The Photographer's Journey with guest Alec Grant

 Hi, my name is Kevin Aaronson from Hampshire School of Photography, and welcome to tog-Talk. 

So today I'm with Alec, Alec Grant. 

Hi Alec, how are you? 

I'm very well, thanks. 

And I've known you for how long? 

20 wasn't it? 2020. 

Okay. 

Around about September 2020 I think. So coming up to three years. 

Yeah. Welcome.

You're going to talk to us about your photographer's journey and we're here in your office, in your lovely house.

You've had a very kind of rapid rise in your photography, like 0 - 60  as if you were driving a performance motorbike. 

The way to me that you've hit the road with your photography is mind blowing, but we'll discover that as we go through it. 

Why don't you tell us first of all... let's go back, go back in time.

Tell us what first drew you to photography. Of all the various art forms there are out there, what, what drew you to photography? 

I suppose in around the 80s and 90s, I just got fascinated with it and was taking family photos and portraits and obviously did a bit of landscape. 

So you were shooting a 35mm were you?

Yeah, it was a 35mm and I had an OM 10. You had an Olympus OM 10? 

Yeah. Ah, yeah. 

So I liked it. 

And I used to send them away and get them back and I'd probably get about three or four keepers and that was a, that was a good day if I did that. 

It's a story I hear very often, yeah. So you were taking this during the 90s. What happened, how did you get into digital? Did you give up film and then take up digital or was it just a smooth transition from one to the other? 

Oh. No , it wasn't a smooth transition. In fact, I had a lot of those Pentax Opti and little compact cameras. And,

point and shoot? 

, point and shoot.

Right. 

Because it just seemed right at the time. 

Yeah. 

And I wasn't particularly over enthusiastic about photography at that time. I only came enthusiastic when I hit retirement. And I had set aside a lot of money for golf. And then I thought, actually I don't really want to play golf. LAUGHS So, so I threw myself wholeheartedly into photography and I've loved it ever since. And I'm in a hurry because, you know, being retired, I don't want to wait until ten years time to get some benefit. So I'm on bang for buck for the day.

Indeed. As you get older, the urgency increases, doesn't it, as you get involved in things more. That's what I find. 

Well, when we buy trees, we always buy them about ten foot tall. There's no point in buying a seedling, 

you tell that to Lynn, to my wife? She always buys the smallest. I know, buy a big one! 

Okay, so, what was your first proper digital camera, once you stopped using the point and shoots? 

When I stopped using that, I'd just met Sue, and she'd bought me this Alpha 350, Sony Alpha 350. Oh, Sony. And I started using that. 

I know you're a Nikon man now. What happened there? 

Well, it's quite interesting. I wanted to go mirrorless, and at the time, Nikon were... You know, coming out with new lenses and bodies all the time.

And I was enthused by it, actually. And I thought, right, that's the road I'm going down. Because when, once you start buying glass, you don't want to go back and buy more glass, do you? It's a lot of money. So yeah, I chose Nikon. Chose Nikon. And it, I feel it's a good choice. So, I've got ZFC, Z2, Z9.

And all of them have subtle differences. Yeah. And it would be nice if they were, they were a bit more similar. I was with Canon from 2006 and I still have a Canon now and I don't use it so much. And I guess that was never an issue with Canon, but it was with my Fuji cameras. And I've been shooting Fuji since about 2011, and I'm on my tenth Fuji camera.

And the controls, they appear to be in the same place, but in reality there are differences. And it is frustrating. If you're out on a shoot and you're using two bodies, it's remembering which one does which. Yeah, exactly. Do you try to... Set up the cameras so they work in the same way. I have done that in the past.

One of the things that I get frustrated with is in the menu system. When you press a button and say, I want to do that, it says, You know, then you think, well, what's wrong? Some of them have got the I button, so you press I. No, you can't do that if you've got this set. But a lot of them don't do that. So all of a sudden it says, you can't do that with the settings in this state.

And I'm thinking, what? It's interesting because a lot of professionals, when they go out and do their jobs, they have two bodies, but they're the same bodies. Yeah. So they haven't got that issue. Yeah. But when photography is a private passion, not one that's producing an income, we buy bodies because we like them.

Yeah. It's like cars. Yes, indeed. Or, I was going to say ladies, but I might have to cut that out. So okay. And that is a problem for people like us who buy a body, because we actually, we like the latest development, we like the newest one that comes out, so we upgrade, or we just get another one, and then when we're out with two cameras, we're stuffed.

When I came to you... I had the Z7 II, and I was using that. But when you started talking about street photography, and we were going to London, I was thinking, I'm gonna feel really conspicuous with this camera. So that was when I bought the little ZFC, little sexy silver thing. Yeah. And I was happy with that.

And the only reason I bought the Z9 was because I wanted to do sports photography. Yeah. And that catered for it. Better suited. I know certainly when I was shooting a lot of weddings, I would go out with two Canon bodies, which were pretty much identical. I think Canon are probably unique in that, keeping the...

Everything in the same place. There were some changes, but nothing really serious. And I felt comfortable moving from one to another. But, you know, I'm not so much into my canons now. I really enjoy my Fugees. And I think it's great that there's such a lot of choice that we can find something that suits us.

That we haven't got to be sheep. We haven't got to buy what the next person's got. We can go our own way. Okay. So, how do you think your photography, as you evolved in... How many years would you say now? When did you retire? September 20 actually. Oh, so you came to me about the same time you retired? Right, okay.

So in three years, less than three years, you've gone from zero almost to complete and total hero, because we'll hear about that in a moment. Yeah, I, I, when I started with you, I, I was, I'd already done a short OU course, which was quite good, I quite enjoyed it, but it, It didn't really cut the mustard because I wasn't talking to anybody.

It wasn't interacting and making things more clear. I found coming to your well I came to your viewfinder first, didn't I? For those who don't know, viewfinder is a, or was, is now no longer, no longer exists. It was a taster meeting where you just came along with about eight of you with me in a boardroom.

We just kind of talked through a number of issues. It's been replaced by something new now, but... So that was the first time I met you. I'd forgotten you came to a viewfinder. And then from there you went to... Masterclass. Masterclass. Masterclass 2. Was it? It was the second? No, I don't think it was. No. No, it might have been the third or fourth.

It was fourth, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're on five and six now. We are, yeah. And seven starts next weekend. Mm hmm. And eight, well, we shot a video for eight, and that's now going to be in September. Mm hmm. At a new location. What was the question? Yes. So, in nearly three years oh, actually, from Masterclass, you went to Inner Circle group, didn't you?

Yeah, I did. Yeah, that was a great year together. That was really good, that, because what I felt was Masterclass gave me the understanding of the basics of composition and exposure triangle. But the Inner Circle really pushed me in terms of creativity and, yeah, Inner Circle is, it's a bugger, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it, it really puts you in very difficult situations where you've, you, you are so far out of your comfort zone. But that's where you learn the most, of course. Yes. That's where you learn the most. So how do you think your photography, or the style of your photography has evolved in those three years?

I think in most areas it's always completely changed. I think, I've gone from what I would call pretty inane portraits, to what I consider to be damn good portraits, you know. And the landscape is improving, but not quite as fast. Macro, I think I got there very quickly. But yeah, I'm trying to learn all the genres so I can, I can think which one do I want to do.

The trouble is I want to do them all. I love them. Yeah. My, my wife often called me David Bowie. Bowie. Because Bowie was always reinventing himself. He never stayed to one genre of music for any one She felt that I would change from one style of photography to another so frequently that there was a similarity there. And I, the part of that is that I get bored doing the same thing. I love exploring new stuff. And there's not much left new for me to explore. There's a few things I'm not interested in.

But there's, yeah, there's still a couple of things left. You often find there's something you're not interested in. If you do it for six months, you suddenly become interested in it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've met people who are really into landscape. I don't do people, they say. Put them in a studio with a model.

Oh, I'm really enjoying this. And then suddenly they become portrait photographers. It does happen. Yeah. And the other way around. And what pulled me forward with the portrait stuff was being with Joe McNally and going and doing the... Oh, so this is where it's going to get exciting. So you've been blessed. I think twice you've been with Joe now, haven't you?

For those who don't know Joe McNally, Joe McNally is... Possibly the foremost lighting photographer in the world. American. He's worked for some of the major publications out there like National Geographic and I think Life or Time or one of those two. And I've been blessed UK.

But you've been on a couple of his private workshops. Yeah, so you get mentored. Tell us about that. Tell us about it. Well, I think they were completely different the two, the two workshops. So the first one was at Ashridge House. Ashwood? Ash Ridge House in Birkhamstead. And I think we had three models and largely the lighting was being set up and he was showing us how to do it.

And I quite enjoyed it, but I thought, actually, I'd rather do it myself. And when they brought out the second course, they said, No, it's your turn, and he's going to mentor you. And I really enjoyed that, because I was setting up the lighting. So... There, we went to a place called The House Next Door, which happens to be next door to where they filmed Dragon's Den.

And it's a really derelict house. If you saw it on Homes Under the Hammer, you know, you wouldn't buy it. So we went in there. We had a whole... range of lighting available to us. Props and there was about five rooms in the house and there was ten of us and we paired up and in the morning we went and shot one model in one room with one set of lighting that we'd create.

And we did that for three days. And it was good. So, you know, we'd set it up. What you're trying to achieve here, what is it you're trying to get? And I was saying, I'd really like to get an old master type of look. And, you know, and I've got it set like this. And you do this or you do that. You know, so it's quite interesting, interactive.

Yeah. You know, really learning from it. It was quite good. McNally was one of my greatest inspirations. I, I, I avoided flash for many, many years. Like so many photographers do too complicated. It doesn't look very good until I found someone who convinced me otherwise. And McNally Joe McNally is responsible for me really getting into flash at all.

And we're probably talking about 2000 and. 10, maybe 2011. I would just watch all of his teaching videos online. I learned so much. I spent a fortune on gear. Absolutely. You know about that don't you? I've got a gym upstairs full of it. I love, I love working with artificial light because you can create stuff which just doesn't exist.

You're in control. Out in the real world, nature's in control. But with lighting, you're back in control, and that's, that's fascinating. The only thing that's more exciting than lighting is actually post processing. So there, the world's your oyster, you know, you can completely change it. Oh, okay, so this is a, this, we're going to go off on a tangent here, which I'm going to explore, because post processing is one of those truly divisive subjects.

There are people who love it, and there are people who think it's Satan personified, and there are people at various stages, excuse me, at various stages in between. So, talk to me about post processing for you. I started off with Lightroom, with the OU, and that's basically a cataloguing piece of software with basic photo manipulation, isn't it?

And... I was, I was quite happy with it, and then, I think it was you who introduced me to Photoshop, and then, and then I thought, wow, this is amazing, and and now I've been sort of looking at videos of creating composites, and, you know, going beyond just taking the photo, right, I want to get that person in that scenario doing this, and, you know, you can, you can do that with composite layers.

Yeah, because there are some artists who just take a photograph. In order to get the final result, which is the composite in their head. Absolutely. They're not photographers, they don't consider themselves photographers, but they use it as an image tool to be creative with. Yeah, yeah. As you probably know, we've got this online photography assessment tool, this quiz.

And the data that's coming through in that tells me, really, how popular the different editing tools are that people are using in Southern England. The most popular by Pretty sizable margin. I haven't got the figures in my head, so I'm not going to guess them. Is Lightroom, Lightroom Classic. And of course Lightroom Classic now is, is a very competent tool.

It's getting better. Three years ago, it was nowhere as good as what it is now. It can do some extraordinary things, especially with the latest update, which is only two or three days old. Which is the one where they've brought in the AI noise reduction. It's not as good as Topaz or DxO, it doesn't have that ability to bring out the detail the same as the others 2 do, but it really does get rid of the background noise, and maybe if you're shot in a high ISO...

It's great at getting rid of that. But if you compare light for light, I use Topaz, as you know. And I didn't until very recently. The difference is remarkable in that you get much more detail coming through. It looks more natural. But Lightroom is a fantastic tool now. It's got its critics. All software does.

There's no such thing as a perfect software, otherwise only one piece of software would ever be bought and sold. So they've all got their strengths and weaknesses. So what I was, I was giving the results, wasn't I, of the survey on what people use. So Lightroom Classic comes top. Photoshop is second. Mm-hmm.

third is the Lightroom non-class. It's, it's the Oh, right. Cloud. The cloud version. But it's quite a small percentage, it's about a third as much as Lightroom Classic in terms of numbers. And then very close on its heels you're getting all the other stuff things like PaintShop Pro, Photoshop Elements, Affinity, Affinity, yeah, and all the other stuff.

From your perspective now, what's your workflow, are you still using Lightroom? Yeah, I take pictures on the camera, I download them through the, the Nikon NX Transfer. Because I, I've not yet managed to get the, the card into a card reader that I'll actually read it and load it up. Is that because you're using the CFexpress?

That's really strange. Yeah, I mean, I will talk to Nikon, because I... Naturally, I've got a pretty, pretty close relationship with the guys in support. Yes, understandably. Because I use the Nikon school as well, so. Yeah. Yeah, the so, yeah, I get them into the computer and load them into Lightroom. And obviously back them up into two backups and, yeah, take it from there.

So, working on a photograph, you'll start in Lightroom? Yep. Basic edits? Mm hmm. A bit of exposure, a bit of shadows, highlights, maybe some colour. Yeah, that sort of thing. Then you'll send it into Photoshop. Yeah. Do all the fine detailed work, all the clever stuff. Yeah. And then back into Lightroom. Yeah. Okay, do you use any other software?

No, I don't. Not at all. But I've seen you been using Topaz AI, I might try that. Yeah, yeah. Well, I seem to remember, I thought it was you who challenged me at a a meeting some weeks ago, about whether I use any other software for sharpening or noise reduction, and I didn't at that stage. Yeah. Was it you?

It was, I think, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it made me think, okay, well, if, if Alex saying that... I respect that, man. Not a lot, but... So I started looking, and I'll tell you what finally seemed to me was their adverts, because they've obviously spent a fortune on Facebook advertising, and their adverts are everywhere.

Absolutely inundating. And I didn't believe them. I saw the results and thought, that has got to be a scam. But there are some seriously good photographers out there using this. I mean, some well known, globally famous photographers using it. So I thought I'd give it a try. And you get a 7 day trial, you know, to...

To get a 7 day trial. If you don't like it, you ditch it. But you can't save the picture. You can't, so you can actually see how it works, but you can't save it, so I would do a screen capture. Okay. I can do. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, okay. So you know how it is. Do you think you're spending more time editing now than you used to?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, I, because I've got access to, you know, the processing tools that I didn't have before, I'm, I'm exploring them and learning more about them and getting into them. And yeah, I'd want to do more. Let's go in a different direction. If you look back over the last three years, where you've really been foraging ahead, is that the word foraging ahead for forging, forging ahead that you're forging ahead.

Yes. Forging ahead and really pushing your photography at a remarkable rate. We're the only clean light bulb moments where suddenly something clicked and you thought, I really, yeah, I really got this. Now this is, this is, this is game changing for me. So, I didn't get a light bulb moment, I don't think. I I got, I got inspired, I think, was...

Gone? This counts, gone, inspired? Well, you know, once you start being able to create and, plan an image in your head and then capture it and get it into the computer, you know, it's sort of Really inspiring for me. So you're doing something which most photographers don't do which is your Preconceiving the shot before you go out and take it.

Is this come from McNally? Sometimes I wouldn't say it was all from McNally I think I, I think I, I've just read so much and watched so much and realised you need to do that if you're going to get the right shot. You know I think, you, you put out a video the other day, Trent somebody was it? Yes, yes. He was very good.

Trent Parker, yeah. Now you can see he's got clear vision in his head, he's gone out there, he's sat still and waited for something to happen that he knows is going to happen and then he captures it. And he captures it so well. Yeah. And. You can't do that unless you've thought about it beforehand. I've, I've had to tell the wife this a few times, because we go out down Fleet Pond or something, and we, we've gone down to do, I don't know, a specific shot, and then she says, oh, there's, over there, well, I can't suddenly change the settings and capture that, so.

This is very interesting to me, because, I've worked both ways. Most photographers will go at the camera and they'll capture what they see around them. Not many, as a percentage, will decide in their head what the shot's going to be, what the constituents are, whether they need someone, what they should be wearing, what props, what lighting, what location.

And I've done this, and I've done this with kids as well. I did a whole, I did a number of years working in conceptual images with children, and mom and dad, and, you know, and getting... A shot which we conceived in our heads before we went out and shot it. Yeah. And as a youngster, I left home, I grew up in Brighton, I came to London to work for the BBC.

And it was my goal back then to be a film director. It happened in a very limited way but nothing major. And this is like being a film director but with a single shot rather than a movie. Why don't you talk us through one, something you have shot from scratch, conceiving it in advance. And I suspect much of that would have been from the Inner Circle group you belong to, because there you were set very specific tasks, weren't you?

Yeah, I think the most exciting one for me was the HDR task, because I knew I had to go and find... Something that would, would lend itself to a true HDR. And it was just so lucky, as soon as you said that, I thought, I want to go to Battersea. Because at the time, they had the light show there. And I, I knew exactly where I was going to stand and take that picture.

And I went straight to it and took it. And I got it for a shot. Ah, fantastic. That was, I really wanted to do that and achieve that quite well. I'm the, the, the, the one that you, you gave me about the go, go to get up at some ungodly hour and get down to Fleet Pond and take a sunrise. It was quite okay here, it was, it was I mean, what were we, two miles from the pond?

And it was quite okay, quite clear. Got down the pond, just missed. But I made, I made something out of that. But it was, I enjoyed it, it was quite good. What would you say were the most significant moments of growth for you? Good question. I think I think one of the most significant moments of growth was learning about the controls on my camera which I've only just finished because I did the z9 part 1 and part 2 with Nikon and You know the most important thing for anybody is to know your camera And I, I failed to do that.

I was speaking with someone yesterday on the phone and she'd taken part in the online questionnaire, and she'd scored incredibly high on creativity, about 83%, but on camera operation, it was, I think it might have been in the 30s, or even the late 20s, and she said, yeah, I just, I just don't understand my camera at all.

Actually, she's got a, she's got a nick on, she's got a... I think she's got a Z6 2. Yeah, yeah. And she said, yeah, it's an incredibly complicated camera. But, there are people who have a natural eye for a shot. And there are others who are really technical. And most people are somewhere in between. So where would you put yourself?

At the creative end or the technical end? Or what? Hey, let's make it, let's score it, okay? So someone who's super, super technical would be a one. Someone who's super, super... Creative would be a 10. Where would you be? I'd probably be about 7. Which, my background was 100% detail, technical. And I'd never thought about creativity.

You don't get creative when you're building submarines. You know, the last thing the Navy wants is creativity. This man used to build submarines, can I just tell you? Yeah, from scratch, in his backyard. No, you were an engineer at a very, very high level. Yeah. So, left brain, absolutely. What I find is that so many people, particularly as they get towards our age, retirement, they realise how much creativity there really is.

And I bet there's a lot of us who are thinking, gosh, I wish I'd done this when I was younger. , you're right.

How do you stay motivated? Yeah. With your photography? Difficult. I do find that difficult. Any tips Not for staying motivated? No. I'm, I'm in a bit of a dip at the moment. The, the. The thing is I'd like to be able to pick up the camera every day and use it and I don't generally. So I get amateur photographer and I look at that and I think oh I could go and do that.

No I thought no that's copying. You know, so trying to have an original thought is, is something that I'd like to be able to do. Here's one for you. All the things that you spent money on. What had the greatest positive effect on your photography? That's hard. I think, I think some of the courses I've done actually.

Because, so, Joe McNally had a real a real step change in my photography. You had a real step change in my photography. I did the inner circle in particular, but the masterclass helped me along. The more important thing is gaining the knowledge. So if I was going to say, know your camera, get the knowledge, and those two things, you can't go far wrong.

What are some of your proudest achievements, do you think, in the past three years? I was pretty proud of some of the images I created on Inner Circle. But, yeah, I'm not, I'm not a real great pride type person.

Think about this one. What advice would you give to someone who was just starting out in photography? Maybe or they're hoping to take their skills to a new level. If you were giving advice to a rookie, rookie photographer, and you're sitting in a pub having a chat with them, what would you say to them?

What's the, what's the most important piece of advice you could give to them? I've said this over again, you know, I think it doesn't matter what camera you've got, learn it. Make sure you know every in and out on that button, all the buttons, all the menus. And and just soak up learning. I can't emphasise that enough.

You know, obviously they've got to learn the exposure triangle, that's all part of learning, isn't it? What do you think differentiates between the successful... photographer and, and a photographer and that probably counts the majority, who never really get to that kind of level. Even within the classes that you've been on, there have been people better than others and others which have been not as good.

What do you think separates them? What's the key? Some of it is vision and creativity. If you've either got it or you haven't, you know, but you can, strangely, because I'd never had it before and now I've... start to develop it. I don't understand the mechanism from, from going from not having it to having some of it or most of it.

And I just, it's just interesting. If you could bottle that, you'd sell it. That's the thing, isn't it? It is the thing. From your photography journey, which does go back to the 1990s when you first started working with a, a Sony camera, no it wasn't a Sony 10, and then progressing to the Sony DSLR and eventually to mirrorless.

We know that the photographer's journey goes up and down like a yo yo, as we're influenced by different things and your highest high so far and your lowest low so far. The lowest low so far. Was having bought my Z7 2, come back with shots that I didn't even think were acceptable. You know, they were... I got better on film.

Interesting. Which was really low, and I thought, shit, I just spent a lot of money on this. Yeah. But I suppose my highest highs were, were in the inner circle, some of that. And with Joe McNally, particularly the old master paint photo I took with him was good. Yeah. Yeah. It's very obvious that learning is fundamental to your passion.

Mm hmm. And that probably comes from the engineer in you. Mm hmm. Fortunately for you, you've been able to put some creativity into that. You're not completely, I know you are, and you are not definitely technically only. You know, so many people who got their head around the technicalities of photography and their pictures, they just lack something.

And I would have, before I knew you, expected that to happen to you, but it's not the case, because you do produce some remarkably great photos. But your passion to learn and to understand is, is, is something else. Thank you so much, Alec, and Please pass on my thanks to your lovely wife Sue for putting up with me.

She can't hoover while I'm here because of the noise on the microphones. Although I have picked up some stuff while we're talking. I you for your time and for your answers and for your involvement. And I wish you very well with your photography as you take it forward because I know you're gonna take some even more amazing stuff.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for staying to the end. I hope you found today's episode of Talk Talk interesting. It's important to me that you stay invested in your photography, that you grow in knowledge and continue to develop your skills behind the camera. And to help you analyze your photography, I recently launched an online photography assessment tool.

It will ask you a number of photography related questions and produce a personalized report based on your answers. You'll be able to see at a glance where your strengths and weaknesses are, and as an added incentive if you complete all the questions you might win a free coaching call with me. Wow! A name is picked at random each month, and if you're the lucky winner I will contact you direct to book a call, which will be by Zoom.

I'll post a link to the photography assessment tool in the show notes below. Thanks again for listening. Hope to see you back at the next edition of TOG Talk. In the meantime, happy snapping! Yeah.