Ep. 29: I don't want to do watercolours or learn ballet dancing...

Well, isn't this interesting?

Our very first TOGTALK podcast, which is broadcast on YouTube in video as well. And you can see now our glorious faces in beautiful, stunning 3D color

 I'm interviewing somebody called (what's his name again?)  David Emery. 

I've known him for about four years. He joined early master classes and he's got a good journey.

He's a good articulator. He can speak well. He is, he's interesting to listen to. And if you're new on your photography journey, if you, you've only become a photographer in the past few years, I think he's going to have some interesting things to say, and if he doesn't, I definitely will. Thanks for coming along and watching this episode, episode 29 of Tog-Talk.

My name is Kevin Ahronson.

I've had a particularly stressful week. I'm taking no chances. I've just written down your name.  (laughing) 

I might actually keep that in. It's a great way to start. 

I'll get a, I'll get a banner here and just put my name on it. Yeah. I had a workshop last night and I gave everybody labels and the guy at the far end of the table halfway through the evening, I couldn't see it, it was too far away, so I still had to ask him what his name was, even though I knew, I absolutely knew who he was, but you know, old age, it happens.

And welcome to Tog-Talk, my name's Kevin Ahronson from Hampshire School of Photography and today we are with David Emery.

Hi Dave. 

Hello Kevin, how are you? Hunky dory, mate. How are you doing? What's, what's happening in your life?

Oh, you know, bits and pieces, working hard. You know, just running around. I'm on a few days off at the mument, so I'm having a bit of R& R. I just finished a long piece of work with my company with a particular supplier, a customer. 

That's just come to an end just as my holiday started. So when I go back to work on Monday, I'm gonna be hopefully told who my next client will be for the coming weeks and months. 

And isn't it good to know that in all this time off, you spent all of it with your camera? 

No, I was out with the camera yesterday.

I won't lie. I, the camera was, the big camera was on my hanging from my shoulder yesterday where he was out in Windsor Park with my wife and a friend on horses. So yeah, I've got some post  to do after this call. There's some pictures of them in the park, but yeah, I look forward to seeing them, look forward to seeing them.

So this is all about discovering your, your photographer's journey. You know, we've done a few of these and. Just picking people, photographers at random, no one famous, no one who is, you know, super amazing and clever. I mean, not as obviously not as clever as like what I am. Exactly. But I wouldn't want the competition.

Yeah. Wouldn't want the competition. But people I respect, I like their work, I've, I've known you for four years? 

2019 we met, yeah. Four years, yeah. Yeah, four years, yeah. About, about 2018, but yeah, 2019, I started Masterclass 2 in 2019. Yeah, would have been. In September time, I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But obviously I came to one of your one day You know, or one evening events, whatever, wherever it was. it a viewfinder, an evening event? you get the critique. You send, ask people to supply three pictures and you have a look at their work. Yeah. Well, last night I was at the viewfinder replacement, which we now call the photographer's evening, which is so much better.

The format is, it's, it's a bit longer and we spend. Like 90% of the evening looking at people's individual journeys and the problems they have and analyzing their own problems. And the conversations I have afterwards, and I've had come through by email from people saying, Oh, it just connects you with me talking through all those issues.

So the photographer's journey is bigger than I thought it was when I first got into it, because obviously I talk about it a lot. And sometimes I wonder whether I talk about it ad nauseum, but the more I. Discuss it with other photographers. The, the more I realise actually how very important it is to everybody because everyone struggles to some extent, but it's not just photographers, regardless, whatever your hobby or interest is, your journey is always a zigzag, like one of those charts at the bottom of the bedroom in hospitals, up and down, up and down, there's never a straight line.

And so we were analysing last night people's journeys and looking at the problems they were up against. And it's pretty predictable from my perspective, I've seen it all before. But when you get people to stop and look and analyze it, you can see light bulbs going on. Oh yeah, that's exactly right. So today we're looking at yours and I'm going to hit, so I want you to do most of the talking.

I mean, you know, I don't mind talking. No, no.

So my plan is to let you do most of the talking, but it wouldn't be right of me to, that you have too much of that. So I will interrupt occasionally. So your first question, I've got them up on the screen just to my left, going back, mate, to your earliest days with a camera, what draw, what drew you to photography, what creative tug.

What was the, what was the creative gravity that sucked you in and said, I want to do photography. I want to buy a camera, don't do watercolors or learn ballet dancing. Oh, I want to, I want to play with a camera. What was it that drew you to photography? Tell us about your early days. So just said, so it's a good question, actually, because it's a lot of it.

Actually, I think stems back to my late grandfather on my mother's side. You know, he was, self taught at everything he did. You know, he was a minor in Wales, came up just at the start of world war two and post world war two, he was wiring radiograms for Michaels. He was a cabinet maker, a carpenter that turned himself to an electronics engineer.

And even then, when he was retired, when I was a small boy, you know, he'd be the kind of person that we'd sit and make with a little electric motor and a battery would sit on, we'd sit and make a little hovercraft and stuff, but he had, you know, when, when televisions were in the street, had the first television in the street.

where he lived. And it was a big road. You know, first telephone, but he had a cine camera. He got a, he had a super cine camera and he had 35 millimeter cameras. And I always used to play with them as a couple of broken cameras he had. And I think it was about my 14th birthday. I got my first SLR, which was a Pritika.

So the old, the old East German Pritika cameras or whatever they looked like tanks, weren't they? They are brilliant. I mean, I've still got it. It's actually on the, the, you know, sat behind me at the mument in a bag. It's slightly damaged, but, but it came with a couple of Carl Zeiss Jenner lenses. So even though it was an old, the old 42 millimeter screw mount, and that's how much I use it, cause it's a screw mount, not a bayonet.

So that got me started. And obviously you went through that process of, you know, you'd take. 24 or 36 pictures and took them to the chemist or sent them off. And a few days later you saw how bad you were. And I used to, you know, I used to take quite a lot of pictures, mainly of the cat, especially at the end of the role.

It was always ones of the cat, you know, laying on the front of the fire or whatever. You know. Just to, just to finish a film off so you can get it developed. And yeah, I had some success, but nothing majorly, but then, you know, time's obviously changing the advent of digital in Iowa. I was in America when I went from, I think it was the APS C the like the compact.

Cassette type or roll. I went, I had, I had a couple of Olympus cameras using the compact, but then I went from that same camera to the to the, to the digital version, then very small digital version with Canon, you know, and you know, that was great, but it was, you know, one, one megapixel, two megapixels with a two times optical zoom or whatever, and it was okay.

You know, I got some good pictures of where I lived in America and stuff. And I was staying out there around about 2000. I was living in the States for a couple of years working. And it wasn't until I came back and I was just looking at cameras and I thought, oh boy. And that's when I, you know, it was about 2005.

I, I opted into Canon, you know, I had their digital cameras, so I went and bought a A A D S L R and three 50 D. By any chance, that was exactly that model. It was a three 50 D digital. Yeah. Picked up a couple of, Kit type lenses and other lenses. I had a 75 to 300 zoom and bits and pieces and then for years, you know, I'd get it out, take some nice pictures, put it away again, you know, not use it.

And I was going through that, that definite, yeah, I could use it to get it, find other lens or whatever. And, you know, I'm sat in my garden one day and we had some blue tits nesting in a box. So I got the big lens out and was sat there with a tripod for ages, trying to get some pictures. And they were one of the pictures I took along to your, the viewfinder, the course.

And, you know, I thought they're pretty good. But then when you look at them, you can see the blurred out of focus. They're grainy because obviously I've had to pump everything up. And to be honest, I didn't know I was doing to get that picture. It was just by pure by chance. And because you could see what you were getting through the digital, you know, straight away, you could take thousands of pictures and not have to worry about, you know, waiting for them to be developed.

You know, I was just getting your picture, you know, a couple in a hundred that looked reasonably good. So that of course, you know, being a bloke, I thought I need a new camera body and this is around about the 2018 2019 mark. So I got the Canon 80 D that kind of fell in my price range and then started using my existing lenses, then realized one or two of the lenses were damaged.

I bought more lenses. And and then. By chance joined your courses, but then at the same time, you know, I was typical bloke, you know, I research all my activities through YouTube. So I teach myself from, from YouTube and other, other websites are available. But I was looking at, you know, photography courses and, you know, people that are using cameras and giving you good tips and techniques.

And everybody was talking about mirrorless. I'm like, what's this mirrorless lock. So I thought, well, I've got these lenses, I'll stick with Canon. So I upgraded to the EOS R. So I've got the first mirrorless. I haven't changed since I'm, you know, I am looking at some of the newer versions, but they keep changing them quicker than we can.

Yeah. Apple change, Apple change a phone or, you know, Samsung change a new phone. So at the mument I'm content with what I've got, but I am on the lookout for a new body, but funds permitted funds don't permit at the mument, but yeah, I'm I'm in with the Canon family. So I've got about four or five lenses and you know, my kind of, but I think it was just that, you know, your question talked about, you know, what was that spark with photography?

I just like capturing muments, you know, I have no real. And when I, when I met you for the first time, I have no real niche area that I was interested in. I wasn't someone that was coming to you as a portrait photographer or as a landscape photographer or a macro photographer. And you know, my love of macro, Kevin, come on.

But yeah, it was just more of a generalist really. You know, I, I, you know, I've taken a lot of candid pictures and still like. You know, trying to not let people see a great big white lens appear around a corner while you take a picture of them. But it's, you know but yeah, I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm a jack of all trains, master of none really, but it's, and I still feel that way at the mument, but you know, my, you know, my actual technical knowledge on cameras is greatly increased and, you know, and obviously having masterclass really, really helped me understand.

The technicalities, not of the camera, but of the process of taking a picture as well. For those who are listening to the first Tog-Talk, and this is your first one you've listened to, any reference to Masterclass is a one year course we run at the Hampshire School of Photography. It's a, it's a foundational course teaching all the basic.

Building blocks of photography, but then you also look at photographing people photographing landscape, working with flash, shooting macro, which is David's favourite. Not really. And, and editing with my, with Microsoft Photoshop with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. You said something, David you were talking about the, the rate at which models are changing and updating.

And I don't know if I'm accurate with this, but it feels to me like This is something which has been accelerated, I feel, primarily by the likes of Sony. Once they started bringing out their mirrorless cameras, which just got better and better and better, everybody else then jumped onto the bandwagon, and now everybody upgrades their cameras.

Yearly. And I hate this. I don't care what technology is possible. I hate the fact that photographers feel pressurized to change their cameras so frequently. And even when Canon was just making DSLRs, I'd buy the 5D, so I had a 5D Mark II, then a Mark III, and eventually a Mark IV. And they would often be five years apart before they changed them.

And some people would criticise them for that. I thought it was brilliant because in terms of financial resources, it's a much better way for, for hobbyists and even professionals to go about running their lives and conducting their finances. Changing your camera so frequently to keep up with the latest technology is nuts.

It diverts the important elements away from taking the pictures and learning the skills to, I've got to have the best camera, I've got to have the latest, I've got to have the newest. IBIS system or the ability to track a bird three miles away. I'd much rather that people changed every four or five years and they actually spent their time growing their skills.

I think that would lead to better photography. And I think if I hadn't have taken on some courses and actually understand or understood, you know, the, that, that process you're talking about is actually understanding, you know, what it is you're trying to take. Well, how would you set your camera and say, cause you don't have to have the best camera, you know, you don't have to have a, you know, the, the latest Nikon on the night, the latest Sony, you know, the latest Canon to take the best pictures, you know, if you're a sports photographer, yes, you might want some of those features, you know, but yeah, I, you know, if you're like, you know, with Sony, they've got some amazing megapixel cameras, you know, I mean, you'd need a supercomputer just to actually open the files, the raw files and start editing or you'll need a bank of disks with air conditioning on them because they're taking up so much memory.

It's. Yeah. And, you know, and I've, I've been in that trap and I can't, I look every, you know, every week and think, Oh, I need that one. I need that one. You know, and I, and I, and I even become a little bit of a, not a snob now, but it's a bit of a, you know, I'm, I'm looking, I have a Canon EOS, you know, the EOS R, which is approximately 30 megapixels.

Now there's two, two cameras I'm looking at, which is the. EOS R6 and the EOS R5, EOS R6 is cheaper, still more expensive than my body, but I'm losing approximately six to 10 megapixels depending on the variant you go with the EOS R. And there's the R5, which obviously costs a lot more, but it's 45 megapixels.

There's me thinking I've got to get 45 megapixels. And actually, I've tried, you know, a couple of friends have got the R6 and it's an amazing camera, but you think, Oh, it's got less megapixels. It can't be very good. And it is, it's a very good camera, but it's. I totally agree with you that you don't have to keep, you know, you don't have to keep changing your camera.

Yes. The autofocus systems on those cameras is very, very good. It's, it's class leading, but you know, it depends what you're trying to do with it. If you're setting up for portrait or if you're doing landscape or whatever, do you need all that eye tracking stuff?

I don't want to take pictures. I want to take pictures. I don't want to record videos. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. You know, I've got this online photography assessment tool. It asks 45 questions. Photographers gives me a personalized report, and it gives me a whole load of data, stack loads of data about What photographers think, what they believe, what they use, how they behave.

And I can tell you, certainly in Southern England, only 2% shoot video with their still cameras, 2% is nuts. Now in America, it's probably different cause they've all got YouTube channels. And they're all using their DS, they're all using their mirrorless cameras as their camera rather than a computerized web webcam.

But yeah, I just, it just frustrates me that we're paying for all this tech. I don't need it. I really don't need it. Yeah, I agree with you. I completely agree with you. Okay. The only thing I would, the only thing I was grateful for, obviously with the Canon is I could adopt all my lenses. So actually all my glass I use at the mument is EF.

Which is the EF mount for the DSLR systems. And then I have an an EF to RF adapter, which is very, very good actually, you know, Canon have made a good job of that. And I get hardly any noticeable difference in focusing speeds. No real, no real degradation at all. I know some of their new lenses, actually purpose built lenses for the mirrorless are good, but.

So I think I've gotta explain for people who are listening who are not Canon users, what you are talking about is the fact you are using old D S L R lenses. Mm-hmm. on a mirrorless camera, there's an adapter for that. So you've, you've got that adapter, you are plugging in these old D S L R lenses onto it and it's working fine.

It's absolutely fine. And you think, you mean the camera body is, like you say, it's a big investment, but so are the lenses. Yeah. And those lenses will last a lifetime. You know, if you look after your lenses, well, they will last you a very long time. And every time I see you had conversations where people say, Oh yeah, but you should be buying the glass.

And then they still go out and buy the latest camera. I, you probably picked up that. I've just had it back. I had. For just over the week access to Nick on Z nine, which is a five and a half grand camera without Lens. Mr. Gro. He was, yeah, he offered them just outta the blue. He offered them outta the blue.

'cause he, he felt it would be good for me to understand what Nick on is doing. 'cause I've never used a nick on ever, not even in film days. So I had a 70 to 200. Lens and a and a 50 mil prime, one point F, 1.2 prime. I mean, the lens, the 50 mil, I think was over two grand. It's a very expensive system, and my first reaction is, was look at the what size of that thing coming from a Fuji crop frame user.

Mm-hmm. and, and I still have Canon full frame as well. But this was a big beast, heavy beast, and when I first picked it up I thought I'm going to take this out for a walk along Baysea Stoat Canal and see what we can do. And I got about 50 yards and I was saying to Linda, oh this was a mistake this thing's so heavy.

As it happened I got used to it. In the end I didn't notice the weight. Which is good. When mirrorless first came out and people were complaining about heavy DSLRs, I thought what are you all moaning about? And then once I went over to mirrorless, I realized actually they are lighter and it's quite attractive.

But it was not so heavy that it was a problem. Now the thing is, this is Prime product. This is the kind of product that the guys who are standing at the side of the football line of Premier Division. This is the photography that would be shooting at the Olympics. This is the kind of camera that the very best sports photographers use.

This And livelihoods, not lives, whose livelihood depends on them getting the shot that no one else has got. This thing will shoot with the right tweaking up to 120 frames a second. Yeah, it is nuts. Yeah. Yeah. And like I say, you're carrying the server on your back just to capture the point is, even though it was massive for a hobbyist photographer, which most people I do with a hobbyist, total overkill.

But if, if someone were to ask me, would you like this? I'd bite the hand off. Yeah. If you're listening, Nick on or Canon, where we wouldn't mind trying it for two, three years. It was astonishing to use. Yeah. It was the difference between. Driving a really high quality upmarket Volkswagen and then jumping into a McLaren.

Don't mention that name, but yeah. I only said McLaren because I knew you used to work for them. Yeah, but you understand, the quality was just on a very different level. Build quality, the feel quality, the speed of reaction of the focusing system. It was completely breathtaking. Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I have had a play with an R3.

Mm hmm. You know, and if someone offered me, you know, a six and a half thousand pound R3 body tomorrow, I'd, I'd snap the hand off, but I'm not going to buy one myself, you know, in the same way that someone said, here's a, here's a, an Aston Martin and you haven't got to pay for it. No, I kind of take, wouldn't, wouldn't, yeah.

Yeah. Sorry. Aston Martin. I used to work with you as well, but I wouldn't buy one. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't actually go spend my money on one, you know? So some people say that, but to me it's more about the association, my childhood and James Bond films. It's, there's nothing logical about it. I just look at it and thinking, oh, that's gorgeous.

Yeah, no logic. And most things are bought not because of logic, but because of emotion. Next question. How has your photography style evolved over time do you think? I think it has evolved, I wouldn't say a huge amount, but I feel two main things really and I know that a lot of this has actually just come from Not understanding the camera, but understanding the techniques and the style of photography.

But for me, if I go back to masterclass as well, it was those first, I think four or probably four lessons. Those first four of the 10 lessons in masterclass. Yeah. The foundation, the foundation, so understanding light. Shutter speed aperture you know, and ISO and bits and pieces like that, just to really, but, but also just going through those and in composition.

So I think what's changed greatly with me is, is, is composition of pictures. I'm able to think of a picture now and see a picture in a way that. I'm not just snapping everything in the center of the screen. You know, it's not center focused. It is, it's framed in a better way, but at the same time, understanding when I want depth of field versus no depth of field, for example, or, you know, I want to open up the, the, the, the aperture So I can understand, you know, when I'm doing those things.

So it has greatly affected my ability to sit down and take some pictures. I mean, if I go back to COVID times, good old COVID, who remembers the COVID times, eh? But I remember, you know, sitting in my garden with one of our dogs and she loved playing with the sprinkler, you know, and I go back to when we had the the, the bird box in the garden before I'd done any photography lessons and.

The faff that I had trying to set the camera up just to take some pictures of of a fast moving object like a bird coming into feed in its bird box versus then watching a nutter Jack Russell running around the garden with a hose sprinkler, but I was able to get 10 times a better quality shot, you know, freezing the picture, freezing the water droplets, getting that you know, picture balanced and correct.

Yeah. Just by, and just sat there on my grass, just letting her do her own thing. And I, you know, that has greatly. change my, my ability to imagine shots. So whether I've been, you know, in a, in a studio, like, you know, like the studio you guys have at the headquarters there, you know, doing, you know, taking shots of a model you know, or out landscaping, you know taking some landscape shops or whatever, you know, I'm just able to sit there and think, right in my mind, what's I want.

I'm not worried about the camera. I'm just thinking, what's my shutter speed? What's my aperture and stuff like that going to be? I'm going to set the, I can start before I take pictures. I'm set up and ready to go. This is so good. Last night at the photographer's evening, we were talking just about that.

One guy at the back of the room, he was talking about how we so often let the camera get in the way of our shot. And what he's talking about is that in our head, We are so, we're so kind of calculating aperture, shutter speed, ISO, exposure, triangle, law, reciprocity, which button do I press? The, the camera, the technology, the mechanics, the whole, this, this little box with the lens on the front is sabotaging our ability to get the shots we really want.

It's actually the camera that's doing it. It's our inability to master it because we don't spend the time mastering it. If you look on a website, we have this thing called CCC, which is camera control create. In other words, first of all, you've got to master the camera. Then you've got to master. the control of the camera and the scene and the light and the focus to get the shot you actually want rather than the one the camera wants to take.

And once you've mastered the camera and your ability of control over it and the shot, the scene, then what comes is a confidence level. Which gives you the ability to create cause you only really truly release that creativity when you don't have to think about the camera, when that camera is unimportant in the same way that I don't have to think about changing gears and driving a car just happens.

You know, all I think about when I jump in a car is where I'm going. I don't think about which pedals I'm pushing down or which way I'm pushing my gear stick or which way I'm indicating. I just think about the journey. I just think about, I want to get from here to here, off I go. That's the way it should be with cameras.

But we do not spend enough time really getting to that point when the camera is an extension of our body so that we don't have to think about it. So, effectively, it gets in the way of our shot. It gets in the way of our creativity. That's what you're talking about, isn't it? Yeah, it is. I mean, I think as well, I mean, there's two aspects to that.

You know, I would like to think that if someone gave me a camera, I wasn't fully knowledgeable of, I would still be able to say, if the owner of the camera was just by the side of me, they say, can you take a picture for me? I'd like to be able to think that I can say to them, right. Okay. So I want, or can you, even if you had, even if you said to them, can you set this aperture, this shutter speed, or, you know, this ISO range, because I can tell now by, Okay.

the type of light or the type of environment or where I'm stood, how I want to take it, you know, if I'm doing fast sports or if I want to capture motion blur or if I wanted to capture you know, lighting or if I wanted to add some additional lighting, I feel that, you know, I've got enough knowledge in This old box to, you know, to actually compute what I want, regardless whether I'm taking a picture with a Sony, a Fuji, a Canon, or a Nikon or other makes, you know so for me, it's, you know, it's having that understanding of the environment I'm stood in.

Yes. It's lovely to know where I've got all these fancy buttons and shortcuts and custom menus, but then everybody does it differently. So if someone was to give me the exact replica of my camera, I can guarantee I'll probably take. It's like a different picture because it's knowing how that camera is set up.

So it is nice to understand how you set your camera up and not have to put the camera down to look at something to put the button on. It's nice that you get familiar with, you know, you know what your hands and fingers are doing, whereas you're holding the camera ready to take a shot. And But just understanding the key things, what I want to capture here.

And that's something that really came very quickly from doing those first few lessons on masterclass. Yeah. Yeah. If I go back to, you know, I think one of my proudest pictures from, from the masterclass days was, I don't know if you remember the match lighting. So where we talked about the match sparking, you know, capturing that image.

Yeah. You know, that was, that came out way better than I was expecting. Because obviously if you see this and I never photographed the setups, obviously the little rig with the flower pot, holding a match, my finger coming in, holding another match to light that match while holding a shutter, a manual shutter release button in my other hand.

And just putting the camera on burst mode and then like missed, right? Okay, another match and you try about 40 times, but the actual picture come out, you know, once a little, just a little bit of editing. And it wasn't a huge amount either. It came out, you know, cause it was in the very early days of masterclass.

So we hadn't gone through all the editing classes. So to actually just find out what I wanted to do and I was at, where that was a really pleasing picture. to get. And again, it just came from just, Oh, okay, so I need to do that. That right. Okay, so that balances with that. And it was just that understanding that helped me gather that go that process.

So, you know, that for me is where that, that for me was like the, probably the biggest light bulb mument. It's not about the technology behind the camera. It's about understanding the science behind the pictures. Interesting. Do you know one of the questions I was going to ask you is, what do you think, no, the question was, I'll read it off, off the screen.

Can you think of any light bulb muments in your journey? You just, you just give me one. I think that was one definitely, you know, understanding, you know you know, if I say to anybody who's doing photography is understand. Shutter speed, aperture and that, that, you know, the, the, the, the exposure triangle.

Yeah. If you understand that, and, and then I think the other big light bulb mument for me is even just looking at your pictures, other people's pictures, pitch online composition, and you know, just some of the, you know, just, even just the rule of thirds, to be honest, I've been taking pictures for years.

I'd never heard of the rule of thirds. Properly, you know, someone and you see all these grids that can come up on the back of a camera now and like you say, some of those rules are there to be broken, but just understanding, you know, a good picture and a bad picture and just because of composition, nothing else, you know, same light, same exposure, same shutter speed, just through composition, you can, you can.

go from a very average, boring picture to a very good picture just through composition. That's pleasing on the eye. Okay. So what do you think the biggest challenges are for anyone trying to pursue photography as a, as a hobby?

Well, I know I will mention one thing straight away and that is the. The, the graph that you've flashed up many times, there's a photographer's journey. So the, the, let's spend more money. We take a picture, we put it away, you know, we see a better picture from someone's phone and we don't get this disruption.

We're going to spend more money and then we're still not getting the pictures we want and it's, it is going back to that learning. you know, it's understanding, you just, you know, nothing's automatic these days, you know, and I'm working in the software and I t industry. I'm getting very frustrated when people start talking about I as if it's the next miracle thing.

It's not. And, you know, people expecting the cameras in to say, Oh, It's like, it's a bit like me saying, look, I'm looking, if I'm looking east and you point the camera east, you want to get a picture of what's happening to the, to the north. It's not going to do that for you. You know, it's, it's, it's basically, it's just, you know, it's capturing what you see with your eye.

Don't you think, don't you think that much of the frustration that photographers have these days comes from the fact that in today's 21st century culture that we live in, particularly in the West, I'm not sure. Other parts of the world probably view it the same way we've become used to having things instant.

We want that instant in terms of our skill level. We'll pick up a camera and we want to take great pictures straight away. We're not prepared to put in the time to learn those processes. So that they became laid down as synaptic pathways in their brain, you know. We drive the car. I'll use the same analogy.

We drive the car without thinking because we've got strong pathways between our neurons through habit. We don't have to think twice about it. You only really get command of the camera through constant repetition and doing it again and again and again. And if we don't get it straight away, we just give up.

So many photographers give up because they don't get there straight away. The number of people who go on a one year course. And then don't pick up the camera when it's over, it's quite frightening. And I know it's going to happen because it's human. Absolutely. Absolutely. Not so much when we were young lads, you know, Back into 1920s, speak yourself, but you know, our generation viewed things differently because the culture was different.

The culture there was, you learn, you, you, you study, you apprentice, you, you spend time acquiring the skill. It's a craft. It isn't instant. Yeah, it is. It is scary. You know, my you know, very fortunate. I've got two beautiful little granddaughters, you know, four and six years old, you know, and without any training at all, you know, you, you know, you show them your phone and you show them a picture.

There's a picture. First thing I do is pinch zoom, just to zoom in on them. How do they learn that at that age? It's like they're born with it and yet it's taken us a long time. And also going the other side, I'm trying to, I'm trying to educate my mum. We bought her an iPad about a year ago and she's getting a little bit better, but it is quite slow and you know, you have to have a And I think that's the same with the camera side of it.

You know, it's, it's picking that up. Yeah. My wife. And you've mentioned it, but my wife says, you know, we live in this one click society. We expect everything on one click and it's, it's not right. You know you know, we, we live in a throwaway society you know, digital pictures, for example. I don't like delete, delete, delete, delete, delete.

And yet, you know, I was looking through a box of pictures with my mum the other day. We were looking for a couple of pictures of some old holidays to send to someone. And we were just going through boxes of old six befores. You know, just, just there we were just, just reeling through these boxes and thinking, no, can't find it.

But it just brought back when we were, when we were going through the memories, you know, just holding something, you know. Yeah. Two questions left. Here's one for you to look at yourself personally. How do you stay inspired and motivated to keep going out, taking fresh pictures? Or don't you, you can, you can say, if it's a struggle, I mean, it is a difficult one for me.

And I, you know, and I know that we've obviously, we've had lots of conversations on this, you know, cause you making this investment. Then sometimes that horrible four letter word called time gets in the way, you know, cause you need time to go and take pictures. But at the same time, you know, we are very busy.

You know, and I, I capture pictures when I can, you know, we were driving along the road the other day and there's there's a road near Guilford we were driving along and there was a car park on there and I'm just thinking, what a great place to stop and takes pictures because it is, you know, quite a famous view from there, you know, I was thinking, I must come and do that one day, you know, we'll get once, once things are right, you know, I think back again, one of my early pictures again, before I came and see you was was, was of I've taken a few Windsor Castle, but it was Windsor Castle from the long walk on a very frosty morning.

So there's me with a slight hangover after being at Twickenham the day before torture and England rugby match. But I just got my camera, woke up and there was a beautiful white frost. It was, you know, I haven't seen a frost like even years. So I just jumped in the car. It was still dusk, drove into Windsor, parked up, walked on the Great for a long, long walk and just look back at the castle.

Thought there's a shot click now. I wish I'd have had a better camera to capture the mega pixels and probably less grain on the picture. Now looking back at that picture, I think, yeah, it's a shame. It, I just kind of just took it very quickly and walked away. But you know, it's just having the time. So yeah, I do, you know.

I am more of a impromptu person. I don't walk around with a camera all the time because I mean, you know, Kevin, I like to use my big 70 to 200 Canon L series lens, which is a quite a big white monster which is quite heavy to carry around all the time. I do love that lens. I absolutely adore the lens.

But at the same time, it's quite a big beast to carry around. So it's not something you put in your pocket. You know, I mean, I am at the opposite end of you. I know you like using a small, you know, Camera. I always have a battery grip on my camera. So I've obviously got the two batteries in there instead of one.

I mean, I'm not like I'm taking millions of pictures. I don't know. I need it, but it just fits me. I have teammates. So yeah, so I think that's a good idea because if I'm doing a wedding and I've got it with me, I don't know. Yeah, no, no. So but no, I, you know, I, you know, where I can, you know I take the camera with me, but it's I'm always inspired to take pictures.

It's just sometimes I just, you know, have days where I don't have the camera with me. And then days when I think, well, I'm going to take the camera, you know, I think it's a common misconception to think that and professionals, especially they, they never lose that motivation. They never go off the ball that they, they constantly, constantly are taking, you know, we all have bad days.

It doesn't matter, again, where it doesn't have to be photography, your hobby could be knitting or falconry, whatever it is, there are days where you just don't want to do it. So it's never going to be there the whole time. Look I got a feeling I know you're going to answer this one because we kind of already touched on it, but it's a question I normally end with.

So your approach by someone might be a younger person who is looking at taking up photography.

What advice would you give to someone who's just starting out with photography for the first time?

Knowing me, being the technical person I am, I would, I'd either go two ways. I should, and the answer should be, I'd ask them what type of photography they want to take. Yeah. And then give them some advice on... how I would go about then looking into that. So the type of or the range of lenses I'd be looking at just to give them an idea of where I think they should be looking at from a focal length.

And then obviously the type of camera, you know, knowing the cameras as well as I do now. And I do like to keep up to date with technology. I'm a, I'm a technical person. So I do, I'm quite aware of. makes the ranges, the types of features that you get on all the different cameras. So, you know, I'm the kind of person that you'd find annoying in a shop.

If you were in a camera store somewhere, I'd be saying, don't get that one. It doesn't do this, you know, you know, you mentioned earlier about, you know, has he got Ibis blah, blah, blah, you know? Yeah, it did. But for me, I think it's more about just letting the. Giving the person some understanding if they, you know, if they were going to become, you know, either landscape photographer or portrait photographer or wedding photographer, just do street photography, just give them a range of ideas around the type of body, the size of camera, you know, we did have a, we have a photography channel on one of our chat systems at work and, you know, There is, we got just a channel dedicated to amateur photographers and there was a guy asking on there the other day about he wanted to get a smaller camera than the most DSLRs and what people think and there was tons of answers on there and it was getting quite an interesting chat around the size of camera he wanted just coming into London, you know, when he'd come into our office in London and he just wanted something small that he could have in his pocket that was much better than, you know, your camera you get on your phone that it could just give him a bit more control.

But he didn't want to carry a A A D S L R or a, or a mirrorless, and yet there's a couple of guys that come into the office in London with, they will have their Fuji or their canons over their shoulder ready to go just as they see anything interesting as they come in off the, off the transport systems.

So I think for me, I'd just be, you know, understanding now more about the, I call it the science of photography, the, and understanding that the basic rules. You know, I'd just be saying to him, this is what I would be looking for, you know you know, and obviously if, you know, the next question would be, then do you have a budget in mind just so I can advise people?

Because again, I've got a rough, a pretty rough, but firm understanding on the price of the camera ranges and where you're looking at, you know, if someone says, I want, I want to, if I wanted a Canon R3 and I wanted the big white lens like yours, I'd be like, you know, have you got 10 grand in your pocket?

Because you're not going to get any change out of that. So it's just, again, letting people know that, you know, obviously photography has an expense as well. Brilliant. Well, with your permission, I'll put your phone number at the bottom of here so anyone who has any questions can give you a call. Do you know what, David?

We've been talking now for quite some time on my screen and I may edit it down below this, but I'm, we've been talking for just over 50 minutes. We'll try and chop some of this out just to get it down to more listable space on the other hand. When I play it back, if I think this is compelling listing, I might leave it all there.

Mistakes. You'll 10 minutes and I think with me waffling on, but yeah. No, I've enjoyed it, Kevin. It's good to it's good to have a conversation like this. And thank you for giving your time up and for speaking so well. Obviously I, I interrupt occasionally, but most of this session I think was, was over to you.

So I'm delighted about that. Thank you. for giving up your time and your thoughts and until the next time you and I meet face to face. Yes, absolutely. Looking forward to it. Thank you. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, everybody.