Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 170 - From the Midwest to NYC With No Degree: A Self-Taught Photographer's Journey

Transcript

170 - From the Midwest to NYC With No Degree: A Self-Taught Photographer's Journey · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:05
  Casey Fatchett: Are you sure you want to do that? Oh, hey there.
• 0:09
  Welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your
• 0:12
  host. Casey Fatchett, welcome, welcome, welcome. The first
• 0:14
  thing you should do, if this is your first time here is be sure
• 0:17
  to subscribe to the show, then you can join us for lots of
• 0:21
  interesting conversations and adventures. Because in addition
• 0:24
  to giving you interviews with amazing photographers from all
• 0:27
  over the world and providing lots of informative and
• 0:29
  entertaining photography related information, I also go on
• 0:32
  adventures with a crew of the starship Fibonacci, perhaps you
• 0:36
  should focus on the task at hand. Listen, I'm good. Just
• 0:41
  keep the light on it right now. I'm dismantling a series of
• 0:44
  explosive devices we found on the ship. And fib is a little
• 0:47
  concerned about my skill level, which is apparently quite low,
• 0:52
  not true. I've done lots of research, I've watched lots of
• 0:55
  videos. I just happen to be self taught. This makes me feel so
• 1:00
  much more comfortable. Shush. Speaking of self taught in this
• 1:04
  episode, I interview photographer Steve Vaccarello,
• 1:07
  who has had an incredible journey as a self taught
• 1:09
  photographer, from being a photojournalist in the Midwest
• 1:12
  becoming a dance and portrait photographer in New York City,
• 1:15
  including being Alan Cummings personal photographer for more
• 1:18
  than two decades. All that after the break, oops. Why did you say
• 1:25
  Oops? Don't mind why I said oops. Just go to commercial.
• 1:33
  Let's talk about the one thing every photographer dreads more
• 1:36
  than a dead battery in the middle of a shoot, paperwork. We
• 1:40
  get it. You're an artist, not a lawyer, but a handshake doesn't
• 1:43
  protect your equipment, your time or your livelihood. To run
• 1:46
  a professional business, you need professional protection.
• 1:49
  The nerdy photographer has done the heavy lifting for you. We've
• 1:52
  developed a comprehensive suite of photography contract
• 1:55
  templates designed specifically for the way we work today,
• 1:58
  whether you're shooting a 12 hour wedding, a high profile
• 2:01
  corporate event or a family portrait session, our templates
• 2:04
  ensure that both you and your clients are on the same page,
• 2:08
  growing your team. We've got you covered there too, with
• 2:11
  specialized contracts for hiring associate shooters and second
• 2:14
  photographers. Define your rights, set your boundaries and
• 2:17
  protect your brand before the first SHUTTER CLICKS, don't wait
• 2:21
  for a misunderstanding to realize you aren't covered.
• 2:23
  Build your business on a foundation of what ifs that are
• 2:26
  already answered. Protect your passion and go purchase and
• 2:30
  download our attorney vetted contract templates today at
• 2:33
  nerdy photographer.com the nerdy photographer, we handle the fine
• 2:36
  print so you can focus on the big picture. You Hey,
• 2:44
  photographers, it's time to revolutionize your workflow with
• 2:47
  aftershoot. Imagine culling through 1000s of images in a
• 2:50
  matter of minutes, effortlessly flagging blurry shots and closed
• 2:53
  eye pictures. Now you can stop imagining and meet your new
• 2:57
  photography sidekick, aftershoot, the game changing AI
• 3:00
  photo culling and editing software, say goodbye to hours
• 3:03
  spent sifting through images as aftershoots. Ai can cull 1000s
• 3:06
  of photos in just a few minutes, grouping together similar shots
• 3:10
  and flagging those blurry or closed eye picks. I have been
• 3:13
  using aftershoot for a little over a year, and I have to say
• 3:16
  it has transformed the workflow on the portrait side of my
• 3:19
  business, culling and organizing my photos from family portrait
• 3:22
  sessions to corporate headshots in a matter of minutes for
• 3:25
  engagements, events and weddings, it does a great job as
• 3:28
  a first pass call for me, since I like to go through and make
• 3:31
  sure you didn't miss anything, but those family and group
• 3:34
  photos are all solidly organized together, and that saves me so
• 3:38
  much time. You can also make your artistic vision a reality.
• 3:42
  After shoots, automated. Ai editing is customizable to your
• 3:45
  unique style. Edit 1000s of images in just a few clicks,
• 3:49
  achieving consistency and brilliance effortlessly. Sign up
• 3:53
  now at nerdy photographer comm slash recommends slash
• 3:56
  aftershoot and experience the aftershoot advantage with your
• 3:59
  first month free transform your workflow and transform your
• 4:02
  business. Go to nerdy photographer comm slash,
• 4:05
  recommend slash after shoot or click the link in the Episode
• 4:07
  Notes and free up time for what you love by letting AI handle
• 4:11
  the heavy lifting so you can focus on capturing moments and
• 4:14
  not sorting through them. Hello and welcome to the nerdy
• 4:21
  photographer podcast. I'm your host, Casey Fatchett, and I am
• 4:24
  here today with photographer Steve Vaccarello, Steve, welcome
• 4:29
  to the show. Thank you.
• 4:31
  Steve Vaccariello: I'm glad to be here. Very much. Looking
• 4:33
  forward to having a nice conversation today.
• 4:35
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's gonna be great. Before we get started,
• 4:38
  I'm gonna roll the dice breaker. It's a 14 what is the best
• 4:44
  advice you've received in regards to photography?
• 4:49
  Steve Vaccariello: Ooh, probably follow your own path, and once
• 4:54
  you achieve that path, stay true to it. Don't don't change for
• 4:59
  others. To stay on that, you know, focus, focus, focus. So,
• 5:05
  in other words, create a certain style for yourself. You know,
• 5:09
  make it so that when people look at one of your photographs, they
• 5:12
  know it's yours.
• 5:14
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, if there's too often, I see people who are
• 5:16
  just trying to be somebody else that that when I see they're
• 5:24
  they're they're asking questions like, How do I make photos like
• 5:28
  this? Yeah, it's one thing I see on Reddit all the time, and
• 5:32
  people will just like, post somebody else's photos and be
• 5:34
  like, how do I light to be exactly like this? Or, how do I
• 5:38
  post produce my photos to look exactly like this. And it's
• 5:42
  like, Come on, man, like, find your own thing. Find your own
• 5:45
  language for this
• 5:47
  Steve Vaccariello: Exactly, exactly, which, you know, we'll
• 5:50
  get into later, which is how my, essentially, my whole career
• 5:52
  was, was made
• 5:55
  Casey Fatchett: the, you know, speaking of your career, I mean,
• 5:58
  you're a largely self taught, like I like myself, what first
• 6:05
  drew you to photography? And so, how'd you get beginning? How'd
• 6:10
  you get how'd you begin? Like, yes, making
• 6:13
  Steve Vaccariello: Fun story. My dad bought me a Minolta 35
• 6:18
  millimeter camera when I was in eighth grade. Camera sat around
• 6:22
  for over a year, and my dad one day just like, you know, damn
• 6:27
  it, I bought you that camera. Aren't you going to use that
• 6:29
  camera, you know? So I was like, Oh yeah, I picked the camera up,
• 6:33
  went to the drugstore, got a roll of film, put it in there,
• 6:36
  ran around, took a bunch of pictures, took the film to the
• 6:40
  drugstore back then, which is what you used to do, take the
• 6:43
  film of your drugstore to get it developed. And I inadvertently
• 6:46
  bought a roll of black and white film. So the drugstore was like,
• 6:51
  we can't do this. This is black and white film. So I went to my
• 6:57
  high school biology teacher, and I said, who I knew, taught
• 7:01
  photography, and I said, I got this roll of film, you know, can
• 7:04
  you help me with this? He said, Sure, stay after school. I'll
• 7:08
  show you what to do. So we unroll the film, we do the whole
• 7:11
  cool thing. We put it in a canister, we shake it, you know,
• 7:14
  develop the film, pull the negatives off, and the whole
• 7:17
  thing was really amazing. And then we took the negative, put
• 7:20
  it in the enlarger, and when we shone that light onto that piece
• 7:24
  of blank white photo paper, put it into the ductile developer,
• 7:28
  and I saw a piece of white paper turn into an image. I knew from
• 7:33
  that exact moment that I wanted to do that for the rest of my
• 7:37
  life. I was in ninth grade.
• 7:38
  Casey Fatchett: That is a magic...that is, that is a
• 7:40
  magical origin story right there.
• 7:42
  Steve Vaccariello: That is, it was total fluke. I mean, if I
• 7:46
  took color film, I might have took that role and never took
• 7:48
  pictures again. But the fact that my biology teacher let me
• 7:52
  come after school to show me that, and for me to see that
• 7:55
  whole thing happen like that, I was, I was lucky to know what I
• 8:00
  wanted to do at a very young age.
• 8:02
  Casey Fatchett: That's, I mean, it's such a, I mean, that's a,
• 8:06
  what I would call it a clarifying or crystallizing
• 8:09
  moment like that, being able to see the, you know, the the
• 8:14
  photo, basically come alive.
• 8:16
  Steve Vaccariello: It was something that, for me, I'll
• 8:22
  never forget that moment like it was yesterday. I mean, and
• 8:26
  although I did go to school for chemical engineering because my
• 8:29
  parents didn't think I could make a living being a
• 8:32
  photographer, you can't, what are you talking about? You can't
• 8:35
  be a photographer. You won't make any money, and you got to
• 8:38
  go get a four year degree. You're going to be a chemical
• 8:41
  engineer. I'm like, okay, you know, I'll go to school. And
• 8:44
  after the first year, I told him, I said, Look, I go, Mom and
• 8:47
  Dad, I'm wasting your money. I am not going to do this. I want
• 8:52
  to be a photographer. I got a job on the college newspaper. I
• 8:55
  was a stringer for the Toledo Blade, that paper in Toledo, and
• 9:01
  I just knew that I was going to be wasting their money if I
• 9:04
  continue with college. So I dropped out of college and and I
• 9:06
  pursued my my photography, my,
• 9:08
  Casey Fatchett: I'm very familiar with the Toledo Blade.
• 9:10
  My, my grandparents were from Blissfield, so like, right over
• 9:16
  the border, Sylvania, Pennsylvania. It's like, yeah,
• 9:20
  yep, into that's crazy Michigan, another Midwesterner, yeah, it's
• 9:26
  a it's really interesting because I also got the same I
• 9:30
  wanted to be a bunch of different things. I started off
• 9:34
  as a physics major, and then ended up with two degrees in one
• 9:39
  in acting and one in writing, journalism and yeah, and I moved
• 9:46
  out to New York, and yeah, did the acting thing for a while,
• 9:49
  and then became a photographer. So these, these, these strange
• 9:53
  paths that we take.
• 9:55
  Steve Vaccariello: Absolutely, man you get you, where you where
• 9:58
  you get is always. An interesting story without a
• 10:01
  doubt.
• 10:02
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I mean, so you started your career then in
• 10:05
  Ohio, working for Cleo blade, being Cleveland. How do you
• 10:10
  think that shaped your career, or shaped how you developed as a
• 10:17
  photographer? No pun intended. That wouldn't have happened or
• 10:21
  might not have happened if you had been somewhere else.
• 10:25
  Steve Vaccariello: Well, I think the the biggest part of that is
• 10:29
  the limitless opportunities. I had access to everything and at
• 10:34
  either no cost or really cheap. I could be in big studios. I can
• 10:40
  be on locations without permits, or I could do basically anything
• 10:45
  I wanted, you know, with no red tape. You know, I can get people
• 10:50
  that were interns to help me out from, like the local colleges.
• 10:54
  It was just like an open canvas and and nobody ever said no to
• 10:59
  me. I mean, I was a big fish in a little pond, and because I was
• 11:04
  in Cleveland, I could really do almost whatever I wanted, and it
• 11:08
  allowed me to really, really focus on my personal work. I had
• 11:13
  plenty of clients in Cleveland, the Ritz Carlton, the Cleveland
• 11:17
  Indians, the Cleveland Cavaliers Lake, at stash hour, different
• 11:20
  ad agencies and stuff like that Cleveland magazine. But anytime
• 11:25
  I was not shooting for a client, I was shooting personal work.
• 11:28
  And the amount of personal work that I shot while I was in
• 11:31
  Cleveland is staggering. 10s and 1000s and 1000s of negatives I
• 11:36
  shot for myself to hone my own skill testing my limits and
• 11:42
  boundaries, with models, with makeup artists, with shooting on
• 11:46
  location, with different lighting techniques, I
• 11:49
  essentially went nuts. And I was able to, you know, I was in
• 11:53
  Cleveland, so I didn't have a big overhead my studio, where it
• 11:56
  was like 600 bucks a month. So once I paid that, I would be
• 12:00
  like, Okay, time to play. I do what I want to do to create my
• 12:05
  own vision. And that, that way, when I moved to New York, I had
• 12:10
  an amazing body of work that I could put into a portfolio, and
• 12:14
  then I can show that 95% of it was personal work
• 12:19
  Casey Fatchett: that's really incredible. Yes, people who are
• 12:23
  East Coast listeners don't understand the differences in
• 12:28
  costs between the Midwest and like New York or and they just
• 12:33
  still I remember at one point early on in my photography
• 12:38
  career when my mother was still trying very hard to get me to
• 12:42
  move back to Michigan. And she said something like, oh well,
• 12:44
  there's an apartment for rent in town that you could you could
• 12:47
  have like half, it's a whole floor of a building. You could
• 12:50
  have like half of it be your studio and and I was like, oh
• 12:53
  yeah. Well, how much is it? She's like, well, it's $300 a
• 12:56
  month. I'm like, what?
• 12:59
  Steve Vaccariello: Oh my god, yeah, yeah. In Cleveland, what
• 13:03
  we had, I would, I always like to tell this to people. We had
• 13:08
  what was directly equivalent to, like a Warhol factory in
• 13:13
  Cleveland. I had a huge studio space. We had writers, we had
• 13:17
  musicians, we had artists, we had painters. We had sculptors,
• 13:21
  photographers, anybody that was creative would come by my space.
• 13:25
  So we all like collaborated together, like designers and
• 13:30
  sculptors and painters, and we just all like helped each other
• 13:32
  with our art. And we would just have these every month. At the
• 13:37
  end of the month, we had this big gallery showing where
• 13:39
  everybody would put their work on the wall, and we would show
• 13:43
  each other what we've been working on for the last month,
• 13:45
  and literally like a Warhol factory in Cleveland. And I
• 13:50
  really, really did miss that when I moved to New York,
• 13:52
  because I never was able to achieve that in New York, for
• 13:56
  obvious reasons, it's a little harder to do something like that
• 13:59
  in New York. I love that experience, and I'll cherish
• 14:02
  that for the rest of my life. Having those experiences and
• 14:05
  creating a creative collaborative between so many
• 14:09
  creative people.
• 14:10
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah having a community like and it's
• 14:12
  something that we talk about a lot on this show, is like
• 14:16
  community with other photographers, but it's not just
• 14:16
  photographers, it's other creatives, like the people that
• 14:19
  you work with, whether it's, you know, designers, and, yeah, I
• 14:23
  see people all the time ask me, like, oh, I want to do a shoot,
• 14:25
  and I want to, like, I want, I need clothes, and I need, you
• 14:29
  know this, and whatever. It's like, Well, do you know anybody
• 14:32
  who's like, Have you ever talked to a makeup artist? Or, like,
• 14:35
  yeah, you talk to designers or stuff. Like, these people want,
• 14:39
  like, to do work too. Like, it does not like, you don't have
• 14:39
  to, just like, go out and, you know, pay somebody like you find
• 14:44
  the other people who are looking to do something and collaborate
• 14:48
  on something and and work together.
• 14:50
  Steve Vaccariello: Yeah, it's the best. I mean, you know,
• 14:52
  always having an open mind, and I always had that philosophy,
• 14:55
  I'm not one of the photographers, that is, like,
• 14:59
  it's my. My way or no way. If I have an idea in mind for a photo
• 15:03
  shoot and I show up that day and the makeup artist says, well,
• 15:06
  that's great, Steve, but what if we do it like this instead, or
• 15:10
  we add this to it? I'm like, Yeah, that's great. Like, you
• 15:15
  know, I know some people that aren't so open to ideas and like
• 15:19
  that, but for me, I'm like, if someone else is going to bring a
• 15:22
  better idea to the table collaboratively, I'm all for it.
• 15:26
  I'm like, whatever is going to make the picture the best. In
• 15:28
  other words, like, I don't have an ego. I'm not like that kind
• 15:31
  of photographer. I you know, I'll never stop learning. You
• 15:35
  know, I'll never stop like, you know, listening to people that
• 15:38
  have ideas, you know, across the industry, you know, no matter
• 15:42
  what they are, hair, makeup, styling, actors, models,
• 15:45
  whatever you know, I love collaborative influences.
• 15:50
  Casey Fatchett: You can see the like you said, somebody else
• 15:53
  might have an insight into, into this is like that that creates a
• 15:57
  spark that takes you in a completely different direction.
• 15:59
  I've had that experience on shoots all the time where, like,
• 16:04
  you know, there's one a shoot that I did, there's, you know,
• 16:06
  like, a bridal fashion shoot, and, like, the model was like,
• 16:10
  why? Yeah, I'm a dancer. I could do XYZ. And I was like, Yeah,
• 16:16
  let's do that. Like, let's, let's, let's do that. Like,
• 16:19
  let's make this, you know. And then those were the, some of the
• 16:21
  best shots from the entire shoot, where this whole thing
• 16:25
  that we started, like, talking about, like, like, I'm familiar
• 16:28
  with, you know, I can speak dance language. I know that you,
• 16:31
  you are very much a dance photographer, definitely, that,
• 16:37
  you know, just being able to, like, then, like, Okay, I didn't
• 16:39
  know this about, like, my model. And now let's, let's, you know,
• 16:42
  we can, we can go in a different direction and find some
• 16:45
  different things. And, like, that's, it's, I'm happy to come
• 16:49
  up with ideas. I am an idea person. But like, when somebody
• 16:52
  else brings something, like, you know, it's like, I always look
• 16:55
  at as, you know, the recipe, you're adding more, more
• 16:58
  seasoning to to the to the recipe, and we're gonna get a
• 17:03
  different flavor
• 17:04
  Steve Vaccariello: Exactly, exactly.
• 17:07
  Casey Fatchett: You have a pretty, like broad background of
• 17:09
  thing that you mentioned, like starting in film, but you were
• 17:12
  dark room technician.
• 17:14
  Steve Vaccariello: I was my I essentially through that
• 17:17
  experience I talked about earlier with the printing. I
• 17:21
  became really, really infatuated with the darkroom, so much so
• 17:27
  I'd, at one point, I'd almost say I was a better printer than
• 17:32
  I was a photographer. My black and white printing was like,
• 17:37
  stellar. I spent 1000s of hours in the darkroom. I mean, for me,
• 17:42
  it was also an escape, and later, I found the best way to
• 17:46
  find out about yourself as a photographer is when you get in
• 17:50
  that dark room and you're scrutinizing your negatives in
• 17:54
  the enlarger, and you're looking at everything, the shadows and
• 17:57
  the highlights and all that stuff, you really begin to know
• 18:02
  your talent as a photographer when you start to scrutinize and
• 18:05
  you print your own work. You know, obviously this was all pre
• 18:08
  Photoshop. So dodging and burning, I would mix my own
• 18:12
  developers. I would mix my own toners, Selenium toner, split
• 18:16
  toning, just printing on like all my favorite like Agfa and
• 18:21
  Kodak papers, and just I would do the photo shoot, and I'd be
• 18:25
  in the dark for days. My staff wouldn't see me for days. I
• 18:28
  would just be gone in there, disappeared into the darkroom.
• 18:31
  It was my passion, and I love it more than anything. It's, I
• 18:37
  think it really contributed to me becoming a better
• 18:39
  photographer.
• 18:40
  Casey Fatchett: Well it teaches you about what you are doing
• 18:43
  with the camera and behind the camera. You see a lot more of
• 18:46
  it. You spend time with those photos. You live with them.
• 18:49
  Something I try to tell people like you ever just try to get
• 18:51
  through the editing process as quickly as possible these days.
• 18:55
  And I'm like, You're not spending time with that image.
• 18:58
  And something that I learned a lot was like, What am I
• 19:00
  shooting? What focal like I was using, starting out like, I was
• 19:04
  using a lot of zoom ones as well, shooting digital. And I'm
• 19:12
  like, what are the, what are the focal lengths I'm using most
• 19:15
  often? And it's like, in the metadata, and I could see, like,
• 19:15
  this is the, this is what I mean. This is what I'm using a
• 19:15
  lot of time. Or, like, you know, when you're looking at the photo
• 19:15
  and going, like, Okay, this is something I this is a habit I
• 19:19
  have, like, and find figuring out my own, like, bad habits or
• 19:24
  things that I relied on or like that I was not good at. So I
• 19:27
  could improve just by, like, looking at the photos and just
• 19:31
  being like, even you can still do it digitally, but you need to
• 19:34
  spend time and, like, live with that image and not try to just
• 19:37
  pump it out as quickly as possible
• 19:39
  Steve Vaccariello: Right. And often, there's so many digital
• 19:41
  images, it's, it's a lot more than if you're shooting like a
• 19:44
  36 exposure role, you know, it's, it's, it's numbers, you
• 19:49
  know, with digital photography. But for me, that little square
• 19:53
  room with the red light and music cranked up and, you know,
• 19:58
  was my like, Haven you know. I would, and I people knew when I
• 20:01
  was in there not to bother me. Man, just let this. Let me go.
• 20:05
  Casey Fatchett: I'm curious how you feel about this, because I
• 20:07
  I've seen this on threads in other places, a lot like, people
• 20:12
  are going, like, if you have to spend more than 10 minutes
• 20:15
  editing your photos, like you're doing something wrong and
• 20:20
  whatever. And it's like, like, you're spending way too much
• 20:22
  time on it. And it's like, I have some bad news for you
• 20:26
  about, like, Ansel Adams and, you know, other, like, here's
• 20:31
  some markups of, like, various film photographers from the
• 20:34
  Steve Vaccariello: Richard Avedon, no toys for that. Irving
• 20:36
  Penn, all those masters, yeah.
• 20:38
  Casey Fatchett: It's like, these people, like, people were
• 20:40
  editing like before Photoshop existed, it was there were
• 20:44
  things. People were doing things. I mean, I the, one of
• 20:46
  the examples I always bring up is spirit photography from like
• 20:49
  the 1800s like double exposure stuff and like doing and, you
• 20:54
  know, like people have been editing images for almost
• 20:58
  longest photography has been around.
• 21:00
  Steve Vaccariello: I have two words to say, grease pencil, you
• 21:04
  know, you'd have the grease pencil, and you would just mark
• 21:07
  up the contact sheets. And it was, you know, I used to love
• 21:12
  I'd said, Oh, days per week to edit, and I would go through
• 21:18
  like phases of shooting, shooting, shooting. I'd have
• 21:20
  like, 40 rolls of film in like a bucket. Then I go into the
• 21:25
  darkroom, develop, develop, develop, and then I would go
• 21:28
  into the editing phase, after I made the contact sheets of going
• 21:32
  through and deciding, like, what I wanted to print and how I
• 21:34
  wanted to print it. Am I going to dodge this? Am I going to
• 21:37
  burn this? Am I going to crop that? What am I going to do? But
• 21:39
  Oh, so much time spent on that
• 21:41
  Casey Fatchett: Do you think that that mean, here's both
• 21:45
  related to film and digital. I don't know. Film is like
• 21:49
  undergoing a renaissance. Over the last, I don't know, five
• 21:53
  years or so, people are just buying up all like, the point
• 21:56
  they are.
• 21:57
  Steve Vaccariello: Yeah, it's like record it's like records
• 21:58
  and LPs. Yeah, you know, coming back, it's coming back to adult
• 22:02
  Casey Fatchett: Exactly, yes. And also, like, the point and
• 22:04
  shoot digital sort of thing. And I did an interview about this a
• 22:08
  while back, people were trying to figure out why this is such a
• 22:11
  thing. And, like, it's because it's, it's a nostalgia for a
• 22:14
  time that these people did not experience. And also, it's not
• 22:18
  connected to the internet, right? But I don't know if you
• 22:21
  saw this article in The New York Times when they're talking
• 22:23
  about, like, everybody's like, printing a bunch more film,
• 22:26
  these kids who are shooting film aren't collecting their
• 22:28
  negatives, what they're taking them to get developed, getting
• 22:33
  the high res scans, or even low res, because they're using it
• 22:36
  for social media, and then just Leaving the film at the lab. And
• 22:42
  the labs are putting, the labs are putting a time limit on how
• 22:44
  long they will hold sure the film, because they used to just
• 22:49
  keep the negatives indefinitely, and now they're like, we've got
• 22:52
  rooms full of negatives, because people are shooting not
• 22:54
  Steve Vaccariello: I did not know that. That's insane. They
• 22:55
  said
• 22:55
  Casey Fatchett: 20% of people who are shooting film are
• 22:57
  picking up their negatives.
• 23:00
  Steve Vaccariello: That's staggering. That's that. That's
• 23:02
  dumb. Wow, that's insane. I mean, I I didn't get rid of any
• 23:08
  of my film cameras. I have all my film cameras. I have my rz.
• 23:12
  I'm a Nikon shooter. I have a contact 645 I have my four by
• 23:15
  fives. I have a huge collection of vintage cameras, like from
• 23:19
  the 40s and 50s that are actually operational, like
• 23:21
  graphlex cameras. I see that back there. Yeah, graphlex
• 23:25
  cameras and all that stuff that I used to shoot with that and
• 23:28
  still do. And I remember I towards the end of when Kodak
• 23:32
  was going belly up, I did a shoot for them, for Endura, one
• 23:37
  of their newer papers that came out and they couldn't pay me my
• 23:43
  full creative fee because they were, you know, going bankrupt.
• 23:47
  They said, Well, how about if we give you half your creative fee
• 23:51
  and the other half will give you film. And I was like, You know
• 23:55
  what? That's That's great. So dude, when I tell you I have a
• 23:59
  full size refrigerator full of film. I have a literal full size
• 24:04
  refrigerator full of film, tri x t max, 3200 all their color. I
• 24:10
  do two and a quarter, four by 535, all I have everything
• 24:14
  whole. It'll last me till I'm dead, for sure.
• 24:17
  Casey Fatchett: But you don't have to buy film, and it's gone
• 24:19
  up the price. You've made money just on the stock itself.
• 24:23
  Steve Vaccariello: Oh my God, dude. Film is, it's like, it's
• 24:26
  like, eight or nine bucks a roll for film. Now it's crazy in
• 24:30
  photo paper. I just was looking at Ilford paper, and I was like,
• 24:33
  You got to be kidding me, like 50 sheets of 11 by 14 is what.
• 24:38
  Casey Fatchett: It's crazy. And it's like, I look at like I've
• 24:41
  got a couple of old Polaroid Land cameras, and, yeah, I like
• 24:48
  to test stuff like I've got old like things, and I'll get
• 24:51
  adapters for things and whatever like. And I've managed to, like,
• 24:54
  shoot most of the antique cameras that I own, and you
• 24:58
  know, the ones that are. Not even like, ones that I regularly
• 25:01
  used anyway, but I have these two old Polaroid cameras, and
• 25:05
  I'm like, I wonder if they work. And then I'm like, I guess I
• 25:07
  could, like, let's see how much a pack of like, like, hey, they
• 25:11
  don't make Polaroid film anymore, and there's like, a
• 25:14
  couple of companies that make, yeah, their versions. But it's
• 25:18
  like 150 bucks for pack of film, for like, 10 exposures,
• 25:23
  Steve Vaccariello: it's like, and I my, one of my favorite
• 25:25
  things to do in the entire world was to shoot Polaroid, type 55
• 25:30
  and type 665, and keep the negatives and print from the
• 25:35
  negatives. I would keep the negatives, and I would put them
• 25:38
  through a sodium sulfite, then a hardener, a fixer hardener. And
• 25:44
  I would save those negatives, and I would print, I would print
• 25:47
  those negatives in glass, and I would make enlargements from
• 25:52
  like a five by seven glass and larger. And it was, I have to
• 25:56
  tell you, one of my most favorite things to do in the
• 25:58
  world. You get those really cool borders, but in real life,
• 26:02
  Casey Fatchett: emulsion borders,
• 26:03
  Steve Vaccariello: yeah, real it wasn't like an app or something
• 26:05
  that was like the real deal. And you're right. I was looking for
• 26:09
  665, some guy had a pack of 665, on eBay. He was selling like 10
• 26:14
  exposures. He wanted, like 110 bucks for it. I was like, Oh, my
• 26:17
  god, yeah.
• 26:18
  Casey Fatchett: And then expired, like 15 years ago,
• 26:20
  Steve Vaccariello: Who knows if it would work right? Exactly.
• 26:24
  Crazy, crazy, man, I miss, I miss doing that stuff. I missed
• 26:28
  the polar and big time
• 26:29
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, like all that film stuff, there's such a
• 26:31
  visceral feel, dude. I think it's something that, and I think
• 26:35
  that that something else that you mentioned about printing
• 26:40
  your own work, and how it, how you and it differently from from
• 26:46
  working in a dark room, just printing it out and having a
• 26:50
  tangible version of it, even if you're sending it to a lab to
• 26:53
  get printed, and having and seeing your photos in print is
• 26:57
  so much different than I'm looking at it on my phone. I'm
• 27:01
  looking at it on my computer like
• 27:04
  Steve Vaccariello: it's I equate it to you. Think about like you
• 27:08
  finding that shoebox in your grandma's attic with all those
• 27:11
  prints in it. Yeah, this generation isn't going to have
• 27:13
  that like, because, not because they're like, you just said
• 27:16
  prime example. They're just not printing anything. It's all
• 27:19
  like, just up in space. I The archives that I have at my house
• 27:26
  as a result of me telling you what a darkroom fanatic I was, I
• 27:30
  have close to, I don't know, maybe 400 to 500,000 prints that
• 27:37
  are silver gelatin, archival fiber based prints that are in
• 27:43
  my archive of all the different subject matters that I have,
• 27:46
  fashion, nude portraits, you know, dance, everything that I
• 27:51
  spent my entire life printing, and I could draw from those
• 27:56
  images to do a show at an art gallery or put A portfolio
• 28:00
  together, or anything I want like that, because I took the
• 28:04
  time to print everything, and I still do that till this day. I
• 28:08
  do shoot film and digital, and I print my digital and I print the
• 28:12
  stuff that I shoot on film.
• 28:13
  Casey Fatchett: It's, it's such a different you get such a
• 28:17
  different feel for your work. Oh, I have, I think it helps you
• 28:21
  grow as a photographer to, like, see it, print it out. Because,
• 28:24
  again, it's another it's another way to view your stuff and be
• 28:27
  like, Okay, this is something I do all the time. When you're
• 28:30
  flipping by it just on a computer screen, you don't
• 28:33
  really see it, like, over and over again. Like, I have stuff
• 28:37
  in my office, yeah. Like, print it out. Like, I look at it in
• 28:40
  and I'm like, Oh, those two photos are really similar. Like,
• 28:44
  and it's like, it's not just because I liked both of them for
• 28:48
  this, like, because they look similar. I'm like, my I composed
• 28:52
  them similarly. There's like, the lighting is the same. I'm
• 28:55
  like, Okay, this is something that i is, again, this is a
• 28:58
  habit I have. And maybe do I want to, you know, examine that
• 29:03
  when I'm behind the camera? Or do I want to, like, think about
• 29:05
  that, like, Am I just doing the same thing again? Or do I try
• 29:08
  something different? Yeah, that's sort of like getting in
• 29:12
  touch with your own work, exactly.
• 29:14
  Steve Vaccariello: And I just had a an exhibition of my fine
• 29:19
  art photography and art gallery, and it was 80 images printed of
• 29:23
  the actor, Alan Cumming it was a 25 year retrospective. I've been
• 29:27
  shooting him for 25 years, which is really rare with a celebrity
• 29:32
  that you have access to somebody like that over 25 years. And
• 29:36
  going back to the whole print thing, it was an amazing
• 29:39
  experience, going through all my negatives and all my contact
• 29:42
  sheets and pulling out what I was going to have printed, and
• 29:45
  then actually framing it in archival like acid free mats and
• 29:49
  frames, and putting it on the wall, and walking around that
• 29:52
  gallery and seeing my my prints on a wall, like in a gallery,
• 29:57
  and I was just like, this is. Is the ultimate way that any
• 30:02
  photographer should showcase his work. I mean, it was so nice to
• 30:06
  be able to go through that experience.
• 30:12
  Casey Fatchett: That's an incredible experience, not just
• 30:13
  like being having that much time with one subject, because
• 30:13
  whether it's a celebrity or not, like having that much time like
• 30:18
  Steve Vaccariello: you dive into somebody like that, you trust
• 30:20
  them implicitly. They trust you. I mean, you know, if I told him
• 30:24
  to hang upside down from the chandelier naked, he would do it
• 30:28
  for me, because he trusts me and he knows me, you know, and we
• 30:31
  would do that for each other, you know, that's rare. He really
• 30:35
  opens up, you know, for my camera, which is why that
• 30:38
  exhibition was such a success.
• 30:41
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's a it's the connection that you
• 30:46
  build with one another. Yep, yep. So I'm curious, like, we
• 30:52
  talked a little about a lot of things, but when you mentioned
• 30:56
  how it was, like, kind of a you didn't have that community like
• 30:59
  you had in Cleveland when you moved to New York, like, when
• 31:01
  you first moved to New York City, what do you think the
• 31:06
  hardest thing to I know what my answer is, but like, what was
• 31:08
  the hardest thing to adjust to? Like, creatively, personally,
• 31:12
  when you moving from the Midwest?
• 31:14
  Steve Vaccariello: Yeah, that it was, well, the the biggest
• 31:17
  thing, I guess, was how many goddamn good photographers there
• 31:21
  were there. I mean, there are so many good photographers in New
• 31:26
  York, when I went there, it was like the opposite. I was not a
• 31:35
  big fish in a little pond. I was a little fish in a big pond. And
• 31:39
  it was really eye opening experience for me, and it made
• 31:46
  me be like, Okay, I gotta get my act together, because I gotta
• 31:51
  work even harder now to put myself on the map, moving from
• 31:54
  like the Midwest to New York, ultimately ended up taking me,
• 31:58
  I'd say, maybe five or six years before, I was really successful
• 32:04
  in New York, bidding on jobs. In the end, you know, it after five
• 32:09
  or six years, I was bidding on jobs with Herb Ritz and Annie
• 32:12
  Liebowitz. Like my rep would call me and say, You're triple
• 32:15
  bidding. One of them's Annie Liebowitz, one of them's Albert
• 32:18
  Watson, you know, one of them is Bruce Weber, and I was like,
• 32:21
  Okay, I've, I think I've, you're,
• 32:24
  Casey Fatchett: you're in rare air at that point
• 32:27
  Steve Vaccariello: exactly. But it, it took a while, and it was,
• 32:31
  like you said, it was daunting, for sure, but at the same time,
• 32:36
  I was so inspired by the energy of New York and the vibe and the
• 32:40
  people and the art and the the things that I hadn't seen before
• 32:46
  living in Cleveland, it matched my work up, for sure. Because
• 32:51
  when I saw all that, my brain just like, exploded now, just
• 32:55
  like, oh my god, I was like, all this stuff, like, re inspired me
• 33:00
  like, to a whole nother level, which was really amazing, like,
• 33:05
  it made me break my boundaries even more.
• 33:07
  Casey Fatchett: So I was gonna ask that we when you did, you
• 33:11
  feel like you needed to, like, sort of double down on keeping
• 33:15
  your different perspective on photography, or, like, trying to
• 33:19
  adapt to fit the New York style or but it seems
• 33:22
  Steve Vaccariello: like you, yeah, I did not want to adapt to
• 33:26
  fit the New York style because there were already 50,000 other
• 33:30
  people doing that. So why would I want to actually do that when
• 33:35
  there's so many people doing that? It was all like, okay,
• 33:39
  white, seamless, two stops, overexposed, you know, with a
• 33:43
  beauty dish on the model. Like, no, I'm like, so many people
• 33:47
  were doing that style photography, so I I really stuck
• 33:50
  to my guns with what I did when I developed my basic style. When
• 33:57
  I was in Cleveland, I figured, well, this is going to set me
• 34:01
  apart, because it's going to make me stand out from those
• 34:06
  other photographers that are in New York that have this style,
• 34:11
  that they all
• 34:12
  Casey Fatchett: right, they all shoot,
• 34:13
  Steve Vaccariello: yeah, that they think is the only way you
• 34:15
  can succeed in New York. So I stuck I I talked about that
• 34:19
  earlier. I stuck to my guns and my my own like vision of what I
• 34:24
  am like and what my work is about, and I really like you
• 34:29
  just said I doubled down on sticking true to my own style,
• 34:32
  which is basically timeless classic, mostly black and white,
• 34:37
  because I love shooting black and white imagery. For me, I
• 34:42
  want someone to look at my images in 2550, years and be
• 34:46
  like they don't know what it was taken. Yeah, was it taken last
• 34:50
  year? Was it taken 30 years ago? Was it taken yesterday? That for
• 34:53
  me, is a huge thing. I never liked to timestamp my
• 34:56
  photography, and I since the time I started. Right? And a lot
• 35:00
  of people would give me grief about that sometimes, well, that
• 35:03
  that's not like high fashion. I'm like, Well, okay, no, it's
• 35:06
  not, but your high fashion photo is going to be worthless in like
• 35:10
  six months, right?
• 35:12
  Casey Fatchett: So the trend is going to change the Yep, yeah,
• 35:15
  exactly. I'm very much against chasing trends, and I think
• 35:20
  that's become a it's hard for people to get noticed these
• 35:25
  days, and trends become a very seductive way of trying to get
• 35:33
  attention. They do because they get they you can. You can garner
• 35:37
  some attention via the algorithm, by by being a part of
• 35:41
  the trend, and then people will see your work. I've always
• 35:48
  found, like, find a way to present your work that fits the
• 35:50
  trend, but the work is not fitting the trend.
• 35:54
  Steve Vaccariello: Yeah, there's lighting trends. There's all I
• 35:57
  remember way back when, when the ring light was the big deal
• 36:01
  like, oh, the ring light. Everyone's using the ring light,
• 36:03
  or Keynote flows, you know, oh, gotta have keto flows in the,
• 36:07
  you know, in my studio for when I'm shooting and all that kind
• 36:10
  of stuff. And it, you're right though, it's like, those come
• 36:14
  and go, and that's why, when I go up to my archives with all
• 36:17
  those images, I can look at 95% of those and be like, Man, those
• 36:22
  pictures are still valid today.
• 36:25
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you're getting you I say it to my I do
• 36:31
  my work is non personal. Work is, over the last 20 years has
• 36:36
  been majority weddings and right? I try to tell people
• 36:41
  again, like, I don't want you to look at the photo I take on your
• 36:45
  of your wedding, which is like, like, Oh, that's so 2026 or, you
• 36:51
  know, that was so 2015 or whatever, like, I remember we
• 36:54
  did selective color, or, you know, like, or that. Or when
• 37:00
  trying to think of the name that makes it look like a toy camera,
• 37:04
  tilt shift. No, yeah. Like there was a huge thing in the wedding
• 37:08
  industry for like, three years where, like, tilt shift may not
• 37:12
  have been three years may have been less, but it seemed like it
• 37:14
  was forever, where people were doing like, fake digital cross
• 37:18
  processing and like to make things look, quote, unquote
• 37:23
  vintage, and to, like, do using tilt shift, like they'd use the
• 37:28
  use the lens for, like, three photos of the entire I'm like,
• 37:30
  I'm not buying a $3,000 lens, but I'm going to use twice. And
• 37:36
  I have to, like, set everything up and just to fit this trend
• 37:39
  right exactly, because what are you doing? Like, you be
• 37:43
  yourself, like, be like, find your own way, like we said,
• 37:46
  like, you don't have to, you don't have to, like, impersonate
• 37:55
  everyone else exactly you can. Well, yeah, my talking about New
• 38:04
  York again. Do you think that it changed you as a person or as a
• 38:13
  photographer, like I know you, like, double down on your on how
• 38:17
  you were shooting. But do you think that, like, overall, like,
• 38:21
  the experience of going from the Midwest to like, the big city,
• 38:27
  quote, unquote, like, changed your perspective, if not but
• 38:33
  your style.
• 38:34
  Steve Vaccariello: It definitely changed my perspective. I don't
• 38:37
  think it changed my style much, and it definitely didn't change
• 38:39
  who I was as a person. Part of the reason I was so successful
• 38:43
  in New York is because I maintain my Midwestern morals.
• 38:46
  You know, a lot of my friends are like, Oh, you're gonna move
• 38:48
  to New York and become one of those, like, asshole, snooty New
• 38:51
  York photographers. I was like, No, I'm like, No, I'm I'm gonna
• 38:56
  maintain my Ohio guy. I'm an Ohio guy. I'm from the Midwest,
• 39:00
  and I think I'm largely successful because people feel
• 39:04
  comfortable with me, they like me as a person, and they trust
• 39:08
  me. And I maintained all that throughout everything when I was
• 39:13
  in New York, in every way, it definitely changed my
• 39:16
  perspective on what was out there. I mean, so much more I
• 39:19
  saw in the world. I mean, with huge budget shoots, like huge,
• 39:24
  gigantic studios, like, you know, I walk into a studio,
• 39:27
  like, splash light or industrial, and I'd be like,
• 39:30
  holy crap, look. Or I walk into an equipment room and I'd be
• 39:34
  like, What the hell? Like gear everywhere, like lighting I have
• 39:39
  never seen before. I'm like, What the hell is that? What's
• 39:42
  this? What's that? So it really opened my eyes up to a lot of
• 39:46
  stuff like that. I mean, but I stayed who I was, true to myself
• 39:50
  as a person, but I definitely grew like technically, as a
• 39:55
  photographer, by by seeing all these other you know, pop.
• 39:59
  Possible ways that I can enhance and use different kind of like
• 40:03
  equipment and lighting in my photos, which was kind of neat.
• 40:06
  Casey Fatchett: I'm curious, because this is something that
• 40:08
  I've heard a lot about lately, like in the last few years. Just
• 40:14
  like dealing with live in New Jersey, still work in the city a
• 40:18
  lot, but like talking to photographers who were, like,
• 40:23
  out in, you know, more rural, I guess, areas, who were just
• 40:29
  like, you know, I was talking to this guy who's pretty young.
• 40:33
  He's like, in his, you know, early 20s, like, still getting
• 40:37
  his legs under him as a photographer. And I was just
• 40:40
  like, yeah. Like, he's like, where do you shoot like, he's
• 40:44
  like, oh, you know, I've done some stuff in the city, but,
• 40:46
  like, I stay out here mostly. And he's like, I have friends
• 40:49
  who, like, try to move into the city. It's so expensive and,
• 40:51
  like, rent. I get a whole house for like, half of what my
• 40:54
  buddy's paying in rent for one bedroom. And was like, you know,
• 40:58
  why am I going to move to New York? And I have this fear that
• 41:01
  we're going to lose some of the a the culture in the big cities
• 41:09
  because we don't have people like bringing their art there,
• 41:13
  but also that the artists who are staying where they are won't
• 41:17
  be challenged.
• 41:19
  Steve Vaccariello: That's very true. I, you know, I, I,
• 41:22
  essentially, I lived in Head Studios in New York City for
• 41:27
  over 20 years, and I only left because I didn't want to raise
• 41:30
  my kids there. So now, where I live in New Jersey is literally
• 41:35
  like a 22 train, 22 minute train ride into the city. So I'm, I'm
• 41:41
  close. I could be there at the drop of a hat.
• 41:43
  Casey Fatchett: You're lucky because you live somewhere that
• 41:45
  has a train station right next.
• 41:46
  Steve Vaccariello: Yeah, exactly, exactly that. And
• 41:48
  that's why i That's why we, my wife and I, chose to live in
• 41:52
  this town because of the train line. And so I somebody even
• 41:55
  calls me today and say, Hey, we got to have you come in and do
• 41:57
  the shack. You know, I could be there lickety split, and I can
• 42:00
  make it happen. And I could have that energy anytime I want it,
• 42:04
  but when I want to shut down and sit on my deck and listen to the
• 42:08
  birds chirp with a beer in my hand, you know, and my grill
• 42:11
  going and picking some stuff out of my garden, I got that. So for
• 42:17
  me, spending over 20 years in the city was was great, and I
• 42:22
  loved the experience, and I loved everything it brought to
• 42:25
  my career, both personally and professionally. But I kind of
• 42:29
  like living outside the city now, but just having access to
• 42:35
  it, like whenever I want, very easily. Yeah, I think there's,
• 42:38
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, I'm not saying that people have to move
• 42:41
  to the city I feel like, or, you know, whatever, I maybe moved to
• 42:46
  the city for a little while. I don't know, you don't have to
• 42:48
  spend decades, but like having some sort of experience, and
• 42:51
  maybe this is broader, traveling, being like
• 42:54
  experiencing other places, yep, helps you grow as artists,
• 43:01
  Steve Vaccariello: I would never, I mean, God, I would
• 43:04
  never take that back in a million years. I mean, both my
• 43:07
  wife and I had great jobs in Cleveland. I was making a ton of
• 43:10
  money in Cleveland as as one of the top photographers in the
• 43:13
  city. My wife was editor in chief of the of the biggest
• 43:16
  magazine in the city. So we were both like, you know, flying high
• 43:21
  in our careers, but we both maxed out like there was no more
• 43:24
  room for creativity. If I would have stayed there, my creativity
• 43:28
  would have been stifled. There would have been no more room for
• 43:30
  me to grow. And essentially, I was my work was getting so avant
• 43:36
  garde for Cleveland that I was not getting hired as much
• 43:39
  because clients were worried I was going to do something that
• 43:41
  was going to be too artsy or too over the top. We can't hire
• 43:46
  Steve. It's he's going to do something really weird or crazy.
• 43:49
  And at that point, I was like, you know, my business partner,
• 43:52
  Todd, was like, You know what, Steve, I'm not, I'm not paying
• 43:56
  the rent next month. And it was Todd that actually lit the fire
• 44:00
  under my ass and said, We're, you're going, you're, we're
• 44:03
  leaving. And we just packed everything into a U haul from
• 44:07
  that studio, and just drove 80 east to New York. And there it
• 44:11
  was.
• 44:13
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, well, the the 8090, corridor, oh, yeah,
• 44:18
  driven it many times. Yeah. It's, that feeling, though, of
• 44:22
  just like, like to grow, to expand, to like to be a
• 44:31
  different artist. Otherwise, like you said, you're just like,
• 44:35
  you're going to be your creativity had reached kind of
• 44:38
  its ceiling
• 44:40
  Steve Vaccariello: exactly. And what I also forgot to mention
• 44:43
  earlier is after I left college after that first year, oddly
• 44:50
  enough, people think this is really weird, but this is
• 44:53
  definitely part of my story. I was a medical photographer for
• 44:57
  eight years in the largest. First Suburban Hospital in
• 45:01
  downtown Cleveland, St Vincent Charity Hospital. There's also
• 45:05
  one here in New York. It's the same same run by the same
• 45:08
  sisters as st charity and I did everything there. I shot
• 45:14
  portraits of doctors. I flew on helicopters. I flew in
• 45:18
  ambulances. It was a level one trauma center. I saw gunshots, I
• 45:22
  saw car accidents, I saw open heart surgery. I photographed
• 45:27
  the very first documented AIDS patient in the country, in
• 45:31
  Cleveland, Ohio. It was this intense job where and I was
• 45:37
  young. I was 19 years old. I would get there every day, and I
• 45:41
  didn't know what I was going to be doing. Am I going to be on a
• 45:43
  helicopter? Am I going to be in the surgical suite in the
• 45:46
  operating room? It was really, really intense and often
• 45:52
  gruesome. And part of what drove me to my style of today, which
• 45:58
  is shooting pretty things and beauty and fashion and beautiful
• 46:02
  dancers and stuff, was that I saw so much of that reality when
• 46:07
  I left that hospital and I got out of there, I like, ran in
• 46:11
  totally the opposite direction. It's like, I'm going to go find
• 46:15
  pretty things to take pictures of, and beautiful things, you
• 46:18
  know, no more blood, no more stuff accidents and torment and
• 46:23
  stuff like that. I'm going to forge my career in a different
• 46:26
  direction.
• 46:27
  Casey Fatchett: It's a trauma response,
• 46:29
  Steve Vaccariello: yep, yep, exactly, you know. And I believe
• 46:32
  me, I saw it all like I'm taught, you know, abuse cases,
• 46:35
  because hospitals need to document that for, you know,
• 46:39
  legal purposes. And you know, I would sit in surgery for six or
• 46:43
  seven hours. It was a teaching hospital, and dude, I would
• 46:46
  shoot Kodachrome 64 in the or bright, vivid transparencies.
• 46:53
  And the surgeons would go in front of the medical Grand
• 46:56
  Rounds, in front of hundreds of of medical students, and show my
• 46:59
  slides up on the screen to kind of show them how he did
• 47:02
  procedures. It was an intense job, but I really loved it. But
• 47:06
  then when I hit the wall, I hit the wall. I'm like, All right,
• 47:09
  no, I'm like, I'm done. And that's when I, like, quit that
• 47:12
  job, save some money, and started my own business.
• 47:16
  Casey Fatchett: There's only so much of that you can you can
• 47:18
  handle
• 47:18
  Steve Vaccariello: exactly, but it made me who I was, though, as
• 47:21
  a photographer, I think if I would not have done that, I
• 47:25
  would not have had the foresight and the vision that I have today
• 47:30
  as an artist. It really, like, shaped me.
• 47:33
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I'm guessing it gave you a lot of
• 47:34
  like, really, like, throwing you in the deep end, technique wise,
• 47:39
  like, you're, you're, like you said, you're, you're, you're
• 47:43
  learning a lot of different things. You're, you're, you're
• 47:45
  shooting in like, varied locations. Yeah, way different
• 47:49
  subject matters, and not knowing what you're going to be, you
• 47:51
  have to adapt really quickly to, like, whatever's happening.
• 47:54
  Steve Vaccariello: And the guy that was in charge there was a
• 47:56
  guy named Jack, and Jack taught me almost everything in that
• 48:02
  hospital, and him and I had an amazing relationship. It was
• 48:06
  just the two of us for the entire department. So we did it
• 48:09
  all, the two of us, you know, and with and it could be
• 48:13
  demanding. Things in a hospital happen quick. There's
• 48:16
  emergencies, there's all kinds of crazy stuff. And then he,
• 48:19
  when he retired, he turned the keys over to me, and I ran that
• 48:23
  department for myself for three years before I left.
• 48:27
  Casey Fatchett: That's really incredible, I mean, and for
• 48:29
  someone who, like you said, didn't have a lot of formal
• 48:32
  photography training, right?
• 48:35
  Steve Vaccariello: Yep, exactly. Yeah, I have. It's funny,
• 48:39
  because I teach a lot of photo classes, and I tell all, all the
• 48:42
  kids in the photo classes, you taking this photo classes? One
• 48:46
  more photo class than I've taken. I was like, I've learned,
• 48:51
  you know, trial by fire. I used to keep really meticulous
• 48:54
  journals, and I still have them. I would write down how I was
• 48:57
  going to light things. Why does this work? Why doesn't this
• 49:00
  work? When I light it like this, it looks like that. Like that
• 49:03
  same thing in the darkroom, and when I mix these chemicals
• 49:06
  together, I get this contrast, and when I mix that, it looks
• 49:09
  like this, and this doesn't work, and this sucks, and this
• 49:12
  is great, and and years of that stuff to be able to formulate
• 49:17
  what I think is my final style that I actually had
• 49:20
  Casey Fatchett: today that's such a, it's such a a commitment
• 49:28
  to the craft of it. It's like one of those things where people
• 49:32
  go, like, what preset do you use? Like, and I'm like, make
• 49:37
  your own. Make, make one that fits your style
• 49:44
  Steve Vaccariello: and I didn't assist. I never assisted a
• 49:46
  photographer either, never, never, ever came up through the
• 49:50
  assistant route like I literally went from teaching myself to
• 49:55
  starting my own studio. So I've never even had another
• 49:59
  photographer to tell. Tell me, Well, Steve, this is how you
• 50:01
  light a person. You use this three quarter softbox light over
• 50:06
  there, and use a rim light over there. And no one even told me
• 50:10
  that, because I, like I said, I never assisted a photographer.
• 50:14
  So neither one you know, no photo classes, no assisting,
• 50:19
  really. My style came from learning the hard way and
• 50:24
  teaching myself what I like and what I didn't like.
• 50:28
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, someone with little formal training
• 50:32
  myself. For me, it was like I would analyze other photos and
• 50:40
  like, Look at me. Oh, well, what did they do to light this or,
• 50:43
  you know, it's one of the reasons I still go to workshops
• 50:45
  today, is to, like, see how other photographers minds work.
• 50:48
  It's not to copy what they're doing, but like, how do you
• 50:50
  approach this problem, and how do you approach the situation,
• 50:53
  and how do you think it out in the moment? I'm curious, being
• 50:58
  self taught and not knowing those things and not having some
• 51:02
  other photographers saying, like, Oh, this is how you do it.
• 51:04
  Whatever. Do you think that shaped the risks that you were
• 51:08
  willing to take as a photographer in your career?
• 51:11
  Like you were more willing to, like, do something avant garde,
• 51:14
  like you're saying you were becoming too avant garde for
• 51:16
  Cleveland, but like, it would be like, take those risks and not
• 51:18
  be the same photographer as somebody else, because you
• 51:22
  weren't, sort of, like, rigidly shaped by somebody else's I do.
• 51:27
  Steve Vaccariello: I think it gave me more confidence, because
• 51:30
  I knew there was not, I wasn't going to be falling under that
• 51:33
  group of, like, formally taught photographers, either in photo
• 51:38
  school or, like, you know, being trained by, like, you know,
• 51:42
  another photographer as an apprentice. It and I did a lot
• 51:45
  of what you just said. You did. I look to other photos too. Like
• 51:50
  my biggest inspirations, which are probably a lot of yours, are
• 51:53
  all the classic photographers like Irving, Penn, Robert
• 51:58
  Mapplethorpe, Richard Avedon Horst, those photographers for
• 52:02
  me are the photographers that, like, I looked up to I would go
• 52:07
  to when I first moved to New York City. I would go to all the
• 52:09
  galleries, and I would ask them if I could see the original
• 52:13
  prints by like Mapplethorpe, because his prints were like,
• 52:17
  magical. You'd see a Mapplethorpe print, and you'd be
• 52:19
  like, Oh my God. And I would look at the catch lights in the
• 52:22
  eyes, and I'd be like, Okay, you had a soft box here and a fill
• 52:25
  reflector there, and or avedons photos. And I would look at the
• 52:29
  grain structure in the pictures and how they were printed, and
• 52:33
  all those different kinds of methods. And I would, in my
• 52:36
  mind, would spin, how did they do that, but not knowing exactly
• 52:40
  how they did it? Yeah, I would have to interpret it for
• 52:43
  yourself how I did Yeah, exactly, try to myself and see
• 52:48
  if I could do it, or if I didn't do it, or if I did something and
• 52:50
  I liked what I did, like, loosely inspired by that, you
• 52:54
  know,
• 52:55
  Casey Fatchett: and it takes you in a different direction, like,
• 52:56
  exactly, you're not, necessarily, you're not what I
• 53:00
  always tell you, like I had talked about, like, don't be an
• 53:01
  imitation of other, somebody else. Like you can emulate
• 53:03
  somebody else and be like, I'm inspired by them. I'm inspired
• 53:09
  by their work. And like, it pushes me to do my thing in a
• 53:14
  like, a direction that might be like parallel in some parts, but
• 53:18
  then I can turn in a completely different direction because I'm
• 53:20
  not trying to follow their path. I am just like looking at what
• 53:24
  they did and going, Wow, that's really cool, exactly.
• 53:27
  Steve Vaccariello: And that's the thing you can you can look
• 53:29
  at my work and you could see all those four name photographers I
• 53:33
  just mentioned in my work, you know, and but not all as one,
• 53:39
  like little pieces and parts drawn from, like, each of them,
• 53:43
  like you said, you know, which is really like I said, all those
• 53:47
  masters and even older ones, like Stieglitz and Steichen and
• 53:51
  and people that are even older than that, like, you know,
• 53:55
  Edward Weston, people like that, all those pictorialists. Like I
• 53:59
  see myself as a pictorialist, my photos, like, I, they're,
• 54:04
  they're always soft, like, nothing's ever sharp. I don't
• 54:06
  shoot anything at high F stop. Everything's like, wide open and
• 54:10
  fuzzy sometimes or even a little bit blurry here and there. I'm
• 54:15
  not, like, I don't like shooting anything where everything's
• 54:18
  sharp. Like, I have definitely see myself as one of those
• 54:22
  early, what they used to call themselves pictorialists.
• 54:25
  Casey Fatchett: It's, I mean, it's a being a little soft here
• 54:28
  and there. Like, I always tell people like that, that in my own
• 54:33
  photos, and when people are say, like, Oh, this isn't sharp. This
• 54:37
  photo in your portfolio is not it's not like tack sharp, or
• 54:40
  whatever my response is, emotional content, exactly.
• 54:46
  Trump's technical perfection.
• 54:48
  Steve Vaccariello: There could have been said better, man, it's
• 54:51
  how do you feel when you look at that photo? Yeah, exactly, yeah.
• 54:55
  Casey Fatchett: When you look at that picture like, Yeah, I'll
• 54:57
  take a picture of two people dancing. You. And, yeah, maybe
• 55:01
  this photo is a little blurry, but it's because you're getting
• 55:03
  like, the motion of them moving and like, and you're also kind
• 55:07
  of in the softness of their touch, like, in being close to
• 55:09
  one another. And it's not, you know, yeah, you can't make out
• 55:13
  every fine line of somebody's hair. But like, that doesnt
• 55:17
  matter
• 55:18
  Steve Vaccariello: And my philosophy with with gear and
• 55:21
  like, like technical aspect. I obviously, when you're starting
• 55:26
  off, you try a lot of stuff. You try everything. And I'd
• 55:29
  encourage anyone that's starting out to do exactly that. Try all
• 55:33
  kinds of different lighting setups and all kinds of
• 55:35
  different stuff. But after doing this for as many years as I've
• 55:38
  been doing it, I will show up on a photo shoot with the bare
• 55:42
  minimum of equipment. I mean, believe me, if I can shoot it
• 55:46
  with just a camera and no lights, then that's how I'm
• 55:49
  going to do it. I love natural light. I love single light
• 55:53
  setups. I mean, you'll never see me, usually, ever with more than
• 55:57
  two lights. I mean, I don't like the technical aspect and the
• 56:01
  lighting and all that stuff to get in the way of the
• 56:05
  collaboration between me and the subject. I don't want to be
• 56:08
  worrying about, okay, is that light doing what it's supposed
• 56:11
  to do? And I got lights all over the place, over there, and
• 56:14
  there's cords and this and all, it's like, look, I'm honed into
• 56:17
  the subject, and I want that to be my priority, not like 8000
• 56:22
  lights and things all over the place. That's my simplistic look
• 56:28
  at technique and equipment. I like to keep it very simple.
• 56:33
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's, it's the, I think there's a it's like
• 56:39
  stages to a career in photography or journey. Yeah,
• 56:43
  you start out and you're like, I'm still trying to figure out
• 56:46
  who I am as a photographer and and once you become you, like
• 56:53
  you said, you experiment a lot of different things. You try
• 56:56
  different styles and try different lighting setups or
• 56:59
  whatever. And it's like, I same here and now. It's like, my, my
• 57:03
  thought now is, like, when I'm going on a shoot, I want to
• 57:05
  probably take the minimum amount of equipment, because I'm
• 57:10
  getting older and I don't want to carry that much crap,
• 57:13
  Steve Vaccariello: yeah, who wants to hump that stuff around?
• 57:15
  Casey Fatchett: Man, yeah. It's, uh, yeah. It's just like, who
• 57:20
  wants to carry like, 18 bags of stuff? Like, yeah, no,
• 57:25
  Steve Vaccariello: hey, when I first moved to New York, I lived
• 57:27
  in a five story walk up in Chelsea, and I was young, I
• 57:30
  could, like, carry old speedatron, 4800 power packs
• 57:34
  that weighed like 80 pounds up and down five flights of stairs.
• 57:38
  Now it like gives me hives just thinking about that.
• 57:42
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah. I mean, when I was younger, I was like,
• 57:43
  I would, I mean, I lived in the third floor and a fourth floor
• 57:48
  walk up in Queens, and it was just like, Yeah, I would carry
• 57:52
  this stuff up all the stairs and just be like, boom, boom, boom,
• 57:55
  boom, dragging bags and stuff that could be dragged. If it
• 57:59
  wasn't something that I had to worry about breaking and at
• 58:02
  weddings I'd be carrying like this. I used to have this, like,
• 58:04
  shoulder bag that was full of all of my equipment that I
• 58:07
  carried with me all day long. And I like, I had a assistant
• 58:12
  who I talked to, like, last year, and he said, Hey, you
• 58:15
  remember when we first started working together? I used to
• 58:17
  carry that bag around all day. And I'm like, Yeah, I was dumb.
• 58:21
  It was dumb. Like, I didn't realize that rolling bags were
• 58:24
  probably going to save my life, right? I can still, I still have
• 58:28
  Vicki, and my shoulders aren't in back, aren't you screwed up?
• 58:31
  Because I, like, realized at one point, like, Hey, I could just
• 58:34
  put all this stuff in a rolling bag and just like, roll it
• 58:36
  around and not have to carry it with me on my body at all times
• 58:40
  during the day because I was worried, oh, something's gonna
• 58:42
  happen. I'm gonna need to change the lens. It's that sort of,
• 58:47
  that intermediate beginning phase where you're, like, I need
• 58:51
  to have is all my gear within arm's reach at all times
• 58:55
  Steve Vaccariello: You're just, you know, when you're just
• 58:57
  starting, you're you're scared what can happen, and you want to
• 58:59
  be fully, like, prepared for everything and anything, and you
• 59:02
  bring everything but the kitchen sink for sure.
• 59:05
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you feel like you've got to, you have to
• 59:08
  have access to it. And now, as I am comfortable enough where I'm
• 59:10
  like, Yeah, I don't need all that stuff.
• 59:12
  Steve Vaccariello: And now it turns into, okay, I only have
• 59:16
  this stuff. So let's get creative, right? Let's see what
• 59:19
  we can do with a minimum amount of stuff and make this look
• 59:21
  really kick ass with what we have. It makes you think totally
• 59:26
  out of the box. Well, it's one of those I've done photo shoots
• 59:29
  with, like, little pen lights and flashlights because I didn't
• 59:32
  have enough lights. And I'd be like, Oh man, I really wish I
• 59:35
  would have had an extra light. And I pull a little pen light
• 59:38
  out of my pocket and, you know, use that. You know that that's,
• 59:42
  it's really fun doing that sometimes.
• 59:45
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's, it's the, I mean, one thing I try to
• 59:47
  teach people is like, you know, limitation is, you know, the key
• 59:51
  to innovation. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it's, even if you're
• 59:56
  shooting digitally, you can find ways to limit yourself. But.
• 1:00:00
  Like I used to do, like, try telling people, you know,
• 1:00:02
  shooting film, you know, a 35 millimeter film camera. For many
• 1:00:05
  years, you couldn't go over a 1,000th of a second on the
• 1:00:08
  shutter, and you couldn't, like, there's all these different
• 1:00:11
  things that you had limitations to, or you had the limited
• 1:00:13
  number of shots that you could take, and saying, like, Oh, hey,
• 1:00:16
  you got to tell a story in 24 exposures. Not find 24 photos
• 1:00:20
  out of whatever, however many couple 100 or few 100 digital
• 1:00:26
  shots that you took, but like, literally only 24 exposures.
• 1:00:30
  Yep. And make that makes you think a lot more about, oh, this
• 1:00:34
  is what I wanted. I actually visualizing what photo I want to
• 1:00:39
  get, instead of just
• 1:00:40
  Steve Vaccariello: Yes, dude, that's the thing with digital
• 1:00:43
  now, people just take, you know, both of us already know that
• 1:00:46
  everyone and their brother thinks they're a photographer
• 1:00:48
  nowadays. I mean, that that's that's a given. And when you
• 1:00:52
  have a digital camera, you take 5000 photos, and you only need
• 1:00:56
  one good one. I mean, that's that that happens, I try to
• 1:01:01
  still treat my digital camera like a film camera. I don't
• 1:01:05
  really go nuts with exposures on it because of what you just
• 1:01:09
  said, and it's important. And guys like you and me that grew
• 1:01:13
  up on film, we know that these new photographers have no idea.
• 1:01:17
  They just take gobs and gobs of photos, and, you know, until
• 1:01:22
  they get what they get, they don't think about stuff. There's
• 1:01:25
  things in the background that they, you know, keep there. And
• 1:01:29
  they're like, Oh, I'll fix that later. It's like, yeah, my goal.
• 1:01:34
  And I tell everybody this that I shoot with, even if they ask me,
• 1:01:37
  Well, we can, like, do Photoshop and fix this up later and do
• 1:01:40
  that. I'm like, I was like, that's I go. I don't want to do
• 1:01:43
  that. I go. My goal is to take that picture out of that camera
• 1:01:48
  and be able to use it as it is. I'm going to make the lighting,
• 1:01:52
  the contrast, the composition, every single aspect of that
• 1:01:56
  photo as best I possibly can when I'm taking it, and if it
• 1:02:01
  takes longer, so be it. I don't care. That's what's gonna
• 1:02:04
  happen, but I'm not gonna spend hours and hours on the back end
• 1:02:08
  fixing up a bunch of stuff, because that's not who I am, and
• 1:02:11
  that I'll never be that guy. I do believe me, I know nothing
• 1:02:14
  about Photoshop whatsoever. If someone said, Hey, can you
• 1:02:18
  retouch this in Photoshop? I couldn't do it to save my life.
• 1:02:20
  I literally, Photoshop is a foreign entity to me. I know
• 1:02:25
  nothing about, and I'm proud to say that actually,
• 1:02:29
  Casey Fatchett: well, I mean, look, listen, I think we grew up
• 1:02:31
  in slightly different backgrounds, like I started off
• 1:02:34
  in film, but I was using Photoshop before it was actually
• 1:02:37
  used on photos. Well, kind of it was. My brother was older than
• 1:02:43
  me. He worked in a computer lab at the local college, and I
• 1:02:46
  would go there after school, and I could just like, sit in like
• 1:02:49
  these the old, old ass Apple computers, black and white
• 1:02:54
  screen, and they had Photoshop. And I would just like, learn. I
• 1:02:58
  learned. I taught myself Photoshop. Oh, as a teenager,
• 1:03:01
  like, it was, like, a first version of Photoshop ever, and
• 1:03:05
  and they had no photos for you to work on, because, like, you
• 1:03:08
  had to scan in every photo, yeah. And so, like, in every the
• 1:03:13
  bit depth was terrible. And, like, again, it's all black and
• 1:03:16
  white, and so there was very little to bring on. But like,
• 1:03:19
  for me, that is, like, how I people, like, how long have you
• 1:03:21
  been using Photoshop? And I'm like, 30 something years. Like,
• 1:03:25
  I don't know, like, it's been a long time, but I wouldn't
• 1:03:29
  consider myself even an expert at, like, what can be done, but
• 1:03:33
  it's the knowing enough to get what I need to do done, and it's
• 1:03:38
  the same and like, but I, because of that, I try to do the
• 1:03:42
  same thing. I was like, I want to get as much of this in the
• 1:03:44
  camera as possible, because I don't want to spend all that
• 1:03:48
  time afterwards in the, you know, in post, you know, like,
• 1:03:54
  it's, uh, I'm sure there are people out there who do it,
• 1:03:57
  because we have somebody who just does post, and that's all
• 1:04:00
  their job, whatever, and my job is to do the photography and
• 1:04:03
  whatever. But like for me, that's not the case. And it's
• 1:04:06
  like, Okay, I am. I want to get this as good as possible, right?
• 1:04:12
  Steve Vaccariello: It's not film. Should feel that should
• 1:04:14
  kind of approach it that way. I think, I mean, you know, that's
• 1:04:17
  my opinion, but because we know the value of being able to make
• 1:04:23
  that photo, because back then, we had nothing. I mean, unless
• 1:04:26
  you were gonna, like, scan it into like, a sci tech scanner,
• 1:04:29
  which was all crazy stuff. I mean, we that was it. We had to
• 1:04:32
  get it right. And if we didn't do it in the camera, we'd have
• 1:04:35
  to get in the dark room and and dodge or burn or do crazy things
• 1:04:39
  in the dark room to make it happen.
• 1:04:41
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you had to, like, you had to do all that
• 1:04:43
  stuff. Doing that stuff in the darkroom is, like it was a
• 1:04:46
  process. And I talked to people about how the bar has been
• 1:04:50
  lowered, you know, as far as you know, editing and they don't
• 1:04:56
  understand, like he we talked about earlier, you you marked.
• 1:04:59
  Things up and you went back and you dodged and you burned and
• 1:05:02
  you did different things, or you cropped things, whatever. But it
• 1:05:05
  took a long time now you do that stuff, and it's like seconds to
• 1:05:08
  do it, but that's that's it. That bar has been lowered so far
• 1:05:15
  that people take it for granted. I think in some ways they're
• 1:05:17
  like, like you said, like, I can fix this. I can take 30 seconds
• 1:05:20
  and fix something in the background of my photo, right?
• 1:05:23
  Or like my lighting in the light whatever in real life, and do
• 1:05:27
  that, and then that saves me two hours of work or whatever in the
• 1:05:34
  computer. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Sure. So one final
• 1:05:41
  question here, like, if you were starting out today, either in
• 1:05:46
  the Midwest or here New York City area, is there something
• 1:05:50
  that you would do differently, and what would you do the same?
• 1:05:55
  Steve Vaccariello: Oh, um, there. You know, I thought hard
• 1:05:59
  about that, and there's really not a whole lot I would do
• 1:06:04
  differently I I certainly think the way I learned my trade, I'm
• 1:06:10
  very happy with i Nothing really comes out as Something crazy
• 1:06:20
  that I would do different, because I'm happy with how my
• 1:06:23
  career has progressed. I'm happy with where it is now. I'm happy
• 1:06:28
  that I like took chances, and I'm happy I did it my own way.
• 1:06:32
  You know, being a little more bold and a little more daring
• 1:06:36
  and experimenting a lot, you know, with not knowing the
• 1:06:39
  results all the time. It really, my career is, I'm blessed. I
• 1:06:46
  mean, I'm really pretty happy with, like, everything, where it
• 1:06:51
  is and how it has gone. And I'm, I'm really happy that I had a
• 1:06:54
  good 25 years of shooting film, you know, I think I'm so happy
• 1:07:00
  that I had that, and I was just born into the digital world,
• 1:07:03
  like tied into my whole experiences with the dark room
• 1:07:07
  and and actually made, you know, making photographs with my own
• 1:07:11
  two hands. Like I can go up into my archives and say, Look,
• 1:07:14
  there's a half a million photos up there that I actually touched
• 1:07:18
  with my own two hands. I made these pictures. I touched them
• 1:07:22
  in the developer and in the fixer, and I did all that. I'm
• 1:07:24
  really thankful that I learned on film, and I think it made me
• 1:07:29
  when this whole digital thing started, it gave me a leg up on
• 1:07:32
  on people that just started digitally, because I had a
• 1:07:35
  fundamental understanding of film, which made me much
• 1:07:40
  stronger when I pursued, like, the digital aspects that are out
• 1:07:44
  there today. You know, I could, I got more of, like, got a
• 1:07:46
  handle on it. I think that something
• 1:07:49
  Casey Fatchett: else you mentioned early on was the you
• 1:07:52
  had stuff for your clients, but you were also like, I'm shooting
• 1:07:56
  all this stuff for myself too, yeah. And it's just like, I
• 1:07:59
  think that that having all that stuff for yourself, and there
• 1:08:04
  are lots of things that I shoot that are just for me, that I
• 1:08:07
  don't even share with anyone, yeah, it's just for me, and
• 1:08:10
  Steve Vaccariello: the day we stop doing that is a bad day.
• 1:08:13
  Yeah, I it's so important all my assistants, and all a lot of
• 1:08:17
  people that I used to work for. They would be like, Well, geez,
• 1:08:21
  you have the day off today. Why are you calling this model, and
• 1:08:25
  why are you going and doing this big shoot over at this thing?
• 1:08:29
  And that's like, a lot of work. And it's to say I'm like, I'm
• 1:08:33
  like, because I can, and because I want to, and I want to leave,
• 1:08:37
  like, a legacy and a big body of work when I'm gone, and I want
• 1:08:41
  to hone my skills. And the next time I get hired for a job, all
• 1:08:45
  that personal work is going to come back and help me, yeah,
• 1:08:48
  like, tenfold, like, Oh, I remember when I went and did
• 1:08:52
  this. Oh, this job is almost just like that. And, you know, I
• 1:08:56
  never want to sit and rest on my laurels. I always want to be
• 1:09:00
  busy. The more I shoot, the better I I'll go on vacation
• 1:09:03
  with my wife, and we'll be in some city, and I'll be like, Oh
• 1:09:07
  yeah, I I know this dancer that lives here. I'm gonna, once you
• 1:09:11
  go to the spa, I'm gonna go shoot her for like, three hours.
• 1:09:15
  She's like, but we're on vacation. What do you what do
• 1:09:18
  you mean? I'm like, I got this idea. I want to do this even
• 1:09:22
  like I'm all the time, like it never stops. That is the most
• 1:09:26
  important advice I can give anybody that's starting. Is
• 1:09:29
  shoot for yourself, shoot, shoot, shoot and never stop.
• 1:09:40
  Casey Fatchett: In the world of photography, things change fast.
• 1:09:43
  New tools drop. Platforms shift their algorithm. Sometimes, gear
• 1:09:48
  brands will change the game. If you're busy shooting, how are
• 1:09:51
  you supposed to keep up with all of this without burning out? The
• 1:09:55
  answer is, you power up. That's right, the power up the new
• 1:09:59
  monthly newsletter from the nerdy photographer. This isn't
• 1:10:03
  just another email that's going to. Sit in your inbox. It's your
• 1:10:07
  monthly briefing on the industry news that actually matters to
• 1:10:11
  your business and your craft. But we don't just give you the
• 1:10:15
  headlines. Subscribers get exclusive power up only content
• 1:10:18
  you won't find on our social feeds or on our website. And if
• 1:10:22
  we want to talk perks, every issue, features, unlockable
• 1:10:25
  discounts, we're talking savings on the services you use and the
• 1:10:30
  gear you've been eyeing. It's like a cheat code for your
• 1:10:33
  photography budget. Don't just stay in the loop. Get ahead of
• 1:10:37
  it. Head over to nerdy photographer comm slash
• 1:10:40
  newsletter to subscribe for free today, the power up knowledge is
• 1:10:44
  power and let's get you plugged in. Hey, folks, big news from
• 1:10:48
  our friends over at SiteGround web hosting, they have just
• 1:10:51
  increased the storage capacity of two of their packages by 150%
• 1:10:55
  the Grow big, which I use because I'm managing the nerdy
• 1:10:59
  photographer website, my wedding photography website, my non
• 1:11:03
  wedding photography website, my art photography website, and
• 1:11:06
  some other sites, is now 50 gigs of storage. It used to be 20. I
• 1:11:10
  had gotten the message recently, actually, this was up over 80%
• 1:11:14
  of my storage capacity. So I was thinking, why don't we add a
• 1:11:18
  delete but now I don't have to delete anything, because it's
• 1:11:22
  now 50 gigs. The Go geek package, which used to be 40
• 1:11:25
  gigs of storage, is now 100 gigabytes of storage. So if you
• 1:11:29
  have, like, a lot of video or, again, multiple websites that
• 1:11:33
  you need to manage, that can be a great option. If you only need
• 1:11:37
  one website, the they have a startup package which has 10
• 1:11:41
  gigabytes of storage for just 390 $3 a month for the first
• 1:11:44
  year. The grow big, the one that I use that has 50 gigs of
• 1:11:48
  storage is $5 a month for the first year, and the Go geek 100
• 1:11:52
  gigabits of storage $8 for the first year. All of those include
• 1:11:56
  free domain, free SSL, free email and free site migrations.
• 1:11:59
  So what are you waiting for? Head over to
• 1:12:02
  siteground.com/go/nerdy that's siteground.com
• 1:12:05
  siteground.com/go/nerdy, and get this offer today.
• 1:12:15
  Hey, now for my favorite part of the show, what's that? Say?
• 1:12:21
  Useless information. This is always death. And now Steve,
• 1:12:29
  it's time for the useless information. For this episode.
• 1:12:35
  True or False galaxies are more or less evenly distributed
• 1:12:42
  throughout space, throughout the universe,
• 1:12:51
  Steve Vaccariello: true,
• 1:12:52
  Casey Fatchett: false, ooh, there are massive, quote,
• 1:12:55
  unquote, Galaxy filaments that stretch across The observable
• 1:13:00
  universe that contain hundreds of millions of galaxies. On the
• 1:13:04
  other hand, there are massive voids, where that go on for
• 1:13:09
  hundreds of millions of light years, where there are no
• 1:13:13
  galaxies at all.
• 1:13:14
  Steve Vaccariello: Wow. Very interesting.
• 1:13:17
  Casey Fatchett: There's a lot of space. It is actually space.
• 1:13:23
  Steve Vaccariello: Wow. I was gonna say false, but then I
• 1:13:25
  changed my mind at the last minute.
• 1:13:28
  Casey Fatchett: Well, you think that maybe, like, if everything
• 1:13:30
  kind of starts at the middle or whatever, but it's like, how
• 1:13:32
  they form and shape us is that there's still, like, these huge,
• 1:13:36
  vast, empty space. That's kind of what freaks me out. Because
• 1:13:39
  we talk about like, you know, oh, if we could travel
• 1:13:41
  throughout the universe, like, what if you end up in like this,
• 1:13:44
  just like nowhere,
• 1:13:48
  Steve Vaccariello: yeah, in some, like, deep black hole or
• 1:13:50
  something.
• 1:13:51
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, that's like, talking about, like a void
• 1:13:53
  of it's like 100 million light years across, like, thinking
• 1:13:57
  about the just the amount of like space where there's just
• 1:13:59
  like, nothing, yeah, that's kind of creepy. Steve, thank you so
• 1:14:06
  much for being here. I really appreciate you coming on the
• 1:14:08
  show.
• 1:14:10
  Steve Vaccariello: It's been such a fun time talking with
• 1:14:12
  you, Casey, I love your podcast, and I love being able to talk to
• 1:14:17
  another photographer like this for more than like five minutes
• 1:14:20
  to actually get into an in depth conversation like this. And I
• 1:14:24
  think it's really cool what you're doing, and I'm very
• 1:14:26
  honored and thankful to be a part of it.
• 1:14:29
  Casey Fatchett: Very welcome. But it's your local we can do
• 1:14:31
  this again sometime. Where can people find you on the internet?
• 1:14:36
  Steve Vaccariello: Well, there's the website is Steve vac.com s,
• 1:14:40
  t, e, v, e, v, like Victor, acc.com and I have two different
• 1:14:47
  Instagrams. It's Steve dot vac, and then Steve underscore vac,
• 1:14:56
  one of my Instagrams is all dance fatigue. Fee, because
• 1:15:01
  that, like I said, is one of my biggest obsessions and hobbies,
• 1:15:04
  and the other one is fashion portrait everything else. So I
• 1:15:09
  kind of figured I would separate the two out, because my dance is
• 1:15:13
  so intense and it's very, you know, one sided, but I like to
• 1:15:16
  kind of keep all that together, and then my commercial and all
• 1:15:19
  my other stuff is at the Steve dot bank, so I'll include
• 1:15:23
  Casey Fatchett: those links in the Episode Notes, so anybody
• 1:15:24
  who looking for that can find you there, Steven again, it was
• 1:15:30
  awesome. I really appreciate you coming by.
• 1:15:32
  Steve Vaccariello: Thank you so much, Casey, if you have any
• 1:15:34
  other follow ups after anything,
• 1:15:39
  Casey Fatchett: and we're back and all in one piece. I might
• 1:15:43
  add, I'm not sure if we have you to thank for that. Hush.
• 1:15:50
  Everything is fine. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Steve
• 1:15:53
  Vaccarello. You'll find Steve's info, including links to his
• 1:15:56
  Instagram, etc, in the Episode Notes, and be sure to follow
• 1:15:59
  along with the socials in YouTube is the nerdy
• 1:16:02
  photographer, so you don't miss us out on our live streams. We
• 1:16:05
  got Q and A's live portfolio reviews and much more going on
• 1:16:08
  between episodes. So don't miss out if you have disarmed this,
• 1:16:14
  why are all of the lights on this device flashing? Not to
• 1:16:19
  worry. Just remind me where I put my wire cutters until next
• 1:16:23
  time everybody Stay safe and stay nerdy beating about
• 1:16:41
  Unknown: you better get better. Get better. Get better. Listen,
• 1:16:45
  you.