[00:00:02] Speaker A: The camera light. The flash ignites. Frame the world. See it Right. The camera light.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, good morning, everybody. Or good afternoon. Depends on where you're watching us from. But this is the Camera Life podcast. It is 8 January 2026 and episode 147. Of course, it may also be. Depending on where you're watching, it may be the 7th of January at 2pm is Vancouver time, British Columbia. And that sloppy segue brings us to. Introducing our guest for today, David Ducheman. Welcome.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Thank you, Greg. Nice to be here. That was an artful segue. That was.
I've never seen three.
Three. I've never seen three whiter guys being introduced with reggae music. But well done.
[00:00:52] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a story behind our intro music.
It was. It was actually we sort of. We were going on a deep dive on. On AI and was like, people were sending in, like, things that were getting made with music creation, stuff like that. And as a joke, we were. We come up with this and a couple of other funny songs. One about Greg on a train and we were just playing him on the show and it kind of unfortunately kind of stuck and now we're in this weird position where we're sort of people. I didn't play it on one of the shows and everyone was like, where's the intro song?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: So.
[00:01:29] Speaker C: So now it's kind of stuck to us. But it was also 100% AI created off a silly prompt that was just for a joke. So, yeah, it's kind of odd.
Oh, is that a. Is this a bad way to start the show off? I mean, we should probably introduce who you are, but AI, that's a. It's a controversial topic.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, I don't know if you've heard of it where you are, David. Sorry, I just want to backpedal just a little bit. Did I pronounce your name correctly?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good, yeah.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Oh, great. All right, fantastic. Should have checked that before we went live. Greg, Add it to notes.
So, David, you're. You're based in Vancouver, British Columbia. You're a nature and wildlife photographer, but there's a lot more to your resume or your CV that meets the eye. You've got quite a comprehensive and holistic approach to your craft. And on today's episode, of course, we want to. We want to dig through all of that. But just before we do, roll back the clock and find out a little bit more about you. I've got a question for you based on one of your quotes.
If I can just find It.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Where should I put it?
[00:02:43] Speaker B: In my notes?
This is from your website, so I think it's from one of your blogs. It was from the Stop Making Art, one of your more recent blog articles from the 9th of November last year. And you said, when we lose the thrill of play, we resort to rules.
When we doubt the calibration of our own desires and preferences, we look to others to confirm the merit of our work. Rules are reliable, but they'll keep you moving in circles around the tastes and opinions of others. They won't pull you forward into who you're becoming.
My question to you is, given that we live in a world where everyone's trying to be heard and seen, especially as photographers, and it's such a saturated market on social media for images, what is your advice on how people can stop seeking that external validation that we get drawn to, we get convinced that we need from social platforms? What is your best piece of advice for people to cut out that noise and just focus on their craft?
Well.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Fight like hell not to get sucked into it. It's not an easy.
I don't know anyone that finds it easy, especially those of us who insist, despite our protests, that I mean, so social is so challenging. It's such a quagmire and yet it does offer opportunities to broadcast ourselves for the good or for the bad.
And unfortunately, when you start putting yourself on social, you're probably also doing a lot of looking around to see what other people are doing, even just to enjoy their content. And you see it and I think as, as artists, we absorb the world around us, we react to it, we create what we create and we can't help but sort of look at what other people are doing going, oh, I like that. Or you know, we see that so and so has won certain awards and you know, you can feel the jealousy and the envy. And we're very complicated people and I don't think we're hardwired to absorb all, all of the inputs of social.
And so I guess my advice would be tread carefully and understand why you're on social and use it as the tool. It is this constant doom scrolling.
It's like we're absorbing all of this not just negativity, but influence. And I'm just not sure that I love social as a broadcast, a very limited broadcast tool. But I do not love and an interaction tool for people that actually will send me a note or ways that I can engage with. That's, it's great. And that's why I got back. I was off Social. For three years I just completely abandoned it. Had felt like I was living my best life without it. But I did miss the little connections, you know, with blog posts and emails. I'm very active as a writer.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: But.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: But they elicit bigger responses and I kind of missed the little, the people checking in and just going, hey, have a great time in Kenya.
I saw this picture, I really loved it. It reminds me of this little micro connections and I miss that.
But I do think that the overwhelming negative aspect of social media is the push towards homogeny, a push towards sameness. It discourages individuality or I mean, it doesn't. Social doesn't have agency. It doesn't discourage us, but it does tempt us away from individuality. It makes. It takes a lot of courage to truly be yourself because I don't think the algorithm favors you just being yourself until you're, you know, insta famous.
And so it's really tempting to get pulled in this direction and then get pulled in this direction and then, oh, look at that guy, he's doing, I'm going to do that. And we get so scattershot that eventually we, we try a million things and that's not bad.
But we're not exercising our own voice. Like we drift away from the one thing that's uniquely us because it's hard to be yourself. It is hard to be just who you are and not feel, especially when you look at everyone else. It's hard to feel like you are enough and that what you make is enough.
So I would recommend being cautious about social media being. To be an artist is to create and put out into the world. It's a. It's got to be much more this than it is this. We have to be very circumspect about our influences.
And I'm not, I'm not, I gotta say, I'm not a fan.
I'm on, still on social reluctantly, for the one or two little benefits that it offers.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's an interesting point you make because, you know, obviously the platforms have flipped with my age demographic. Facebook was the leading platform when I first got into the craft and obviously Instagram's really important.
But it's interesting that these social media tools, I feel, have flipped where they stopped being a tool for us to use and now we're the tool for social media to use.
Yeah, and I think we, you know, we were all blindsided by the benefits of the initial benefits of social media that now we're entrenched in them. And like you said, pulling away is very difficult because there are benefits to it. And I often say to my partner that if it weren't for photography, I would be off social media.
[00:08:05] Speaker C: Me too.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Especially with the introduction of AI. There's so much AI content flooding social media at the moment, it's hard to know what's authentic.
So I guess a follow up question on that.
How do people strive for authenticity in a world of AI?
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Okay, this is a bit of a. Maybe it's not controversial, but I don't think AI matters. I mean, in this conversation I don't think your ability to be authentic matters in the presence of or the existence of artificial intelligence. I can go about my day without ever encountering AI in a way that affects me.
AI doesn't affect my ability to go sit on a rock beside a river and photograph bears. It doesn't affect my ability to sit down at a chair unless I want to. To sit down in a chair and write something heartfelt, authentic, 100% human.
Should I decide to launch something like whatever, chat GPT or grok or whatever and engage it, then that's, that's my choice.
But I live quite happily every day without, you know, other than being able to use lightrooms AI tools to like remove a little twig in a way that it couldn't have done a year ago, two years ago.
I live my life quite happily without AI because as an artist I'm not actually concerned whether so and so's video with a lion or an elephant is a real thing.
I choose to sort of generally kind of ignore that stuff.
So I'm not sure the answer. I mean, certainly it's, it's harder in the sense that there is much shinier stuff out there. AI can make things that we can't. But I really, truly believe that the strongest stuff out there is still human generated.
Not the stuff necessarily that the algorithm likes and favors, not necessarily the stuff that's going to make you popular, but the stuff that's going to have impact. The stuff that, you know. I do this because it is a means of expression and connection and a million things that have nothing to do with A.I. and A.I. will never touch.
Does that mean that A.I. that you know, A.I. isn't.
That we shouldn't respond to A.I. i think A.I. has an environmental cost. Every time someone says please or thank you, it adds, you know, an inordinate amount of energy resources. The servers have to crank harder. That I think AI is very dangerous in a number of ways.
And I don't think I. So I was working With Apple for the last two and a half years as a consultant. I've just wrapped my contract with them and very really, I loved my work with them, but we started to ask a lot of AI questions and I'm just not interested. I don't.
I just want to. Like I said, I want to sit on a rock and watch bears. I want to hang out with real people and real circumstance. Will AI affect us? Of course. But I'm choosing just to kind of, you know, la, la, la, la, la. I can't hear you. Because it doesn't really affect my day to day. If I was an illustrator, if I was in stock photography and making my living, yeah. I'd be really concerned that it is much easier just to say, hey, generate me a picture that looks like this.
So, yeah, you're gonna have to adjust your sales model, your business model. You're gonna have to create different kinds of content.
But I'm not a content creator. I just. I write heartfelt things for people that are struggling with the craft and want to be better human beings, you know?
[00:11:41] Speaker B: I think you definitely did answer it.
[00:11:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Did you see the news floating around about the head of Instagram, the post that he made about photography and creators and AI? Did you see that recently? In the last week or so? I think it.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: No.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Kind of floated around the Internet.
What's his name? Adam Massari Masuri put like a post out and he's the. The head of Instagram. And one of the. The captions in one of his slides on his post were that camera companies are betting on the wrong aesthetic. And he basically kind of went into it.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: I did see that.
[00:12:17] Speaker C: You did see that? Yeah. Where they were.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Well, I saw a commentary. A commentary on it.
[00:12:21] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it was. It's interesting that he's sort of thinking that.
He basically said, to compete with AI, you're going to have to be more authentic and stop making polished work, because AI can make even better polished work than you can now.
But then he went on to say, but soon it'll be able to make authentic work anyway, so.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Well, it'll be able to emulate.
Yeah, it'll be.
[00:12:52] Speaker C: Emulate.
Sorry, yeah.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Counterfeit up.
[00:12:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
Authentic work.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: That's actually a great way to.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: That's what it is, isn't it?
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Pulling all those bits to make a counterfeit of everyone else's effort.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
But make no mistake, I mean. I mean, there have been develops in technology for thousands of years and each one carries with it a threat, each One carries with it a possibility or multiple possibilities, some good, some bad, and the opportunity to refuse to engage in, to not necessarily use it. Will that become a harder stance to take? Yeah, probably. But I think the more polished and the more perfect things get, the more the human heart is going to cry for things that are less than perfect. You know, my, my television is. I mean, it's not massive, but it's a large screen television. And when I got it straight out of the box, the factory default settings were too perfect. And I went on a deep dive to how do I make my TV look like a normal TV again? Because it looked like this razor sharp HD soap opera kind kind of look, and I hate it. And it wasn't. It didn't take much for me to dial it back and kind of, you know, knock the blacks back a little. The back, you know, there were a few settings and it was like, oh, okay, that looks, you know, that feels real to me.
And, and I think we love the imperfect. I think the whole Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, you know, speaks to that.
There's this, the Jap again Japanese idea of Kintsugi, where there are broken pieces of pottery that are put back together with kind of a gold enamel so that after being broken and repaired, it's more beautiful for the brokenness and the repair job than it was before. There are ways of embracing the poetic and the imperfect that will resonate. People will resonate more with than these hyper perfect, you know, apart from the fact that people seem to always have six fingers on an AI rendition of something. You know, this hyper for perfection that you look at it and just like, no, it doesn't. It's too plastic, it's too smooth and real life isn't that, you know, very true.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Now it's speaking of the imperfect or the perfect. Sorry, Justin.
[00:15:11] Speaker C: Yes.
Wow.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: I was going to jump to the chat.
[00:15:15] Speaker C: Oh, that's exactly what I was going to do.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Okay, you go, you go.
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Perfect. Now you go. Yeah. But I was going to say before, I just want to say good morning to some of the people in our awesome chat, but I was going to say that's it's sort of. We've kind of stumbled on it, we think with this format. Hopefully we started going live on this podcast originally because one, I wanted the interaction with, with the live chat and two, I didn't want to have to edit podcasts like, how's the video podcast? And I was kind of procrastinating as well of like, oh, well, how many cameras would I need and I need a nice looking set and all this kind of stuff. And it turned out just go live and do this and then it's done.
But I think we might have hopefully stumbled onto that with the format of having something that's quite real, not perfect, and certainly can't be imitated by AI because people can literally type something in the chat and we can read it.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Out or they can even call us. We've got a dial in number for our Thursday night. Like a radio show.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: Yeah, we got live calling. It works sometimes.
All right. But I'll do a quick hello to the chat. Good morning, Paul.
Morning. Rodney Nicholson.
Looking forward to watching later this morning.
Stuart Lyle. I don't know who this is. This is just someone's managed to have just an AT symbol. That's impressive. Good morning from Newcastle. Glenn Lavender. Good morning. Glenn is actually. I'll get to that in a second. But Glenn's actually the. Because you are, I believe, the most recommended guest on this podcast, David, for us to try and get.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: All seven of you, that's great. Thank you.
But I see Glenn's name in our.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Little world, all one was an AI boss, so that doesn't count.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: So, yeah, it started with Glenn, but then we've had multiple previous guests and multiple listeners say please get David on the podcast. So you are definitely the most recommended. I love it.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Well, thank you. And it's good to see some names. I, I recognize Bruce Moyle's name. I follow him on Insta and, and Glenn.
So I am, I'm very excited about this. This is fun. It feels. And, and to your point, this feels like a human experience more than something polished and, you know, sort of prepackaged and put out. And I think increasingly people are looking for that. They're going to look for, you know, AI is just an extension of these really, really shitty stock photography sites that we've had for so long. They're just taking that soullessness and moving it down the road. And we can respond by creating work that has greater soul. We can respond by work that's more poetic than it is perfect. And that includes our engagement with each other and just being maybe a little less polished and a little more honest with each other about the struggles of things. AI can't do that because it accesses the sort of sloppy middle and AI will only ever generate the mediocre. We can do better than that.
[00:18:10] Speaker B: We can.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: I love it.
A few other people in the chat. Ernesto Creativo, haven't seen you for a while. Greetings from Germany. We're still on Wednesday here. Nice.
You'll catch up. David Leporati. Good morning, everyone. David Mascara from San Francisco. Good afternoon, guys.
Who else have we got? Robert Varna and lots of comments. Anyway, lots of people. So, yeah, Glenn says here David's within the frame book is required reading for anyone joining me on one of my tours. I assume you give Glenn some sort of kickback for that, those sales. Something there. David's like a.
I'll tell you what.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: It gives me a reason not to go on one of his trips. I. If I have to read that thing one more time.
But thank you, Glenn.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: I owe you. I owe you.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: I get about a buck. I get about a dollar every time one of these books sells. So I. I'm like, well into you for a. For a beer. So beer's on me when we're together.
I see my. My friend Andre is here. Well done. Nice to see you, Andrew.
This is fun.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Oh, that's on Andre.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Is that the first person?
[00:19:14] Speaker C: Okay, cool. Yes.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Yes, it does. Andre is just very, very mysterious.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: Andre, like the first YouTube user ever.
[00:19:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it's got number one.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: It's like the number one license plate. Yeah, it's just.
Sorry.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: Yeah. Lots of love for you in the chat. So if you're listening with us now, you have the. You have the absolute benefit of being able to type a question in the chat, and if it's good enough, we'll read it out and David can answer it. So go ahead, leave your questions while we're chatt. But yeah, where to from here?
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Well, just before we do dive into the next phase of the interview, I just remind everyone watching, listening at home or at work that the Camera Life podcast is proudly brought to you by Lucky Straps. That's us. It's our product.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: That is us.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: You know. Yeah, it sounds good to have an ad read, but head to Luckystraps.com we make handcrafted leather camera straps in Bendigo, Victoria, and we'll ship them to pretty much anywhere in the world. So if you're looking for a new premium leather camera strap that will probably outlast you, and you'd definitely outlast your cameras, then head to Luckystraps.com but if you're not after a camera strap, we sell belts, we sell lucky straps, T shirts, hoodies, all sorts of goodies. Oh, that rhymed. But yeah, head to lucky straps dot com.
Let's.
David, let's dial the clock back. Just. Just a little reading through your website. And your bio and learning about you. In preparation for today's discussion, I saw a few little snippets there that said that you previously worked in comedy.
And I wanted to just very quickly touch on that. And how does a comedian end up becoming a photographer?
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Well, I think it's a question of how does a photographer become a comedian and then become a photographer again?
It was just a diversion. Photography is a good diversion and a long diversion. But photography has been my, it's been the thing that has been, it's been the constant in my life since I was about 14 and even before that there were cameras. My father was a photographer in the Canadian military and there were, it was just always kind of a thing. Not like, you know, if you'd grown up in the home of Annie Leibovitz or something like not that level of important. It was just there were always cameras and it was not an unusual thing. And by the time I was 14, I was really like, I bought a camera at a neighbor's garage sale kind of out of curiosity and, and it just, it hooked me. I, this was finally my camera, right? And I, it just made sense in a way that other media never did and athletics didn't and music didn't and God knows, you know, at that point girls didn't make any sense to me. So the alternative was I still don't weekends, right? So, so a dark room was a good alternative.
You know, you just turn on, turn on some music and the buzz of the timer and the red light and the smell of the chemicals, it was great and it occupied me for many years and I loved it. Somewhere in my very early 20s, in college, I've always worked with kids. I was doing some kids drama and stuff and I learned to juggle and juggling led to magic, magic led to sort of this comedy thing and eventually I was doing full time comedy. I kind of, I left school as a full time comedian.
My alma mater is so proud of me.
And my mother asked me when I was going to get a real job for the next 12 years, but I loved it. And I still, there is something about when I step on stage and can engage with an audience and talk to them about things that I think are important.
I think for that phase, laughter was really important to me and still is and is a great way to break the tension. And so when I, after 12 years I kind of got tired of it and I started getting the urge to be a little bit again more serious about my photography.
Comedy was a great way to engage, you Know, I jumped straight into humanitarian photography. I was working with children and family around the world for organizations, and to be able to entertain them, to get them to. To feel comfortable with me in front of the camera. All of those skills were very transferable.
The difference is when. When I left the stage, I got to be myself again. I didn't have to play a Persona to the horror of my parents. I spent 12 years at. My stage name professionally was the rubber chicken guy, which, you know what? As a young guy, I look back and I'm like, good for you, David. Because as an older David, I look back and I'm a little embarrassed that I went through the whole thing, but it was fun. It was a great phase of life to make. I was doing mostly toward the last five years of my career. I was doing large auditoriums, like a thousand to 2500 seated audiences lit with music with, like. And so it wasn't like I was a street performer Entertaining for 20 people, trying to get them to put money in the hat. They'd already paid their money. I had their attention. And to make 2,000 people laugh and on cue and to. Just to give them. To create together an experience that's positive and fun.
I had a riot. And I think that thread still continues through what I do now.
I'm focused on the joy and the positivity of it all.
I see the world. You won't look through my pictures and see the really dark stories. You. I'm not a photojournalist. I'm not a documentarian. Those are important roles, but they're not my role. And so, you know, my stories, my photographs, all are. They're positive. You're not even going to end the wildlife. You're not even going to see, like, bloody predation.
It's kind of not my thing.
I want to focus on the lighter side of things.
Not because, you know, the other stuff isn't important, just because it's not my. It's. Those aren't the tools I'm good at using.
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: No, that's.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
Is there any transmission from comedy?
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Sorry, sorry.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: We must have a delay.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: You're just gonna fight over me this whole time?
[00:25:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It was like, okay, we keep crossing.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: To get you flagged.
[00:25:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Hold up my hand.
[00:25:31] Speaker C: Yeah. You go to a bit of an Internet delay. Is there. Is there anything you miss from comedy now? Like, do you ever sort of think, like, back to it now and think, you know, I really miss, like, performing on stage, large crowds and that kind of stuff. Does it Ever tempt you to ever throw your hat back in the ring?
[00:25:46] Speaker A: No, no, no, never.
I love the laughter, but I get that I still do enough speaking, probably. Well, I don't do enough. I do a lot of speaking. I would like to do more.
If I were in the U.S. for example, I would have a much bigger market. But I can't just cross the border and speak in the US and increasingly these days I don't want to cross the border and speak or do anything in the us.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: But.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: But I. What was that?
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Fair call?
[00:26:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a scary. It's a scary place.
Having said that, you know, so many of my friends and family are Americans and it's so. It's not a personal issue, it's a personal safety issue.
But. But I do miss like getting on a stage and that thrills me. I really enjoy that. So on those occasions where I can lecture and it's not. I love virtual lectures. But there's something about being there in person. There's something about the energy of a room and getting people laughing and nodding their head and knowing that you're having some impact.
Yeah, that thrills me. And I. And I miss that because I was doing it like, I was doing it a lot. I was doing 50 to 100 shows a year and I do not speak on stage 50 to 100 times a year. That's a little much like. It's an exhausting. That was really tiring.
But I miss it. But I don't miss being. Like I said, I don't miss being someone else. I don't miss the caricature.
It wears thin when you can't just be yourself and speak about the things that you really want to comics. I wasn't like a Edge. I wasn't George Carlin. I was doing family shows. So there was a very small gamut of things I could talk about. And fart jokes. That was. The edgy stuff, was a fart joke.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Nice Classic.
[00:27:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm getting old. I need a little dignity.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: So just a quick comment.
On reflection, Glenn has said, I think I feel most alive when I am on stage.
And I can agree with that because I've seen Glenn on stage a couple of times.
At a recent photography festival that we go to every year, Glenn gave a what can only be described as a one man show all about himself.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Me too.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: And he even created his own intro and outro music just celebrating him as the world's greatest photographer.
[00:28:11] Speaker C: So it was an AI song where the chorus was, I think it was the one and only Glenn Lavender. And it was like a show tune. And he stood up there for the entire three minutes while it played out and just sort of danced along to it. And, yeah, he.
He loves the stage, that man. That's a good talk. In between the music, though.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it was interesting.
We love you, Glenn. Obviously.
David, back to you. Enough about Glenn Lavender.
The transition from, you know, you'd reached a point with your comedy where that Persona was too much to carry, and it was time for change.
What.
What then caught your eye with humanitarian and NGO photography?
[00:29:00] Speaker A: It's funny.
It all happened really quickly. And, you know, it's easy when we look back and be like, yeah, I took the road less traveled, and that's made all the difference. It's like, I don't know. Actually, no, because the only path I've traveled, so I don't know if it made a difference, but I was on this flight from. To Texas to do another show, and I was just tired. And I remember this sort of, you know, Magnum PI Inner. Inner voice dialogue thing. And I remember sort of asking myself, like, whoa, I'm exhausted and tired.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: What.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: What would happen if this was my last gig? And I remember for the first time going, oh, my God, that would be so amazing. It would be so great if this was my last gig. And I was like, okay, something needs to change. If the. If the joy is gone from this as a lifestyle, as a vocation, I need to think about other things. And at roughly the same time, pure dumb luck. I was at a.
At a convention for comedians you've never seen. I mean, talk about a serious group of people when they're not on stage.
It was super intense. And during this, I met a guy who ran a children's mission in Haiti, and he was asking comics if they would consider coming on his dime to see his work and then later to do pitches from the stage. Kind of, you know, a child sponsorship kind of thing.
And I was mostly working with children and family audiences, corporate audiences, festivals, but all very, very clean kind of stuff.
And I thought, yeah, that's, you know, that'd be interesting. And just before I went, so I signed up, I said, I'll go for a week. He emailed me and said, could you come for two?
I've noticed you're a photographer. Would you be interested in photographing for us?
And of course, I was thrilled. And I put my cameras in my bag and I went. And probably.
I mean, the story changes depending on, you know, the day you ask me, but at Some point on the first day that I was there and shooting, something clicked and I just went, this is it. This is my next thing. There was something about.
Because I'd been a photographer for years, but, but I was that kind of dilettante photographer who just shot everything. And yeah, I didn't have a focus, like I was really good at, at using the guitar, but I didn't really have anything wanted to sing about. It was just, you know, and suddenly I had this clarity that this, these were the stories I wanted to tell. Stories about, you know, families and, and kids and their struggle with some very real life issues. And, and that started. And I remember going home and just telling my friends and family, I, I'm going to be a humanitarian photographer. And they said, what's that? And I said, I have no idea, but I'm going to find out, you know. And they said, well, can you make a living?
Again, no idea, but I'm gonna find out if. I strongly have the opinion that if I could sell juggling and magic and fart jokes to the world, I could certainly sell humanitarian photography.
It seemed a little more pressing, like there was an actual need for it.
And very quickly, within a year, made a transition.
Did my last stop taking bookings, did my last gig on stage. I had an agent in Nashville who did all my US book bookings. And I called and said, I'm done.
And within that year, I was suddenly off to Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia and Haiti and blah, blah, blah. So it all kind of steam railed very. I would love to say I masterminded this thing, but it was just me being attentive at the right moment in my life when circumstances kind of offered. There was an on ramp suddenly and I went and took the off ramp.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow, that's pretty powerful. So putting aside your, what I like to call Oprah. Aha. Moment at that first humanitarian photo shoot, you've been to 58 countries across all seven continents. You've probably photographed some of the best and the worst of humanity.
What's, what's been the most powerful story behind the camera that you experienced while whilst on that leg of your journey?
[00:33:13] Speaker A: I mean, I know what you're asking, but for me, because like Glenn, it's all about me. Apparently for me, that, I mean, it's the arc of a longer story. And that's the story of this, you know, really introspective, introverted kid from, you know, middle of Canada who, because of these cameras, suddenly, like, I've been, I've been accepted into Cultures that I would never have have met, never have engaged with, and now am like, have been accepted into them.
I have had experiences that I never would have experienced. It's just this, like photography just created. Through all of those experiences as a humanitarian photographer, I've seen the best and the worst. I've seen incredible diversity. My understanding of life and the world has magnified because when you're looking through a camera, you are paying so much more attention to it. You're looking for those little stories, you're looking for those aha moments.
I think for me, I mean, the big real story is the transformation that's happened in me as a photographer. I think I've softened as a human being. I've become much more accepting, much more cynical.
As a humanitarian photographer, even though I was photographing hope, that was what I told my clients. Like, I don't do the dark stories. I don't do kids with flies around their eyes. I photograph hope. And that was my unique sort of niche. In that very complicated world is still a dark corner from which to see the world. You see a lot of defeats for every victory and a lot of sorrow and a lot of challenge.
But out of that, that's where you see the greatest strength of the human spirit. It's where you see creativity flexing its muscles the most.
Not, you know, as some artist in a Soho studio, but some Kenyan mother who's trying to feed six people, including, you know, some kids that are she's adopted because their parents died of hiv, AIDS or like, you see this and you see them still laughing and smiling and vibrant and. And it's not, it's not because there's something good and redeeming about poverty. It's just that I think the human spirit rises to challeng.
And I've had my own challenges and those have got me to where I am now.
So I think that's the big one. I mean, there's lots of little stories, but many kind of some version of the same thing. People enduring incredible hardship and yet, or even because of that, becoming these luminating like these luminaries, bright shining people that are creative and strong. And you know, I think in, in Western culture, we try to downplay, we try to make life easier for ourselves, but it's the challenges that make us who we are. It's the challenges that, that, you know, polish us up and make us, you know, it's that, I mean, God, so many cliches, but, you know, you. You don't get a diamond without the pressure and the Heat.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:28] Speaker A: So that's the big. I think that's the big story. I mean, when I look back on my life at however old I, I get before I cl.
I, I think it'll be the story of who I became, you know, for me and probably that's the same for all of us. You know, we are all the hero of our own story. And I don't think that has to be a bad thing. It. It just makes us responsible for that one life we have.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: It's very.
[00:36:54] Speaker C: I saw you revisiting some of this work in. Back in. I think on your Instagram, you were revisiting some of your older archives from like the mid to late 2000s, maybe like 2006, 2008, that kind of thing, and posting some of those images in a few months ago. Is that something that you do regularly or was that just happenstance, you were sort of digging through hard drives or something and saw some things?
[00:37:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was probably. It was probably that. I mean, I, I go through my archives quite frequently.
I like to give, you know, some of that work was shot 10, 15 years ago. I like to give the photographer that I am now a chance to react to older work. And especially before I kind of like 10 to 15 years is where I start really deleting images.
If I go and I shoot 38,000 images on a safari, I generally don't delete much. I give to sort of to look into the future. I give the photographer I'm going to become in a few years a chance to eventually to look at that work and, and judge it because he's going to be a better photographer than I am now. He's going to have more refined taste, he's going to understand his craft better. He's going to have a better grasp of tools and different tools. There will be tools in five years that I don't have access to, but the photographer I'm going to become will be able to look at that work with a whole different set of filters.
So I frequently revisit old work and try to look through it through these, you know, my current filters. And once in a while I kind of. I get on a. Like, I should really post some stuff, the Insta. And I do it for like a week and then I lose interest again.
So, you know, it's like, if you see a barrage of stuff from me.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Get it while you can.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: Because in, in five days I'll be like, I freaking hate Instagram. And then I'll disappear for a month. So I think that's Love me or leave me. That's the way it is. It's a very binge purge kind of, kind of thing.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: Let me just jump to a couple of comments.
I can't see where we were. Rubber chicken guy. I think that was the last comment from Glenn.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Glenn's gonna haunt me. Every time I mention that someone comes back and goes, hey, by the way, I found your DVD on Amazon. I'm like, oh God, please don't watch it. Like, save the $9.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: Save it.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: It's a different person from a different life.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: Sorry, go on, Glenn. Comments. That funny thing is David's comedic voice still manages to share thoughtful and creative ideas.
Robert Varner trying to chicken.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Glenn said, I think I feel the. Did we cover this earlier? I think I feel the most.
Yeah. That led to the thing. Yep.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: There is a, there's a comment there from 2.28 Photography that says if this were to get a million viewers, the chat would become untenable. How do you sustain and protect authentic human connections whilst accommodating growth? The reason I wanted to highlight this is I, I. And I'm sure you would have to it, but I don't think connection is scalable and I think we've made scalability a really important thing.
I don't think it's scalable. When I look at the people I have one good friend I'm thinking of who's a world class photographer, he's got 7.1 million Instagram followers and he loves what he does, he's really good at what he does. But I don't think he has the connection that I have with my audience because at a certain point scalability takes you into a whole different realm and, and it offers him things that I don't have access to. You know, the people that he's now in touch with, you know, will sit around, he's like, yeah, so, you know, so I was talking to Brian Adams. Oh God, you know, or whoever I, you know, I don't have that. I have normal people, but I have a connection on a level that, that I don't think you can have at a million or whatever. So a lot of people chase scalability.
I don't think it's valuable, I don't think it dilutes. Right. It's about impact for me. And the more it dilutes, the less impact I think I can have.
And there's a middle ground there, but I think we need to stop playing with numbers. I think the numbers aren't important. I would rather have Quality over quantity. I'd rather have impact over scale.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's well said.
[00:41:21] Speaker C: I was actually, I was actually watching one of your videos on your YouTube channel from eight years ago, I think, I think it was.
[00:41:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think my laptop was wood burning back at that point. That's a long time ago.
[00:41:37] Speaker C: Steam powered.
It was, it was a three part series, I think, on how to get known about eight years ago. And I was actually interested to ask you about it and, and sort of revisit that topic today because I think a lot of the things that you brought up around, like what are you trying to be known for? What's the. What, what it. Like, what's the actual purpose of trying to become more known in whatever channel it is that you're trying to become more known and, and that kind of thing. Do you have any thoughts on that now with photographers that want to become more, you know, have more followers and become more well known?
[00:42:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so.
I'm big on biographies of creative people and professionals. I'm very interested in the lives that people have lived. And when I think about the people that we know, right, the artists that we know and love and that are really like, distinct, they are who they are because they're distinct, because there is no one else like them.
Prince, whether you loved his music or not, will always only ever be Prince. And you're not like, hey, was he that guy? No, no, that's another. No, Prince was Prince. David Bowie was David Bowie. The people that we look at, actors, musicians, artists, you know, no one's like, oh, Picasso, was he that guy that did these dreamy lilies? And no, that's Monet. Oh, yeah, I get them confused. Nobody gets Picasso and Monet confused. They're so distinctly their own people. And I think, to go back to previous conversation, this push towards homogeny where we're. Where I can look at 100 different travel influencers and I've got. I'm so sick of that name. We don't need influencers. We need leaders. And these people are all just regurgitating the same garbage and, and applying the same lightroom filters. And their pictures all look like each other. Now, admittedly, you know, I mean, I'm not the world's most like, out there guy, but I do like to think that if you saw one of my images, you might, before you saw image credit, go, I think that might be one of David's, or read something that I wrote and go, wow, that sounds a lot like David. Because I speak about this And I speak about it in this way. Not in this way, this way, this way. I'm not trying on 100 hats, I'm just trying to be me. And so that I think is the key however else you do it. Because in eight years, my advice on how to get known, I mean the mechanism by which we do that is so different now you have to contend with the algorithm. And I'm so glad that I kind of, you know, that I created my first book when I did because I think I hit it at the right time.
Sheer dumb luck. Again, it's not because I'm anything special, but I have figured out that I don't want to be anyone but myself. I don't want to, and we'll talk about gear later on, but I don't want to be the guy that people come to and go, so you know everything about the Sony A7R3.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: What?
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Tell me about the. And I'm like, I.
I haven't the foggiest friggin idea. I can't even keep track of Sony's model numbers. You know, I know the ones I use because it's an A1 and no one can forget A1. That's why I don't upgrade to the Mark 2 because it's just too complicated. It's just more numbers, more letters.
I'm not that guy and I'm perfectly comfortable saying, you know what, ask me a technical question, I'll see if we can muddle through it together. But if I answer it, it's going to be in service of your creativity. It's going to, I'm going to first say, what do you want to do with this tool? How do you want to make it work? Is there a better tool? I want to ask those questions.
I'm not interested in how many megapixels you have. I can look that up, I can google that shit and figure it out.
So I know who I am, I know my voice. For better or worse.
If you want to get known, whatever that means.
If I were going to redo that thing, I would, I would get rid of it and I would say, how do you have impact? Because that's what's important. If you have impact, you will get known.
And again, whether it scales or not, to what degree? Different conversation.
But I think you need to be unapologetically you.
[00:45:44] Speaker B: Just a quick question on.
We're talking a moment ago about creativity versus technical, knowing all the technical stuff and I want to read one of your quotes again because I love your quotes.
This is from the Evolving Photographer, which is one of your blogs from August of last year. The technician pushes the artist in us forward, and the artist pulls the technician into places they've never been needed before.
Iron sharpens iron, as they say.
With that sentiment in mind, do you think that current with photographers that are entering the industry now, that have gone through education, do you think that education is failing the creative artist in favor of the technical one?
[00:46:28] Speaker A: I think it always has. If we're talking about just the popular photography movement, I think it always has because the first thing you have to learn is the technical. And unfortunately, it's often the only thing that gets focused on, whereas there are other realms in the arts that are a little more, you know, artsy, fartsy, poet warrior kind of.
This is so heavily technical at first, and sometimes people never get past the technical stuff. So it just remains an exercise in technical, you know, figuring out technical stuff. And some people get into it because of the technical. Right. The camera is a technical marvel. It's fun to play with. It's, you know, it's interesting, and there's lots of gadgets, and so some people never get past that. And that's fine if that's, if they just want to play with cameras. But, yeah, I think that, that there is a huge opportunity. And it's part of what I'm trying to fill is as, I mean, I'm not the only voice talking about this stuff for sure, but I don't ever want to be the guy really talking about technical because there are so many good voices that are talking about it in ways that are much more like I could form an opinion technically about something specific. And like, in three months, it's, if that it's obsolete and I can't keep up. I, I, it drives me crazy. Every time I open Lightroom, I'm like, oh, my God, they move my tools. Where the hell is my, you know, my, where's my split toning? Oh, my God. Now split toning's become channel mixer.
[00:47:58] Speaker C: No.
[00:47:58] Speaker A: What did they change it to anyway? It doesn't matter.
Yeah, color grading. You, you figure it out, right? But it's like, it just, it's this juggernaut that keeps moving, and, and I think you do need to keep learning that stuff at a pace that, that suits your own personality and time constraints.
But I think to do it in separate from the artist who's asking colors about asking questions like, what colors? There are people that know how to use color grading, like, technically, that have no sense of how to actually mix Colors that don't really understand or have taste. Where color is concerned, that's a more artistic question. I think they have to, they have to grow together if the one is going to be, you know, if it's going to serve us any more than just being an exercise in the technical. You know, I don't know all the things about sharpening and noise reduction. I know enough to make it not noisy. I know enough to make it sharp enough.
But every time I learn a new thing, I have a new tool and I go, oh, how can I apply this to making a stronger photograph that moves the heart, that stirs the imagination?
So getting back to that quote. Yeah, it's. It's sort of. It's like this. And I, I do think we've neglected the artistic side, but I, I think we need an approach that's more holistic, that's like, let's, let's pull them up equally. Let's. For the artists, let's have a little lesson on geekery and, and nerd out on some technical stuff. And for the nerds, let's maybe learn to, to loosen up a little bit on, on the jargon and speak to the heart a little bit more. Let's take a class in poetry.
It should be. I think I hate using the word should, but there's an opportunity there when both pull each other up as opposed to this heavily. Like, if you're heavy on one side, you're probably missing an opportunity to advance your craft and your art.
[00:49:54] Speaker B: And given that you are an educator, you know, you run workshops, you do tours both domestically for you and abroad.
And also a side question. Why haven't you brought anyone to Australia yet?
We'll get to that later. But I forgot my question.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: I did. I did. For the record, I did come to Australia. I did a thing in Melbourne a few years ago at the aipp, and I had a wonderful time. But they put my keynote like first thing in the morning after the previous night before this big awards show. And no one likes their awards like Australians. My God, you people are rabid about that.
And, and so they were partying late into the night, and then I had like a 9am keynote address the next morning.
So anyway, I got a little. I got a little burned by, by that. But I have been. And I would come back. I love Australians.
[00:50:47] Speaker C: Yeah, well, good.
[00:50:48] Speaker B: Anytime. You're welcome. Justin's got a. Justin's got a couch.
I have.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: Quickly, Greg, I just, I just want to. So you see that, that concept that you were talking about and the gap between the technical and the creative being a space for progress.
I did I. That when I hadn't heard that concept before, before I was actually researching for this episode.
But it resonated with me because I've often thought about that in my photographic career, that I had this idea in my mind of the gap between feeling.
What's the right word?
Competent, almost good, feeling good at what I do, and then. And then feeling really insecure and like I'm not a good photographer. And that that cycle is what made me progress to getting better and better because I needed to feel good and like I was creating great work to keep going. But then I. Then I would have these moments where I see someone else's work or have a bad shoot or something like that and feel like I'm so far behind. And that's what drove me to learn something new or tackle things in a different way or whatever and progress to the next level. And it was that sort of gap between, I guess, competency or feeling good about what you're doing and feeling insecure or like you. You have so, so far to go that helped drive me forward.
[00:52:18] Speaker A: But that's important, isn't it? Like, you need, in order to have room to grow. You need to have room to grow, and it's only going to be looking at your craft and seeing something. You know, I always. I'm always asking myself, like, what's missing? Like, I've done all this work in Africa.
What. What would I like to see in my portfolio that's not. Not there now? And. And it's not a, you know, beat yourself up kind of thing. It's like, okay, you've done that. What's the next challenge? What's the next thing? And it's. With time, it becomes less about beating myself up. I can. I can hold two feelings about my work at the same time. One is I'm really proud of where it's come, and the other is it still has room to grow. Especially when you look at older work, right? You look at older work and you're like. It's like the stuff I was so proud of 10 years ago. I'm like, did I put that in a book? It might be time for a second edition.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: You know what's interesting about doing that? I'm sorry, you go. You go.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: No, go ahead, Greg.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just going to say that going back to your old work, as you grow and you develop, sometimes I go back and look at some of my older images and the ones that i5 starred sure, they were good, they were competent, but it's the ones that I didn't five star that often seemed to me more because my, my eye has changed, my appreciation for my craft has changed. And, and I think that the images, maybe I had something back then when I took that image that I didn't write as being worthy to share or to, you know, print or whatever it may be that actually now those images feel stronger than the ones that I thought back then were my best.
[00:53:49] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:53:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: We, we, when we edit, we look through. And by edit I mean, you know, like choosing our keepers, not post production. We're, we're always looking through different filters.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Right?
[00:54:00] Speaker A: We're looking for, on one given day, we're looking for, for what's going to play well on Instra. Or we're in a color phase, not a black and white phase. Or we're, we're really much more about the horizontal than we are about the, the vertical or blah, blah, blah. There's so many filters we look through that you can't help but be affected by that. And that's why I think you need to give your edits many opportunities, go back and see it through a different lens than you did a year ago, because, you know, you now may be in a color phase, whereas before you were in a black and white phase. And that image that you rejected, no, it would not have made a good color image. It's a spectacular black and white image.
And now the reverse and you're like, oh my God, how did I not see this? Why is it not, you know, why is it not like front and center on my website was because you didn't see it. And seeing is a mental exercise, not an, not an eye exercise.
Just because you looked at it doesn't mean you saw it.
So I think it's really important that we give ourselves that patience and that grace to become the photographer we're going to become and let that photographer weigh in on older work. And, and you know, it's.
None of this has to be, you know, like there's no pressure to come back from a shoot and be like, oh, I gotta have 100 image. No, you don't. You have to have one. Maybe one great photograph or have learned. Maybe you have none, but you learn some great lessons. Or maybe you come back and you're like, man, that was a bust photographically. What an experience. Look, I tell you what, on your deathbed, you're not going to be wishing you had a blue ribbon photograph from that. You're going to Be remembering the experience. You're going to remember the story and you're going to become a different person because of it. So I think we need to. We're not curing cancer here. We all need to take a deep breath and kind of. It's. We're just making pictures, man. Like, yep.
[00:55:49] Speaker C: We actually had a. A really fun competition that we just ran on this podcast a few days ago. We, we called it the best photo of the year competition.
Self titled, you know, but we're claiming the whole world anyway, so everyone was able to submit a photo, their best photo that they captured in 2025.
But the real kind of crux of it was what the writing. Why this was your best photo of 2025. Why did you pick this image? And we brought them all up on the show and read through the whys and it. Yeah, that the process. Because I realized after I set this challenge, everyone to do that I would have to do it myself. And the process of looking through your lightroom catalog from 2025 and trying to choose one image that had some sort of why as to why you think this is your best image of 2025 was a really fun process to do. And I think it's really emotional process.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: Going back and revisiting not only our memories, what we look for, sharing those images about the 40 images that we receive for review, sharing that and the stories live with us and with our viewers. That was such a powerful experience. You know, I shed a tear over more the story than anything that, you know, that was kind of bracketing this photo, holding this photo in place. It was really powerful.
Going back to education, I've remembered my question from earlier, so I need to get this one out. My memory's fading.
You know, you run tourism workshops and you have a natural. We like to call it gift of the gab here in Australia. I don't know if it's an Australian term, but it's a term that we use. You love telling stories.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: I am not known for my brevity, Greg. I am not known for being brief. So no, I think that's absolutely appropriate.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: Okay. Gift of the gab. There you go. You can use that if you want.
When you come across.
When you have a group of people with you photographers and you're all sharing an experience, how do you support the more technical photographer who versus the creative one? How do you get that technical photographer out of their numbers and into seeing the world?
[00:58:12] Speaker A: I think it starts with just a conversation about what do you want? What do you feel?
I'm big on the soft skill stuff, like, the camera's great, but it's insufficient.
And so that's where we have conversations about taking risks and trying something new and thinking kind of obliquely, we can be very. All of us can be very. You know, this is the way we see the world.
And I want to mix that up. So I will encourage people to change their approach.
One example I often give, when I was still doing workshops in Venice, I let my students just go. We never photograph together. You go, you photograph. I'll find you somewhere in the city, and I'll come next to you and say, you know, how's it going? And the number of times is like, oh, well, not so good, you know. And I'm like, okay, well, can I see what you're shooting? Which, of course terrifies people because they think I want to see some magical thing on the back of their camera screen. What I want to see is that they've tried everything. That in one scene, when they've said it's not really working most of the time, I look at what's on the back of the camera, I go, no, you're not really working because you stood in one place and you just kept pressing the shutter. You didn't change anything. Maybe you changed your shutter speed.
[00:59:23] Speaker C: Speed.
[00:59:23] Speaker A: I want to see that you walked 360 degrees. I want to see that you got on your hands and knees. I want to see that you climbed to the top of a spire. I want to see that you tried things and failed.
Because that's what's going to get you to that one image where you finally go, oh, hang on a sec. And then you try a few more things. And then you're like, oh, this is really working way down the line. You're like, oh, yeah, right. You get to your hell yes way down the line.
And so that's. Those are the kinds of things that I encourage people to do, is just to, you know, see it differently, perceive it, feel it differently, and think about it for a minute. Like, back off of the. The shoulds. What lens should I use? What shutter speed should I use? What. What aperture should I use? Back off of the shoulds and ask yourself, what could I be doing? What could I do here? Well, you could put on a 16 millimeter fisheye. You could put on a 600 millimeter lilac.
Play with it. Let's experiment with all the possibilities. Because should directs you into a yes or a no. A this or that could opens up infinite possibilities. And then it's like, okay, so now, with all of these laid out in front of me, what do I want to do? What do I want to try? Do I want to try black and white? You know, you're not thinking about, you know, how would Steve McCurry shoot this? How would Ansel Adams? You're thinking, how do I want to do this?
And it becomes playful and it becomes experimental. And if we can get away from the strict technical should thinking, I think creativity opens up for us. That technical stuff still serves you. It's still a background, you know, it's a foundation on which you build. But it alone isn't going to suffice. It's not going to make images that just are total. Hell, yes. They're going to be sharp, they're going to be well exposed. You're going to have a really frigging great histogram.
Nobody cares.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: It's not everything. Yeah, right.
[01:01:10] Speaker A: AI can do that.
[01:01:13] Speaker B: It is an interesting aspect of the craft because, you know, and like you said, we all do it.
We all get caught up in the technical at some point or another and we think that maybe better gear can improve that, but it doesn't.
I've run street photography workshops here in Melbourne where I've set challenges for people. You know, I'd say, okay, well, you need. You can only shoot in jpeg. It can only be monochrome, it can only be an aspect ratio other than what you normally shoot, preferably one to one.
And the amount of brains I saw explode after that moment was quite interesting, that a people didn't know their cameras well enough to know how to change to JPEG from raw, but also just creating parameters.
And then I later judged that the photos from that walk at one of their club meets, it was a competition and I provided a prize. And the creativity that came out of that process was so inspiring.
And I think it just harks back to what you've been saying about that space. Where we learn is when we fail, we fail. And we learn from that, hopefully to become better artists.
Anyway, just a reflection.
[01:02:20] Speaker A: The key thing that you just said there, Greg, was about constraints.
You force them to have constraints. And I do. I mean, if going back to this Venice workshop that I ran for years, and eventually we'll do again, we would go for a week and it would be small. It'd be like four photographers and me and usually my wife and the students would have. At the end of the week, they had a deliverable. And that was a set of a body of work of 12 images on a theme that they chose with very specific constraints, they could choose them, but they had to be there. And so some would choose horizontal, you know, traditional two by three aspect ratio, black and white. This particular theme. Someone choose others, you know, one lens, whatever. They had to work within the constraints.
Constraints always increase our creativity. They, they, they. Because they give us a problem to solve instead of this limitless. I have a camera, but I had a guy show up in Venice one year and I, I'm not exaggerating. He had everything between an 8 millimeter, a Nikon 8 millimeter fisheye, which if you know, was a dinner plate size.
[01:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:03:25] Speaker A: And all the way to like a 500 millimeter refractor lens. He had a bag that I would put my back out if I tried to lift. And he was paralyzed. He had all these options, but he was paralyzed.
Whereas someone with, you know, a Fuji X100 or a Leica with a 21 millimeter lens, walking around, you have constraints. Now you can start working because you've got guardrails. And the creativity I see out of people that embrace or even intentionally impose constraint is much stronger than those that are just like, I have everything. I have all the gears. It's like, great, good luck with that. Because there's no problem to solve now. It's just an endless.
I don't know, it's. I think constraints are absolutely key to.
[01:04:09] Speaker B: What you just said.
[01:04:10] Speaker A: Sad.
[01:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I agree.
I've been in that.
[01:04:14] Speaker C: You go, Jay, I've got that quote written down here to bring up at some point in the show. But that's his.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: Well, let's talk about it now.
[01:04:22] Speaker B: Let's do it.
[01:04:23] Speaker C: Create. Well, it's this. Yeah, creates. Sorry. Constraints are the secret, if there is one, to productive creative work. And because I'm, I'm on a mission this year to put a couple of goals that are kind of percolating. One of them, I've never entered a photography company competition before.
I want to enter two of them just to see what the process is like.
But I also want to try and produce some sort of personal project because I've never done that before. And your framework around personal projects was the simplest breakdown anyone's ever really made to.
That I've seen made. That made sense to me about just. It's not. Doesn't have to be this huge thing and it doesn't have to be defined from the outset. But that step going from going from playing basically and exploring to constraints really clicked for me into having to develop into a personal project. Can you talk about that? A Little bit, maybe for everybody.
[01:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I. I think bodies of work are really important because I. I think.
And that's not to say that single images aren't also valuable and important.
I'd say my work is about half and half. But the beautiful thing about bodies of work is that instead of putting everything into one photograph, trying to get that one image to tell the whole story, is that you now have a gamut. You have 12 images, 24 images that you can introduce some nuance, that you can allow one image to do one thing really well. Another image does another thing really well, rather than try to get one image that does them both really well, which just ends up being a soupy mess, that. That has no impact at all.
So I very simply, when. When I give someone a. An assignment for this stuff, I'm like, pick your idea. It starts with an idea.
It could be. For me, it could be, you know, grizzly bears. It could be grizzly bears and salmon and that relationship.
Pick your thing, right?
It could be an idea, it could be a theme, if it's simple. If you're out on the streets, it could just be slivers of life, whatever. Pick an idea, a theme to explore, and then give yourself some constraints. This is going to be 12 images. It's going to be all limited to.
Your constraints will be different. But, you know, I love horizontal aspect ratio, and so I naturally incline to that. But if I was really trying to push myself, I'd be like, okay, it's time to play with some vertical. Every shot has to be vertical. So then I see the world differently. I start seeing vertical relationships instead of horizontal relationships.
Start seeing ways in which I can compose completely differently the scenes I would normally compose horizontally.
So it's very simple. You just pick your theme, you pick your constraints, and then you just freaking go to work and you allow yourself time to learn and see what's working and build on it. But it doesn't have to be super complicated. It's just. It's a way of extending that.
Taking what's normally very opportunistic for a lot of us, right? We're just walking along. It's like, oh, look at that click. When you're working on a theme, you're looking for a very specific thing. Doesn't mean you can't also do the. Oh, look at that. And you take that one shot. It may not work into your body of work, you can still photograph it, but you're looking for a very specific thing. And so you will see. We see what we're looking for. We see what we recognize. And after a week where you're working on a theme, you will see things at the end of that week that you never saw at the beginning. And. And I think that's alone is part of the value. I tell. When we're on street photography workshops, like in India or Venice or wherever, I will tell people, you know, if you're at a street corner and you're there for 10 minutes, put in an hour.
I know you just want to see. You know, you come around the corner, you're like, oh, that's pretty cool. You take a couple pictures, you leave. Put in an hour, like, spend some time. Because two things will change. Either the scene will change. Especially, you know, you get there and you're like, oh, nothing's really happening. But I love the light. I love that background.
Put in some time, wait patiently, observantly. Don't just check out and scroll on your phone and, you know, wait an hour.
Be there, be present. Either the scene will change, something new will happen, or you will change. By the end of that hour, you're going to see this. Change the scene differently. You're going to perceive different opportunities. You're going to see horizontal compositions where before you saw only vertical.
You're going to see new characters. You're going to be looking in a different direction, just purely out of boredom. You're going to be looking for things that you didn't see before.
Either the scene will change or you will change. And it's, I think, very valuable advice because time spent is what does that for us. And opens. Because you've already seen this thing 10 times now. After 15 minutes, you're starting to look a little harder. You're looking a little harder. And that's like, ah, I didn't see that before. And look it up there and oh, suddenly there's this picture and the opportunities we miss by just being in such a damn hurry.
So anyway, but to that original point, constraints. Pick a theme, pick some constraints. And you know what? If you get halfway through the project and the constraints are no longer serving, and you're like, gosh, I wish I'd chosen to do this in color instead of black and white. Well, now you know. Now you've got to the point where you know what the project really is. It really is a color project. And that one constraint got you to be like, double down on the fact that, no, it's not black and white, it's color. Change it to color and continue your work and do the Body of work. That's how creativity works. And I think a body of work project should always be on everybody's list. I'm always working on a body of work for various different things. Some are sort of smaller, like time bound, like this one week in Kenya. I'm working on a very specific thing or like, like I'm on a. I have a thing about bears and I'm right now I'm working on a thing about, I love my bears and sorry, you probably can't see it, I've got a bear on my, my monitor there.
I, you know, that's so that's a long term body of work. But the longer I work on it, the more insightful my work becomes. The more I learn about my subject matter, the more I understand about behavior of bears.
The same will be true if you work on a project in Venice or India, or on about flowers or dancers, or pick your thing. The longer you put into it, the more insightful your work's going to become. The faster, well, not faster, the more inevitable it is that you will get over the low hanging fruit. That's just, you know, the obvious stuff, stuff. And your work will become better. I don't think it happens when we're just opportunistic and we're always just like, I see the thing, I take the picture, I move on. I see the thing, I take the picture again. Nothing wrong with that. But maybe that approach could also expand a little and include bodies of work and a more disciplined, long term approach to that. Your work will just get better, it'll be stronger, it'll be deeper.
When Robert Capa said, if you're not, not if your images aren't good enough, you're not close enough. I really believe that he meant proximity. But I think, you know, metaphorically, symbolically, it could just mean that you don't know your subject well enough, you're not intimate enough with it, you're not close enough to the subject matter.
The closer you are, the better it's going to be. And time gives you that time and you know, investment and passion.
[01:11:51] Speaker C: The thing that I seem to miss a little bit is, is how do, how do people get, how do artists get from I guess the spark of an idea and then some constraints to what always seems to be a deeper level that you're talking about in their bodies of work.
For example, I, I went to Vietnam. Gosh, it was over a year ago now and, and really I had a great, great time. Yeah, it was a while ago. Great time photographing there and made some images that I'm, I'm really happy with and I think it could turn into some sort of project, long term project, but I don't know what it is, you know what I mean? As in, it always seems when I see other people's bodies of work that are finished, they seem very, they've got these beautiful themes and, and context that, that are quite specific around what it is they're trying to explore.
For example, this book that I've got from one of our guests, Michael Coyne, he spent decades, 15 years traveling to. 15 years traveling to Vietnam. 15 years on the world on the book. Yeah. Documenting the changing world of small villages and towns in different countries around the world and how things like climate change and, and just economic impacts are sort of draining these villages from, or draining people from the villages. And the villages are sort of being impacted heavily and losing some of their, some of their soul, I guess. Anyway, you know, you see that and it's really hard to imagine getting from, you know, a trip to Vietnam where you, when you wander the streets and take some photos that were not bad to something so deep and long term. Does that make sense?
[01:13:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. And I think it's just simply at a certain point you come to a fork in the road and you can choose not to be a dilettante about this subject and go deep on it.
And that's where that feeling of depth comes from, is someone focusing their efforts and their affections and their curiosity, their attention, their insight.
And so to get back to what I think was your original question, how do we get there? I think one, it's, you just make a decision like you find the thing that really, that you're curious enough about and if, if you could only do this for the next couple years, would, would that be enough? And if it's a hell yes, then get to work. And that's, that's where it happens, is bashing it out and failing and making a lot of photographs, many of which do not work work, but some of which do. And then you take the best of that and you try again and you make another photograph that's like, oh, that, that's even better than the first one.
And it accomplishes. And by the time you're at the end of your body of work, all those beginning images, not all of them, but many of them are going to be like, okay, those were a good start, but they're not, they're not part of the work anymore because they were, they were what helped me discover what the work is.
And then I got to work.
But I do think you need to make a choice. I think many of us could. Without discipline, without making decisions, you could just end up being, you know, that dilettante. And I don't mean that in a bad way necessarily. I just. It's. It's an undisciplined approach where you just kind of shoot a little, and if that brings you joy, I think that's great. But we're talking about, how do you. From the perspective of, I have a hunger for something more, then I think making a choice. But it can't come from any sense of obligation. It can't come from a sense of what, you know, well, if I was. If I was Ernst Haas, if I was Sebastio Salgado, I would do this. Okay, well, but you're not. You're you. So what. What would you do? And I know that there are people that, after following my human work for so long, are probably like, God, David, enough with the bears, enough with the rhinos.
And I get it. I get it. You started following me because you really love. That resonated with my human work. And now I am not so interested in humankind.
We need a break. Me and humanity.
And so I'm much more interested in rhinos and bears. And you know what? If that's your jumping off point where you go, oh, okay, I'm not.
I'm not so much interested in rhinos and bears, great. But I am, and I have to follow that thread.
So you can't respond to that sense of obligation. You can't respond even to what you believe your audience wants.
Your audience has. You are a leader. You need to lead your audience. They can't lead you.
And then you just make it. Then you put the time in, and sometimes it goes nowhere, and you get halfway through project and go, huh, it turns out I don't care about this quite as much as I thought I did. I don't have the energy. I don't have. It's not working. But if you're really lucky, somewhere in there you do find, you pick up a thread that you can pull and go, oh, it's not this.
[01:16:47] Speaker C: It's that.
[01:16:48] Speaker A: That. And then you pull on the thread that leads you to whatever that is, and there's no obligation. There should be nothing but a sense of curiosity and joy.
All of which is a little bit burdened by the need to be disciplined and. And actually work hard at it. It's not always easy. In fact, I'd argue if it's easy. You're probably not experiencing the kind of challenge that's going to lead to creative flow.
[01:17:09] Speaker B: So.
[01:17:09] Speaker A: So there needs to be that sense of, I maybe have bitten off more than I can chew.
[01:17:13] Speaker B: What?
[01:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah, find out. But probably not. You will be. The hard work will make you the photographer that you need to be to do the harder work that you need to be. You know, like, it will make you that photographer. And. And if that's all a body of work accomplishes, then that's a huge thing for you. You know, getting back to your. Your comment about the contest you ran. Sometimes the best photograph we make in a year is not one that others are going to resonate with. It's not even, quote, unquote, a good photograph.
It's important to us. It's the best one we made because it represents a step forward. It represents a risk that we took. It represents owning our own taste or diverging from what we've done for 20 years and finally getting out of that rut.
And people may react to it and go, whoa, this is. It's not what I expected. It's not. What I like, is a blah, blah, blah, the voices, the voice of the monkey in your head chattering. But it's still your best work because it's. It represents a step forward. We need to be really careful about, you know, kind of making idols of our past work because it's. It's in the past. The next step is the next step. And that next album that you make is, you know, as, like, I remember, I'm a huge U2 fan. I love YouTube, but there was a period where I had to a lot. Like, I was like, I'm not sure I like the direction that these guys are going. It's just a little.
I had to kind of let them lead me, but it would be so unreasonable of me to expect that they're going to stick to, like, just keep doing the old stuff. Bono and Bono would be like, go pound sand. That's not why I'm in this.
Join me on this journey, whether you, you know, like, if you want to join me. But I'm not. Bono is not going to write music to make me happy. He's writing music to make him happy.
And in hindsight, yeah, there's some stuff that I don't totally resonate with. But now I look at the arc and I go, oh, I see where he's going. I see. And there are some albums that I'm like, yeah, that one's not for me, you know, and that's okay. That's all right. But, God, what a miserable life as an artist if you only make what you do in hopes that someone else will like it, you know, that's. Yeah, that's an awful way to live. Yeah. Terrible way to live.
[01:19:26] Speaker C: Live. Yeah.
Yeah, that makes sense.
[01:19:31] Speaker B: Well, how.
[01:19:33] Speaker C: I mean, how did the wildlife change come about?
[01:19:39] Speaker A: I just got tired of people. No, I. I mean, I've always loved wildlife. I've always.
I. I've always been an. Like a nature kid.
Camping and hiking and. And that sort of thing. And as a kid, I mean, I did try my hand at painting. And for a while, I wanted to be a wildlife painter. I wanted. There's a Canadian painter called Robert Bateman who's very well known in Canada anyway, and I want it to be, you know, Robert Bateman, you know, and I could have been, except for the fact that I can't paint for shit. So there was that.
But, you know, it was natural stuff. It was kestrels and hawks and eagles and loons and, you know, and I loved that stuff. And so, in a sense, it was coming back to some of my roots. Not roots that I had abandoned, but, you know, they were not. Like, I actually, someone recently said that in one of my books. I even said something like, I'm not really drawn to, you know, photographing ducks and, like, gnat birds and stuff. And I kind of. I'm not really. Birds are not really my thing, but big things, bears and rhinos and like, I. I just love it. But I did get to a point, and it coincided with the pandemic when the. As things loosened up, the idea of going back into crowds, the idea of going back to India, which I loved.
Crowded streets in Venice, which I loved. Suddenly I'm like, I just, you know, I don't want to play the social anxiety card. I just suddenly wanted to be somewhere else. And I was finding that sitting with a small group of people in a Land Cruiser, watching cheetahs and talking photography and wildlife was much more my speed than jostling tourists in Venice. And so, yeah, that night, I just. I don't know, maybe I'm getting old and grumpy. I just don't like people as much. It's just. I like my people. I just don't like in the abstract. I don't like crowds of people. I don't. And so maybe it's a time of life thing, but for now, that's just not where my heart is.
So. But I still, you know, I look at my old work And I'm proud of it and I still love it. And I keep thinking, oh, I'd like to go back to India and go up into the like. If I were to return, I want to go back to some of these small villages and the dark monasteries and the quiet, gritty places and the street food. And so there's, there's aspects of it that I like.
[01:22:04] Speaker B: But it's interesting what you say about COVID You know, it gave you an opportunity to kind of reset.
And I think we found that for a lot of creative people that we've spoken to here and friends and even ourselves, I think we found that there was kind of a bit of a, you know, a circuit breaker that maybe was almost kind of timely. Yeah, because we were heading down a very, like you say, homogenized path. People that we've spoken to were struggling in a field or in a role or whatever it may be, and, and that forced lockdown and rethink about how we interact with people was a creative reset for many.
The other creative reset that I want to talk with you about was, you know, post your, your life altering accident, 2011, is that correct?
Yep.
You obviously, you know, you had, you had the opportunity to rethink about your future. You had health issues that you had to navigate, challenges that were quite significant.
How did your creative mind and your photography and your craft and even your writing, how did those things help with your healing journey?
[01:23:17] Speaker A: That's a great question.
So I guess as background, as context, you know, for those that didn't follow. So I had a fall. I was in photographing in Italy. It's so funny, you know, I'd been photographing in all these really dangerous places, places like the Congo and Haiti. And you know, my father was angry, ex military, and he'd always tell me, you know, just be careful. He'd always say, life, remember, life is cheap in these places. Which I don't, I'm not in agreement with, but I understood the sentiment. And he was saying, be careful.
[01:23:47] Speaker B: And.
[01:23:47] Speaker A: But he never warned me about Tuscany. Tuscany was where I finally, you know, took a diver off a 30 foot wall and crushed both my feet. And so there Was this like 12 year recovery process, but it wasn't really, I did recover, but then things got worse and I had another surgery and things were better for a bit and then things worse and it's just.
And so two and a half years ago I went in and had my right foot below the knee amputated. And you know, now I walk around on a carbon fiber prosthetic And I think I had an idea that prosthetics were going to be, you know, bionics. I grew up with the bionic man, this whatever, $6 million man, and I thought they were going to be a lot more functional than they are. I thought there was going to be jet packs and. And it turns out, what a disappointment. Less so. Like, you know, he would run. And it turns out with, with like, with a prosthetic leg, if you do that, you actually have to make the sound yourself or you don't get it. So I'm that guy at the gym.
[01:24:51] Speaker C: Going.
[01:24:53] Speaker A: So it's less exciting than I thought it would be. But it was one of these decisions. I don't know that my amputation and all of that challenge affected my creative life as much as my creative life affected my recovery and my willingness to embrace challenge. I've always kind of felt like if something's not serving you, just kind of want to be careful how I say this, you know, but if it's not really, it's not serving you and it's disposable, if you can cut it out of your life, then. Then get rid of it. There's no reason for me to hang on to a foot that's not working anymore, that does nothing but give me pain and challenge my mobility. When I have a very good friend who's a below the knee amputee, very much like I am now, we're kind of like twins, and he could run half marathons and he was doing stuff with his prosthetic leg that I couldn't possibly be doing with my damaged foot.
And there is something in the creative process about being willing to scrap it all and go back to the beginning, about not taking things so seriously, about asking, oh, what, what's possible and what's it going to take, and just thinking kind of obliquely about all kinds of things and knowing that creativity ultimately is about solving problems. And I knew that if I got my foot amputated that there would be some challenges and there would be challenges I couldn't possibly foresee, despite all the questions I'd ask myself, all the due diligence.
But I also knew that I've been making my living in part by teaching creativity. And I know about. About problem solving and I know about thinking obliquely and kind of, you know, taking a challenge and turning it on its head.
And. And so it was, it was an interesting.
I don't know, it was an interesting challenge. And like I said before, challenge leads to flow. You cannot have Artistic or creative flow without challenge. You need, it has to, it can't be so challenging that it's completely out of your wheelhouse because that just leads to anxiety and frustration. It's not like to flow, but neither does boredom. It can't be so close to what you're good at that you're just repeating yourself and has to be sort of, there's a 45 degree line between, you know, anyway.
So, yeah, I think, you know, like the best choice I've made in the last number of years is getting my foot amputated. I'm. Now I'm back in the gym finally. I'm losing some of the weight that I put on because I was increasingly inactive.
There were things that I couldn't do. And now I'm back at the gym and I'm doing box jumps and leg presses and I, you know, it was months ago now, but I remember and I'm at a pretty hardcore gym. Like it's called the Iron Warehouse. And it's, you know, it's full of some real, you know, and it's, it's pretty cool, but a little, a lot intimidating.
And the first day that I dragged one of these boxes out and I like, at first I was like, there's no way I can jump. Like, if I jump, I feel like my, the bone in my leg is just going to come out right through the bottom. And I had all these, these visual, like awful, you know, worst case scenarios.
So I learned to do little jumps. And at one point I said to my trainer, hey, you know what, I can jump. Like I can do a little hop. And she was so proud of me. And then she said, great, that means you can do burpees now. And I was like, oh, it was a trap all along. Hate burpees.
But, but just that little incremental and that's, that's like, that's how we grow as people, as creative people. It's how we get better at skills. It's these little, it's not some big jump, it's these. You show up every day and change is almost imperceptible. And then one day you drag out the 16 inch box. And I remember thinking it's kind of a foam box. So I thought at least if I fall, like, I'll bruise my ego, but I'll be okay. And I got like a standing ovation from these big meatheads, like these guys that are like, they're pressing stuff with their, with their pinky finger that I can't even do with My, both my legs and, and they're like clapping and cheering and I felt like king of the world because I, you know, jumped a 16 inch box.
But that's progress, you know, that's, that is how we move forward. It's not these big things. It's not, oh, I'm going to buy a new pair of running shoes. Buying your new running shoes or if you haven't picked up on the analogy, that new camera is not going to move the needle the way showing up every day and just being intentional about your craft is going to. And then suddenly one day you're going to do that thing and go, holy crap, look at that. And I did it in my crappy old running shoes. I didn't have to buy the latest and greatest runners. I had to show up every friggin day and be intentional and, and, and work at it, have discipline.
That's where this whole like I am, I'm, I love the artsy fartsy stuff. I love the, my, my wife calls it my poet warrior crap.
She says it with great affection. But it's, that stuff is not separate from the need for discipline and like rigor, right? They're, you know, left, left side of the brain, right side of the brain, left hand, right hand. They're, they're held in tension with each other and you need them both. Or, or it gets wildly out of, out of whack.
And I think we all know where that leads. You know, it leads to the kind of, you know, creative people that only use the color purple and put sparkles on, on all their stuff and glue macrame, you know, glue macaroni to bristle board and that sort of thing. Like I do think there's room for both. You can be wildly poetic and artistic and also have a firm grasp on the tools that you need to have. You don't. I've got a blog post coming out soon in the next month or so called, you know, you know enough and that's enough, you know, because what I need to know to practice my craft may just be shutter speed, aperture and ISO and how to focus my camera. Like that may be enough. And if that's enough for you, then know that stuff so well that it's intuitive that it then serves that artsy fartsy, poetic side. And if you're like, yeah, no, what I want to do is like focus stacking with, you know, with dragonflies and beetles and stuff, and it's highly technical, then great, learn that stuff. Stuff.
Learn it as well as the person who needs only the basics but be so fluent with it that it gets out of the way and you can serve that. That poetic side of you that now can think about color harmonies and. And line and shape and balance and the things that actually make a photograph resonate with us.
I don't even know how we got on this. I just suddenly I was talking. Somebody shot.
[01:31:27] Speaker B: It.
[01:31:27] Speaker C: It actually that thought it actually parallels with that quote. I don't know if you've ever heard it, but if. If more information was the. The secret, we would all be millionaires with washboard abs. Because we've all read and. And watched a million tutorials on anything you can, you know, we overanalyze and over. And I'm definitely guilty of this on just in gathering information instead of just doing the work work.
And I love that article. I'm keen to hear it when it comes out about it.
You know enough. Go and do something with what you already know rather than constantly trying to sort of.
I don't know what the word is for it, but yeah, like over research something instead of just going out and trying it. Doing it every day for a while. See what happens.
[01:32:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:32:13] Speaker A: And to your point about the washboard abs, which I like to tell my wife, I. I have a washboard stomach. It's just. There's a load of towels in at the moment.
But I'm getting there. Damn it, I'm getting there.
No, I've seen significant progress. But the thing is, you know enough until you bump up against the fact that you don't know enough. And then you know what? Five minutes on YouTube you will figure it out and you'll move on. So if I'm at the gym and I'm like, okay, there's something I'm missing here. I've been doing abs for a long time. I'm not hitting particular spot or I'm in a rut. I want to try something else. Great. You've been doing it long enough to know that it's not working. Five minutes on YouTube. I promise you that's all you need to get to get onto the next thing. And now you know enough again. You've taken your. This, this obsession with. I got to research until I. Oh, just you know what, Figure out as little as you need to get the thing in your hands and start doing it because that's when you're going to really learn. YouTube's only going to like I can have a YouTube level understanding of how to do a thing. When I really will learn is when I pick it up and. And try it. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, that didn't work. What? What? No, this isn't. What. You know, and then three weeks from now, I'm like, now I get it. Now I got it. This. Because there's a difference between, hey, how do I do this? And how do I do this?
The. The guy on YouTube may be teaching in a way that you just don't quite get, but. But 24 hours with your camera in your hand, you're going to be a master at it.
[01:33:41] Speaker C: I love it.
[01:33:42] Speaker B: Me, too.
[01:33:43] Speaker C: I love it.
[01:33:43] Speaker B: I. I have a question about.
Sorry, you've got a fitness question. Justin's a fitness lover, so.
[01:33:49] Speaker C: Wow. Final. Final cap on the fitness topic. Before you go. Before you go, Greg, I just want to know, was it. Was that something that come about after your accident as a. As a rehab, into. Into the. Or as a gym and training and fitness, being a part of your life for a long time?
[01:34:05] Speaker A: No, I hate that. I mean, if I went to a gym, it was a rock gym. It was rock climbing, and I was a gym rat for many years. But, like, the idea of doing athletics for the sake of gym, oh, God, I hated it. Just the idea of it.
But, you know, as you get older, things get stiffer and, you know, you lose certain things and you gain certain things. And yes, as part of my rehab, so for 12 years, not being able to do certain things, I stopped hiking. I started, like, I got less and less active. And it was when I decided, okay, I'm. I'm going to get this operation. So I saw a physiotherapist to do what I was calling prehab before the surgery. What can I do to get myself in shape for it? And then afterwards, it was like, I. I don't want to be. Because the statistics are pretty clear. There are a lot of amputees that once they get their amputation, they will never walk more than, like, 100ft at a time.
[01:34:56] Speaker C: They'll.
[01:34:57] Speaker A: More of them will use wheelchairs, crutches, whatever. There's reason for that, because a lot of amputees are diabetic, which I actually am, but has nothing to do with my amputation. But they let it get out of control, and they're not fit and they're not inclined that way. I got this done so that I could be more mobile. And I was like, I'm gonna hit the gym and I'm gonna. This is like my. I've seen.
My mother's 85, and I love my mother, but I Just, I just went, went Right before we got on, I was at my mother's residence. She lives in a home for seniors and the paramedics had been there again because she'd fallen. And you know, she's 84 and I know 84 year olds that are like, they can run circles around me and I know 84 year olds that are like my mom, that are almost not mobile at all, that are falling over themselves and I'm like, the choices I make now is a 50, 54, 50 ish year old person are going to determine which kind of 84 year old I am. And I want to be carrying that 600 millimeter lens on a big ass tripod through Africa as long as I possibly can. I want to hike, I want to be with the bears and all of this stuff. Any of you that are watching that are a little bit older, you know, as, as you get older things get a little harder and I want to, I want to do the things now that are going to make this easier.
So it's purely self serving. I'm not a, I'm not an.
[01:36:17] Speaker C: An.
[01:36:17] Speaker A: Athletic like naturally not gym anyway. Like I always, I just want to climb rocks and climb trees and stuff.
But increasingly that's dangerous and that's how I got my accident. I was climbing something I shouldn't have been climbing. So you'd think I'd learn, but not so much.
[01:36:36] Speaker C: Oh, that's very cool. It's very, yeah, your, your reels and things. If anyone wants to check him out, jump onto to David's Instagram and you'll see some, some reels of him training in the gym and even running and yeah, pretty inspiring stuff. I love it.
[01:36:49] Speaker A: So thank you. That's been, it's been a good journey. It really has. It's, it's given me new, new life and I, I have to work really hard for it. It does not come naturally, especially after 12 years of not moving very much and the body compensating and. But all of these things also can be applied to the way we think about things. We can get rigid in our thinking. We, you know, we get into creative ruts and it's very easy to kind of look at both worlds and go, yeah, I see how this applies to that. And I don't want to be the kind of 85 year old or 54 year old that's rigid in his thinking and can only think in this certain way. And I, anyway, yeah, it's been fun. It's been a good adventure.
[01:37:30] Speaker B: Nice, nice.
Just before we move into the home stretch. We might jump to some comments in the chat in just a moment, but I just want to remind everyone that's watching and listening if you're enjoying our conversations today with David and why wouldn't you be unless you're dead inside.
Give us a like, give us a thumbs up. Let us know what you thought about this, this episode, either right now in the chat or later. If you watch this later on YouTube, drop a comment and let us know and let David know what you've, what you've loved so far about this episode. And on that note, this episode wouldn't be possible without the love of our favorite sponsor, Lucky Straps. It's our favorite sponsor because it's us. We are Lucky Straps. We make handcrafted leather camera straps in Bendigo, Victoria. They're Aussie made products and we'll ship them almost anywhere in the world. So head to Luckystraps.com now. Have a look at what is the best way to connect your craft with a Lucky Straps leather camera strap. Justin, you want to jump to some of the comments because they've been building quite quickly.
[01:38:28] Speaker C: Yeah, they've been building a bit. I'll quickly. We won't go to everything. I'll just have a. Okay, well, well, yeah, we'd be diving deep back into other topics. I don't even know where we should go back to.
This was an interesting one. And this is, this is not for this episode probably, but David Mascara has been doing a theme for years. He says, I just don't know what to do with it when we're talking about personal projects. He's been photographing street portraits in on the streets of San Francisco for decades. And yeah, he's got an amazing body of work. He sends in images to the show very regularly, but he's not sure what to do with them. I mean, do you, what.
When you're creating or building bodies of work or projects, if, if there's a personal project, David, do you have something in mind to do with that at the end or is that something that evolves?
You know, is that something that only sort of comes about towards the end of the project?
[01:39:26] Speaker A: Both and yes, that's my answer. Yes, I always.
When. So going back to what I said before about, you know, I set a theme, I set my constraints, I also set an output and the output can often changes. But I always, I always have an output at the beginning whether it's going to change or not. So for me it at least ends with I'm going to create either.
Well, it's always prints. It's always, I will order an archival box, I will print it in a certain size, I'll sign the work. It will exist as a physical thing, whether that's 100 prints or 24 prints. It will be a thing that exists in this world that I can put on my shelf and every now and then I can pull out and I can pour over them, you know, and experience them as tangible things. I think that's very important.
I think having your work printed, whether you do it yourself or not, makes you a better photographer. But just having an output and making it a thing and doing something with it. So I'm a big fan of books. I have always felt that photographs, their real home, as much as we love putting them on walls, I think that's all right. But when they go on a wall in a home, they become decor.
They're not necessarily art. So there are a lot of incredible photographs that I would never put on my wall because they don't match my couch. You know what I'm saying?
And I'm not sure that that's the best criteria for choosing our best work. So I want to see it in a book. I want at some point to have a tangible thing, whether that's a self published, published blurb book that you pay 50 bucks for and you're the only one that ever sees it, it or you put it up for sale.
I'm. I love the fact that, you know, I. Because I teach, I like my. My latest book, Light, Space and Time. This is one of the premises of it, other than the fact that I wanted to publish my ideas, was that I had a body of wildlife work that I had not yet published. And this was one way to do that. So I approached my publisher and said, could we do with a thing that is kind of a coffee table book? It's. For me, it's a bit of a legacy project, but my writing is as important to me as my photography. So it made sense to have a commercially available thing. It also meant that I didn't have to pay the money to outlay to have it printed. But I do not for a minute believe that it has to be commercially viable to be a product. Create. Create a thing and put it on your shelf and revisit it every now and then. Maybe it's only you ever see it, but make something with it because that will guide the process. It'll. It'll put skin in the game for you. And it's very easy when it's just A digital. Like, I'll just, I'll just make something with 12 pictures. Yes, we'll, of course, we'll, you know, make good decisions and we'll do our best. But, you know, nothing to me, like, when you know that you're going to spend 200 bucks printing the thing or, you know, if I did a run of books, it would cost me $60,000 before I started to sell them and recoup the investment.
When you put, like skin in the game, you start thinking long and hard, is this really the image that I think it is? You know, like, it's pretty. When it's just good enough for Instagram, it's like, this is great. I'll just post it. But when you print it and you get the first working prints back and you go, oh, yeah, okay, I really screwed that one up. And then you got to go back and then you got to reprint it. Soon $20 becomes 40 becomes 50, and then. And it's like, so it makes you a better craftsman, it makes you a better artist. And I think that knowing that you're going to have an output helps you choose the images, right? If it's going to be a book, it's going to. In a certain format, it's going to look one way. If it's going to be a slideshow, it's going to be. You're going to choose a certain number of images, they're going to be a certain vertical images don't look good in a slideshow. You're probably going to shoot mostly horizontal or, you know, maybe it's an Instagram rec. Then you're going to shoot.
So the output matters, I think. Make something with your photographs experience. Don't rob yourself of the joy of like. Again, whether it's commercial or not is not relevant. There's so many professional photographers that make a living and think that because they make money, it means that their art is. Is good. It's not necessarily. And if you don't make money at your art, it doesn't mean your art isn't good. That money has nothing to do with any of it.
But make a thing like, give yourself the joy of experiencing that physical artifact. Put it, I have a bookshelf that's got a number of my books, but it's also got like these archival boxes lined up with labels for my projects. Some of them are ongoing, some of them are complete.
Sometimes when they're complete, they still end up in a box, but they also end up in a box book. And that's like, okay, it's. That phase of the project is done.
[01:44:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:44:18] Speaker A: Sometimes it doesn't go where you think it. Like, I had a project in Lesotho with Shepherds, and I thought it was going to be a much longer project than it ended up being.
So the body of work is quite small, and I always, like, if I had an opportunity, some of my support in Lesotho fell apart. The guy that I was working with stopped working in Lesotho, and it's like, okay, this becomes not a tangible, like a doable thing.
It could have been a really great project, but, you know, at the same time, it was short, it was small. It's like, okay, that's. That's still kind of in incubation, but the time got spent doing another thing, and it. So, you know, it's like, who knows? It's all very fuzzy around the edges. But do something tangible, at least print it and put it in a box, bind it into a book, make it a thing so that you can experience it. And it's not just like, okay, I've done. I've made the picture, I've slapped a filter on it, and I've moved on.
I think we shortcut the creative process. Like, we make it far shorter than it can be, and we rob ourselves of joy and growth and anyway, end of sermon. Pass the plate.
[01:45:28] Speaker C: Okay, a couple of other quick comments I want to. I want to get to include including a little tie into to what we're just talking about before I say that. Me and Muse, who's had heaps of great comments in the chat. Thanks for joining us. Hope you subscribe. Join us on future episodes.
Watching a video versus going out and trying something just reminds me of the Dunning Kruger effect. It's easy to get confident if you don't actually know what you're doing. It's a fair point, you know?
[01:45:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[01:45:56] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:45:57] Speaker A: You don't know what you don't know, and you find that out by doing and failing. And then. Then you learn the thing and you're like, oh, okay. Turns out I'm full of crap. I did number like. The great epiphanies in my life have been these moments of failure where I'm like, okay, time to go back to the drawing board. Because I didn't know what I thought I knew, but now you know. Right. So, yeah.
[01:46:17] Speaker C: And it's also easy to find.
Yeah. And you don't want to fall into that trap of watching, you know, a million YouTube videos and going, oh, well, I know exactly how I could have taken this shot of A bear that David took with, with the 600 mil lens and where he went to do it. So I, I know, I know what he knows because I've watched.
[01:46:37] Speaker A: I could have done that.
[01:46:38] Speaker C: How to do it. Yeah, I could have that. Exactly. It's that, that thing of like, oh, I could have done that. It's like, yeah, but you didn't do that. And could you have. Who knows? Do you even know where it is? Like it's. Yeah, so.
[01:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:46:49] Speaker C: And then what?
[01:46:49] Speaker A: So much, so much of this is. Sorry, let me just jump in real quick. Quick. So much of this is exactly what you said.
I do courses, I put out online courses with, you know, with maybe once a year, once every two years I put out a new one, but I relaunch them a couple times a year and very rarely, but almost once every course, out of like a thousand students, one will come up and go, you know, there's nothing new here. I already know this. Like, this is stupid. It's usually someone who responded to like a Facebook ad who doesn't know what I write about, who doesn't, you know, it isn't kind of vibing with, with what I do. And I'm like, okay, but if that's the case, why'd you buy the friggin course? Like, if you think you understand this stuff, then, then go do it. Like go make great art. But if you're struggling, if you think that if what you're looking for is a new, there is nothing new. Like, I'm sorry, I cannot explain shutter speed to you any. And if you're still like struggling with it, what you need is not a new explanation. Or what you need is to go out and friggin learn this stuff yourself. Because none of this is new. Like my mother asked me when I was writing this last book, she goes, so what's the new book about? And I said, mama, it's the same stuff every one of my books has been about. It's about how to think as a photographer. I'm just using different words and different pictures to try to explain it in different ways. But there's nothing new like the craft of photography. Pictures don't suddenly work differently in this century than they did did you know in the last century. You don't look at a picture from 1985 and go, oh yeah, that is radically different than what we do. It's all the same stuff.
You stop taking my courses, stop reading my books, just go out and photograph. You will learn this stuff yourself. I just think I can help you get there faster by helping you avoid some of the mistakes and putting some language to it.
[01:48:36] Speaker B: But I think there's also, there's also power in discovering something and having. Have someone validate it for you too.
[01:48:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:48:43] Speaker B: You know, through, through one of your courses or one of your books. Is that, ah, okay. That's what I've been doing.
That makes more sense to me. I can now articulate. I now have the, the visual language to explain what my work is trying to achieve or what I have achieved. And I think there's power in that.
That's right.
[01:48:59] Speaker A: But it requires a little bit of humility. It requires a bit of humility to, like. You cannot be arrogant and have a teachable spirit at the same time. And that applies to all of us, especially those of us who, you know, propose to teach things to the world. That humility has to be, because if we're not still learning, if I am not still learning, I have nothing to teach. So, you know, but again, there are those out there that they're looking for that, that one secret thing. And I'm like, there is no one secret thing. If there is, it's just hard frigging work and falling on your face a lot until you get to the point where you go, you know what? I should probably stop falling on my face. Like, I've learned. I think I have learned the lesson now. Now let's, you know. But that takes some humility to, to go. Okay. You know. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, absolutely.
[01:49:43] Speaker C: Just one last comment.
Greg, just quickly, just quickly, just quickly, one last comment. This one's, this is an important one because we were just talking about.
[01:49:51] Speaker B: Oh, is it? All right, go on.
[01:49:52] Speaker C: I, I really do think our Internet must be mismatched this morning because we're normally not stepping all over each other like this.
[01:49:58] Speaker B: Well, for one, we didn't.
[01:49:59] Speaker C: Dave.
[01:49:59] Speaker B: And compare wardrobes again, so we're kind of out of sync.
[01:50:03] Speaker C: I'm just angry that you didn't tell.
[01:50:05] Speaker A: Me it was black shirt day.
[01:50:08] Speaker B: We'll send you one. Where's the love?
[01:50:09] Speaker A: I should have been wearing my black shirt. All right.
[01:50:11] Speaker C: If any of my friends hear this, they would be yelling out, it's every day is black shirt Day for justice. My entire wardrobe is black shirt day. Yep. That's why I got these, these lucky straps T shirts done. It's actually a black on black logo. And they're quite popular with, with other photographers because they're like, like cool. I don't like logos. That's perfect.
Anyway, so.
David. Mascara. So we're talking about personal projects and what to do with them. And he wasn't sure what to do with his street project. But there's a comment here because they've been going back and forth a little bit in the chat, but the thought of street portrait books have been done a million times. That's what's scaring him is like what? Like why should he put his work out there? Because street portraits have been done by a million photographers a million times. How should he think about that differently or tackle that, that fear?
[01:51:00] Speaker A: Yeah. If you were a musician, I would tell you never to write a love song because people have been writing love songs for centuries and there's nothing new.
And yet love songs are the number one thing that musicians seem to write about.
It doesn't matter whether it's been done a million times. Look, I work now in wildlife life.
Everyone has seen a picture of a lion, a rhino.
The question is, what do you bring new to the table? And if, and if that, maybe that's the real concern, do you bring something new to the table and let that question like maybe you're not ready yet but, but maybe you are and it's just a fear that street looks. There's no such thing as street photography. There's, there's Sean Tucker's photography. There's you know, like name of. They're all doing different things, but it's not street photography. It's the genre based thinking drives me crazy because there's really no such thing as wildlife photography or portraiture. You can look at five different portrait photographers and their subject is wildly different. It's all people. But the emotions they photograph, the way that they do it, it's all dramatically different.
So forget the fact that people have written love songs and, or done street photography books and make your street photography book book and make it yours, make it distinctly yours. And it could be, this is the wake up call. It could be that only 10 people buy it, it could be that only 100 people buy it, that there is not a massive market for books. Even book publishers now are asking their photographers to like go in havesies because it's not.
Unless you have a huge audience.
It's not even my friend Paul Nicklin. Paul Nicklin has 7 million followers. He's an incredibly talented wildlife photographer, National Geographic photographer. People know Paul and he crowdfunded his last book because it's not easy to get a publisher on board and especially a publisher who's going to do it your way.
And so he just, he went and I saw there was a Comment here about crowdfunding. Yeah, crowdfund it. Or pre sell. I mean if you don't want to go all the way to Kickstarter, pre sell it to your audience. See if you can find 12 people that will pre buy a book so that you can buy 20 of them.
Then get them print. My first book was I did it on blurb like years ago when blurb was like just starting out and the quality was awful.
And I sold it as a limited edition. $100 gets you a copy of this book. And it cost me 50 bucks to make. I made $50 on it. I got these books and some of them were terrible. I had to replace a bunch of them. I have one friend that still got his copy and every time I visit he drags it out and puts it on the the coffee table just to taunt me. I look at it. Oh my. But you gotta start somewhere, so make the damn book, even if it costs you money.
My first like self published art book cost me $60,000 and I pre sold I have an audience so I could pre sell it, but I didn't press go on it until I pre sold enough that it covered my costs. And then I could take a check to the printer and go, it's all paid for. And suddenly had a thousand books in my. In my basement. Where the hell do I. They take up a lot of room, but do it anyway. Figure it out. Do your research, figure and do your first book at a loss. Just do it for the love of being a photographer. Artists have not through the centuries had the luxury of being commercially viable or even frankly responsible. So at least be responsible. Don't put it on your credit card. Be responsible. Save your money. Do it right so that you know. Because once you, once you print that damn thing, you're gonna, you're not gonna like camp out on it. You're gonna be moving on to the next thing. So you don't want a huge credit card bill. That's all I'm saying. But find a way to do it. Find someone who will, you know, buy a limited edition copy or a few people that you know at a ludicrous price because they love you and they love your work.
There's gotta be a way to do it. Be as creative about the creating and selling of your book as you are about your photographs. You'll make it happen.
But there's no template. There's no template. Crowdfunding seems to work for some people, but it's either you have to have a great audience or a really good idea.
[01:55:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:55:11] Speaker A: And I. I cannot even imagine, even from the photographers I love, like, the. The best of the best. I can't imagine that many of them doing a crowdfunding project that I look at and go, yeah, I want that book badly enough that I'll pay the hundred bucks.
[01:55:25] Speaker C: I did.
[01:55:26] Speaker A: I bought Paul's. Paul's late now. He's a very good friend of mine, but his new book, Reverence, I think we all have to support each other.
And so his Kickstarter came up, and it's like, it's a shut up and take my money kind of thing, because I want to support my friends and what goes around comes around. So I don't think you, as an artist can expect people to buy your book if you're not buying their books. You know, my bookshelves are full of, like, I know the authors, I know all the photographers.
What are you showing me there?
[01:55:53] Speaker C: Yeah, so this. The guy that in. Matt Palmer who's in the chat who mentioned about you can crowdsource initial runs. This is the. This is the book that he crowdsourced, which I. I jumped on the Kickstarter and funded that. Or didn't fund it. Funded one book worth for exactly that reason. I was like, I like the work that I was seeing from the book, but more so I wanted to support something that he was doing because I like all the work that he creates, and it's just a good opportunity. And I really like photo books, too. So there's that.
[01:56:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's a great way to learn. I see, Matt, you're still in the chat.
Tell me this, are the books still available?
[01:56:33] Speaker C: I believe he's still got them because they actually have a physical gallery here in Australia.
They actually sell their landscape work in a very beautiful but small gallery in a town called Bright. And I think they still have the books available in there.
[01:56:48] Speaker A: Okay, somebody shoot me. Shoot me a link at some point so that I can get my hands on it. I. I think there are enough photographers that if we all supported each other when a book comes out, you know, like a book that we're interested in, landscapes, whatever, we can all learn from each other and we can all. I mean, I think photo books are the great resource that people are not spending their money on.
I mean, yes, buy my books, buy my courses, whatever, but save some of that budget.
Come on. My workshops, do the things, but don't spend it all without having spent money on actual books of photography, because that's where you're going to learn. It's going to be where you learn what you love, what you don't like. It's going to be where you interact with the medium. And actually, some photographers know their cameras better than they understand photographs, and that is a crime. If you know your guitar better than you know how to write a song, you're in trouble. Like, unless all you want to do is just stay at home with your guitar, that's fine. But if you want to be a photographer, it's photographs. Photographs are that. It's in the word.
You know, with respect to the podcast called the Camera Life, it's about the photograph, not about the damn camera. So study photographs. Put the B and H catalog away for a little while and study photographs. Figure out why lines draw you. What kind of lines do you have? How did they. What lens was used? What, like, dissect it, learn from it, figure it out.
Because at the end of the day, fiddling around with your camera, it's only one part of it. You still have to know how a photograph works. You still have to understand composition and line and shape and color and tone and how to get mystery and depth and all of these things. And if, if, if somebody asks you, hey, you know, talk to me about depth in a photograph, like a sense of visual depth, and you're like, ah, I have no idea. Well, then you have no idea how to create an image with visual depth. If you can't talk about balance and tension, if you can't, you know, talk about light and shadow, how are you going to use these tools?
Look at photographs? So get me the information on that book and I'll.
Matt, he said, sorry, customers walked in right away.
Stop talking to your customers. I'm your customer. Get me the information. I will buy your damn book.
[01:59:06] Speaker C: We'll send his details through. Yeah, please do. What is this?
[01:59:09] Speaker A: Please do.
[01:59:10] Speaker C: Now I. I know where we are. We're an hour and 59 minutes in.
[01:59:14] Speaker A: And, yeah, we can keep going.
[01:59:15] Speaker C: A little bit busy, man. Yeah, but if you got a little bit. I mean, I've. I've got a few things written down. I don't know if you've got a few more things written down, Greg, or if you were. Yeah, I wanted to.
[01:59:24] Speaker B: No, that we need to just talk a little bit of gear and maybe at the same time, look at some things a bit. But let's, let's.
[01:59:32] Speaker A: Let's talk. Let's have the gear talk.
[01:59:34] Speaker C: All right, let's have the gear talk.
[01:59:36] Speaker B: So, obviously, David, we all make mistakes in life. Now you're a stony shooter.
Out of interest, why, why did you go with Sony with a 1s? Why did you go with the at the time, cream of the crop.
[01:59:49] Speaker C: Oh, I know something. I know something Greg doesn't know. What?
David used to shoot Fujifilm film.
[01:59:57] Speaker B: How could you?
[01:59:59] Speaker A: How could I, how could I give up food? Oh, let me list the ways.
Listen, I love.
[02:00:08] Speaker C: Greg. Greg's a Fujifilm fanboys.
[02:00:17] Speaker A: I was an early adopter of Fujifilm and actually Fujifilm took me to task because I was one of their ex photographers and I always just called it Fuji. And one day I actually got a stern letter saying I must refer to it as Fujifilm. And that was the beginning of the end for our relationship. But also the fact that the cameras couldn't focus. But that I felt was a minor squabble.
[02:00:39] Speaker B: You shut your mouth.
You shut your mouth.
[02:00:42] Speaker A: Shut your mouth when you're talking to me.
I was an early adopter of the Fuji mirrorless stuff and for street photography I loved it. I loved the ergonomics, I still love the feel of those sort of old school shutter speed aperture. I loved it, had no problems with the image quality, etc. Etc. And I don't think if you look through my work that you will ever, you know, look through the portfolios go. I think that was from his Fuji period and you can see how it dramatically shifted when he moved to that's nonsense sense. The reality is I changed my subject matter. I stopped photographing on the streets of Venice and India. I stopped requiring small, easy to use cameras and requiring higher megapixel, better low light performance lenses that actually focused on a running cheetah, etc, even just better lens options and it was just no longer the choice for me despite the fact that my relationship was with Fujifilm Canada sort of devolved.
It really had more to do with the fact that it was no longer a fit. And it's like asking a carpenter why he changed from one tool to another. Well, probably the tool was no longer doing what he needed it to do. I have shot and loved in my time Pentax. Who shoots Pentax? Pentax, Leica, Hasselblad, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Fuji and all have had their advantages. If I were to today, if someone were to say you could have any system in the world without blinking, I would change back to Nikon.
But because it was always my brand, I'm a Nikon guy. I like the ergonomics better than anything. They fit my hand a little. Sony's are a little small, small for me, but is it because of image quality? No, I think across the board people will bitch and like if you really believe that your shots are better because you're shooting a Canon, we probably don't have anything to talk about because the camera does not make the photograph for one photographer. They will see things in a camera system that they love and that work better for them.
[02:02:58] Speaker B: Great.
[02:02:59] Speaker A: I don't nitpick about skin tones because elephants, bears I like if you see, if you see something in a camera system you're like no, that's what great. Buy the brushes and the paints that you want to, that you want to use.
But it probably has a very it has less to do with the actual system.
If I Nikon has has a better range of lenses. They have things in their lenses that Sony doesn't buy a little. But again this is only if somebody like gave me carte blanche I'd be like, yeah, I would switch to but. But when I went from Fuji to Sony I didn't have carte blanche. I had some very real constraints financially and I asked a very good friend of mine who shoots Sony I said, you know, why did you choose this? And we had a conversation and when I started looking at actually making the purchase he was on his way to some upgrades and he gave me like he gave me one a one body. He sold me the other at he got some very good pricing. He sold me a 600 millimeter lens at a price that I couldn't possibly have got anywhere else. So I took that total price and it was like it was a no brainer. Was I gonna go, yeah, I'm really more of a Nikon guy. No.
And I have no regrets switching from Fuji and shooting. What I did with Fujifilm to Sony was like a night and day difference. I my Fuji stuff couldn't keep up with the wildlife, plain and simple. But you're not going to look at I have shot wildlife with Fuji. You're not going to look at it and go is that the Fuji stuff? Because it no, you're not going to.
[02:04:35] Speaker B: Be able to tell.
[02:04:36] Speaker A: And my underwater stuff was all shoot shot on Nikon just because I inherited some gear and I got a good deal on a housing and it was just is purely pragmatic.
I think we get way too hung up on the brand of our brushes.
We need to be a little less precious about it. I'll shoot with anything. I would even shoot with a Canon again or a Pentax or you know. Well okay, let's not get crazy, right?
[02:04:59] Speaker C: I love how can it's like, I would even shoot with a Canon. I mean, I don't want to, but I would if I had to.
[02:05:04] Speaker A: Well, I just, you know, like, some. When you pick up a camera, here's the thing about a camera purchase, they're going to be with the camera is going to be with you for a while, and it's got to feel good in your hands and it's got to do all the things you need it to do. And that'll differ from. If you're an astrophotographer.
Your needs will differ from a macro photographer, from a portrait photographer. I get that skin tones are more important to some people than others. I'm like, skin tones. Like, I'll just move that color temperature slider or any way I want anyway, so what does it matter? I. To me, it wasn't an issue, but to someone else, it will be. The most important thing is the camera in your hand gets out of the way as quickly as possible. That it's not an obstacle to your creativity, that you're not kind of going, oh, God, where's the thing? You know, and. And so it needs to make sense to you. It needs to be learnable. It needs. And you can learn anything. Anything is figureoutable. With enough time playing with the dials, you will develop the muscle memory that you can get where you need to go.
Stop worrying. Like, if you got a preference, own that preference. But one of the things that drives, okay, I feel like I've been drinking because I'm getting really loose with my tongue here.
It was just Diet Pepsi, I promise.
One of the things that drives me crazy is when I do have this lapse in judgment and I go back on Instagram and I see someone's profile, and rather than talk about the things that they photograph, the passion that they have for making images, it's all about, I shoot with this camera. I'm a Nikon shooter. I'm like, that's the best you can do.
That is the best that you can do. You have an opportunity to create art that will move the human heart, stir our imaginations, ask important questions, point to beauty, do all these amazing things. And the best you can do is shill for a camera company. And like in your one, in your bio, you have to tell me what camera you want to impress me. Show me your photographs. Let your cameras do the talking and stop this nonsense. If your obsession is your tools.
[02:06:59] Speaker B: I'm.
[02:06:59] Speaker A: Sorry, this is like artistic masturbation at a certain point, and I, forgive me for putting it as such terms but we can do better. We can do way better than this nonsense because, yeah, those tools are amazing, but you need an obsession that is not your camera. You need to photograph real life. There's this old, like Saturday Night Live skit with William Shatner from Captain K. Kirk from. And he. They did this whole thing about, you know, Trekkies and that sort of thing about Star Trek. And he finally, in the character of Captain Kirk, he's like, get a life.
And. And it. Among. I'm not really a Trekkie, but I know Trekkies. I'm Trekkie adjacent. And, and I've always thought that it's so true. Like photographers. If I could say something so cynical and out of character for me, you know, so uncharacteristically, without grace, I would say, get a life. Like these cameras, the camera that you were so in love with right now. Ten years from now, you're going to be onto something else. Five or two years, if I know you, it'll be the next upgrade cycle. You'll be on a Mark vii and you can't believe how you ever shot with that Mark six.
Good grief. You know, like go sit on a rock with a bear and. And just experience deeper human emotions.
The cameras you have will work. And if it doesn't now, you know, and you get the camera, then that will do the thing you need it to. Doesn't matter whether it's a. Okay, maybe not a Pentax, but, you know, it doesn't matter if it's like, get the camera that works. Yeah, I loved my Pentaxes. I. But they were a quirky camera company that insisted on 55 millimeter prime lenses and everyone else was doing 50. And at the time I was like, that's pretty cool, you know, but anyway, anyway, I think it's great that you still use Fujifilm, Greg. It's okay.
[02:08:52] Speaker B: Thanks.
[02:08:53] Speaker C: It's okay. It's okay.
[02:08:54] Speaker B: But like you said, you know, I. I was a Canon shooter and I was liking big glass, but I developed some neck issues, which I still struggle with these days. And Fujifilm just made sense. Yes, of course it was creative. I love the ergonomics and the feel. So there it is. But I'll tell you what, when we did our photo of the year competition, that was that Monday. It was, wasn't it? Yeah. Monday night. Yeah, Monday evening.
And if you haven't seen that yet, guys, please go back and watch that because it's an absolutely stunning episode, even if we do say so ourselves. Humbling.
[02:09:25] Speaker C: Which is actually still there's. Actually still time to vote on the People's Choice winner. Actually, we should have mentioned that at the start of the show. If you haven't done that, go to that episode, go in the comments and, and submit your vote for the People's Choice winner. Anyway, sorry, Going great.
[02:09:39] Speaker B: But what I, what I loved about that experience, other than obviously the imagery and for me, the words stood out more than the photos. Well, they, they paired beautifully, but was the range of gear that people were still shooting with. Some people were shooting with, you know, first gen APS, C, canon DSLRs, you know, and a whole range people sending in photos they shot on their phone. It didn't matter. It was about the, the image and the language that went alongside it.
But we do like to tease people about their brand here on the Camera Live podcast.
And as you are by nature.
[02:10:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And there are still people that insist on shooting with Fuji and God bless them. But, you know, if you can't.
[02:10:22] Speaker B: If.
[02:10:22] Speaker A: You can't make a meaningful body of work on an iPhone, you haven't learned the craft of photography. If you truly believe that you are only as good as your gear, then you don't understand creativity, you don't understand storytelling, you don't understand composition or the way color works. Because an iPhone, far other than the fact that no, you can't, you don't have a wide range of lenses, but you should be able to take an iPhone into any circumstance and make a meaningful body of work. Those constraints that we talked about earlier come with with an iPhone. And on some level, the iPhone will create better stuff than your mirrorless or DSLR because it's computational and it will do some things, things that, so it's just another tool. But this nonsense that we're only as good as the latest version of our cameras. It's what the camera companies want us to. You know, I'm so tired of their marketing. Like, you know, your, your next great creative tool, your ultimate. I'm like, no, someone's a tool, but it's not. Anyway. It's, it drives me crazy. It's just, it's such silliness.
[02:11:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I want to quickly comment on, I want to quickly comment on that.
So I, I have a Leica Q3. It was a dream camera to own and it is love.
It is a stunning camera. Like, it's, it's beautiful to hold. I love it. The image quality is insane.
Everything's great.
And I even spent, I, I. We traveled to the US for three months a couple of years ago now, and I took that camera only just, just the one camera. That was it. And I do love it. But when I was in Vietnam, I took that and I also took my normal Canon with a zoom, like a pretty standard, like an F4 zoom lens and a 50 mil prime, just 1.8 prime, like the nifty 50 as well. And I ended up shooting all of my favorite images on the Canon.
And it's. And it ended up. I sort of learned, although the Leica has a better feel for, like, street photography and travel and it's smaller and it, it's way less noticeable and all that kind of thing.
The muscle memory that I've got on the Canon from shooting hundreds of thousands of sports photos. And like you were saying about. No, like, instead of changing, changing, changing, like learning your camera.
I got images that I definitely wouldn't have gotten with the Leica, with the Q3, just wouldn't have got them because I was able to pull it from my hip and shoot in half the time or less. And I know what the autofocus is going to do without even bringing it to my eye. I know how it tracks. I have a pretty good sense for all of that. What it does grab, what it doesn't grab. And anyway, so it was just. I like what you said about just knowing your system inside and out is more valuable than upgrading to the next thing.
[02:13:21] Speaker A: Yeah. If you're constantly, you know, if you're constantly chimping to see if you got the shot. If you're, you know, you're looking at the dials and going, oh, where's my ev compensation? I can't. The moment's gone. Like, and that's why I love Mirrorless is because I can keep the camera to my face all the time. I don't have to, you know, unless I want to flip the screen down. You know, it's. I'm in the moment, in the moment. I'm not in, out, in, out. And it's invaluable. But again, if you're looking for buttons and stuff, stuff like, you got to know that stuff cold.
The more you know the tool, the more it gets out of the way. And you can be thinking about composition and storytelling and all the soft skill stuff way more important than that. I'd rather that than have the latest and greatest that I still am fumbling for things on. Yeah, it's that that fumble takes you out of the moment. It breaks creative flow. You should be able to put the camera. And that's why, I think, why some of the great Photographers, they use the same or similar cameras all the way through their life.
I almost am jealous of people that, you know, shot film all their lives and, you know, ended up with a Nikon F3. And. Because you never. What got obsolete about a film camera, really? Nothing, you know, I mean, at the point where they could all shoot at 8,000th of a second and they had good matrix metering and nothing changed, it's like, I can just keep shooting this. And admittedly, we all could. Still. I just, you know, I'm no longer a film guy.
[02:14:45] Speaker B: But again, it's a tool choice, isn't it? It's about selecting your brushes, as you said earlier, for the canvas that's in front of 100%.
[02:14:52] Speaker A: And we just need to be less precious about it. Like, ultimately, if I lost my camera gear, if I was flying to Kenya and somebody stole my camera bag and I got to Kenya and all I had was my iPhone, would I still be able to make meaningful photographs of my svari? Absolutely. The same photographs? No, but would I be able to make meaningful photographs? Yes. And I may come back with a stunning body of work. That's totally different. It might be stunning because it's different. It may, you know, and. But I can do it. Or I could. Someone could say, hey, can you. I shoot Canon. I have an extra camera and lens. Can you use that? Absolutely. I can pick up any camera and figure it out. I will learn it and I will still make the. The photographs I need to make exactly the same, you know, no different. But if you can't do that, I convinced that you're not at the place you need to be. As a photographer, making photographs is not the same thing as using a camera. They're related, but they're not the same.
[02:15:48] Speaker B: Yep, they're cool.
[02:15:50] Speaker A: Gosh darn it.
[02:15:52] Speaker B: Yep, I love it.
As we head into the home stretch, did you want to bring up some images, Justin?
[02:16:00] Speaker C: Well, if we have time, but it's completely up to you.
[02:16:03] Speaker A: I've got time. I'm happy to hang out for a while.
[02:16:06] Speaker B: Let's bring up some bears.
Yeah, we love bears here because we don't have to battle them.
[02:16:11] Speaker C: The right one.
[02:16:11] Speaker B: It's one dangerous creature we don't have.
[02:16:14] Speaker C: That was one thing in the US when we're in Yosemite and. And, like, we're just. We're just in a national park. We're just cruising around, going on a hike. And then I started to see people with bear spray on their, like, backpacks. And I was like, no, surely, surely we don't need to worry about that here. But apparently, depending on where you go in the park, you might have to. And in. In Australia, it's like if you're not. If you're not in the ocean or if you're not in the top end of Australia where large crocs are, like, you can't get eaten.
You know, it was just an odd. An odd feeling to be like, oh, no.
[02:16:53] Speaker A: And at the same time, you know, the reality is, I mean, I've. I've clocked hundreds of hours with bears and they're not. You have to. What you have to do is you have to understand bears, you have to understand how they work, you have to be able to read them, you have to treat them with respect. But they're not that. They're not the fearsome, you know, mindless killers in the same way that, you know, yeah, you'll have a shark attack every now and then, but in general, sharks. Are sharks the dangerous thing we've made them out to be? No. I spent plenty of time in the ocean with bull sharks and tiger sharks. And as long as you understand them, as long as you understand the world in which they work and they live and the way they're the. We're the most dangerous predator on the planet. Not them. Yeah, sorry. Pictures. Let's talk pictures. Look at those cute little bears.
[02:17:45] Speaker C: Look at those bears. Bears. This is amazing.
[02:17:47] Speaker B: Yep.
[02:17:49] Speaker C: So this is. This is on your website under the, like the images section, the portfolio section under bears. And I'm just kind of cruising through.
So this is what you were describing when you were saying this is an ongoing body of work for you.
[02:18:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. And, and honestly, this. What my. My website gets kind of the least of my attention. This is just where I dump stuff every now and then. When I think about it, it's a little bit like a sandbox for me. So I'll, you know, put stuff on and I'll look at it and see if it sort of succeeds or. Or not.
But if I were to do a book, it would be much more serious. When I do a book, it would be much more seriously curated in terms of the sequence and that thing. I. It's, on some level, it's kind of a bit of a undisciplined dumping ground, which it shouldn't be. I would never counsel any of my students to do it this way.
It's just that I haven't gotten around to making it. These are sort of rough bodies of work.
There are others on my website that are A little bit more better curated and unfortunately with a lot of this bare stuff. My best stuff is more towards the end.
It's a little bit chronological, but, you know, I'm aiming for a rhythm. I'm aiming for a variety of images, variety of feelings.
My hope is that when I see what I see in bears and what I'm. What I love about them is the personality.
I'm fascinated by animals that are bigger than me, but I'm also fascinated by animals that are threatened and, and, or going extinct. Right. In danger.
And there's something about the personality of bears, especially grizzly bears, but especially, you know, bears in general, general that I'm, I'm captivated by. I find them, they have such strong personalities and ultimately my time spent with bears is some of the most rewarding. And so I don't think it has to be any more complicated than that. You find what you're obsessed with and you photograph it. And that obsession fuels the long hours. And, you know, there's oftentimes when we're not succeeding.
None of, I think a good body of work takes a lot of time to create.
If it's that easy that you just show up and raise your camera and get a shot and move on, it's probably not worth your time. These are spirit bears. They're. They're actually a North American black bear that has a recessive gene that makes them white, not like an albino. It's different from albinism, but they, they're very limited to the Great Bear Rainforest, a certain area in British Columbia, Canada.
But again, just, just a regular black bear that's not a regular black bear. And they, there's just something about their disposition and that, you know, you can see their eyes more clearly. Their personality comes through more clearly than just a straight black bear.
And the contrast too, you know, the white in these incredible rainforests I think is just. They're astonishing creatures and, and you know, you spend time with them. Like there was one that you went past where the bears. Basically, it's a headshot and he's basically. She was just kind of sitting there and.
And I'd been photographing. That's the one. And I'd been photographing and. And suddenly this bear was gone. And I'm looking around and I'm frustrated and, you know, and suddenly I looked over to my bear guide, Tom, and he's going, david, David. And I, I look over, I'm like, what are you calling my name for? Like, we're trying to. I'm trying to Photograph here, nothing. Because there's a, there's, there's no bear. And I looked over, I'm irritated. I looked over and he just, with his eyebrows, big bushy eyebrows, just kind of does this. And I look up and the bear is like right behind me, sitting with his head on the, just watching me. And it was just this, I don't know, just this encounter that was, you know, that the watcher has become the watch. And that's some of what I love about wildlife photography is, is every animal I photograph elephants.
Just recently, an elephant, a super tusker in Kenya called Craig just recently died like this last week.
[02:22:00] Speaker C: And I think, very famous, huge.
[02:22:02] Speaker A: Oh, everyone, everyone that liked elephants knew Craig. He was exactly my age. He was actually about, I don't know, a couple weeks or a month younger than me. So we were the same age. Born. He was born in early 72, I was born late 71.
And the fact that he made it as long as he did to die as a 54 year old elephant is quite unusual. So he was a real success story. But he was a beautiful, gentle, kind, you know, and I realize these are anthropomorphic words, but to encounter an elephant like that. I remember lying on my belly in front of Craig and he was like a massive elephant is tusks. To be a super tusker, your tusks have to basically touch the ground.
Huge. I had a 24 millimeter lens and I'm like, I can't even get him in the frame. He was like just all elephant.
To have those encounters, it's just, you know, it's just astonishing. And especially as, as a representative of the human race that has so decimated their, you know, their numbers, I feel like it's my, my life mission to apologize in person to every one of these animals.
[02:23:11] Speaker B: So anyway, question for you about this, these experiences for you is the call to head out into the wilderness, to see the animals in their environment and to take the shot as a secondary part of that experience. Or is it the other way around?
[02:23:33] Speaker A: The photograph is always secondary.
Part of the motivation to go might be that, you know, I bring my cameras and photograph, but the experience is always I, I tell my students, you can't meaningfully photograph something that you haven't meaningfully experienced.
And I stand by that. I, yes, there's always room for that. That opportunistic shot that you just, you know, lucky shot out of the, you know, out of the corner, your eye, you see something you get. But generally speaking, the deeper you experience something, the Deeper. Your photographs have the potential of being.
But aside from all of that, I collect experience. I want to be there with the animal. I want to feel their presence.
Not always the way the camera shows it. Like, this is not me lying on the beach with a 16 millimeter lens.
It would be irresponsible to me and to the animal. It wouldn't. I don't, honestly don't believe I'd be in any danger, but it would change the animal's behavior and.
And it would encourage other people to go do stupid things like that. And with the wrong bear, it could be really dangerous.
But my camera was on a ground level tripod with a remote, and I was about 100ft into the bush, and so, you know, not far, but I was. I was well off the track. And I just. As the bear went by, I said, hey, bear. Just to let her know that I was there. And she looked. She's in this case, looking directly at me.
And, you know, there are ways of getting these great low POV shots without compromising your ethics, without being irresponsible, without, you know, because let's face it, I could probably do this and get away with it. And yet at the same time, if everyone. The question is, if everyone did that, what would you know? Well, there'd be a lot more dead bears, for one, because it only takes one bad encounter with a bear, and suddenly it's the bear's fault.
And suddenly the beaches everywhere would be strewn with people doing stupid shit getting in the way of a bear's natural rhythms and habits, and it would change that. And then no one would be able to see bears. And the bears, you know, especially on a hard year, the bears might not get the calories they need. They might be pushed deeper into the forest. They don't get the salmon.
They don't den successfully. They don't breed successfully.
[02:25:53] Speaker B: Like, our.
[02:25:54] Speaker A: Our people talk all the time about is it responsible to, you know, to clone this out of an image or, you know, do this? And yet they're perfectly happy misbehaving towards wild animals.
I think we do whatever you want in Photoshop.
[02:26:09] Speaker B: Just stay out of the way of.
[02:26:10] Speaker A: The damn bears, you know, and the whales and the, you know, we need to. We need to treat this.
We need to treat the world with some reverence. Not. It's not our playground. It's not just there for our entertainment and likes on Instagram. So, yeah, the experience is always more important to me.
[02:26:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[02:26:28] Speaker A: And sometimes that. That means putting the camera away.
[02:26:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[02:26:33] Speaker C: Yes.
I just have I have a question about wildlife photography because it's obviously, it's probably very appealing to lots of photographers, very appealing to me. It's something that I'm always pushing off, thinking, I'll do that in the future, future, maybe when I've got more time and, well, mainly money. And I. I don't know if I'm putting a fake block in my way, but in my mind that photographing these large animals, especially going to Africa and things like that, in my mind it's something that you need a lot of money to do. You need. I mean, you don't necessarily need the best gear. You can definitely get away with a. A more, more simple setup, you know, 5, 100 to 500 or something like that. But just the trips themselves seem really expensive. Is. Am I, am I.
[02:27:25] Speaker A: No, you're right. You're making that up.
[02:27:27] Speaker C: Or is it correct?
[02:27:28] Speaker A: No, you're absolutely right. They can be because the reality is most wildlife, especially charismatic megafauna like bears and, and lions and leopards and, yeah, elephants, they are in places that we are not right. We have pushed them out into reserves and areas where we just. Where we don't want to put our houses so often.
But charismatic megafauna are not the only story. There are wildlife photographers that focus on animals much closer to home and do brilliantly. There are photographers in the UK who photograph the native stags and badgers. And, you know, there's absolutely no reason in the world why you couldn't stay close to home. It's really less a question of can you do it at home? Like we have black bear populations in Vancouver. My grizzly work is done relatively close to home.
But you do need time. You can't just, generally speaking, do a day trip and meaningfully photograph these things.
I need to go off for a week or two so that, you know, I get a guide and I spend real time. And that's where the expense is, is you do need a guide who knows how to track. You need someone who understands the animals, understands the area.
It's about access. And the less you spend, especially when you look at, like African safaris, the less you spend, the bigger the lodge that you're going to go to. The more people are going to be there, the more dense the tourists are going to be. So, yeah, it can, it can cost money, but it doesn't have to.
Often it's just the expense of getting there. Once you're there, there are ways to spend time, you know, at a less luxurious lodge that's, you know, in a More remote corner of things. And you have. There's lots of ways to do it, but elephants and lions are not the only animals out there.
But you're not wrong in thinking it costs money. It costs money for long lenses, it costs money for faster glass, faster bodies.
But there are, there are people out there, I'm quite sure, who are doing very meaningful outdoor and specifically wildlife photograph photography with older gear and within the constraints that they've got and they're making beautiful stuff, it's just going to be different.
And there, there are people that are spending all the money that have the latest and greatest gear that are making garbage photographs. Like, don't let, let's not, let's not forget the main point. It's still going to be about composition. It's still going to be about mood and emotion and putting the time in to get, get that shot where you have, you know, like, this does not happen every day. Not. I mean, you will see things in front of a setting sun, but that particular composition where the wildebeests are going the right way and the, the giraffe are looking at the right. Like, it, it just takes time. This is not any amount of particular skill. It's just sunset after sunset after sunset, most of which are like, wow, that was an amazing experience. But did you get anything? Not really.
Okay, that's fine. But you know, on, on the 14th day, you might get something unbelievably extraordinary, but you need to put the time in and time, time is money, right? In terms of staying and paying for guides and, and time away from work or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:30:48] Speaker C: I, I think that's where I'm sort of where I'm at currently is like, I've, I've got a lot of, lot of different things. Unfortunately, being on this podcast exposes you to a lot of different styles of photography and you want to do them all.
It's just how it is.
[02:31:02] Speaker A: You know, you see, that's a good problem to have.
[02:31:03] Speaker C: Cool. That's cool.
And, and then, you know, you do a trip to Vietnam and you cruise around on the streets and it costs next to nothing in the scheme of things. I'm not saying cost next. Nothing for everyone. But in the scheme of things, the flights are cheap from Australia and accommodation is cheap, food is cheap. And to go out on the streets, you don't need a guide necessarily.
You know, you can get a scooter for not much money. And so I compare the two things and I, and that's why I keep pushing this. You know, I've always thought about going to Africa and, and seeing these animals in person, but it's something I just keep pushing back every year because I'm like, oh, I couldn't afford that, you know?
Yeah.
[02:31:39] Speaker A: I mean, everything's, everything's. You know, there's a time of life that you can't afford to do it. And some people will never be able to. I, I would never, I've never forgotten how privileged I am to be able to do it. But I will say this. It is. I mean, I've been on the streets of Vietnam and Thai. I mean, I've been a lot of places and nothing has changed my life like being in Africa specifically. Being in front of the, the big, beautiful.
I, it. There's something unbelievable about it. So I, I would encourage you to do it at some point. Like, you know, if not, there are people who are like, yeah, I have no interest, Interests. Great, do what interests you. But for me, it's important enough. Like, I cannot imagine. If I was like, if I got a cancer diagnosis tomorrow and they're like, you got a year to live, I'd be like, I know exactly what I'm doing with that year. I book my flights, I'll be in Africa, and when I finally keel over, just feed me to the hyenas. Like, I think that's what I want to do.
And I would miss the bears, right? But if I had my choice, bring some bears to Kenya. Bring some bears. I want the Zambian. I want to photograph the Zambian bear.
[02:32:46] Speaker C: Quick, quick question on bears. Nathan wants to know, saying, hey, bear, does that actually work?
[02:32:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, lots of things work.
There's so many things that you can do to mitigate a bad experience with wildlife, specifically bears. The fact that people for so long in places like Yosemite and the places that I go to photograph grizzlies have been saying, hey, bear.
It's what they're used to hearing. It's friendly. It's not fear based. It's not banging pots. It's not, you know, yelling.
I don't think anyone benefits when we make bears afraid.
Like, nobody makes good choices when they're scared, humans or bears. But hey, bear, you know, calm, peaceful. Yeah, it's. I think if they're in a place place that's well trafficked, they're a little bit habituated. They've heard it and it's like, okay, that's just, that's just the dumb people with cameras. Yeah, it, it works in the sense that it's familiar to them and Bears like us don't like to be startled. They don't like aggression.
Yeah, it's ice. After all these years, I'm still like, hey, bear, how you doing? Hey, mama. You know, and I'll talk to the bears and I sound like a raving idiot. But, but they're used to hearing that. They're used to hearing the tone and, and they don't associate it. Like no hunter is out there going, hey, bear, how you doing? Right. Like they're, they're locked and loaded and they're scared and they're with bear. You know, they got all the stuff and they're angry and they're, you know, don't want to pick on the hunters. But I don't like them, you know? Yeah. So you feel like an idiot, but it is, it's a good way of letting the bears know your intentions.
[02:34:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
I talk to all five of my cats all the time.
More than my, more than my children. So I think they.
[02:34:38] Speaker A: And why not, Right?
[02:34:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
I don't know.
[02:34:43] Speaker A: What I don't know is that if you went somewhere else, like there's a comment that said they spent a week in Slovenia and, and the girlfriend kept saying, hey, bear. I'm not sure whether the bears, like, whether it translates language wise, like, would you want to learn, you know, some Slovenian? You know, that would be my question. But tone of voice is everything. And honestly, like, animals are animals and we are part of the animal kingdom, whether we like to admit it or not. We are not separated from the animals. Our instincts are similar, theirs are probably more refined, but we respond to tone of voice. If I go to India and my Hindu, sorry, my Hindi is not particularly good. I get to the end of my workable Hindi in about 1212 words, then my tone of voice is everything. And with wildlife, energy is everything.
Bears, elephants, lions, whales. If you're swimming with whales and you're thrashing about, they will respond to you differently than if you have a calm, peaceful energy. And so to go back to the question. Yeah, saying, hey, bear, I think it matters because your energy will be translated. Horses, you know, know whether you're afraid or not because they feel that energy. They pick up on this.
Same thing with animals and sharks and, you know, it's, it's incredible how we've lost that, you know, and yet if somebody yells at me, it's not the things they say, it's the, the way that they yell at me and, and I can. My adrenaline goes up, my fight or flight.
Same with a bear, you know, so anyway.
[02:36:20] Speaker C: Great advice, great advice.
I have one small self serving question then we should probably let you get on with your day. Unless Greg's going to.
[02:36:32] Speaker A: Yeah, well if I don't go to the bathroom at some point I'm going to be in trouble. But yeah, let's go for it.
[02:36:36] Speaker B: Let's hear your question, boss.
[02:36:37] Speaker C: One tiny small self serving question is actually. So I'm going to go to India this year.
If there was one other country you could recommend visiting from all of the countries you've visited. Not on the wildlife side but on the culture. Walking the streets, making images out in the world sort of side of things. Is there anything else that pops into your head other than India?
[02:37:06] Speaker A: I mean in terms of walking the streets and that sort of that village feel. I mean there's, there's so many. I mean I love the little, little villages and in, in Italy I, I mean it's different, very different. But I love that. I love Nepal. I, I thought Nepal was a little bit like. People have always joked that it's kind of India light.
I don't think there's anything light about it but it's a little bit more kind of, it's a little more chill in some places. But I, yeah, I love Nepal. I thought Nepal was wonderful but honestly, I mean you can't, most of Africa is not kind of a, hey, just land in Nairobi and walk around Nairobi for, you know, like it's not a villagey kind of place though. There are places you can do that.
But, but I, my impression of so many places in Africa, the villages I have been in, again because of my humanitarian work, you wouldn't necessarily ever go there as a tourist.
Africa changed my life. It just, there's a, a quietness, there's a generosity of spirit and it could just be that it's just, you know, some people just, you know, like they fit better with some cultures and Southeast Asia was great. I love India and especially northern India, like Ladakh and that kind of the more Buddhist culture.
Even in Kathmandu, in Nepal, I, I generally spent more time in the Buddhist areas.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean almost everywhere I've been. If you, especially if you don't just go and get off a plane. But if you go and like old Cairo, I loved old Cairo. I love that like Islamic culture and I've never felt more welcomed than in some of these Muslim communities.
I loved Tunisia. I found it hard to photograph in, but I loved walking around Tunisia.
I don't know, I mean the World is so every place that I've been has been both amazing and confounding at the same time. It's all had its pluses and minuses. It more has to do with, you know, who I was there with that could sort of lift the hood on the experience for me and kind of go, okay, you want to go here and not here.
But I love Tunisia. I loved Cairo. Ethiopia was amazing. Ethiopia is distinct in having its very own culture, has its own language, its own history. It's the only country in Africa, I believe I'm right in saying this, that hasn't been colonized. I think I'm right in saying that they were occupied briefly by the Italians, but never colonized and they're just so distinctly their own that I highly recommend Ethiopia.
For cultural stuff, go to a place like now. I can't speak for right now because of the political stuff, but towns like Lalibela, this little once upon a time village that was bound to be the new Jerusalem. It's all these rock hewn churches and you can go and walk around Lala Bella for four weeks.
Spectacular kind of place.
But yeah, I actually, I think you're going to get more, more advice in the comments than you will from me because I've increasingly kind of like once I find the place I love, I just want to go back there. I'm not interested in that sort of that thin. I want to see everything anymore. I want to go back to the places and go deep, deep, Go deep, go deep.
See the places I know, the people I know and use that like learning curve that gets chipped away at because my, my images in these places get stronger, but also my experience, a little bit of the language, a little bit of familiarity, a couple more friends. These are, these are important for travelers, but depends why you travel too. So. Yeah, very true.
[02:40:45] Speaker C: Thank you. Wonderful, amazing advice.
All right, we better let you go, I think.
[02:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Can I say. Well, first of all, thank you. It's been a real privilege. I don't think I have ever done a 2 hour and 41 minute interview, but it's been really fun.
Thank you for that. For those of you that are watching, if you want, you know, God help you if you haven't got enough of me already. If you want more, you can find me on my
[email protected] my Instagram handle, same thing at David Duchem.
And from there there's all kinds of options. I send out a, every two week roughly an email called the contact sheet. And it's not A newsletter. It's not about me. It's about the art and craft of photography. Usually slanted more toward the soft skill stuff, the creativity stuff.
You just go to my website and you can find the links. But there's. Get the contact sheet. If you go to the top left, there's a free download for an ebook, but that will also get you on the contact sheet.
Mycontactsheet.com is another way. That's what you're looking at now. Anyway, I welcome you to sign up for that. It's kind of my best. It's an article about what I believe is gonna. New ideas. Maybe they're not that new. New ways of looking at old ideas about moving our creativity forward, the visual language, being a better picture maker, that sort of thing. So I welcome you to join me. There. There is somewhere at the top of the. That page there's a link for.
Was it say so I need an adventure. If you go to the. The tab there at the very top that says need an adventure. If you were curious about joining me on one of my.
My. Right now I'm not doing workshops, but I am doing safaris. That's. You can get on that list and I'll send you. I've got a couple trips coming up in 2017 to Zambia. We've got a couple bear trips coming up. That would be the place to put your name in to hear about those. If you thought that if two and a half hours with me wasn't enough and you wanted to do this for like 10 days on end, I. I'd love to. You know, I'd love to travel with you too so that you can find that there as well. So anyway, it's all there. My books. There are the links galore.
Anyway, thank you guys for having me. It's. It really has been. Been a treat.
[02:43:01] Speaker B: Well, look, thank you, David. It's been.
I think the word is inspirational.
Thank you. Insightful. It's more than one word, but I think it's fair. I mean, even just looking at your website, it's clear to see that you have such a holistic approach to understanding your art and your craft.
And you apply that in how you approach that and how you support others.
And you've clearly demonstrated that to us today through our conversation. So we really appreciate your time and your insight into our episode today. And we certainly, you know, we. We talk about. People often say, oh, I've been going on for two and a half hours. But often we find that as we have today with these interviews we get to a point where we still feel like we could continue to dig and scratch away at the surface of who you are, what. What makes you a visual creative. But we do appreciate your time and. And also to those of you in the chat that have been asking questions and commenting and following along, we couldn't do this without you guys. So please make sure you give us a like and a subscribe.
And Justin, was there any final words you wanted to share?
[02:44:07] Speaker C: No, no, I think that's it.
Just thanks. Thanks again, David, for. For all the time. Amazing way to kick off 2026. What an interview. And there's a ton of comments in the chat. I'll read out a few of them when we play our amazing AI Reggae music for us to all bop away to and the way out of the show.
[02:44:25] Speaker B: But, yeah, we all do that. Like, we know how you appreciate it, but we don't.
[02:44:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, let's. Let's do a rematch. When it's time to have me back, give me a shout.
[02:44:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll do. That'd be great.
[02:44:35] Speaker C: Would love that. Anytime. And if you ever have anything that you want to contribute to the show or anything like that, just yell out. We're always here for it. So I love it.
[02:44:43] Speaker A: Fantastic. All right, thanks, gentlemen. Take care, everyone.
[02:44:45] Speaker C: Let's do this. Thank you.
Let's see who was in the the. So Yelena came in late and she said, I've only just tuned in, but I have to say, Dave has a very cool voice. Yes, agree.
[02:44:56] Speaker A: Thank you.
[02:44:59] Speaker C: David Leporati said, this is a great inspirational chat. And I think even Nathan said, hey, guys. So refreshing to hear this. There's always a collection of people in every photography community that rant about gear they use, but you never see their photos that Yelena also said, great to see Greg copying some flak about Fujifilm rather than Greg just giving it to Justin. I agree. It was great to have some.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us today and we'll catch you in the next one. Yep.
[02:45:30] Speaker B: Be safe, everyone. Bye.
[02:45:32] Speaker A: Take care.
