[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Well, g' day everybody and welcome back to the Camera Live podcast. I'm Greg and joining me is co host Justin and it is. What is it? It's Thursday the 9th of April all of a sudden and we are here yet again to interview an amazing photographer, Australian photographer. On today's menu we have one Sophie Geraghty, special reserve.
Sophie is a weddings, family, newborn and maternity photographer. Plus on the flip side, she's also a corporate and event event and real estate photographer. Sophie, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on board.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me, guys. I'm really excited.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: As are we. As are we. And Justin, how are you doing, mate? Welcome. Good to have you on board as well, obviously. Thanks.
[00:01:08] Speaker C: Great. I thought you forgot about me. I was like, oh, don't worry, I'm over here in the corner.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Who pays the bills? That's all right.
[00:01:15] Speaker C: I'm great. It was raining this morning when I woke up. When we went to the gym, it was. Was pouring and now the sun's out. It's weird. Bendigo, you know who would have picked it?
[00:01:22] Speaker B: What time did you get up to go to the gym?
[00:01:25] Speaker C: 5:20.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: That's ridiculous.
[00:01:28] Speaker C: That's. That's the time early bird gets the stuff.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Are you an early. You're an early worker outer?
[00:01:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I've been hit and miss lately. I went to this, I used to do every morning. So every morning wake up at. Yeah, like 5:20, exercise at 6 at the gym, at a class, so I can just walk in and then people tell me what to do. This morning, Yelena was the coach, so she told me what to do, which makes it even better. And so if I don't exercise in the morning, I tend to have a very slow morning.
Like I won't get anything more done in some other realm. I'll just kind of wake up a little bit later, float around a bit and I won't start work or anything any earlier.
So I've sort of found out that. And then I'll have to exercise in the afternoon anyway. That's just the. So the routine for me is, yeah, get it done in the morning and then the day's. The day's free.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I get that.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Sophie, just on that topic, you. You do a bit of distance running, don't you? Bit of endurance stuff, is that right?
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yes, I do.
I have been known to go for some crazy kilometers here and there.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: We've had Emily Black on the show in the past and she's also an Endurance runner. What's your, what's your longest run to date?
[00:02:44] Speaker A: Longest run is an event called Costa Cozy, which I don't know if you can see behind me that a cobra up there. That's what you, that's what you win for your first, the first time you complete the. The event.
And that is 240km. That runs from
[00:03:03] Speaker C: 240km?
[00:03:05] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: How far is it to Bendigo from me, Justin?
[00:03:10] Speaker C: Less than that.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I can run adjustable.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: Are you kidding? I thought you were going to say, like. Yeah, a 100 I think is like that's one of those things. That's the big, you know, the big one. And then what's a hundred. 100 miles is 100 miles is 160.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And. And they're becoming bigger here. So I've got, I've got 100 miler event in about five weeks, four weeks time.
So 240ks. Yeah. So it runs from the Twofold Bay in Eden on the south coast, New South Wales. And you basically run pretty much 98% road from Eden to the top of Mount Kosciusko through Charlotte Pass and then you can.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: You also have to go up a mountain.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it does. Well, when you look at the elevation profile, the whole thing is basically from the highest point and then you come back down to Charlotte Pass to finish.
[00:04:01] Speaker C: All right, now I know this is a photography podcast, but it's also, it's our podcast. We get to do what we want.
So I want to find out about this 240 kilometer.
How, like, how long did it take?
[00:04:13] Speaker A: So I was out there for 44 hours.
I wasn't planning on being out there for that long, but we hit a couple of road bumps, quite literally where.
So you start at 5:00am at Two Folds Bay in Eden and by about 4:00 clock on the Friday afternoon, the first afternoon, I think it was a really hot event. So it was, you know, kind of in the 30s and 40s for the majority of it during the day. And I think a mixture of probably overheating, too much fuel, kind of intake of liquid and food, and I started vomiting at 4pm I didn't stop vomiting until 6am the next morning. So I vomited for 14 hours.
You know, we do have things and so it was actually a case of like, you know, you'd be kind of like running, walking, you know, 500 meters, vomit, run, walk, 500. And you know, obviously you get down to the bare bones of it.
It's an interesting event in that, like, you know, most ultras or most events, you would have set aid stations that you have to kind of run to and there'd be checkpoints or whatever.
This event, after the first 24Ks, you have a crew car. So I had my own crew there who are three of my closest friends and we. They can then crew you whenever you want. So because it's on a road.
Yeah, you basically kind of work out with crew how often you want fueling, crewing, etc.
And so the initial plan was probably about every 10ks, the car would stop and, you know, I'd restock with whatever I needed. But because it was so hot after the first probably 50Ks or so, the girl said to me, it's. It's hot, duh.
So we're going to now do you every 5ks just to make sure that you're keeping the fluids up, Keeping the salt.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: Yeah, keeping.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: And I think that although it was the right approach in terms of Salt levels, electrolytes, etc.
What it meant was that I was probably eating a lot more frequently than I would normally be used to in an event like this.
And so, yeah, it just caught up with me over the course of the day. And by 4:00pm, I just.
And, you know, the vomit during an Ultra isn't something that's particularly scary or worrying for me especially, it's. It's something. I'm kind of running jokes that Sophie loves to have a bit of a spew in a race, so that's fine.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Yeah, totally.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: Like a brand. It's a brand thing.
And so it wasn't kind of scary, but I mean, it was obviously really fatiguing.
So we have. Obviously there are checkpoints that you have to reach, there are certain cutoffs that you have to make. And there's a bridge in a little town called Dalgetty and you. Which is, I think around the 165k mark or something like that. And you had to be there by 7am And I made it there with four minutes to spare. The race directors and all the medical crew were basically all lining up outside the, like, along the bridge to basically pull me from the course. Because I was like, there's no way that, you know, that this chick's gonna make it. Was my first time doing this event. Like, rookie has zero reason to be there. Like, absolutely no place in this race whatsoever.
And I made it with four minutes, just had a quick dirt nap, ate some food and then was off and out and finished.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, you're crazy. So I love it.
[00:07:49] Speaker C: Yes, I am so so the maths on that is 240km with no stops whatsoever. You'd still have to, you'd have to average in 44 hours. You'd have to average over five kilometers an hour.
But that's without, that's with, that's with zero.
Like never stop, you know, and obviously you are, you're stopping it. Refuel, spew, have, have a nap. Is napping common? Like a little.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: So when you get into those bigger distance things then, then. Yes. So I had three naps. One was, one was, one was seven minutes, one was 10 minutes, one was 13 minutes.
So it's literally like one was me asleep in the, in the car in my, in my car. Just like, like that one was on the mat on like a, just a picnic blanket and I literally just like that was when I crossed the bridge at Delgetti to, to make the cut off and I literally just came in, went the starfish down on the, on the ground for about 10 minutes. And then the next one was in Jindabine at one of the, the cut off the, the aid station crew point that they had there, which was.
I just fell asleep in a, just in, in the bush just on a head on a log like fully just out for the cow. And there's obviously some great photos of all of those snoozes as well.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: I was going to ask you about, I was going to ask you about the photos because I, you know when we interviewed Emily and we've obviously we've chatted with Emily since then about her endurance running and long distance running and you know she's, she's incorporated her photography into it. So does your photography come into your events? Does, does someone take photos of you while you're doing it? Is there, is there a documentation process for you?
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Oh, I mean in, in. I just saw in the comments someone's talking about UTA and that's the one that, that's the one I've got going on in, in a couple of this one.
[00:09:42] Speaker C: Philip Johnson says we, we have a huge running event in the Blue Mountains each year called the Ultra Trail. That's very popular. Top distance 161km and you pay $1,000 for the pleasure. Is that so, so what's that one called?
[00:09:54] Speaker A: So that's Ultra Trail Australia.
That's actually this, this mug.
So they, it's a, not as a controversial event now but it was, it used to be something called the North Face 50 and it, it grew and then a few years ago it got bought out by Ironman utmb And so there's been some in, you know, varying opinions about various topics. I don't know how.
I don't know quite know what I can say. I got no PR training. I don't work for them. I don't care.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: This is a photography podcast. No one's listening.
Everyone's just like, what gear does she use?
[00:10:39] Speaker A: Stop talking about running. Who wants to talk about running?
Yeah, so that. So that's the event that I'm doing in.
What is it now? Four weeks just on Fort Sign.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Well, Philip. Philip can camp out on the side there and.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: And his own little. Get a photo. Set up his own little aid station there for you.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: It's funny. It's funny being a photographer and a runner and I'm actually a running coach, so I coach people to do these crazy distances as well.
And it's. Yeah, it's really funny when, you know, like you run Sydney Marathon or you run UTA and you get your photos back and you're like, it's overexposed. And I don't know why they've done this.
I. Can we just not.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: You never. Yeah. You never want the event photos because you're just like, no, no.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: And yeah. I've actually shot a couple of really epic events in both in South Australia.
One was the Heisen 100, 105.
And one was an event called.
Oh my God, Irrational south.
And it's a 200 mile event. So then you're talking like.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Does sound irrational.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: So he. So yes, that running organization has delirious West, Irrational South, Unreasonable east was their most recent one, but that doesn't exist anymore. So they are. They're 200 miles. So we're talking three. I can't even do that maths like 340km or something stupid. And you do it over five days of. Yeah. Of pretty much constant moving in their sleep stations and stuff.
And that one was a really interesting event. So I was the only photographer and because a lot of these events have very small. So here we go. We're going to make. We're going to make running and photography meet.
So most of these independent running events are, you know, they're very small businesses. They're run by, you know, a handful of people. It's. It's. It's a dream and a passion realized, which I'm all for. Yeah.
And so I was the only photographer at this event.
It starts in a place called Blinman, which is about seven hours drive north of Adelaide Airport.
And yeah. So it happens kind of this, this time of Year. So it was. It was April when it used to go ahead and we.
I was obviously had to have a car. So I flew into Adelaide and I got lent the race director's parents car which is like this old Holden LPG like sedan thing with like sheepskin seats and the sheepskin steering wheel. I'm going, cool. Okay. Yep. How does LPG work? Like, can someone please.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: You gotta screw the thing on and.
[00:13:29] Speaker A: Yep. Can someone show me the YouTube video? And also when I'm like seven hours out of Adelaide, can you get LPG Like, I don't know.
And yeah, so I drove up there and it was just, it was.
So it was obviously a really isolating incident into. Oh, there we go. Yeah. How we go?
[00:13:48] Speaker C: I just. For our international viewers who. There is a few, but I just want to show them like how far that is. Yeah. And where it is in, in Australia that this, this, this sort of middle area, there's no land, no person, there ain't nothing there.
[00:14:04] Speaker A: So yeah, so once you get. I think it's like kind of Port Augusta kind of. And. And start north, there it is. There is nothing like you are driving for hundreds of kilometers and there is just nothing there.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: I'm just looking, looking in the town of Blinman, like what's. What comes up on the maps. And one of them is that one of the key points of interest in Blinman is the Blinman community shed. And then when you click on it, the picture that comes up, it's. It's not even. It's not even built yet and it's very small.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: That was even there when I was there.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: The wheelbarrow for scale. That's not a big shed and that's the community shed.
Just to give everyone an idea.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Yep. A rampart. I took a photo of that house. Yep.
There's nothing there. There's a pub and I'm vegetarian. And so the two nights that were there, the night before the race and the.
So, yeah, the two nights before the race before. It's before it started that we stayed there.
In fact, I couldn't even stay in Blinman because it's such a small place. There wasn't enough space for me, so I had to stay 7km down the road in a station outhouse that they put two bunk beds in and went, here's some accommodation for you with all my camera gear and stuff. Anyway, so I get to the start line, you know, driving for like seven hours and the further away you get from Adelaide and you know you're trying to stop for, you know, fuel because I don't know when I'm going to be able to next fill up.
So I'm kind of stopping as often as I can. You go through a town called Hawker which has like a couple of cafes and a petrol station and stuff and the, the amount of green things that you can consume or colorful things that you can consume just rapidly diminish because transporting this stuff trans, you know, fresh food and vegetables out is out there is really hard. So you know, and they make a real, you know, they make real comedy out of it in that the, the fridges that they would keep like some veg in or you know, some fruit in or whatever they'll put like they'll call it long green thing and it's a cucumber or you know, round red thing and it's an apple and because it's just not, not every day, you know. And it probably cost you, I think, you know, it was costing me like $7.50 for an apple to have in my car, you know, for, for at some point, you know.
And anyway so you know, driving a lot, driving around for, for five days and I'm driving through, you know, off road like old dried up riverbeds in this car that has no business being really on the road at all anymore.
And it's just I'm there going if, if something happens to me like I've, there is no reception. Like I, I, you have to drive, you know, 10 kilometers down a dirt track to get one bar of 3G on your phone to maybe send a text message, you know, like you can't have a phone call, nothing, you know. So I'm going to like anything happens like I'm done. This is, this is me out.
[00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like Wolf Creek all over again.
[00:16:59] Speaker A: Yeah, it is, it's, it is so remote but like obviously photographing this stuff and it's, they're very small events. So runners are spread out over the course of, you know, 100 kilometers from, from first, from first person to last person kind of thing.
So it's, it's a huge distance that you're covering and we had a real incident that they have a 200 mile event that started on the Wednesday or Thursday or something and then on the Saturday they start like halfway through the course they 100 mile event.
And so everyone kind of starts to, you know, kind of catch up and run together. And at going to the start line of the 100 mile event there was a car ute in Front of me that was one of the crew for the 200 mile runners. And, you know, big ute has enough stuff to live out of his car for five days because that's what you do when you're going from A to B. There's no, you know, point of continuity along the way.
And his car blew up in front of me. And I've got these amazing photos of just this ute, just at like, So I was 50 meters behind him. And smoke just starts pissing out of the back of this ute and there's runners running along the side because it's all just kind of fire trail that, you know, dirt tracks that we're running along. And he's.
And, you know, me and a couple of other people are like flashing lights and trying to wave him down. Be like, stop, stop. Get out of the car, get out of the car, get out of the car. And he kind of gets out and he's this old, old guy that's obviously, you know, lived seven lives and, you know, should probably be dead. And he gets out and he starts, like, trying to get stuff out of the back of the car. We're like, I don't think you have time for this. I think you have to just move.
So we get him away. And then the whole car just goes boom and just completely explodes. Black smoke, everything. Like, it was bad.
And yeah, so there's that photographer, there's the helper in you that goes, I want to help. Obviously nothing I can do now. This car is just on fire.
Might as well just take photos. So I've got these epic photos of, of this, of this car just, you know, pissing into flames. Obviously nothing to do with the race itself.
And then, you know, within 12 hours, 15 hours or something of that, of the 100 mile event starting, a massive storm blew in and you are remote, you know, and for those that know, kind of outback Australia, you know, when the rain starts coming, you've got to be really careful because floods happen, you know, very, very quickly and, yeah, really fast.
And so we then spent the next 12 hours pulling people off course and trying to find people and, you know, sending, you know, SES vehicles out and using, you know, the emergency manuals and I mean, and it was a real message, you know, a. To me, I was, I was really mindful of driving around even like in that kind of golden hour sunset where, you know, the photographer in me is going, I want to get to the top of this mountain to take this photo and get this person.
And I'm There. Going there are. You know, the kangaroos out there are seven feet tall and they are built like. Those are not the kind of things that this car that I'm driving is. Yeah, I'm gonna lose.
And so I was really mindful that as soon as it got dark, I was. I was kind of out for. For the night.
And. But, yeah, then you've got to think about the safety of people and the, the winds that this storm, you know, kind of whipped up and the rain and stuff, it was horrendous. And people were out there thinking, like, we're actually gonna die. Like, people were terrified.
And it was a real lesson in how to make sure that, you know, you have. Not just keeping. How do you keep people safe, but how do you.
How do you plan for something like that? And like, what is, what are your emergency procedures? Because in, in that, in that instance, it became very apparent that the, the safety procedures and the emergency plans that they obviously, obviously you have to submit to councils and landowners and Parks Australia and all this kind of stuff that they probably weren't the most practical. So it was, you know, like, oh, if, if there's bad weather, then, you know, text all the participants and tell them to, to go to the nearest aid station. Well, you can't text them because there's no reception. And then, you know, the next level down was text the. The aid station volunteers and tell them not to let runners continue again. You can't communicate with anyone on your aid station, so what do you do? And, you know. And yeah, it was, it was really scary. And, and there was a real.
Again, I don't want to sound like I'm kind of bad mouthing anyone because I wouldn't have wanted to be in that position, but there came a point, like we were joking before we came on air about, you know, Sophie will be the boss. Like, there was a moment where I kind of looked around this, like, literal kind of round table in this Airbnb in this place called Quorn, going, no one else knows what to do. Like, yeah, if I don't do something, if I don't make a suggestion, we're not pulling anyone off course.
So I became the president. I was in charge.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: Nice. Well played.
[00:21:44] Speaker C: It's probably not the first time a photographer's had to take charge of a situation that, that everyone else there isn't ready for, and that. That could be from something life threatening, like you're talking about. I'm sure lots of situations like that, or down to the very smallest things. I've seen Jim a million times at a wedding. Have to put all the groomsmen's.
One of those things called pin things, boutonnieres, whatever they're called.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: And he'll.
[00:22:14] Speaker C: Yeah. And he'll. He'll just have to go through and do it because they're all. They're all standing there looking at each other, being like, how do we do this? Or tying their ties as well. And they're just fully unprepared.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: So I've done that. I would say every wedding that I have shot, I have been that person. And I actually now get to the point where I literally. I get to the point now where I don't even wait, I think almost to kind of go, okay, now we're going to do this, and wait for them to fumble through it. I'm like, do you know how to tie a tie? Do you know how to do a bow tie? Do you know how to do the pins? And most of the time they're like, no, do you want me to do it? Yep. So I'll do all the, all the corsages, all the buttonholes. And then I'm like, we'll just fake it afterwards. So now the father groom is going to come in and pin and pretend. And now you can look at each other and have a, you know, having a deeper, meaningful conversation because. Yeah, that's. It's. It's that kind of. Yeah. The unplanned.
And people just see the photos, right? They just see the end result of. That's the beautiful photo. I want my, you know, I want that photo with my mom or my dad or whoever it is, and they don't think about the logistics of what it actually takes to get there.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: That's actually a good one. That, that I. I want the photo of my dad pinning the. The thing on, and the dad's just like, I have no idea what, you know, like, I shouldn't be doing this. I've never done this. Why would. Why would the most important thing you've ever had pinned on you in your entire life be given to me?
[00:23:33] Speaker A: I didn't even own. Yeah, I didn't even own a tie until last week when I felt like, yeah, I didn't even own a suit. Like, I'm a trainee. I. I work on a building site and I, you know, I drive a ute and I, you know, like a beer at the end of the day. I don't know. Yeah.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: And it's.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: And it's funny because, yeah, they do. People see the. The end result And. And that's what they. That's what they want for them. That's how they want to portray there. That's the memory that they think is worth having.
[00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Especially in a wedding when you're talking about, you know, the most emotive moments and the, you know, the. The things that. The events in our lives that we put a huge amount of significance and weight on. I think my best wedding story was getting. Literally getting to the moment in the ceremony where it's the. The presentation of the rings and, you know, how many weddings have we been to where the. The best man does this one and everyone laughs.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: The fake loss wasn't fake.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: He went, nice.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: And luckily the. Where the venue where they were getting married was a. Was a yacht club.
And he just left the rings in, like, little anteroom, the little green room where.
Where they were getting. Getting kind of holding. Holding the fort before they came down for the ceremony.
And, yeah, he just left them up there. And obviously it's Aussie summer, you know, outdoor wedding. Everybody's dressed up, everybody's already hot and sweaty. So I just went. I'll go. And it's up, like seven flights of stairs. You know, it's through the kitchen, like, short cutting it through. So I was like, just dumped my cameras down at the, like, literally at the altar and just bolted to go and get these rings and come back and been like, wait, please. Camera's not on. Yeah, now you can go.
[00:25:23] Speaker C: That's. That's awesome. I only. I only had it once.
The real. The real. Forget the rings. And I've never seen a groomsman run as fast or the. The best man, like, he. Because he realized he'd left him in the car and he was like. He was like, hurtling fences and stuff to get to these cars. I was. There are some good photos that come out of that, but you know what?
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Like, that's the. That's the cool stuff, right?
[00:25:47] Speaker C: Like, the real stuff. It's the real day.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: It is.
And I think I'm really lucky with my wedding clients.
And maybe it's how I present myself and how I, you know, that's who I attract. I want to shoot real people's weddings. You know, I want to shoot the, you know, the people who have a. You know, who want to share their real story and it not be the, you know, the Instagram idealized, you know, because that's what's going to be real for them, and they're going to, like, in that case, Justin, you know, like, he's that they're going to remember that moment forever. And that's going to mean so much more than any kind of posed, you know, posed image of the father in law pinning the buttonhole on. My dog wants to play fetch.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: That's all right.
[00:26:36] Speaker C: Bring him on screen. I should. I'll read out some chat messages, Greg, if you want, we'll take a little pause and just see who's here because Lisa Leach is here. Robert Varner says good morning Australia from New Jersey. Good morning, Robert from New Jersey. Oh, look at that pooch.
[00:26:55] Speaker A: His name is Scout. He's a stupid teenage boy.
[00:26:58] Speaker C: Well, hi, Scout.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Oh, g', day, Scout.
[00:27:02] Speaker C: Who else is here? Felicity Johnson says morning everyone. No power here. So watching this on the phone. Oh, hopefully that's going well.
Bruce Moyle is here. Morning all. Checking in between jobs. Hope the jobs are going well. Bruce.
Good morning, Paul.
Julie Powell is here. Can't stay long. We'll have to watch the replay. You will have to watch.
David Mascara from San Francisco says took a nasty fall today doing a city walk. Broke a skylight and an orange filter, but the 40 Voigtlander glass was saved. I turned in the film today also. I'll see in a few days if it's out of sync. Watching this while soaking in a tub of Epsom salts. Lol. Well, hope you're feeling alright.
Hope it didn't hurt too much.
[00:27:45] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: If you're listening along live, throw a comment in the live chat. Tell us where you are, what's going on? Ask Sophie a question if you want. She seems to know a lot of things about a lot of stuff, including Canon cameras, which are awesome.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: I just think I have a lot of stories. Like I've just done a lot of dumb stuff.
[00:28:02] Speaker C: Done a lot of dumb stuff. Perfect. That'll make the rest of this podcast awesome.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: What else?
[00:28:08] Speaker C: What else did I have to say? So, sponsor of this show, us Lucky Straps, me and Greg. It's us. We're the sponsor. We sponsor our own podcast.
We're having a sale at the moment, a little anniversary sale because we turned 12 this month. It's been 12 years since we launched. Oh, thanks.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:28:28] Speaker C: Actually, I got a bucket for that.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:28:34] Speaker C: And yeah, I did it.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Did you pay for that?
[00:28:38] Speaker C: Come with the soundboard so that it was preloaded on there when I got it.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: And Greg, so proud of me.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: I know what I'm gonna do with this.
[00:28:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
So yeah, go to Luckystraps.com. there's a big range of stuff that have got varying discounts up to 25 off, but also until Sunday. If you use the code make it yours or one word, make it yours. You can get free personalization on any leather camera strap. Just normal personalization. You can't put your logo on it or something crazy like that. Just normal like your name or whatever, just in text.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: I'm gonna put you on the spot, Justin, because we had this conversation at. Oh no, there we go.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: Yeah, bring it on.
[00:29:22] Speaker A: And I know because a little birdie told me that you're having a planning meeting at Lucky Straps. Will there be a double harness for women in Lucky Straps future?
[00:29:34] Speaker C: There will be. I can definitely say there will be. When will there be?
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Near future.
[00:29:40] Speaker C: I will not commit, but there will be.
Look, there should be prototypes in a short amount of time. Hopefully. Hopefully.
Yeah, we've got, yeah, we've got some big plans for some new products. I'm looking at stuff on my floor. I can't bring it on screen, but I'm looking at some things. They're very cool.
And the sling style and Jewel style straps are definitely on the list amongst some other things. And yeah, we're catching up on Friday, Greg and Jim and I and we're going to be going, going bananas looking at different options and things that we can try and work on over the coming months. So maybe, maybe by beef up this year we might have some, some things to, at a minimum, some things to like play with.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that be awesome because my, we had this conversation obviously at B last year and the, the double harness for me and I would say I use two bodies across 99% of my shoots.
And from a, from a physical perspective, like I'm, I'm a strong fit person. Right. Like it's, you know, that's. But I'm small, I'm 5 foot 2, so I'm not a tall human being. So I'm not a broad human being.
And the, you know, the single strap obviously is, is trying to manage that is just awkward, you know, and there's nothing like looking super professional. Yeah, there's nothing like looking super professional being like, hang on, let me just let me.
And you miss stuff. Right? Like regardless of whether it's a wedding, whether it's a conference, you know you're going to miss stuff.
And I think the, the weight distribution is obviously great and I feel like my posture is undeniably better, you know, in just kind of walking around because you're not constantly, you know, conscious of. I've got a camera hanging here, so I've got to Kind of keep it on my shoulder kind of thing. Yeah.
And you know, when you shoot 14 hours a day for, for some of those big conferences or a big wedding or something, I don't tend to do big weddings like that. But yeah, it's, it's a lot on your body. And as someone who is in their 40s. 40s, you know, I'm really mindful that, that my physical health is actually a really big part of my profession. Because, you know, for any photographers watching, and I'm sure it's before on your podcast, like if you're sick or if you, if you, for whatever reason, physically, if you can't shoot, you don't get paid, you know, and that's beyond even, you know, the idea of letting a client down for being like, yeah, sorry, I've hurt my back, so I can't shoot or something like that, you know, so. Do you want harness? Please.
[00:32:31] Speaker C: I'm. Yeah, we're on it. We're on it. And I completely agree. And, and physical, it's very interesting you mentioned physical health, so.
Dumb story. Jim and I were shooting weddings together. We were in that like kind of our seasons were getting bigger. We're shooting every weekend through summer, double headers and all that kind of stuff. And we, we joined a CrossFit gym. Neither of us had exercised really. Like we're active. We, we did things, you know, I was wakeboarding and snowboarding, being active and stuff like that, but we didn't exercise.
And in the first month, and definitely didn't run much at all.
And in the first month, one of the workouts that came up was a 10k run, which was by far longer than I'd ran, I don't know, since. And even at school, I don't think I ever did a 10k run.
Never ran 10ks in my life. And I was still exercising at that time in, in Nike skate shoes. I didn't, hadn't even bought like runners yet. They were just like flat shoes. And we went in and, and so this gym too, the cool thing about this gym was sort of old school at the time. You just went in and you didn't know what the workout was that day until you arrived. It was just like, you show up, you do that, you do the workout. And that stopped you from like going, oh, I don't want to do that because you're already there. And we got there and it was 10k run. And Jim was like, we've got a wedding. Like we had a 12 hour wedding today.
Should we do this And I was like, if we can do this and shoot a wedding, we can do anything on a wedding day. You know what I mean? Like, there'll be. And so we did. We both. We both ran our first 10k, then we got to this wedding.
We. We normally shoot around Bendigo. Not a lot of big buildings around Bendigo, and that's this one. I think this was down towards Melbourne on, like, a vineyard or something. First time we've ever been where I think the.
They were either on the second or third floor. No elevator. So the first thing we had to do is get our gear out and walk upstairs, and we're both like, what have we done?
[00:34:34] Speaker A: Do you feel the whole back of your body just go?
[00:34:38] Speaker C: It was just. It was. I. I can distinctly remember just my quads and calves just being like, oh.
Because I had this. And at the time, I had a giant. I'm pretty sure I'd gone to a think tank production manager. I'd gone through so many different ways of managing my gear on a wedding day, and this was my. I want everything, including my lighting gear and stands in one bag. It was the heaviest bag ever. That didn't last long. That didn't even last a full season. That. That strategy, because that was dumb. But I'm pretty sure.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: And you don't need. You don't need everything.
[00:35:11] Speaker C: You don't need it all. You don't need.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:16] Speaker C: Anyway, so that's my. That's my funny story about Jim and I learning, too. And so that was in 2017 or 2018, and both of us still train at that same gym, so that you
[00:35:28] Speaker A: were allowed back is what I'm hearing.
[00:35:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. They let us back and the coach. The coach became a very special part of my life. So there's that, too.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: And did you. Do you now still run 10ks or was that like one and done?
[00:35:42] Speaker C: No, no, I still. Yeah. So 10ks would be semi regular. 5k is quite regular. Just as something to, you know, if we're. If we're traveling and there's a park run or something on, we'll go and do a park run or what.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: The.
[00:35:56] Speaker C: The longest I've ever ran still is 21ks, and I'd really like to do a longer one. Yeah, but that. And that sort. That was sort of cheating, though, because that was a Spartan where they have the obstacles. So it was like.
[00:36:06] Speaker A: That's hard.
No, it's this.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: Yeah. This one was at bright, so there was a lot of elevation, but it was easy because it was just like, there's always something coming up, you know, like, oh, soon there'll be an obstacle
[00:36:18] Speaker B: or soon objective each time.
[00:36:21] Speaker C: Yeah. And it felt more like it was broken up. Whereas I'm quite scared of a long non stop run.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: It.
[00:36:28] Speaker C: It worries me.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: It's a bit of a casual flex of like. Yeah, Spartan half marathon was just easy.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Oh no, I heard it too, so
[00:36:36] Speaker C: I didn't say it was easy. I had to walk uphill, you know, a bit of it and stuff like that. That's the other thing that I never realized is that it's okay to walk on these longer runs sometimes. I mean this isn't a long run for you. Like the half marathon for most runners is like a sprint for like an ultra runner. They're like that, you know. You know what I mean? Like it can be random pretty fast, but like a. I'm assuming anything in the distances you're talking about, there's going to be some walking happening.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Especially if it's steep and spewing, apparently lots of spewing.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: And, and you know what? That's less free, that's less frequent for other people. For me, totally. I think, I think the, yeah, the perception is really interesting thinking about what we like, what we kind of put ourselves through and what becomes our normal kind of thing. So on.
You know, I remember my, the first MAR marathon I ran. You know, I don't think I moved beyond a snail's pace for like two weeks afterwards because I physically couldn't. But you know, as your body adapts, you know, it really.
It. Yeah, it becomes your normal and, and that's what you're looking for. Right in, in anything.
And so, you know, great example was, you know. Yeah, couldn't, couldn't walk for two weeks after doing my first marathon. But yet on Good Friday I did 50Ks in the blue Mountains. And then Saturday I ran an hour and 15 minutes of stair repeats and then on Sunday I ran 10Ks with intervals because that's the TR. You know, that's the trading block that I'm in. So you're looking for that load.
[00:38:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: And I think it's really from a, you know, from, from a work perspective, you know, the idea of having like, you know, getting your first couple of weddings or your first couple of shoots and whatever it is and then suddenly having to kind of manage the, the diary with not only the, the shoots that you've got, but the editing and the, the how you find the clients, you know, the, the marketing strategies and the, the networking and you know, going. If you're a wedding photographer and you want to get into the wedding expo world and things like that. Right. Like, it's, it's learning the. The. The business side of. Of photography and. And getting that experience in kind of all facets of. It's taking what was a passion and into a. Into a business.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Yep. Definitely agree. Yeah. That's amazing.
[00:38:53] Speaker B: That's really great.
[00:38:54] Speaker C: Apparently, Bruce. Bruce says vans are the worst for running in. Not recommended.
Yeah, Wendy. Yeah, Wendy wasn't keen on my Nike Skaterboy shoes. You know what, to be honest, the next. The running shoes I bought after that actually gave me blisters. I was like, I didn't get blisters in my stupid shoes.
[00:39:13] Speaker A: In my Vans.
[00:39:14] Speaker C: Yeah, in my Vans.
Anyway, let's get back to you. Let's get back to your photography journey and things like that. But I can promise you Greg and I will be working hard on a harness.
[00:39:27] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: For you.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: Thank you very much.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: Yeah, we'll do our very, very best.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Because there's a few people out there that have threatened to put a hit out on Justin should it not happen. Han Scott virtually comes to mind immediately.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: You know. You know how you have eye opening. Was it. Well, just, you know how you have those, like, crowdfunding. Those crowdfunding events, and you're like, it's not. It's not a. It's not a. A gofundme for a double strap. It's a. If you. Here's a list of people that are going to hunt you down if you don't.
[00:39:53] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's the reverse. Yeah, it's like, yeah, do it or else.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: Just listen to the people.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: Just listen to the people. Hey, we know. I've had. Like I said, I think we've had prototype. Jim's still. Right. I've got one. Jim's got one. A guy in the US has got one.
Prototypes that have been. Yeah. For. I think Jim would have done easily 100 or 150 weddings with his.
Yeah, sorry, go on.
Look, there's three. It's not really a big sample size. I'm sure if I had 100, it might have gone beyond that. Jim was my business partner.
And then the other guy.
Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: Is not what I'm gonna wear.
[00:40:35] Speaker C: I'm just saying he's the other end of the outlier spectrum. I'm like, if it fits Jim, it should fit most. And then I need the other end.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Yeah, you need women.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: Yeah, I need women and small ones, ideally. So either you or Lisa Leach, who says, I'm five foot and a smidge and they struggle to carry.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Gear is real plus tax. That's what I call myself.
[00:40:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I, I caught up with
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Lisa last week and I had to do a long exposure shot and I just sat the camera on her head and used her as a tripod because she's so small. So that's a terrible. Why did you go there, Greg? Sorry, Lisa.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: Glenn. Glenn, Lavender's in the chat. He says, can you do a. That also lifts and separates my man boobs.
Yeah, we'll put that on the list, Glenn.
Absolutely noted.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: I don't have any boobs, so I can't even recommend a bra that does that. Sorry, mate.
[00:41:29] Speaker C: Oh, dear.
Where were we?
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Let's dig a little bit deeper into, into your journey before we get to the multitude of genres that you do professionally, shoot professionally and the two sides of that coin that you constantly flip.
Let's find out a little bit about where this all began for you. Now, I know you studied fine art photography in, Was it Nottingham?
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Nothing?
[00:41:57] Speaker B: Nottingham Trent University.
Some years ago. We'll just say some years ago.
We'll be kind.
But before that, what, what, what inspired you to, to head down the path of photography? Where did it, where was that first spark for you?
[00:42:12] Speaker A: My dad bought me my first camera when I was 4.
Now, I don't necessarily, you know, wouldn't connect the two and be like, oh, here's my origin story. But I do remember that very vividly.
My dad was interested, was, was really into photography and I remember him showing me some, some prints from when he was probably in school and stuff. And you know, he always had a, you know, a camera or a video camera and he used to, you know, do the home video thing back in the day when the home video cameras were, were this big.
And so he used to love editing videos and I've still got like Pink Floyd in my head from the soundtracks that he would overlay for the audio that, you know, probably a bit of PTSD there.
And I think that the, the biggest jump towards photography was when I was at school, so I went to boarding school in the uk. My dad was in the military, so he was in the RAF and in the Air Force. Certainly in the UK you get funding to send your children to boarding school, so they have that consistency of education because you move houses every two and a half, three years and that's not just to the next suburb, that's, you know, we would move. I was born in Scotland. We moved from Scotland to Devon, which is for anyone that doesn't know the geography of the uk. That's one end of the country to what's through a country to the other end.
I then moved to America, I moved back to Scotland and then I moved all around England. So, you know, in terms of exams and, you know, continuity of an education, it's zero. So the military provide that. That funding. So I went to boarding school and I was very lucky in that I had an amazing art teacher. I don't think I was ever amazing at art, but I connected with it more.
And I later found out I'm at university. I found out I had. Was dyslexic. I was diagnosed with dyslexia in my second year of uni.
So I think the learning aspect of the academic subjects pushed me more towards the arts because it was a creative outlet that I wasn't being judged on my spelling, my ability to, to write, you know, coherent sentences and not make spelling mistakes and, and not having to learn a language and things like that, like my. Or maths, my brain just did not work like that.
And, you know, even though the concentration thing, you know, I then found out as an adult, as I think most creatives do, you know, get the ADHD diagnosis and you're like, okay, that explains a lot.
And so I think all of those things kind of, yeah, pushed me into a much stronger kind of art space. And then when I was doing my A levels, which is kind of the English equivalent of a hsc, we.
My year was the first year that they changed the education system. In the first year of your A levels you chose, they made us do five subjects instead of three and we only did one of them for a year. So it was kind of like a short course and it was called an AS level. And I don't know if that still exists anymore. It probably doesn't because it was a dumb system. Kind of just meant that you did a subject for like seven months and then gave it up.
And so I did. I picked up photography as a what was only going to be an as level and just do it for the year. And my English, my art teacher pulled me to the side and went, soph, love you.
However, art is not your thing.
Photography is your thing. Go do that.
And it was. She said, you need a tool to create something and the camera was the tool.
It was. I always had a real interest in, in people and their stories, but I needed something in between me and them to create that story and to tell that story.
And it still allowed me to interact with people without, you know, Having to then create something that was literally kind of all me, you know, in, you know, in the way that, that you know, painting or drawing was for me kind of thing. So yeah, so I dropped art, carried on with photography and just kind of poured everything into it, you know. And I think we are the summation of the people that we meet along the way. And my photography teacher, his name was Mr. Hodge.
He was amazing.
He was, he was kind of the young trendy teacher in the, in the all girls school. So there was probably a few crushes that were happening.
16 and 17 year old girls. Poor guy. I felt so sorry for him.
And yeah, he, it was, it was just like I found that affinity with it and I just kind of went ah, this is what in you know, enjoying something and, and being able to explore something freely. Because that's what you know, education is, is all about, right? It's kind of is that learning and that journey and you know, everything was film. We had our own dark room at school. So you know, I shot on a, on a Pentax film camera that I think my dad bought me from you know, like a secondhand camera store for 20 pounds or something like that, you know, one lens, that was it.
Developing all my own, all my own black and white film, you know, learning that process and, and then decided to go and study it at a university.
And Nottingham Trent was a really renowned, had a really renowned art school and they had the most incredible facilities. You know, had full, they had three full studios with you know, the white, white dioramas, infinity curves in there, all the lights you could, you know, we could hire, they had a photography store to hire stuff from that was all free. So I shot on like Mamiya six sevens for three years straight because I'd literally just go and like get it out and then take it back in. And so, you know, and we had to, it was an expensive course because, you know, you're buying your own film, your own chemicals, your own paper. They had a full color darkroom with the, with machines, a full, full black and white hue, huge black, black and white dark room. And they even had enlarges that were on that were like so big to do real like large format stuff. So you know, imagine like the size of the wall is just, you know, completely blank and they had proper like railway tracks built into the floor to roll back this enlarger because it was just, it was so big, it was like the size of a small car.
So I got to do some really cool stuff and learn a lot in
[00:48:56] Speaker C: that space essentially the same school the whole way through. Like maybe a different campus or something like that. But was the same. Was this. Was. Is this a different. Is this university or is this the school you're talking?
[00:49:08] Speaker A: This is university. So, yeah, boarding school. Yeah, boarding school was just. We had. We had a. A small, dark room that was, you know, kind of an overgrown cupboard kind of thing.
But then when I went to university, the facilities there was just absolutely incredible. Yeah. And some really incredible lecturers that I definitely did not appreciate as much as I should have. Now, you know, in hindsight's a wonderful thing.
[00:49:32] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. I think everyone can look back as adults and think, gosh, if I would love to do that course now, I would actually apply myself and, you know, and, like. And just extract everything I could out of it. But when you're younger, you don't. You don't always see all of that.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I remember there being, you know, no, your brain's not fully developed. Like, I remember being, you know, being at uni in my first year, and so I went straight to university. So I was 18, and there were mature students who are on the course who were 24.
And I just remember going, like, oh, my gosh, you're so, like, you're so old, so mature. You're so. Oh, my God, you must have all the, you know, all the answers and all this kind of stuff. Like, it's just. Yeah, it was crazy. And, you know, and I was a very studious student. You know, like, I, you know, we went out and we drank and we partied and we, you know, did dumb stuff.
But I went to every lecture, I did every project. Like, I wasn't one to not go. You know, I still had that appreciation of I'm here to. To be educated and to. And so there's a. There's an end goal of having a degree at the end of it, and I'm. I'm not going to throw that away. You know, I'm not going to. You're not going to waste it. Like, this was, for me, that was my ticket and out. That was, you know, my way of getting out of home and. And, yeah.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Starting your own life.
[00:50:55] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And I have two alcoholic parents, so I grew up in a very unstable, unstable household.
And that, you know, I think I saw through going to boarding school and then going to university, I saw what normal was in whatever, you know, whatever spectrum you want to call normal.
[00:51:16] Speaker B: And.
[00:51:16] Speaker A: And I kind of went, oh. And it wasn't. So I was about 16. I just remember going to someone's house one weekend and just, you know, there was a dinner that everyone sat down at together and there was no yelling and, you know, no wine being thrown around and stuff and going like, okay, I want that. That's what I want.
The drive became like, how do I make that happen?
[00:51:40] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
What, what was, what was boarding school like? What age did you start boarding school?
[00:51:47] Speaker A: 11.
[00:51:48] Speaker C: 11. And, and what was that? What's it like? How long are you, because you're away, you're staying at boarding school, how long are you away for? And like, what sort of stints? And then, and what is it like, are the teachers that the same people that also kind of like an 11 year old still needs looking after, you know?
Who looks after you at boarding school?
[00:52:10] Speaker A: That's a good question.
So, okay, so our boarding school was, is a very small school. So we had 100. There were 160 girls in the whole high school. So 11 to 18 years old.
And it's these beautiful old houses, like Victorian houses in Oxford.
So literally the, the classrooms were downstairs and the bedrooms were upstairs.
So age 11?
Yeah, I got dropped off. I, you know, as we remember these randomly significant moments in our lives, and I remember my first night being dropped off with my dad and unpacking. We had these shared dormitories which were about five, four to six girls in them and they were all varying ages. So from in the UK you do your GCSEs when you are 15, 16, kind of in year 10, I think kind of works out as like year 11 here because we go to year 13 in the UK and so you have kind of a girl from each year in your room. And so the idea being that the oldest girl is kind of there to just kind of oversee and, you know, make sure everyone's okay and stuff.
From a staffing perspective, we had probably, we had a house mistress and we, like, this is how old I am. We had a matron, so we had a matron who lived on, you know, kind of in the school full time.
And it was her job to look after all the borders. You know, she was the school nurse as well during the day.
And we had a couple of staff that lived on site as well, which now feels weird thinking about that, but whatever.
And you know, they tended to be kind of single women who hadn't, you know, had a partner and got married and it was, you know, obviously free accommodation for them. So.
And then we also had these, we also had gap girls who were these kind of 18, 19 year olds. So they just finished high school. And we always had one Australian and one Canadian gap girl. And they'd come and do their gap year over from, from here, from Canada. And they were kind of the, the fun ones, you know, they were that kind of intermediary, not a teacher, you know, and they would come and like, help with sports lessons and they'd be around in the evenings to kind of make sure everyone was okay. And they'd be there in the morning to make sure we all went to breakfast or whatever. And then obviously they had free rent board. And then during the school holidays they would go off and do their little bit of travel and weekends, they'd go and party and whatever else and. Actually, very funny story. So bear in mind, this is Oxford, uk, right? And I live in Sydney, Australia, Australia. And I was shooting a wedding end of last year for an older couple locally. And I had this woman come and tap me on the shoulder and I'm there, you know, camera dap, double straps not.
And this woman taps me on the shoulder and she goes, Sophie? I was like, yeah.
She's like, sophie Courtnage, which is my maiden name. I'm like, yeah. She went, oh, it's, it's Lisa. I was your gap girl at Witchwood School when you were 13 years old.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: And wow.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: We were just like. She was like super close friends with the, with the bride and groom and she lives in Melbourne and she come up and stuff and I was like, and this is a woman who a I've, you know, not heard from in, you know, nearly 30 years.
She was. It's funny because again, like, going back to that kind of, you look so old and you look so grown up. Like she was 18, she had no idea about the world and how things were and she took herself off to the UK, but I was 13 and I thought she had all the answers and she was the most lovely, lovely human being. And she actually sent me a postcard after she finished her year at school.
And that postcard was not that she lived there, but it was a picture of what was then Ayers Rock and is obviously now Uluru.
And I still have that postcard. And it was, you know, talking about, like, maybe one day you'll come to Australia. Maybe one day you'll, you'll, you'll come and see this and, you know, we can hang out or whatever.
And that was probably the first time I ever even heard of Australia. So then to, you know, but obviously that's, you know, you make those grand gestures or whatever. And then, yeah, 30 years later, she finds me at this wedding that I'm. That I'm working at and I'm shooting at. It was just absolutely incredible.
[00:56:39] Speaker B: So just on that, when did you first come to Australia and what, what led you here?
[00:56:47] Speaker A: I followed a boy.
2008, 2009, one of those two. It's been a long time.
Enough. Enough to lose the accent or to gain this one?
Yeah. So my now husband, he and I met. He's 10 years older than me. He and I met at work after I finished. I finished uni, got myself a job trying to, you know, trying to move out.
And, yeah, we connected and we dated in secret for probably six months or so, and.
And we were together for a couple years and then he eventually, he's Australian and he was kind of went, oh, I'm going to, going to go back.
Do you want to come? And I was 23, 24, something like that at the time. And I went, sure. Sounds great. Why not? You know, you're young enough to be able to, you know, take those big hits. And I feel like I'd always made very conservative choices. You know, I always took the safe option because I was looking for that safety.
And so it was probably the first, like, really big, like, just jump straight in, figure it out later type of thing. And I think I just felt like I was young enough that if it didn't work out with him and I, which, you know, odds are, you know, 50, 50, whatever, that it would, you know, that I'd still be okay.
You know, you haven't kind of put roots down and, you know, big bills to pay with mortgages and stuff.
And now I have all those things, and it's great.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Aren't you lucky?
I'm the dream.
[00:58:22] Speaker C: I might just read a couple of comments at Greg before we dig further into this.
I like this one from V. Tran. I'm not sure Z E8CO with the one with a cute pooch as the profile picture. One teacher, one comment. Life changed. I think that's. That's pretty epic if you look back, having that art teacher be like photography and. And you said, yeah, and went for it. So that's awesome.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think you look at, you know, the, the role that teachers play in our, on our, in our children's lives, and it, it's make or break. Right? Like, they have the power to, you know, to inspire one person, you know, And I often think about, you know, in, like, some of the mentoring stuff that I've done.
You know, if I can give that, that gift to, to one other person. Like, job done. I'm happy.
[00:59:15] Speaker C: Yeah, I've. I've told this story before, so I'll keep it really, really quick, but we were in a band when I was at school and I distinctly.
[00:59:22] Speaker B: So sick of hearing of this band.
[00:59:24] Speaker C: I distinctly remember. No, no, you're not, Greg. No, wait till I perform for you one day.
I distinctly remember our year 11 or 12 English teacher telling us in class, talking to us because multiple of us were in the class from the band. But in a room of 30 kids, there's better, There's a better band than you that's still struggling to make it.
So what chance do you have?
You should just look at getting a normal job.
Yeah. And it was like, it was. Which I think I know what he meant in terms of like, hey, it's a slim chances, you know. Yeah. Like maybe you need to have, you know, four different paths laid out in front of you. That could work or whatever, but you should still chase your dreams. But it definitely, it definitely was, don't even bother because bands manager can't make it. Yeah. And it was, it was pretty. I was like, wow, this guy's not very motivational at anything.
[01:00:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:00:31] Speaker C: But he wasn't an English teacher.
[01:00:34] Speaker A: I think I've had two moments like that in my life where the first one was like our first, our first lecture, you know, first year of university, you know, you sat in a big lecture hall and there's, I don't know, 318 year olds and a smattering of older ones. And the head of the photography department kind of spoke and he went, odds are maybe three of you will become photographers.
And it was that same thing of like, you know, the odds are stacked against you.
So what do you. And I think again, he meant it as a like, so what are you gonna do about it?
[01:01:15] Speaker C: I was gonna say that sounds more motivational, more like, hey, you want to be one of the three? You know, like, you're gonna have, you're gonna have to work your ass off to be. If you want to be one of those three that make it. Is that what he meant or. Because this is definitely wasn't what that wasn't.
[01:01:32] Speaker A: If he did mean it like that, I certainly didn't take it like that to start with. Like, it was a really intimidating statistic. And, and I think it was one of those moments where you get from, from the, the receiver of something like that you have a choice of. You either go in, like, in your case, you know, With a failed band behind you because clearly no one's heard you behind perform.
[01:02:00] Speaker C: I like this.
That's it. I'm getting my guitar right now
[01:02:09] Speaker A: and you, you have the choice of going. That's the driver. And you know, maybe that is, it maybe separates the I hate the term but the men from the boys and then from the. But then from the, the provider of that, that piece of feedback I think and it's something that I took, I have taken on board, maybe not directly but subliminally and have always been really mindful of is the way you intend something is oftentimes very different to how it is received. And I think especially as photographers we are in the art of storytelling.
We are you know, in my field of work with the people that I work with. You know, I work in very busy and or emotive sets and it's really important that it's, it's how I communicate with my client. Whether it's a newborn shoot or a conference at the ICC or you know, the sand dunes photographing defenders and Range rovers. It's how I communicate and how I listen, what I hear, how I interpret. What my client is saying is so important to how you run, how you take photography as a business and because my world combines pictures and stories and people, you know, having that kind of constant overview of like all the, all the non verbal stuff that's going on is really important.
[01:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
And I think also when we have these mentors, teachers, you know, sort of authority figures try to inspire us.
I've experienced that too where it doesn't feel like they're sort of reading the room, you know, a bunch of 18 year olds, they're still kids, they're still walking around bumping into things and scratching their heads and for someone to come out on stage and say, well chances are you're not going to make it, you know. And when you're 18 that means that feels very different to when you're in your 40s or 50s, you know.
[01:04:24] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think it's one of those things where you know, like when stuff like that happens I want to just kind of be like read the room. People like, you know, I know you think, you know, if it was intended to be inspiring and motivational, you know, even staring out onto a whole bunch of like faces.
[01:04:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:04:45] Speaker A: You probably pick up the fact that, you know, you could probably tweak that, you know, now you could probably use chat GPT. Right. And how do I figure out make
[01:04:52] Speaker C: this, make this 20 more inspirational
[01:04:57] Speaker A: and 50 less condescending yeah, I think you know there's that, you know you're built to, Human beings are built to comply, right? We're tribal human beings and we spend our lives looking for our tribe and I've got a teenage boy and you know, he's in the, in the crux of that at the moment is that kind of, I call it his assimilation phase, you know, where he just wants to go and find his friends and then just be the same as them. And that being the outlier is, is a really bad thing. And so to have it, to have something in you that's either like I want something more than this tribe or this community is giving me. And, and I think that there is, there's something more in me. And then having the, the bravery and the courage and then the drive to, to be able to go after that and to be able to pursue it relentlessly because it's not just if I work really hard for six months and if I work really hard for a year, I'm going to get it and then I don't have, have to work that hard, then it's just going to roll and be easy. It's every day.
It's like you were saying Justin, about getting up early, you know, like you get up at 5:20 every morning and you, you go and do the work because you know that by doing the work not only does it, you know, in, in your instance, you know, you get up and you go to the gym that's going to obviously work your, your physical body. It keeps you strong, it keeps you fit and, but then it has this, you know, really profound onwards effect and knock on effect of now I'm you know, clear headed now I get to go and do the work in the other parts of my life and that's not going to stop, right? You're not going to get to one point where you go my body looks as great as it's ever going to and I don't need to do anything else to it. And you know, the effect of my, you know, of me working out is now continually going to go and have an effect on my ability to perform mentally. You don't do it one day and you feel the effects and it's the same in our business. You know, if, if like going on holiday is some, as a someone who's self employed and runs their own business, you know, you don't just go on holiday and sit on a beach for a week and doom scroll and read a book and drink a cocktail. You know, you're on the, you know, you're on the phone and you're still doing this and. Yep, yep. And I'm just answer this email or I've just got to jump onto LinkedIn and you know, put this post up or whatever because it is every single day.
[01:07:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'm, I go on holidays and I listen to audiobooks about business.
That's my.
[01:07:30] Speaker A: There you go.
[01:07:31] Speaker C: That's how I, that's how I relax.
All right. Actually I do want to talk to you about your businesses but first let me, let me check in with a couple more comments that come through.
JC Orange watching from Perth wa.
Hey jc, thanks for, thanks for joining the plumber, Matt.
Matt was actually at my gym this morning. He's a plumber indeed.
He's. He says good morning and he should go back to the start of the show if you missed it, Matt, because that's where the stuff you want to hear about is, which is the, the long distance running. Matt recently just did his first half. Ironman.
[01:08:04] Speaker A: Oh yeah, congratulations.
[01:08:07] Speaker C: Finished in five hours and 45 minutes. Amazing effort. We were running, we're doing a nice run the other morning together and we're just, we're just sort of cruising.
My heart rate was at like 150something and I peaked at his watch and his was at 120 and I was like, he's not even moving. He's not even basically sitting on it. He's basically sitting on a couch.
I was like, this is, he's obviously all that training worked. David Mascara says Edward Western had Ansel Adams enlarger in Carmel as a photo student in Monterey. We got to visit same thing. It was on a railroad track. That's insane. Yeah, yeah.
[01:08:49] Speaker A: Some little masters names in there. Nicely done.
[01:08:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, I, I got to visit that area.
Just drive through Carmel and Monterey. It's near Santa Cruz and stuff in California. It is beautiful. There is a reason there's a lot of people along that coastline. It's north of California.
[01:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:09:08] Speaker C: Beautiful.
[01:09:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:09:10] Speaker C: Lisa Leach says I was a school nurse at an all girls boarding school and the girls called me mama. That's awesome.
[01:09:17] Speaker A: Oh, that's. Well, you must have been a very, very special person to them, Lisa, because I definitely did not call my matron mama.
Very scary individual.
So I'm glad they had, I'm glad they had you. That's awesome.
[01:09:30] Speaker B: Just the title matron carries with it a dark omen, doesn't it?
[01:09:33] Speaker C: Oh wait, yeah, it feels like a matron. Someone that hits you with something if you do the wrong Thing. That's what it feels like. I don't know if that's true, but that's what it feels like.
[01:09:42] Speaker A: Well, I, I remember breaking my, my scaphoid in my thumb, my right, my right hand and I'm right handed in playing hockey at school and I had like a clash of like two hockey sticks and it was broken for a week before she took me to go and get it X rayed.
[01:10:01] Speaker B: Oh, it's turning purple.
[01:10:09] Speaker C: What else?
[01:10:10] Speaker A: This big.
[01:10:11] Speaker C: Oh, what else have we got here? Matt Palmer says holiday equals multi day photo shoot. Yes.
That's a hazard. A hazard of.
Yeah, what you do for a living, Matt. Obviously you go, oh, I was just gonna say Bruce Moore says I suck at holidays. I cannot do more than one day without needing to do something.
[01:10:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:34] Speaker C: Who else have we got here? Oh, Nev. Nev Clark. How's that Q3 going? Nev. My photography teacher had a profound impact on me. We built our own dark room and fundraised for our own cameras because the school couldn't afford to, to buy us cameras. Hashtag work ethic. Nice.
[01:10:50] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome.
Yeah. And what a way to set that in, you know, that kind of intention, right? Like I say to, to my kids all the time, like there's these really, like, that's a really adult skill, you know, to be able to have that drive and perseverance and go, this is what we want to do and we're gonna, we're gonna make it happen.
You know, if you can master that when you're at school, like that's, that's a golden ticket for life, right? Like you don't lose that ability. That's awesome. Yeah.
[01:11:19] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly it.
[01:11:20] Speaker B: Very, very true.
[01:11:23] Speaker C: Okay, what about, what about your businesses? So you running, you running two distinctly different brands, but the one business essentially, but two distinctly different brands to attract customers.
[01:11:36] Speaker A: Yes. So when, when I first started in photography as a, as a business as to, to earn money, I was very much in the, you know, kind of weddings, families space.
Then I had kids and then it opened up this whole, you know, a whole new realm of, of newborns and that, that kind of went, took me down a rabbit hole.
And it was funny. Like it was just this really organic, really organic journey that I went down because it wasn't something that I kind of went looking for. It just kind of came to me.
And so that was, that was my business for probably the first 10 years of my career.
And then slowly I started to kind of get A few opportunities to shoot more kind of corporate stuff.
Made a lot of mistakes because I tried to just kind of shoot it under one umbrella. And I assumed that a corporate client was the same as, as a family client, personal client.
And then covet happened and I, I felt like, I mean a being a wedding photographer, you know, then became illegal.
[01:12:52] Speaker C: Yep.
[01:12:52] Speaker A: And I lost, you know, I lost my entire business and became a kindy teacher in the space of one weekend. Weekend.
And it was, yeah, it was a really scary time.
And they then after Covid I felt like, you know, this is maybe just a Sydney observation.
I felt like a lot of the corporate commercial photographers because we all need to earn a dollar and job seeker was not enough.
A lot of people I think went back into some kind of full time employment and then they recognized the benefits of a regular paycheck superannuation, you know, not having to, you know, your tax not being complicated and expenses and GST and you know, let alone having time off and you know, not having not been, you know, getting paid time off suddenly is, you know, something that we're not used to.
So it kind of just opened up this, this kind of gap in the market.
So I just started getting these inquiries from, from left, right and center to be like hey, there's this conference and will you shoot this? And.
And it just kind of rolled from there. And I learned very quickly or. And I decided very quickly that as a, you know, you talk about these two different brands.
If I'm a, if I'm a couple getting married and I'm looking for a wedding photographer or if I'm a, if I'm a mum looking for family photos for, for my family, I don't want to see, I don't need to see. I don't care about seeing photos of you know, an event, you know, or a car or the inside of, you know, a house, you know, architectural photography, like that's, that's not something they're going to connect with. It's not going to tell them their story and it's not going to sell them the idea of them in these pictures.
So I had to keep them separate. And the same was, was you know, you want especially as a, as a woman, as a female photographer trying to work in that commercial space.
It's really, I have to be really mindful about how I portray myself and I would say more so than a male photographer to be taken seriously in this world.
And so having pictures of, you know, pretty brides and grooms at sunset on my website when I'M trying to bid for work with Jaguar, Land Rover or Tesla or Amazon or mailchimp. That's not going to get me that business.
So I have to look at both entities. As you know, it's, it's two sides of the same coin because it's me, it's my skill, it's my experience.
But the conversation you have, the story you tell and what people see is what they want to invest in.
So it's like when you walk into a show home and you know, they say that, you know, the kitchen sells the house. When people furnish homes to go on the market, they make it, you know, they want to sell the, the potential buyer. The idea of them living in this space as it looks now and that's
[01:15:54] Speaker C: what you're selling and then they move all their cruddy stuff in there like, oh, there's nothing like it looked like.
All right, I want to. So that, so this, this. Do you think that it, do you think? And, and this is just your thoughts, not what's necessarily going on in their heads. But do you think that a commercial client would potentially look at a female photographer that has pictures of say newborns and weddings and stuff like that and just think, oh that's just like a mum photographer or something that does work on the weekends. They're not, do you think it's that, it's not the fact that it's like a male versus female, it's this perception they've got of like oh, they're, they're just kind of doing it as a part time thing. They're not a, they're not a serious photographer.
[01:16:42] Speaker A: And I think, I think it's those two things married together, 100% I think and that, and that's not just my, my perception of something that is, that's real life conversations that I've had. So I shot for, I shot for Ironman. Paul Macquarie Ironman. So which is a championship race. I was on the media team and the debrief that we got the night before the event with a, with the other male photographer who was also on the media team.
He, we introduced ourselves and he was like so what kind of photography have you done before? Have you, have you done, have you done many, many, many races? What kind of, what kind of stuff do you do? And I was like, but it's, it's hard for me to look big and intimidating but like talk about ruffling.
It drove me up the wall and it's, and, and it's like every time you have to kind of prove your credentials and you know, your, your, the time, the energy, you know, and it's like, you know, you kind of want to turn around and be like, mate, I have a six figure business. Like this is not something that I'm, you know, this is not a weekend I've done that. You know, like, you know, talk about origin story stories like yes, 100. That's where my business started.
But there's a reason that I'm here and it's not just because I know a guy. It's, you know, I have, I have as much right to be here as any one of you. And you know, the, the problem is yours, it's not mine. Your opinion of me is none of my business.
And so I'm not going to sit here and, and kind of, you know, show you the brands and let you look through my website and you know, prove that I'm going to be here but God damn it, I'm going to go out and do a good job.
And you know, in terms of how I see, how I see that personality type interact with, you know, clients or participants or delegates or whatever compared to the way that I interact with them, I'm like there's this reason that I get the work.
[01:18:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:18:43] Speaker A: And you know, and so I think it's a really hard, you know, especially some of the areas that I'm trying to kind of break into at the moment. Like I love shooting cars, absolutely love it. And that's, and that's something that I'm really trying to kind of focus in on at the moment is you know, how to, how to grow that side of my business.
And again it's amazing to look at the reception that you get because you're, you know, you're a woman with a camera that automatic. Exactly like you said Justin. Like, like, you know, oh, she must just be a part time photographer or you know, she just photographs like mums and babies. So I do, I keep my, my, my things very separate where I, you know, what I advertise and, and what, what I advertise. So say like on LinkedIn you will never see you know, wedding photos or family photos that I've done on, on LinkedIn because it's not the space for it. It's a professional networking space site.
So yeah, long answer to a simple question.
[01:19:49] Speaker C: I want to, I want to, yeah, great answer. I want to ask you about LinkedIn.
So, but, so I think I reckon Jim and I got a little tiny taste of what you're talking about. Obviously different because we're not women.
But. But we. So we, we built a business around wedding photography and we've done a lot of commercial work, but our business was. Was always like wedding photography. That was us. That was what we put out into the world because that's what we're trying to build a business around.
And then, and then recently, the last few years, Jim's been trying to build a boudoir business, a new thing which he's done as a. As a separate brand because he wanted to kind of do what you're talking about, have a separate brand or whatever. Now this is a funny story. We got a gig shooting a motorbike race event. It was kind of a corporate content creation event combined with a race with people from a heap of different countries all coming together. But the brand put it on and it was to get a ton of content over the weekend. It was huge. Eight photographers, full video team, big thing.
And it was funny. And we end up having a great weekend and stuff. But we were. We're not like in that world in terms of.
A lot of these guys were car photographers and motorbike photographers that work mainly with brands. And there were some sports shooters there too.
But we've done all of that stuff. Like I shoot mountain bikes, Jim rides bike shoots. And we've done like, we've shot desert racing and all sorts of stuff. We've. We've very much got the skills. But the first thing the guy said that was sort of booking the team was like, oh, because I recommended Jim to come as well. I'm like, mate, we'll crush this. No problem.
He goes, oh, Jim, he's. He's the boudoir photographer, isn't he, though?
And I was like, not really. He's trying, but that's not, you know, like. But he must have seen it somewhere connected to him when he grow it and basically like, well, he wouldn't be able to do this job. This is a sports thing. He's a boudoir photographer.
[01:21:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:21:53] Speaker C: And it was. Yeah, that sort of. I didn't realize that happened as much. And it obviously happens even more. So where you're talking about with. When they. If they see a newborn or something and they're like, well, how's she going to suit Teslas?
They can. They're so different.
[01:22:09] Speaker A: You can switch one of them off,
[01:22:12] Speaker B: you can leave one out in the sun all day.
[01:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:22:16] Speaker B: Just. Just on the topic of getting work, I just wanted to ask, do you ever find that one of your brands feeds the other? Like, do you get Referrals across those
[01:22:26] Speaker A: two sort of elements.
Yeah, absolutely. 100% both. Both ways. So I've shot conferences and I've booked weddings off the back of shooting conference, like literally there and then. So day two of a conference, I had a woman come up to me and be like, hey, do you shoot anything else? Do you work for this company? Like, specifically? It's like, no, no, I'm freelance.
She's like, oh, I'm getting married and April next year, whatever. Are you available?
Sure, yeah, happy to. Sit down, have a coffee with you have to pay a deposit for me right now, but, you know, happy to. To, you know, lock it in. It was. And yeah, that was awesome. So plenty of stuff like that. And then, yeah, the other, the other way around as well.
You know, doing family photos, newborns, and then, you know, obviously both of, you know, one or both of the. The individuals in a family, mum and dad, whatever, have jobs and then have shot, you know, whether it's headshots, events, you know, conferences they're putting on, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. So it definitely works both ways. And I think it comes down to the authenticity of the person, right? Like, knowing that I like to pride myself on the fact that I'm the same person regardless of whether I'm, you know, photographing a family, photographing a, you know, a conference, photographing, you know, Teslas on Gorges or whatever. Like, it's, it's. It's still me.
And being able to connect with people is, Is really important. And being able to.
It's not about necessarily being able to shadow people because I think that feels manipulative, but understanding everything, you know, we're all different and so accepting, accepting that client, whoever they are, giving them space to, to be able to be themselves and helping them understand what it is they're trying to achieve. Because they'll sit there and, you know, they'll look at my work or they'll look at something that, you know, that they need to address.
They've got a shoot to, I don't know, photograph products or something like that.
It's helping them dig down, having a conversation, a really honest conversation, asking questions and, and really. And problem solving where you need to problem solve.
It's all just all those. Those skills and we call them soft skills. And I think that's completely the wrong name for them because I think it's. It's being human and, and realizing that you're both trying to achieve. Achieve the same thing, right? Like you want the same outcome of. I Want a happy client. And I'm going to have a happy client if I help them produce the thing that's in their head. And a lot of the time people really struggle with like, yeah, I've got this idea in my head, but I can't quite vocalize it or the way that I'm explaining it doesn't quite resonate with me. I'm not quite understanding it. So we're going to talk it through until I do, because until I'm on the same page as you, we can't achieve the same thing.
And, you know, having that overview, you know, like with say, you know, a wedding, for example, you know, having a whole overview of the day and being able to forecast, you know, potential issues and being able to come to your client and be like, hey. And a classic example is this weekend I'm shooting a, shooting a wedding on Saturday afternoon and they're getting married at a registry office in the city.
And their time slot is 5:45. So it's going to be pretty much dark by the time they go in and it's certainly going to be dark when they come out. But they don't think that they see photos on the, you know, the registry website of, this is what the space is going to look like. And they know that, you know, that the wharfs around where they, you know, where they're getting married look beautiful at, you know, midday when the photos have been taken.
But it's going to be nighttime, so it's my job to go, hey, guys, this, this is how we can workshop this. So we put together a whole plan to do everything beforehand and whatever else.
And yeah, that, that's. And it's not about blaming someone and going, you've booked, you know, you've booked your wedding to be at, at night time because the clocks have now changed.
It's, it's about working together and being on the same team as them.
[01:26:47] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you think that that's a skill that, is that. Are they skills that you learned at university or are they, are they kind of more life teaches you those skills?
[01:26:58] Speaker A: I think it's, I think it's, I think it can be taught and I think there is a place for, for almost a course like that. And I've almost, I've thought about putting something together that's almost that kind of, you know, mentorship that's very different to, you know, wanting to be a fine art photographer and go out and create art like photography as art, which skill that I don't possess. I need a purpose I need more of a. Like purpose is the wrong word and it's suggesting that they don't have purpose and they absolutely do. But I need to invest in a, in a, in another person's story to tell that story. Yeah. And, and, and I think it's something that I learned, but I think it's something that, especially with the new age of photography that is emerging and even the shift from analog to digital, you know, film to digital, we are so saturated with imagery now, whether it's stuff that we've taken, whether it's stuff we see online, you know, marketing and advertising that's just available to us everywhere we look. You know, I think there was a statistic that you see something like 50 million pieces of imagery or something in a day and your brain has to process all that.
And that stuff doesn't get there by accident. Right. Like it's all intentional.
[01:28:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:28:25] Speaker A: So I think choosing to work in a field that is creative and artistic, but for business purposes, there is an aspect of running your business as a business and I think the, the trick is learning those skills to enhance your business.
And, and that's, you know, that, that's a, that is a skill and it is learned. But I think there is also a place from a, you know, professional development perspective where a lot of, you know, a lot of photographers out there who, who work in a similar space to myself with that kind of more commercial, you know, client interaction kind of working space that, that they can, they could understand what those skills are and, and I think it would really help them build their business, you know, in the same way that understanding LinkedIn and stuff like that does as well.
[01:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I just think it's a, you know, when I studied, I'm in my 50s now, and when I studied university, I studied industrial design.
And we learned nothing about the business of running a business.
Yet we're all expected to go out and be, either work for an organization or become our own, you know, our own design company, our own design brand.
And it was something that even to this day I often will, you know, reach out to Justin or Jim for advice, business related advice to my, to my current endeavors, because it just wasn't something, it didn't come naturally to me. I didn't come from a family who ran businesses, you know, very working class. But I always, I've always felt like that was a big gap in my education, that there was an opportunity there to say, okay, well here's how you become a designer and here's how you attract clients. Here's how you manage your professional side of your business.
That was really lacking and I, I'm always curious to talk to people about that.
You know, is that something that is improving in education?
[01:30:25] Speaker A: And I mean, I, yeah, and I think it, I think it's, I don't know if the landscape of that has changed more recently.
You know, maybe it, maybe it has. You know, I probably can't comment on that, but I think with the, the, you know, with the development of AI, there's a lot of people.
I've had a few emails now from, from photography students who are, you know, being super brave and reaching out for work experience, which is great.
However, they have very clearly used chat GPT and gone.
Right, right. Write a, write an email to a photographer asking if I can have some work experience and you can tell from, you know, the way that it's worded and the punctuation and the, you know.
Absolutely. And, you know, and I've gone back to them and said, thank you very much for email. I think it's great. I really, you know, I think it's really impressive that you are a young person and you're going out on a, on a limb there.
I don't tend to use a lot of, you know, students and stuff. If anything changes, I will, I will help you. You know, I will let you know. My advice to you is 100. Use.
Use ChatGPT. Use an AI to, you know, to, to build this stuff as a draft, but go and make it human because you can tell that it's chat GPT and, and I think we're at a real risk of people leaning too much into that.
You know, I was, I was cc'd in on some emails for some kind of brand ambassador stuff a couple of weeks ago, and it was very clearly just one AI talking to another. Like, it was literally just like, this is the email I've received, come up with a reply to it that, you know, that hits these points. Copy paste. I've received this email, Dilla, and it was like, there's no, there's no humanness in it anymore.
[01:32:26] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real risk and it's a real risk at the moment, that sort of stuff. You know, my partner Sasha, she's a university lecturer and just the anecdotal discussions we have about her experience with students using ChatGPT and students and you know, a couple of years ago, the software that the universities bought and employed to detect like the use of AI in submitted assignments and texts and things like that, you know, that stuff no longer cuts through.
It's proving to be more and more difficult to detect AI written context and the big challenge with that stuff is that you know, these are people applying for professional roles, like people that want to be nurses and doctors and life saving and you know, really critical roles in our community and they're not actually memorizing or learning any of the content. They just let a bot, you know, create a summary. And, and the problem, the biggest problem I have is that the software that we have to, to run our lives in this world is constantly trying to force AI down our throats. You know Apple, I use Apple Mail for, on my laptop and it's constantly offering to, to reply for me. Create a summary or something.
Yeah, like it's, it's kind of, yeah, it's, it's being shoved in there and you know, and to a 18, 19, 20 year old, well of course I'm going to save a few minutes and just go yep, do that.
[01:33:51] Speaker A: Oh. Even predictive texts like my, my 10 year old yesterday, like I was texting a friend, it's her birthday, birthday today. Happy birthday Sarah.
And you know, I was just asking, you know, kind of what are you, what are you doing tomorrow? Blah blah.
And she texts back. And river, my younger one was like oh, can I reply to this text? And he was like your options are.
Sounds great whatever the three iPhone options were from it. And I was like no, no, if you're going to reply to someone you reply with your thumbs.
And it's scary because I think again going back to what we're talking about earlier with that kind of habit setting and intention and being in the cycle of, of, of continuing to, to, to work and, and, and have that, that perseverance and drive and be part of the grind.
If you start to take those exits of this is the easy option. This is AI answering this email and this is chat GPT telling you what to post and when to post it. You actually do yourself a massive disservice this because you get out of the habit of what doing the work.
And our brains like easy. You know, it's like brains are like a waterfall in that it's going to constantly. Water is going to constantly look for the past path of least resistance. Our brain wants to do that too.
[01:35:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:35:14] Speaker A: Because it's a preservation thing and so you have to tap into that habit and constantly feed that like getting up and going to the gym at 5:20 every morning, like getting up and you know, ticking the box of I'm going to do the run that's programmed for me by my coach. I might not want to do it, but I know that it's going to feed the next thing.
[01:35:35] Speaker C: I want to do a little public service announcement for any young photographers that may have found this episode. Chances are our demographic isn't really that. I don't know what it is. Maybe we just, you know, we're so dignified that we get a slightly older crowd. But if you are young and new to photography and you want to build a career in this world and you were using AI to write emails, how like so. And the email is the, like the least connected form of communication.
There's telephone after that, video chats like we're doing now and then there's in person stuff. If you can't write a personal email, you are going to get crushed by people like me and Sophie that can walk into a room and talk to people face to face. Try, like Sophie was saying, figure out what they're trying to get out of this. This is a business. They're trying to get something out of this. My job is to get them what they want. I've got to figure it out and I've got to make sure everyone's having a good time and happy at the same time. Same at a wedding you will have. There's no point you're doing work experience if you can't walk into a room and communicate with humans on a human level and deliver what they want.
So lean into figuring out how to communicate. Don't shy away from it.
[01:36:47] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely.
[01:36:48] Speaker C: Write the emails, get on the phone. Hey Sophie, I know you don't have time, but could we have a 15 minute phone call? Because I just have a few questions about what it's like to be a professional photographer in 20, 26%.
[01:36:58] Speaker A: And you know what? And any photographer I know will have that phone call with you, you know, and you know it's, and it's, and I've, I've had it from, from photographers in, you know, in, in my local community. Like I've had photographers call me up and go, hey, so if I know you work more in this space, I've got a client who, you know, I normally do X4 and they've thrown me this curveball of they've got this event, you know, and I don't know how to charge for it. What would you normally charge?
And you know, we're all here, you know, there's, I'd like to say there's plenty of work out there. Like, I think the landscape is definitely changing. But, you know, I'm not the, I'm not, I'm not the gatekeeper of, you know, of all the secrets.
And I think most photographers would feel the same, would feel the same way. I would like to think anyway.
And you're right. Like it's, it's about.
There's a certain amount of bravery in it, you know, and the, in that instance with, with the student, you know, I wrote back to them and said, by all means, you know, use ChatGPT. I think it's a great tool to get a first draft, to get some ideas down, you know, to kind of get the ball rolling.
Because we live as photographers, we live very isolated lives. Like, we get to go and, you know, if you're shooting a wedding or conference or an event or whatever. Yes. You know, we're out there and we're with the people and you're surrounded by. And then we come home and then we sit in our, you know, empty houses and this is it. This is, it's quite an isolating feeling. And you know, kind of going back to what you were saying before Greg about, you know, the business skill side of things and not having that, that kind of network, you know, and that guidance from somebody, you know, we're, we're all, I think we're all in that same boat, you know. And so that's why I think it's really important that we do lean on these, these shared networks and these shared experiences with each other and we create our own little community. I often joke about, you know, my friends who also work from home, like, I just want to sit at a desk next to someone some days, you know, like, we do completely different things, but just having that like, almost body doubling thing of like, I feel like I'm going to be more, you know, more productive if I've just got that little like a body there. Because sometimes you do just kind of crave that, that personal connection a little bit.
And it does mean, you know, you are, you know, developing those skills. And I think when you're like, to your point, Justin, of like go in, walk into a room and go and have a conversation with someone, we, you know, if there's one of the, one of the things that I think I like to try and do every day with my business is I want to be able to go to bed knowing I've done something productive. And then sometimes that's editing, sometimes that's networking, sometimes that's making the calls and doing the, like, the big in business stuff.
And sometimes it's like Actually don't. You know, I'm feeling really, you know, kind of introverted and overstimulated and overworked and tired, but I'm still working those skill sets. So, you know, when I go and buy a coffee or I go for a walk, I'm going to make myself have a conversation with someone. And that's the skill. Yep, yep.
[01:39:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:40:01] Speaker C: You know, it's funny, it's an unintended benefit of actually of going to the gym that I, after we joined that I realized is because, you know, when you work at home alone all day, it's the same group of people that usually rock up to the same class time as me. So it's kind of almost like they're almost like workplace relationships because, you know, we. We chit chat about family or the weather or the whatever. You kind of get that, like.
[01:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah, you get that dose of it, don't you?
[01:40:29] Speaker C: Yeah, a dose. A daily dose of just like, yeah, what's up? You know, what's been going on? Oh, yeah. You know, I bought a new bike. Oh, that's cool. You know, like.
[01:40:36] Speaker A: And you know what? That also is that, that it is. That I think is really important is it's a. It's a benefit benchmark. So, you know, if you are the kind of person who, you know, who does spend a lot of time by themselves and, you know, the way to the world gets on. On top of you and things and stresses and stuff happen, to have those people that you do have that regular connection with and you do get to spend that time with when you're not okay for them to be able to go like, you're not the same today. Like, you've pitched up at 6:00am and you know, you're not either quite as chatty or your tone or your body language or whatever.
And so to have that, you know, that little cool group to be able to check in with or to kind of challenge you, because we all do the same thing. Right Again. And I'm fine. They're like, no, really, Are you okay? I think that's really important as well.
[01:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah, most definitely.
Most definitely.
[01:41:35] Speaker C: Oh, sure.
[01:41:37] Speaker B: Pivot for a moment if we can.
Let's talk about gear for a little bit.
Now.
I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna criticize or judge you for being a cabman shooter because Justin gets enough of that from me. So he can be my voodoo doll for today.
Where are you at with your gear?
[01:41:56] Speaker A: You.
[01:41:56] Speaker B: You said you're often going out with. With twin bodies. What? You know, for an Event, let's say, let's say a wedding.
What's your go to kit?
[01:42:05] Speaker A: Yep. So I was actually a nikon shooter for 20 years.
So I had, yeah, interesting. I guess I started on film, moved to, you know, went digital, bought a digital camera. And I think we tend to start out and then subsequently stick with our kind of first, first interaction with whatever that technology is. Right. Because it's comfortable. So I, my, the first wedding I ever shot, I borrowed a camera.
He was friend's husband, he was, he was in the army and he was supposed to be shooting this mutual friend's wedding and he got deployed to Afghanistan so he was no longer available and he went, Sophie, do you want to shoot it? Like it was, you know, absolutely. Like I don't want to do this anymore. I'm busy that day.
And yeah, he shot on a, I'm going to say a Nikon D70.
So not the first iteration of digital, but not too far beyond that and then did that, whatever. And so then when I was in the market to buy a digital camera, I stuck with Nikon because I'd used it, I was comfortable with it and I also had that source of knowledge to be able to go, hey John, can you help me?
And so I started on Nikon and obviously then you buy the lenses and you buy the speed lights and you know, that becomes your kit. And so to be able to make that change is a very costly exercise.
Even if it's just one body and one lens. Right.
As well as then the skill set that then goes, goes alongside making that switch. So I was shooting, it's probably two years ago, two, three years ago, shooting a conference for, for mailchimp in Sydney. And it was a two day conference and halfway through day one, my Nikon just the screen on the back just stopped working.
So I could still see through the viewfinder. It was still taking photos, it was still reading.
It would show me the review of the image on the, on the back screen. But then I couldn't hit play. Had no menu functions, no nothing.
[01:44:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:44:11] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:44:12] Speaker C: Weird.
[01:44:13] Speaker A: So luckily I have been doing this for a very long time. I shoot completely manual, so I'm very much used to looking at, you know, my aperture and exposure and, and exposure readings and stuff. And, and it was a fixed lighting. You know, it was an indoor conference that was, it was all artificially lit and so nothing was, was different. So I, yeah, you know, I kind of, I knew I could get through it and I knew the card was still writing so I kind of had that As a.
I knew I could get through the day and I messaged my friend Jen from Canon who has been my best friend for 12 years and she has been trying to get me to switch for a very long time.
[01:44:51] Speaker C: I was gonna say, took a while, didn't it?
[01:44:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
And she's priced it up for me beforehand and I'd actually wanted to switch for quite a few years.
Not because she's bigger than me and scarier than me, but she. Yeah. So we'd kind of gone down that path a couple of times and I just couldn't afford it. Like it just wasn't financially viable and.
Yeah. And so I just messaged her. I went, my camera has expletives itself.
I don't care what you give me, but I need a camera because I can't do this for two days straight.
So I shot the rest of that conference that day. She lives was 400 meters down the road for me. So as I was driving home that night, I stopped off at her house and picked up this big ass camera bag and went, cool, now I'm going to learn how to shoot mirrorless Canon. Great.
[01:45:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:45:48] Speaker A: So then the next day I took my, my Nikon just as a, as a backup. Backuping. But I was just very fortunate that in that instance the, you know, the conference, you know, it didn't need thousands of images. Right. There's plenty of time. Each speaker that was on stage was on stage for an hour.
So I have plenty of time to do that. Instead of that, I forgot where does the thumb go? Like looking like an absolute rookie.
[01:46:17] Speaker C: Why do they zoom different directions? I forgot about. Because I've switched from Canon to Nikon and then back to Canon again. And that's probably the most annoying part of it is the, you know, get. And so mounting the lens as well, like getting used to mounting it the other way and zooming it the other way. And you just like why.
[01:46:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Because they can. Because they have to have to be a point of difference. Right.
So yeah, so I picked up the. I think it was the. I think she had an R. Like a. The original R, which was the original.
[01:46:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow.
[01:46:50] Speaker A: And the R5.
[01:46:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:46:54] Speaker A: And yeah, a couple of lenses, you know, 24 to 70 probably in there. And I literally just shut shot on that for, you know, that, that whole day. And you know, I kind of went, oh, I like this. And I had to continue to use it while I sent mine off to, to Nikon.
And this is not a Nikon bashing exercise, but I will say that the, the Nikon presence for professional services and, you know, things like servicing and stuff in Australia is not as, not as great as Canons.
Certainly from my experience, like having to find a, you know, local provider, send it off, wait to get the quote, you know, figure out like it took, it took weeks.
I, you know, I think I was using her equipment for.
Oh, I think I still have her R5. I hope she's listening. Yeah, she's probably out somewhere.
[01:47:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:47:52] Speaker A: And. Yeah, so I then just ended up, fell in love with, with the R5. It was awesome. She wouldn't sell me. So she works for Canon. She wouldn't sell me in R5 because she was like insider trading. There's the Mark Twos coming out.
Sorry. She definitely didn't do that.
[01:48:12] Speaker B: No, no, delete.
[01:48:14] Speaker A: Can we go back?
[01:48:15] Speaker B: We're live out there. Don't worry.
[01:48:18] Speaker A: Done. It's done.
[01:48:19] Speaker C: They're tough secrets to hold on to. We, we were aware because we did the, we did the straps, bundle straps for the R5 and the R5 Mark II. And it's just, you just have to become like a vault once you know that, you know that information. But also, also like, you know, one thing, the only thing I knew about the R5 Mark II was that it was the R5 Mark II.
[01:48:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:48:44] Speaker C: Yeah. And that's, it's quite easy to tell that that's a camera that's going to come at some stage. And other than that, we were making the straps for the launch and we had, I had no idea what it was. I got, I got all my hints from the Canon rumor sites.
[01:48:56] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, and even then, you know, so you always know it's coming, right? Like, yeah, someone brings out a new camera. Camera. It's, it's the evolution of technology. Right. And it's going to be, you know, a couple of years, three years, five years, whatever it is, you know, if there's a new iPhone coming out, every couple years, there's a new camera coming out as well. So, yeah, so she, she knew it was coming and so she wouldn't sell me the, the off, you know, and I'm lucky in that she's a pro shooter, but she's, it's not her, her day job, you know, she works directly for Canon, so she had access to all this gear and she was like, I don't need it. And even if I do, I've kind of got a whole storeroom full of stuff. Like, I'm okay.
So, yeah, when they are, when the Mark II Came out. I got.
I got that. And so I. And I got the 24 to 105. 2.8, which I was.
[01:49:49] Speaker C: Did you.
[01:49:50] Speaker A: I was not concerned. I had questions in terms.
It is a big lens, but. But when you.
[01:50:00] Speaker C: I'm a.
Yeah, you got this.
[01:50:04] Speaker A: I got the guns.
My weedy little runner arms.
No, it's an awesome one. So obviously, you know that traditional 2470 for kind of across, that kind of Nikon Canon space is your industry standard, Right. For the most things. And just having that extra bit, like, I was worried about image quality, you know, kind of extending it out, but it's so sharp, it's fast, it's clean.
You know, it's. Yes, it's heavier, but, you know, in things like a wedding or an event, just to have that extra little bit at the end of that, of that range to get up to that 105, like, I've got a. I've got a 70 to 200. And I very rarely use it now because I don't. I just don't need it.
[01:50:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:50:51] Speaker A: So when I dual shoot, I'll have that on one body and on my R5, which is definitely mine and definitely not Jen's, I will shoot with a. I'll shoot with a prime.
So normally I would say, yeah, 95 of the time. I've got an 85, 1.2 on there.
[01:51:13] Speaker B: Nice.
[01:51:14] Speaker C: Oh, another heavy lens.
[01:51:17] Speaker A: I know, I know. It's. It's my workout today.
[01:51:20] Speaker C: If I'm shooting balances out, you need to say.
[01:51:23] Speaker A: Yeah, actually, it actually does. I've got the.
I've got the. Those hybrid lenses from Canon which are the. The 35.
[01:51:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[01:51:34] Speaker A: And they're so light, like, to the point where I'm like, there's no quality in this, but they're. They're awesome little lenses. But yes, to your point, if I have a one. If I've got the 24 to 105 on one and the 35, and they obviously, they are identical, they weigh the same and everything thing you actually like, oh, this actually feels weird. So it's kind of good to have that. That weight on both sides.
And then, yeah, those two are good for, you know, kind of real low, light, like events, you know, kind of grungy little dive bars and stuff, or if I'm doing a little bit of video or something as well. They're great for that.
[01:52:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:52:10] Speaker B: Plus that.
[01:52:10] Speaker C: That 24 to 105 is great for video as well, isn't it? In terms of. You see a lot of more professional Professional video productions using that lens is
[01:52:19] Speaker A: like a one and done it it 100. And I've spoken to quite a few videographers if there's been a videographer on site and, and they love it as well.
And you know, I think the only thing is, is obviously the, the weight. You know, if you're using a gimbal or something like that, it's, you know, it's too heavy for. I've got the.
What is it? The DJI, like the Mini,
[01:52:41] Speaker C: the RS Gimbal, the RS4M.
So do you shoot a bit of video for your commercial work?
[01:52:50] Speaker A: I'm gonna out myself really badly. Yes, I dog hair. How fun is that?
I do shoot a little bit of video.
It's very basic and I, when I'm having conversations with clients, I'm very upfront and very honest about my ability in that space.
I feel like as a photographer it's really important to diversify as much as you can because we're entering in a world where, you know, AI and video is becoming, you know, massive.
[01:53:25] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:53:25] Speaker A: And you know, especially in the, in kind of social media space and people, people do need videos. So I will always say to them, you know, yes, I can do some video if you need like a little highlight reel, a little speaker reel if you're a keynote speaker, you know, if you need some vox pops doing, I've got some DJI mics and things like that.
But if you're wanting like real high level production stuff, I'm not your person and I wouldn't put myself into that space because it's not fair to the client or to me. You know, at the end of the day like I'll do myself out of a job and burn a bridge and you know, that's never my intention with a client.
[01:54:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:54:01] Speaker C: Do you, do you say you're booked for just a full day commercial shoot? If they want a bit of video too, do you charge extra or do you just like, well, I'm there for the day when I'm shooting video, I'm not shooting photos. So it's just kind of the same. It's just the same price kind of
[01:54:17] Speaker A: would depend on what they wanted out of it at the end, like what the deliverables would be. Deliverables.
If they're wanting, you know, a highlight me to do the editing on a video, then I probably would charge them a little bit more because as we know that the editing is such a different landscape.
If they are just after, you know, some kind of BTS stuff and they've got someone, you know, internally that's going to do it, then I probably wouldn't, you know, mainly because I just don't consider my, my skill set to be up there, you know, enough. And I've done, I've done quite a few, few shoots now where I've kind of dual shot those like photo and video.
It's really hard and it's really important if you're going down that road to be really clear with your client not to a oversell what you can deliver on the day, but be what their priority is because you can't do both to the same level as you would as if you were only doing one.
And I think it's really important that.
And that's where I think a lot of, a lot of the time when I do get a new client, a lot of the time that the feedback has been, you know, kind of oh, we, we booked them to do video and photos and it. And it, you know, kind of wasn't that great, you know, or whatever. And they've just, they've oversold and under delivered and always flip it.
[01:55:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, great advice.
How do you get your big clients? Because you listed some names off. There's some names floating around on your website. I don't know if you've just screenshotted them off websites and just stuck them on there.
[01:56:00] Speaker A: Yeah,
[01:56:02] Speaker C: there's some pretty big names on your website. Like how do you get clients like that?
[01:56:08] Speaker A: I'm very lucky. Scout the dog has heard another dog. Hang on. I'm just going to ring my little bell. Hang on.
[01:56:16] Speaker C: Oh, what does that do?
[01:56:18] Speaker A: Come here.
The neighbor's dog going. And he's like, oh my God, there must be something going on.
[01:56:27] Speaker C: Yeah, alert the family.
[01:56:29] Speaker A: Yep. Alert everyone.
No, so from a, from a commercial client perspective, event management companies I've got a really good relationship with, with a few event management companies and freelance event managers who I shoot quite regularly for, for that. So for. So it's kind of, it's, it's their clients as well. So you know, shooting for like Mama Mir and people like that as well.
And then what I really as saying before, like what I pride myself on is being able to develop that relationship with, you know, with those clients themselves. So I then become a preferred supplier whether it's kind of then independently through to, to them or whether it's you know, just the ongoing like so that event management company gets the gigs for mailchimp and mailchimp will always ask to use me or that company will always ask to use Me. So, so it comes back to your
[01:57:30] Speaker B: earlier statement about, you know, that how you communicate and present to potential clients.
[01:57:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:57:36] Speaker B: Because you never know who a potential client might be 100% as well.
[01:57:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's worked for me. You know, a lot of times, you know, shooting, especially when you're in say like a corporate event, like a, you know, a networking event or you know, a conference of some description where you've got delegates from, you know, they've got their own, they've got their own cohort of their clients that are all from different companies. You know, I say it to photographers or you know, to my kids or whatever, you know, if I'm in a mentoring space with, with photographers, like every shoot you're on is an audition for your next shoot, whether it's with that same client or with other people who are in the room. So act like it, you know, and going back to what we were talking about earlier about being able to, to have conversations with people, being able to have a, you know, kind of polite in passing conversation and make yourself memorable to people, not in an aggressive salesy. I'm a photographer. Here's my business card. If you need something kind of a way because I don't think that's worked one time but just to, to be enough of a presence that you are then memorable in that person's life, you know, and we are very fortunate now with the technology, you know, I can wi fi into my camera and pull off a photo and download it onto my phone and airdrop it to someone and you know, that gives me a lasting impression, you know, to somebody as well.
I think LinkedIn being present is really important. Like, you know, we talk about branding and stuff like you have to be a brand and being present in the, you know, the Internet sphere is, is just an absolute must and that comes down to the grind. You know, understanding where the work is going to come from, whether it's, you know, freelancer pages on Facebook, whether it's following the brands that you like on, on LinkedIn and connecting with those people and being able to reach out and send the email that makes you sound like you a human being.
You know, I did it yesterday and ended up on a really cool call with the head of the Academy of Sport for TAFE Queensland and had an awesome conversation with him about some sports stuff that I'm, that I'm working on and some in the well being space.
You know, at the end of the day if you don't ask, you don't get and the worst that Anyone is going to say to you is no, and that doesn't hurt.
[02:00:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Very good. Very good, Sophie. I'm very conscious of time. So we might sort of head into the. The final round of questions for you, provided you've got some time to stick around for a little bit longer.
[02:00:20] Speaker A: Of course. Absolutely.
[02:00:24] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:00:30] Speaker A: With.
[02:00:30] Speaker B: You know, you've shot a lot of different genres of photography and you've had a broad experience in dealing with a whole myriad of different. Different sorts of clients.
Is there a genre that you haven't yet tackled that you think may have something in it for you?
[02:00:44] Speaker A: That's a very good question.
Wipe the dog slobber off my face.
I would love to get into some, like, bigger architectural stuff.
[02:00:58] Speaker C: Okay.
[02:00:59] Speaker A: I think that would be really interesting. I think, you know, as a photographer, we're, we're always looking and I feel like, you know, even when I'm on a run, I'm a really annoying person to run with because I'm like, oh, stop. Like, we've got to take that photo and that view and.
On my. On my iPhone.
[02:01:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I was gonna say. I was gonna. So when you run, you. You only have an iPhone. Have you ever ran with a small camera? Have you ever thought about that? Or is it just like, oh, I
[02:01:25] Speaker A: would love to, but I'm too. No, it's. When I'm. When I'm running, especially in an event, it's. It I'm out there for. That's the purpose.
So, yeah, it's.
They. Even the. Even a small point and shoot is. Is heavy, it's bulky. You know, you get sweaty, you can get wet, you don't want to damage it. Blah, blah.
Yeah, it's. It's too distinct. It's like I want to be intentional with what I'm. With what I'm doing, you know.
Yeah. Architectural stuff, I think would be really interesting. I love, you know, buildings, lines, cityscapes. That kind of stuff is really cool.
And like, I was saying before, like, getting more into. Into cars, whether that's, you know, kind of hot rods, supercars, like, you know, racing, something like that, that's kind of where I'm trying to take my focus a little bit now.
[02:02:14] Speaker C: What is it about the cars that. That excites you? What? And that. That industry, obviously, the hard thing with that is you're competing against, like, just a hoard of car loving.
[02:02:27] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[02:02:28] Speaker C: People that have just bought cameras. Like, you know, we've had Matthew Garberg on the show, who was at B. I don't know if you saw the, you know, the young guy that got electrocuted on stage. Did you see him? Yeah, that guy. So he, he, he's trying to make a career in, in photography and video. He's young and he's excited. He's going to the Bathurst six hours and shooting all the stuff and just, just, you know, trying to get into that world. And obviously he doesn't have your experience, but that's. You're kind of competing with a, a flood of very passionate people that are like, oh, it's my dream to shoot.
[02:03:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. And you know who you're also. Yeah. Who you're also competing with is a lot of younger people who do not necessarily have the, the, the busyness of the business and two kids and two dogs and a running hobby that takes up more hours than I should really commit to, you know, so the idea of, you know, going like, like this weekend, it's like the Melbourne Car Show. But I can't go because I have got, I've got to go and pick up lights tomorrow. I've got a meeting with Sydney Wanderers in the morning, pick up lights Saturday I'm shooting for Coca Cola and then a wedding. Sunday I've got two interior shoots.
Monday I've got headshots out in Norwest and then a branding shoot for someone on Monday afternoon and then the same thing again on Wednesday. So I don't have time to go to Melbourne Car show, let alone pay for myself to go down there and do it all for free. So, yes, I'm up against, you know, people with more time.
You know, I think the interesting thing about cars as well is that, you know, there's obviously a huge amount of content because like I said, cars is a passion for a huge number of people.
And it's actually where it's kind of figuring out where the money in it is. And I don't mean that in a, like, give me the money scout get down.
[02:04:18] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean for it to be viable, it's got to be a business, you
[02:04:21] Speaker A: know, like, you can't just.
[02:04:22] Speaker C: Otherwise it's a hobby.
[02:04:23] Speaker A: So, you know, and as much as I would love to combine those two things, I also have, you know, a mortgage to pay and bills and kids to feed because I have teenage boys and they eat a lot of food, don't they?
Oh, my God.
So, yes, it has to be viable. Exactly. And so I don't have the time to go and do a lot of stuff for free. I'm trying to, to just kind of build a little bit of Content. And I also think, you know, a lot of the time, a lot of stuff that you see, especially on, you know, Instagram and TikTok and stuff, the, the, the shoots that people are out there doing are not actually where the, they're not being paid to go and do those shoots of those cool cars.
It's the views that they're getting on Tick Tock and on, on YouTube and it's that, that content stuff that, that's actually where, where the money is for, for them.
So, you know, there's also a little bit of a, like kind of actually having to realize that no one's going to go and pay me $5,000 to go and shoot their Mustang. Like that's not gonna, that's not gonna happen.
[02:05:23] Speaker C: Like a private, a private collection kind of.
[02:05:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's not so sure.
Do you know someone with one?
And so I think the business acumen comes into going. Okay, so my, I guess idea a little bit is that we are at a precipice and an evolution of electric vehicles, which means there's a lot of brands that are newer brands that are launching and coming to Australia. So like, that's where I want to target and try and kind of work my way in because they're all going to have to have launches and they're all going to have to have drive day experiences with potential clients, existing clients, things like that. And so there's definitely a niche there and that's what I'm hoping to kind of look into now.
[02:06:15] Speaker B: That's smart.
[02:06:16] Speaker C: It's a very interesting niche because obviously we've got, we've got AI just coming along like a freight train where you can, you can probably take a photo of a car and then, and then AI it into whatever things you want and stuff. But, but with EVs particularly and with the Australian market and the, you know, the classics, the Toyotas and stuff like that that have, that have been the icons of the car industry in Australia for so many years.
Building trust with people that EVs can be relied upon for daily life in Australia is going to take some work.
[02:06:51] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
[02:06:52] Speaker C: I think you're right. Like image, real authentic imagery in Australian context is going to be important to try and build that trust with Absolutely. The wider population.
[02:07:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Because you know, they're selling, you know, you're selling the, you know, the JCOO or whatever or the Cooper or whatever. You're selling that to, you know, a real Aussie family. And they've got to understand, understand they've Got to have that experience of learning a new brand or a new brand identity, buying into that. And you know, in Australia we are very brand centric and we're very Australian centric as well. So taking overseas brands and trying to build them here is hard. It's a really hard market to break into.
So yeah, it's, it's really interesting and you know, like even now just kind of of teaching my algorithm about, you know, I want to see stuff with cars and when car meetups are and all that kind of stuff. You know, you get the ads for the apps to, hey, take one photo of a car and then put it into these, you know, this, yeah, AI world.
But I think we are becoming as consumers, we're becoming more savvy towards it as adults anyway. I think youth is a completely different, completely different minefield.
But we are becoming more savvy to it and we are not connecting to it as, as strongly as I think the, the, you know, the metas of the world would, would hope.
Because I think people, what, what is always going to supersede any technology and any interaction is human connection. Because we, we are human beings at the end of the day.
[02:08:32] Speaker B: That and trust.
I think trust plays a big part in the AI equation. You mentioned earlier yourself that we're a very tribal species and when tribes form, they tend to distrust the other tribe.
And that's been an evolution thing for us to work through. And I think the Aussie family who wants to buy a Toyota RAV4 electric version electric vehicle, they don't want to see it in an AI backdrop because it won't feel authentic to them. And so if that doesn't feel authentic, what else, what else about this product isn't authentic? You know, you erode away at that trust and you know, through the work that you do and many of the other amazing people we've had on the show here, you know, I think you're kind of the last, the last bastion of trying to keep trust in the game, you know, and I think
[02:09:25] Speaker A: 100 across all aspects of what I, what I do in that commercial and corporate world. The, the shift.
And I think it's really happening now with the economy tightening belts, budgets being cut.
[02:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:09:45] Speaker A: Businesses are starting to realize that they can use AI to generate an image of somebody looking engaged, standing in an exhibition stand, you know, with a certain brand in there or whatever, and they might be able to use that for their marketing. And that's taken them, you know, seven minutes to make, as opposed to paying me thousands of dollars to Be there for two days to capture that one image.
But I think what people will start to experience from a marketing, you know, engagement, brand awareness thing is coming back to trust.
People want to see what reality looks like. Looks like.
And so there's a reason that, you know, Defender, which is a luxury vehicle, you know, will put a, you know, use their marketing to put a family with a border collie and two kids in the back of the boot. Because it denotes real life and it denotes what people will you, you know, be that fit for purpose is what people will use that car for. For, you know, for the majority of people, of drivers and owners.
[02:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, very true.
[02:10:43] Speaker C: Any other thoughts you have around the future of our industry with regards to whether it's AI or whether like the ever shifting landscape of social media and how we consume imagery, like all that sort of stuff. We always like to talk about meta glasses. I often say that vertical is a fad and it won't be here, particularly for video, in not that long because it's dumb and it's a crappy way to watch a video and we're only doing it because phones are like this. But soon we're going to have glasses and vertical will be dead.
Do you have any thoughts on the future of photography, imagery, social media, anything?
[02:11:24] Speaker A: You clearly do.
[02:11:27] Speaker B: We've got episodes of it, Sophie.
[02:11:30] Speaker C: Hours and hours of content.
[02:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah, look, I, I agree vertical is so dumb, but it's, it's at the
[02:11:38] Speaker C: moment, it's here for now. It's here for now and very important.
Yeah, I get that.
[02:11:43] Speaker A: And you know, it's the consumerism thing, right? Like you've got to put it in front of people in and there's got to be no barrier to entry. So you film in vertical, you know, post in vertical.
Look, I think we are at a time where, you know, with social media, image saturation is huge. I think the messaging is, you know, behind it there's, it could be really dangerous for some people and it probably is really dangerous for a lot of people. You know, mental health, you know, issues that come from cancel culture, being bullied online. Just the pure saturation of, you know, of body image or, you know, what someone's life looks like. Again, you know, I have these conversations
[02:12:26] Speaker B: or even just feeling like you can't possibly keep up.
[02:12:29] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Yeah. And it's, and it's overwhelming and it's really over stimulating and, and I think we need to take it with a dose, a real kind of strong dose of reality and understand that if someone has posted something, regardless of how organic it might look or you know, how real life, you know, versus super, something super cinematic.
It's been posted with intention and it's a, it's a moment in somebody's life or somebody's work day or career or whatever that they have intentionally put out there for you to consume.
And so it's not real life because it has been curated, you know, in, in some way shape or form.
I, I think one of the things that I, a lesson that I have learned the hard way is losing all my social media last year. So just under a year ago, Meta put me in the meta jail.
And what did you do?
I posted a stupid video of my then 13 year old son. We were doing a council cleanup, which I don't know if that would translate, you know, across borders or whatever, but like curbside pickup. So in New South Wales you can, you can put like all the crap that you store in your garage all year from Christmas with all the boxes and you know, the mattresses that you're throwing out, put them out. You can book a council cleanup. Council come take all that bulky goods collection. And my husband is a hoarder and he has been holding on to these audio cassette tapes since 1995, something like that.
[02:14:07] Speaker C: Awesome.
[02:14:09] Speaker A: Yep. Like, and not just one or two, like a whole big like I'm in vertical now, so you can't seat like this massive big boxes and a whole bunch of CDs from when we moved from the UK, you know. And he was like, I can't throw them out. They'll be, you know, they might be relevant. And I was like mate, take a photo of the CDs. It's like you, you have an entire world of, of music at your fingertips, you know, on, on Spotify or whatever it is. So just go download it. You probably have half of it there anyway.
And anyway I, I showed my son a, an audio cassette and said hey buddy, what's this? Whilst filming him. And he's there like just looking at this thing going what is this Dragon magic? And he's like oh, it's the thing that you put the pencil in and twizzle. I'm like yeah.
And then I showed him a CD and did the same thing and he's like, oh, is this like a dvd? I thought, no, this is before D. It was just a series of those. And I put them on my stories on one of my business pages. And the next day I was got an email from, from the, the Meta gods saying you violated community standards for child exploitation.
You can Submit an appeal. Yep. So I went through this full, like, you know, deep dive subreddit kind of journey and found out that meta have basically replaced all of their human security people with AI. And so AI just goes and does this massive mine sweep of accounts and goes, oh, here's a picture of a chocolate chip cookie. It must be a chihuahua.
And I don't know if anyone's seen that meme. It comes from a real. Anyway, and so they've meta. AI have looked at my page with a video of a child on there and gone. That must be exploitation of some varying degree or other.
So it.
So I lost everything.
They've deleted all my accounts, so including my Facebook, my personal Facebook, which is, you know, 20 years old and has, you know, pictures of my wedding and when my husband and I first got together and uni friends and, you know, a whole life of, you know, two. Two whole human lives of my children.
So I've lost it all. Which in the grand scheme of things is social media. Like, yeah, it doesn't matter. But from a business perspective, I think I'm very lucky in that I don't get a lot of business through Instagram. So not Instagram so much. Facebook I did through a lot of, you know, referral. Referral pages.
It took me about three months to be able to develop, to be able to open a new account. My device is flagged, so there are still Instagram accounts that I can't access on my phone because it reads it.
Get down.
Because it reads it as this device is a problem.
And so, yeah, that's been really hard. So that was a real lesson from a business perspective of you can own the house, but you do not own the land.
So for any photographers, and I'll go past that and say any small business owners, any freelancers, your client list is your entire business. Forget, you know, forget about what you're gonna, who you're gonna meet, how you're gonna develop your business, how are you going to grow it?
What that. But that. But that client list is everything.
And so, you know, we talk about, you know, like email marketing, you know, not being dead is the big message from, from people like mailchimp, for example.
But it's really important that you find a way to diversify.
Diversifying your market channels, but not being so much of a generalist in your scope of practice, whatever that might be, that you kind of just bleed yourself to, you know, you kind of spread yourself too thin.
[02:18:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:18:07] Speaker A: So find that niche of what you do to do it really, really well. Go after that, there's always going to be the little jobs you've got to do around it to pay the bills 100%. Like, no one, no one is out there just doing that one. Like, look at both of you.
But find the, you know, find the thing that you love to do. Make that your niche, but make sure you understand your marketing channels and social media is not the, and nor should it be the solution to your, to your developing business.
[02:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
[02:18:40] Speaker C: Yeah, it's great. That's great advice because it's, it's a tool to be used, but it's not. You can't put all your eggs in that basket. I mean, look, no, you can do whatever you want, but you're running a risk of absolutely. The rug being pulled out from under you.
[02:18:54] Speaker A: Absolutely. Because, like, in my instance, you know, like, I'm not a Kim Kardashian of the world and whatever else. Like, I don't have tens of millions of followers, so little old me. Losing their Instagram means nothing to them.
Absolutely nothing. And they, you know, the front that they put out is, oh, we're protecting, you know, we're keeping standards, you know, protecting our community standards.
[02:19:15] Speaker C: So they give and they would, they would look at that. Like if we, if one out of a hundred accounts that we pull down was a misjudgment. Yeah, look, when we're 99. Accurate on our, whatever they call it.
[02:19:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:19:27] Speaker C: Enforce like community standards. That's close enough. It's as good as we can get. But you're the, you're the one that lost everything and.
[02:19:34] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[02:19:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:19:36] Speaker A: And so, you know, if I'm someone that gets, that has, you know, tens of thousands of followers on, on Instagram or, or Facebook and I lose everything and I've got no other way of contacting those, those people and they've got no way of contacting me now, then that's, that's, that's your business literally gone overnight. And there is no one that you can call. Like, there are so many subreddits. Well, you know, contact me. I know someone who works in, in Meta and, you know, my husband even had someone, you know, someone that used to work for him that now works for Facebook and he couldn't help me because I don't know him directly.
[02:20:13] Speaker C: Wow.
[02:20:14] Speaker A: So it had to be the only reason they can kind of, you know, look at my request to my appeal as if it was a personal connection, which it wasn't. So, you know, a lot of people out there, they're like, oh, you know, you need to get a social media manager, and they can. They've got an account manager at Meta at Facebook.
It's all just rubbish.
[02:20:32] Speaker B: And it's not like you can. You can, you know, take legal action against Meta for damaging one of your revenue streams because, you know, they'll crush you.
[02:20:41] Speaker A: Oh, you know, absolutely. Doesn't even get it. Wouldn't even get. I read a few Reddit of people being like, I sent them a letter telling them I was going to sue them and it was, you know, defamation of character and whatever else.
[02:20:53] Speaker C: Right. Yeah. Good luck.
[02:20:56] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Like you might. And it's. And it's frustrating because we live in a world where we feel like we can control most things around us. Right. And actually, it's a real lesson of being completely helpless.
You know, being stuck up on the mountain, vomiting for 14 hours, going, the only person that is going to get you out of this is me.
And I can either have a tanty about it or I can figure out a way around it and. And, you know, learn the lesson and continue to grow in other areas.
[02:21:27] Speaker B: Yep.
[02:21:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I. I feel like I got kicked out of a nightclub once, you know, and I. And I.
[02:21:34] Speaker B: Just.
[02:21:35] Speaker C: Doing well? Yeah, pretty much just once. And. And, well, I wasn't doing anything wrong, but I think they thought that I was with other people or something like that that, you know, so you get. But it's that feeling where you're like, but hang on, what. What's happening? Like, I wasn't even doing anything wrong. And then you're like, but. And there's nothing you can do. You're outside, the security guards are just like, dude, go away. You know, like, we don't want to talk to you. We've got a hundred other people in there. We don't care that we've kicked one person out that wasn't doing anything wrong. Like, move on. And it's that kind of feeling where you're like, but. But that's not fair.
[02:22:06] Speaker A: It's the social injustice of it. And you're like, but I didn't do anything wrong. And like. And you're there going, I come. You know, I managed to get another. And, you know, managed to make another Facebook account, managed to get that meta verified so that I could go through the ad support chat and I'm there going, you guys are costing me my livelihood. Like, this is. This is everything. This is like, you know, screw the, you know, pictures of my kids, whatever. They don't care about that. But this is what puts food on my table, like, for me I don't have another job. You know, I don't, I don't have another revenue stream.
This is it. And you are, you are directly impacting my ability to, to feed my children and, and put a roof over my head. You know, it's, it was, it was really devastating, you know, and at the same time, I was lucky that I, you know, I do have a lot of other channels and networks that I, that my work does come through.
And I did have an established business with a, you know, with a client history that I can kind of reach out to. But, you know, I'm still rebuilding. It's. It's really demoralizing. And, and people do now they look at social media to, to kind of validate, Validate, verify. Yeah. And it's. And it is hard when you've got.
I think on my new, in my new photography, Instagram, I think I've got, like less than 200 followers. And it's like, how can I sit there and say, I'm a, you know, I'm a photographer with over 20 years worth of experience. Experience.
I've shot some massive global brands and some incredible Australian brands. But, like, to Justin's point, it's like I could just go onto a website and just copy and paste those, those logos and just kind of stick them on there. If people are going to go to my website and, and then try and check me out on social media and I've got 200 followers, like, yeah, yeah.
[02:23:54] Speaker B: It doesn't tell a congruent story, does it? It feels. People will feel like there's something missing.
[02:23:58] Speaker C: Guessing if anyone, if anyone wants to. So go to Instagram, go to the photographer. Sophie, that's, that's with the end. And let's get, let's get the followers up as much as we can. Go and follow.
[02:24:11] Speaker A: Oh, thank you, guys. Please don't show the photo. I had my, my profile photo in that I was shooting for. Yeah, I was shooting for Clarendon Homes and I had pneumonia. I was really sick.
So I look amazing in that photo.
[02:24:29] Speaker C: Oh, is that. I saw this. Oh, there it is. This one. Wait.
[02:24:33] Speaker A: I was so sick that day. Like, I never sit down. I never sit down on a shoot and I, like, I was really sick, which is hard these days to be sick on site. But a. You don't, you know, you're sick, you don't work, you don't get paid and. Yeah. Oh, God, that's funny. Seeing it. And it's a very different way to see your work showing at you, isn't It.
[02:24:55] Speaker C: Yeah. Good job. David Mascara. He's number 201. We've got it over 200. Let's, let's keep it going.
[02:25:00] Speaker B: Well done.
[02:25:02] Speaker A: Thanks, David. That's awesome.
[02:25:07] Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's a really great story to take away. Just like don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially a basket that you don't ultimately control.
Have a website, have an email list.
[02:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Drive people to sign up to something somehow which is something I need to, to put back on. There is, you know, and it's not about sending people out a newsletter that's, you know, that's every month or, and you know, saturating an inbox. It's just like be a part of your journey and you know, so that when you've got something significant to say to people, there's, there's a way of connecting with them and you know, and I don't think email marketing is dead. I think there is a space for it but I think it's about doing it in a respectful way that doesn't. Yeah. Saturate Hong Kong with 202.
[02:25:57] Speaker C: Let's go.
Yeah, I, I definitely don't think email marketing's dead. I think it is definitely hard to cut through.
But over the last, you know, the recent years we've seen a resurgence in email newsletters. Actual ones that operate as a, that's their platform. They send out a newsletter with information. Information not, not just like the newsletter from some company but a, a curated news source of written articles and things like that in a newsletter form has worked really well. And we had Jeff Cable on eight time or probably nine times now. I don't know. Olympic Games photographer, absolute amazing photographer. Shoots for Canon usa And he's, he still blogs, flat out blogs and newsletters just all the time. He's got a massive list. Yeah, it's, it's really impressive. Like he's, he, he's active on social media but he's most active on his own website and his own newsletter. So very cool.
[02:26:50] Speaker B: And most of his social media posts say.
Will always say check out the blog on the site. He's always pushing people to the blog and the email list.
[02:26:57] Speaker C: Yeah, very 2000 and something.
[02:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Early two. Let's go early 2000s. And it's true. And I think, you know, especially when you're trying to work in a more commercial space as well, you know, Instagram is not a professional networking site.
[02:27:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:27:13] Speaker A: You know, so. And it's a way of being able to, to directly kind of connect with a Lot of people who, you know, you're not going to. You could put a post up on Instagram and Facebook and, you know, not everyone's going to see it. It's not going to hit everybody's, you know, feedback. So it's important to have, you know, when you've got like important messages and even, you know, things like at the, say at the start of the year, like my, you know, Jan. Feb.
Pretty quiet. Which works well with family and you know, and school holidays and stuff.
But to be able to connect with people and reach out and to have that email list to be like, hey guys, you know, what have you got planned for the year? Let's, you know, we'd love to catch up. Find out what you've got planned in terms of your events or whatever it is.
Find out how we can work together because it's just putting you in back in their thoughts. Because if I'm the, you know, the head of marketing for Jaguar Land Rover, say that's a pretty big job and I'm not necessarily thinking about what photography and what photographer. And so small fry Sophie, you know, sat here in, in Sydney's northern beaches, you have to put yourself in their pot of what are the things I need to sort today? Because we all have a list, right? We all have a list of things that we've got to get through daily, weekly, monthly, year goals, whatever. So you have to put yourself front of mind for, for other people.
And sometimes it might be just like, oh, there's that chick again, I'll read that later. And you know, never gets done.
But when you do it consistently without being rude and aggressive and annoying, then, you know, when you can kind of figure out what that balance is. Like, how often would you like to receive an email?
That's what I like to think of. How would I like to be communicated with?
[02:29:12] Speaker C: And then replicate that especially for something too. Because the thing is your, every time they book you, you're solving a problem that they have. It's not like you're not asking for charity or something, like every time, so. So you're reaching out to basically say, hey, is there anything you need?
And that I can make really easy for you by just replying to this email and saying, oh yeah, actually we've got this thing coming up that's one, one less task that's now floating around in their brain or on their to do list. So it's, it's not. Yeah, don't. If you do it in the right way, it's not some sort of you're not hassling them, you're offering help. And it's figuring out how often to offer that help.
[02:29:51] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah.
Yesterday shoot that I've got this weekend for Coca Cola, the. I emailed the, you know, my, my contact for the shoot and I just said, hey, looking forward to the weekend. I'll see you at, you know, 10:30.
You know, can you just let me know an address and a contact person and any specifics for the shoot in terms of, you know, stuff you need on the day, style, whatever, blah, blah. And she wrote back, she's like, oh, you've been. You have been on my list of things to do.
[02:30:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:30:18] Speaker A: And it's not about. And making feel someone like they haven't done their job. It's like, great. Happy that I can be the person to go, okay, that's one less thing. Yep, that's on my list. And so now when I go to bed, I know I've done everything that, that, you know, I know I've contacted Sophie because I was probably on her list for the last week, give that information to.
But she's just had other more important things going on.
And so, yeah, realizing as the. As the photographer, where you sit on someone's list of priorities is I think, really a really valuable skill in itself.
[02:30:51] Speaker C: That's awesome. Yeah, that's really, really cool.
I know. Oh, it's two and a half hours. I had one other question, but I don't want to keep you any longer. I had one tiny. One little one.
[02:31:01] Speaker A: Go on.
[02:31:03] Speaker C: I just want to know. I want to. I want to find out if you've got any tactics or advice or thoughts about just managing your time, because you obviously do. You do a variety of things and the idea of doing like weddings and then shoots for Coca Cola, which is insane. And then you're obviously trying to market yourself where you can and run insane distances and you have a family. Like, how do you. How do you manage your time to make sure that you get everything you need done daily, weekly, whatever?
[02:31:39] Speaker A: Well, I think it's a really interesting question as a, you know, kind of, I'll say neurospicy human being as well, because it's really easy to get sucked into the things that we. That we like to do that we're interested in. Interested in. And then the, you know, the, the administrative stuff, the sending of the invoices and things like that, you know, kind of the boring stuff then can really easily not get done.
I think my biggest, I guess, skill that I developed as I was building My business, it was that I, and probably the biggest gift to me was that I worked, you know, full time and then part time when I had kids. And you know, we're in juggling daycare and young children and stuff.
And so I learned that my day didn't stop at 5:30 or 6:00 clock or whatever.
So there are definite seasons in my business where, you know, I could be up until 3:00am, you know, editing, delivering galleries, sending invoices, you know, things like that.
It's understanding where you've got those, those times. You know, I do a lot of juggling of it's school holidays in New South Wales at the moment. So I, at 3:00 clock yesterday afternoon, took the kids down to, you know, mountain bikes, BMX park and I had my laptop and they're fanging it up and down these runs and I'm there going, please don't die. But I have to send this email.
I think it, it just taps into if you want something and you constantly have to remind yourself that it's not just going to get easier and you kind of have to surrender to, to that.
You know, I think the old adage is if you want something done, you ask a busy person.
So we just find the time. You know, it, it gets done because it has to because no one else is going to do it for me. I don't have an HR department, I don't have a financial controller, I don't have a marketing officer. It's, it's me. So if I want this business to be a success and to grow, it's going to come from me. And so I have to do it because I don't have a choice.
And I think there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of drive that comes from that.
And I think I like to look at, through my, in my running coaching, I do a lot of mindset at work and a lot of, a lot of coaching around well being.
And my theory is that we have these areas of our lives that all require energy and focus at different times and you know, whether it's your emotional well being, your financial well being, your, you know, occupational well being and there are times when we have to build the pillar of our occupational well being, right? So we're, we're actively building and we're putting a lot of time, time and that's going to be at the detriment of another pillar in our life. So our emotional well being or our physical well being, maybe we don't get to the gym as Often as we would like or, you know, I'm kind of burning out. I'm not getting to spend much time with family and friends because I'm really pursuing this goal, this pillar of my life.
[02:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:34:54] Speaker A: And that's fine as long as we have the awareness and the visibility of the areas that are going to kind of end up in deficit, maybe we're borrowing that energy to, to put into something else.
And when we have that visibility and it's in, in our kind of peripheral a little bit and go, okay, I know I'm sacrificing a lot. I'm burning the candle at both ends. Probably not making the best food choices because I'm just grabbing snacks as I go. But when this pillar is, is, you know, I've, I've gotten through the Christmas season, the wedding season, whatever it is, I can now turn my attention and focus that little bit more on another area of my life. Life that does need that little bit more focus. So I can look at nutrition recovery, you know, spending time with loved ones, taking time to plan the business. You know, I might not be shooting as much, so I'm. But I'm going to be planning it and I'm working out what my next steps are type thing. I think that's my approach.
[02:35:45] Speaker C: I love that.
[02:35:46] Speaker B: It's amazing. Yeah, me too.
[02:35:47] Speaker C: I love that visual as well of pillars. Silos. I often think about silos in terms of, of it's almost the opposite, the reverse. The.
I like to think that we can't always make progress on all parts of our life. But as long as I can be making progress on something, I don't feel like I'm stuck.
Yes.
[02:36:08] Speaker A: You can't put.
[02:36:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Yes. So it's almost the opposite. It's almost like, ah, I can't achieve what I want to achieve right now or something on this one thing. But the other thing is going well. So I can, I can be sort of.
[02:36:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:36:23] Speaker C: Cheer myself up. I don't know.
[02:36:25] Speaker A: And that's a real. And that's a really important skill to have. And it, and it lends itself. So I used to be many moons ago as a yoga teacher and there's a sense in the kind of Eastern world of duality. Right. So not everything is always good or always bad. And so in our lives, yeah, we might be killing it in one area of our life and there's another area of our life that is maybe not going quite so well and it's being able to look at it and go, it's okay, and understand that that balance is always going to happen, and there's going to be, you know, areas of stress, areas of joy, and it's not right or wrong. It just. It just is. And so I think when you're talking like that, it's really important to be very mindful about the words that we use. And so a lot of people will be. Will say, you know, oh, I'm killing, killing it at work, but my marriage is suffering.
And it's like one. Yes, you're the common denominator, but one doesn't excuse the other or one doesn't kind of give way to the other. The sentence should be, I'm killing it at work. And not. But. And things maybe are a little bit stressful at home because the and then leads us to a resolution. The and then leads us to the opportunity to be able to go. I actually have control over that situation as well. And so what energy do I need to put into my marriage or whatever it is to work on that and to build that pillar or fill that cup?
Yep.
[02:37:56] Speaker C: Wow.
[02:37:57] Speaker B: Very insightful.
[02:37:58] Speaker C: We got to the great stuff at the end there. Did good question 20 minutes ago.
[02:38:05] Speaker A: Delete, delete all around.
[02:38:09] Speaker C: No, I'll try and clip it up into some good stuff. That's awesome. I reckon we should leave it there. That was. That's amazing.
[02:38:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a good place to tie a knot in that one.
Just before we say goodbye to everyone, Sophie, just on behalf of all of us here at the Camera Life podcast and Lucky Straps, thank you so much for your time and your input. And I think you know what I could confidently call sage advice for anyone at any stage in this industry.
We all lose our way from time to time, and sometimes we need to look to our sages for guidance and inspiration and direction. And I think that you offer that in spades. So thank you so much for joining us. It's meant a lot to have you here. Great to catch up with you again. Fingers crossed. We see you at BFOP 2026.
[02:38:56] Speaker A: That's the plan.
[02:38:56] Speaker B: And if they don't invite you, let us know.
[02:38:58] Speaker C: We'll just.
[02:38:59] Speaker B: We'll smuggle you in somehow. We'll work it out. We're doing a run.
[02:39:03] Speaker C: Yeah, you got to come and you got to come and see this new jewel strap. You got to come and check it out.
[02:39:08] Speaker A: You've said it now. It's out there on the interweb. So it must be true if it's on the interweb.
[02:39:14] Speaker C: Paul said it's only 183 days counting down.
[02:39:20] Speaker A: There you go. Justin, start the timer.
[02:39:23] Speaker C: No, no, the pressure's on.
So before we go, if you haven't gone to Instagram at the photographer, Sophie with the dots in it, just search. You'll find it.
We're at 204 followers. We need more than that. Come on. If you're listening back to this later, if you're on, if you're on your, your long distance run on Spotify or something, just quickly whip your phone out and go and give it a follow. We can get it up, we can do it.
And otherwise. Yeah, you'll find links to everything there that Sophie does. Website or that sort of thing. The different arms of the businesses. Or if you want a master class in LinkedIn marketing, head to her LinkedIn and check that out. It's got a ton of activity and followers and things on it and I think that's how you do it if you want to be a commercial photographer.
I don't know anything else. Anything, Anything we need to know about you, Sophie.
[02:40:14] Speaker A: Anything else? Anything with me one day, Justin. I think there's, I think there's a market there. We can do the podcast.
[02:40:21] Speaker C: I will film would be. You would have to do all the talking. I would just be like, I think
[02:40:28] Speaker A: I've proven that I'm okay having a chat.
[02:40:33] Speaker C: I'll just get the odd. Oh, it's a good idea out of the.
So struggle to run up a hill.
Maybe one day. One day. The, the marathon or that. You know what? I figured, I'll never do a marathon. I think I go straight to some sort of 50k race. Because then you can call yourself an ultra runner. You just don't tell people that it was the smallest run ultra.
[02:40:52] Speaker A: Well, you could do an ultra run. You could do a 43 kilometer ultra. Anything over a 42.2 is considered an ultra. So is it.
[02:40:59] Speaker C: I thought it was 50. Oh, oh, that's definitely how I'd do it. You just run just a little bit past the finish line of a marathon, call yourself an ultra.
[02:41:07] Speaker A: As long as it's on Strava.
[02:41:09] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. Then it counts.
Cool. All right.
[02:41:14] Speaker B: All right, let's roll some music and we'll say goodbye to some people in the chat.
[02:41:20] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, and I should say too, the, the anniversary
[email protected] will finish on midnight Sunday probably you use the code, make it yours for free.
Free personalization.
And there's lots of straps discounted up to 25 off. So head to Luckystraps.com now and check it out. Otherwise what do we got here? Phil Thompson says thanks Greg and Justin for an absolute, absolutely incredible interview and insight. Sophie David Mascara says great show guys. Thanks Sophie. Hope you're feeling alright. David yeah, hope it didn't hurt too much. Are you still in the bath or are you able to get out?
Lisa Leach says thank you Justin and Greg. Thank you Sophie. Incredible show. Inspiring and engaging. Loved it.
Paul has an amended zombie question but we might have to left a something something something Heavyweight cannons. I'm not sure. Philip Johnson the music gives me too much pressure to read things fast. Philip Johnson says thanks Justin, Greg and special thanks Sophie.
What else have we got here?
Lots of stuff. Anyway thanks everyone that joined us. Thanks Nev. Thanks. Matt Palm was here Vn Tr V Tran Lots of people. Bruce Moyle everybody. We'll see you on the next one.
[02:42:32] Speaker B: Be safe guys.
