white. Lightweight. Yeah, this is definitely. And I don't, I use it, I use it a lot, but I don't need the critical high end image quality that it provides for what I use it for. So for me, the weight and, and this is half the price as well, basically. [00:52:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:22] Speaker C: Is a big advantage. So, yeah, be worth it. Worth a shot if you get a. [00:52:25] Speaker A: Chance to test it, suss it out. [00:52:26] Speaker C: Yeah, especially if you, yeah, especially if you like. I need the 2.8, but it's not used a lot. Yeah, could be handy. Okay. And you said 24 to 105. That's the F4. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah, the, the L series one. [00:52:43] Speaker C: Yeah. And then did you say 100 to 500? [00:52:45] Speaker A: 100 to 500. Yeah. [00:52:47] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:52:48] Speaker A: That way you covered you've got 15 mil to 500 mil. That's a. Yeah, that's a big, a big focal range. [00:52:56] Speaker C: Yep. And you, and you think that I should get a 100 to 500 for New Zealand? [00:53:01] Speaker A: It depends what you want to do, but yeah, I, I use it a fair bit. [00:53:07] Speaker C: How often do you reckon you're above 200 mil? You know, all the time. [00:53:11] Speaker A: All the time. To me, a lot of people talk about the 70 to 250 for landscapes. I don't call the 7200 landscape lens. It's not. [00:53:22] Speaker C: There you go, Justin, you heard it here first. [00:53:25] Speaker A: It. What's the point of it? It's a portrait lens, 7200. It's not a landscape lens. You. I find whenever you want to. Zoom lens, you want a zoom lens. So you want, you want to go past 200. I don't. I rarely would shoot the 100 to 500 under 200. It would normally be 300 to 500 where I'm shooting it, but that's just me. Like other People might do things differently, but yeah, I find it, it's good for those long shots. Yeah. Okay. That's if you like taking long shots. Some people. [00:53:57] Speaker C: Well, well, I, I, I really, really like this image. So. Yeah, I love layers and that kind of stuff. Yeah, definitely. I often use the 7200 if I'm doing landscape stuff. [00:54:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:09] Speaker C: And I'm pretty sure if I looked at my data, it would be regularly racked into 200 mil. [00:54:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:54:15] Speaker C: Which means if I had longer, I would, I would experiment with longer for the composition. So. Yeah. [00:54:21] Speaker B: And from our conversations the other night with Bruce and, and today here with Brett and looking at Brett's images, you know, and like you said, Brett, often you get these huge flat valleys and then all of a sudden, you know, verticality and layers of verticality that disappear into the, into the haze and, you know, often you just need that reach, don't you, to get across that valley and then start your composition. [00:54:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So that, that scene you just had on the screen there, that if you were to, say, the actual landscape that you could see with your eyes, that scene might have been about 5% of what you could see, if that makes sense, you know? [00:54:56] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:57] Speaker A: Like it would have been this great big, wide scene and that would have been this tiny little postage stamp part of it in the distance. Just this one little piece of the landscape. And yeah, it was the layers that, that I seen because there's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 layers there and they're all at different distances. So that's how you sort of have that depth with those different layers. [00:55:16] Speaker B: Such a phenomenal landscape. [00:55:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So that's where, that's where a zoom lens is. Just super good for that sort of thing. Yeah. [00:55:25] Speaker C: Before we get to. Well, actually, how am I going to go about this? You might be able to point me to some images. But before I'll leave them off for a second while we're still talking about gear filters, Tell me about filters for landscape photography. Are they required? Do you like them? You don't like them? [00:55:47] Speaker A: Yeah. 100. Yeah, I'm biased because I work with NISSI filters and I have done for more than 10 years, so I'm very biased. I'm going to tell you to use NISSI filters. I've been using them, I think probably 2000, when was it? 2014, probably so 11 years maybe. I've been using NISSI filters. So I work with, with NISSI Australia. I'm sort of pretty good friends with Andrew, the guy that owns a company. So he's always supported Me, I've supported him. I'm a pretty loyal person. So I'm loyal to people that are loyal to me. So it's one of those sort of relationships. So. But I've used NISSI stuff for years and recently. Just hang on a sec. [00:56:34] Speaker C: I'm worried he's going to show us that Jet Mag thing that's come out recently. [00:56:37] Speaker B: That, that looks the one we saw the other day. [00:56:39] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:40] Speaker A: Jet Mag. [00:56:45] Speaker B: I could feel Justin's credit card just melting in his wallet. [00:56:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So. Yeah. Reese. Well, I've had these for nearly a year now. I got the. I got one of the. What do you call it, trial kits before they were actually released to the market. [00:56:58] Speaker C: Bigger. [00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, this is. That's. They stack in. Some of them are still on one of the lenses but they all stack into a. Into a thing like that. And I've been using these since maybe October last year. They're amazing. [00:57:15] Speaker B: Yeah, they make outstanding products. Like the end. [00:57:17] Speaker A: They're the best product on the market. I can. Hand on heart, I can say that, you know, because I get to see all the other brands because people that come on workshops have them. So I've used all the different brands and there's. Some of them are really good, but I still think they're these. These are the best. Yeah. [00:57:35] Speaker C: So for the, for those that aren't familiar, the Jet Mag system basically means. So there's been a bit of an evolution over the last three or four years, maybe even longer. I don't know with filters because you used to have to screw each filter on, screw it on, screw it off. You can have issues with threading. They can get tightened up so much you can't get them apart. When you stack more than one filter together and then you're having trouble separating them or separating from your camera and it can be a bit of a pain across threading and that kind of stuff. [00:58:03] Speaker A: So. [00:58:05] Speaker B: And some lenses just don't have a thread because they've got a fixed petal leaf. [00:58:10] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:58:10] Speaker B: Which is their bulbous, you know. [00:58:12] Speaker C: Yeah. We saw the advent of like magnetic filters. So that would just clip on and then. And then we also saw some ones that kind of turn lock on and off or just push on and off. And obviously the, the more. Yeah, the more I guess traditionally professional landscape filters of the big square slide ins and stuff like that. So explain what's different about the Jet Mag stuff to all of that. [00:58:43] Speaker A: The thing I like the most about these things. And again, this comes back to what I was saying about the video Is that's. I just took some filters off a lens here. So that's my whole filter kit there. Yeah, yeah, that's it. So that. That'll go in my pocket there. So if I'm climbing. Because often I go to some weird places to. To take photographs. I could. Like the other day, we're at a waterfall in New Zealand. I'm literally using one arm to hang onto a tree. Hanging off a like side of a cliff kind of thing. Not a cliff, but a steep. You know, I don't recommend doing that, by the way, but I don't have arms and legs and gear around me, you know, so having filters, like your whole filter kit is there. It's just in your pocket. Just small, compact, really easy to use. There's a camera there. So I don't know if you can see that. There's an adapter ring there which actually screws onto the lens. That's on the lens. And then I'll just grab a filter. If you want to put a filter onto that, it just magnets on. There's the lens and then the filters on. That's it. [00:59:53] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:59:54] Speaker A: And it's actually. You can actually lock these filters so that they have a little white dot on them. Just like when you line up your camera lens to clip it on, you line up the little white dots, make sure it's lined up. There you go. [01:00:09] Speaker C: Yeah. And then it can't come off. And that's the difference between these and. Well, other than just nissi's normal quality of glass and all that kind of stuff. Just disregarding that, the difference between this system and any other magnetic system that you might. Might see advertised is that locking tab where if you turn it there. Whereas I actually bought some cheaper magnetic filters to test out because I shoot. I shoot a lot of hybrid photo video and I'm forever putting a VND a variable ND filter on and off the camera going. Because I'm trying to shoot action. So I have to shooting video. I need to cut the light so I can get some motion blur and stuff like that in the video. You don't want to be all janky and be able to shoot at log at like ICO 800 and then 10 seconds later I need all the light I can get to shoot at a fast shutter speed and get a clean photo file. So I'm constantly taking the thing off and on. I've used Nisi VNDs basically the whole time, but they're traditional. [01:01:09] Speaker A: Screw on one, they just put out one of those in a VND I know and I. [01:01:14] Speaker C: So I was very close to buying it. I've temporarily. I bought one of these off them which is just a standard ND in a 67 thread because I'm basically converting my whole kit for mountain bike photography to these smaller. So this is the 16 to 28. I've got the 28 to 70 to 2.8 as well, which is also a 67 mil filter thread. And then the two primes that I shoot with are both 67 as well. [01:01:41] Speaker B: Oh wow, that's convenient. [01:01:42] Speaker C: It's very convenient. That's why I've bought these Nisi 67 mil protection filters. This isn't an ad for NISSI either. NISSI don't even know exists by the way. So this is just a weird coincidence. [01:01:52] Speaker B: They're sitting, but if you're listening and. [01:01:53] Speaker C: You want to sponsor someone, hey, sponsor the podcast nisi. It's cheap, it's real cheap. But yeah, basically I saw the Jet Mag system, but at the moment their sizing means that I would have to use a step up adapter from 67 to 82. And that's going to be quite cumbersome in my bag, the way that I pack everything. Because they don't make these in every size, obviously that would be crazy for them to make this system in every filter size. So the convenient thing is if you've got a 77 and an 82 within your lens kit, which is pretty common, especially with Canon, you know, to have one, one that's 82, that 15 to 35 is 82 and then, yeah, 70 to 202.8, 77. You can use the same filters just with two different adapter rings. It's perfect. Yeah, but the rings were just a bit big for the fill for the lenses that I'm using currently. So I'm going to wait and see. I know they're bringing out a smaller size and I think it only goes up to the one below 67. So anyway, I'll wait and see. But I love that when we got our hands on those, I was like, these are cool filters. [01:03:02] Speaker B: Let me just jump to this comment quickly from Sam. The thing I like best about the NISSI filters is that I don't have to fix the colors in my landscape after using a NISSI filter. [01:03:11] Speaker A: Correct. [01:03:12] Speaker C: Okay, what I want to find out. Yeah, right, so tell us what, hang on, let me bring this screen back to normal. Tell us what, what does a landscape photographer. Obviously it'd be great to have every filter that's available to be to Be able to, you know, do landscape photography. What would you recommend? What are the minimums to take your photography from like, I don't use filters for landscapes to I want to level up, but I don't want to spend all of my money on every filter that's available. What are the like one, two or three filters that you would recommend? Is like, hey, these are must haves. You'll use them all the time. This is where you should get. [01:03:56] Speaker A: Well, you don't even need to use filters at all. You can still take awesome photos without them. And it depends if you want to. Want to use ND filters for that sort of slower shutter speed stuff, whether. Whether you even need. Need to buy them at all. One filter that I sort of use a lot is a circular polarizer. So if you're going to buy one filter, you'd probably just get a circular polarizer because what that does is takes that glare off things, particularly what I call green scenes, you know, like the waterfall type forest scenes. That's where you really want a polarizer because it takes that glare off the rocks, makes all the green. If you go on to my New Zealand, go up to the top of the website and go to the workshops, tourism workshops, and just go to the one called South Island, New Zealand. Come down a bit more. Yeah, there. Yeah, come down. There's a waterfall there in the middle. That canyon. That one there? Yep, that one. Yeah. See that? Like a shot like that. I would have only used a circular polarizer on that far out. It's actually a handheld. That shot. No tripod. [01:05:11] Speaker B: Were you standing in the water? [01:05:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, in the, in the. [01:05:15] Speaker C: Nice and that and that, kids. That's why we need Ibis in cameras. Yeah, that's. That is a great shot. So, okay, no tripod. Wow. [01:05:28] Speaker B: Justin, tell us why Ibis helps with that. [01:05:32] Speaker C: I mean, Ibis is literally just stabilizing the sensor within the camera, which means you can hold it for a longer hand, hold it for longer shutter speeds. Do you have any idea, Brett, what you would have shot that at? What shutter speed? [01:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah, that's about a quarter. Quarter of a second, I think. [01:05:47] Speaker C: Wow. [01:05:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But I've. It depends how steady your hands are and then how steady you can get yourself. Sometimes you want to lean on a tree or lean on a rock or whatever it is and get really steady. With the R5, you can probably get away with half a second, depending, again, you know, how steady you are. But quarter of a second. Most of my water scenes like those, shots like that are handheld, probably 80% of them I don't use a tripod. I just hand hold them and I'll just lean against the tree or make sure I'm really stable. That one, I was literally just crouched down in the water and I just use my elbows against my body to sort of hold the camera still. And I just take a bunch of shots and hope one of them comes out sharp. And they do they normally if you can keep your hands pretty steady, it just opens it up more to where you can get. Not using a tripod. You could have took that shot with a tripod as well. You just put the tripod in the river, in the stream and just get it solid. But sometimes you don't need to. If you've got a lot of these new cameras now, pretty much all of them. Well, the new Sony A7R V I think has got like extremely good IBIs, like better than the Canon has. You probably get away with half a second without too much trouble. But yeah, you don't always need a tripod. But that was just a circular polarizer. And you'll see like on the, the stones or the rocks in that photo don't really sort of have a lot of glare on them. Those are. You can see the light coming in the canyon from the outside. So that light was actually super bright and glary. So the polarizer gets rid of all that bright glare. So yeah, circular polarizer would be one filter and then other common filters that people use would be a 6 stop nd or a 10 stop nd. They would probably be the 3. But in this jet mag kit they do one that's called a landscape photographer's kit. And it's definitely cheaper to buy the whole kit because you're buying it as a, as a kit as opposed to buying the filters separately. And that kit has got everything you're going to need in it like well and truly. So that would probably be the one to get. [01:08:07] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. So if you're going to do it, look at the kits because it'll work out cheaper than buying each individual filter as you need them. [01:08:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:08:16] Speaker C: Just see which kit maybe has the ones that you really want to get started with. [01:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. But if you're new to filters and you just want to experiment, you could just buy a circular polarizer and even just that will make a pretty big difference. And it will. Yep. [01:08:33] Speaker B: Sorry, I was just gonna say. Yeah, Sam. And Sam just said I tell my workshop participants to bring as a minimum a CPL and a 6 stop ND. [01:08:41] Speaker A: Okay. [01:08:42] Speaker B: Landscape stuff. [01:08:43] Speaker C: So yeah, do you often recommend any filters for your participants or is it just what they've got or if they ask, ask whether they should bring them or buy. Buy some. What do you think? [01:08:53] Speaker A: I'd always say it depends. You know, some people, it's a cost thing. They don't, they can't afford to buy, you know, because they just 750 bucks for a kit or if you get them on a sale, they might be a bit cheaper. But it depends on affordability. But I would say if you can, if you can afford to bring filters, definitely bring them. But if not, it's not the end of the world. We still, we can still get good photos without them. Yeah, I actually sell these, so if anyone wants to buy them, they can. [01:09:23] Speaker C: Jump on my website because that's, that's set up through nissi. I've seen that with a few photographers. They, they partner with photographers so that you can buy through, you know, say if you run workshops or whatever you can recommend. Hey, these are the filters I use and people can actually purchase them off you instead of having to go and find them elsewhere. [01:09:42] Speaker A: So. [01:09:42] Speaker C: Yeah, cool. Oh, head to. Head to BretWoodPhotos.com if you need NISSI filters if you're in Australia, I would imagine. I don't know if that works internationally. [01:09:52] Speaker A: If anyone wants to buy NISSI products in the usa, I've also got a affiliate discount code for the States too. So I can. It's probably not on my website that, but I can tell you what it is. It's actually on my YouTube channel. If you look at any of the videos on my YouTube channel and read the, what do you call it, the text below each video, there's a link in there. So if you're in the usa, there's a, there's a link there to buy NISSI filters in the States and they get shipped out of la and it's a discount link as well. So. Yeah, I think. [01:10:26] Speaker C: Brett Wood Photos 5. Just type that in or click the link. But yeah, it's in your, it's in your description so I can see it. [01:10:32] Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. [01:10:35] Speaker C: Okay, so what about the more complicated filters for. Cause I'm seeing these like photos like this. [01:10:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:10:44] Speaker C: Does this need. Do you use like graduated NDs or anything like that? Or do you shoot multiple images and work with them in Photoshop later? Or is this just. Is this just you being a great photographer at the perfect moment? [01:10:59] Speaker A: That's just a single shot, that photo. Just one photo. I think I might have used a polarizer that's it. Lisa, my partner, still uses the slide in graduated filters, which darken the top of the frame, like darken the sky. I don't. I don't use those anymore. I used to use them quite a bit, but I just don't bother with them anymore. The R5 is, is good in terms of dynamic range, that I will often just shoot a single frame for the highlights. Yeah, I'll just take one shot that's gonna look pretty dark on the back of the camera. Like, it could be one to two stops underexposed on the. On the exposure meter. But as long as I haven't overexposed the highlights, I'm okay with that. I can edit. Edit that. Like that shot there that you're looking at, that's how that would have been shot. I just would have made sure I didn't overexpose the highlights and then just bring it up when you edit it. But the other thing you can do is if the sky is really, really bright and the foreground's really dark and, you know, you might have, say, four stops of difference, just take two shots. I just take one shot a bit darker and one a bit brighter and just blend them together when I edit it. [01:12:11] Speaker C: It's pretty easy. [01:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:16] Speaker C: Right. So that would be similar to, you know, any of these. [01:12:22] Speaker B: Oh, look at that. [01:12:24] Speaker A: That'd just be a single shot as well, that one. Most of my shots are single shots. Like, probably 95 of them are single shots. [01:12:33] Speaker B: Can we just go back to that for a sec, please, Justin? So, Brett, with CPLs, because I don't use filters because I don't do this sort of work, but the CPLs help help to cut the glare off water as well, don't they? So you can see into. [01:12:49] Speaker A: If you have a look at this photo, you'll see the stones in the foreground. So in front of the stones, you can see into the water and see the stones on the bottom. So that's what the polarizer does. It sort of takes that glare off the surface and gives you that ability to sort of see into the water, and it sort of adds a bit of contrast. There's a few things it does. It removes glare, it adds contrast, and it also saturates the colors a little bit as little bit as well. But there's also times when you don't want to use a CPL as well. Like if you. You might actually like. Like in this instance here of this photo, you might actually like the pink reflection across the whole water. Across. Yeah, the whole image. So you. You Might not want to remove that reflection. You might like it. So you may not use it. It's a personal thing. It's what you like. The only other thing you got to be careful of with a circular polarizer. And it doesn't matter which brand, they all do the same thing. It's not, it's not to do with the manufacturing, it's to do with the geometry of a wide angle lens. Is when you shoot a polarizer. On a wide angle lens, you sometimes get this thing that I call polarizer blob. You'll get a big dark lump in the middle of the sky at the top and the polarizer does that. Normally when you're shooting it quite wide, like 15 millimeters or something like that, sometimes you don't really notice it. Like on a sky like that there, you probably wouldn't notice it that much. But on just a plain blue sky or gray sky, you, you'd notice it. So you just need to be mindful. That's normally only when you're shooting fairly wide angle. But yeah, the, the best place to showcase what a polarizer does is in, is in a green scene, like in a foresty waterfall type scene. You just spin the polarizer around and you'll see that just makes a huge difference. Yeah. [01:14:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. Okay. [01:14:44] Speaker B: I've just got to say once again, your images are just jaw dropping. They really are. They're just magic. [01:14:51] Speaker C: You're surely not sure they're not. AI, no. That's rude. That is so rude. Okay, before we, I want to ask you about editing, but before we do, what's the deal with this trip Tree? [01:15:02] Speaker A: The Wanaka tree. I'm sure you've heard of that one. [01:15:05] Speaker C: Yeah. So obviously super, super famous tree, the Wanaka tree. That Wanaka tree. As a photographer, is that something. Obviously you've taken an image of it here. Is that something you, you were drawn to take images of even though, you know, tons of people have done it? And if you are like, what do you, how do you approach that? Knowing that it's been photographed so much, how do you approach it? [01:15:31] Speaker A: I've taken, I don't know how many photos I've taken of it. It would be in the hundreds. We go there on workshops mainly because people want to go there because it's a famous icon spot and they've never been there before and they really want to go there. But I've been there. Yeah. I don't know how many times I've been there. Probably a couple of hundred. It's a great photo. Like it's, it's cool, you know, it's this tree in the water with snow capped mountains. And then each season it's different. In the autumn, it's got nice yellow leaves on it and then those trees behind it in the background, they have nice yellow leaves on it in the winter. Like this one here you're looking at. It's in the winter, so you've got snow on the mountains behind it, but there's a stack of different ways you can photograph it. That shot there is taken with the 100, 500. [01:16:22] Speaker B: There it is. [01:16:23] Speaker A: So. [01:16:23] Speaker C: Dang it. [01:16:24] Speaker A: What, what I've actually done there is get a long way back from the tree, like probably maybe 800 meters back, and zoom in on the tree. I've done that on purpose because the zoom lens compresses the background, right. So I wanted those mountains to look a lot bigger than what they actually looked, say to a wide angle lens, for example, that's what they really look like to the human eye, like what they. That photo is. But if you shot them with a wide angle, they just be these tiny little mountains that barely, you know, because a wide angle just squashes everything. So I wanted the mountains to have a lot of impact, so that's why I got right back and zoomed in to, to compress it like that. All right. [01:17:06] Speaker C: Another point for the 100 to 500. [01:17:09] Speaker A: You just better order one, mate. [01:17:11] Speaker C: I think Sounds like it. I'm doing my best not to spend. [01:17:16] Speaker A: Money, but it's a. It's not a cheap lens either. [01:17:20] Speaker C: I know. [01:17:21] Speaker A: I think it's like over four grand, isn't it? Or something. [01:17:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:17:25] Speaker B: That's a lot, isn't it? [01:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot it is. [01:17:28] Speaker B: That's another camera body. [01:17:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:30] Speaker C: And I've. I keep saying this, but I'm supposed to have a printer arriving any moment, so I've already spent my money. Do you have a printer, Brett? Do you print your own, your own work? [01:17:39] Speaker A: I don't. It's definitely something that I'm interested in. But whether I've been tossing up the idea of buying a printer for probably five years and I just haven't done it, I just don't know whether I'd get enough use out of it. I like the idea of it. I definitely like the idea of printing your own photos, but no, I don't have one. I watch lots of videos on YouTube about people printing photos and I love the idea of it, but I just haven't done it. Yeah, I get my photos printed by professional labs. Yeah. [01:18:13] Speaker C: All Right. Well, if, if you convince me to buy this 100 to 500, I'm going to do my best to convince you to buy a printer because what printer have you. It's. It's still arriving. So we used to always use. Jim and I were business partners in a wedding photography business. He still shoots weddings. I don't so much anymore. So together we bought a Epson 3880 years ago that we use for we. We always want to give our clients prints with their. We hated the idea of just handing him a USB or something like that. So. And it's still going strong. Jim still uses it. But since we're not in the same office anymore and for quite a while, you know, I probably haven't printed much for five years. I've ordered some prints, but that it's a barrier. Whereas when we used to have the printer sitting there, I would regularly print something out of mine. And I want to get back to doing that again. And so I ended up, I did did a bit of research and The Canon Pro 1100 is way over. Oh really? [01:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:09] Speaker C: So it's super overkill for what I want because it does up to a 2. I don't plan on printing that big. I might, but I really actually honestly just wanted like really high quality A4 and then the odd kind of up to A3ish width. But I did the calcs on. On print cartridges and the mills. So the, the next one down, the Pro. What is the next one down anyway? The smaller one than the Pro 1100 comes with 14 mil print cartridges. And the other one, the 1100 I'm getting comes with 80 mil print cartridges. There's 10 print cartridges in there and it comes full like photo printers are different to your regular printers from office works that may just have like a starter cartridge. These come with a full set of inks. So. So the Pro 1100 comes with like 900 to $1000 worth of ink. And even just doing the maths on that versus what you get with the next one down, it's far more beneficial to buy the bigger one. And then add on the fact that when you replace ink, even though the cartridge is more expensive because they're bigger, you get a lot more ink for your money with each. With the cartridges. [01:20:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:27] Speaker C: So it's something that, yeah, I did the sums on it and I was like. And you know, an 80 mil cartridge is like $80. And I think a 14 mil cartridge was, don't quote me on this, like 30 or $40. So you're paying almost twice as much per mil once you're replacing cartridges. And yeah, when you do the sums on the printers, the extra mile print ink that you get with a bigger printer is way more than the difference in price. Yeah, that makes sense. [01:20:55] Speaker B: And how many prints do they tell you how many prints you can expect to get out of a fresh batch of ink? [01:21:00] Speaker C: I can't remember. There's a lot of YouTube videos on that. It depends on the colors and stuff. And that's the thing is you start running out one or two cartridges at a time. You won't, because it's got 11 or 12 ink cartridges in it. It's not like you'll get to the end of them and you're like, all right, I got to replace all these cartridges. They just. [01:21:19] Speaker A: The blue would run out first or whatever. [01:21:22] Speaker C: Exactly. Depending on what you print, you just start going through. We used to go through a ton of black photo black because. And the grays because we would always provide a lot of black and whites and colors and that color. And black and white both use a lot of black, depending on how you shoot your photos. So, yeah, it's all variable. But anyway, I'm excited to get back into it and print my work regularly and also print for family and friends as well. I just want people to be able to hop around because everyone. It's a bit of a barrier. We don't print enough stuff. [01:21:56] Speaker A: No. [01:21:56] Speaker C: I think if. If we can make it easy. Yeah, yeah, that's what I want. [01:22:00] Speaker A: Our house is full of landscapes. They're in every room. There's two in this room. There's one behind us there. Aerial shop from Utah. There's one right in front of me here on the wall, which is a. Aerial shop from New Zealand. Every room in the house. And then downstairs I've got a gallery as well, which is full of print. So there's lots, lots of prints in this house. [01:22:21] Speaker C: I had a gallery. [01:22:24] Speaker A: Yes. [01:22:25] Speaker C: Wow. Is that something that you invite people, like people, if they want to come and see your work, they can come and check it out. [01:22:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:22:32] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [01:22:33] Speaker A: That's on my website as well. Yeah. We also do. We do a project print workshop as well, which is normally in March. It's a south cut where. Where I live here on the south coast in New South Wales. So we do a workshop every March where we take a group of people for four days, four days, and we shoot this south coast area and then we. We pick their favorite photo, then we edit the photo, then we get it printed and framed. Like that and send it out to them at the end of day. The workshop. Yeah. [01:23:07] Speaker C: That's so cool. So this is the gallery, this is the room that you. [01:23:10] Speaker A: Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. [01:23:13] Speaker B: That's amazing. [01:23:14] Speaker A: They're old photos, some of those are sold. But I've got some new ones in there now and I'm. I'm updating some of them. Actually a lot of them I'm selling at the moment because I want to freshen it up and put some, some. [01:23:26] Speaker C: So who, who do you get to print your work then? [01:23:29] Speaker A: What those ones are. All those ones there you're looking at, they're all acrylic face mount. So they're done by a guy in Sydney called Five Magics. His name's Patrick Five Magics Photo Imaging, I think he calls himself. He does a really good job. Very good. [01:23:49] Speaker B: So tell us about that, that print style. How does that differ from printing on paper or canvas? [01:23:55] Speaker A: Well, it is paper. It is printed on paper and then it's got like the acrylic over the top of it. So acrylic's like a Perspex type material, but I don't know the whole science behind it, but it's got some sort of chemical thing in it and it's a particular product that's made for that. And then, so they'll get like a thin sheet of metal, like only a couple of mil thick, print the photo, put that. And then the acrylic goes over the top. Then the acrylic sort of generates some gases or what a. I'm no technical guy. Some sort of thing like that. And then kind of like seals it, seals it in. And they say that they'll, they're guaranteed for 100 years that they won't fade or, you know, no air bubbles or anything will get into them. Four landscapes. They look pretty amazing. They have a real three dimensionality look about them. Real good contrast color. [01:24:51] Speaker C: They seem to be vibrant like, like they almost become luminous. I don't know how it works, but they look beautiful. [01:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I like both. I like. I've got three different styles in the house. This one behind me here is just a frame print, printed and framed, which still looks really stylish as well. And then the one on the wall in front of me here is a framed canvas. I don't want to take it off the wall to show it's too hard. [01:25:17] Speaker B: No, don't do that. [01:25:20] Speaker C: Although we did have a guest that was. What's his name? Rodney. Yeah, Rodney was bringing. Oh yeah. Every, every he kept. He'd be Like, I've got. I've actually got a frame. And he'd come back in with this giant frame, be like, see, it's like, this is awesome. It was like show and tell. His office was. Yeah, it was great. [01:25:38] Speaker B: We've got a great question here. Can I bring that up? [01:25:41] Speaker C: That's what I was just about to say. And there's actually a question from Exe earlier as well that would lead on after this. So we're going to get to something. [01:25:47] Speaker B: He's off the Tassie tomorrow, so he wants. [01:25:49] Speaker C: That's what he asked about. [01:25:51] Speaker A: That's a good question. [01:25:52] Speaker B: So let me just read it out. I'm just starting out in landscape photography. Brett, do you do a lot of focus stacking and how does that go with moving water? [01:26:01] Speaker C: And that was. That was also WA Bird Nerd, which is an awesome username. Good to have you with us. WA Bird Nerd. [01:26:07] Speaker A: A bird photographer, I think, for sure. The question about focus stacking is one of the most commonly asked questions we get. Do I focus stack? Yes. Do I do it often? No. I actually had a guy on our last workshop, a guy from Brisbane, and he was started off on the first day focus stacking every shot he was taking. And then he started asking me, oh, should I focus stack this? I said, no. Should I focus stack this? No. I would only focus stack if the first focal element in the scene is close to the camera. And when I say close to the camera, I'm talking, you know, half a meter sort of thing. [01:26:54] Speaker C: Would this be an example? I was just looking through some. It's not. [01:26:58] Speaker A: Not focus stack? No. [01:26:59] Speaker C: Oh my gosh. [01:27:01] Speaker A: If you get the photo Pills app and you look up hyper focal distance, there's a thing. I'll just open the app up and explain it. I think too many people over complicate photography. They talk with all these technical terms and focus stack and exposure blend and all. You don't have to do all that stuff. [01:27:20] Speaker B: I know someone like that. [01:27:22] Speaker A: You just don't have to. You just don't have to. [01:27:24] Speaker B: I didn't say names. [01:27:27] Speaker A: So where are we here? Photo Pills app, they have a thing on there called Hyper Focal table and basically you put in what camera you've got and what lens you're using and what aperture you're using and it'll tell you what the best hyperfocal distance is, meaning the distance from the lens, where to focus. And in most instance, most instances it's a couple of meters in front of the lens. So as long as the first element you Want to be in focus is more than a couple. Couple of meters in front of the lens, then you don't need to do it. So in that. That photo there, that big rock in the foreground was about three or four meters away. So I just focused on that and the whole scene was in focus. [01:28:12] Speaker C: Very cool. [01:28:13] Speaker A: It's a very. I can show you this thing. I've got it on my phone here. I'll try and hold it up to the camera. This is photo pills. And you can just put in this one, I've got Nikon D850 at the top, because that's the. The last lens, our last camera I put in there, which was for a client. And then it's got aperture across the top. You pick which aperture you're using. Like, if you use F11 on most landscapes, you're all good. And then it's got focal length. So just say shooting at 16 millimeters. So for example here, for a Nikon D850, if you were shooting at 16 millimeters at f11, your hyperfocal distance is just under a meter. So about a meter in front of the camera, if you were to focus there at F11, most of the scene's going to be in focus. That's it. That. That photo pills app is very good. [01:29:08] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:29:10] Speaker A: So, yeah, back to the question. I would only focus stack if that first sort of element was super close to the camera, then I. Then, yes, I would take a couple of shots. And if the water's moving, it's pretty tricky. Very tricky. Each shot's gonna look different. It's a bit like shooting panoramas of moving water, where you do multiple images and stitch a panorama together and it's moving water. You're never going to get them to line up because the water looks different each time. So it's tricky. Yeah. [01:29:47] Speaker C: Brendan Waite says Amen. I think that was to your. Most photographers over complicate everything and say, oh, they do. And all that sort of stuff. [01:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Some people will focus, stack and take like 10 images and stack them together. Or they'll take, you know, multiple exposures and blend them together. You just don't have to do all that stuff, like, don't need to. I still. All the prints that we do, you know, in my gallery, a lot of those are single shots and they're fine. They print perfectly. Yeah, yeah. [01:30:20] Speaker C: Exy's question. I'm going to shoot landscapes in Tassie tomorrow. What's your advice? Broad question. Broad question. [01:30:29] Speaker A: Very broad. [01:30:30] Speaker C: I'm going to bring up some images that are on your Landscape Tasmania Photography workshop page and whether any of these jog your memory of any particular tips, whether it's for Tassie or just landscape photography in general. What are your thoughts? [01:30:48] Speaker A: Tasmania's. Well, it doesn't matter where you go shooting landscapes, the approach to it's probably pretty much the same. The first thing I would say is the old KISS theory. Keep it simple, don't over complicate it. It's really about two things, light and composition. So having a really strong composition and having some good light to work with, that's how you're going to get a good photo like that. That photo there, for example, those rocks in the foreground, same thing about that was probably shot at about F11 or something like that. Probably about 2 meters in front of the camera on the first red rock there somewhere like that you would have focused and then the whole scene would have been in focus and then I would have just exposed for the highlights. So this. The bright sun was obviously there, you can see, but I would have positioned the lens so that the bright sun was just outside of the frame and not in the frame. So if the bright sun was in the frame, you wouldn't be able to control that bright light at the. It would just be too, too much glare and it would overexpose the highlight. So then you just tilt the. The lens so that the bright sun is just outside of the frame. So you're still using the light but you haven't got that real bright sun sun ball to deal with. And then composition, just solid compositions. Tasmania, like anywhere. What doesn't matter where you go, the best light is at sunrise and sunset. Always like early morning, late evening. What else can I say? The east coast of Tassie is really, really pretty. Like the fires region. [01:32:31] Speaker C: Is that where this, this would have been? [01:32:33] Speaker A: That is. Yep. Yep. That area is easy to photograph, easily, easy to access and yeah, it's really accessible, isn't it? Yeah, easy, very easy and plenty of good shots. It faces east, that area. So probably more suited to a sunrise than a sunset, but still works for both. What are the other things on Tassie? Yeah, all the usual spots. That's the Horseshoe Falls, which is another one that's easy to get to. You can park at the. I think it's the Mountfield national park and then just walk up. There's two waterfalls on that hike. They're both easy to get to, easy to photograph. That one there, circular polarizer like I talked about before. That's all I Used. That's the only filter I would have used on that. It just takes that glare down and. And brings out the greens in the foliage as well. Yeah. [01:33:35] Speaker B: Whereabouts in Tazzy are headed Xe Let us know in the chat. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:33:39] Speaker B: Look at that. [01:33:40] Speaker A: Wow. [01:33:40] Speaker C: Oh, man. Yeah. If only you could get those people out of the foreground. [01:33:49] Speaker A: Well, we. We could make them disappear. But I kind of like the people. [01:33:55] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. It's a beautiful shot. It's great. That's a great way to. To say, come on. A landscape workshop. That's about the best way you could say this is what will be the. [01:34:05] Speaker B: Best ad for it. [01:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the idea of that photo, basically. Yeah. Yeah. [01:34:09] Speaker C: It's very. It's so good. Even the boat. The boat hiding out there. [01:34:13] Speaker A: It's just. The boat's quite cool. I don't know if you probably see it. It might pixelate. I think there's some birds flying around the back of the boat as well. They might. Maybe they'll hauling in their catch or something like that. And all the seagulls were hanging around. Yeah. That's very cool. [01:34:32] Speaker C: That one was very. That's why I pulled that one up before. Like, that instantly caught my eye. I don't know the composition, the color, it just. Yeah. [01:34:40] Speaker A: I think the big rock in the foregrounds is kind of like the anchor point, you know, that sort of pulls you straight into the middle of the scene. [01:34:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [01:34:53] Speaker B: That's interesting, isn't it? Then your eye gets drawn up to the rock in the background. But it's. It's amazing how foreground elements can change how you experience a landscape shot or any shot, really. [01:35:03] Speaker A: But. [01:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah, especially in landscapes like it. [01:35:04] Speaker A: Really. Yeah. That's a pretty old photo. I think I took that. Oh. A few years ago now. But if I was going to edit that now, I'd change the way I edit that compared to what it looks like there. [01:35:16] Speaker C: Editing. Yeah. Okay. I've had the same thoughts on editing and that kind of stuff. I want to ask you something else. And this isn't meant to be a dig about whether good work or old work, new work or anything like that, but this is just something I've experienced. Do you ever look back at any of your photos and go, man, that was pretty good? I don't know if my new stuff's as good as that anymore. [01:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:43] Speaker C: Ever happened to you? It has because that's happened to me. [01:35:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:35:50] Speaker C: What is that? Is it like. Yeah. Why do you think that happens? [01:35:55] Speaker A: Well, I think some of your old shots are Just really good shots like you, you took them well, you edited them well. They, they can't be improved on. You know, you just did a really good job on them. But that, that's happens like every, you don't take a really good shot very often. Let's, let's be honest. You might only get, I don't know how many good shots are you year, Maybe a dozen or something like that in a year. So if it was that easy, everyone would just be out there doing it, right? To get a good shot. [01:36:29] Speaker B: You wouldn't have a business. [01:36:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. So like you, you, you know, your really favorite top shots, you don't get that many of them. So. Yeah, I look back on some of my old ones. I dragged up an old one the other day to show a client and it was from 2016. So that was, you know, what, what nine years ago. And I looked at it and thought, wow, that's a really good shot. You know, like, how did I do that? But I think it was just really good light. I composed it really well. I must have edited it really well back then. I, I thought, oh, how would I improve that? And I thought I don't think I can. I'll just leave it the way it is. [01:37:07] Speaker C: So is that then an argument that, that if you ever thinking about buying the latest and greatest gear, sometimes just looking at, you know, your older images can be enough to be like I probably don't need the latest and greatest gear because this, this photo is great. And yeah, it was shot in 2016. You know, like, you know, it's completely different gear and it's great. [01:37:31] Speaker A: Yep. 100. Yeah. I think people get too hung up on gear. I think people just get too hung up on a lot of things that don't matter, you know, like equipment and also technique. They, you know, like editing and focus stacking, all those things we're talking about before. I would, I would recommend just focusing more on getting all the simple elements nailed before you even think about doing anything else. And that, and that can take years to, to hone in on. To hone in on little things like getting your computer composition skills really dialed in. Get. But just been. Most of my best shots are just taken in really good light. So I've made the effort to get to that location in good light. That is probably 50 of it, you know. [01:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot to be said for. And we've talked about this with other genres too. Sometimes when we have guests on, we talk about the. In photography, the need to be present. You know, it's all very well to marvel over someone else's shot and say what settings did you use and what was your aperture? And you know, those sorts of things. But at the end of the day you got yourself there. That was, that's kind of like the first step to taking a great photo is being present multiple times at the right time. And you know, sometimes you're going to show up and it's going to be foul weather and you don't want to get your camera out, but you keep going back and you keep putting in that effort and along the way you learn, you build your own set of, you know, skills and knowledge and experiences from failures and success. [01:39:07] Speaker A: Yep, yep. I've got a saying, I've got lots of sayings or quotes. You can't buy a can of experience. So I like that one. [01:39:17] Speaker C: That's good. [01:39:18] Speaker A: There's no substitute for experience, right? So the, the more, the more you go out and show shoot, the better you're going to get. It's as simple as that. And it doesn't matter if you go out for a shoot, you're not, you are not going to get great shots every time you go out. You just aren't. That's just not how it goes. But every time you go out and shoot, especially if you're learning, every time you go out you're going to learn something. And if you go out and you shoot and you don't get any award winning or you know, great photos, but if you, if you learn something, then it's worth it. There's no substitute for time out there in the field shooting that, that's how you learn, that's how you learn, that's how you fine tune your composition skills. That's how you learn more about light. And that's why like for example, going on a workshop, you know, I'm going to places with a group of people on a workshop and I'll say to them, put your tripod over there and frame it up like this. And at 7:42 the sun's going to come up just behind that second little hill there and the light's going to light up those trees three minutes later. And they go, how do you know all this? And you say, well, I've been here a hundred times, I know that that's what's going to happen, you know, and that's experience. So and another thing I always say to people, because people, you know, they live busy lives, they work hard, they got families, all that things. So they don't always have a lot of time to get out and shoot that. So, you know, they might only have three or four times or half a dozen times a year. And they can only go to their local beach or their local river or whatever it is. But keep going back to those places if you like them, because you'll get to know the way. You'll get to know the compositions that are on offer there. You'll get to know how the light works there. And the more you know about. For example, our local beach, it's only 800 meters down the road here, is really nice, about 10 minutes after sunrise. You know, that's probably the best time to get a good light there. And that's what happens. If you're going to get a good shot, that's the best time to be there. Yeah, people. [01:41:26] Speaker B: But you know that from going down there, you know. [01:41:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I always say to people, there's nothing wrong with revisiting the same location multiple times. Times, which is what we do all the time. I had a photo, you had the photo on. On the screen there not long ago, a photo from Tasman Lake in New Zealand, which is that glacial lake there with the icebergs in it. And I put that photo on Facebook one day and some lady wrote, you always seem to fluke perfect conditions or something like that, whatever it was, some comment like that. And I'm like, do you know how many times I've been. Been. I've been to that lake to get that photo, like probably 30 times, you know. Yeah. I didn't just rock out there and fluke it. I've been there like 20 times before that and got nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:42:17] Speaker C: A couple of good comments. Robert Varner says the trick to landscape photography is to find a good landscape. [01:42:23] Speaker A: True. [01:42:23] Speaker C: It's solid trick. [01:42:25] Speaker A: True. And yeah, yeah. [01:42:29] Speaker C: And then figuring out how to capture it. [01:42:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:42:33] Speaker C: Brendan Waits Cameron photo in Ocean Grove for all of your photography needs on the gradation road. Spot on. I find a lot of enthusiasts get tripped up on various techniques that they've seen on YouTube. The key is to use those techniques when required. And, yeah, I think we're all guilty of that too. Like, you learn something new and you're like, all right, when do I get to. Yeah, yeah. When do I get to learn this new technique? And it's not the time, but you do it anyway because you've just learned it and. Yeah, but he's spot on. It's like, it's learning those. Having those tools in your tool belt. But not necessarily using it for every photo. And that's, that's how we ended up with what I'm going to call HD Armageddon. From when, when was that? Like it was probably like 2013, 14, 15 or something like that when every landscape photo was like mega hdr. And then, yeah, everyone did it. And then everyone was like, oh, actually, yeah, I've changed my mind. [01:43:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think if there's one other thing that I think super important. I notice, you know, we do, you know, probably see a couple hundred clients every year on workshops. So you get to watch and observe people. Is one piece of advice is, is to slow down. I think people just live a fast paced life and their brain becomes fast paced as well. So slow down. They get to a scene and they're in a, it's like they're in a rush to get, to get the job done sort of thing. Slow down. Because you'll definitely be a better photographer if you can slow down. Like if you were to rock up at this scene here in front of us and instead of just grabbing your camera and your tripod or whatever and setting up and just starting to take photographs, I never do that. I just put my camera bag on the ground and I just walk around for probably 15, 20 minutes at least. Sometimes longer, sometimes half an hour, 40 minutes. Walk around the whole scene just looking at random things. What catches my eye. Sometimes I'll just sit on a rock for 10 minutes and just, you know, look at the scene and start to think, well, how am I going to shoot this and not just photograph what's obvious and right in front of you. You might walk 20 meters to the right and find something that you may not have seen. Things like that. Always use my phone. I use my iPhone as like a composition finder. So I'll walk around. I think, oh, that cool. Be a good shot there. Get my phone out, take a picture of it on my phone. Yep, looks good on the phone. Feels right. Then go and get the camera and tripod and then have a go at shooting it. So that's all like slowing everything down. A lot to do that. But I think be more sort of methodical about it. And I always say to people, you only need one good photo. You know, don't get greedy. You come to a scene like that there, you just want one really good photo of it. I'd rather one really good photo of that than five average photos of it. That, that would be more my approach. And like the composition, for example, I might tweak it six times. If I think that composition is the one, I might tweak that composition like six different times. I might move the tripod 2 inches higher, 2 inches lower. Couple inches to the left, couple, couple inches to the right. Change the focal length 1 or 2 millimeters. Just keep making little tweaks till every element in that frame looks right. And then I'm like, yeah, that, that, I'm happy with that. [01:46:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great advice. I love that idea as well as. Yeah. Using the iPhone as a composition finder. [01:46:22] Speaker A: Really good. Yeah. Because normally if you take a photo on your phone, it looks good on your phone. It's going to look good on your camera. [01:46:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:46:28] Speaker A: If you use the wide angle lens on your iPhone. You know how it's got the three lenses on it. If you use the, the wide angle lens, it's basically looks the same as a wide angle landscape lens. Like a 1535 or 16 to 35. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. [01:46:44] Speaker C: That's great advice. So exe, did you get all of that? You are ready now for your Tasmania trip tomorrow. You've got the best advice from an expert. You've got no excuses. Go make some great images. And now, yeah, no pressure. And now because we heading towards the end of this podcast and I haven't got my selfish part out of it yet, we're going to, we're going to literally. Sorry guys. If, you know, if you were here for photography talk, you'll have to leave because now we're going to talk about New Zealand. [01:47:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:47:19] Speaker C: Where should I go? What should I do now? So specifically, let's, let's keep it somewhat photography related. What I'm hoping that you can tell me is, yeah, how do we stay away from crowds and see cool stuff, enjoy our time and just immerse ourselves in the New Zealand landscape? [01:47:42] Speaker A: Well, most of the crowds will be at the same places. So right in the middle of your map there you got Lake Teapo. That's where most. There'll be plenty of crowds there at Lake Te because there's a car park right next to the lake where the church is and it's. Everyone can just drive their car there, coach buses, all that kind of stuff. Wanika is another one. There's going to be crowds. Milford. Milford sounds actually normally not too bad. Like even though it's such a popular place, if you shoot a sunset or a sunrise there, there's not normally many people there. They all, they, all the tourists at Milford Sound come and go in the middle of the day because they do the. They do the boat cruises and they Normally finish about 3 o' clock in the afternoon. So if you go after that, there's not. Not many people there. That area in the middle where you got the three lakes, you've got Lake P, Lake Teapo and Lake Ohau there. That area there, that's the best part. And you Zealand, that's called Mackenzie region or Mount Cook. That. That area. [01:48:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:48:45] Speaker A: If you wanted to focus in on one area that. That would be the area that I'd be hanging out. [01:48:51] Speaker C: So this is Twizel that you mentioned. You mentioned this quite a few times. [01:48:54] Speaker A: Yep. Twice of my dog's name's Twasel. So. Yeah. [01:48:58] Speaker B: I feel like your bio. [01:49:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Tells you how much I love Twasel. Yeah, I love. [01:49:03] Speaker C: Okay, so. So that is an area that you're sort of drawn to in terms of central around. Like would you recommend staying near there? [01:49:12] Speaker A: Yeah, 100. Anywhere in that area you can stay at Twas or you can stay at Lake Tekapo or you can stay up at Mount Cook. If you follow that, where it says Glen Tanner there, just up past that Iraqi Mount Cook, you've got the Mount Cook village there. You can stay there. There's only one hotel there. It's called the Hermitage. I think it's pretty expensive. Or you can stay there in your motorhome. There's a few campgrounds there, is there? Yeah. [01:49:38] Speaker C: Interesting. [01:49:39] Speaker A: Yeah. That area there is epic like that. You don't have to look far for a good landscape there. They're right. They're off the side of the road. They're right in front of you. They're everywhere. Tasman Glacier, you can see there, that's on your right of the screen there. Tasman Lake at the bottom end of that. That, that photo you had on the screen before four for the icebergs. That's where that's taken right there. [01:50:02] Speaker C: Okay. [01:50:04] Speaker A: And then there's another lake on the left hand side which is called the Hooker Lake. You'll see over to the left there. That one there. Yep. So that, that's about an hour and a half's walk to get there to the Hooker Lake. [01:50:15] Speaker C: But that I've actually walked there before. We had. We were doing heli out of out of Mount Cook as well. And we had three down days in a row. So. [01:50:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [01:50:27] Speaker C: To stop us from drinking all of the beer that we're eat was in. I think we were staying in that Hermitage place and we. We actually drank the favorite beer that we had. We emptied the keg and they had beer. [01:50:39] Speaker A: Was it. [01:50:39] Speaker C: I can't remember. There was. Yeah, there was two kiwi beers from the same company, but one. One was like a pale ale and the other one was a lager and we all preferred the pale ale. We drank that until it was empty because it was like. It was like, we're in the Shining, like there was nothing to do. The weather was bad and we're just waiting for the heli place to be like, all right, we're on. And yeah, we just. So we walked to Hooker Lake multiple times. I think I ran there once. [01:51:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:06] Speaker C: Because we're getting that stir crazy trying to like stop from. Because we just go to the bar. Like, we can't do this again. You know, this is not good. Anyway, so I have been there and it was beautiful. Like the blue water and the every. It was stunning. [01:51:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:25] Speaker C: But I had. But I didn't explore much beyond that and you know, because we were there for something else and I don't know what. Maybe what I was missing. That was in the area that was less common, you know, that was kind of like the marked out track. Hey, go this way. [01:51:40] Speaker A: That, that whole region. Well, it's called McKenzie region, which is, you know, sort of from over Tekapo. Right across there's three big lakes. There's Lake Tekapo, Lake Pukaki and Lake Ohau. And there's also a lake further to the south, you'll see, which is Benmore, which is where that layered photo is taken. That, that one down the bottom there. That layered shot that you like is taken there. [01:52:03] Speaker C: Yes. [01:52:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So that, that whole area there, it's hard to beat. You know, like anywhere in that region, you just take a side road, take a dirt road, just drive around. That whole area is packed with lots and lots and lots of landscapes that. [01:52:19] Speaker B: That seems to be the, the, the hottest tip is to, you know, don't be afraid to take the. The path less traveled. [01:52:26] Speaker A: No, not at all. Not at all. As long as your rental car is going to go down that road. Yeah, most of, most of the gravel roads are fine. Like they're actually in pretty good condition so you can drive down them. Not, not too many dramas. Yeah. People seem to get a bit worried about icy, wintry type conditions, but most of the time it's fine. The only time you're gonna have any bad stuff on the roads is after a big snowstorm. So if you have a big snowstorm, just be pretty careful the next day or during the snowstorm. There is a lot of ice on the roads. But that's normally only after heavy snow or really cold weather when you're going to get a bit of black ice. It's not that common. And the best way to avoid the black ice is don't drive on the roads early in the morning. Just wait till sort of 10 o' clock or something like that. Yeah. Don't be the pioneer, don't be the first guy on the road in the morning. Let someone else find the ice for you. Yeah. [01:53:26] Speaker C: Yes. Especially not in this camper that we're in. I don't want to slide that off the side of the road. [01:53:31] Speaker B: Floating bubbles driving those. [01:53:33] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:53:33] Speaker A: But for the most part it's fine driving around unless the temperatures are below zero. That's when you might get a bit of ice or. But as long as the temperatures are above zero and there's no obvious water on the road then that's fine. Yep. [01:53:49] Speaker C: So we've got two and a half weeks. We'll definitely be exploring that area that you talked about. We might even do that. [01:53:57] Speaker A: Are you. Are you in and out of Christchurch or you into Christchurch and out of Queenstown or. [01:54:02] Speaker C: Nah, in and out of Christchurch because a little known thing these days. So if you want to rent a camper from Queenstown they sting you an extra $300 or so just as a Queenstown tax and then they charge you extra as a. A one way fee as well. So I think it was going to be a thousand dollars extra for us to drop it off or pick it up in Queenstown. So I decided. I also thought too because I get. I've driven this road from Christchurch down to Queenstown before through the middle which is beautiful. Like that road is amazing. But I'm like, I've never been over to either of the coasts so I'm like well we should do some sort of loop. And I just haven't, I haven't figured out we don't have enough time obviously to, to see everything. And I'm like what should we prioritize? You know, should we go north of the south island at all or far south of the South Island? Should we do the west coast? [01:54:56] Speaker A: Have you been to Milford Sound before? [01:54:58] Speaker C: No. [01:54:59] Speaker A: Okay. So I probably wouldn't worry about going up north. [01:55:03] Speaker C: Okay. [01:55:03] Speaker A: There's some really cool stuff up north but it's a long way between locations. And you're going to do a lot of driving. Yeah, I'd potentially maybe do a big loop. Maybe go across to the west coast from Christchurch straight over to the west coast. You'll see the Road over to. Towards Greymouth there. [01:55:22] Speaker C: Set through Arthur's Pass. [01:55:24] Speaker A: Arthur's Pass? Yep. Straight over there. Then make your way down the west coast and make sure you get to Lake Madison, which is down near Fox Glacier. Down the bottom. [01:55:35] Speaker C: Okay. [01:55:36] Speaker A: You just went past Fox Glacier. [01:55:38] Speaker C: Did I? [01:55:39] Speaker A: Yep. Fox Glacier, just there in the middle of the shot or towards the right. There's a place there called Lake Madison that. That's like a. See where it says Reflection Island. [01:55:51] Speaker C: Oh, yes. [01:55:52] Speaker A: That's like Madison. That's Lake Madison there. That's a. That's an amazing photograph. Like, really, really good photograph. I've got some shots on my website from. From there. That's a. I reckon a must do photo, that one, if you want a really good landscape. But just one thing to be mindful of, if you're going to travel down the west coast, if you've got a itinerary that you can. That's not sort of fixed, check the weather before you head to the west coast because the weather there can get pretty. Pretty dismal. So if it's going to be bad weather there, don't go there. You'll just run. It'll just rain the whole time. So check the forecast before you go there. So you could come down the west coast there and then come back across to like, Wanaka, which is across what they call the House Pass. And then from Wanika, you could go down to Milford Sound and then back to Christchurch. That'd be a big loop. But that'd take you two and a half weeks to do all that. [01:56:53] Speaker C: To do it. Yeah. Okay. So basically. [01:56:56] Speaker A: Yeah. But if you didn't want to. If you wanted to shorten it a bit, just drop the Milford Sound part off, but do the. The rest of the loop. So do Queenstown, Wanaka, west coast, Mount Cook, and then back to Christchurch. Yeah. That big. [01:57:09] Speaker C: Okay. Yeah. Because basically we would have to go. So that's the thing. To get to Milford Sound, you've got to go down and around essentially from Queenstown. Queenstown, yeah. Wanaka's here. And you're saying that you would come across from the west coast here. Oh, is that. That's the house. [01:57:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Across to Wanaka, past Lake Haweir. Yep. Through there? [01:57:34] Speaker C: Yep. Through there. Yep. And then we'd have to go from Wanaka to Queenstown. [01:57:38] Speaker A: Yeah. That's only there now. Yeah, yeah. [01:57:41] Speaker C: And then you basically have to go down and around to Milford Sound and then backtrack back out again. [01:57:46] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep. [01:57:47] Speaker C: Okay. [01:57:48] Speaker A: Stay at Milford Sound in the motorhome at the lodge at the Milford Lodge there. Or you can stay at that little town called Te Anau, which is on the way to Milford. It's on the lake there. [01:58:00] Speaker C: Yep, I see that. [01:58:01] Speaker A: You can stay there and you can drive in to Milford from there. It's probably about a. Let's say it's not that far in distance, but it takes a long time because it's a sort of windy, fairly slow road and lots of scenery stops along the way. So that. That drive could take you, you know, a couple of hours for the sake. [01:58:22] Speaker C: Of photography and tourists and stuff like that. Would you be better off staying at Milford Sound? So you can be there, you know, you're there in the morning and then you could leave mid. You know, when it starts to get busy? Basically, yeah. [01:58:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Most of the tourists are there in the middle of the day, so if you're there at sunrise or sunset, there's probably not going to be. Be that many people around. Yeah, I've shot. Shot heaps of sunrises and sunsets at Milford Sound and I've never seen many other photographers there. Like sometimes there might be three or four. You know, that. That's about it. You never get like big crowds unless there's photography workshops there, which there could be, but there's still lots of room there to move around. So even if there was, you know, a dozen people there or something, I still wouldn't. Wouldn't get in your way, really. [01:59:07] Speaker C: Is there, is there anything that you would recommend in New Zealand? Splurging on, you know, like Greg mentioned, you know, a light plane landing on a glacier or, you know, there's. Obviously you can take Heli Tours, Fox Glacier. You can go. Is there anything that you've ever done on any of your trips that you're like, all right, that was expensive, but that was, that was worth the splurge. [01:59:32] Speaker A: Are you an adventure person? [01:59:35] Speaker C: Yes, but I have no interest in hanging myself off a bridge in Queenstown at some sort of warp speed or a bunch of scary stuff. [01:59:44] Speaker A: The Shotover jet. The jet boat. Oh, yeah, the red one. Yeah, that. That's pretty cool. That's okay. I've done that half a dozen times now. That. That's worth doing. That's good fun. You can take your kids and wife and everything on that. It's not too scary. They only. I don't think they even get up to 100ks an hour. They might only get up to 80 or something like that. But that, that's. That's super fun. There's another jet boat Right out at Glenorie, which is the Dart river jet. It's a blue one and it's more. It's a combination of a jet boat ride but also a bit of a nature type experience and then, then you get out in these little kayaks and paddle through a gorge and it's a, it's sort of a bit of a mix that. That's really good as well those two. There's. I don't know if you like wine and food and all that stuff. There's lots of good, lots of good wine and food options around that Otago region, around Queenstown, Wanaka region. If you want to send me a note or something I can send you some places to go. [02:00:48] Speaker C: You know it's crazy you say that. I actually got an. I got an email yesterday from one of the listeners of the show, Paul, who any dedicated listener would know as thanks Paul. He actually, he needed to get some winter photography gloves and we set up a code for him to use but I told everyone what the code was and it got used more than any other code that we've had. This code called thanks Paul. Anyway, he sent me an email with yeah, he's all his recommendations from his sort of. He's going soon but he's been before and he's. Yeah, I was like this is. The podcast is amazing. These recommendations of where to go and stay and different things. So we don't, we don't need a ton of things but even just a one off thing like hey, this restaurant was great. You know, like if you're in this area, go there. It was amazing. Anything like that, that that you or anyone else knows of. I mean it's. [02:01:40] Speaker A: Yeah, there's things that make the Trump special. Good restaurants in Queenstown, if you're going to happen to be there. There's some very good ones actually. [02:01:48] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll probably do a couple of nights in Queenstown I think not a ton of time because we're staying in the. The camper. I'll have to try and find somewhere nearby that we can park and sleep and stuff. I don't know if there's one. [02:01:59] Speaker A: Yeah, there's one in walking distance of the main street where you can park your camper van. [02:02:04] Speaker C: Oh, that would be awesome. [02:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just up. I think you got. What's it called? I know where it is. I can't think of the name of it but it's right in town. You can park your camper and camp there and walk into the town. It's probably only wouldn't even be a 10 minute walk. Five minute walk. [02:02:21] Speaker C: That is awesome. I was worried we were going to be sort of stuck on the fringe of town and either have to like pack the camper up to drive into town and then try to find a park or whatever. [02:02:30] Speaker A: No, you could camp there. [02:02:33] Speaker C: Oh, that's cool. Yeah. [02:02:35] Speaker A: And another thing. Yeah. Another thing would be to do a helicopter flight. The stacks of different ones. You can do them around Lake Tekapo, you can do them around Mount Cook, do them around Wanaka, Queenstown, Milford. It really depends what you want to see. There's a few company. I've been on a bunch of heli flights there and I'll work with a few different companies there. So I could put you onto a couple. [02:03:01] Speaker C: Yeah, any that you, you think is. Is. Is a worthwhile experience, actually that I would like to do that because Yelena is, as I said, like, I'm. I'm lucky enough to be doing heli snowboarding, but Yelena's not joining me until after that and I'd love for her to see the, the mountains and the glaciers from, from up high. It really was. That was like. That was almost better than the snowboarding part of, of the first time I did it. Just seeing everything from that aerial view, like it was indescribable. [02:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Maybe look up the sunrise flight over Mount Aspiring. I think it's Glenorchy Air that do that. That. That's in a plane, not a helicopter. Small plane. That. That's a good one. Yeah. [02:03:43] Speaker C: Okay. [02:03:46] Speaker A: Still get good photos out the window. If you put your camera like really close to the window and use a zoom like a 24 to 105 sort of lens. Yeah, yeah, that, that'd be a good one to do. You could take your whole family on that. [02:04:01] Speaker C: All right. Sunrise flight, Mount Aspiring. [02:04:04] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's Glen Orchard is the company that do it. They're a local company as well. Yeah. [02:04:10] Speaker B: I think Bruce said that when he went up he used a fixed wing because it was also cheaper than the helicopter tours. [02:04:17] Speaker A: Yeah, they're a lot cheaper than helicopters. Helicopters will cost you about $2,000 an hour to charter. So if you, you know, if you got a. Doing a workshop and you're hiring two helicopters, it's four grand. So it's not cheap. But planes are definitely cheaper. Helicopters are more maneuverable so they can move faster and quicker. Planes are cheaper. Six, one half dozen, the other. Really like it depends. Yeah. Going up in the helicopter over the mountains on a windy day is fun. [02:04:51] Speaker C: I. I Don't know what I want to do that. It doesn't make any. It doesn't. Yeah. It wasn't a super windy day or anything, but I don't know what it is about helicopters, but when you're flying over the top of a mountain and then it suddenly drops away, even though we haven't changed anything about our flight, it still scares the pants off me. I don't know why. Like when, when are you like going over the top and then you drop away and it's just like, yeah. Oh, it's terrifying and I don't understand what it is. Yeah, it's a scary. And sometimes they just move up and down and just from wind currents and stuff and you're like, oh, grab on a bit tighter. [02:05:35] Speaker A: Normally that time of year, August, it should be pretty calm weather, unless a front comes in or something. But normally the winter weather's fairly calm. Just cold, that's all. Yeah, if you're up there, it's cold. But that's why a plane might be better because it wouldn't be as cold in the plane as a chopper. [02:05:54] Speaker C: Oh, that's true. [02:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:05:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Dress warm. Phoenix. Phoenix says good morning. Thanks for joining us. We're towards the end of the show, Phoenix, but you can always, once we're done, you can can loop back to the start and watch from the beginning. [02:06:06] Speaker A: So this, this podcast or this stream will be on YouTube? Yes. Is that where people can rewatch it? Or is it. Or does it. [02:06:17] Speaker C: So if you want to watch, rewatch it on YouTube. But you can also listen on Spotify, Apple podcasts, any of the other podcast platforms, just as an audio, all of that. It'll go up within a few hours to those platforms are finishing. But yeah, it's on, it's on YouTube right now and it'll stay on there. [02:06:34] Speaker A: Yeah, cool. [02:06:36] Speaker B: Justin, do you want to ask Brett the ultimate gear question? [02:06:40] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I should. So if it was the end of the world and you're in New Zealand again, another pandemic hits. But this time it's zombies and the world is ending and you've only got time to grab one camera and one lens to document beautiful landscapes of the zombie apocalypse, what would you grab? [02:07:03] Speaker A: Go for the Canon R5, of course, and a 24 to 105 lens. [02:07:09] Speaker C: Oh, the versatile all rounder. [02:07:12] Speaker A: Yeah, a bit of an all rounder. You can't beat that lens. [02:07:15] Speaker C: Nice choice. [02:07:16] Speaker A: Or the second one would be just your iPhone. [02:07:20] Speaker C: Oh, actually I don't think anyone said. [02:07:22] Speaker A: That yet because you can do whatever you want. With that, you can take a video, you can take a wide angle, a zoom, a pano. [02:07:29] Speaker C: Lightweight, easy to run with, actually. So I think I'll know the answer to this already, but we'll just see the R5. Any interest in updating to the R5 Mark II or not for you? [02:07:42] Speaker A: Not for me, no. [02:07:44] Speaker C: Why is that? [02:07:46] Speaker A: Doesn't. It's not much different. I know some people start arguing with me about this and says does this. But they're the people that have bought it. So as far as what I do, it's not. Not really any different. You know, it's got a lot of other fancy features that probably are good for wildlife or sports or portraits. But as far as it being a landscape camera, the only thing that's going to make it better for me is whether it's got more megapixels, more dynamic range or better image stabilization. And if it only had one of those, I still wouldn't buy it because it's not enough. So, no, I think they're about. What are they, six and a half grand or something or. [02:08:29] Speaker C: Yeah, you might be able to get them under 16, I can't remember, but I'm pretty confident actually has worse dynamic range in mechanical shutter at base ISO, if anything. [02:08:41] Speaker A: Yeah. I had a lady on a workshop recently that had it and she was using it for wildlife and the higher. I don't know whether what the circumstances were, but the high ISO noise was not so good. I don't know if that's what that's got to do with. I don't know. But it's high ISO on my R5 and no drama. [02:09:05] Speaker C: So might have been the conditions that the. In the testing that I did. That's another point. [02:09:11] Speaker A: The. [02:09:11] Speaker C: The R5 mark II was worse, but not in high ISO. But not enough that you would. Yeah, that was in like test testing worse. Not enough that you would worry about it, but you certainly wouldn't upgrade it to get better high ISO because it's actually slightly worse. The only thing. Exactly. You were spot on. The only thing you would upgrade it for is autofocus performance is way better. Video performance is better. A few other little features and stuff like that. I find the control layout better. [02:09:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:09:41] Speaker C: Now that they've moved the photo video switch. But again, that's because I shoot hybrid a bit. But other than that. Yeah, it's for landscapes. It's. It's potentially worse. [02:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:09:51] Speaker C: So, yeah. Interesting. [02:09:52] Speaker A: My R5 has been an absolute beast of a camera. I've had it for. I don't know, years now and I've dropped it. It's got, you know, salt water corrosion all over it, all sorts. It still takes a photo like it did the day I bought it. It's best camera I've ever had by a long way. Yeah. [02:10:12] Speaker C: Oh, that's awesome. [02:10:14] Speaker B: That's a great endorsement. [02:10:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Have you ever thought about Canon? Yeah. Hey, hook him up. [02:10:21] Speaker A: Okay. [02:10:21] Speaker C: Him up. Have you ever thought about a infrared or full spectrum conversion? [02:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. [02:10:31] Speaker C: Said about your R6. I was like, oh, that's a. I've already. [02:10:34] Speaker A: I've already been looking at that. Really? [02:10:37] Speaker B: All right, well, you two were separated at birth. [02:10:40] Speaker C: I know because I've been doing a heap of research on it at the moment. Especially the fact that it's full spectrum so you can put the filter in and still use it as a backup camera, as a normal camera. That really appeals to me. What have you found in your research so far? [02:10:54] Speaker A: Well, I haven't done it, but I've definitely thought about it. We've had a couple of clients come on workshop. I never really considered infrared much, but we've had a couple of clients come on workshops that have got cameras that they've had converted and seen some of the stuff they took. And it's cool. It's just something really different, you know, I like those real sort of. And then I started following a guy on YouTube that does infrared. I can't remember what his name is now. Have to look him up. But I like those infrared scenes that have got that real blue and black, blue, black, white sort of palette to them. They look like a real wintry scene. They look almost look like some of those Whore Frost photos. Yeah. [02:11:33] Speaker C: Yep. [02:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I sort of really like that look. So, yeah, I wouldn't mind having to experiment with that sort of stuff. [02:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Found a company in Melbourne that can do the conversion. [02:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. What? That's the name of that place, I think. [02:11:48] Speaker C: Imaging by Design. [02:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I looked them up online. Yeah. [02:11:52] Speaker C: Used to be Camera Clinic. Their website's pretty average. Doesn't have much information on it. Looks really old, but I called them and they super helpful, really knowledgeable, straight off the bat. And we're hopefully going to get. I think his name was Wayne, either the owner or the guy that runs it or whatever. We're gonna try and get him on the podcast with a couple of infrared photographers, hopefully just to kind of have a bit of a discussion around like the ins and outs of converting cameras and what, what the different light spectrum, you know, filters and conversions and stuff. What Sort of. Yeah. What's the best one to start with? All that kind of stuff. So yeah, we want to do that because I'm pretty. I'm pretty keen on it at the moment. It looks like a lot of fun. [02:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just something different, isn't it? Like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [02:12:39] Speaker C: So anyway I'll. You'll find out if I end up buying one of those as well. One thing at a time. 100. [02:12:46] Speaker A: If I update the R5 at some point, which I will, but I'll probably wait till they bring out something better. I want more megapixels. [02:12:54] Speaker C: Do you reckon they. Do you reckon they will? Do you reckon Canon are gonna like surprise at some stage with like a megapixel jump to like 70 or 80 or something like that and get in front again with a high res camera? [02:13:06] Speaker A: I think they will. But when it happens, who knows, you know Canon like nothing happens in hurry with Canon. It took them about six years to bring out the R5. So. Yeah. So when that happens then I'll have a spare R5. Then I might do the R6 as a infrared maybe. [02:13:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's a good idea. [02:13:27] Speaker B: That's a solid plan. [02:13:29] Speaker A: That's a super underrated camera, that R6. Yeah, that is a really good camera. It hasn't got the megapixels as the R5, but it's. It's a awesome camera and it's low light stuff is amazing. It's better. Better than the R5. [02:13:46] Speaker C: I shoot the R3 for sports and I, I feel like I could get it as good out of the R6 Mark II basically as the R3. Like they're so close in terms of their. This like ability level for sports sense is great. Yeah, yeah. Very, very underrated camera and pretty cheap at the moment too. I think the R3, the R6 Mark 3 is on the way which is why. Why the R6 Mark 2 is pretty cheap. That's. That's what the rumors are saying. We don't have any inside knowledge sadly. All right, before we let you go, let's find out where should. How should people stay in touch with you? You mentioned about trying to stay in touch with people. Like where can they find out about workshops about your. Because you've even got some online courses on editing. I want to talk about that. But we. We've spent too much time talking about New Zealand. Yeah. Where should people follow you to keep up with everything that you do? [02:14:46] Speaker A: My website, BretWoodPhotos.com but one thing we do is A regular newsletter which has actually grown a lot, A lot. In the last 12 months, our newsletter list has almost doubled. So we do. We were trying to do a newsletter every fortnight, which we were doing earlier in the year, but at the moment I don't think we've put one out now for about a month because I've just been busy, but probably put one out this week. But they should definitely sign up to the newsletter because it's not a newsletter about just trying to sell you things. There's actually something in it for you guys. We give. In every newsletter, we. We actually give quite a bit. So we give tutorials, we give information on things like. There's a bit in it for the. For the subscribers. So that would be the best one. Just go to the website and sign up to the newsletter. [02:15:41] Speaker C: Just click on newsletter up the top. Put your stuff in like I just did and then hit submit. [02:15:47] Speaker A: Yep. [02:15:47] Speaker B: And you'll get a unique code. [02:15:50] Speaker A: Will you? That's right. I forgot about that. [02:15:54] Speaker C: What does that do? [02:15:56] Speaker A: Is it a discount code for buying stuff off the website or something? Yeah, yeah. Cool. Yeah, yeah. So the newsletter is probably the best one. The other thing that I really put a lot of focus into now is YouTube, so follow my YouTube channel. I try and do a video every two weeks, sometimes every week. But, you know, I try hard to do a lot of video on YouTube and that's definitely a big focus for me going forward is doing more and more and more stuff on YouTube. Yeah. So, yeah, follow the YouTube channel. There's heaps of good videos on there. There's even. There's a very long video on there. Not very long. I think it might be half an hour or something about Nissi jet mag filters. There's all sorts of. Of stuff. But there, it's the. There's editing videos on there. There's in the field landscape vlogs just out wandering around taking pictures. Yeah, that would be social media I use as well Facebook and Instagram, but I don't take that stuff too seriously, to be honest with you. I use it, but yeah. Yep. YouTube website, newsletter website, be the best ones. Yeah, awesome. [02:17:08] Speaker C: Well, WA Bird Nerd has subscribed to newsletter and on YouTube. Awesome. [02:17:13] Speaker A: Cool. [02:17:14] Speaker C: LTK photo says, this has been great. I've learned a lot. Me too. Thank you very much. It's. It's been super useful. And Philip Johnson says, love Brett's YouTube. Thanks for that. Jim says, thanks for an awesome episode. Robert Varner says, helicopter. Helicopter. Helicopter. Helicopter. Helicopter. [02:17:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:17:33] Speaker C: And earlier Brendan Waite said HDR I agree. Robert says goodbye from New Jersey, usa. Thanks for joining us again, Robert. It's always good to see you from all the way on the other side of the planet, which is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, it's been a wonderful episode. I really enjoyed it. Love to have you on. [02:17:53] Speaker B: Yeah, we'd love to have you back. [02:17:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:17:56] Speaker B: We will wrap up for the day, folks. Please join me in thanking Brett Wood for sharing his time with us today. But also lots of nuggets of wisdom. And obviously Justin gained a lot of info and insight about New Zealand, which is wonderful. It's the only reason he set up this podcast is for self interest. [02:18:15] Speaker C: It's very selfish. [02:18:17] Speaker B: It is very selfish. But on that note, Brett, thank you so much for, for your time today and for, you know, sharing your inspirational journey and your amazing, absolutely jaw dropping work. It's. You have to be pretty proud of that. It's absolutely. You have a stunning eye. You've got a pair of them, but you know what I mean? But, but look, we will wrap it there, folks. Just a reminder that this is the Camera Life podcast and it is brought to you by Lucky Straps Luckystraps.com for premium leather camera straps made here in Victoria, Australia. Aussie made. Better check out the site because we also sell belts. We sell valorant gloves. They also have some beanies and some other nice things for this time of year, especially in the southern, in the southern half of the globe. Pretty chilly. So go and check out the gloves as well. And please, if you're watching along and if you're new to the channel, make sure you like this episode. It helps other people find it. Subscribe and tickle the bell so that you get notified of every upcoming episode as it happens. This has been episode 99. We are hitting our 100 mark Monday night. [02:19:28] Speaker A: One more thing before you hang up. I know you're trying to promote your YouTube channel, but I just thought because if you get comments on your YouTube that helps as well. So if anyone's got any questions or anything they want to ask, if they just leave a comment on YouTube, can I can get back to them? [02:19:43] Speaker C: That would be great. Yeah. If you're listening back later on or you just. It pops into your head, drop them down below. That'd be great. If you can, Brett, we'll let you know if we. Yeah, if we see any that you can chime in on, that would be amazing. And of course, if you aren't subscribed to Brett's channel, go to Brett Wood on YouTube. You'll find it. [02:20:01] Speaker A: I think it's Brett Photos on YouTube. [02:20:04] Speaker C: Photos. It's, you'll, you'll, you'll definitely know it when you see it because you'll see these amazing landscape images and a whole lot of videos about nissi filters or actually tonight at 7:30, the premiere of your Utah video, 7:30 tonight on YouTube, Australian Eastern Standard Time. So jump on there tonight if you need some viewing because that, the, the photos from your. We didn't even talk about that. Oh my gosh. We need to do a whole nother episode. [02:20:31] Speaker B: I think we might, we might need to get you back on. Sorry, Brett. Drag you through a couple all again. But look, folks, we're going to say goodbye. Justin's going to play the music. But thank you to everybody who's watched, commented, asked questions. We value that. It's why we do what we do because we want your involvement in this discussion just as much as our guests. So yeah, thanks for joining us today. Good to see you all again. We'll see you Monday night, 7:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time for our 100th episode. That's a pretty, pretty good milestone we're celebrating, I think. [02:21:04] Speaker C: Pretty good. [02:21:05] Speaker B: I look forward to my bonus. But yeah, let's play the music and say our farewells. [02:21:11] Speaker C: All right. Well, David Mascaro just back in time to say goodbye. Good to see you, David, for a moment. How's San Francisco? You'll have to go back and watch it from the start and let us know. Comment below later. Let us know what you thought. Rodney Nicholson says, great show. It's great to see you. Wa bird nerd. We'll look forward to seeing you on future episodes, everybody. You're all legends. Catch you later on. [02:21:34] Speaker B: Thanks, team. Bye bye. [02:21:36] Speaker A: See ya.