Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 163 - The Art of Light and Melanin: Photographing Black Subjects Beautifully

Transcript

163 - The Art of Light and Melanin: Photographing Black Subjects Beautifully · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:04
  Casey Fatchett: I try adjusting the contrast a little bit
• 0:07
  Unknown: more right there. Oh, hello. Welcome to the nerdy
• 0:11
  photographer podcast. I'm your host. Casey Fatchett. In
• 0:14
  addition to providing informative and entertaining
• 0:16
  photography related content, I also go on adventures with the
• 0:19
  crew of the starship Fibonacci. Right now, we're working on
• 0:21
  customizing some of our cameras so that we can capture images of
• 0:25
  the residents of the planet that we're on, because most of the
• 0:28
  imaging equipment can't display their true colors. In fact, most
• 0:31
  of our cameras can't detect them at all. I have increased
• 0:35
  sensitivity in the ultraviolet and infrared ranges by 15%
• 0:41
  thanks. Fib in this episode of the podcast, I'm speaking with
• 0:44
  regular guests on the show, Leighton da Costa about how to
• 0:47
  best photograph black skin. Leighton provides some helpful
• 0:50
  tips to make sure you're capturing your melanated
• 0:53
  subjects in all of their beauty. All that after the break, we are
• 0:59
  locked on at optimal sensitivity. Excellent.
• 1:03
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• 3:07
  Leighton DaCosta: well, that, I mean, I would say, in some ways,
• 3:10
  that would be good, but it's kind of funny now that we're
• 3:13
  seeing a very kind of, how can I put it this way, a weird
• 3:19
  situation going on where a lot of commodity and luxury items
• 3:26
  have the same industry pressures as government expenditures,
• 3:35
  government purchases, as well as Corporate America. So you know,
• 3:42
  it's very rare. Do you have where the government's not
• 3:44
  spending money? Real Estate's not spending money. Luxury items
• 3:49
  are still getting bought, but I think they're getting bought on
• 3:54
  FOMO more than anything else, absolutely. And it's funny
• 4:00
  because, and I know we haven't started yet, but it's funny that
• 4:03
  when you go into as we're going into WPPI season, and everything
• 4:07
  else which kind of relates to what we want to talk about,
• 4:13
  Annie, Annie at WPPI as the keynote speaker, which is a huge
• 4:19
  Deal, like, like in I think she's probably, you know, not a
• 4:24
  wedding photographer, somebody who has shot weddings, but not a
• 4:28
  wedding photographer like, you know, a gentleman. Now, I think
• 4:30
  she's probably the biggest draw that they've had at WP vi for
• 4:36
  probably about 20 years.
• 4:38
  Casey Fatchett: Well, as we were talking about before, I think
• 4:41
  that the numbers had gone down. So that might be an attempt to,
• 4:44
  like, try to boost.
• 4:47
  Leighton DaCosta: Well, I hope so, because I think right now,
• 4:50
  we are going through the change that we saw, probably in 2008 to
• 4:58
  2012 Where photography truly made the digital photography
• 5:06
  transition. And it went from being, it became democratized.
• 5:11
  So it went from being, I mean, it's still technically is, but
• 5:15
  it went from being an old white man industry to being a young
• 5:23
  talent that was now, and especially in the wedding and
• 5:25
  portrait side, where the customers and the providers
• 5:29
  started the match, you know, and you know, we talked a couple
• 5:34
  weeks ago when I was up there for our watches, and I like to
• 5:39
  go on some of the watch forums to see how a lot of women are
• 5:43
  don't like how the watch companies are marketing towards
• 5:47
  women and and I had to, you know, my thought is watch
• 5:53
  companies market towards their buyers. A majority of buyers of
• 5:58
  watches are men, right, even when they're buying for women.
• 6:05
  So therefore, instead of making a smaller version of a
• 6:08
  Submariner, they make a pink version of a Submariner, or they
• 6:13
  make put like diamonds and sparkly on it, because that's
• 6:16
  what women like, right? That's what kids think that women like.
• 6:20
  That's what they think, right? And so I think when you start
• 6:24
  going into the photography side, back in 2008 most of the
• 6:28
  customers of consumer photography were women. They're
• 6:33
  the ones that arrange the family photos. They're the ones that
• 6:36
  arrange the wedding photos. They did a lot of that stuff. And now
• 6:40
  for the first time, you had women who were on the other side
• 6:43
  of that table providing that service. Yeah. And so now we get
• 6:47
  fast forward to now you have, we've gone beyond getting, I'm
• 6:54
  not saying it doesn't happen, but we've gone beyond getting
• 6:58
  cameras for Christmas and not starting a photography business
• 7:01
  to where we were at a point to where everybody's utilizing AI
• 7:04
  to some point. And photography is not about just the product,
• 7:11
  because I can go on Google Gemini and making some great
• 7:14
  headshots, regardless of what we photographers would like to
• 7:17
  think, right? Yeah, but yes, it doesn't look like me, but it
• 7:22
  looks like a good resemblance of me. And the what you're now
• 7:28
  trying to pay a photographer for is to capture your essence,
• 7:32
  which the AI can't capture. Yeah, and so, and that's why I
• 7:35
  said it would become democratized to where, if we're
• 7:39
  not using the new technology, we get canceled out because we
• 7:44
  don't have that business. We're artists, right? We're artists.
• 7:47
  And so we don't have that business acumen to say, Okay,
• 7:51
  how do we leverage and exploit so which I will go to in there.
• 7:56
  How I leverage, exploit dark skin when I was in Charleston,
• 8:01
  South Carolina, that's a unique area of the US, because they
• 8:07
  have a lot of people who are not too too many generations removed
• 8:14
  or diluted from slavery. And if you ever hear about the Gullah
• 8:18
  Geechee, the big thing about the geeky most of those slaves came
• 8:21
  from the Ogeechee River in Savannah. And the big thing
• 8:27
  about those slaves were that they were from Western Africa, I
• 8:30
  want to say around the Ghana area. Somebody can correct me if
• 8:32
  I'm wrong, but they were well versed in growing rice and
• 8:38
  indigo and tea and things that you do not equate America
• 8:44
  plantations with is rice, indigo and tea, right?
• 8:47
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, not necessarily something that you
• 8:50
  thought of like as staple crops for the South, right?
• 8:53
  Leighton DaCosta: And in Charleston, they have tea
• 8:54
  plantations, indigo plantations, black rice was used to make
• 8:58
  Indigo, right? So it was used as a dye. And if you know anything
• 9:03
  about rice production, like in Asia, with all the technology
• 9:09
  that is out there now, it's really still artisanal, where
• 9:16
  your family passes down this tribal knowledge of how deep and
• 9:20
  how wet and everything that the soil has to be. So in
• 9:24
  Charleston, you have a lot of people who have this very dark,
• 9:28
  dark pigment. And as we spoke about before, there's undertones
• 9:31
  in that skin. And so too long to read, but the TLDR of a
• 9:38
  situation of why I think photographers are having even a
• 9:41
  harder time now shooting dark skin is because photographers
• 9:48
  are shooting more and more in color that it sees. That's my
• 9:53
  hot take. That's my Stephen A Smith hot take, right? They're
• 9:56
  shooting more and more in color than they ever. Have to wear
• 10:00
  black and white photography is different. And think about this
• 10:05
  30 years ago, you know, you had the difference between Ilford
• 10:10
  film and Fuji film as far as which ones you wanted to use for
• 10:14
  black and white photography, especially if people use sports
• 10:16
  and just different tones that were inside of that, compared to
• 10:19
  using Kodak film for portraits and stuff. And it's hard to
• 10:25
  believe that 30 years ago we were doing that. It's hard to
• 10:27
  believe that 30 years ago, payphones were normal, right?
• 10:32
  And I think that more so than anything else, is because while
• 10:37
  we use histograms, we use histograms for exposure of the
• 10:41
  image, and not, not necessarily, for exposure of the subject. And
• 10:46
  so when your histograms are based off of 15 to 18% grayscale
• 10:50
  white, yeah, and you get something that's 85% grayscale
• 10:56
  white, right? Because we say it's white, not black, right? So
• 11:00
  grayscale, white, the nuances that come with that is, yeah, I
• 11:07
  might be exposed for it, but the color doesn't look right, or
• 11:10
  it's too dark, or whatever. Yet we can shoot Harry Connick Jr.
• 11:17
  Is he still alive?
• 11:17
  Casey Fatchett: Yes, okay,
• 11:19
  Leighton DaCosta: all right. Who isn't known to have the best
• 11:24
  hand in the world, but it's known to be a very snappy
• 11:28
  dresser that will be in a tux while he's playing the piano.
• 11:31
  I'm thinking, that's right, he plays a piano, right? And we
• 11:34
  shoot the lapel like you can't see it, because this is going to
• 11:38
  be audio, but I have a black hoodie on, and you can see the
• 11:41
  difference of the shade of the inside of the black hoodie
• 11:44
  compared to the outside of the hoodie of the outside. Yeah,
• 11:47
  there's a difference. And this camera, which is a DJI camera
• 11:55
  that I'm shooting on, perfectly exposes for that. But yet we,
• 11:57
  with our technologies, don't do that, and we make an excuse
• 11:57
  that, oh, I don't know how to shoot black people. To shoot
• 11:58
  black people. Black people are harder to achieve. But that
• 12:06
  being said, the question I would ask, what I wanted to shoot back
• 12:10
  to you is, because you threw me out some questions, and I look
• 12:13
  reviewed through them, right? Why? Why? After 1015, years of
• 12:21
  us having this conversation now, other than being able to shoot
• 12:25
  in color all the time, is it still hard for photographers to
• 12:30
  and with the Sony, which does a great job in computational
• 12:34
  photography inside of the camera, and Fuji, which does a
• 12:38
  great job of computational photography inside the camera,
• 12:43
  not to mention iPhones and stuff like that. Why do we still have
• 12:44
  such a hard time exposing exposing for dark skin? I think
• 12:50
  because I mean, and as a white guy who has photographed lots of
• 12:54
  people of varying symptoms and a lot of time at weddings, I'm
• 12:58
  dealing with people who are wildly different skin tone. So
• 13:02
  I'll have somebody who's one, you know, you have one partner
• 13:06
  who's a very light skin tone, somebody who's a very much
• 13:10
  darker skin tone, is because of what you're talking about there.
• 13:12
  Like you don't think about the undertones for one thing that
• 13:16
  the camera technology is not, obviously not considering that
• 13:20
  it's, thinking about things in terms of highlight and, you
• 13:26
  know, like and black, like it's either black or white, that it's
• 13:31
  very you can I always talk about this as, like, some thing that
• 13:35
  people don't think about when they're exposing for is like,
• 13:39
  they don't think about a metering method that they're
• 13:43
  using. They're not thinking about like, Oh, am I using spot
• 13:45
  metering? Am I using, you know, center weighted? Am I using,
• 13:49
  like, an overall but they're like, Oh, why is it that my, you
• 13:55
  know, in this shot that I took in a wedding, people are
• 14:00
  dancing. Everything is really under is really overexposed, or
• 14:06
  underexposed, or whatever. And I'll find like, Well, it's
• 14:09
  because a big like, what metering mode we're using, and a
• 14:12
  big chunk of this is white, like somebody with a white shirt,
• 14:16
  like they took their jacket, their jacket off, their touch
• 14:18
  jacket off, and they got a white shirt on, and they stepped in
• 14:21
  front of the camera during, like, on the dance floor, and
• 14:26
  that's like 60% of the frame is somebody's like, shoulder got in
• 14:31
  the way with their like, purely white shirt. So everything else
• 14:35
  is not exposed properly, or the flash being blue, right, coming
• 14:41
  up, right? The flash is still it's kind of funny that we talk
• 14:43
  about mono blocks and whether or not Godox is enough white or
• 14:48
  compared to pro photo, compared to Braun color or whatnot. But
• 14:51
  the the flash tubes are still blue, right? The Flash tubes are
• 14:54
  still coming out. Added this ice, I want to say a. 35 or 3000
• 15:02
  Kelvin type blue that comes out. So we're, it's something that
• 15:07
  you just said that I think, and I know we got to get started,
• 15:12
  but
• 15:13
  Casey Fatchett: I think we, I think we started. Welcome to the
• 15:16
  nerdy photographer podcast, everybody. I'm your host, Casey.
• 15:20
  We're here with Leighton da Costa. We're into it. I think, I
• 15:24
  think we've already started having the discussion. So I
• 15:26
  think,
• 15:26
  Leighton DaCosta: Okay, well, so I will at least say this. Hey,
• 15:30
  this is LD, Leighton da Costa, give you a drop for your thing.
• 15:35
  Your intro. This is LD, late in the Costa. And I am a semi,
• 15:41
  Semi. Semi I can use that word, semi retired photographer down
• 15:47
  here in Florida, because that's what people do in Florida. We
• 15:48
  semi semi retired, which means that as long as, uh, I have, as
• 15:52
  long as I have a camera and there is a tax advantage, I will
• 15:54
  still be shooting, which is what we do here in Florida, tax
• 15:59
  advantage, as opposed to you people in New Jersey,
• 16:04
  Casey Fatchett: What do you mean, you people.
• 16:07
  Leighton DaCosta: What do you mean? You people? So as we talk
• 16:13
  about it's something that you just said. So three things I
• 16:16
  think that really affects us on how we shoot, just people,
• 16:22
  different shades of people, and things that we're not doing
• 16:26
  anymore, that we used to do regularly to 1015, 2030, years
• 16:31
  ago. And once you learn how to do these, you never had the
• 16:36
  problem on being able to expose or shoot or whatnot. Metering
• 16:40
  the light. How are we metering? Are we, like you said, are we
• 16:43
  doing incidental metering? Are we doing spot meter, right? And
• 16:47
  one of the things with, you know, in studio, if you have a
• 16:53
  light meter, you usually are going to actually shoot, you
• 16:57
  know, the incidental light. You're actually going to shoot
• 16:59
  what the light is actually receiving, what the subject is
• 17:01
  actually receiving, as opposed to what's reflecting off the
• 17:03
  subject exposure. There's something I used to have when I
• 17:07
  used to do weddings, especially down here in Florida, outdoor
• 17:10
  weddings, where the sun changes every 15 minutes, and it's
• 17:14
  angle, and you either have the benefit of shooting in broad
• 17:19
  High Noon from 10 to two where, where the shadows are harsh, but
• 17:24
  the color temperature is consistent, right? Or you're
• 17:27
  going to shoot in from three o'clock to five o'clock and
• 17:31
  beyond, where it gets warmer and warmer and warmer as you go on.
• 17:36
  And so the challenge that comes back is that back in the days we
• 17:40
  used to have this thing, which they still make, they still
• 17:42
  sell, call an expo desk. And the big thing about the expo dist
• 17:47
  serve two purposes. It one, it helped you to expose for this,
• 17:51
  for the scene based off of the light that was actually coming
• 17:54
  from the light source. But it also allows you to do custom
• 17:58
  white balance right in camera, which was a huge difference,
• 18:02
  especially even if you're shooting RAW, which 10 years ago
• 18:07
  with the, I want to say it's the Sony A 7r which was really the
• 18:12
  big, big, big dig, in my opinion, Digital Camera pioneer,
• 18:18
  and the 35 millimeter frame space. And we all know that Sony
• 18:25
  had awful, awful color science coming out of the camera in the
• 18:30
  beginning, compared to Canon and Nikon. But, and I say digital
• 18:36
  space, the mirrorless digital space. But the thing about it
• 18:41
  is, if you could do custom white balance, the once that was set
• 18:47
  you were shooting weddings, that you could edit pretty much in,
• 18:50
  you know, 40 minutes to two hours right after the wedding.
• 18:54
  And then the third thing, exposure, color exposure. So
• 18:57
  both lighting exposure and color exposure metering, which will
• 19:00
  lead you to visual perception. I think when we look at somebody
• 19:09
  who is dark skin, we may like how they their skin looks, but
• 19:16
  we may not like how their skin looks on them in frame or in
• 19:20
  picture. So therefore we add different colors, different
• 19:24
  undertones, different pigments or whatever, because we didn't
• 19:27
  capture it right in what their essence was, and we want to
• 19:32
  expose them in the same ways that we expose, you know, white
• 19:38
  people right now, that being said, it wasn't until I went
• 19:43
  overseas that I realized that guys that work with a lot of
• 19:48
  younger to Asian women, which which shoot very, very their
• 19:51
  skin tends to be a lot more paler, right by by societal
• 19:56
  design, I'll say that, or people like. Uh, what's your question?
• 20:01
  Name is it? Live, not live, Tyler. Live. Tyler is fairly
• 20:04
  pale too, but I'm thinking of Anne Hathaway, yes, very pale.
• 20:10
  That it is harder for them to shoot color for them as well,
• 20:14
  because they go below that, that that 15% threshold, right,
• 20:18
  right? And people have hard times lighting them. Yes, I'm
• 20:22
  saying it's so and then they make them look ghostly and
• 20:24
  ghastly at the same time. And they make black folks look
• 20:27
  either ash, like red, orange or very, very ashy or whatever, to
• 20:34
  compensate for that.
• 20:35
  Casey Fatchett: Okay, I think here's a question for you, like
• 20:38
  in this is not a question that we have discussed beforehand,
• 20:42
  the like, something I noticed a lot in the is the use of
• 20:48
  different the colored, like gelled light started more I feel
• 20:55
  like, with people using that with With black skin models, you
• 21:01
  get, like the very orange in, in cyan type of thing, then, then
• 21:08
  with so that you'd have like, those highlights in the skin to
• 21:15
  bring up, like to bring that that, like, not have just like A
• 21:19
  white light on someone with darker skin tones, then with
• 21:25
  very pale models, because, like, the very pale models would just
• 21:28
  come across as, like, you're just yellow, you're just yellow,
• 21:31
  right?
• 21:32
  Leighton DaCosta: Like you don't, they don't usually use
• 21:33
  CTOs with, with, with very pale subjects, right? And that you
• 21:40
  know, if, or if they do, they use them as accent lighting, not
• 21:43
  for the main front line. If you know that, I love that fire and
• 21:49
  ice type, you know, blue and red gels, or whatever, with dark
• 21:53
  skin because of how a, you know, the specular highlight that
• 21:56
  still comes off of that. I know that's an old term, specular
• 21:59
  highlights. I haven't heard that in a while, but I
• 22:01
  Casey Fatchett: was just thinking it, and I was like,
• 22:06
  Leighton DaCosta: but that I still think, and I'm going to
• 22:11
  use her for an example. Hopefully I can use her, because
• 22:14
  I think right now in the education space, using off
• 22:19
  camera lighting and different creating light of creative
• 22:23
  lighting techniques. Ms Adler, right? That she has been very,
• 22:28
  very deliberate in how she teaches lighting, especially for
• 22:35
  different skin tones, right? And I think she does a pretty
• 22:39
  exceptional use now, I don't know how much of that comes from
• 22:45
  the area where she grew up versus the area where she lives,
• 22:50
  right? And when I say that is this, I grew up in Florida, New
• 22:56
  York, well, Brooklyn, New York, and I'm Jamaican, right? So I
• 23:03
  tend to see dark skinned people all the time. If you're from,
• 23:07
  and I can't remember where, exactly where she's from, from,
• 23:10
  like, if you're from, like, Ithaca and you grew up near the
• 23:13
  Finger Lakes or the cat skills, you're not seeing so many
• 23:20
  differentiators and different shades of black, right? And so
• 23:23
  it's like when you go shop for chocolate, there's a difference
• 23:24
  between milk chocolate and dark chocolate, but even when you go
• 23:25
  into dark chocolate, you start going 4570 8588, 90, 92% cacao.
• 23:38
  Yeah, right. There's a difference in just that texture
• 23:41
  and the shape. So I think when you start coming back to that
• 23:46
  other side of hey, they're using gels, they're using this.
• 23:51
  They're using light. And sometimes that stuff was used to
• 23:53
  compensate for not being able to light, and sometimes it's used
• 23:58
  to enhance, if we use it as a recipe, we use it as cooking.
• 24:02
  Are you using salt and pepper to enhance the flavor of the dish?
• 24:09
  Are you using salt and pepper and hot sauce to mask a bad dish
• 24:16
  or badly a poorly cooked dish? Going back to when we were
• 24:20
  talking about the flash, that blue bulb of flash that comes
• 24:24
  out the old wedding trick is when you're shooting and all of
• 24:29
  a sudden, some guest, or whatever has shot their their
• 24:34
  flash, right while you're shooting? Well, that's gonna be
• 24:38
  black and white, yeah? Because right,
• 24:42
  or you've got those the like, the DJ lights, like, like, come
• 24:48
  on all of a sudden, and you're like, Oh, that's a black and
• 24:50
  white one,
• 24:51
  exactly. And, and I think that's kind of one of those things to
• 24:55
  where. And I'll throw one last thing. So earlier, I said that
• 25:01
  we market to our customers. When I was in Charleston, like I
• 25:06
  said, a lot of my customers were dark skin, and it wasn't even so
• 25:10
  much that, oh, only black photographers can shoot dark
• 25:13
  skin. Even a lot of black photographers were had a hard
• 25:16
  time shooting dark skin, right, because, because a lot of us
• 25:21
  were not taught some of the old traditional ways of how to light
• 25:25
  and shoot people. In general, we weren't taught and given the
• 25:28
  bowling ball challenge. I don't know if you where you take a a
• 25:32
  black bowler ball or a spear or a bottle or something, and to be
• 25:36
  able to use and adjust, to be able to shoot that ball or that
• 25:39
  black sphere, that orb perfectly, because that orb
• 25:42
  represents a space, and then you can take a dark bowling ball and
• 25:47
  a red bowling ball and a white bowling ball and get the get
• 25:53
  similar exposures to them. They, you know, we and then we weren't
• 25:58
  taught a cheat code. So those are things that I still
• 26:01
  encourage people to learn, like I said, if you don't grow up
• 26:05
  with that perception of what different textures and skin
• 26:09
  tones and whatnot look like, and to where they become just
• 26:13
  normal, to where you can look at Naomi Campbell and be like, Oh
• 26:19
  my gosh, her skin is so beautiful. And it's to look at
• 26:22
  Anne Hathaway and still look and say, oh my gosh, your skin is so
• 26:25
  beautiful, right? You know, it's like dark chocolate milk, milk,
• 26:29
  you know, whatever it is. I think that's where it becomes
• 26:32
  hard to shoot those extremes. And what we consider cultural
• 26:35
  extremes,
• 26:36
  Casey Fatchett: well, you bring up that, like getting used to
• 26:43
  it, or having the exposure to, like, what are the
• 26:46
  misconceptions that people go into, like, trying to, like,
• 26:50
  light, darker skin tones, like, what is it? What are like, the
• 26:54
  big misconceptions that people just like, go in and think,
• 26:57
  Okay, well, I can do this. I haven't done it before, but,
• 27:00
  like, I can I know how to I know how to do lighting, right? What
• 27:04
  would you say? Like, the biggest misconception is
• 27:07
  Leighton DaCosta: so lack of practice. Like I said the
• 27:09
  bowling ball thing, lack of practice or not having a canned
• 27:15
  lighting setup to start from before doing certain people in
• 27:22
  general, right? So it's like, if I am a photographer that always
• 27:28
  puts my lighting source on the open side that I'm shooting,
• 27:33
  right and as opposed to shooting from the closed sides and
• 27:36
  having, you know, to give this cinematic look, well, I may
• 27:41
  always have, and you see me with my light on there, I may always
• 27:43
  have my male subject looking into the light the same way I
• 27:48
  would have my female subject looking in the light, not
• 27:50
  realizing that it softens both of them. And for certain
• 27:56
  subjects, I may want one to look more assertive or aggressive or
• 28:02
  gender terms, masculine versus feminine, right? And, and to me,
• 28:07
  that's the same thing with lighting. To say, Oh, I can't
• 28:10
  use harsh light. I can't use a soft box, or I have to use this.
• 28:17
  We get away from the actual subject lighting, the actual
• 28:19
  subject itself, right? To just to say, hey, we're going to
• 28:24
  create a look. And in this day and age where editing has been
• 28:32
  very, very democratized by software, right? That software
• 28:37
  is pre programmed with the visual perception of the
• 28:41
  programmer, of what a person should look like, exposure, skin
• 28:47
  tone and color. Yeah. So some software, I'm not going to pimp
• 28:53
  any software out. Some software is better at that than others.
• 28:59
  Some software has had to go through iterations to get to a
• 29:01
  certain point now. And once again, if it's garbage in,
• 29:06
  garbage out, if it's not balanced, to go in, that
• 29:11
  software is just going to take those, the information on the
• 29:14
  pixels, and say, Hey, based off of this, this is what I think it
• 29:17
  should look like. And then you have somebody, just like I said,
• 29:20
  using the DJI right now, I know that if I shot this on my Nikon,
• 29:23
  exact same if I'm looking at it, I think I am right at 3300
• 29:30
  Kelvin, the DJI has put my white background almost perfectly.
• 29:37
  White gives a little blue tone on it, but it has me almost like
• 29:42
  an incandescent tone to where I think I'm being exposed right
• 29:45
  around 6000 Kelvin ish, and I know that that's not what it
• 29:50
  looks like. And I've noticed this when I've shot watches and
• 29:53
  I'm using my co branded. Light setup from one of the
• 30:03
  photography stores in New York, right, which gives you the
• 30:11
  benefit of local service. So right, that way, I don't, I can
• 30:15
  still save that for a possible sponsor, or we don't. But
• 30:18
  anyway, I know that it's model lamps are warmer. I just now
• 30:25
  recently got a set of apertures right which the coolness that
• 30:32
  perfect 5500 makes such a huge difference in shooting video and
• 30:39
  on even how the DJI picks up because of the quality of the
• 30:45
  light. And last, oh, I forgot about that, the quality, quality
• 30:49
  of the light source, if we're like because we are such a
• 30:54
  visual, we want it to look right, that even sometimes if we
• 31:00
  get the skin to look right, the rest of the image looks off,
• 31:06
  because the quality of the light source is not on. The subject
• 31:08
  may not be as great as what we're trying to achieve. You
• 31:13
  know, you probably went to the same old school thing where we
• 31:17
  used to call it stroboscopic lighting, and we were taught
• 31:22
  that stroboscopic lighting was not used to light a subject.
• 31:26
  Stroboscopic lighting was used to freeze motion of a subject,
• 31:31
  and the secondary effect of it is that it illuminates, right?
• 31:34
  Yeah. But we all had hot lights back then too, as well, so that
• 31:38
  was the big thing, right? I think now we're at a spot now to
• 31:43
  where perceptionally, to get people to look like how they
• 31:50
  look like in real life, and a better version of them has to be
• 31:54
  the driving force on shooting and exposing folks better. And
• 32:00
  we can't use excuse. Shoot a black like I said. Shoot a black
• 32:03
  tablecloth. Shoot salt and pepper on a black tablecloth.
• 32:07
  Shoot a bottle of wine, a bottle of red wine, which is going to
• 32:11
  have the nuance of red but still. Photograph very, very
• 32:15
  dark, right? It's one of those things where hot take right here
• 32:20
  again,
• 32:22
  Casey Fatchett: they're coming fast and furious, folks,
• 32:25
  Leighton DaCosta: black coffee is really brown. Yeah, right.
• 32:29
  And that nuance of shooting spilt coffee on a white
• 32:37
  tablecloth next to a glass that's reflecting filled with
• 32:43
  black coffee and still making black coffee look black, but the
• 32:49
  foam look brown. And if you ask most people to do that, they can
• 32:54
  do that. So why do they have such a hard time shooting a dark
• 33:00
  person in any other environment wherein, oh and I love this a
• 33:07
  dark person wearing bright yellow or orange clothing
• 33:13
  getting that effect. And dark people like wearing because not
• 33:19
  only does the red or the blue or the orange or whatever pop out,
• 33:22
  but it usually makes your skin pop as well, and capturing that
• 33:26
  essence. And I think, like I said, it was going back to when
• 33:31
  I was talking about the software and being democratized editors,
• 33:32
  as we go shoot overseas editors a lot of times, or graphic
• 33:38
  editors who look at the entire image and not and they just want
• 33:42
  to make sure the skin looks smooth and everything else. The
• 33:47
  software makes the skin look brown. It adds those yellow
• 33:50
  tones into it, and it's not trying to keep it neutral. So,
• 33:55
  like I said in the photographer will always get blamed. I have
• 34:00
  seen
• 34:02
  the person that's the keynote speaker at WPI. I can say, Okay,
• 34:06
  I've seen Annie shoot Serena different ways, and her skin
• 34:14
  would come, sometimes come out absolutely beautiful and
• 34:16
  gorgeous, and then other times it's like, that's not the same
• 34:20
  Serena that I know, right? Whereas, man Jeff and the
• 34:29
  photographer down in I have his name is Jeff, and his last name
• 34:34
  is blowing my mind right now, and like, two minutes after we
• 34:40
  have this conversation, I would actually rely no remember his
• 34:44
  name so I am Oh, there we go. Jeffrey Salter, amazing
• 34:51
  photographer in the Miami area, a lifestyle, I would venture to
• 34:58
  say fashion, but a very much a lifestyle. Style photographer
• 35:02
  who hits every time he shoots, and when it comes to color,
• 35:09
  color grading, the essence of someone, even with gels and
• 35:14
  everything, the dude hits. I mean, every time he shoots,
• 35:19
  every time he aims, he hits the target. But he grew up, I
• 35:24
  believe he grew up in the Miami area, former Navy photographer.
• 35:28
  Did, I think he did, also combat photography. So he's used to
• 35:33
  doing things on the fly. He is a phase one photographer. So you
• 35:38
  don't see too many phase one photographers these days. But
• 35:42
  one thing that impressed me about Jeff is he is not a sports
• 35:48
  photographer, but he has a ton of covers on Sports Illustrated.
• 35:52
  He shoots good portraits. So he shoots good portraits, and you
• 35:56
  can't have bad color.
• 35:58
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, on the cover. See, there's the thing.
• 36:03
  We discussed this a little bit. I think it was part of the
• 36:06
  reason we decided to get together and record this.
• 36:10
  Because a lot of like, Annie Leibovitz is getting a lot of
• 36:13
  flack for her pictures of Michelle Obama and people saying
• 36:19
  like, she has not like, like black people, she doesn't know
• 36:22
  how to like, like black skin. And I have this feeling we
• 36:27
  talked about this, it's like, not that she doesn't necessarily
• 36:30
  know how to light it, it's that she doesn't know how to edit it,
• 36:33
  or whoever's editing it, the colors always come out. I feel
• 36:39
  like that's it's not necessarily in the lighting. It's the it
• 36:44
  feels like they're like tones that are applied afterwards.
• 36:50
  Maybe I'm wrong, but it's a it just like there's a portrait of
• 36:56
  Simone Biles that she had like that I feel like has the
• 37:00
  tonality of like, a climpt like or some other like, painterly
• 37:07
  looking tones to it. But it doesn't do any favors to Simone
• 37:15
  Biles like it actually like it makes her, her skin tone look
• 37:20
  like, there's no like, there are no undertones, there's like it,
• 37:24
  but it's like, it's this look of like the visual tone that we are
• 37:29
  going for does not, is not complimentary to the subject,
• 37:34
  Leighton DaCosta: if that makes so, because I just had to pull
• 37:36
  up. But you know, I know you're talking about the one that was
• 37:39
  on Vogue, or the back, shot right. And I think the challenge
• 37:44
  is, is this, in 2020, ish, the 2000s the 21st Century. And I'm
• 37:58
  not saying shooting, I'm saying presenting, a lot of
• 38:01
  presentation in the effort of being timeless and classic is
• 38:06
  still being shot in the way that 1970s Rolling Stone would shoot,
• 38:11
  right and that, that time you're talking about, there is a lot of
• 38:18
  colorism inside of the industry, one of The biggest things back
• 38:21
  in the 80s, when a movie that, you know, we all love, coming to
• 38:25
  America, right, where there is there is certain, and I'm not
• 38:30
  going to hash it up, but there were certain co stars that were
• 38:34
  said that Eddie Murphy wouldn't have at the time, right, because
• 38:38
  of that, the colorism. So when you look at the summer on bio,
• 38:41
  so I'm looking at it now. I think the reason why we see the
• 38:46
  color issues, because I want to throw out there is a Vogue
• 38:52
  cover. Let me see if I can pull this up real quick with LeBron
• 38:57
  and Gisele bunching very different skin tones. It is but
• 39:04
  it's perfection. It is perfection. You I mean, if you
• 39:11
  pull it up, you cannot get better. You cannot get better
• 39:18
  exposure. And it has green, it has the brown skin has the
• 39:22
  black. Giselle is perfectly edited and shadow LeBron is
• 39:26
  perfectly edited and shot. It is the perfection of what you would
• 39:31
  expect in any shot to look like in studio. But on the same note,
• 39:41
  it is also flattering to both of them, even though I want to say
• 39:50
  there's some tones there, there are some tones there, societal
• 39:54
  tones there, but you look at the cover of the. With Kanye and his
• 40:01
  former wife, you now see there is like it becomes color grading
• 40:09
  because Kanye is fairly dark skin, they have made Kanye brown
• 40:15
  skin and added a blue color grader to give it a timeless
• 40:22
  look. So the reason why I say this is that some of what stands
• 40:28
  out, where we pick out and choose on what Annie does and
• 40:31
  Annie doesn't do, is the posing and presentation of the
• 40:36
  subjects, and when it comes to posing and presentation of dark
• 40:41
  and brown skinned subjects. It is very much more subjective
• 40:48
  than esthetically pleasing for everything else. When she does
• 40:55
  group photos, in my mind, one of the best photos like the iconic,
• 41:02
  iconic. And I have it somewhere around here, where I have the
• 41:06
  shots of Vogue, a book around here, and I'm trying to see if I
• 41:10
  have it in the office, and it has the Dream Team, versus or
• 41:13
  not, say the Dream Team, the political Dream Team of George
• 41:16
  Bush's cabinet. And you turn the page, and it has the Fahrenheit
• 41:23
  911 Michael Moore crew, but everybody in that George Bush
• 41:32
  cabinet, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, all those people are
• 41:37
  light lit perfectly and color graded perfectly, and they're
• 41:42
  shot on film, so they're not even shot being shot. Being shot
• 41:44
  digitally, right? They're shot on film. I think what she what
• 41:48
  she puts out, is what people want to what the people who buy
• 41:54
  Vogue and buy Vanity Fair and buy Rolling Stones and those
• 42:00
  editors want to see, because if you look at I just pulled up
• 42:03
  one, if you look up Viola Davis and Vanity Fair, same cover,
• 42:11
  beautiful, dark, beautifully lit. Another back shot, totally.
• 42:17
  But you know what she's showing, the muscles and the physical
• 42:22
  attributes of this person. There is a lot of undertones that are
• 42:29
  usually used with black subjects, in their physical
• 42:36
  prowess, not their achievement prowess. And you can even go
• 42:41
  back to Marion Jones. There's a reason why, when Andy shoots the
• 42:49
  body issues, yeah, they look great because they become very
• 42:55
  subjective. And this is not, this is not a chastisement, as
• 42:55
  much as is an observation. Well, it's neither right nor wrong.
• 42:55
  That's, I think that's what one is going for with like the
• 42:56
  saying that it's in the editing, it feels like it's in the post
• 43:06
  production. It is very much a an editorial choice for those
• 43:11
  particular publications. Not necessarily that she's lighting
• 43:15
  it poorly. It's that she's like, this is a, this is the editorial
• 43:19
  choice of the magazine, and they're choosing, and they're
• 43:23
  choosing those certain poses, because she's not just shooting
• 43:27
  15 frames and culinary today, right, right? So the editorial
• 43:32
  process is and that's why, like, if we talk about the, think
• 43:39
  about this, if the Lebron James Vogue cover with Giselle bunch
• 43:44
  exactly as it is, came out in October 4, 1996 people have been
• 43:55
  in an uproar because the of the OJ Simpson ruling On October 3,
• 43:59
  1996 or 95 the day before, right because of those connotations.
• 44:06
  Now we come back to where we're at right now, like I said, the
• 44:12
  look and esthetic and please. I mean, don't make me look bad. I
• 44:16
  might get fired for this. The look and esthetic of that. It
• 44:21
  shows you how great that person is and what kind of product they
• 44:26
  could present. The Michelle Obama cover of Vogue right made
• 44:32
  her look brown, but it also still made her look youthful and
• 44:35
  graceful and elegant when she shoots Meryl Streep on that
• 44:43
  Rolling Stone cover. Look at this like I said. It shows up on
• 44:50
  here. It shows Lady Gaga on my on my search. Lady Gaga, Meryl
• 44:54
  Streep and Adele side by side. It shows Adele looking rosy
• 45:02
  cheeked. He looks great. Makeup looks good, beautiful. Meryl
• 45:07
  Streep has a lot more seasoning to her visage than Adele does.
• 45:13
  She's been around for a minute a close up, so they put her in a
• 45:17
  mask. Why do they put her in a mask? Is they put her in a mask
• 45:25
  to cover up that seasoning. I don't want to say the age,
• 45:29
  right? It's what we want to see on the cover, and the editors
• 45:37
  and the the like I said, I don't know if she can get all the
• 45:41
  blame when it's the art directors, the print directors,
• 45:44
  the editors, the you know. I mean, there's so much more added
• 45:48
  to the team. But what you do notice is that when you see them
• 45:52
  shoot men, you don't see as much fall off in how they are
• 46:00
  presented as far as color grading goes. If you see them
• 46:04
  shoot Idris, they don't have that problem. If you see him
• 46:09
  shoot like I said, LeBron, they don't have that problem. Kanye,
• 46:13
  they shot him lighter. But if you see them shoot Kanye by
• 46:17
  himself, they don't have that problem.
• 46:22
  Casey Fatchett: And my question is this, like, a, is this a bias
• 46:27
  that, because of how women are presented, they think that? I
• 46:31
  mean historically, though, like, I mean, we touched on this a
• 46:34
  little bit before, but like, historically, the like, the
• 46:44
  like, film stock, the light meters, the like, early digital
• 46:52
  sensors are all sort of geared towards exposing, towards a
• 46:57
  lighter skin tone. And we, we're we're like, he's used to getting
• 47:06
  the result. It's not necessarily even like an attempt, on the
• 47:11
  photographer's part to misrepresent the tonality of
• 47:18
  somebody's skin, but it's just that the the the stock or the
• 47:22
  and we'll
• 47:23
  Leighton DaCosta: push back against that. So sorry. I will
• 47:26
  push back against
• 47:27
  Casey Fatchett: it's like the stock and the sensors, at least
• 47:35
  early on, are not geared to accurately represent those
• 47:41
  tones.
• 47:41
  Leighton DaCosta: But if you look at photography from as
• 47:45
  recent as wings, but go back to like Gordon Parks back in the
• 47:49
  70s, right? Or Cecil from South Carolina. Cecil, ah, I can't
• 47:54
  remember Cecil's last name, but Cecil, for those who don't know,
• 47:56
  Cecil, is the one that is photographed drinking from the
• 47:59
  whites only water fountain. He is also a photographer right
• 48:03
  back in the 60s or whatnot, 50s and 60s, right? But anyway, you
• 48:08
  go back to they're shooting black and white. They're
• 48:09
  shooting on these stocks. They're shooting with the same
• 48:12
  film as everybody else, and in the 60s, 70s and 80s, they're
• 48:17
  still able to expose with the same equipment as everybody
• 48:21
  else. You go back to the most photographed man of the 1800s
• 48:26
  Frederick Douglass, right. Right. Photograph, more than
• 48:33
  even Abraham Lincoln, even though he didn't have as much
• 48:37
  time to get photographed, that's beside the point, right? You
• 48:42
  know, his last night was a shot, a little shoot, but no, that was
• 48:52
  a John Wells joke, no. So the thing about it is, is that, if
• 48:56
  you think about it, is it really that way? Or is it that excuses
• 49:02
  that we make? Is it really say, hey, we couldn't cook like this
• 49:07
  because we don't have that same kitchen setup as Gordon Ramsay,
• 49:11
  but if Gordon Ramsay came into our kitchen after a few
• 49:15
  expletives, he would still make a better meal. He would still
• 49:18
  make a better Beef Wellington than I do. It may not be up to
• 49:21
  his standard, but it will still be a resemblance of the beef
• 49:27
  wellington that he's known to make. And I think we use because
• 49:31
  we have so much of a crutch. We do not market, sell, shoot to
• 49:37
  people. And this is not me gonna blame the victim, but it's not
• 49:40
  like blaming the victim. If a certain customer base demands a
• 49:47
  certain product outcome and results, the market will
• 49:50
  eventually move to provide that certain product outcome and
• 49:53
  result. If certain photographers lose business and. Is a market
• 50:00
  for that business. Guess what? The market will provide that if
• 50:07
  you go to Chick fil A McDonald's, the drive thrus,
• 50:11
  right? All them now have double drive throughs. All the new ones
• 50:15
  have double drive throughs. Multiple drive throughs going
• 50:17
  out because less people are actually sitting in the
• 50:20
  restaurant eating most people are getting it to go. You go to
• 50:24
  now McDonald's. You can get a McFlurry after a few lawsuits or
• 50:29
  whatever, but the ice cream machine is working. Is the ice
• 50:34
  cream machine working because the lawsuits, or is the ice
• 50:37
  cream machine working because they're losing market share to
• 50:41
  restaurants like Culvers or Wendy's and Dairy Queen and
• 50:45
  Wendy's. You see, I'm saying yeah, so I'm not saying that.
• 50:49
  I'm blaming dark skinned people for not. I'm blaming dark
• 50:55
  skinned people for for taking substandard work that they do
• 51:02
  not themselves, like from photographers and not demanding
• 51:07
  better. If you demand better, and you say that you vote with
• 51:12
  your wallet, your pocketbook, right if you demand better from
• 51:16
  your providers, because photography, at the end of the
• 51:19
  day, while it is commoditized, it is still a relationship. It
• 51:23
  is still a relationship like I want to be shot by Jerry
• 51:27
  gillnes, I want to be shot by Jerry giones, right? And if I
• 51:31
  have a choice between getting shot by Jerry giones and Peter
• 51:37
  Hurley for a headshot, I may make a certain choice, but I'm
• 51:41
  gonna tell you this right now, if I have the choice we get
• 51:45
  between those two, which both of them, they're great guys, right?
• 51:49
  I watch you for cigar and a beer. If Jeffrey Salter is added
• 51:54
  to that mix, Jeff's getting my money. Jeffrey's getting my
• 52:00
  money because he is going to make me look in a way that I did
• 52:04
  not know that I could look and still feel like myself. That is
• 52:10
  very important, that is very important as a photographer, to
• 52:15
  get your subjects to look in a way that you provide that they
• 52:22
  didn't know that it could look like themselves. This is the
• 52:25
  reason why so many people are using the AI streaming platforms
• 52:32
  to get well, you don't look like that. I know I don't look like
• 52:35
  that. Last 37 pounds, I will look like that, right? But, I
• 52:42
  mean, what's what's got? Um, now I'm doing that. Uh, what's it?
• 52:51
  Lil NAS X, look how he is photographed. You've never heard
• 52:56
  anybody say, oh, man, his skin don't look like that. He is
• 52:59
  photographed as a Black Stallion, black, dark racehorse.
• 53:02
  I call him Sunday silence, right? He is where you racehorse
• 53:06
  people. So I think there's, there has to be where the
• 53:11
  customer base. And I even throw this out, you don't hear
• 53:18
  customers. You don't hear regular people say Annie
• 53:21
  linguist cannot shoot Simone Biles, you hear photographers
• 53:26
  say Annie Lee was cannot shoot Siobhan balls. And you know what
• 53:30
  Annie Leibovitz says, show me your photo of Siobhan boss,
• 53:34
  right? Because I have one. Do you have one?
• 53:39
  Casey Fatchett: Right? Yeah, I think that, again, it's, she's,
• 53:44
  I think that the the criticism, a lot of that criticism is
• 53:48
  probably more leaned towards the editorial and, like, post
• 53:52
  production and whatever toning in, in my opinion, as a
• 53:54
  photographer, but I think in the agree with what you're saying.
• 53:58
  Like, demand better. Demanding better service is going to like,
• 54:01
  you know, better product is going to have a huge impact. And
• 54:07
  I think that the problem that happens for some people is that
• 54:16
  they don't know how to approach getting better at photographing
• 54:23
  black skin or just different skin tones. Like, again, this is
• 54:27
  something that I had to learn early on as a wedding
• 54:29
  photographer, because I was getting a lot of, you know,
• 54:32
  mixed tone weddings where I was like, oh, like, how do I like
• 54:37
  this person is very dark, this person is very light. How do I
• 54:40
  get them in the same photo and have the like it not look like
• 54:43
  it's under or overexposed on somebody? And I think that a lot
• 54:48
  of people overcompensate to lightning dark like, by just
• 54:52
  turning up the lights to light darker skinned people, because
• 54:55
  they don't know, like, oh, I need to keep some I need to keep
• 54:58
  some shadow in there. I need. Keep some so
• 55:01
  Leighton DaCosta: remember you so you still used to like over
• 55:04
  like somebody when they had wrinkles, yeah, right, like you.
• 55:09
  Bless it out, right? Yeah. That goes back to a customer base. I
• 55:13
  will say this as a wedding photographer, if you knew that
• 55:18
  you were passing up an extra five wet five to 10 weddings a
• 55:22
  year based on your inability to light somebody, not even a dark
• 55:27
  skinned person, a brown skin person, right? If you knew that
• 55:31
  you were passing up at effectively five to six digits
• 55:35
  worth of revenue a year, would that make you more receptive on
• 55:40
  how learning how to do that. The deeper challenge is, is that
• 55:44
  that customer base, I was at a wedding this past week. I was at
• 55:49
  a wedding this past week of a photographer, and I went as a
• 55:54
  guest because I was known as a photographer. But the question
• 55:58
  is, hey, LD, how much would you charge to do this wedding,
• 56:02
  really quick, backyard wedding, or whatever. You know, the more
• 56:07
  in the wedding photography business, the more a customer
• 56:11
  describes the wedding, the more they expect the wedding or the
• 56:16
  cheaper they expect the wedding photography to be. It's only a
• 56:21
  small wedding in the backyard where there's only gonna be 10
• 56:25
  of us and, you know, we're gonna have really good food, and this
• 56:30
  that you only need you for an hour, right? The more that that
• 56:34
  comes up, the less they want. So when you sit there and you're
• 56:39
  like, Well, hey, how much would you charge me to come? Do you
• 56:44
  wedding? Three hours? Oh, only $3,500 All right? Well, it's
• 56:48
  only two hours. I know I was looking you up, right? And the
• 56:52
  thing about it is, is that normally don't do two hours like
• 56:57
  normally, I need at least four, right? They you have a you still
• 57:02
  have a large customer base that and a photographer base meeting
• 57:06
  that customer demand of not providing value for their
• 57:10
  quality of photography. And so when I say that is, you're
• 57:15
  providing good enough, and that's what the customer wants.
• 57:19
  The customer wants good enough. If a photographer had the
• 57:23
  essence to say, hey, I want to provide better than good enough.
• 57:28
  I want to swim up. I want to be able to adequately light any
• 57:32
  skin subject, and then get better at that. I want to know
• 57:37
  my lane. If my lane is, hey, I do courthouse weddings, and I
• 57:41
  want to stay in my lane. Just because you stay in your lane
• 57:45
  doesn't mean that you can't dominate that lane, right,
• 57:49
  right? You can't just be amazing at Courthouse weddings, exactly.
• 57:54
  And the thing about it is, is that, hey, if I'm only charging
• 57:59
  $750 for a courthouse wedding, right, which puts me in a point
• 58:04
  to where I'm competing with my friend that has a camera, right?
• 58:08
  And do I want to spend that much? But if I'm doing that and
• 58:13
  I'm like, Dude, this dude does a 35 minute courthouse wedding
• 58:17
  photography, gives you an album this that the other and you
• 58:22
  democratize it to where that 35 minute only takes you an hour of
• 58:26
  pre post and whatever it is outside of transportation, and
• 58:31
  you can sit out there and do eight winners a day at the same
• 58:35
  courthouse, and that's you. That's your studio. You have it
• 58:40
  locked in. The only way you get to that spot is because you
• 58:44
  dominated that lane. And I think photographers, Dunning crew, we
• 58:49
  talk about Dunning Kruger, incompetent people are not
• 58:53
  competent enough to realize that they're incompetent. And
• 58:57
  competent people feel that what comes easy to them should come
• 59:02
  easy to everybody else, right? I used to tell folks this, the
• 59:06
  difference between me and you is that I'm good enough to realize
• 59:11
  that I suck, right? The white speck on chicken shit, that's
• 59:15
  chicken shit too, right? And so pure country. George Strait,
• 59:20
  great movie. And I think that is important for us to as a
• 59:24
  photographer, not necessarily to be humbled, but to have the
• 59:29
  desire to say, Hey, can I shoot a cup of rice, a cup of rice
• 59:33
  pudding in white milk and a paper cup in a snowstorm, and be
• 59:38
  able to get the details in those shadows, right? You know, you
• 59:42
  sort of saying that, understand that they're not just different
• 59:47
  shades of white, they're different they're different
• 59:51
  qualities of shadows that that make it stand out. If I'm going
• 59:55
  to insert some watch into this currently, right now, swatch
• 1:00:00
  watch. Have a moon swatch called the snow moon. This is the, the
• 1:00:05
  first white watch or non blue watch in this series, and it
• 1:00:09
  has. An earth phase complication on it where Snoopy is on the
• 1:00:14
  moon as the cartoon from the 60s, when we landed the moon, he
• 1:00:18
  said, I beat everybody. I even beat the cat next door, right? I
• 1:00:23
  beat the Russians. I beat everybody. I beat the cat next
• 1:00:27
  door. But one of the differences in this version is that while
• 1:00:32
  Snoopy is on the moon with Woodstock and he has a helmet on
• 1:00:36
  on the moon, little easter egg. He actually has snow on his
• 1:00:40
  helmet, which I've only seen it because it was photographed well
• 1:00:45
  to differentiate the snow from the helmet, from looking through
• 1:00:50
  the helmet on the back of the watch, it's just a little
• 1:00:54
  nuanced, different white it may be the difference between 00000,
• 1:00:59
  and 0001, right? Just that little nuance. But young for and
• 1:01:03
  I say young, not by age, but by experience. Young photographers
• 1:01:08
  still look at exposure based on the highlights, not also by the
• 1:01:13
  shadows. So when you're talking about quality of light, quality
• 1:01:17
  shadows, quality of all of that, I think that's kind of where we
• 1:01:22
  have to educate the customers to say, Hey, why you are getting
• 1:01:27
  for me, is not just good enough, it's beyond good enough. And
• 1:01:31
  then they can see that. And unfortunately, we are using
• 1:01:35
  crutches like editing. We are using crutches like software. We
• 1:01:40
  are using crutches like and little, no secret, I use the
• 1:01:44
  same crutches, so I'm not chastising, right, but, but
• 1:01:48
  Cullen. Cullen became such a huge industry in the past 10
• 1:01:52
  years, from photo mechanic to aftershoot that now, guess who
• 1:01:57
  has culling inside of there? Lightroom. It's not but
• 1:02:01
  Lightroom doesn't have color because of those things.
• 1:02:05
  Lightroom has color because when you go into Google Photos or
• 1:02:09
  Apple photos, I type in what I'm looking for and all of a sudden
• 1:02:14
  it brings up everything that I've shot that way, yeah, so
• 1:02:18
  they lost market share and use. Why do I need Lightroom anymore?
• 1:02:23
  When Google Photos or Apple photos does a generic enough
• 1:02:27
  editing on it, it does great. You know, fetching. I've started
• 1:02:32
  shooting by because I was forced to. I've started shooting Camera
• 1:02:37
  Raw on my Samsung phone. And every time I shoot Camera Raw,
• 1:02:41
  it does its own little generic editing. And that generic
• 1:02:45
  editing is good enough. So if I'm giving a customer good
• 1:02:50
  enough, why do I have to get better? And that's what a lot of
• 1:02:54
  photographers think about because, excuse me, they do not
• 1:02:58
  upgrade until the market is about to leave them behind. I've
• 1:03:03
  been guilty of that we know a lot of film photographers. Hey,
• 1:03:07
  you know digital is just a fad, and in 2005 when digital started
• 1:03:12
  become much, much more approachable, it's just a fad.
• 1:03:16
  They still spent four grand on a Nikon f6 camera because a $3,000
• 1:03:21
  D, 2h or whatever it was at the time was not worth it because
• 1:03:26
  the pixels didn't match for the film. But it's like, if I can go
• 1:03:30
  back 20 years, man, I tell you right now, I would be a much
• 1:03:35
  better photographer, because we lost the the we lost perception
• 1:03:39
  of I took a shot right now, looked at the back of the
• 1:03:43
  camera, at my 256 channels, and saw that I was underexposed. And
• 1:03:48
  in less than 30 seconds, I realized that I needed to be at
• 1:03:53
  one, 3/50 of a second. You know? Yeah, f7, one. And here, that's,
• 1:03:57
  Casey Fatchett: that's, that's one of the biggest things about
• 1:04:00
  like, the difference between shooting. I was talking to
• 1:04:03
  somebody who shoots only film for weddings, or mostly film,
• 1:04:06
  not only film, and I was talking about how that would just drive
• 1:04:10
  me. I used to do it. That's how I started out. Like I said, it
• 1:04:13
  would drive me insane. Now, why? Because I need, I want to know
• 1:04:17
  that I am making the adjustments that I'm, you know, and
• 1:04:20
  especially during, like, portrait time, when I'm shooting
• 1:04:23
  portraits for everybody, and it's like everybody got their
• 1:04:27
  eyes open, yep, okay, we're good. It's like that. That was
• 1:04:30
  the thing when I was shooting films that just always drove me
• 1:04:33
  crazy. And being able to know that stuff now and be able to
• 1:04:37
  look at it, and like, you have the ability to, like, practice
• 1:04:40
  and look at the look at the back of your camera, or look at the
• 1:04:44
  file and just be like, Okay, I need to change up what I'm doing.
• 1:04:48
  Leighton DaCosta: It's funny. You could see this, but the
• 1:04:50
  audience can't, but I have a it's
• 1:04:51
  Casey Fatchett: another jab at me recording video. That's okay.
• 1:04:54
  Leighton DaCosta: Well, you know, it's nice to have face to
• 1:04:57
  face conversations, right? It? It. I have a Nikon f1 100 in my
• 1:05:02
  hand. And the main reason why I bought this Nikon f1 100, and at
• 1:05:07
  the time I was shooting with the Nikon d8, 10, is because this f1
• 1:05:12
  100 had TTL logic built in. And why that was so important with
• 1:05:16
  me at the time this was like 10 years ago, is that I can use my
• 1:05:21
  pro photo B ones which had TTL logic for Nikon, and I can go
• 1:05:25
  between my da 10 meter exposed to everything else within 30
• 1:05:30
  seconds based off of the film that I was going to have in
• 1:05:34
  here, right?
• 1:05:35
  Casey Fatchett: Oh, yeah, I do. I still do that. I still do that.
• 1:05:39
  Leighton DaCosta: And if I had that in 1995 the ability to do
• 1:05:42
  that, I tell you what, that adds another 10 years of your growth,
• 1:05:47
  because, you know, you're not once your eyes get trained to
• 1:05:51
  see what you want to see. This goes back to the colorism. It's
• 1:05:56
  like, once you get trained to see what you want to see. Why?
• 1:06:00
  LD, why do you shoot in black and white in camera. Well,
• 1:06:04
  because I'm shooting RAW, right, that's that's the quickest way.
• 1:06:09
  But I just wanted to see if I'm exposed, right, if I got good
• 1:06:13
  composition, and if I'm focused, that's all I care about. So once
• 1:06:18
  I get the color balance done, boom, I switch it over to black
• 1:06:23
  and white, because it's less I got to think about now, every
• 1:06:27
  once in a while, especially with my old icon, I would fat finger
• 1:06:32
  something, and the quality would go for a raw find to just find,
• 1:06:36
  right? And I'm in JPEG, and if the worst thing that I had
• 1:06:41
  happened to me is that I shot something in black and white, in
• 1:06:45
  JPEG, but the composition, the focus and everything and
• 1:06:49
  exposure was right, right then, okay, you know what? Man, that
• 1:06:54
  model photo shoot looks great. Like, look at that texture like,
• 1:06:58
  yeah, it was pretty good, man, I tell you what, like, you know,
• 1:07:03
  and it was fine. Eventually, everybody's like that. I love
• 1:07:07
  that. You use black and white. It was really, really, you know,
• 1:07:12
  artistic freedom. I think that's important. That's important. Um,
• 1:07:17
  I wanted to touch on something though. So like I said, in
• 1:07:21
  Charleston, I had a lot of dark skinned customers. In San Diego,
• 1:07:26
  I had a lot of interracial customers, but in San Diego, I
• 1:07:30
  liked to shoot out in the desert. And so desert lighting
• 1:07:34
  is a little bit different. You know, especially in southern
• 1:07:38
  California. If you ever been out there and you shot, it's weird
• 1:07:43
  because it's like this very soft, harsh lighting at the same
• 1:07:47
  time. But it's great for loop lighting. So if you're a loop
• 1:07:52
  lighting person, it is probably the best place. To do loop
• 1:07:56
  lighting that because you have perfect loop lighting for like,
• 1:08:01
  10 hours of the day. But one of the things like I said, is when
• 1:08:05
  you're trying to have because you asked me about this, about
• 1:08:10
  inclusivity of your portfolio, and I touched on this earlier,
• 1:08:14
  when I was in Salt Lake, were there people that I could shoot
• 1:08:19
  that were dark skinned? Yes, because it has a high African,
• 1:08:23
  Nigerian and Cameroonian population in Salt Lake City,
• 1:08:27
  Utah, but most of my customers would still have been white. So
• 1:08:32
  I used different subjects to show that I can shoot different
• 1:08:36
  subjects. I made it a point to that if I'm going to do a TF,
• 1:08:40
  let me do a TF with somebody that I normally don't have to
• 1:08:45
  drive business to the people that I normally do get right.
• 1:08:49
  They see something different visually. If I shoot mostly
• 1:08:53
  women, let me shoot men to show diversity, right. If I shoot
• 1:08:58
  mostly kids, right, let me shoot maternity to show diversity
• 1:09:02
  right. And there are different ways to do that. And I think
• 1:09:06
  when you as a photographer, especially with the industry
• 1:09:10
  shifting again, and this is something like I said, 20 years
• 1:09:15
  ago was a bunch of old white men and then a lot of young excuse,
• 1:09:19
  the phrase, quote, unquote, mom talks invaded, and these old
• 1:09:24
  white men got upset, right? And they call them digital Debbies
• 1:09:28
  and digital dance. I think that was a term that they used in a
• 1:09:33
  very dismissive way, right? Never heard digital Dan, but I
• 1:09:37
  definitely heard digital Debbie's, yeah, digital Debbie,
• 1:09:41
  I tell you, down to South Florida, and then where it got
• 1:09:46
  an issue was, was that late, 2000s early teens, the
• 1:09:49
  demographics, especially in wedding photography, when you
• 1:09:54
  had. Not just interracial couples, but you have same sex
• 1:09:58
  couples started coming in, and then you had photographers like,
• 1:10:02
  hey, I need a same sex couple because I want to diversify my
• 1:10:07
  portfolio. But they never were inclusive in their portfolio to
• 1:10:11
  begin with. They just did it as a way to increase market share.
• 1:10:16
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, when it becomes very obvious that you're
• 1:10:18
  just trying to, like, tap into the that extra money.
• 1:10:23
  Leighton DaCosta: And I think that's the same thing with dark
• 1:10:25
  skin. I think that's same thing with dark skin, brown skin, if
• 1:10:29
  you want it in your portfolio and you suck at it, there are
• 1:10:34
  plenty of underemployed models in this country and in the
• 1:10:40
  world, I can go to Thailand right now and find you a model
• 1:10:45
  that has a gray scale of between 80 and 90% gray, right now this
• 1:10:50
  minute, right? I could probably go to Moscow. I don't know about
• 1:10:53
  Siberia, right, but I could probably go to Moscow. I know I
• 1:10:56
  can go to Anchorage, right, and find that. And the reality is,
• 1:11:01
  is this, if you're looking to get better, instead of
• 1:11:06
  practicing on clients that are paying, you pay someone to
• 1:11:10
  practice on, if you don't have the resources to pay somebody to
• 1:11:14
  practice on, like I said, once again, a bowling ball, an
• 1:11:17
  iPhone, a all these things that have darker specular highlights
• 1:11:21
  ingredients. Start shooting them in black and white. Get start
• 1:11:25
  learning how to how to use a light, shape them, angle it, and
• 1:11:30
  then get the color grading better. And it doesn't matter if
• 1:11:36
  it's dark skin or if you want to like, like, right? Now, like I
• 1:11:39
  said, My hobby is watches, right? And I am shooting watches
• 1:11:42
  to make posters, something similar, like, Hey, I got a
• 1:11:45
  printer here, right? Let me use my printer to make posters. And
• 1:11:50
  one of the areas where I found some traction in is in micro
• 1:11:54
  brands, because everybody's going to shoot a Rolex poster
• 1:11:57
  right. In New York, you have this great watch company called
• 1:12:01
  brew right? And it's based off of the timing of a espresso,
• 1:12:05
  right? Like, like, there's like, the thing on it. Nobody shoots
• 1:12:09
  brew. Nobody shoots that to make posters. But you see guys from
• 1:12:13
  Alton Brown to Idris ebook wearing brew watches, right? And
• 1:12:18
  these are the $600 watches. These are not expensive watches.
• 1:12:22
  So to me, it's like it's a microbrew, right? If you want to
• 1:12:27
  get better, find something and practice with that. And I think
• 1:12:33
  that is what a lot of photographers don't do. I'm
• 1:12:35
  guilty of it. We don't practice enough on things that we want to
• 1:12:39
  shoot. And better did we get the less we want to shoot for what
• 1:12:43
  we don't get paid for. And going back to miss Adler, when she
• 1:12:47
  talked about, hey, taking two or three days out of the month
• 1:12:50
  every month to shoot what you want to shoot. Get better at
• 1:12:53
  that. Build a portfolio just off of that, right? And you'll be,
• 1:12:57
  yes, it's costing you money, but you would be surprised at how
• 1:13:01
  much money you'll get returned as you get better shooting that
• 1:13:05
  and
• 1:13:05
  Casey Fatchett: because you're building the portfolio you're
• 1:13:07
  you have, you then have that stuff in your portfolio that you
• 1:13:10
  can show people who want to hire you to do that work. And as you
• 1:13:13
  go along, you get better and better at it.
• 1:13:15
  Leighton DaCosta: And as a business guy,
• 1:13:18
  you have to have the mindset to say that latent D is my
• 1:13:21
  customer, latent D is LDS customer, right? And so if
• 1:13:27
  latent d.com is redoing which I'm guilty of, it because I've
• 1:13:31
  posted my blogs, because I have one of those guys that have
• 1:13:33
  like, 200 drafts, right? But you don't get published. But if
• 1:13:39
  latent D is latent D's customer, that when lately, pays a model,
• 1:13:43
  pays for a subject, or pays for a watch or pays for something to
• 1:13:46
  shoot photograph, I'm hiring myself to shoot something. So at
• 1:13:51
  least if I'm going to practice with a customer, let that
• 1:13:54
  customer be me that I'm practicing, right?
• 1:13:56
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, that's yeah, a fantastic way of looking
• 1:14:00
  at it like the that you are, you're hiring yourself to do the
• 1:14:05
  work, to to put it into your portfolio, to get it in there,
• 1:14:11
  like and get better at it.
• 1:14:13
  Leighton DaCosta: And I believe in alignment. So if you're, if
• 1:14:15
  you are a, if you are a maternity photographer, right?
• 1:14:20
  If I'm a maternity photographer in New York, I'm riding the
• 1:14:23
  subway to say, Hey, this is me. Excuse me for being
• 1:14:27
  opportunistic. I'm riding the subway looking for dark skinned
• 1:14:30
  baby mamas or pregnant women. I should say big moms, pregnant
• 1:14:32
  women. And be like, Hey, do you want to, do you want to train
• 1:14:35
  pass a metro pass for two months, right? Something as
• 1:14:40
  simple as that, and you're photographing your maternity but
• 1:14:47
  you're also getting your dark skin on, yeah, you're also
• 1:14:50
  building that, and then you can use those for your sample
• 1:14:52
  products. So when you're showing diversity to your future
• 1:14:57
  clients, they're like, Oh, you. He or she shoots. Oh, wow. This
• 1:15:02
  is great. This is different, right? When you are traveling on
• 1:15:06
  vacation, don't use travel on vacations, because, once again,
• 1:15:08
  those, those are tax implications on there. But let's
• 1:15:11
  say that you are using work on vacations, right? Hey, book a
• 1:15:16
  shoot, book a model, local a local model, or local family, or
• 1:15:19
  whatever it is to get that kind of content that you are needing
• 1:15:25
  practice on in your portfolio, and they don't have to be pretty
• 1:15:32
  I forgot who told me this is like, Hey, your your your
• 1:15:37
  website is for pretty people, your blog is for all the ugly
• 1:15:41
  people, right? And it's like, but a lot of people will go
• 1:15:47
  through your blog to look at people just like them, who are
• 1:15:50
  look way beautiful, and they ever have a you tell the story,
• 1:15:54
  and at the end of the day, we have to get back to using our
• 1:15:58
  lenses to tell stories and capturing people in their
• 1:16:03
  essence to tell a better story.
• 1:16:12
  Casey Fatchett: Tired of juggling multiple programs to
• 1:16:14
  get the perfect look say hello to on one Photo Raw, The
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  Unknown: Hey. And now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:18:47
  what's that? Say? Useless information. This is always
• 1:18:53
  death for this episode later,
• 1:18:56
  Casey Fatchett: which US state, do you think is closest to Africa?
• 1:19:02
  Leighton DaCosta: I mean, if I was to assume either Florida or
• 1:19:08
  Hawaii by distance, by population, South Carolina,
• 1:19:14
  Casey Fatchett: no, no distance was what I was talking about.
• 1:19:16
  Leighton DaCosta: Okay, the so I would say Florida only because
• 1:19:21
  the Pacific is big as hell, and even though Hawaii is look like
• 1:19:28
  it would be a How can I put it this way? If I'm looking at
• 1:19:34
  Africa, I'm taking in something like, let's say the Azores or
• 1:19:40
  the Canary Islands, and I'm counting those, and considering
• 1:19:47
  a hurricane, only takes about five to 10 days to go from the
• 1:19:53
  Canary Islands to the keys. Okay? And a typhoon? Oh, you. I
• 1:19:59
  still would say Florida.
• 1:20:02
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I mean, yes, Florida is obviously closer
• 1:20:05
  than Hawaii, because you still have Asia to deal with before
• 1:20:09
  you get to Africa to get right. But the correct answer is, Maine.
• 1:20:13
  Leighton DaCosta: Are you talking about going over to pole?
• 1:20:17
  Casey Fatchett: No, no, it's like it Maine is actually
• 1:20:22
  further east, and you draw a straight line over to, like,
• 1:20:29
  Morocco, it's like, from there, like, it's actually closer than
• 1:20:33
  Florida.
• 1:20:34
  Leighton DaCosta: So, so I'm going to go use them. Are we
• 1:20:37
  using a Mercator projection or what? Because, because, if I
• 1:20:42
  were using a chord line, if I'm using a chord line and I'm
• 1:20:47
  taking I would say Portland,
• 1:20:50
  Casey Fatchett: okay, look at like, how Africa is shaped
• 1:20:54
  there, right where Florida actually is. The distance we're
• 1:21:00
  talking about is going up towards, you realize how far up
• 1:21:05
  like, when you think of like France, like Paris is actually
• 1:21:11
  on more of a New York, like New York, as opposed to like people
• 1:21:17
  always kind of like, think it's like further south, but it's not
• 1:21:23
  right? That's more like New York, so, but Maine is way
• 1:21:28
  further east than Florida is, yes, and if you're just going in
• 1:21:34
  a straight line from from Maine to like Morocco, Azores,
• 1:21:39
  whatever like
• 1:21:41
  Leighton DaCosta: I'm looking at it visually. So I'm looking at
• 1:21:44
  it visually, and I'm using a chord line. Okay, I can give you
• 1:21:49
  that I'm looking at it visually, but we're still, hold on a
• 1:21:54
  second. I just want to make sure before I before I commit to that
• 1:21:59
  answer.
• 1:22:01
  Casey Fatchett: Finally, yes, say your final.
• 1:22:03
  Leighton DaCosta: I will accept that. I will accept that I can
• 1:22:07
  admit when I'm wrong. And the only reason why I say that based
• 1:22:13
  off of that definition South Carolina, but I still say by
• 1:22:18
  chord line. If I were to draw a chord line from, I want to say
• 1:22:24
  the Tangiers, or whatever it is, right, whatever that's at the
• 1:22:29
  top of Morocco and that area, yeah, because we're because,
• 1:22:35
  like, the we're not talking straight to Gibraltar. We're
• 1:22:40
  just talking about that. I want to say, Hold on, a second
• 1:22:45
  Casey Fatchett: might be the longest we've ever made.
• 1:22:47
  Leighton DaCosta: Yeah, no, you know you're, no, you're, you're
• 1:22:48
  absolutely 100 I'm looking at it right now. I'm trying to see
• 1:22:52
  where I want to look at what town this is, because I'm having
• 1:22:55
  a little Hunt for Red October,
• 1:22:59
  Casey Fatchett: whatever they end up parking the sub.
• 1:23:01
  Leighton DaCosta: Yeah, so like, if I'm in Cutler, Cutler Maine
• 1:23:06
  or Lubeck Maine, but then by your definition, Canada is
• 1:23:11
  closer to Africa than America, yeah, which is even more useless
• 1:23:17
  information. Yeah, that I did not need to know that Nova
• 1:23:23
  Scotia is closer to Africa. It's closer to Africa than Key West,
• 1:23:29
  yeah, and that is why we waste time on this podcast.
• 1:23:34
  Casey Fatchett: Yes, exactly. That's why we have the trivial
• 1:23:36
  knowledge. Layton, thanks for coming by again. It's been a
• 1:23:40
  while, so we've had you back on the show. I don't know if you're
• 1:23:43
  still, I don't know if this makes you the most, most
• 1:23:46
  frequent guest, but I think it does. I think you've become most
• 1:23:49
  frequent guest again.
• 1:23:51
  Leighton DaCosta: Was this, am I the youngest guest? Though? Am I
• 1:23:53
  still the youngest
• 1:23:54
  Casey Fatchett: flyest guest? For sure, the you know,
• 1:23:59
  Leighton DaCosta: you know you know what we got to do when
• 1:24:05
  Marvel gets back on Netflix and they bring back Luke Cage,
• 1:24:12
  making access there.
• 1:24:15
  Casey Fatchett: Second season was terrible.
• 1:24:17
  Leighton DaCosta: Casey this a new haircut?,
• 1:24:20
  Casey Fatchett: still not as bad. Well, I don't know, was it
• 1:24:23
  marked for death?
• 1:24:26
  Leighton DaCosta: Oh, no, no. Was Meet Joe Black?
• 1:24:28
  Casey Fatchett: Yes, that's but I'm talking about generally in a
• 1:24:31
  movie, was that? Was that marked for death when he's like, Screw
• 1:24:35
  face, Keith David was that he's David Screwface?
• 1:24:38
  Leighton DaCosta: No, but Mark for death is one of the Kevin
• 1:24:41
  skull, the Steven Seagal Steven Seagal movies like that's when
• 1:24:47
  the Steven Seagal movies were popular. More about a
• 1:24:52
  catchphrase as for title, just like how the Jason stadium
• 1:24:56
  movies are about occupation phrase, right? You know, I mean.
• 1:24:59
  Right?
• 1:25:00
  Casey Fatchett: Yes. The catchphrase one guy thought he
• 1:25:02
  was invincible,
• 1:25:03
  Leighton DaCosta: hard to kill. Yeah, hard to kill. He's marked
• 1:25:08
  for death. He is under siege, right? Whereas Jason Statham is,
• 1:25:15
  he's the beekeeper. I'm the beekeeper.
• 1:25:19
  Casey Fatchett: You know how you do a Jason, take some accent.
• 1:25:21
  Gonna get a little you're gonna get a little love. Because say,
• 1:25:25
  Do you know who I am? As fast as you possibly can, no,
• 1:25:28
  Leighton DaCosta: I am, no, AM, no, am.
• 1:25:32
  Casey Fatchett: You're gonna get rid of his. I'm a beekeeper.
• 1:25:34
  I'm, right, a working man.
• 1:25:37
  Leighton DaCosta: So what I love about Jason Staton story? I
• 1:25:40
  don't know. I don't know. This is like, more useless
• 1:25:43
  information. Guy, Richie, right?
• 1:25:45
  Casey Fatchett: Found, yeah. Is this how he found Jason Statham?
• 1:25:48
  Leighton DaCosta: Go ahead. Yeah. Guy, Richie, and the thing
• 1:25:51
  about it was, was that Jason Statham is a great example of do
• 1:25:55
  what? Of not only staying in your lane but dominating it,
• 1:25:59
  right? By doing what you what you do. Because when you look at
• 1:26:03
  a Jason stadium movie, you expect Jake. You never want
• 1:26:07
  Jason stadium to show up and be Brad Pitt, yeah, right. You
• 1:26:11
  always want him. And the thing that is Brad Pitt. Now, whether
• 1:26:15
  Brad Pitt is serious, like Moneyball, or He is funny, like
• 1:26:19
  money train, right? I'm glad I did that off the top of my head,
• 1:26:23
  where I can get those two together, right? He's still Brad
• 1:26:27
  Pitt, and he's no he no longer has to be anything. And so even
• 1:26:31
  when you're looking at World War Z, or whatever it is that he was
• 1:26:35
  in, it's the clooneyness. He's Brad Pitt. He no longer has to
• 1:26:39
  be, be. Meet Joe Black. He's just Brad Pitt, and he's cool.
• 1:26:43
  So that being said, if you could ever get me and Brad Pitt in the
• 1:26:48
  same room on the podcast, yeah, well, then we have to do video.
• 1:26:52
  And I have to, like, I will give you the skin tones, right? I
• 1:26:56
  will do the entire podcast in Jamaican accent, in my Jamaican
• 1:27:00
  accent, right? Like, and we'd have to schedule it right when I
• 1:27:04
  come back from home, because that's what it's strongest,
• 1:27:08
  right? Yeah, well, mania, yeah. And that way people in my Tuan,
• 1:27:12
  yes, I am twanging because they usually take it from customs
• 1:27:16
  when I when I come
• 1:27:17
  Casey Fatchett: through, you have anything to declare, yes,
• 1:27:22
  my accent,
• 1:27:24
  Leighton DaCosta: right, exactly right. Once again. Thank you,
• 1:27:27
  Casey for having me on. Though I appreciate it. It's always great
• 1:27:33
  to be here it is. As I get older and my eyesight gets worse,
• 1:27:38
  right? I use that day after even more, right? Make sure your
• 1:27:43
  diopter is a it's perfectly focused and it's ranked.
• 1:27:48
  Casey Fatchett: Mine is cranked as far as it can go.
• 1:27:51
  Leighton DaCosta: It is great to see. I will say this though
• 1:27:55
  prediction time. I think in the next five years, you will see a
• 1:28:00
  huge revolution of photography back to 1997 slash 98 to 2003
• 1:28:05
  when photojournalism was all the rage, right? And the main reason
• 1:28:11
  why, and even in the early digital era, it was, it was a
• 1:28:15
  rage. But I think to go back to authentic shot on film, not not
• 1:28:21
  AI, photo journalism is going to be where people are going to get
• 1:28:26
  their credibility from. I think that's going to be where they
• 1:28:32
  get their photo there. And you've already seen it with,
• 1:28:36
  with Kodak and Fuji bringing back a lot of old recipes on
• 1:28:41
  film that they didn't have. And you're like, why are they
• 1:28:46
  bringing back on this 35 millimeter film? Like, who is
• 1:28:51
  out there making 35 millimeter cameras? Right?
• 1:28:55
  Casey Fatchett: Oh, there are new 35 millimeter cameras,
• 1:28:57
  exactly like point and shoots. People want those I bought, I
• 1:29:02
  bought a an Olympus, like, at the my local camera store that
• 1:29:07
  is like a used pile, and I'm hoping it'll actually work. But,
• 1:29:11
  like, I was just like, oh, this is a look that people want. This
• 1:29:14
  is a look that people want, you know, out there, and, you know,
• 1:29:18
  I was
• 1:29:19
  Leighton DaCosta: like, said, I had to buy one of those b i
• 1:29:21
  think they call b1, two, threes, or whatever, the B cell, yes,
• 1:29:25
  batteries that that used to have to put in the APS, C cameras.
• 1:29:29
  Yeah, right, yeah.
• 1:29:30
  Casey Fatchett: Find one to make to see if it would work and it's
• 1:29:33
  okay. It's a, there's a, I think what you're you're on to
• 1:29:37
  something there, because it's that, that sort of backlash,
• 1:29:41
  because we're already starting to, I think the first wave of
• 1:29:45
  backlash against AI and people want to know what they're seeing
• 1:29:49
  is real, and like younger people as much, it's a very and but
• 1:29:53
  when I say younger, I don't mean by experience. I mean by age,
• 1:29:58
  but there's a nostalgia for a time that they. Didn't
• 1:30:01
  experience that was not connected to the internet, and
• 1:30:05
  what they view as simpler. So I think that you're absolutely correct.