Exploring Outback Landscapes with Adam Edwards

[00:00:02] Speaker A: The camera light, the flashing night frame. [00:00:05] Speaker B: The world see it right. The camera. [00:00:15] Speaker C: Well, good morning everybody and welcome back to the Camera Life podcast. It is the 15th of January, 2026, bright and early in the morning. It's going to be a gorgeous day and of course it's being the Thursday morning show. We're joined by a guest, but we'll get to him in just a moment. Just up front, a little bit of housekeeping. Don't forget to give this episode a like. And if you're new to the Camera Life podcast, we do this twice a week. Every Thursday morning, Australian Eastern standard time at 9am we interview an amazing photographer or someone like Adam. And then on Monday evenings, I just, I just. On Monday evenings we have the random photography show, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard or daylight time, where we, we just talk crap about photography and have a blast in the process. We look at your images, we cover the news, we cover everything. So, yeah, so make sure you subscribe and give us a thumbs up, of course. We're joined today by Justin. Someone has to keep the lights on. Glad that you're here, mate. Good to see you. And, and yes, we, we do have a special guest on today. We are joined by BFOP royalty, if you know what BFOP is. Adam Edwards, Australian landscape, nature, commercial photographer, gallery owner, videographer, tour guide, tour operator. It's all happening in Adam's space and of course he's coming all the way from Broken Hill, so I don't even know where that is. Adam, welcome. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Good morning, guys. Thank you. Yeah, it's cool. We've been talking about this for a little while, so it's nice to, yeah, get the pin on the calendar and have a conversation. [00:01:43] Speaker C: Yeah, we're glad you're here. We're going to unpack everything about, and I mean everything about who you are and what you do. But maybe before we head into that, Justin, do you want to say good morning to some peeps? [00:01:54] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a few people starting to roll into the chat. This was an interesting one. This is actually from 8:58pm last night from Dennis. I'll be on my way to the airport, but listening in. [00:02:04] Speaker C: Yeehaw. [00:02:05] Speaker B: First in the chat. Love the energy from hours and hours ago. Paul's here. Morning all. Morning, Adam. Yeah, obviously Dennis is driving careful. Texting and driving. Dennis commenting and driving. [00:02:16] Speaker A: Be careful. [00:02:18] Speaker B: Elaine is here. Good morning. Ian Thompson. Good morning. Oh no, he's still furiously packing. Okay, well, furiously pack away or you listen to us. Yeah, you've, you've got a Workshop coming up with Dennis, don't you, Adam? Sometime in May. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah, May. Yeah. We did a little thing together last year and it was like just the nicest thing. So we just decided to do it again. Yeah, we, we've become very good friends, I would say out of. Been working in beef up together and yeah, we're just, we're just like yin and yang, I think. [00:02:58] Speaker B: Which one's which? [00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it switches around but yeah, no. Super excited to, to do things and we're going to Mungo. This time last year we did something here in the gallery and here in Broken Hill and you know, we both have a really special connection to Mungo and both really love the place. So like obviously I have the ability to get there. Yeah. So we thought why not try something different? Yeah. Yeah. [00:03:28] Speaker C: Well that sounds exciting. Just for people who don't know where Mungo is or Broken Hill. Jake, we just bring up the Google map very quickly. Let's have a look where. Adam, if you go out the front and wave, maybe we'll get you on the satellite view. I don't know. But bring up the map, we'll have a look at, Tell us just briefly a little bit about Broken Hill while we bring up the map. Adam? [00:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah, like I grew up in Broken Hill and it's pretty much as far west as you can go in New South Wales before you hit South Australia, which is, is, is a pretty cool place. It's got incredible mining history and lots of great art and culture and Broken Hills, Australia's only heritage listed city, so. [00:04:18] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:04:18] Speaker C: I didn't know that. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it's incredible. It's like such a, such a fantastic place. It's, you know, it's isolated and we spend a lot of time in the vehicles to go places and, and those things. But the lifestyle here is just amazing. I think pound for pound it's the best photography workshop location in Australia because you can travel no more than an hour in any direction and have something completely different and amazing like. Yeah, yeah, you literally, you could spend a week here and see everything from the Menindi Lakes, which you can see on Justin's map there, just to the, just to the right there. There's. Yeah, the Menindi Lakes and the Darling river runs through there. And then, you know, a bit further south of that is, is the Willandra Lakes and where like Mungo is, which is not actually a lake, it's dry these days. Yeah. Just to the bottom right there's Lake Mungo. Yeah. And like Mungo looks close To Broken Hill. Right. But it's still about four hours drive. Yeah. [00:05:26] Speaker C: It's a big countryside. People watching from. From outside of Australia. Contrary to popular belief, Australia is much, much bigger than Texas. [00:05:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:38] Speaker C: A couple of memes over the weekend where people were comparing Australia to the size of Texas. No, no, no. [00:05:43] Speaker B: Isn't Australia closer to this? The US the whole. Excluding, excluding Alaska? No, not, not the continent of. Because that's the continent. North America. But like the US that like main chunk of the us Not. Not Alaska. [00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I think New South Wales has about the same. Don't quote me, but New South Wales has about the same land mass as Texas, which is. [00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So for anyone, anyone that's joining us from around the world. [00:06:10] Speaker A: Because you do. [00:06:11] Speaker B: We know you do because you're in the comments. I don't know if you can see my pointer very well, but this, this is Bendigo. This is where I am here. Greg's here. That's like an hour and a half away to two hours away, then Broken Hills all the way up here. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. 10 hours to Greg, 9 hours to Justin from me. So. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's a great. [00:06:35] Speaker C: Have dinner ready, mate, just say the word. [00:06:40] Speaker B: We'Re on our way. Yeah, actually I would love to, I'd love to come and visit because you've got a gallery there now. [00:06:46] Speaker C: Yeah, let's talk about that. You only opened the gallery last year. [00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:50] Speaker C: Same year that you won a New South Wales Tourism Award, a bronze award for tourism. So you know, you talked earlier about the amazing opportunities in Broken Hill. You're contributing to that in your own special way, which is pretty amazing. Tell us about the gallery. [00:07:05] Speaker A: Yeah, like, you know, I still work like most photographers, it's not a fruitful passion sometimes. But over the last five years I've worked to a point where I turned it full time last year and as a part of that I decided that I wanted to have a space and I had no intent to be honest, in having a gallery. I wanted an office and like a training type room which, which I have here now. But I just couldn't find the space in Broken Hill. And this place come up, you know, series of events happened and, and this place come up and it was big enough that it has this area that I'm sitting now that is like big enough to create a gallery space. So I thought why not, you know, lead by example and have some investment back into Broken Hill because I think, you know, the, the arts in, in, in a lot of places is struggling. But Broken Hill has this incredible arts culture, you know like pro heart. And some of those famous painters are from Broken Hill. And you know all of those guys are either sadly passed on or towards the end of their career. So all the people that travel to Broken Hill for the arts to go to galleries and things like that are running out of places to go. [00:08:32] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:08:33] Speaker A: So it was just a no brainer, right? Like it was like well one, it's beautiful opportunity to be able to show your work. But two, like it's just giving something back to Broken Hill. So I created this space with the intent that it fills gaps that Broken Hill has. So I have a conference room that's set up with really good tele conferencing stuff. I've got like fiber Internet. I. I've got a couple of offices with hot desks, you know. Yeah, just, it's just this place where someone, if they needed resource could come and use it. Yeah. [00:09:13] Speaker C: Well that's interesting because Justin and I have been looking for a place to have a meeting that's maybe we could. [00:09:20] Speaker A: Come up and see you do an offsite. [00:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean sounds like it would be a great place to do an in person podcast with. With a few people. [00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that would, that would be really fun. [00:09:36] Speaker C: Yeah, it would be cool actually, wouldn't it? And get a whole round table happening. [00:09:39] Speaker A: Dennis wouldn't be here exactly. [00:09:42] Speaker B: He would be in the car before you could say we're doing it. [00:09:45] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:47] Speaker C: Just with regards to the gallery. So you opened that last year and we've spoken to other folks. Yep, we've spoken to other folk who have opened galleries in the past. I'm thinking of Rodney Nicholson. He's. He's had a couple of galleries in his time, Mika Matt from Alpine Light Gallery. Obviously they're still going strong. What was your experience? Like what was the, what was the biggest surprise in creating the space for you and what was the biggest disappointment? [00:10:19] Speaker A: I don't know whether I had any. I had pretty reasonable expectations. So I think a lot of people dive into things like this and think that it'll just happen overnight, you know, and within a year you'll be selling enough work off the walls to be paying rent. Like that's an unreasonable expectation. I think like I genuinely believe that. Yeah. So like I just, I committed a budget to set the place up and you know, furbish the walls and put you know, a whole stack of money into it and just. I'll go with the flow, you know. I think this year was. This last 12 months has been quite Good. But I think what will happen with these kinds of things is it'll be a year, two years before people come to visit Broken Hill and go, you've got to go to that gallery, you know, like it's just, it just won't happen overnight. And I guess the other part of, of that whole conversation is the reason that I have all these other things here in terms of hir hble space and is because I just know that, you know, people don't have as the money for luxury items at the moment in most cases and like it or not, a piece of art for your walls. A luxury item. Yeah. And it's been really cool to be honest. Like I don't, I wouldn't say I've had any disappointing moments. You know, I've tried to use my background and experience in like marketing in professional world to translate into what I could do here properly. So yeah, trying to meet the market with some cheap products. Like it's lovely to have all the wall full of, you know, 40 and 50 and 60 inch prints but you know, most people just aren't in the market for that. So I literally have some little frame six by fours, you know that. Yeah, I probably sell 50 of them to one big work to be honest. Yeah, people come in just to grab a souvenir. More. More so than a piece of art. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's a bit of a. [00:12:30] Speaker C: Mixed business isn't it really when you, when you look at it from a helicopter view, you've got all these little pockets of potential income, revenue and, and, but also supporting the community. You know, if people need a meeting space, you've got this beautiful space. I saw on your website also that you said that, you know, people want to use the space for events, that it's got that capacity and even just seeing it behind you, it's obviously a decent size gallery. [00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah, the main gallery space, about 170 square meters. So yeah, it's pretty, pretty big space and we've had some like cocktail style events in here. [00:13:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:13:05] Speaker A: So I've got pretty reasonable sound system and yeah, it works really great for that kind of stuff actually. Like people come in, they're like, oh, that was such a cool event. I think the, you having the right event here is important though. Like you don't want, we're not a nightclub. [00:13:27] Speaker C: You don't want sticky carpet every morning, that's for sure. [00:13:29] Speaker A: No, no, but yeah, it's, it's just feeling out what, you know, what, what's going to pay the bills long term. Like, you can't go into. And I think this is where people might go sideways a bit when they go, I'm gonna go do my photography full time or I'm gonna go do my passion full time. Yeah, because it's that one part of. It's your passion. That's where all your energy goes. But that's not sustainable because you can't have a. A sustainable business with just one revenue stream. It's impossible. Like, you know, because one thing can change and you, You. You're in dire straits, like, literally. So, yeah, I've tried to just use what I have here in the gallery, but, you know, my. All of my other experience and skills to say, well, what are the. All the other things I can do that will get you by. In on the. In between, you know, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So far, so good. [00:14:27] Speaker C: That's great. It's a good. It's a good report card to be able to sit there and say, well, I didn't really have any disappointments for a new business. That's. That's great. [00:14:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We would all like to sell more work off the wall, but of course. [00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah, you do a ton of workshops, obviously. How do you manage the gallery while you're, like, traveling around with workshops or are a lot of them based out of the gallery and then you do sort of sunrise and sunset shoots or. Yeah, talk to me about that. [00:14:57] Speaker A: No, yeah, so I just closed the. Close the doors. Yeah, pretty much. I. I just have a nice little sign on the, on the. That I flip on the door that says, you've missed me. I'm out about creating work. Here's a QR code that you can fill in and I'll get straight back to you and make an appointment, essentially. And that's worked really well. Like, worked really well. Like, people who are committed enough that they really want to come look at the work will fill in that thing and make an appointment every time. And then you obviously get the odd tourist that's just like, I want to go have a look and, and that, you know, sadly, they miss out when I can't be here. But, you know, like, I'd love to be at a point one day where I'm turning enough through the gallery that I can pay someone to be here when I'm not. Yeah. But, like, I don't see the path to that yet, like, to be reasonable, you know. [00:15:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's fair. I mean, you, you know, you're only shy of 12 months. Yeah, yeah. [00:16:01] Speaker A: That's. [00:16:02] Speaker C: It takes time. [00:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And, and we can all dive in and just go to the dream. Right. Like get to the end of the dream and do all the things but then you know, that'll be short lived. So it's just. Yeah. This non linear path, it's like every time an opportunity comes up, you jump at it and you know, do the smart thing and you know, try not to put yourself and your family at financial risk and all of those kinds of things and, and you know, just grow slowly rather than, you know, try and do things overnight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:38] Speaker C: We talked a little bit earlier about that. You're, you're starting to lean into more of your video work. You do have a YouTube channel and you've got some content on there, but recently you posted a video I can't remember about the, about the location you went to. [00:16:53] Speaker A: Ah, the gear I took to Kenya. That first one. [00:16:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I know the second one. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Oh, Samburu. [00:17:00] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I watched that yesterday and I saw that another one just dropped today. You've said that you've said to us before we went live that you're going to lean a bit more into creating that sort of content. What, what was the, what was the drive for that for you? What, what's driving that need to make that content? [00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like this deeply personal thing for me I think is, is photography and everything linked to it for me is, is passion. Like, and it always has been. And you guys were around and you've seen it. There was this beautiful time on Instagram where you had a tight knit group of followers and you know, you put something up and you'd have a meaningful conversation about it or you know, you'd have thoughtful comments and you'd have this depth that just doesn't exist anymore. And, and it's a funny, a funny parody, right. Because like I know that I'm now a part of the problem in that space because now I go on Instagram and I'm so fatigued from that hollow stuff. Yeah. That I do that like thumbs up. Yeah. [00:18:10] Speaker B: Cool work. [00:18:11] Speaker C: They've trained us well. They've trained us well. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's the problem. Right. And it's become this, like everything in photography for me is, is about the passion and about the community and the people you meet and the creature conversations you have. And that's just not happening anymore in those, on those platforms. And they're like necessary evil. Right. You guys are marketing your podcast and, and, and your other businesses and things and you have to be there otherwise you, you're nowhere. But I kind of committed before Christmas to create a video about the gear that I took to Kenya. Yep. And it was a pretty easy sort of. I don't know, I say easy, but when you're getting back into it, it takes time. It's probably, probably put eight or 12 hours into a five minute video. [00:19:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:19:00] Speaker C: And to be fair, it's like, it's like porn for us really, you know. [00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:19:06] Speaker B: So it takes, it takes time. [00:19:09] Speaker A: Yeah. But like what it was this awakening, right. Because it had great reach, which I was shocked by because like my at my 70 subscriber YouTube channel had three and a half. It's had three and a half thousand watches or something now. But just the comments, man. Like that would. People were thinking about what they were writing like and, and it wasn't. Thanks, that was great info. It was like, oh, I've been thinking about going to Kenya and. Or like I've got a trip next year and I didn't quite know what to take and that really helped me and I thought, oh, that's filled this void. [00:19:48] Speaker C: Gold, isn't it? [00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so good. So over the New year period, you know, like, whether we like it or not, we have this cliche of setting ourselves some goals for the New year. [00:19:58] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It's such a weird concept, right. Because I'm always setting myself goals, but it's like it's New Year, new me kind of thing. [00:20:09] Speaker B: It's just quickly though. I heard someone talk about that on a podcast because I, I sort of do it this time of year as well. And someone sort of talked about it and said, you know, you can always set yourself a new goal. You can always. That you don't need to wait for New Year, but if you don't do it at New Year's, when else are you going to make time to do it? And if, and if it's a natural cycle of like, hey, new year starting time to take stock of what I did last year, what do I want to change, what I want to keep doing or whatever. They're like, you might as well do it then because when else will you make time to do it? So. And I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. It's like, it doesn't need to be cliche. It can just be like, yeah, that's, that's just, it just makes sense. It's like, but you could do it in March if that suits your lifestyle better. But yeah, you know, or the first. [00:20:55] Speaker C: Of every month or yeah, you know? [00:20:58] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, that's actually really good. Like I've always been pretty good with, with mindset and those kinds of things, but I, I thought over that break, you know, just that little snippet of experience from that video, I thought that's where my energy has to go this year is to creating more meaningful conversations and growing my community and, you know, all of these great things that come from that. So, like, I've committed to do 20 videos for this year and like, yeah, I'm confident I'll do it. Like, I'm the kind of. Yeah, I've got that personality that when I say I'm going to do something, I'll probably have it done by August, you know, so. Yeah. [00:21:40] Speaker C: Sorry. [00:21:41] Speaker A: Oh, like the backup to the confirmation that that's where my energy needs to go is just my, my, my Samburu video that you mentioned before is only been up for a couple of days and I've done an A B test, so it's really slow to go out, so it's only had a couple of hundred views. But like, there's that many meaningful conversations started from that, that I woke up to an email from the UK today, like from someone who couldn't comment for some reason on YouTube but wanted to have a conversation. I'm like, how cool is that? That's like very cool. You know, extra deep confirmation that that's, that's the path and that's the place that I need to put my energy. [00:22:26] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's, I think it's important. I, I've said this to Justin recently that, you know, if it wasn't for what we do here and lucky straps and the photography community in general, I, I don't think I'd be on social media anymore. It just has no appeal to me. It, it's, you know, and Paul, Paul's just dropped a comment here and I think it was, I think it was Paul who commented last week about that quote that we talked about about, you know, the narcissistic slop that has become social media. It says Instagram's demise, that was the change from sequential to algorithmically driven feeds. Totally ruined it for me. And yeah, I have to agree. The, the, I mean, apart from the ad, 1 in 3 posts is an ad and some don't even look like ads. You've got to give them a. Like now, I don't know if this is new or if it's just me missing it. I went to double tap on a post in Instagram and it went straight to the person's website. Didn't like that episode. [00:23:26] Speaker A: They make it look like a post. Yeah, yeah. [00:23:28] Speaker C: And I feel a bit. I feel a bit cheated by that. It's like. No, I just wanted to say well done, you know. [00:23:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:34] Speaker C: And they're, you know, they're forcing you into a. Into kind of a buy now situation. And. Yeah. You know, and we saw other platforms, you know. What was the old photography site that everyone used to use before it became filled with porn? [00:23:50] Speaker A: Oh, what was that? [00:23:52] Speaker B: Tumblr? [00:23:53] Speaker C: No, no, no. Before. Before that it was like. It was like a gallery site. [00:23:57] Speaker B: I'm just trying to think of places. [00:23:59] Speaker A: That ended up filled with porn. [00:24:01] Speaker C: Flicker. [00:24:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:02] Speaker B: Oh, you did say. [00:24:02] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just. There was a period there where it just started to get filled with nonsense, you know. [00:24:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, what happens, right, is I don't think it's. I feel ripped off every time I go on Instagram these days, because I feel like it was our home as stills photographers. Right. Like, it was, it was our place and it was our. It was our turf, even. But when you think about it, right, is. Is regardless you like it or not, it's a business. And the business is going to put its efforts to where the rewards come from. And the rewards are coming from the majority, not the minority. Right. And we're just the minority nowadays. So people creating stills, photography and even. Even video content in some. Unless it's that viral entertaining stuff. So my, My whole take on social media is, it's. It's just become media, right? The social aspect's gone. So, you know, people go to those places now not to connect, not to have conversation, not to find, you know, new people, any of that. They go to be entertained. That's it. [00:25:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it's a boredom buster. [00:25:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's like this sick cycle. Like, you know, we don't know whether you guys do it, but sometimes you'll be two videos in and you catch yourself doom scrolling. And I've got to, like, put. Put it up because it's. It's addictive, you know, even for. [00:25:27] Speaker C: And then you get on to algorithms like, you know, American politics. And it's like, I've got to retrain my algorithm to go back to just photography stuff because I can't stand it. I can't have it constantly shoved down my face, not knowing the context, because Instagram is so sloppy with the dates. Like, there's no sequential ordering of posts. Like, you'll be seeing a post and think, oh, crap, what's happening and it was from March last year. But it's just been presented. [00:25:51] Speaker A: If you go in to choose following in your feed, it's, you can have that hit, that historic sort of sequential feed. But the problem is, is everybody's fatigued from it. So like I said at the start, like, I know I'm a part of the problem. Like, if people go and leave a thoughtful comment on my Instagram post, I'm likely not to see it because I'm barely on there or, or if I see someone's work, like, my best comment will be, you know, this is really inspiring. Or like it'll be a one, one liner, you know. Yeah. So I think, I just think it's, you know, it needs to change. Like, but I don't really know what the solution is. [00:26:40] Speaker C: You know, I, I always take a bit of a, maybe I'm a glass half full guy. But you know, I, like I said earlier, they've trained us well. You know, it's a, it's a mechanism of capital capitalism. It's, it's trained us to use these things and, and we're almost reliant on them now, as we said. I, I, I can't get rid of it because my job requires it. [00:27:00] Speaker A: Yep. [00:27:00] Speaker C: You know, I can't stitch Instagram because, you know, we use it for the, for the podcast and to promote the podcast and to promote lucky straps and you know, and so we're, like you said, we're part of the problem, but we're also trapped in it in a way. [00:27:13] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it's, it's so true. I get better. Like I have better conversations on the back of my, my website mailing list than I do, you know, anything. Like I can, I don't know whether you guys get it, but like I'll send out. I try to do it monthly. Sometimes it's fortnightly, sometimes it's weekly. But I always try and make sure it starts off with something nice, whether it's a lesson, a story, something I've learned, something I can share. And then obviously you have to do a bit of advertising. So it's got a bit of stuff about workshops, but you know, I can send one out to my 1400 or so mailing list and I can get like 10, 20 replies in the, in 24 hours about. Oh, that was really great. This is my experience, you know, all these really great conversations that then have or some, some people who are clients of mine or who know me well will just call me, we'll just have a conversation like Old school. Yeah. You know. [00:28:15] Speaker C: Which is just out of interest. Sorry Adam, I keep cutting just out of interest. Justin, do you find that with, with lucky straps mailing list that you get engagement, good engagement from the mailing list? [00:28:28] Speaker B: Not as much in terms of, because we're like, because that's business focused. Even though we do send a lot of content out that we create with the podcast and stuff like that. It's, it's usually it'll be questions and stuff that come back in about the products. So it's, it's us like it's prompted someone to think oh yeah, what, you know, what strap do I want? I'm going to reach out and ask or whatever. But it definitely, it's definitely the most interaction that we have over like Instagram and stuff like that. Compared to Instagram, the mailing list is by far more interactive and we get, yeah, we get replies, but they're not, not as much replies about the podcast content. I think think the podcast content that we send out through the lucky mailing list because they probably signed up in more of a product focused. Even though the mailing list is quite big, it's like 10,000 people and they're all photographers but they signed up because of the products that we make. [00:29:30] Speaker C: Generally transactional. [00:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah, not, not too much. But the click through rate to the podcast content isn't as high as what it is to just our products when we send the email out. So we're kind of, it's funny, we're like almost going the opposite way. A lot of people will create content and then try and use that to sell products. Whereas we like, we sell products and then we're using that to try and get podcast listeners which is, which is pretty fun. But yeah, it's definitely, obviously an email list is we should have one specifically for the podcast. I think that's, that's, I mean, yeah, we're going to do a planning day hopefully next week, me and Greg about what we want to try and do with the podcast this year. And that's something that's definitely on my list is a dedicated kind of home like a website for it and then a mailing list. But then the problem is then someone's going to make those emails and things and it's just like figuring out how much we can take on while still not dropping the ball with the cadence that we've tried to stick with two shows a week to make sure, you know, you can't do everything. So it's just trying to figure out what the best use of our time. [00:30:35] Speaker C: Is I know a guy who can write emails. So. [00:30:40] Speaker B: What'S his name? [00:30:41] Speaker C: George or Sasha's ex calls me Gary. So we'll just go with Gary Gazza. Yeah, bad story. Anyway Adam, back to you. So you've been full time, you said you've been full time now for how long is it? About 12 months did you say? [00:30:58] Speaker A: Yeah, about roughly 12 months. [00:31:00] Speaker C: And you mentioned earlier about your previous kind of corporate business life. Let's just roll back the clock a little further than that perhaps and talk about, you know, your earliest inspirations into picking up a camera. Do you remember what got you into photography or what gave you that first taste? [00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:15] Speaker C: Let's hear it. [00:31:18] Speaker A: I was always into art. So my mum's really art and craft. She like super capable, you know, like as kids mum would, you know, paint something or would, you know, she'd help us draw and like was just really into art. So I used to love drawing, man. Like I must have if I didn't spend two hours a day working on drawings in high school, like I was, I was the weirdest kid in high school I think. But I just loved it, right. And I went through school and just art and hands on things were always this really big deal for me and I had an opportunity to leave school after year 11 and I did a trade to become a diesel mechanic. So that was like I always wanted to do a apprenticeship and get a trade and yeah, I went and did that and I was about halfway through my trade I guess and wanted to do a fair bit of traveling like got myself a four wheel drive and. And there was this natural progression where when I did my trade like some of that art stuff was missing because you know, you, you've only got so much attention span. [00:32:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:32:32] Speaker A: And I was focused fully on where my life was at that point. And then I thought, oh, you know, digital camera at that point was becoming a big deal and yeah, I had the money because I was an apprentice and went and bought myself an asonic DMZ FZ10. Like one of those all in one. [00:32:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:32:55] Speaker A: Yeah. With the Leica lens. Yeah, like it was like six megapixel or something. Yeah. And it was just, it was so cool because like I'd had a, I did a bit of photography through school and did some, some stuff through art and at one point I remember mum bought like a. Probably must have been a Minolta or something SLR with a couple of lenses before a trip and, and we had gone to the Dubbo zoo and I remember when we got photos back from being developed. Oh wow, that's like so good. That was so good. And yeah, it's a way it was this interest and the thing that was like mind blowing for me and I think we, we take some of these moments for granted was I bought a camera and it was digital and it was new and people were like, oh, it was never going to be as good as film and all of the stuff that was happening in the early 2000s. But yeah, maybe it wasn't as good as film, but I could go out and take a photo and I could print it that night at home like and that for me was just like this like mind, like mind blowing moment. And like inkjet printers have been pretty good for quite a while. Like just a good home inkjet printer at that point. Buy some photo paper from Big W at the time and yep, go and like print your image the night that you took it. And I was already fairly familiar with Photoshop because I'd used it a bit at school and like the rest is history. Like I just, I got absolutely like addicted to it, you know. Like A year or two later, Nikon brought out the D200, which was like this remarkable camera for its time. It's like hot, much higher resolution and you know, was a really great camera. Yeah. And all of a sudden I had two D2 hundreds. And then all of a sudden I was doing weddings and like commercial work and all sorts of things. Right. Because by the time I was a tradesperson and before my kids come along, I worked like on a five days, on five days off roster. I had so much spare time. Yeah, there's always out and about and yeah, like it was, it was a crazy period of time. Like I love that, that part of everybody's photography journey where you literally just take photos of everything. [00:35:23] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:35:24] Speaker A: You don't care about subject, you just walk around and take photos of everything. And like I remember that, that point in time just so vividly. It was just this mass area of learning and I was in some amazing communities. I don't know whether you guys were ever in the DSLR users forums when we had PHPB forums. Like it was massive. [00:35:48] Speaker B: I didn't think so. [00:35:49] Speaker A: No, it was just this great group of people and like some great long term photography friends that we, we would meet up when I went to Adelaide and go to the Adelaide Zoo or we would go to the Adelaide markets and it was just such a social thing, you know, and people were so open to sharing what they knew. And yeah, it's a beautiful journey, like. And it's like that addiction that once you've sort of got it and it becomes this habit, then it's really hard to. To put aside, you know. But I think photography is a healthy addiction. It's, like, really good for you. But I did have a break too, over the years. Like, I had a few years where I put the camera up because I had a bit of other stuff going on in life and I'd been doing work that didn't really light my fire. Like weddings, as an example, like. Yeah. [00:36:44] Speaker C: What. [00:36:45] Speaker B: What didn't you like about weddings? [00:36:46] Speaker A: Everything. No, a liar. Like, I actually. They were certain parts of that kind of photography that I really enjoy the creative stuff, but the, you know, the weird documentary things and ticking off people's family photo lists and. Yeah, like, a lot of those things just, it's. It's just not me. So, you know, I was at a point where I was burnt out, really. Like, now I look back and I put the camera up for a period of time and just picked it back up when it felt right. Probably eight, nine years ago now. Okay. [00:37:22] Speaker C: And. [00:37:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, crazy, crazy. [00:37:25] Speaker C: And if push came to shove, could you shoot a wedding today? [00:37:30] Speaker A: I absolutely had to, but I've committed that I won't to myself. [00:37:34] Speaker B: I've made. I've made. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:37:39] Speaker C: What. [00:37:39] Speaker B: What made you pick it back? What made you pick the camera back up after break? [00:37:43] Speaker A: I was. I was traveling a lot for work, so, like, I worked in mining for 25 years, pretty much from being an apprentice through many different roles. And yeah, at that time I was away from home a lot. And, like, that's a really. A really. Life. Like, you're spending all your time in hotels and, you know, the only option after works to go to the pub for dinner and just wasn't. It's not healthy in. In so many ways. And I was. What I realized was, like, I was traveling all these places that just had beautiful places, like scenery and, you know, traveled back and forth to Orange in New South Wales quite a bit. And no matter how I went there, I had to go past some beautiful things. You know, sometimes I'd fly to Sydney and drive through the Blue Mountains, and sometimes I'd. I'd drive from here, you know, and I just thought, I'm gonna put my camera in there in the car, you know, and then I just knock off work and it would be a nice afternoon. I think, oh, I'll go back to that tree I saw on the side of the road, literally. And Go and photograph it. And then, yeah, very quickly I was like, oh yeah, this is, this is what photography's always been like. And it just, it just snowballed from there. But I had the emotional maturity by then to say there's things I will and won't do with my camera, you know, and, and that, that takes like fortitude, I think long term. Because everybody would love to make money from their passion, but you can't make passion feel like work. Like there's this really fine line there. And it was good because at this, like I had a great job and like even till I, till I finish full time employment, like I, I love what I did, you know, it was getting pretty boring after a long time, but I had the, the ability to just do it completely out of passion. And then I also had the experience to say, well, if I'm going to turn this into something more permanent, like I am now, I have my own non negotiables list. Like this. Like I'll go do night Phil at Woolworths before I'll shoot a wedding. [00:40:05] Speaker C: Not to knock the night fill people. [00:40:07] Speaker A: No, no, no, not at all. [00:40:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I get it. [00:40:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:40:11] Speaker B: It's more, it's more knocking the wedding people. [00:40:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:40:16] Speaker C: I've had it good for so long. [00:40:18] Speaker A: Yeah. But there's, there's, it's just not me, it's not my personality. Yeah, yeah. I don't draw the passion from it that I draw from many other aspects of photography. Like it has to, has to light you light your passion. Yeah. [00:40:33] Speaker B: Does, does landscape photography ever feel like work for you? [00:40:37] Speaker A: No, never. Never, Never, Never. [00:40:40] Speaker C: That's a good place to be. [00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I've put myself in this place where I don't even care if I get a photo. Like it's not, it's, it's the journey for me. Like every time doesn't matter where I am, where I go. Am I on a workshop? Am I, am I going out on a Wednesday, Random Wednesday afternoon after work? Like it doesn't matter. Like if I don't find a photo, I will just sit and take it in. You know, like there's this, there's this process that is just so good for you. You know, being outdoors, trying to get into that flow state in your head where you're just, just thinking about that one thing that you're doing. And you know, like some days I wish people could live inside my head to get into that, to that state for me is absolute Zen. Like, yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. And, and I don't I don't have any diagnosis, but I'm sure there'd be label. [00:41:45] Speaker C: Anyway. [00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, it's random. And the older I get, the more aware of it I become. Like, my thought patterns are just all over the place. [00:41:54] Speaker C: Everyone's got something. Don't worry. Everyone's got something. [00:41:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:57] Speaker A: That's why they call it a spectrum. Right. Because we're all on it. [00:42:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:01] Speaker A: Yeah. So like it never ever, ever feels like work because of that. Because for me it's. It's, you know, like it's about the journey, it's about the time in nature, it's about exploring new places. It's about all of those things other are photography for me. [00:42:18] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:42:19] Speaker B: Can I make a suggestion for your YouTube channel? I know you've probably already got grand plans for what's going to work, but are you. Are you familiar with. We had him on the podcast recently. Are you familiar with Nick Carver at all the American. American landscape and large format film photographer? [00:42:39] Speaker A: No. [00:42:40] Speaker B: He does these videos that are sort of longer form 20 minutes, even longer sometimes of just. And even more so five years ago he was doing these where it's just kind of like come along on a shoot with him. [00:42:56] Speaker A: Yep. [00:42:56] Speaker B: Like he just films himself going out on a shoot. And I would absolutely love to watch you cruising around the outback going on a shoot, whether you get the image or not. Kind of style of. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:10] Speaker B: You know, like vlog style doesn't have to be high production value. Some POV footage when you're doing your thing, set a tripod up over there and just get you doing your thing. Talk to the camera sometimes. Don't talk to the camera sometimes, you know, hear the sounds of the outback. That. That for me would be awesome to see. Yeah. And then. And then you can kind of tie that in with the next video. Is you printing the image from that shoot, you know, in your. In your gallery or whatever and talking about editing and printing and that's, you know, like I. Following through from. From the adventure to the. To the finished product. Yeah, I love to see stuff like that. [00:43:46] Speaker A: It's definitely in the. In the mix. One of the things that is a part of my 20 videos for 2026. I should make it 26 videos for 2026. [00:44:00] Speaker B: Well, that's one every two weeks too, which is nice. [00:44:02] Speaker A: Yeah, true. It's just to be better at storytelling, you know, and. And grow my skills in that space because that. That's just this incredible skill that flows through to everything you do. So. Yeah, like I've Made a real effort. Like, you know my Sambiru video that I just did, I made a real effort that it had the classic three acts, you know, the, the setup and the tension and the result and like really, really made it, you know that, that becomes habit and that's exactly how those kinds of videos are. Actually. I do have a video on my, my channel. You should go look at it. There's one. It's called Shooting Astro in the Outback. [00:44:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I see that here. [00:44:53] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that's very much like that where it's just come and. Come and shoot with me. I've, you know. Yeah, yeah. So that, that's exactly what I want to get back into. So I've got three sort of content pillars that I want to stick with with the themes of videos and I've got it. I'm pretty, pretty like strategic with that sort of stuff. [00:45:13] Speaker C: So. [00:45:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well you need to be, don't you. [00:45:17] Speaker C: You need to plan, you need to map it out. You can't just go live with whatever you want to talk about. That would be silly, right Justin? [00:45:24] Speaker B: Yeah, that'll never work. [00:45:27] Speaker A: I think like I've got what. There's a video that I'm going to make and I can and 100 talk about it. But one of my content ideas for this, this path is like why I haven't made a video for four years. Right. Like it's three or four years since I made a video like that. That Outback in the Astro was my last one. And I don't. It's three or four years since I did it and like there was a. There was a precipice, there was a moment and that moment was I was out filming the very next vlog after that one and I was having the best time and it was like, it was like this is going to be so good. I was in this epic location and had beautiful conditions and there was this freak like one of those dust, dust devils come through and broke my 2 brand new Z6 2 Z72 while I was filming. And like I felt so hurt. Like my pride was so hurt from that that like it just. That was it. It was trigger. I'm like up not. Not making videos now and like that in itself will make the best story if I go back. [00:46:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:46:38] Speaker A: Look at the footage for that. But I was so. [00:46:42] Speaker C: I think you should. It's authentic and it's genuine content and we're lacking that these days, you know. [00:46:49] Speaker A: And sent me two cameras to, to use while mine was off being fixed and like Those guys are incredible to me. So. But yeah, there was just this story and then the other part of that, which triggered my thought on this is that whole going into things without a plan, it's not how my brain works. Like, I've. I've had three false starts where I've filmed at least three different sets of video to create a vlog to make a video, but I can't make a video out of it because I didn't have a plan, you know, and it's just all this random footage, you know, and dumb, dumb stuff. I did a whole video on the new Nissi Jet Mag stuff, but didn't realize that my OSMO Pocket had reframed and cut my head off for the whole video. Just all this, all this dumb stuff. So, yeah, get. Like going into a plant in things with a plan is the only way to make sure that you actually do things, like literally. [00:47:51] Speaker C: But when things go wrong, you know, I always encourage people, just learn from, learn from it. Put it to some other use. Like, you know, maybe creating a video out of that. The dust storm attempt. I'll tell you a quick comparison story. Was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday. I set up to do some product shots because like you, I've made a plan for what I want to deliver in 26 for my blog site separate to what we do here. And I thought, I'll take some product shots of my gear. And so I got my flat layers out, I got my lighting out, I got everything set up. I've got, I've got two cameras and I wanted to photograph both of them for the, for the blog. And I was using my brand new XE5 and I was trying to get some low shot because it was all set up on the ground because I. There's no clean surfaces in this house. And so I was sort of holding the camera down and shooting off the screen. I was using the screen to compose and. And what I didn't realize is that I'd accidentally flicked the focus selector to manual and my eyesight's not great at the best of the time, so I was assuming the camera was doing its job in focusing on what I was, you know, putting the little square on. And then I went back to my computer. I had 200 images that were soft and I just cracked the sheets and went up. I'll just find something from my archive. Like 2026 is over 20 years, you. [00:49:08] Speaker B: Know, like that's it. [00:49:09] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the way to look at it, that's your first lesson for 2026. [00:49:13] Speaker C: Yeah, it is, yeah. [00:49:14] Speaker B: There's an article in that, Greg. [00:49:16] Speaker C: There is an article in that. But, but yeah, like it is, it is a lesson. It means that, you know, I got, because I haven't done product shots for quite some time and I got complacent, you know, I didn't check my settings, I didn't check my camera was doing set up the right way. I just went for it. And you know, and I've learned from that. I just want to go back a little bit. You talked about, you know, the road trip, about how you suddenly realize you're going past all of these amazing spaces and realize that you should have your camera with you, that it was time to pick it back up again. There's something very, very natural about a great Aussie road trip. You know, we've all been on them. [00:49:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:55] Speaker C: You know, stuck in the back of the car. I remember hurling down the side of my dad's Valiant when we're doing a tour of Tasmania once, you know, all those great memories. But you know, I think people that live in a city like me, you know, and we don't have a car because we are so close to everything, we just use public transport and Uber, it's cheaper. But I do miss that opportunity to jump in the car and just pick a direction, you know, let's go east. Sun setting, we'll go east and we'll, we'll look back on whatever, you know, it's a, I think it's a, I think it's a dying art form in a way or a dying experience perhaps that, you know, people don't do three day car trips anymore. [00:50:35] Speaker A: No. And I think I, I look at my kids, you know, my kids are 16, 15 and 18, you know, and I think one thing that is happening over time is we're becoming less resilient in many ways, like to adversity and discomfort and like to just let go of all the planning and all the worry and all the other staff to just jump in a car and go somewhere you don't know where you're going or don't know what you're gonna see for some people is really uncomfortable. Yeah. You know, and obviously there's things you have to plan for to be safe. You're gonna make sure you have a rough idea of where you want to get every day and blah, blah, blah. But that's like where adventure and amazing life experiences start is when you don't know like you. Because there's all this delight that comes in life from surprise and if everything you ever do is what you expect is going to happen, where's that surprise? Like, you know, what part of your personality will ever feel that, oh, that was amazing. Like, that was so good, you know, and you see people that are really well traveled is the perfect example. People who hit their teens and, or hit their 20s and go to Contiki Tours and go to, you know, travel overseas and all of those things, they have a completely different outlook on life to people who hit their 20s and go to uni and do a career and, you know, live the safe life and, and not knocking the people that are doing that. But the world is so much bigger than the sphere that you let yourself exist in and, and a road trip is the best example of that because it's so accessible for us in Australia. Like, yeah, I've got to do it. Like, I'm driving three hours today to take my daughter to the orthodontist. [00:52:42] Speaker C: Like. [00:52:45] Speaker A: It'S, it, it's in, it's in our culture in Australia, you know, in. And I would hate for that part of us to disappear long term because you, you're so right. Like, I have the same memories of you, like sitting in the back of dad's VL or VK station wagon driving to Alice Springs. Like back when you could just put all the rugs out and no seat belts and play, like lose your playpen in the back of the wagon. Yeah. You know, like I, I want that for everybody because that's one of the beautiful things we have here is just so much space and so much unexplored stuff. You know, see a sign for a tourist marker and just go and have a look at what it is. [00:53:31] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:53:32] Speaker A: It's like, yep. Yeah. [00:53:36] Speaker B: What are some ways that I can. And we try and do this a bit, we drive around their van, go on road trips and stuff, but I do not. [00:53:44] Speaker C: You and me. You and your Lana. [00:53:45] Speaker B: Yeah, sorry, me. Not me. Greg. Although we drive in the van to Bright. Yeah. Yeah. [00:53:51] Speaker C: What are some ways? [00:53:52] Speaker B: Because I often see what I think could be photo opportunities or like quirky. A mechanics shop in the, you know, northern parts of Victoria in the flat, like plains. And it's just this weird looking sort of building that I want to take a photo of, but I just drive straight past instead of stopping. How, like, how do you break that idea of like, I'm trying to get to my destination and change it to just stop or just, you know, to take photos on the way? I have, I have a real problem with that and I don't know how to change my mindset. [00:54:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm a bit guilty of that when I travel with the family, you know, because it is hard because you have other people's needs to think about. But just. Just stop and take photos. Right. Like, there's no more simple solution. Just if something grabs your interest. Hey, guys, we're stopping for a leg stretch. You know, we're gonna have a look. But because I spend so much time on the road, for me, the process is a little bit different. Like, I. You ask my wife, like, I'll be like, that's a. That's a nice tree. Like, and she'll just look at me like, you, you are such a weirdo. But she knows, yeah. That in my head now, this pin on the map exists. And there will be a time where I'll be driving past that in better light or. And I'll just, oh, look, it's going to be a good sunset in 25 minutes. I'm going to stop and take the shot. You know, like, and that's also another nice way, you know, you can explore with your eyes and not your camera, too. And, like, record all of those things for future. And then when you get the opportunity to go back or, you know, maybe you need a reset, and you just think, I'm just going to go for a couple of days back out to the Mallee and explore some of those old buildings. Because that, that is a beautiful area. Like, there are so many cool old towns and ruins and just really cool scenes. So you could just go and, and, and make a even one overnight for you guys. Like, you could head out in the morning and shoot in the afternoon and shoot in the morning and, and head back. Because that's the other thing in, in on the road trip. I think, like, from a photography perspective, it's not that often that you're in those cool places where the light's good by chance. [00:56:24] Speaker B: Yes. And that, that's. I think that's the other issue I have is when I'm like, well, that'd be a cool photo, but it's probably not the right time of day. But then it's just gone from, you know, like, it just disappears from my world. [00:56:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:36] Speaker C: But I do like the idea of, you know, literally, literally pinning a Google map. [00:56:40] Speaker A: Yep. [00:56:41] Speaker C: Creating a collection of that. That particular journey. You know, that there's stops along the way. Maybe next time you can plan it. We were talking to someone recently, I'm pretty sure it was on the podcast, and they were saying that when they road trip, they Have a particular. Maybe it was Dennis. He has a particular camera with a telephoto lens on it. [00:56:58] Speaker B: I was, I was going to ask about sitting on the seat. On the seat, yeah. Do you have an easy setup in your car where your camera is kind of like quick and with a certain lens or something like that or. [00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah, like, I think the things that I come by by chant on the road generally is wildlife because like so much of my travels just open planes, right. Yeah. So I almost always, if I'm traveling by myself, have my like 180 to 600 Nikon lens sitting next to me on my passenger. It's such a good lens. Yeah, yeah, but. And for the money, man, like that thing's just the best value telephoto lens there is. [00:57:41] Speaker C: It's. [00:57:42] Speaker A: It's so good. [00:57:43] Speaker B: So the 180 to 600. But the one that you took to your. Yeah, I took a flames that you had in 20. Was that. No, no, the. What's that was the. The 100 to 400. Is your. [00:57:58] Speaker A: Yeah, I took a 100 to 400 and at 428 with the tele. Yeah, yeah. [00:58:07] Speaker B: So. So your main lens that you're cruising around on the roads here and stuff like that, the 180 to 600, that's not something you took over to Kenya? [00:58:15] Speaker A: No. [00:58:16] Speaker B: Okay, interesting. [00:58:17] Speaker A: Well, it's a bit physic, physically. Big, like. Yeah. And yeah, many reasons. 100 bit wider for that because Kenya or like any of those safaris, sometimes the wildlife's pretty. Pretty close. Yeah. [00:58:36] Speaker B: Okay. I do want to talk about. I do want to talk about your trip at some stage because. Yeah, that was pretty recent. [00:58:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:42] Speaker B: I'll just quickly check in on some comments that I've been meaning to get to. We are checking the comments out, guys, so. So get in there. Because Bruce said I'm going diving into your channel after this. YouTuber. Actually, I've been diving into some of your old content, Bruce. I found one. Someone sent me one the other day. Buns and Cats, Bruce. We'll bring that up at some stage. I need to get the story on that. Buns and cats now. What else do we have? Matt. Matt Palmer says losing camera gear is a rite of passage. Happens to everyone eventually. [00:59:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now that I'm full time in it, like if I break a bit of gear, it's like that was like five years ago. Like it was two brand new cameras. [00:59:25] Speaker B: Because that's the thing is like one hertz but two in the same event. [00:59:30] Speaker A: That's quickly yeah, it was pretty, pretty tough. Yeah. But, yeah, now I drop something, I'm like, oh, no, it'll have to go to camera clinic. [00:59:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's that nick on zoom, that 180 to 600. Just out of interest. That's. That's smack on two kilos. [00:59:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:59:49] Speaker C: It's quite a hefty lens. Yeah. [00:59:52] Speaker A: It's not that much lighter than the 400 Prime. Yeah, I think that's 2.3 kilos, the 428 with the teleconverter in it. So there's about 20 to $21,000 of difference in price as well. [01:00:06] Speaker C: So. [01:00:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's insane. Yeah. Very, very lucky. Nikon lent me the 402.8 because. [01:00:15] Speaker C: And they did that even after you broke two cameras in a. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:00:20] Speaker B: You have more. That's nice. Brendan Waits is in the, in the chat. Good to see you, Brendan. [01:00:27] Speaker C: Hey, mate. [01:00:27] Speaker B: From camera and photo down Ocean Grove, he says you win or you learn. Never truer in than in landscape photography. [01:00:34] Speaker A: Oh, it's. That is so true. You know, it depends on your attitude though, right? You have to go in with that attitude. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's. You'll just get so demotivated if you expect to have a win every time you get out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:00:52] Speaker B: I think that's. That's part of the, part of the process. And it's hard to. When you're. Well, you know, because I'm not a landscape photographer, but I do like to try and do it when I'm traveling around. And when you try and do it, you realize how much time you need to put in to try and get the images. The sorts of images you get, they don't just happen while you're traveling around and you're like, I'll go out for a sunrise shoot once. You're not just going to get sometimes, but sometimes. [01:01:20] Speaker A: But you've got to do it over. [01:01:22] Speaker B: And over and over again to build a body of work of great images kind of thing. Because it doesn't happen every time. Yeah. [01:01:28] Speaker C: And beginners luck is a very real thing and it can be. It can overcompensate, you know, for the reality of, well, next time it's probably going to be a struggle, you know, for sure. [01:01:40] Speaker A: And like, there's nothing you can do more to get better images than just spend more time in the field. [01:01:47] Speaker C: Yep. And I really loved on that. On the video you did of Kenya, you talked about, you know, you went to a space that not many people go to. There were no vehicles. So you had a much greater view or field of operation without other tours getting in the way and spooking animals. You know, that happens the more vehicles can spook animals away. But I love the bit where you talked about being patient. Just, just, just wait, just wait. You know, it will deliver if you're just patient enough. If you hang out in the spot, you know something's going to show up eventually. I really like that. You've got to be present, you know, you've just got to, you've got to be present and patient for it to work. And that's also how you learn for sure. [01:02:28] Speaker A: The sequence of images that I put there with that leopard going up the tree with its prey, like there's a bit, there's a bit in the middle where I talk about being patient and it's, it's a video of me sitting with no shoes on, like in the safari vehicle with my socks, like just what, looking at that tree. And we sat there. Yeah. Like two hours to wait for that, you know. [01:02:50] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:02:50] Speaker A: Like it wasn't, it wasn't like we rolled in and it all happened. It was. Oh, well, we know the leopards over there under the tree and we know that we actually had a cub that was feeding on that prey at the bottom of that tree that we couldn't see was in a little ravine. And yeah, we just said, well, we've got nothing else to do. So we just sat talking and you know, like there's, there's a sequence there where, that I filmed on purpose where I'm literally just sitting there in my socks looking out the window. Yeah. [01:03:21] Speaker C: The camera on your lap. [01:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah. One of the guys in the car had a bit of a shut eye and you know, that's just, that's the only way to capture those things. Yeah, yeah. [01:03:32] Speaker C: The, the other. It also reminds me of Levin, Levin Barrett, who's a astro landscape photographer here in Melbourne. And he was talking about when he runs tours, he often, you know, and they'll fly, they'll go to New Zealand and then they'll land a small plane on a glacier and spent a few hours on the glacier with a tour group. This is one of Levin's tours. And, and he was saying that how everyone sort of did their photography thing and then he just asked everyone to put their cameras away and just sit. [01:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:02] Speaker C: You know, and just experience, you know, because it's a different mindset to just sitting and, and passively absorbing a surrounding versus intentionally photographing it. And he was just trying to teach people that you know, you also got to respect the space, you've got to appreciate the space. And the best way to do that is put your camera down, stop thinking about the photo and just think about the experience. [01:04:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I almost think you need to do that in reverse order. Right. Because if you didn't appreciate the space before you create your image, then it might actually change the way that you create your image. Like you might notice something that you hadn't or you might feel something that you hadn't. Yeah. There's all these outcomes that literally five minutes of sitting just taken in the world can change the way you look at the scene. Yeah, yeah. And I do that a lot. [01:04:52] Speaker B: I was just going to say what's, what's your process? And is it the same each time or it changes? Or talk to us about like when you're, let's just say, let's not say photographing cheetahs in Kenya, but just an average landscape shoot somewhere local to your area. [01:05:09] Speaker A: Yep. [01:05:09] Speaker B: Not, not on a workshop, but just by yourself. What's your process when you approach? [01:05:15] Speaker A: Well, if it's local, the first thing I do is look at the conditions because I know the surrounding hundred kilometers well enough that I've got a couple of places that I want to get to in particular conditions. Which is, is like the first part because that I know that's going to increase my chances of getting an image. So it might be there's cloud in a particular spot or whatever. But when I pull up, if I don't already have a shot in mind, there's a few places where I have a shot in mind and I've explored and I'm pretty keen. Like if I pull up somewhere where I haven't been before, it sounds very woo woo, but I've kind of developed this ability to feel where I need to be. And what I mean by that is I think if you roll into a location that you've never been before, you can roll in with all the stuff in your head like, oh, I need to remember to hyper focal focus and I need to remember to use this setting. And you can go in like that and what happens is your mind is so closed. But if you go in and you've worked on your craft enough that the camera is not driving you, it's just a tool that you can use to create what you want to create. Then I've developed this like process where I'll walk into a scene or I'll pull up at a scene. And the science behind this is I actually think we see things before we consciously see things like our brains, like all the time. [01:07:00] Speaker C: Yep. [01:07:01] Speaker A: And what I actually think is, is if you can open your mind enough, you've already seen the composition or you've already seen the shot, your brain's already looked at it and processed it. And if you can just go in open minded, like, and, and this is the only explanation I have for this is that generally I feel like I've got to be over there, you know, and I'll, I'll, I'll literally go, I've got to go over that way and I'll go and walk and, and ultimately I feel like I find a shot pretty quickly. [01:07:30] Speaker C: Yep. [01:07:31] Speaker A: And that something that's really probably developed over probably the last six, seven years, I guess. And I think there's two reasons I'm able to do that is, is one that I'm never. Technical constraints for me aren't a thing now. Like there's never a time where I don't know what to do with my camera to do what I want to do. And the other one is just repetition, you know, like I've been to so many new places, so many new times that I know what that feeling feels like. I know when I'm being pulled to a particular place for a particular shot. And if I don't have that like direct, like I've got to go shoot that tree, then often I'll, I'll unpack slowly, I'll sit for a few minutes, I'll just look around. I might wander around without my camera for five or ten minutes. And then if I see a shot, then I just use my phone to see what it might look like framed up at a particular focal length. And then once I'm confident I've got a shot, I'll go back, get the camera with the right lens on it because I've already seen what the frame would look like on a phone. [01:08:49] Speaker C: Yep. [01:08:50] Speaker A: And then go and frame it up. But if I'm shooting by myself, it's pretty rare that I'll shoot more than two or three compositions for a sunrise or a sunset. But you know, like when I'm out teaching, I'm often I'm looking for more so I can try and help people see more versions of things. Yeah, yeah. But I really like that just complete flow state, listening to your mind and the way that you've seen certain aspects and taken in nature and being really observant of the things you see in here. It's just, it's one really good for you. But it really Helps you make images that are, that are beautiful. And what it does is it helps you notice things that you might not notice otherwise. And when you get back to the computer and you've got to process your image, you never go, oh, I can't get the color balance right, or, oh, the shadows don't look right or whatever. Because if you're ultra present in the moment when you take the image, it's like burnt into your mind what that looked like. And all you're doing when you process is you're trying to make that image look like you remember. You're not trying to make it look like Mark Adamus's latest work, or you're not trying to make it look like any of these, like, hugely influential people that like it or not, we see their work and we take inspiration, but we also, you know that that greatest form of, of flattery is imitation. Right. So we see something we love and we want to go create that. But I think that it needs to be in the reverse. We need to create things we love and take inspiration from those people. Being really mindful. I just seen Bruce's comment mindfulness, like, two years in a row. I think I've spoken at BFOP about this as, as being more mindful when you're in the field and, and how that can massively increase the quality of your work, but also your satisfaction from doing what you do. Yeah. And like it's, it's the thing that develops your style. Like, I genuinely believe the only way to develop your style is to create images that reflect the way you see things. Because that's the only thing that's going to be consistent forever. [01:11:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:11:15] Speaker A: Because your likes, your dislikes, your, your preferences to what an image might look like is going to change over time. But if you can go out and you can take an image and you can make it look like you remember, then happy days. Right. Like that, that image is going to fulfill, like that place of gratification forever. That's. Yeah, yeah, that's a way. [01:11:38] Speaker C: Because at the end of the day, you should be taking photos for yourself, first and foremost in this particular setting. I do have a question for you about your BFOP or your bright experience more than anything. But just before I do, quick ad read, if you don't mind, Adam, I'll do it. You don't need to. But just reminding everybody that this is the Camera Live podcast. We go live twice a week. Every Thursday morning, 9am, Australian Eastern Standard or Daylight time, we interview an amazing guest. And Every Monday evening, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard or daylight time. We go live with the Random Photography show where we talk about everything that's happened in the photography business in the past week and we also review your images. That's right. We can bring your images up, we can chat about them, we can celebrate them. Plus our Monday evening show even has a live call in phone number and you can call us no matter where you are in the world, as far as we know. Right. [01:12:34] Speaker B: You could even call right now. Talk straight to Adam. [01:12:37] Speaker C: Yeah, just. We can leave. We're not needed anymore. [01:12:41] Speaker B: Let's do it. [01:12:42] Speaker C: But none of this, of course, would be possible without the amazing support of Lucky Straps, which is also us. But head to Luckystraps.com if you're looking for a handmade premium leather camera strap made right here in Australia, in Bendigo, in fact, where Justin is. And we make amazing leather camera straps for pretty much every type of camera out there. And we want to help you connect with your craft. That's the byline. And yeah. So head to Luckystraps.com use code Greg. I'm assuming the discount code still work, but use code Greg for a healthy discount. And yeah, we'll. We'll see you there. All right, let's move on. [01:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:13:19] Speaker B: Back to Adam. [01:13:20] Speaker A: Bit of affiliate marketing going on here. [01:13:22] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, got to keep the lights on. [01:13:25] Speaker B: He gets nothing other than glory for a someone using his code. But glory is very important. [01:13:31] Speaker C: I like the glory. I like doing my bit. Now back to you, Adam Bright. That's what I was going to ask you. So every year we have the Bright Festival of Photography. How many years have you been to Bright now? [01:13:46] Speaker A: Three. Yep. [01:13:47] Speaker C: Three consecutive years. [01:13:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Three in a row. [01:13:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:13:52] Speaker A: Great. [01:13:53] Speaker C: So my question is more about your craft than the festival itself. Obviously the festival, what we can remember, was amazing. Justin's memory is a little fuzzier than mine because I don't drink. But anyway, with Bright, you know, you roll into a place like Bright, which is also, you know, a landscape dreamscape. [01:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:14:14] Speaker C: How does your mind flip from typically photographing vast expanses of the Australian outback to all of a sudden being in a place that is lush, hilly, mountainous. Does your mind do a literal flip into how to approach it if you were going to go out for a landscape shoot? [01:14:35] Speaker A: No, not really. All the concepts are the same. I actually feel like there's two versions of what I've seen through teaching people and it's that how you flip between that parody. But the answer is actually that nothing changes. So if someone comes From Melbourne. Right. And they've learned everything they know about landscape photography and the odd ways and know on the beach and all these sort of green, lush environments with heaps of subjects to look at or like heaps of stuff in the frame. Like, I can stand them in the outback here and you. And like, the first time I take them out in the field, I can see this look on their face. They're like. I don't know what to point my camera at. Like, you just see this discomfort, you know, And I think years ago, like, I would get that in somewhere like Bright or somewhere where it was chaotic and a lot more things to look at. [01:15:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:15:38] Speaker A: But, like, I don't approach things any different now. I'll. I'll scan the scene, I'll decide what my subject is and then I'll look for the story in the composition. So, you know, like, there's a few examples because I. I go to Bright almost annually, not for BE Because I love that place and I love the mixture of landscapes. And last year, or last year, it's the year before now, I went with a really great mate of mine and in winter, and we. We really wanted to get snow up at the cathedral, but we didn't quite get there, but we got snow up at Mount Hotham. And yeah, it's just amazing. But like, deciding what the subject is, which is. Is most of the time pretty clear, you know, if you go to a few of those places and then just, well, what. What elements can I exclude to tell the story? Because I think landscape photography is less about what you include and more about what you exclude from the frame. Because brilliant compositions and really strong storytelling images leave very little to the imagination in terms of what. What's the story or where should I look? And. And that doesn't happen by including more things like that happens by making it more simple and. And excluding things. So, yeah, that's. That's my approach with those things because they are generally more chaotic. Maybe the opposite is. If you're on the Monday plane here and there's literally just one tree and nothing else, you do maybe have to look for something to include. It might be some grass in the foreground or something. But, yeah, like, what's the story in the image? What's. Where do I want people to look like that? That's the reality. Like. And, you know, somewhere, like, bright. So I've got some of my favorite photos from. From Mount Buffalo and that area. Just that just. It's like a Mecca. The lights always great. The landscape's always good. But I wouldn't say I changed my tact. Like, I'm always. What's the subject? What am I putting in or taking out of the image to make people look where I want them to look or feel a particular way, you know, sometimes. [01:18:02] Speaker C: Great advice. [01:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Very little am I thinking what's just going to look good. Like, in fact, I don't. I can't remember the last time I thought, oh, I've got to frame this up so it looks good. [01:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. It's a little more pragmatic than that, isn't it? Yeah. Just a quick comment from. From Brucie. I want to do some landscape workshops. Too busy running other workshops. I love seeing how the other instructors work. It's a good. It's a good point, Bruce. It actually just spawned an idea about, you know, imagine if Beef up had a. An additional day just for the workshop instructors and the, you know, the admin crew, and you'd sort of split it into teams and you do a bit of a round robin, you know, just for. Just for us. There'd be so much to learn in that space. But alas, that. That takes time and money. [01:18:50] Speaker A: The everyone's so busy Professional development day has been brought up and discussed a few times. [01:18:58] Speaker C: Oh, really? [01:18:58] Speaker A: Amongst a few people. So I think, you know. [01:19:02] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [01:19:02] Speaker A: Potentially just plan it, like not load up the organizers, but we could just plan it that we're all there a day before or after and yeah, I'd. [01:19:12] Speaker C: Be up for that. [01:19:13] Speaker A: Incredible. [01:19:14] Speaker C: Make it social, fun. But also. Yeah. You know, like. Like almost the pre. The pre. Pre party. You know, a pre party shoot maybe. And then we can head to the Nikon pre party and actually. [01:19:31] Speaker B: That's clever. Yeah. It rolls straight into the house party. [01:19:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:38] Speaker B: I have a question, Adam, that will probably lead us into a gear chat, but this one's kind of around the way you approach the scene. Slowly. Do you use a tripod and do you use it all the time or not at all? [01:19:53] Speaker A: Not always. So, like, for a long time. Yes. Because what I feel like, and I teach this a lot is camera gear has got so good now that the. The primary purpose of a tripod is no longer just to hold your camera stable. Like, my take on the primary purpose for the tripod is to make people slow down, you know, pretty. Yeah. The ability of the camera gear now you can shoot in the dark handheld if you. If you're happy to ramp your ISO a bit. Yeah. So for a long time I really forced myself to do that and it Made me much more thoughtful about my frame. And. And now. Yes, but with the caveat that if something's happening really quickly or, you know, sunset's about to blow up and I just don't have time to baff around, like, I'll confidently just go and handheld the shot. But the skills that I've learned by slowing down with a tripod don't go away. You know, I'm not just pointing the camera and making sure the subject's where I want it and then firing it off. I'm pointing the camera, making sure the subject's where I want to make sure there's nothing at the edge of the frame. You know, all of the things that the tripod makes you. Yeah. I think one of the best things people could do to improve their composition skills is actually use tripod. Because everything you do is on purpose with your framing. With a tripod, you have to loosen the ball head and you have to straighten the horizon and you have to move it left and right. You don't just like go, I've got it framed up. Get the ones like, or any of those things. It's, it's really on purpose. [01:21:46] Speaker B: It's interesting that you say that. [01:21:48] Speaker A: I. [01:21:50] Speaker B: Back when I was getting started in photography, I'd shot a few weddings and that kind of stuff, but I was working at a marketing agency and I got the task of having to creative direct, and I use that term loosely because it was small shoot. Like I wasn't a creative director or anything like that, but that was the role I was handed for this day. Creative director shoot at a school. And the shoot would be done by a guy by the name of Richard Gibbs. And he was essentially like the photographer in Bendigo, where I live. He sort of was there in the film days. He was very successful, had the portrait thing, the weddings, and then kind of dropped away as that transition happened, where it became sort of a lot harder to compete. As digital come in, there's a lot more people being photographers. And he sort of transitioned away and found other things. But during this time he was still a sort of a high level professional photographer. And we went to do this shoot at this school and I'd shot some weddings and it's like doing shoot at a school for a lot of natural looking shots for like a brochure and stuff like that. I would just cruise around probably with a couple of prime lenses or whatever if I was doing it, and take photos shots and maybe direct them in a very small way. He had this tripod that was so Heavy. Like, heavier than any tripod I'd ever seen in my life. You could. You could have put a bazooka on it. And he's carrying the thing around on his shoulder. And every shot set the tripod up, framed it up perfectly, exactly the way he wanted. Then he. Then he'd take a test shot. He'd get me to take the test shot. You happy with that? How do you like it? Okay, cool. All right, let's get someone in the shot. You know, and he just had this meticulous process. I learned so much on that day of how. And I assume that that would have come from the film days and probably shooting with medium format and that kind of stuff, but this was on a digital camera. He could have clicked away all day, no tripod at all, but he still did that. And yet he took barely any photos, I'd say, out of every shot. You know, he took one or two shots that were always perfect, and we just moved on. It was. It was really interesting to watch. [01:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think just that fact that you slow down, everything you do is tactile. The thing that I see that stops people doing that more often than not, though, is they've been to a camera store who doesn't know that much about the gear, and they've bought a really budget, really average tripod, and it's really frustrating to use, and it's not up to the task of the weight of their camera. And then they get so frustrated with it that they don't use it. And. And, like, I've had people on my workshops where, like, every time we stop, they're like, do I need my tripod? I'm like, yep. And then they're like, you know, there's this one guy, he's like such a funny, funny character, but he's, like, chaotic. Like full in. In the best way, but just, like, almost running between shots. And. And after the first shoot, I'm like, you need to use your tripod. He's like, oh, mine's not very good. I'm like, here's one that I have for you. Put him on a good tripod. And, like, it was like having the kid tied to the tree at the river, right? So they can't reach the water. That's exactly the. The. You know, the. The thing that was going on. So it'd be like, oh, it's bright enough now. Can I get off the tripod? No, because it's not about the light. Took some incredible shots. And, like, it's frustrating for people if they're not used to it. [01:25:28] Speaker C: Yeah. And just to be clear, we don't endorse tying to trees or at least not admitting it live on YouTube. [01:25:35] Speaker A: Yeah. You didn't grow in the same river I did. [01:25:42] Speaker B: Do you have a brand or type of tripod that you recommend to people? If you're on workshops and they've got a cruddy tripod, is there something that you would recommend people go and buy? That's. [01:25:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I've worked with the guys from Pixel 1 for years, so, like, they've got. They're distributing the Leo photo tripods now. They're. They're the best value, best value for money tripods that I believe are on the market, like, hands down, I think. [01:26:08] Speaker C: We'Ve had the custom. Is amazing. [01:26:10] Speaker B: Talk about LEO photo. [01:26:13] Speaker C: They're a great team. They're part of. Aren't they part of Blonde Robot? [01:26:16] Speaker B: No, no. Pixel Ones like Nissi. [01:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's right. They're great. You can spend a thousand bucks on a tripod and you can get a better tripod than you could for the name brands. Spending two plus, like. Yeah, you get double. Double the. The value for money, I believe. [01:26:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Just. Just a note on that. If, if anyone wants to head to Adam's website, which is Adam.com there is actually you've got your own online shop where you're on selling product and. And you've got, I think, three LEO photo tripods and a couple of. A couple of accessories and actually there's a lot more than that. [01:26:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I only put stuff on there that I would use or recommend myself. Like, I could put the whole catalog on there. But I don't think that, you know, if you're going to buy the whole catalog, then you can buy it direct from those guys. But, you know, the idea of me having gear on there that I recommend and use myself is that I stand behind it. So, yeah, everything. [01:27:18] Speaker C: And I think it's a good. I think it's a really good approach to have that on your website. I mean, obviously it forms a part of your income stream or your revenue stream, but also, you know, it helps people make that decision. It's like, well, if Adam, who is, you know, you're this known landscape photographer, you're using that gear, that it must be trustworthy, it must be safe, it must be, you know, good value for money. So I think it's a great way to do it. [01:27:42] Speaker A: Put my reputation at risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:27:47] Speaker C: So, yeah, everyone had to head over to the site. Not now, later. Keep listening, keep watching, don't go anywhere. We need you. [01:27:54] Speaker B: I think it's their, their Summit series that a few people have mentioned that are just good, good value. Yeah. [01:28:02] Speaker A: The most popular one that, that I sell and do recommend for just everybody is the Poseidon one. There's a Poseidon, it's the blue tripod that has. And the reason, reason for it is, is it's a good in between size. Like it doesn't have a center column which is my pet peeve of tripods and like it's built like a tank. It's got titanium threads in the bottom and waterproof gaskets on all the legs. So you know, I wouldn't say it's waterproof but it's water resistant much more than most tripods and if you look after that, you would never have to buy another tripod. That's the reality, you know, unlike many photographers who have had dozens of tripods in their career. Yeah. If you look after that. But I personally might, I have one of them. But I also have like a big, I'm a fan of a big heavy tripod or not heavy but big tripod. So I have that big, the one that's the second from the right there with a really big ball head on it. And yeah it's, it's much bigger but the size isn't such a big deal for me. [01:29:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:29:16] Speaker B: I think, I think someone else mentioned this one because it goes quite tall. I can't remember. [01:29:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I've got the, the self leveling center bit. So you replace the cup in the top. So even if the legs aren't level you can, you can level off the, that ball head which is really, really quick, quick way to do it. I just love the fact that they're so modular as well. You can set it up exactly how you want. You can have a gear head or a ball head or a three way head or a gimbal head or you know, you just buy the bits or you can just buy the pre, pre made kit. So. No, I do, they're, they're great. A great product. Great. Like Greg said, great service, great warranty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:30:02] Speaker C: I met the team at bfop. I was chatting. Is it Tim? Tim was mostly in charge of the earth. Is it Tim? Yeah. Tim, yeah. [01:30:11] Speaker A: Andrew and Matt. Yep. Great books. [01:30:14] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:30:15] Speaker B: Let's talk more gear. Take us through everything that you use. Everything. Yeah, just everything I was going to say on a landscape shoot, but no, let's go. Let's just start with. So cameras what do you, what do you. What are you rocking? [01:30:30] Speaker A: Yeah. So at the moment I have a Z6.2 which is, is a great body to use in low light. So 24 megapixel full frame sensor. It's brilliant in the low light. A Z72 which is probably. No, it's definitely the camera I use most for landscape photography just because it's high res but it, the body's so compact, you know, it's. It's a very, very compact camera. And I have a Z9 as well, which is the beast. Like that camera is just the most brilliant camera. But for just general everyday landscape stuff, it's just overkill. Same resolution sensor as the Z7 II. But my Z9 is the camera I use for doing video wildlife. You know, it's got epic auto focus. Like if I have to take one camera to a commercial job or something that's really important, I take that. Yeah. But my bag that I have packed at home to grab and run for landscape photography is almost always just my Z6II and my Z72. 3. I normally four lenses in my just grab and run bag. I have a 14 to 24, 2.8, 24 to 70, 2.8 and 70 to 200 and a 20 mil 1.8 which I leave there in case I'm out in the dark or you know. But they actually. And I been shooting a lot of landscape on that lens as well. [01:32:11] Speaker B: Awesome lens. And, and they're all Z. Z mount. [01:32:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All Zed mount lenses. I shifted over to mirrorless. Like I was probably late to the party just before I smashed my mirrorless cameras four years ago. But I had a whole heap of travel coming up and, and like I had a D850 and all the old Nikon 2.8 lenses and like those things are so heavy compared to what we have now. I think by changing from my D850 to a Z72 and the three, you know, 2.8 lenses to the new ones, I lost like five and a half kilos out of my bag. It was. [01:32:56] Speaker C: And that matters. [01:32:58] Speaker B: That's crazy. [01:32:59] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:32:59] Speaker A: The new 14 to 24 versus the old one is half the way. [01:33:04] Speaker B: Is it really? [01:33:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:33:06] Speaker B: Does it, does it still have the, the bulby front lens element? No. [01:33:10] Speaker A: No. [01:33:10] Speaker B: So you. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So it's completely different. [01:33:13] Speaker A: Lightest 20, lightest 14 to 24, 2.8 that you can get of any. [01:33:18] Speaker B: Wow. [01:33:18] Speaker A: The camera brands. Crazy. Crazy. [01:33:21] Speaker B: How did you find the image quality change? Sort of did you know better? [01:33:25] Speaker C: Really? [01:33:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Particularly that Lens like the original Nikon 1424. I think it was a G with that big bulbous front lens that was like epic for its time. And when I first got mine I was like wow, this is such a cool perspective and. But it did suffer a lot in the corners. But the new one's like flawless. Like yeah, I've, I've never pixel peeped an image and gone. God, I wish that was better. Like not even, not even a little bit. Like yeah, incredible. All of the mirrorless lenses on all of the cameras. Like I, I don't want to just talk about Nikon because all of the camera brands are doing epic stuff at the moment. You know, if you look at glass. [01:34:13] Speaker C: Especially has just gotten smarter, hasn't it? [01:34:15] Speaker A: Oh it's so much better. Like the, the kit level lens that you can get on a mirrorless camera now from, from any of the, the brands. If it's a specifically designed mirrorless lens like in, in Nikon as example, like the kit level 24 to 70 that was the kit with everything was the F4 version was like streets above anything that they had made in my opinion as gold line lenses previously. Like just the, the lenses are phenomenal now and the same goes you know for like Canons chose a different route. Like whereas Nikon's like now we've got this cool lens mount, we can make things smaller and lighter. You know, Canon's gone and made that 15 to 35 I think it is 2.8. That thing's a weapon. Like it's so big physically it's quite big. Yeah, yeah. And like they're all just going down this road of creating really cool glass because they can put the, put the back element of the lens closer to the sensor now. So you know, and Sony's starting to follow suit. Like you could almost see that all the Sony lenses were just adapted full frame lenses for so long they had that big extension before the lens started. [01:35:35] Speaker B: Yep. [01:35:37] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a cool time to be in photography because you could go buy a kit now for future 1500 bucks and it would be better than $5,000 kit five, six, seven years ago. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:35:49] Speaker C: Question for you. I want to get to this in a moment. You know, you're, you're a Nikon school lecturer that prohibit you from trying other, using other lenses or exploring other lens like from Tamron or Sigma. And, and are you keen on any of those third party options? [01:36:09] Speaker A: So first part of the question is no, like I'm not contract truly obliged to only use Nikon gear at all. Like I would say we're great friends. Like that's probably the best way to describe it. Those guys are incredibly good to me. I got invited to be a school lecturer a couple of years ago which was just such a cool, like such a cool pat on the back, you know, for, to come from a brand that you've just loved for so long. [01:36:36] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:36:37] Speaker A: And we're always talking like, you know, always. But that like doesn't say I can't use other gear in terms of third party lenses my experience with them hasn't been as good but I haven't tried one for a long time. [01:36:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:36:52] Speaker A: So I think it's one of those things where when I first started buying high level gear I had a lot of Sigma gear because much for the same reason now it was so much more affordable than the, than the OEM stuff and what I realized after time was when I could finally afford the native stuff I felt like the jump in performance was like it was much, much better than I thought. And now because I've had that experience it would be hard to go back not acknowledging that it's probably now it's not the same story but like I. [01:37:37] Speaker C: Like but still if it ain't broke. [01:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah, well I mean that's the thing you know if I was on a budget 100 I'd be looking, you know not, not that I've got money to throw it gear all the time but if I, if I was starting out I would 100% look at the other options because place things like Sigma and Tamron are making some pretty cool stuff too like that the other guys aren't, you know, faster lenses, lenses with wider zoom range, you know like there's lots of different options on the market so. Yeah but like I've used GFX cameras, I've used like on a workshop man, I used like every, I, I can handle any, any camera. Like you use so many cameras and help people with so many cameras. But I like I had a loan of a GFX for a couple of months last year which was cool. [01:38:28] Speaker B: What do you think? [01:38:29] Speaker A: That's amazing. Yeah, epic. Like so good. [01:38:33] Speaker C: Justin's been keen for a while now considering it. [01:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got to keep, I got to keep pushing it, I got to push it away. I gotta keep like, I get, I go through like a rabbit hole of like oh, what lenses would I buy? And then I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no no, do not get out of there. [01:38:48] Speaker A: That is such a fabulous Fabulous camera. Like, yeah, if, if, if my work only included landscape photography and maybe portrait commercial, I would like down dead set. The, the thing that falls short for me is like long lens stuff. Like I do a lot of wildlife and stuff. [01:39:10] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:39:11] Speaker A: Know you can do it like without question. [01:39:14] Speaker B: But yeah, I have to find out because Matt Crummons has been gfxing, but I think he kept, he kept his Sony kit. And I have to find out if after his recent trip to Africa whether he like, did he just commit fully to GFX or did he. Yeah, I haven't actually. [01:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah, his last South African trip, all of his stuff, I believe he shot on the GFX because he has the 500 prime as well. Yeah, yeah. [01:39:39] Speaker C: Well, Matt, Matt was involved in the. Sorry, I was just gonna say Matt was involved in the Australian global marketing. [01:39:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:39:49] Speaker C: Because he and I both got it to review. Well, he got it to do media with and I got a pre production one to review. And I'm not a, I'm not a wildlife photographer at all. But it was a lot of fun. But yeah, that 500 mil lens is an absolute, absolute beast. [01:40:04] Speaker A: It's incredible. It go. It, it feels like it goes the opposite way to the other lenses. Like with the, with that GFX system, the lenses are bigger and heavier, no doubt. [01:40:14] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [01:40:14] Speaker A: But the 500 prime feels smaller and lighter than the 500 prime from the other manufacturers, which I think is a really cool thing. And I think if you go pixel for pixel, like you can, you can crop a lot from 100 megapixel image. So 500 prime does have pretty good reach. Yeah, but yeah, like, I don't know, like if I had an unlimited budget to start a whole new camera kit, it would, it would be certainly up there. Particularly the, the color depth is the thing that's really hard to explain to people because they do 16 bit color. And when you're in some of those really colorful sunsets and landscapes, it's pretty noticeable. [01:40:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that would have to be the, the most exciting prospect would be that. That part. [01:41:05] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not the resolution. No. Yeah, it's not, it's not real. Like it's lovely to have that resolution, but like I've got 60 inch prints on the wall here from 50 megapixel cameras that are completely okay, you know, like, would they be better with 100 megapixel? Probably, if you look really close. But I think, yeah, the color depth and the dynamic range is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. So no, it was good and like I'm not saying I wouldn't look at one down the road for sure. Like, if I, If I had the money, I would be. I would have bought one, like. Yeah. But, you know, at the moment. [01:41:44] Speaker C: Well, that itself is a good endorsement. [01:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Plans, plans. You know, it's got to fit within your path. Right, yeah. At the moment. [01:41:53] Speaker C: What about when it comes to. Sorry, yeah, you're right, it's not great. I keep speaking over you. What about when it comes to, you know, you're a dad, you've got kids, you've got a family, you guys do stuff on the weekends, you hang out, school holidays, all that sort of stuff. What, what, what camera do you use? Do you still document your family. [01:42:13] Speaker A: With. [01:42:13] Speaker C: A, with a proper camera or is it mostly smartphone stuff now? [01:42:17] Speaker A: Just the phone? Yep, just the phone. Like, I've never been huge on people photography of any description and I think using the phone solves the problems that exist for me in using a proper camera to do that is like, you know, once you've taken it on your phone and it goes to wherever it goes, like it sort of exists forever, the quality is perfectly good for, you know, documenting family moments and things. And like, our kids are at a point now where they're, you know, they don't want their photo taken anyway. But yeah, yeah, like I have thousands of photos of our kids growing up on, on phones and I think it's a nice way to separate the passion part of it, but still have some level of photography while you're with family and stuff, like on purpose. I don't take my big cameras on some holidays. We're going somewhere super cool 100. But if we're going somewhere we've been before or if, you know, there's not going to be much opportunity, you know, and I'm going to have to take time away from everybody and it would impact on the. On the family version of Holiday Up. Just won't do it, you know, I think that time's pretty important so you don't need another distraction. And it's probably harder now that it's my job because the guys see me do this a lot and I don't want them to think that my job is more important than my time with them. [01:43:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's beautiful. That's lovely. It's important. We'll separate that work from play. And you're right, you know, I just got the new 17 Pro. Yeah. And, yeah, I got the, I got the gold and I was using it the other day. I've been using it for just photos around the house, like you said, mostly the pets because the kids don't want to be in photos. They're all either teens or adults. And I went into the. It's got like the pre prescribed 1 by 2 by, 4 by 8 by zoom. And I thought, oh, the 8 by is pretty cool. Like it goes in really close. What I didn't realize is that you can actually keep going 40 times zoom on this. [01:44:32] Speaker A: It's crazy. [01:44:33] Speaker C: That's crazy. [01:44:35] Speaker B: Crazy. [01:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:44:38] Speaker C: They're not great at 40 times, but if you're trying to work out what something is in the distance, like, yeah. [01:44:44] Speaker A: It'S much better than eyesight. Like I've got two. I think mine's the two generations ago pro Max. And yeah, like it all heaps of behind the scenes from my workshops. I film on, on my phone. Like I have my phone out on a workshop a lot. Like if I like on a workshop, if it's just the run of the mill place that I've been dozens of times and the conditions are pretty normal. Like I don't even get my camera out. You know, my, my time's to help people, not to take my own photos. And I'll never prioritize my work on top of theirs, but 90% of the time, man, I've just got my phone out and if I need to show someone like a compositional conversation or skill or, you know, or just demonstrate, I'll just use my phone to show them. Because it's a nice bright screen. It's like, here's 24 mil, which is your standard lens. This is what happens when you move up or down or left or right, you know, here's what it looked like at 14 mils or 15. 15, I think the white is on mine. And it's just a really great teaching tool, you know, so the amount of time I have it out showing people doing a bit of behind the scenes footage and yeah, it's just super help, super helpful. [01:46:06] Speaker C: And you use the key word. It is just another tool in your kit. It's just another way to help you achieve what you're wanting to achieve whilst having a great experience along the way. [01:46:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:46:19] Speaker B: Before I do want to, I want to talk about your workshops a little bit and Kenya and just other workshops that you do and just find out how you run them. But before we do, there was one other bit of gear talk I wanted to cap off on. [01:46:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, we sort of left that topic. [01:46:33] Speaker B: We deviated. We deviated NISI filters. [01:46:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:46:39] Speaker B: What do you Use what do I have to buy so that my photos look like your photos? [01:46:45] Speaker A: There's two things I like to teach people about filters, right? And I've, I've been using this here filters for like I couldn't even tell you how long to be honest. Like well before I was doing workshops and well before now I, I sell their stuff and I've learned these things the hard way. So not every photo needs a filter and that's a really hard thing to get in your head when you got a nice shiny new 900 or God knows how you might have the top kit might be a fifteen hundred dollar filter kit that you need to have filter out. So the same like the iPhone conversation, right? They're a tool and they're a tool to either control the dynamic range in your image. This isn't a very general overview which you would use a graduated filter or even a polarizer does that in its own way, removes a lot of the glary highlights or control the length that your shutters open and that's it without going into special effects filters and all of those things. So really it's not necessarily the filters all the time, it's using them when, when you should use them or when you, when you can use them as a creative tool. So like I very rarely use a polarizer where I live and there's a couple of reasons for that. One's the, the dark blob in the sky because often we have a lot of blue sky and we shoot wide angle lenses and you get that polarization effect in, in big blue skies when you're looking the wrong way. But two, like I love the, the way the light is out here and one of the things that that changes is it cuts that sort of glare light off the horizon and I don't like to look at that. But my most common filters these days are just the NDs. The cameras are so good now that the dynamic range is not as big of a conversation as it used to be. So more often than not if I can get a RAW file that doesn't have any clipping, I won't use a grad. The only difference is you won't see on your screen what it is going to look like after you process it. Whereas if you put a grad down, you get a bit of a feeling of what it might look like with the sky a bit darker. So the answer to your question is what do you need to get photos that look like mine? I guess one is the to do my online filters workshop. So you Know when you should and shouldn't use one with. [01:49:28] Speaker B: Nice. [01:49:28] Speaker C: Well played. [01:49:30] Speaker A: Yeah. But like just the basic kits. Right. Like if I had to have four filters in a kit it would be a 3, 6 and 10 stop ND and a 3 stop medium graduated filter and that and that, that set of filters it would get you out of trouble for, for the landscape stuff and a polarizer. Like if you're shooting waterfalls in the forest or New Zealand or bright or you know any of these places with lots of reflective foliage or water or you know a lot of those things. Yeah. So five, make it five filters include a polarizer there. [01:50:11] Speaker C: But a really great thing that we learned. Sorry, I was just going to say just on that polarizer in you know, in lush environments when we, when we spoke to Brett Wood. Brett Woods. [01:50:23] Speaker A: Yep. [01:50:24] Speaker C: Landscape photographer Brett, he was talking about. And I didn't know this, that how much the polarized filter, yes it cuts through reflections in water, but how much it amplifies greenery and foliage. Yeah, I never realized it had that effect. It just, it just makes it pop in such a way. But like not, not like a HDR image pop but you know, well controlled just with a simple change of filter. It's amazing. [01:50:51] Speaker A: Or like they have like all of the filters, they have this. There's this particular set of circumstances where it's like that's gonna work every time. Like you know, if you're in a, if you're in the forest shooting waterfall, like a polarizer is going to completely change your image every time. But I've also seen people use polarizers on a seascape where it's had a negative impact on the image where it's maybe looking through some glary water. But what that's done is put this busy foreground in their image or I think that's why you have to look at them as a creative tool because like all creative tools it can help or hinder your. Your outcome and yeah, but I like, I use them all the time. My latest love is that Jet Mag system that Nikon that Nissi do. It's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I find it hard to get my square filters out when I can just have a nd on within like literally seconds. I just pull the stack like the pancake of filters out and put in my pocket before I walk off. You know like it's just so convenient. And the only magnetic filters from any brand that I've seen that really properly. Magnet. Yeah. A few of the other brands that I've seen on workshops and stuff, they're really weak. Like, you know, you bang your camera on the tripod a bit harder than usual and the filter falls off. The guys have made an epic, epic product. And just the basic kit, you know, that's the, that's what I was about to say. You know, the lucky thing is those guys know their gear so well that the basic landscape nissi kit has everything that you need. You know, it doesn't have the grad in it. And they now make the graduate for the, for the Jet Mag system. [01:52:53] Speaker B: Do they? How does that work? Where's the. Where's the. Because it graduated nd just for anyone that doesn't know, it basically goes from an ND filter at the top and then obviously slowly becomes just a regular clear filter towards the bottom. And there's usually a horizon ish line and on a square filter you can position that exactly where you have the horizon kind of in your frame to clear create the, the correct effect for your composition. How does it work on a circular Jet magn? [01:53:27] Speaker A: The compromise in location of the graduation and even the, the length that the filter graduates. So there's no hard version of the horizon. Yeah, but like I've, I've used it a few times and it's, it's been nice compromise. They also now do a holder though for the Jet Mag that you can put a normal grad into. So yeah, click nds on and then click the holder on and then it'll take one. Yeah. 10 by 15 grad so you can actually get a positionable grab as well. So yeah, it's a great, great system. And yeah, like I do, I teach a lot about filters but I think one of the messages that does get lost in the world we live in because like a lot of what we see, teach and consumes about selling you something, you're like, the reality is you're not going to use your filters every, every photo. Like. Yep. You'll develop your own style for them. And once you understand how to calculate your exposure and what each filter does, you'll, you'll decide how much you use them. But the biggest mistake I see people that got filters is I've got a grad. I'm going to use it on every photo. Literally. Yeah, yeah. [01:54:51] Speaker B: And even a night sky photo. [01:54:55] Speaker A: Well like a photo with a tree right to the top of the frame. Right. And then the tree's black at the top and not. That's just not the time to be using a graduation. Like there's other ways to get that shot. So yeah, it's A good question, though. They are an important part of the kit for a landscape photographer. [01:55:15] Speaker C: As an educator in photography. Just a quick question. Sorry, Jay. As an educator in photography, what would be the number one piece of advice you would give? Let's say a beginner photographer or someone who was still in school and they want their, you know, they're keen on getting into photography. Landscape. They think landscape's going to be there. What would be your biggest piece of advice to someone just starting out on their journey? [01:55:38] Speaker A: Yeah, just shoot everything. You can literally just shoot so much stuff that you learn all the technical things so that you can put that, that part of the learning journey behind you and start to focus on the creative and the, you know, the other parts of photography. Because you see so many people get stuck in that technical stage for such a long time, you know, because they haven't had a good teacher to, you know. Every one of the things that I think people, a lot of people never get their head fully around is the exposure triangle. And like, there's so many ways to teach that. And I think unless you've had a good teacher that can read between the lines that you're not picking up what they're putting down and reframe that conversation in a way that you might be able to get it because it's like riding the bike, right? Once, once you've ridden around the block, once you get it forever and the exposure triangles like that, it's like, once you break that barrier and it's like, oh, now I get it, then that is no longer a constraint. All of a sudden someone could give you any camera in manual and say, this does aperture, this does shutter, this does ISO. And all of a sudden now the camera is not a constraint. And once you remove all those technical constraints, then you're not being. I use the example when I teach people, you're either driving your camera or your camera is driving you. And you need to be the one in control. Right. Like, you can't, you know, you can't long term, if you want to be super creative and turn out good work and enjoy the process, you, you can't be in a position where you're constantly in and out the menus in your camera or on Google trying to resolve something or, you know, you need to get to that point as quickly as possible. And the way to do that is to just shoot so much stuff. [01:57:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:57:45] Speaker A: Learn all your lessons the hard way and move on. [01:57:48] Speaker C: Yep. I think it's great advice. I think that's worth clipping. If we still do clips? Do we do clips? We do clip it. [01:57:53] Speaker B: I'm working on it. [01:57:55] Speaker C: All right. Sorry, you had a question, Justin? [01:57:58] Speaker B: I was going to talk about Kenya because. Yeah, yeah, it sounds. Sounds amazing. [01:58:03] Speaker A: That was so. [01:58:04] Speaker B: I was gonna. [01:58:04] Speaker A: So cool. Yeah, it was. [01:58:06] Speaker B: I was gonna. [01:58:07] Speaker A: Epic couple of years in planning that trip. So. Yeah, really small group like my. I wanted to create something that was different to most things. Right. And the thing that enabled that was choosing the safari supplier which you can see their vehicle in that shot. You know, it's set up for photography. Like beanbags supplied panning plates. Like zero restrictions from the vehicle. Super cool. Like they've got custom seat covers made that have pockets for your other camera and like. So well. [01:58:47] Speaker C: What? [01:58:48] Speaker A: Yeah, so, so well thought out, you know, small groups. Yeah. And just put this thing together that lent heavily on the guys in Kenya for the, for the guidance and where's the best places to go and chose that. You know, I could probably go along and add. Add value to the clients in. In terms of helping them get in the right places and helping them get amazing photos and was there such a cool experience? Honestly, like it just turned out. Turned out so well. We had had some of the most epic sightings and conditions and the whole, the whole journey was just super cool. Like that image there's from Simuru, the, The park that I just did the video on, which is like spoiler for everyone, was my favorite was the first of the series. Like that place was just. Just felt different to all the other parks. So my, my workshop visited Samburu was the first park. Then we went to Lake Nuru, which is famous historically for having massive flocks of flamingos. But yeah, environmental change has driven them to other lakes now, but that was still a really cool spot. And then we did the Masai Mara south and north of the river. So we, we split it. But me and another client, one of my clients had a side quest the. The night before we started where we went to Ambercelli for one night because we had a bit of extra time. Yeah. And it like, it was just this amazing sample of, of what Kenya has to offer. It had everything you could possibly want. We saw the bucket list of animals plus animals that you didn't even know existed. Like, which is where having a great, great guide comes in. Like that image that you've got on the screen there. We watched this cheetah in the very first morning light hunting impala. I've got a video on my phone of that cheetah like walking within a meter of the car, like it used the car as a blind actually. [02:01:12] Speaker C: Really? [02:01:13] Speaker A: Oh, wow. [02:01:13] Speaker B: I'll just hide behind these humans before I. [02:01:18] Speaker A: Yeah, they're so clever. We sort of parked so we could watch what was about to happen. And it, it literally knew that if I walk this way and then, you know, I get 50 free meters before the impala sees me because I'll be behind the car. [02:01:34] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. [02:01:36] Speaker A: Yeah, just. The experiences were just, just epic. Photography experiences were great. The camps were amazing. The people are beautiful. We wanted to make sure that we didn't just do wildlife. Landscape photography is pretty hard in habitats in that contain predators. I don't let you just wander around. [02:02:00] Speaker B: I was about to say, I was like, why? And then you said. And I was like, oh. [02:02:05] Speaker C: About this. [02:02:06] Speaker B: The landscape is beautiful. Why is it hard? [02:02:08] Speaker A: Yeah, so we did, we did stop plenty of times and position ourselves for some nice landscape shots. But we went and visited a village in the Masai Mara, which was like a life changing experience. Just beautiful. You know, shots like that, which is more landscape. Just zebras with a rainbow behind it. Yeah. Like, honestly, it's just incredible experience. And the only thing that always sits really heavily with me though with those kinds of workshops is just how expensive they are. Like, everyone knows we do what we do because, you know, it's a commercial endeavor. But one of the hardest things about doing what you do that you're passionate about and putting things like this together is that, you know, these trips are like life savings for some people. And, and that's a really, that's actually a difficult thing to reason with when I'm pricing up trips like this. Like, how, how expensive could it be? You know, like this year was, was a recce essentially. Like I, you know, make, make no secret that this year cost me money, but not, not a lot, but. Yeah, but you know, it was already 18 grand for someone to come along for 11 or 12 days plus their flight. So it's like. Yeah, I don't know. Like it's a heavy, a heavy thing to. For me to sit with. So pricing up for this year, the prices have gone up considerably in Kenya and the US dollar. And because everything's ranked in the US dollar. Yeah, yeah, it's a funny part of those things. Like it'd be great to just say, yeah, I'll do one every year and I'll make stack of money on it where I'll make enough money to warrant the three weeks I take out of life to do those trips and my flights and all that. But Yeah, I don't know. I've got this year's up on the website. I haven't finished the pricing yet, which is one of those things that is the challenge with putting these products together. Like, I want people to see it and have it achievable. So. Yeah, but like you, you get the five star experience though, is what I would say. Like the thing that shocked me in the outside of photography experience there was how good the food was. Like really it was, I was like. Because I've traveled enough to know that some places you have to lower your standards a bit. Right? Like, yeah, not, not, not in a bad way. But you know, you, you, you get what you get. But every single place we went in Kenya, the food was incredible and the, and the staff were incredible and it was, it was just, it made the outside of photography part of the experience just so comfortable that you could just focus on every day. Like and we spent hours over that like a normal day on safari that, that isn't a travel day. We had a couple of travel days between, between those parks in the middle is we meet to leave at 7, like right on sunrise we head out. We don't get back till about 1 o'. [02:05:23] Speaker C: Clock. [02:05:23] Speaker A: We had a breakfast out in the field. So they, the lodge or the camp packs your breakfast and you eat out, out in the field, which is, is pretty cool. Like the first time you're like. But the guys obviously know what they're doing. So yeah, you'll often find a tree out, out in the field and they'll have a good scope around to make sure it's safe. And they unpack the breakfast on the, on the bonnet of the Land Cruiser. [02:05:48] Speaker C: Yeah, that's so cool. [02:05:50] Speaker A: Like, and it's like cool like boiled eggs and like just nice snack. You normally have that about 10:30 in the morning, 10:00 you get a couple hours of the good lighting, then you spend another hour or two, get back, have lunch, have a couple of hours off and head back out at 4 till sunset. Like you spend a lot of time behind the camera on, on safari. Like I think I, I roughed it out to about 80 to 90 hours over there. [02:06:20] Speaker B: How many days is that? So on your trip, Your trip was 11 days. How many days are like photography days and how many days are travel days? [02:06:30] Speaker A: Well, the travel days become mixed. So the first day of the workshop, we traveled to Samburu and then checked in, had lunch, had an hour or so break and then headed out for an afternoon safari. And then the only other travel Days were when we went from there to Lake Nakuru, about five hours and then same process, leave in the morning, lunch, afternoon safari and then to the Masai Mara. So it's only really three days. We only get one safari for the day. [02:07:06] Speaker B: Right. [02:07:07] Speaker A: But they're drives, man, that's so cool. Like seeing all the villages that you drive through and all the people and motorbikes and like the stuff that people in Kenya can move on the back of a motorbike would blow your mind. Like, we literally saw a two person sofa on the back of a scooter and a double bunk bed frame. [02:07:31] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. [02:07:33] Speaker C: Yeah, it's like a challenge, isn't it? Like a local challenge. Who could put the most ridiculous thing on the back of a scooter? Yeah, you never that. There's clips of that travel time in your video too, which I really appreciated because it gave you some context to, you know, the local community and environment and those sorts of things. [02:07:51] Speaker A: I love the, the, the contrast to what you would expect. Like, and I think that's an always an important part of a journey that you might not know about. Like, you think, oh yeah, we've got to drive five hours in those, you know, few times that we drive. But those five hours, like packed full of the coolest things to see. Like, even if it is just passing in the window, like, there's so many amazing things to see. People, you know, you could be driving, particularly down around Massamara, you're 40Ks, 30Ks from anything and you look out and there's a guy asleep under a tree, like literally just having a snooze like, like, you know, it looked like a scene out of the Gods Be Crazy or whatever. That show was years ago. Yeah, the Gods must be Crazy. That's what that show was called. Yeah, it's just the experience outside of the photography, if you've never done that kind of thing, is incredible. And the reason that I chose Kenya over a lot of the other options in Africa because, I mean, South Africa is so much cheaper. That's, that's a, a contrast. Like you could do South Africa much, much cheaper, but it's not that vast, you know, sort of experience that you get in those less populated countries. And it's just super safe. Like they've had peace in Kenya for, for a long, long time now. And the diversity in that one sort of triangle of things we did is just crazy. Like, you know that episode that I did on Samburu, like when you. I never expected that it would feel Like, I was driving in South Asia at one point. Like, that's. And you even see that little clip of the palm forest. You know, like, it literally looks like you're in that sort of agricultural land in Southern Asia somewhere. And then you think about it in terms of, like, reality. And we crossed the equator twice. Like, you. You're in the same bio area of. Of, you know, the. The world. Like, you. [02:10:12] Speaker C: You. [02:10:13] Speaker A: We actually crossed the equator twice on that trip. Yeah. Skiing, just incredible place. So many cool experiences. The village visit was amazing. In the Masai Mara. [02:10:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that'd be cool. I think my sister did that, but she did it, like, 30 years ago, maybe longer. And I know a lot has changed in Africa since then, but it's always fascinating. Those photos from her trip there. [02:10:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [02:10:39] Speaker C: I will say, I know that you struggle and I get it, you know, struggling to price a tour that, you know, not only covers your costs, but. And gives people what they need, but it's essential to, you know, pay what everything costs. But, you know, you said that it's. For some people, it's their life savings. And I agree. I don't think, like, I certainly couldn't afford to do that sort of trip at the moment, and I don't see it in my future. But for some people, it's also the trip of a lifetime. It's the top of a bucket list, you know, And I think if you can. If you look at your bucket list of things you want to do with your life, and that's at the top of your bucket list, and it's going to cost you some coin, but it'd be like nothing you've ever done in your life, you know, it starts to become a very attractive proposition. [02:11:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [02:11:23] Speaker C: No, I agree. [02:11:24] Speaker A: I agree with that. Yeah. [02:11:26] Speaker C: It's like experiences shouldn't be taken lightly, you know? [02:11:31] Speaker A: No, not at all. And it. And it is that it is special. Right? Like, it's like nothing you can do. Yeah, yeah. Like sleeping in a tent here in lines. Roar at night. Like, it's just really. Yeah. Yeah. 100. So the first camp and the last camp we stayed in were tent camps. Yeah. So the place in Samburu was a tent camp, and the place. The last place in Amara was the tent camp. And. Yeah, it's like such an experience, like. Yeah. Like nothing you've ever heard. You hear baboons yelling out. Not all like, their first camp. It was not uncommon. In fact, every day you'd see an elephant walk through the camp and. And it's called Elephant Elephant bedroom camp. [02:12:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:12:23] Speaker A: So like literally past the deck of your own. So when you first get there, they give you a briefing, you know, safety briefing. And they have a whole suite of guards that just keep you safe from their wildlife. And, and you think all the wildlife's the lions coming to eat us, but it's not, it's not the risk. The risk is that you startle a bull elephant and, you know, put them in a position where they're going to be aggressive and whatever. So those guards keep an eye out, make sure it's safe. And it's amazing. They show you to and from your tent at night. If you need anything at night, you don't walk around yourself. You just flash your torch over towards where they are and they come and get you and all of that. And then that last camp, much closer to the predators. Like, we saw lions within five minutes drive of, of our camp in the, in the last camp. But the risk in that camp wasn't elephants or lions. It was hippos because it was right next to the river and the hippos come up out of the water every night to, to eat. So, yeah, it's just those kinds of things you just don't even think about. You don't think, oh, they're gonna have a guard to keep me safe from the hippos. [02:13:39] Speaker C: And I guess on that note, the other side of it is that if you are paying for a tour like this, you're also supporting local community. [02:13:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. All of those places keep local people employed. [02:13:52] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:13:52] Speaker A: You know, and I don't know how well they get paid. They have tipping culture in Kenya, so you make sure you tip accordingly. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah, it's so true. One of the things that's a bit uncomfortable coming from our culture, but you, you get over it pretty quick. And if you've traveled, you've seen it, is almost every time you stop somewhere, someone's trying to sell you something. Like, you stop at the gate of the national park and. And the local tribe ladies are there trying to sell you bracelets and necklaces and, and like, they're, they're pretty, pretty swift salespeople. Like they're knocking on your window and hassling you. And, you know, like, for some people, that can be an uncomfortable situation to tell them no. But outside of that, what's literally the only discomfort from an experience standpoint? And for most people, it's just a passing thing. All the stops on the road trips are always at tourist stops, which is generally a souvenir shop. And a nice clean toilet. [02:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:15:02] Speaker A: But the toilet's always at the back of the souvenir shop, so. So you have to find a way to get in and get out without getting the full personal tour. But that's also quite nice. So. But we, we committed at the start of our trip to make sure any souvenirs we bought were in the village that we were going to visit on the last day. [02:15:24] Speaker C: Right. [02:15:24] Speaker A: Because that way we know that that money was directly to the village, not through other hands before it got there or, you know, or the potential for that. [02:15:35] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:15:35] Speaker B: Which was. [02:15:35] Speaker A: Was really nice and they were much more expensive in the village. But, you know, we all made sure that we spent a bit of money with those guys and, you know, we were treated accordingly, though. It was beautiful. Yeah, yeah. [02:15:47] Speaker C: Oh, that's really cool. It's such a different insight to what you may expect or may think. [02:15:54] Speaker A: Completely. [02:15:54] Speaker C: Going to a country like that. [02:15:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Every version of it. [02:15:59] Speaker C: Yep. [02:16:04] Speaker B: I'd love to. I mean, unless you've got any more questions, Greg, about Kenya. [02:16:08] Speaker C: No, I don't. [02:16:10] Speaker B: I'd love to ask you something that you may or may not be able to answer because obviously you're most well known for, I would say, outback landscapes and your work in that sort of area. If I was to ask you, are there any images that come to mind that you're most proud of? Does anything pop into your head? [02:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, like the stuff that I've created around Broken Hill, like, not necessarily the, the outback specific stuff. I mean, there's a few things in the barrier ranges, which is the range that surrounds Broken Hill. And it, you know, from the road, in many places it just looks like rocky outcrops. But if you get off the beaten path and get amongst it, it's at a whole nother scale to what it looks like from the road. Yeah, I love making images of, of that area because one, it's seldom seen, but two, like, there's places I've been and I've stood and I've taken photos that in my head I'm like, nobody has ever taken this photo and like, it's the coolest, like, concept to come up with that. [02:17:29] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:17:30] Speaker A: Like I've climbed up on this rocky ridge a kilometer off the main road, you know, like nobody has ever stood in this spot and taken this photo. [02:17:40] Speaker C: Yeah, that's bananas. [02:17:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's wild because, you know, it's that removal of influence thing again. Right. Is like, ah, I really want to take a photo of the cathedral because I've seen So many beautiful photos of the cathedral. And I agree with that, and that's inspirational, and it drives you to go do that. But then if you look closer into your backyard and you can go and show people things that have likely never been shown on photography, I think that's like. That's at a whole nother level. And there's an image in the gallery here. It's not on this side of the wall. It's on the other side of the wall that is of this, like, this part of the world that just has. I have this beautiful memories of, which is, like, on a property that dad knew, the guy that owned it. And we were out there every other weekend riding our motorbikes around and going, cutting firewood and, you know, and literally, it's just this rocky ridge that you can see a road go off into the distance. And a very. If you look very carefully, there's an old corrugated iron shear and in it. And. Yeah, like, my childhood was there, like. [02:18:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:18:55] Speaker A: So. So to show people that. Which I'm. I'm confident nobody would have ever taken that photo. Yeah. [02:19:03] Speaker C: And I think that's. [02:19:04] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. I was just gonna say, is it on your website? [02:19:06] Speaker C: I'll try and find it just very quickly. It's. It's another, you know, speaking to people that photograph stuff and they. They kind of lose sight of maybe purpose. And I always like to fall back on. This is why we do what we do is that we photograph what is before it becomes what was. [02:19:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:19:26] Speaker C: And the fact that we're going to spaces that you go to a place where maybe you see it. See it differently, or you. You're fairly confident that no one's ever been out here because it's, you know, it's a big country. There's. It's a really big country. There's a lot of open space out there. And I don't think people can actually imagine that scale. But if you go out there and you find that the way to portray that. Well, we now have a permanent record of what that part of our world was like before something changes, as it inevitably does. [02:19:55] Speaker B: So. [02:19:55] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think it's wonderful. [02:19:59] Speaker A: The answer to your question, Justin, is no, I can't see it on my website. [02:20:03] Speaker B: I was like, I'm sure I can. [02:20:05] Speaker A: Which is. Which is such a plug. Right. I just told you it's my favorite photo. [02:20:11] Speaker B: This will be great. I'll be able to pull it up and we can talk about it and look at it. [02:20:17] Speaker A: I will find it, though, while we're talking and I can send it to you. Yeah, no, like they're. They're the moments for me that will mean more than, you know, anything long term. It's just to be doing stuff that nobody's done, you know, and even if that is just. Might just be a tree. Right. But to stand there in the moment and enjoy it and think, you know, it's pretty likely nobody's ever done this. It's like, it's so cool because. Yeah, like, it get. I have this pride in the place that I want to show the world what beauty exists here. I don't just want it to be just a dry, desolate place because if you drive in and drive out, that's exactly what it is. It's. It's not much. Yeah, yeah. But if you look just a little bit, there's so much to see. Yep. Yep. For sure. [02:21:17] Speaker B: It is beautiful. I've got to get up there. I've never been to Broken Hill before. I really, really want to get up there. [02:21:23] Speaker C: What did you say it was three hours for, Justin? [02:21:25] Speaker B: Oh, no, nine. [02:21:26] Speaker A: Nine. [02:21:27] Speaker C: Oh, sorry. [02:21:29] Speaker B: I think it's three. Three hours from Mungo. [02:21:32] Speaker C: Oh, maybe that's what I. Yeah, probably. [02:21:34] Speaker A: Are you. It's three hours from Mildura. So what are you, four from Mildura? [02:21:39] Speaker B: Just four from Mildura. [02:21:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:21:41] Speaker C: Okay. [02:21:42] Speaker A: So, yeah, yeah, it's a pretty, pretty decent hike when once you build a couple of breaks into it. But yeah, I take it for granted because I grew up here. Yeah. Like, I'm literally like, I can get in the car and drive 10 hours. It's like. [02:22:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:22:02] Speaker A: Like this, this weird because that's just life, you know, and it has been for a long time. Like, I've driven. I've done Sydney to Broken Hill, you know, which is much, much further than Melbourne. Broken Hill. Yep. [02:22:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:22:17] Speaker A: Which is ironic because it's our. It's in our state, but, you know, our closest capital city is Adelaide by a long way. It's only five hours to Adelaide. [02:22:26] Speaker C: It's amazing. [02:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's. It's epic. Yeah. Sorry, I'm still looking for my photo. [02:22:38] Speaker C: No, that's okay. [02:22:39] Speaker A: Like, for some reason I thought it was on that Best of Outback Tour workshop page, but it's not. It's. Yeah, it's. It's not. Well. Oh, here, I can send you a add link to the Instagram post. [02:23:02] Speaker B: Oh, perfect. Yeah, I can. [02:23:05] Speaker A: Can I send it in the chat? [02:23:07] Speaker B: If you throw it in the private chat on the link on the bottom right. Sort of like on the right hand side of your screen. [02:23:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:23:17] Speaker B: I should be able to bring. [02:23:18] Speaker C: It up just while the boys are fiddling around with that. I just want to remind everybody that this is the Camera Life podcast, proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. And this is. I think we're at episode 149. [02:23:30] Speaker B: Yep. [02:23:31] Speaker C: So close to another milestone. Yeah, pretty cool indeed. And you need to stick around. And to stick around you need to hit like, give us a thumbs up for this video, but also subscribe and hit the bell icon so you get notified of when the video is coming in your time zone. Twice a week. Every Monday evening, 7.30pm Australian Eastern Standard Standard or Daylight time. And then Again Thursday mornings, 9am Australian Eastern Standard or Daylight time where we chat and, and learn more about photographers and, and you know, gain insight and inspiration into the craft. Do it. [02:24:07] Speaker B: Nicely done. [02:24:07] Speaker A: You should have it now, mate. Yeah. [02:24:09] Speaker B: Oh, I've got it. [02:24:10] Speaker A: Look at that. Yeah, it's pretty low res coming up off of. [02:24:13] Speaker C: Yeah, but you can instantly. [02:24:18] Speaker A: I just love it, like it, it's just home for me, you know, and I, I'd love that color palette that you get out here. It's just. Yeah, it's, it's really beautiful. And like, I know that I see the world differently. You know, go back to talking about noticing the colors and noticing the, you know, the intricacies of the scene when you're standing there. Like, I know that my, my version of color is different. Like, I know that if I edit a photo and I tell you that that color balance is, is neutral, that it will almost always be more magenta than most people, you know, but I, I just lean into that because that's, that's how I see it. That's what I see is the right thing. And we have so much of that warm color out here and not, not so much yellow, but red. So a lot of it does lean right. Heavily into magenta. [02:25:21] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:25:21] Speaker A: When you're editing. Yeah. And, and always that play off of the warm and cool colors and the balance of shadow and light and. Yeah, I love that image. It looks so spectacular printed on a beautiful matte cotton rag. It's just like. Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. But yeah, you can sort of see in the middle of frame there. There's that little speck on the horizons actually like full size corrugated iron wallshed. So there's sort of a sense of scale. It's actually. [02:25:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:25:55] Speaker A: Really big, vast place. Yeah, Big, vast place. [02:25:59] Speaker B: I bet standing there just feels. [02:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, epic. [02:26:03] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. [02:26:04] Speaker A: And finding it, you know, like it's one of those things where. It's another one of those moments where I've driven past that dozens of times and got, God, I love that rocky ridge, you know, and, you know, I saw we spent a lot of time down to the. To the right of the frame in that shot. And you'd always look up into the Rocky Mountain and think, oh, the rocky Ridge. And think, oh, there's so much cool stuff up there. Like. And then one day I just could see that the conditions were going to be nice for a sunset and said, I've got time to get there. So I just, Just left and parked on the side of the road and trekked up to the. To the top of that bridge and it paid off. You know, like, it's great. It's about an hour north of Broken Hill. Yeah. [02:26:48] Speaker C: And I think that's another. That's another plus for. For, you know, aid workshops where you get local knowledge. You can see a space in the road or maybe where there's a popular lookout spot. But it's local knowledge that will get you to a better spot with better conditions and better scenery. And I think that's a great endorsement for why we do photos, because, like you said, you want to lean into that local pride. You grew up here. These are the colours that you've seen your whole life and you want to bring that to other people. I think that's a really beautiful thing. [02:27:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Access to places is a big one with. Doing workshops with. With people who have that local knowledge too. Like, there's a huge portion of the landscape around here that's pastoral land, you know, it's not. You can't just drive through that gate. [02:27:36] Speaker C: It's someone's property. [02:27:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's someone's property. So, yeah, knowing whose property it is and having a relationship with those guys to be able to go and visit for photography and. And all of those things is a whole. Whole nother conversation, you know, so. Yeah. Yeah. [02:27:52] Speaker C: Very cool. [02:27:53] Speaker B: Awesome. Should we. Should we wrap it up there? I think it's probably. I think it's about to. [02:27:58] Speaker C: It's a good place to wrap just before we do. Is there anything that you've got coming up that say, want folks to know about or anything that you want to just share? [02:28:09] Speaker A: I mean, heaps of stuff. Right. So I'm almost booked out for workshops for the year. Yeah. The ones that I do have availability on are actually in March, so I've got space on Kangaroo island and Broken Hill, those two March ones with special price on them. And There is a special price on them at the moment. I have one place left for Mungo for the whole year, which is interesting. I have a couple of places left on that workshop that's there with Dennis's light painting photo now. Yeah. [02:28:48] Speaker C: Keen to see the results of that. Yeah. [02:28:50] Speaker A: Two spots left. [02:28:51] Speaker B: I'm tempted on that one. I'm just not sure if I can make the dates work. But I did see that, and I was like, whoa. Dennis and Adam in Mungo. [02:29:01] Speaker A: It's so much fun working with Dennis. It would be pretty cool. Yeah, we work together really well. But, yeah, like, there's mixed availability on workshops. Yeah. Off to Iceland in three weeks, which is pretty exciting. Wow. [02:29:15] Speaker B: Sold out. Have you done Iceland before? [02:29:18] Speaker A: No, no, no. Same. Same as Kenya. Right. Really well researched local guide. Yeah. You know, just. Yeah. Employ those guys to make sure that they deliver the experience. And then I. I bring along and help, you know, people with their. With their cameras. [02:29:36] Speaker C: Yep. [02:29:37] Speaker A: It's another one. You know, it's really expensive, and prices have gone up significantly since I set the prices for that one. So it's interesting. [02:29:46] Speaker B: But tourism in Iceland is just, like, skyrocketed over the last five years. From what I can. What. What everyone seems to say is that it's just like, they're just attracting more and more visitors every year because it's. Obviously, it's an amazing place. More and more people find out about it and want to. Want to make that trip. [02:30:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And that one's just one that was born out of. There's a few clients of mine that continually brought it up with me, like, we want to go. [02:30:13] Speaker C: They bullied you into it. [02:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, but. Yeah, I just. I just sort of said, I'll do some research and put it together and. And, yeah, the rest is history, I guess. But that one's a really big one. So that's two weeks. You know, we're doing the whole. The whole lap of Iceland. Yeah. [02:30:39] Speaker B: That's so cool. [02:30:41] Speaker A: We got a helicopter right up to an ice cave and, you know, like, all sorts of cool stuff. Like, it's not just like, we're gonna go visit, you know, the glacial lake. Yeah. [02:30:51] Speaker B: There's a few hot spots. How many guests. Participants are on that? [02:30:58] Speaker A: Six. [02:30:59] Speaker B: What's the group size? Six. And you? [02:31:02] Speaker A: Yeah, and me. And. And what works out good for that is our guide is also pretty handy with a camera and does photo tours as well. So it's really two guys and six people. Yeah. [02:31:15] Speaker C: Yeah. It's really cool. [02:31:16] Speaker B: He's got. [02:31:17] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:31:17] Speaker A: A cool, big Cool. Big arctic bus with massive big tires on it. [02:31:21] Speaker B: It is. Oh, one of those crazy looking things where they can drive out on, on. [02:31:25] Speaker A: Everything and big 38 inch tires on it. Yeah. [02:31:30] Speaker B: I need to see if I can see a picture of this thing that's. [02:31:32] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so much coming up this year, like always looking forward to catching up with everyone at B Fault. So yeah, permanent block out in the calendars is, is October. [02:31:45] Speaker C: Yeah. [02:31:45] Speaker A: But yeah, like heaps of other stuff. Yeah. If. The only other thing that I would say is that if anyone listening's in a camera club and wants a guest speaker or something for camera clubs, I always love doing that for the same reason that I love the YouTube and those kinds of things is because the quality of interactions just at another level, quality of conversations that it starts is always amazing. So I love to do it. Yeah. Yep. [02:32:12] Speaker C: Cool. Awesome. Very cool. [02:32:16] Speaker A: Thanks. [02:32:16] Speaker C: Well, I think that is. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for your time and for the candid insight into, you know, your side of the craft and not only what you offer to your workshop clients, but just how you approach, how you approach your work and your passion, as you put it yourself. You know, you've got to make sure you have that passion to make all those elements come together. So look, thank you so much for your time. It's been a very insightful, inspirational chat and I can see Justin's eyes already lit up over the idea of a couple of tours in his future. So stay tuned for that to come through. But yeah. Justin, any parting messages before we roll tape and move along? [02:32:59] Speaker B: No, no. Otherwise Monday night show, I think we got a special guest coming on. Not 100% sure who it is because I forgot. Oh, is it? [02:33:10] Speaker C: Yeah, Ken Blake's joining us to co host on Monday evening. And then next week we have Dean Holland on Thursday morning. Dean runs a business in New South Wales. I'm pretty sure it's all family photography, but the flip side of what he does is that he also runs workshops on how to. How you can become better at your everyday photography with family, friends, that sort of thing. So yeah, stay tuned for that on Thursday next week. [02:33:34] Speaker B: Awesome. And then otherwise a few comments in the chat that I'll read out when I play the music. But thanks Adam, thanks so much for your time. [02:33:42] Speaker A: Thank. Thank you guys. Anytime. [02:33:46] Speaker B: I will be making the trip up to visit, to visit the gallery and cruise around Broken Hill because yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. That area. [02:33:54] Speaker A: The camera life planning day. Yeah, that's right. [02:33:57] Speaker C: Yes. [02:33:58] Speaker B: In the meeting rooms. [02:33:59] Speaker C: We expect catering. So just people? [02:34:01] Speaker B: Yeah, nine hour drive and then a one hour meeting. Yeah. [02:34:07] Speaker A: Awesome. All right. [02:34:10] Speaker B: Let'S roll the music. Thanks Adam. [02:34:13] Speaker C: See everybody. Be safe. Yes. [02:34:16] Speaker B: See everybody. Bruce says thanks guys. Matt Palmer. Have a good one fellas. Philip Johnson. Thanks Justin and Greg and special thanks Adam. Now Phil Thomas Thompson's says Greg, I agree with your statement about photographing locations before they change. I agree with you wholeheartedly. The changes I've seen in my 72 years around of the changes around the Geelong and the Great Ocean Road. Yeah that place must be so different 70 years, that's crazy. Everyone else that joined us today, thanks very much. Brendan Waite. Who else was here? I don't know Lots of you still. Yep, everybody's here so thanks again Dennis of course. Have a good trip Dennis. Catch you guys in the next one. [02:34:59] Speaker C: See everyone.