Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 051 - Picture Perfect Lies: Exploring Common Myths in Photography Pt. 1

Transcript

051 - Picture Perfect Lies: Exploring Common Myths in Photography Pt. 1 · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:03
  Casey Fatchett: You. Hello there, listeners. Welcome to the
• 0:06
  nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your host, Casey Fatchett, if
• 0:09
  you haven't listened to the podcast before, in addition to
• 0:11
  bringing you informative and entertaining photography and
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  business related content, I also go on adventures with the crew
• 0:17
  of the starship Fibonacci. Right now, I'm going over security
• 0:21
  protocols with our sentient spaceship, fib don't call me fib
• 0:25
  Sure thing, fibo. But before we get started, I would like to
• 0:28
  read a review we recently received on Apple podcasts.
• 0:31
  Absolute brilliant says. Love this podcast. It covers a really
• 0:35
  broad range of topics that relate to photography,
• 0:37
  everything from business and marketing to promoting diversity
• 0:40
  in the industry. Bonus points for the animated episodes, which
• 0:44
  are a lot of fun and have tons of Easter egg Lake reference
• 0:47
  references that go straight to my geeky heart. Oh, that's so
• 0:50
  nice, and reviews like that really help out the podcast. You
• 0:53
  see the nerdy photographer is an independent podcast. That means
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  I don't have a podcast network behind the scenes promoting the
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  show, nor do I have a team of producers working on every
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  leave a review, you are helping others discover this podcast in
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  ways that I am unable to do by myself, so I really appreciate
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  you making the effort to help out. That is very nice and
• 1:17
  important, but this is also important if you ever need to
• 1:23
  override my security system, the voice recognition system,
• 1:27
  requires a match with the control words, which are klatu,
• 1:33
  burrata, nikto, no noodle. Well, it was definitely an N word.
• 1:39
  Hold on. I need to intro the episode. In this episode, I
• 1:42
  speak with a photographer, Rob Hall, about photography myths
• 1:45
  and tropes. You might know Rob from his awesome YouTube videos
• 1:48
  or his Instagram we had so much to talk about. There so many
• 1:53
  photography industry and just photography myths and things out
• 1:55
  there, like so much, we had to break it into two episodes, and
• 1:59
  they're long episodes, and we'll get into all of that after this
• 2:02
  short break. The words back to me. How hard is it to remember
• 2:06
  three words?
• 2:13
  Unknown: Yeah, so I'm not sure how we handle the situation.
• 2:17
  Did you have a contract?
• 2:20
  What I had one I found for free online, but my lawyer says it
• 2:24
  might not hold up.
• 2:26
  Casey Fatchett: Next time you should head over to nerdy
• 2:27
  photographer.com they've got a selection of contract templates
• 2:30
  for weddings, events, portrait sessions, and even for hiring
• 2:34
  second photographers and associate photographers, which
• 2:36
  would certainly have helped you in your current situation.
• 2:40
  Unknown: Really. I will check that out. Nerdy photographer.com
• 2:44
  Casey Fatchett: Yep, nerdy photographer.com they've got all
• 2:46
  sorts of contracts and agreements that can help make
• 2:48
  sure to protect you and your clients. So what are you gonna
• 2:53
  do?
• 2:53
  Unknown: Well, we just have to wait and see what happens, I
• 2:56
  guess.
• 2:57
  Casey Fatchett: So. No pants on. Oh,
• 3:01
  Unknown: no, anything below the waist? Totally Porky Pig
• 3:04
  Casey Fatchett: in it impressive,
• 3:06
  Unknown: not really. Now it's pretty cold out, yep.
• 3:17
  Casey Fatchett: Hello and welcome to the nerdy
• 3:18
  photographer podcast. I am here this episode with editorial
• 3:23
  photographer Rob Hall, welcome Rob. Hello.
• 3:28
  Rob Hall: Hello, Casey. Thank you for having me. And
• 3:30
  Casey Fatchett: this episode kind of comes out of something
• 3:32
  you were doing on Instagram that I jumped on about photography
• 3:37
  industry myths and tropes. So we're going to get into this and
• 3:41
  we're going to discuss some very prevalent myths and tropes. So
• 3:46
  the first one we're going to get into here is that you must have
• 3:50
  expensive gear to take high quality pictures.
• 3:55
  Rob Hall: Is this going to be a whole episode just on number
• 3:57
  one? I feel like it could be.
• 3:59
  Casey Fatchett: I think we could go on this for probably three or
• 4:01
  four days just on question number one.
• 4:05
  Rob Hall: This is definitely, like the biggest photography
• 4:08
  trope. One of the things that I joked about when I when this was
• 4:11
  a conversation, I would say about half of the responses were
• 4:14
  one side of this or the other. And it goes back and forth, and
• 4:21
  you see articles that support like both sides of it quarterly,
• 4:24
  from every single photography blog. It's every YouTuber has a
• 4:28
  video on it, one side or the other, and it all or both, yeah,
• 4:34
  and it always kind of amounts to the same thing, which is like,
• 4:37
  oh, it kind of helps, but it doesn't make you a better
• 4:39
  photographer. That's the only place that we've gotten with
• 4:44
  that argument, which has been discussed since I've been in
• 4:47
  photography, which was over a decade, and probably much longer
• 4:50
  than that.
• 4:52
  Casey Fatchett: Oh yeah. I mean, I can remember. I mean, I've
• 4:54
  been at this for 20 years, and it's, it's, it was definitely
• 4:58
  back shooting film. Boom, it was still, you know, an issue like
• 5:03
  you expensive gear doesn't make you a better photographer.
• 5:07
  Having the right gear for the job that you're trying to do can
• 5:10
  help you take a better photo. And it's like you said, there's
• 5:14
  an article, you know, every few months you have to have the
• 5:17
  brand new, most expensive, most amazing gear, or, you know, gear
• 5:22
  doesn't matter. Every three months, it's one or the other.
• 5:24
  And for most people, the best camera that you have is the
• 5:27
  camera that's on you. And for most people, that is their
• 5:29
  phone. But you're not going to do 99% of any sort of
• 5:34
  professional photography jobs with your phone, right? You
• 5:44
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the big argument there
• 5:49
  that that if you it doesn't make you a better photographer. I've
• 5:54
  seen instances where that is complete BS. And I think the
• 5:58
  biggest one that I think back to is I remember trying to teach my
• 6:02
  wife photography on a DSLR, and that whole like, delay between
• 6:09
  changing settings and then seeing the photograph either
• 6:12
  later, all the while hearing like, Oh, you don't have to be
• 6:14
  looking every time once you understand it, you know. So she
• 6:17
  would just kind of like, plug away and just not really be
• 6:20
  dialed into the meter, and all of her photos would be off to
• 6:23
  some degree. Man, when I put a mirrorless in her hand with a
• 6:27
  DSLR, we never got anywhere. Like we would, we would try it.
• 6:30
  She would kind of pick up on maybe one facet of manual
• 6:34
  photography, right? Like she'd understand shutter speed. And
• 6:37
  then, like, two weeks later, we'd try and that would be gone
• 6:40
  again. We brought a mirrorless camera. The first time, she
• 6:44
  instantly understood the relationship of all three. She
• 6:48
  knew what all three did. By the end of it, she could interweave
• 6:52
  them. All of her photos were like appropriate brightness,
• 6:55
  like that instant feedback of just seeing everything live
• 6:58
  completely made her a better photographer.
• 7:00
  Casey Fatchett: And that's the thing. It's like, it depends on
• 7:03
  the person. It completely depends on who you are and what
• 7:06
  you respond to. Like, and that gets into, you know, every other
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  aspect of like, gear talk and like, what's better for this
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  whatever like, it's what's what works for you. Like, the fact
• 7:17
  that she's able to completely understand the exposure
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  triangle, just because she gets is getting that instantaneous
• 7:22
  feedback is great. And that's like, yeah, doesn't matter what
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  kind of like camera, like, what brand of camera it is, or how
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  expensive the camera is, it's that you are becoming more
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  knowledgeable and understanding of how everything fits together,
• 7:36
  you know, based on that equipment.
• 7:39
  Rob Hall: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this will probably be a
• 7:42
  recurring theme throughout the episode, is that the answer to
• 7:46
  most of most tropes, photography tropes in general, and most
• 7:50
  questions about photography, the answer is, usually, it depends
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  like that is that is the most accurate answer you can give.
• 7:57
  And unfortunately, the answer that nobody wants
• 8:00
  Casey Fatchett: right because they don't want to actually sit
• 8:02
  down and take the time to figure it out for themselves. And
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  that's a whole other right industry issue that you know
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  bugs me lately is people saying, like, just tell me the answer.
• 8:14
  Just give me the answer right now, tell me, tell me what the
• 8:16
  best camera is, and then I'm going to go out and buy the best
• 8:19
  camera, and that means I'm going to take the best pictures? No,
• 8:21
  it, it depends you're exactly right, yeah.
• 8:27
  Rob Hall: But, I mean, I think if I were to, like, sum it up,
• 8:29
  you know, do you have to have expensive gear? Does gear matter
• 8:33
  at all? Yeah, it absolutely impacts you. It can, it can be
• 8:37
  the difference between you getting some jobs, like, there's
• 8:40
  still the people going around in the wedding world, and they're
• 8:43
  asking the question because they read it on the knot, do you have
• 8:45
  a full frame camera? Do you have a full frame? DSLR, which is
• 8:48
  actually kind of funny considering, you know how much
• 8:50
  of the industry has moved to mirrorless, that you know, some
• 8:53
  portion of the industry would be like, No, I don't have a full
• 8:56
  frame. DSLR, well,
• 8:58
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, they would probably say like, Well, that
• 8:59
  depends on what you mean by full frame. And do you understand
• 9:02
  what a mirrorless camera is like? Let's get into the
• 9:05
  technicalities of, you know, camera gear. And that's
• 9:09
  something that, you know, I in the wedding industry, people
• 9:11
  would be like, they would, you can knew it immediately like
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  that they had gotten this list off the knot or wherever. And
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  we're saying, like, ask me the questions, and I'd be like, so
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  how much do you know about cameras, and that was, and, you
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  know, 95% of the time they had no idea, like, anything about
• 9:26
  cameras. They were just like, this is just a question that,
• 9:29
  you know, we were told to ask. And part of getting the job for
• 9:32
  me was then say, like, let me, let's talk about cameras like, I
• 9:35
  will. And I'm not going to bore you with camera details, but I'm
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  just going to give you a little bit of an education so that when
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  you do talk to other photographers, you know what
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  answers you should be getting? And that right distinguished me
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  from other people, like, you know, like saying, like, Listen,
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  you know, it's not just about the camera, it's about other
• 9:52
  things that are involved. And I agree, it's not just having
• 9:54
  expensive gear. Yes, gear can help you with certain jobs. So,
• 9:58
  like, if you're an architectural photographer. Photographer,
• 10:00
  yeah, you probably might want a tilt shift lens, but they're
• 10:04
  seriously expensive. But, like, there are other things, like, do
• 10:07
  you absolutely, as a wedding photographer, need to have a
• 10:10
  macro lens to shoot ring shots? No, you don't like, yeah, it can
• 10:13
  help, but you don't absolutely need it. It's, you know, you
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  find ways around things also, like, sometimes you don't have
• 10:20
  the gear. One of the things that I do a lot of time is, like, I
• 10:22
  don't necessarily want to spend a, you know, $500 on something
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  or $1,000 on a piece of equipment. I'll build something,
• 10:28
  and I'll be a little bit more creative. You know, sometimes
• 10:31
  creativity really is the mother of invention. Yeah.
• 10:35
  Rob Hall: I mean, that is the book play anything by Ian
• 10:38
  Bogost. He talks about how all aspects of playing are derived
• 10:44
  from stuffing, you know, putting limitations on things, right? So
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  that's definitely true in photography. Like, as soon as
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  you're limited, as soon as you don't have everything, you have
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  to find solutions, or just, you know, find an alternative and
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  exercise that to the best of its ability. And, yeah, I think
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  that's a that's a huge point in being a photographer. And
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  honestly, like, from somebody who has way more options than
• 11:08
  they need, that can be exhausting, like, when you have,
• 11:12
  when you have everything, it can be a deterrent for quality.
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  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it can also, like, it just make him
• 11:18
  feel stifling, almost like you can feel like sort of that
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  there's too many options to choose from. And, you know,
• 11:24
  like, I've taught workshops and stuff where I say to people,
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  like, Listen, you know, let's go back to, you know, my film
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  photography days, you have 24 or 36 exposures to make this
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  happen. Like, let's just, like, limit it. So you have to think
• 11:38
  about it. And like, you really have to think about every shot
• 11:41
  that you're taking. You're not just, like, throwing a whole
• 11:43
  bunch of, you know, exposures out there. You've only got like,
• 11:46
  X amount of exposures to, you know, reach the goal that you're
• 11:51
  looking for.
• 11:53
  Rob Hall: I really think this could be a whole episode. But, I
• 11:56
  mean, the summary is, I think we've, we've stated it, and the
• 11:59
  reason that all of these articles always get to the same
• 12:02
  places that you know it depends. It can help and make you a
• 12:05
  better photographer. But there are benefits to to exploring
• 12:11
  other options and being limited. Right?
• 12:13
  Casey Fatchett: Exactly, all right. Moving on to the next
• 12:16
  one, the next photography myth or trip. And I think this
• 12:20
  actually applies to a lot of different industries. Different
• 12:23
  industries or job pursuits. You have to struggle to be a
• 12:26
  success, or if you're not struggling, you're doing
• 12:28
  something wrong.
• 12:31
  Rob Hall: It's so gross. I absolutely hate this trope. It's
• 12:36
  especially prevalent in creative ones, although I feel like
• 12:39
  people have found it a way. If you look at social media today,
• 12:43
  it seems like almost everybody has a side hustle, right? That
• 12:46
  that's just like part of society is to have whatever you're
• 12:49
  working on, and then that other thing that you're working on in
• 12:52
  the meantime. And I don't know, I don't know, hopefully there
• 12:54
  are still some people out there just enjoying like they have
• 12:57
  their 40 hour work week and that's all they do, because I'm
• 13:00
  not seeing them where they
• 13:01
  Casey Fatchett: just have a hobby. They just have, you know,
• 13:05
  actually was one. It's one of the other topics we put like,
• 13:09
  you don't have to do this, because, just because you enjoy
• 13:13
  this doesn't mean you have to do it for a living. You don't have
• 13:16
  to charge money for it. And I think that, you know, we have
• 13:20
  often like, I mean, I for many years thought, Oh, I've got to
• 13:24
  be like, I got to stay up until two o'clock in the morning
• 13:27
  editing. I got to stay up until like, four o'clock editing this
• 13:29
  job to get it out. Because, you know, it's like they had a
• 13:31
  hustle. I always had to be hustling. But then it was just
• 13:34
  sort of like, my wife was like, You need to relax. You need to,
• 13:39
  like, really impose some work life balance in there. And that
• 13:43
  doesn't mean that sometimes you don't work late, or you don't,
• 13:46
  you know, stretch it out a little bit or but you don't
• 13:50
  always have to be operating at 125% capacity.
• 13:57
  Rob Hall: Yeah, I think that's one of the issues with this
• 13:59
  current culture where we have, you know, we're loosely talking
• 14:04
  about this, like, five different social media platforms that
• 14:07
  you're doing and and maybe if you've got a regular creative
• 14:11
  position that you're representing and a side hustle,
• 14:13
  and now you've got, like, separate entities for both and
• 14:16
  everything in photography, tells you that it has to be your
• 14:21
  whatever business you're building for photography has to
• 14:23
  be specific to one exact niche, right? So, oh, if you want to
• 14:27
  shoot boudoir and weddings, you have to have two separate
• 14:30
  companies with independent social media and that stuff that
• 14:33
  becomes exhausting, and then you start reading about how much you
• 14:37
  should be posting to each one and responding to every single
• 14:39
  comment. And very easily, every day, you wake up with a million
• 14:43
  things to do, 1,000,001 and you're never going to get to the
• 14:46
  and one, right?
• 14:46
  Casey Fatchett: And exactly I mean I I suffer from anxiety,
• 14:51
  and one of those things is just feeling like, I'm never going to
• 14:54
  get to through the whole list of things that I have to do. I'm
• 14:58
  never going to be like. I'm never going to complete the list
• 15:01
  of things that I need to do. For example, like I was earlier
• 15:06
  today. I recorded a bunch of videos, but I also recorded them
• 15:10
  yesterday, and I looked at them, and I was just like, I'm not
• 15:13
  happy with these. I didn't the qualities off. The audio quality
• 15:16
  is off. The video quality's off. I don't like how I look. It was
• 15:18
  just like, it's just the anxiety of that I have to be, like, give
• 15:21
  myself a higher I hold myself to a higher level of quality. And
• 15:29
  it's just like I have to be, it has to be better than that. And
• 15:31
  like, I have to be struggling somehow to, you know, achieve
• 15:36
  and I have to have all of these different things, like going on.
• 15:39
  Like, I have to juggle 800 different things going on at the
• 15:41
  same time, social media and actually editing a job today.
• 15:45
  And, you know, you know, producing new content with
• 15:49
  content production is just such a, oh, my God. It's just such a,
• 15:53
  it's a headache.
• 15:55
  Rob Hall: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, that's,
• 15:58
  that's me today. I was, I was getting rid of a lot of stuff
• 16:02
  this kind of ties back into having too many options. We're
• 16:06
  opening up this new studio, and I was looking around, and we're
• 16:10
  going to be renting this out to other people. And I'm like, man,
• 16:13
  if people come in here and they're like, wanting to try
• 16:16
  flash, they're instantly going to be afraid of it. If they walk
• 16:19
  into the room and see what we have. Because there's like, 15
• 16:23
  different reflector options. There's probably 20 different
• 16:28
  softbox options. I was like, I am going to dramatically pare
• 16:31
  this down. And so I started selling a bunch of it. And then
• 16:34
  immediately, today, when when I had that, like, Oh, these are
• 16:38
  going to be gone forever. Now I'm like, I need to make a video
• 16:41
  on this. So I rushed to make I rushed to make this, like 30
• 16:45
  minutes. It took me about 30 minutes this video on it and get
• 16:48
  all that done. And then that turned into, like, not having
• 16:51
  enough time to even ship it. And you know, it just goes back to,
• 16:56
  like, never having enough time to do it all, so that you really
• 16:59
  have to establish boundaries, and I've been close enough to a
• 17:05
  lot of people who have seen real health damage by doing too much
• 17:11
  of a hustle for too long, right? I've seen where it ends you
• 17:14
  where you end up if you do that. I've had a friend who go ahead.
• 17:19
  I mean,
• 17:19
  Casey Fatchett: I've been there. I mean, I used to work as a
• 17:21
  night shift my day before, I was like, a full time photographer.
• 17:24
  I had a job working at desktop publishing for banks, and I
• 17:30
  worked the overnight shift, and I was sleeping like, two hours a
• 17:33
  night or day, two hours day, because she had to get up and,
• 17:36
  like, do my thing. I gotta have, like, I was doing stuff during
• 17:39
  the day. Is also I was acting at the same time as back in my
• 17:42
  acting and photography career going on at the same time. And I
• 17:45
  was just like, I'll work nights that gives me my days are
• 17:47
  flexible. Like, no, you're supposed to sleep at some point.
• 17:50
  And I developed, I developed narcolepsy, like I would I was
• 17:54
  literally like, falling asleep. Like, like, snap of a finger. I
• 17:58
  would just be completely out. I was at a party talking to
• 18:02
  someone, and I fell asleep standing up, and they leaned me
• 18:06
  up against the wall.
• 18:09
  Rob Hall: Wow, yeah, that's how you tell you know. So did you
• 18:12
  like, immediately give something up?
• 18:14
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I mean, I immediately, that's that. It was
• 18:16
  also around the time that I decided that, you know, you
• 18:18
  know, I need to take a step back and figure out what. I switched
• 18:25
  from working overnight to, like, a more of a swing shift. I was
• 18:29
  working four to midnight. I was like, Okay, I gotta, I can't
• 18:31
  just, like, instantly change my life, you know, back to my
• 18:36
  normal schedule. I have to, like, slowly bring myself back
• 18:40
  to normal. And I was like, Okay, I just got to do one thing. And,
• 18:43
  you know, I got to get out of this. This, you know, I was
• 18:47
  planning to, like, switch full time to photography, because the
• 18:50
  other stuff is just, I burnt out. I just burned out on
• 18:54
  everything else. And I was like, This is what I want to do. And
• 18:57
  so I just, I have to slowly do this process, otherwise, you
• 19:00
  know, if I did it too quickly, I was going to hurt myself. You
• 19:03
  know, that way as well?
• 19:06
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah. I had a friend who was what primarily
• 19:10
  did wedding work, but also said yes to, like, any other little
• 19:14
  job that came in, and he was really successful as a career,
• 19:18
  like for for years and out of nowhere, on the way to a wedding
• 19:23
  one day, he he felt like, really bad, and just drove himself to
• 19:28
  the ER, went in the ER, and they were like, You need to go the
• 19:32
  hospital. Walked into the hospital, they're like, you are
• 19:35
  having a heart attack right now. And yeah, so he had to get the
• 19:40
  wedding covered. And, you know, I remember dealing with that and
• 19:43
  going and seeing him at the hospital and everything. And he
• 19:45
  completely uprooted his career. He's actually the reason that I
• 19:48
  have the position that I do at the university, because he he
• 19:52
  uprooted his life to go up to a nine to five creative position
• 19:57
  somewhere else in Michigan, and then he was a. One that was
• 20:00
  shooting at the university prior to me, so I kind of filled in
• 20:03
  for him and have been shooting for them ever since. But yeah,
• 20:07
  like that. That's what happens when you do this for too long,
• 20:10
  right? When you just go hard all the time, it's gonna catch up to
• 20:13
  you. So no, you don't have to do it.
• 20:15
  Casey Fatchett: No, you don't, and just to finish this. Now
• 20:18
  before we get to the next one, like that spoke to me so much
• 20:21
  because, you know, two years ago, I was putting together, I
• 20:28
  was getting ready, I had, I had a weekend, two weddings and a
• 20:33
  Friday wedding and a Saturday wedding, and it was Thursday
• 20:36
  night, and, you know, I it was like different setups for each
• 20:41
  wedding. And I had to have, like, you know, I was setting up
• 20:44
  a photo booth and like, video, and there's almost all these
• 20:47
  things, like, so many moving pieces for both of them, and I
• 20:50
  was trying to get everything ready, and, like, test out all
• 20:53
  the photo booth stuff. And like, things were breaking, and I was
• 20:55
  just trying to get it, and I completely had a panic attack.
• 21:00
  And I, like, I was just like, I couldn't breathe. And my wife
• 21:06
  was like, Are you having a heart attack right now? Do I was like,
• 21:08
  no, like, I'm panicking. Like, I'm just like, I know this is a
• 21:12
  panic attack, because it just feel like the anxiety and
• 21:15
  everything that just built up. And I'm like, I will check my
• 21:18
  heart rate. But it was like, yeah, that totally felt that,
• 21:21
  like, just that sort of, like, I booked myself like, so busily,
• 21:26
  like with so many, so many gears turning with everything that was
• 21:31
  going on. I was just like, run myself ragged, even at that
• 21:34
  point. And like, after that happened, I was just like, okay,
• 21:36
  need to take a step back and, like, I reworked my Of course,
• 21:41
  this is pre covid, but I reworked, like, how I accept
• 21:45
  things, like, as far as wedding work, like, you know, I don't,
• 21:48
  you know, do like back to backs, the same way that I used to like
• 21:52
  now, if, like, if I'm going to do something that the day
• 21:54
  before, like, if it's going to be two weddings back to back the
• 21:57
  same day, or two day every, you know, in two days, like, one of
• 22:00
  them has to be kind of a very low key thing, like, like, it's
• 22:04
  not a lot of moving pieces, if I'm going to do one the day
• 22:08
  after the other.
• 22:10
  Rob Hall: Yeah, I've in weddings. I think it's so common
• 22:13
  in weddings, first off, a because you're generally in a
• 22:17
  field where your work is heavily concentrated. So, you know, you
• 22:22
  you'll work, you'll put extra hours in at one point in the
• 22:25
  year, and then you have all that free time when nobody's booking
• 22:27
  weddings at another point in the year, especially if you're like
• 22:30
  Midwest, east coast, where you actually have a winter, like,
• 22:33
  that's that happens. That's everybody. I mean, in Michigan,
• 22:36
  you know, we know that, like November through April, it's
• 22:40
  just like, that's your part time off, and then the other time you
• 22:43
  work, you know, twice as much as full time, so not healthy. That
• 22:47
  was actually, that was a huge reason that I wanted to get out
• 22:51
  of the wedding industry. Is that disproportionate work schedule,
• 22:55
  half of it just how unbalanced it was. The other half was how
• 23:00
  much it would just destroy your summer, to the point where you
• 23:02
  can't even enjoy the nice weather,
• 23:03
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, and that's, that's, you know, you
• 23:06
  know. Like my wife used to say, like, you know, I, you know,
• 23:09
  when may comes around, I say goodbye to my husband until
• 23:12
  October, and it was just like, it was just gone all the time.
• 23:16
  And it's, you know. Like, think about that, like, you know, not
• 23:18
  being able to, like, do things with people and during the
• 23:22
  summer, and, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a stressful situation. We
• 23:26
  should not glamorize, yeah, we should not glam I think the
• 23:29
  point is we're getting to is, like, we've not to glamorize
• 23:32
  that struggle and that, that we work ourselves to death, to,
• 23:36
  literally, in some cases, just to pursue this?
• 23:42
  Rob Hall: Yeah, and I've definitely been there. Like,
• 23:44
  I've been that guy who did, you know, Four Weddings in a
• 23:48
  weekend, or, you know, Friday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
• 23:51
  Sunday, something like that. And then you're like, you know,
• 23:53
  posting about it on social media. Like, I don't know if
• 23:56
  that's just, like, a testosterone field thing where
• 23:58
  you're just like, I'm a warrior, but yeah, it's actually, it's,
• 24:02
  it's not great. We probably shouldn't be. Shouldn't be doing
• 24:05
  it in the first place, and we definitely shouldn't be
• 24:07
  presenting it as normal to others, no,
• 24:09
  Casey Fatchett: and that's like, I have a second shooter and a
• 24:13
  friend. He's a good friend at this point, and you know, we've
• 24:15
  been working together for 10 years. And you know, he says to
• 24:19
  me, I'm like, I'm doing a triple this weekend, and I'm just like,
• 24:23
  what he's like, Yeah, I'm, I'm shooting my own wedding, like,
• 24:27
  for me on Sunday, and I'm second shooting, you know, here on
• 24:32
  Friday, and I'm second shooting with you on Saturday. And it's
• 24:35
  just like, dude, like, you need to rely like you're young, like
• 24:39
  he's, he's not even 30. Well, I think he's maybe just over 30 at
• 24:43
  this point. But it's like, you know, you can't do that forever.
• 24:47
  You can't, you can't do that forever. Like, that's, yeah,
• 24:50
  I've learned the hard way, like, you can't. It gets old. It gets
• 24:54
  old after a while.
• 24:56
  Rob Hall: I think it's also worse in that context, where
• 24:59
  it's not. All within the processes of your own business,
• 25:03
  right, where you're jumping around from like, independent
• 25:05
  contracting to second shooting to, oh, I got this one for my
• 25:08
  own gig, and then I've got a corporate gig on Monday, which I
• 25:11
  do three times a year, like when you expose yourself to that much
• 25:15
  mental stress, because you have to shift out of a routine so
• 25:18
  much you're only causing yourself more anguish.
• 25:21
  Casey Fatchett: Absolutely, absolutely. All right, I think
• 25:24
  we've, we've beaten that to death. Yeah, we've beaten that
• 25:29
  one pretty hard. All right, next, photography, myth, film is
• 25:35
  better than digital that.
• 25:38
  Rob Hall: Okay, so I'm actually, like interested in this one,
• 25:41
  because you've been, you've been doing this for 20 years. So I,
• 25:44
  full disclosure, I got into photography, like, right when
• 25:49
  digital was about good enough for everybody, right? So we get
• 25:52
  into, like, full frame DSLRs, professional DSLRs, like the
• 25:57
  Nikon d3 was coming out. That is, like, when I enter the
• 25:59
  industry. So for me, I'm like a complete digital baby. I would
• 26:04
  totally be able to expose a roll of film, right? But I cannot
• 26:12
  imagine ever wanting to work with film.
• 26:15
  Casey Fatchett: Oh, it's such a hassle. Like, I still do it
• 26:18
  occasionally, if for myself, like, honestly, it's mostly,
• 26:22
  like, just on a personal level, if clients for, and I only offer
• 26:26
  it for weddings, for clients, like nothing else, and if
• 26:30
  somebody really, really wants it, and they have to pay for the
• 26:32
  privilege at that point, because it is such a pain. I grew up
• 26:37
  like, you know, shooting film, and you never know what you're
• 26:41
  gonna get. Like, it's, honestly, it's probably why, you know, one
• 26:45
  of the reasons that developed anxiety is because you don't
• 26:48
  know what's gonna happen. Because I would occasionally
• 26:50
  shoot, like, weddings like that. And like, you're always
• 26:52
  thinking, like, Okay, what was everybody's eyes open at the
• 26:56
  wedding, did I or, you know, whatever, he was shooting
• 26:59
  headshots, or, you know, musicians. That was the thing
• 27:02
  that, like, taught me, like lighting was photographing live
• 27:05
  music shows with film, because you couldn't use a flash or
• 27:10
  anything like, you're just, like, constantly, like, and you
• 27:12
  can't change the film speed. Like, I would have two different
• 27:15
  camera bodies with different, you know, ISO, you know, film in
• 27:20
  them. And I'm shooting independently with those, like,
• 27:23
  trying to remember, Okay, this one's got, you know, 400 This
• 27:26
  one's got 800 whatever. And like, you know, adjusting, you
• 27:29
  know, my aperture and my shutter speed, you know, independently,
• 27:32
  like, as the lights changed in a, you know, live music show,
• 27:36
  which, you know, it's like, second to second, like, how it
• 27:39
  changes. And then, like, thinking, like, Okay, did I roll
• 27:42
  this film correctly and, you know, did I accidentally expose
• 27:46
  any of these, or is there a light leak in my camera that's
• 27:50
  gonna, like, you know, that's what I had happened at one
• 27:52
  point, was there's a, like, a little leak in my camera body.
• 27:57
  You know, that was like, exposing these streaks across,
• 28:00
  like, the in one shoot that I did. And luckily, it was kind of
• 28:04
  like a, it was, it was for a musician, like a band shoot. And
• 28:09
  like, I was like, this is something's off here. Like,
• 28:11
  something's off with my exposures. Like, there's, like,
• 28:13
  these light leaks that are coming through. And they kind
• 28:15
  of, they loved it. They were like, Oh, this is awesome. And
• 28:18
  I'm like, Nope, there's a problem with my camera, but I'm
• 28:20
  not gonna tell them that. But, like, it is such a like, it's
• 28:24
  film, the quality of what you're getting out of it. Like, I don't
• 28:29
  think we've surpassed that. There's people used to, oh, you
• 28:33
  know, like, the quality of a film is better. Like, you know,
• 28:37
  whenever you're gonna have to scan it in, most of the time
• 28:40
  anyway, when printed out, like your print, if you're unless
• 28:42
  you're, like, developing it yourself, like, there's like,
• 28:47
  you know, whatever, like, I don't know, I just throw my
• 28:50
  hands up at that. But when it comes to the flexibility and the
• 28:56
  knowledge of what you're capturing and like, especially
• 28:59
  in things like, whatever it is, like even editorial portraiture,
• 29:03
  you know, wedding work, whatever it is, that instantaneous
• 29:07
  feedback that you get from digital allows you to know that
• 29:11
  you got the shot that you wanted. Allows you to like, you
• 29:14
  know, move forward and maybe try things that are a little bit
• 29:17
  more, I don't know, edgy or whatever, like take risks or
• 29:22
  light things differently, or whatever like just to see that
• 29:25
  you got it, as opposed to just be like hoping and praying and
• 29:29
  crossing your fingers that you got the exposure that you
• 29:32
  wanted. Just gives me a lot of respect for the people who you
• 29:36
  know did all that stuff you know, like shooting film for a
• 29:40
  long time,
• 29:42
  Rob Hall: I completely wish I was in the film era, because I
• 29:46
  would have, like, from my mind, I would have, like, cleaned
• 29:49
  house in that era. You know what I mean? Like, it just works,
• 29:52
  like, the mathematical side of things, like, that's where I'm
• 29:55
  strong at photography, and that's where most people are
• 29:58
  weak today. You know, I. Would say 90% of your photographers
• 30:02
  out here probably can't accurately define what a stop of
• 30:05
  light is, right? And that was critical knowledge. That was
• 30:09
  critical knowledge to taking a photo, you know, 25 years ago,
• 30:15
  yeah. So I really wish I was in that era, but at the same time,
• 30:21
  I don't want any of the problems that you just described, and I
• 30:25
  cannot imagine any advantage in using film these days, right?
• 30:33
  And every time I see film, and they're like, they're like, God,
• 30:35
  the look. I'm like, like, I feel like that could have been
• 30:39
  replicated via digital. Like, I don't see anything about colors.
• 30:43
  I do agree that, like certain, certain film stocks are
• 30:46
  beautiful, like the colors that come out of them are absolutely
• 30:50
  stunning. But nothing about it seems unobtainable through
• 30:53
  digital. And then when you're talking about, when you're
• 30:55
  talking about, every process ending up digital, I love that
• 30:59
  these, these arguments take place on the internet, where
• 31:02
  somebody has to show a digitized version of a film image that had
• 31:07
  to be scanned at some point, right? Like you had, you had to
• 31:12
  turn your your film into digital just so that you could make this
• 31:16
  argument Exactly. It's very ironic.
• 31:19
  Casey Fatchett: It's like, you know, yeah, it's just like, and
• 31:22
  that is double edged as as well. Like, I see a lot of people
• 31:25
  like, get that film look, get the film look presets. And it's
• 31:29
  just like, how does this look like film you didn't like?
• 31:33
  There's, there's the it's goes both ways. You know? Like, I see
• 31:36
  all these people like, oh, is this how you get the film look?
• 31:39
  And I'm like, do you even know what film looks like? Because
• 31:43
  it's not necessarily that. It's not, you know, it's not my cyan
• 31:48
  and yellow crowd that likes to, just like, you know, boost those
• 31:52
  colors. It's, you know, yeah. I mean, I, I think I did well at
• 31:57
  that point in my career as a photographer, shooting film,
• 32:00
  because I did, I was good at, great at the math, and I knew
• 32:03
  that I could get a great exposure. The problem was, for
• 32:06
  me, was the anxiety of, you know, making sure that you got
• 32:09
  the shot and, like, you know, that it was in focus, it was,
• 32:13
  you know, like the people's eyes were open, that those types of
• 32:16
  things that just kind of drove me crazy.
• 32:19
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah. I mean, today, in today's day and age, I
• 32:22
  think it's quite clear that, you know, you need a, you need a
• 32:26
  digital process to compete, unless, and if you don't like,
• 32:29
  if you don't think you do, you're going to be working
• 32:32
  really hard to establish that niche, just to make that work.
• 32:36
  And you know, if you're, if you're willing to take that
• 32:38
  journey, cool, I just don't see what the advantages are these
• 32:42
  days.
• 32:43
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I don't think there are that many other
• 32:45
  than for the niche of like clients who really want that,
• 32:50
  who just who want that, sort of, I don't know, visceral feel or
• 32:53
  whatever it is, because I certainly have had some wedding
• 32:57
  clients who booked me because I offered film. And also I've lost
• 33:01
  some wedding clients because I didn't offer the kind of film
• 33:04
  that they wanted. They wanted, like, wet plate, you know,
• 33:07
  exposures, what full? Like, yeah, 10 by 10.
• 33:12
  Rob Hall: Like, I need daguerreotype, yeah. Like, I,
• 33:17
  Casey Fatchett: I'm not kidding. I had like, two of these over
• 33:20
  the, like, the last probably eight years where, like, where
• 33:24
  people were just like, This is what we want, and we saw this at
• 33:26
  somebody else's wedding, and I'm like, and hire that person
• 33:29
  because, man, I don't have that equipment.
• 33:31
  Rob Hall: I don't. Do you think there's a niche? Do you think
• 33:34
  there's a very high paying niche market for photos captured with
• 33:37
  a camera obscura? Yeah, like, all right, it's gonna be a four
• 33:42
  hour exposure.
• 33:43
  Casey Fatchett: Enjoy all stand real still, real still.
• 33:48
  Rob Hall: That'd be great for, like, a backyard wedding. You
• 33:51
  like, only give them all you have to deliver is one one foot
• 33:55
  four hour exposure of the whole day. And it completely captures
• 34:00
  everything your whole day. I didn't miss a second. You can't
• 34:03
  see any part of it, but I didn't miss a second. I'm gonna start
• 34:07
  offering that. That's, that's me jumping back into the wedding
• 34:10
  industry.
• 34:11
  Casey Fatchett: Well, it's a really, you know, you just have
• 34:13
  to know the settings to use. And you've got your pinhole camera,
• 34:15
  and you're just like, you know, setting everything up. And you
• 34:18
  just like, leave, and you can go do like, eight jobs, because as
• 34:21
  long as you have the equipment, yeah, you can just set
• 34:23
  everything. We've, we've, we've broken ground on a new, whole
• 34:27
  new market for weddings,
• 34:29
  Rob Hall: yeah, yeah, somebody's gonna take this and run,
• 34:32
  Casey Fatchett: somebody listening to this is gonna,
• 34:34
  like, take that off, all right, which, this leads me to the next
• 34:37
  question, or next trope, which is actually where I contacted
• 34:42
  you about to do this episode, getting published or winning
• 34:47
  awards means that you're successful.
• 34:51
  Rob Hall: I mean, if people go and see my Instagram, they're
• 34:54
  gonna see how I feel about this. My I have to read it. I don't.
• 35:00
  Remember what I put let me, let me bring this up real quick. I
• 35:04
  apologize. I think I've got it right here. I got it all right.
• 35:08
  It's my bio on Instagram right now. Is award winning and
• 35:12
  internationally published. Photographer also specializes in
• 35:16
  finding paid awards and international self publishing
• 35:20
  that about sums out I feel about it now. I don't want to
• 35:23
  completely cheapen all awards. One photographer, if I have a
• 35:29
  photography crush, especially in the wedding niche, it is Jason
• 35:33
  Vinson, do you are you? Do you know who that is? Man, check him
• 35:40
  out. He? He, he just won the he was top 25 in the fearless
• 35:48
  photographer awards in the world, and I believe he was
• 35:52
  number two in the United States. And I look at like, the stuff he
• 35:57
  makes, and I'm like, totally deserves it. Totally deserves
• 36:01
  award recognition, right? And of all the award companies, I
• 36:06
  actually do think fearless would be one of the few that I
• 36:09
  actually respect. Now I will say sometimes I wonder, with
• 36:16
  fearless, and I wonder this of a lot of industries, is, is, how
• 36:20
  big is the disconnect between what clients like and what
• 36:25
  photographers slash photography judges like?
• 36:28
  Casey Fatchett: This is a whole other episode, and maybe because
• 36:32
  I just did a recorded episode about, like, emotionally
• 36:36
  connecting to a photo as a viewer or as like a client
• 36:41
  versus what photographers tend to like, think about as being
• 36:45
  like a great photo, like, you know, in and I, you know, I go
• 36:49
  both ways with this. And like thinking like, you know, there
• 36:51
  are times when I go, like, yeah. I mean, there's sometimes where
• 36:54
  I appreciate the validation of winning an award, and there are
• 36:57
  other times where I'm like, but what did my clients think about
• 37:00
  it. So, like, Yeah, I do, you know, like getting those like,
• 37:04
  reviews and things from clients who are saying, like, I love
• 37:07
  this picture, or I love my photos. I love what I got back,
• 37:10
  because it means so much to me emotionally. And that is
• 37:13
  something that other photographers are not gonna
• 37:15
  they're gonna be looking at this photo like, I'm looking at the
• 37:17
  composition, I'm looking at the lighting, I'm looking at, you
• 37:19
  know, everything you know, the exposure, whatever. And I'm not
• 37:22
  necessarily thinking about how it serves the client.
• 37:28
  Rob Hall: Yeah, I think the biggest barometer for that is
• 37:30
  what makes it in the wedding album. Because what's funny is
• 37:35
  like, I will what I share for a client's wedding. I guess what I
• 37:39
  did share, I haven't done this in so long now, what I used to
• 37:43
  share from a client's wedding was almost always not
• 37:47
  represented in the same way in the album, right? And the album
• 37:51
  is where I'll have like, six pages of the family photos, and
• 37:54
  you won't see a single one of those on my blog, right? So it's
• 38:00
  it's very interesting, and it's funny too, in that it does
• 38:03
  attract the clients. Those Wow shots do tend to attract the
• 38:08
  clients, but it's not the bread and butter. When you actually
• 38:12
  get to you, know, fulfilling their order, like them getting
• 38:16
  what they want, they get that in a completely different place
• 38:19
  from what led them to you, which is so bizarre, so bizarre.
• 38:25
  Casey Fatchett: And it's thing is, like, you know, like to go,
• 38:27
  like, back on to like, the topic getting published, or, you know,
• 38:31
  ignored. It's like, there's just so much out there. Like, people
• 38:35
  look at and and think, like, oh, they won an award, Oh, they got
• 38:39
  published here. Like, they must be great, like, but they there's
• 38:42
  that disconnect. Like, gives it's good for photographers to
• 38:47
  have that sort of, like, credibility, but also it's
• 38:50
  important for I guess, clients, no matter what industry you're
• 38:52
  in, not just weddings, to kind of like, look at that and go,
• 38:55
  like, Okay, well, has everyone won that award?
• 38:59
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the problem with awards
• 39:02
  right now. Is like, I could, I could go sign up for 10 programs
• 39:06
  right now and have a whole list of awards, you know, within the
• 39:10
  next six months. No problem.
• 39:11
  Casey Fatchett: It's like, I was telling some people the other
• 39:14
  day, like they were talking about awards, and I was like, I
• 39:17
  won an award that I was pretty proud of at the time, because it
• 39:22
  was actually based on like, voting from a bunch of like,
• 39:26
  different wedding industry professionals. And like, it was
• 39:30
  like, 1000s of people voted, like, but they were people in
• 39:34
  the wedding industry, and then, like, I won it. I was like, I
• 39:38
  was like, for my category, like, I won. And I was like, Oh, this
• 39:40
  is great. This is awesome. And then the next year, they were
• 39:43
  like, Hey, we're this is how we can make money. We're gonna
• 39:47
  charge you 50 bucks to enter, and then you can just open it up
• 39:53
  to your social media following to vote. And I was like, Oh, so
• 39:56
  now it's just gonna be on the popularity contest
• 39:58
  Rob Hall: right, right, which is a huge. Huge problem like that
• 40:01
  is such a problem with this could be a whole episode too. Is
• 40:04
  like existing audience drive and how that can, like that can move
• 40:10
  stuff to the top that doesn't necessarily deserve to be there,
• 40:14
  right? That is, like a huge issue across every facet of the
• 40:18
  Internet right now.
• 40:20
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, just, like, any sort of content
• 40:22
  creation, and yeah, it's just yeah in that also, you know, as
• 40:29
  far as, like getting published and like people, like looking
• 40:32
  to, you know, it's your when you posted that on your Instagram
• 40:38
  profile, about, like, you know, internationally published, it
• 40:40
  just my immediate thought. And the reason I commented was
• 40:43
  because I just remembered my wife works in media relations
• 40:46
  and PR and things that, you know, like we talk about, like,
• 40:49
  you know, pay to play all the time. And like, you know, what's
• 40:52
  going like, what's happening in the industry. And like,
• 40:54
  actually, just a friend of mine who works in marketing was
• 40:57
  talking about how you can pay $1,500 and be a quote, unquote
• 41:01
  contributor to Forbes magazine. Oh, yeah, website, whatever. But
• 41:06
  I was remembering, like, getting these emails, and I would get
• 41:09
  them, like, I remember, like, three or four times a year,
• 41:11
  usually quarterly, now that I think about it, from magazines
• 41:15
  in Europe who would say, you know, if you want an article in
• 41:20
  a wedding magazine in in Europe published about you pay us
• 41:28
  $1,200 and we're going to do a whole full page or two page
• 41:32
  article on you, like, well, if you're paying for it,
• 41:40
  Rob Hall: how prominent is it? Yeah, it's way more prominent
• 41:43
  when you get paid to be in the article or to write the article.
• 41:47
  That's prominent, but, and nobody can see the difference,
• 41:50
  right?
• 41:50
  Casey Fatchett: Just featured in general, like, you know, just
• 41:52
  like, you know, that's, you know, like, if somebody's, like,
• 41:55
  choosing to publish your work and saying, like, Oh, look at
• 41:58
  this. As opposed to, yeah, they can't tell the difference
• 42:01
  between whether you paid for it or whether someone independently
• 42:06
  chose to feature your work.
• 42:10
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's why I
• 42:12
  put a ton of stock into, like, the stuff that I get published
• 42:16
  through the university. And then I do really enjoy whenever,
• 42:22
  like, somebody reaches out for an article. I've had a few of
• 42:24
  those. This year, I was just published in print for from
• 42:27
  digital photographer magazine for the first time, as well as
• 42:31
  behind the shutter magazine. And like, to me, like I'm I am proud
• 42:38
  of those things, but it sort of gets lost. And I won't wear it
• 42:42
  too much as a badge of honor, because I know from an external
• 42:46
  perspective, at least to photographers like they can't
• 42:50
  really tell the difference between that and, you know, some
• 42:53
  magazine that somebody shares that they were featured in.
• 42:57
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, it's Yeah, being able to pay to get
• 43:01
  yourself featured, just, I mean, it just kind of, it almost ruins
• 43:05
  the credibility factor for a lot of people.
• 43:09
  Rob Hall: Yeah, absolutely. And so I think we need to look at
• 43:13
  how we define successful or or, I mean, famous. I'm like, anti
• 43:18
  fame. I I think it's just so silly. But in terms of success,
• 43:24
  like there is a complete different success when it's like
• 43:28
  external to photographers versus successful to serving your
• 43:33
  clients right, you can be a silent killer in your local
• 43:39
  community, and no 110 miles from you has ever heard of you. Those
• 43:44
  exist in every single community because they are successful at
• 43:48
  serving their clients. And then there's probably people out
• 43:51
  there who are all over the internet and we probably idolize
• 43:54
  them, who probably have some bad reviews or some some negative
• 43:58
  client you know, communication coming back from clients, some
• 44:01
  dissatisfied clients.
• 44:04
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, I'm going to quick the story.
• 44:07
  There's, there was a very famous wedding photographer who did a
• 44:11
  series of shoots and became very famous in the wedding industry
• 44:16
  very quickly. And I remember seeing him featured, I'm not
• 44:20
  going to mention the name, seeing him featured in
• 44:23
  rangefinder, I think it was talking about how his business
• 44:27
  had exploded, and he had gone from shooting 10 weddings a
• 44:31
  year, he was booked for 10 weddings a year, and now he's
• 44:33
  suddenly booked for 80 weddings a year. And I immediately
• 44:37
  thought, oh my gosh, oh God. Like this person is not gonna be
• 44:41
  able to keep up with this. And he's talking about, like, Yeah,
• 44:44
  I'm traveling all the time, and I'm going shooting Three, Four
• 44:46
  Weddings a weekend sometimes. And I was doing a sit down lunch
• 44:50
  with like, a wedding photographers in New York City,
• 44:53
  and we were, like, talking whatever. And we were talking
• 44:56
  about horror stories of, like, things we had heard. And this
• 44:59
  girl. Piped up, and she said, I have one, and it's from my
• 45:03
  wedding. And she had hired this guy, and, oh, she didn't hear
• 45:11
  back from him for a long time, and he didn't send her any
• 45:16
  photos. And she was like, reaching out to him. And she's
• 45:19
  like, oh, you know, he's probably busy blah, blah,
• 45:21
  whatever. She'd gotten married on a Thursday. He had told her
• 45:25
  that he was flying from where she got married in Nevada. He
• 45:29
  was flying to Minneapolis on Friday for a wedding, and then
• 45:33
  he was flying to somewhere down south on Saturday, then he had
• 45:37
  another wedding on Sunday, then he was going back to where he
• 45:39
  lived on Monday, but she's not hearing anything from him. And
• 45:44
  she starts doing some digging, and she starts finding a lot of
• 45:47
  negative reviews saying that this guy would like cancel
• 45:50
  weddings on people because he basically got a gig somewhere
• 45:55
  that he would prefer to do, and he would say that someone in his
• 45:57
  family had died, cancel the wedding and then book the gig
• 46:01
  for somewhere else. And then he would just, like, he was booking
• 46:04
  all these jobs and those, there was just a lot of weird stuff
• 46:06
  going on. And then, like, she and her, you know, maid of
• 46:11
  honor, like, kept, like, pressing him on social media,
• 46:14
  leaving comments on his Facebook page, like, Hey, we're looking
• 46:17
  forward to seeing the photos from x, you know, wedding soon,
• 46:23
  and six months ago. Yeah, exactly this way, it's been six
• 46:27
  months, and he, like, calls out the maid of honor on his
• 46:31
  Facebook page and says, like, Hey, listen, the photos will be
• 46:33
  ready when they're ready. Wow. So, like, they're starting to
• 46:38
  get a little worried at this point, because she's a wedding
• 46:41
  photographer. She knows how this works, and she's like, she
• 46:43
  hasn't seen any preview images or anything at this point. And
• 46:47
  then he posts a blog from the same place, from the same venue
• 46:53
  where they got married. And she sees that she knows some of
• 46:58
  those photos are from her wedding. What? And she's like,
• 47:03
  wait a second, this isn't like, he's portraying this as, you
• 47:08
  know, somebody else's wedding, but I know that's the back of my
• 47:11
  father in law's head. I know that is from my wedding. And
• 47:15
  this is a very, like, very specific venue, and the bride
• 47:20
  from that wedding. Says, like, comments on the the post, and
• 47:24
  says, Thank you so much for showing me the photos from that
• 47:28
  other wedding that you shot there. That's why we booked you
• 47:31
  for this. And it's literally been, like, two weeks since his
• 47:34
  wedding, and he's already publishing it. And she's like,
• 47:37
  What the hell is going on? So she, like, reaches out to him
• 47:39
  and says, like, what's going what's happening here? And he's
• 47:43
  like, all right, I didn't want know how to tell you this, but I
• 47:46
  lost, like, most of the photos from your wedding, sorry.
• 47:51
  Rob Hall: Oh my God, because
• 47:53
  Casey Fatchett: he didn't know how to, like, you know, he was,
• 47:55
  I guess, you know, using, like, the same memory cards or
• 47:59
  whatever he, like, traveled to, like, these three other weddings
• 48:03
  after hers, and does not, like, erase them or whatever. Like,
• 48:08
  he's like, Yeah, I got some photos from the ceremony, and I
• 48:11
  got a, you know, some of the getting ready pictures, and I
• 48:14
  got a few from the reception. But that's it.
• 48:18
  Rob Hall: How do you even only have that? Like, how did, I'm,
• 48:21
  like, trying to think of the card situation where you only
• 48:24
  have parts from every part of the day.
• 48:27
  Casey Fatchett: He's, like, shooting with two cameras. I'm
• 48:29
  guessing it was the second camera, and he didn't, like,
• 48:31
  overwrite that card, is my guess. Yeah, that's my guess.
• 48:35
  From, like, listening to what she said. Like, that was, I
• 48:37
  guess. I'm like, Oh, man. Like, but, yeah, like, this guy became
• 48:41
  super famous because of, or super famous in the wedding, you
• 48:45
  know, photography world, because all of these, you know,
• 48:49
  publications kind of like, went crazy for him. And, like, some
• 48:52
  of these photos that he put out there. And I was like, you know,
• 48:55
  yeah, soon as I saw, like, I am now shooting 70 to 80 weddings a
• 48:58
  year. When I last year, I was shooting 10. I'm like, oh,
• 49:01
  scalability, buddy, scalability,
• 49:04
  Rob Hall: yeah, and all right. Post show you got to tell me who
• 49:08
  that is.
• 49:10
  Casey Fatchett: All right. Well, after, afterwards. All right,
• 49:13
  moving on. I think we kind of addressed this a little bit
• 49:17
  earlier. If you enjoy it, you have to make money doing it.
• 49:21
  Rob Hall: I think we can go over this one quick. Is definitely
• 49:24
  not true this. This can be a hobby. You can keep it a hobby,
• 49:28
  and it'll be super fun, and you can probably enjoy it for the
• 49:31
  rest of your life. If you make it your job, especially if you
• 49:35
  desire to make it your full time job, you will likely love it
• 49:41
  less.
• 49:44
  Casey Fatchett: I because it becomes a job,
• 49:48
  Rob Hall: yeah, and you be, you get exposed to everything else
• 49:52
  that it entails. And it's running a business, which I got
• 49:56
  news for you, like photography will instantly become like less
• 49:59
  than. 50% that's including editing,
• 50:02
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, and it's just like, that's the part that,
• 50:05
  like, my wife always says, like, well, what parts don't you like,
• 50:07
  I'm, like, running the business, part, the marketing. And, you
• 50:14
  know, that stuff is the, it's not the doing the taxes, and,
• 50:19
  you know, you know, marketing and all that sort of stuff. It
• 50:22
  makes it less fun, like just putting it out there, it makes
• 50:25
  it less fun.
• 50:27
  Rob Hall: I made a, I believe it was a Tiktok video where I made
• 50:30
  this fake keyboard shortcut for Lightroom that you activated by
• 50:34
  smacking your face on the keyboard. And it woke you up. It
• 50:38
  woke you up to realize that you spend 80% of your time on
• 50:42
  Marketing duties and emails and all of those aspects when you
• 50:47
  started this career because you wanted to be outside taking
• 50:50
  photos, that's that's the reality for a lot of people.
• 50:54
  Casey Fatchett: You don't have to, if you enjoy doing this, you
• 50:57
  don't have to do it as a business. All right, next one.
• 51:02
  All right, I don't know how do you pronounce this? Because it's
• 51:06
  Boca,
• 51:07
  Rob Hall: bokay, bokeh, bokeh, I don't care boca. Boca is what
• 51:10
  naturally comes out of my mouth. But I also say ISO
• 51:15
  Casey Fatchett: equals great portraiture.
• 51:20
  Rob Hall: This is so we had, like, a, I have a podcast with
• 51:24
  my buddy Justin, called the high ISO podcast, and we did an
• 51:28
  episode, and he summed this up in a way that I never thought
• 51:31
  about, in that the reason that Boca is so popular is because
• 51:37
  it's the visual representation of why we spend so much money on
• 51:41
  our lenses, right? Like the that's why, like, if you're
• 51:45
  gonna buy a one, 435, millimeter prime, you're probably spending
• 51:49
  close to a grand, maybe 1500 if you're on Sony or these new
• 51:54
  Canon mirrorless systems, right? It's a, it's a, it's a big
• 51:58
  expense, and the way you show it is with that wide aperture.
• 52:03
  There's also just over the last few years, over the last decade,
• 52:07
  really, the way lighting has evolved, and now you can use
• 52:13
  wide apertures outdoors very accurately. And like, the
• 52:17
  autofocus is good at wide apertures. Like, there's a lot
• 52:20
  of reasons why, a decade ago, or a little bit longer, that you
• 52:24
  wouldn't be shooting at 1.2 or 1.4 outdoors that are completely
• 52:28
  obtainable now, like those problems have been solved, so
• 52:32
  it's just doable. First off,
• 52:34
  Casey Fatchett: well, I mean neutral density filters and
• 52:37
  various other things ways you can around it, yeah. People are
• 52:41
  like, shooting at these, like, super wide apertures, also, like
• 52:44
  those f2 like, 200 millimeter lenses, is like, like, it just
• 52:49
  like, it's so like, the background is, like, almost non
• 52:53
  existent. When you're looking at, yeah, it's just like, okay,
• 52:56
  the great, but you're like, is, like, are your clients sitting
• 53:01
  there going like, Yeah, this is the photo that I want. Are they
• 53:04
  looking at that and going like, Well, this must means he's
• 53:06
  really good.
• 53:09
  Rob Hall: I can't see anything.
• 53:11
  Casey Fatchett: It's like they lifted this person off of the
• 53:13
  page. You know,
• 53:16
  Rob Hall: I think there's a, I think there's a dozen reasons
• 53:19
  why it's so popular. I mean, a, it was a big separator from from
• 53:24
  your camera phones or your cheap cameras. B, just because, again,
• 53:28
  that representation of the money. C, it makes being in a
• 53:33
  shitty location really easy. I mean, this is where you see. How
• 53:39
  many, how many photos have you seen that are just down the
• 53:41
  street with all these cars in the background, and because it's
• 53:45
  at one two, you can't really see any of it detailed, or the
• 53:48
  subject, your eye still goes right to the subject so that you
• 53:51
  ignore it. Like, it's just so easy.
• 53:54
  Casey Fatchett: Like, yeah, I was just talking a, I just
• 53:56
  remember, like, Ryan brennizer, and if you're familiar with him,
• 53:59
  brandizer method, yes, I would talking about, like, ways
• 54:04
  around, like, crappy backgrounds. Yes, make it
• 54:07
  totally blurry, blow it out with light, like, you know, just
• 54:10
  like, blow it up with your lighting, you know, just like,
• 54:13
  so that you can't see the crappy background. And, yeah, it's
• 54:16
  totally something that people do. It's like with their, you
• 54:18
  know, in he mentioned is like, one of the things with the
• 54:21
  brandizer method, like, just to make that background so so
• 54:25
  blurry that you didn't even almost recognize it.
• 54:29
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's kind of a Chico. Now, does it
• 54:33
  equal great portraits? No, I don't. I don't think so. In
• 54:38
  fact, I think a portrait is better when the context of the
• 54:44
  background ties in accurately to the purpose of the photo, which
• 54:49
  almost always requires more than wide
• 54:50
  Casey Fatchett: open, right? And I think that, again, we're
• 54:53
  talking about like as we mentioned at the very beginning.
• 54:55
  And most of this stuff is going to be it depends. It depends on
• 54:58
  what you're trying to do. And a lot of the time. I'm, you know,
• 55:00
  you can't get all of your subject in focus unless they're
• 55:06
  far away from the camera, like, any sort of, like, headshot,
• 55:10
  like, I've seen people like, going, Whoa, you know, I'm
• 55:12
  having trouble getting my headshots in focus. Do I need a
• 55:15
  different camera? And I'm like, What's the problem? And they're
• 55:18
  like, Oh, it's just like, you know, part of the face is out of
• 55:21
  focus, but that, you know, this isn't, I'm like, looking at
• 55:23
  like, you're shooting at 1.2 like, maybe that's the problem.
• 55:28
  Maybe you need to stop it down a little bit and get a little bit
• 55:31
  wider, like, a bit of, a bit more depth of field in there, so
• 55:34
  that you can get the whole face in focus. Maybe that's what the
• 55:38
  problem is. You can't shoot a headshot, you know, at 1.2 and
• 55:41
  expect the whole face to be in focus and clear.
• 55:48
  Rob Hall: I don't know how you experience this, but I think
• 55:50
  part of the reason too is with Instagram being such a big
• 55:54
  vehicle for sharing photography, that the smaller the screen
• 55:59
  size, the less that matters, right? You can't tell it all.
• 56:03
  And like, if you're, if you're an, like, LCD shooter, or, you
• 56:08
  know, you kind of, you get much enlarged vision when you're when
• 56:12
  you're looking through the viewfinder. But yeah, if you're,
• 56:14
  like, reviewing off of an LCD too, you may find when you get
• 56:18
  home, you're like, Oh, these. This is actually not as in focus
• 56:22
  as I wanted. Yeah. So yeah, I've kind of, I've kind of trained
• 56:27
  myself that when it looks good on the on the EVF, go up another
• 56:33
  stop.
• 56:34
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, one more stop isn't gonna hurt you. Yep.
• 56:38
  Yeah. All right. And moving on to the next one, the must and
• 56:42
  always rules, like you always have to do the rule of thirds.
• 56:48
  You can't break the rule of thirds. This is actually a joke
• 56:51
  in the podcast, so yeah, these sorts of things, you know, kind
• 56:56
  of drive me crazy.
• 56:58
  Rob Hall: First off, if there's asymmetry, I'm breaking the rule
• 57:01
  of thirds every time, and I'm and I'm focusing on asymmetry
• 57:04
  instead. That just works better for my brain. But yeah, I mean,
• 57:08
  every, every single rule, I think everybody's heard this,
• 57:11
  it's a trope in itself that you break the rules in art, right?
• 57:15
  So sometimes, yeah, the rule of thirds, great. They're nice,
• 57:20
  foundational things that you can use to elevate the average of
• 57:25
  your photography. But by no means should you feel trapped by
• 57:28
  them. They can become the same thing that too much gear becomes
• 57:32
  in that you you start only living within their confines.
• 57:36
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you start to get limited by the rules
• 57:38
  themselves, which is why you break them. But it's like, it's
• 57:42
  good to like you said, it's good to know the foundational aspects
• 57:45
  of things, like, Yes, this is why the rule of thirds, why it
• 57:48
  works, is because of the way your eye moves, or whatever it's
• 57:51
  like and but that leads you to 80 different other rules of
• 57:56
  composition. So it's just like, you know, you knowing all of
• 57:58
  those things and how people's brains work can help you, yes,
• 58:01
  like you're saying asymmetry, that is another thing that, like
• 58:04
  causes you to pay attention. Like, knowing all these
• 58:07
  different things can help you produce a better image. But it
• 58:10
  doesn't mean you have to fulfill all of them all the same time.
• 58:13
  You know all in every photo
• 58:17
  Rob Hall: I'm in. Like, an internal struggle with, with
• 58:20
  like, how I like what, how I like consuming video versus what
• 58:26
  is, what is more important these days when it comes to when it
• 58:30
  comes to watching something, man, give me like 65 millimeter
• 58:34
  wide, or, you know, 21 by nine. Like, those are the aspect
• 58:38
  ratios I love. So to then have to prioritize vertical content
• 58:43
  all week. It just claws at my core. But I have to, like, I
• 58:49
  can't do anything about it, right? Having to
• 58:51
  Casey Fatchett: produce vertical content is just, like a It
• 58:55
  hurts.
• 58:57
  Rob Hall: It hurts. Yeah, so, I mean, that's another thing too.
• 59:01
  Is your rules are going to change eventually, right? And
• 59:05
  you got to be prepared for that
• 59:06
  Casey Fatchett: depending on the mode of delivery. Yeah, it's
• 59:08
  going to completely change. But this sort of leads into the next
• 59:11
  question, always use the UV filter.
• 59:15
  Rob Hall: Are you Team UV filter? Or No,
• 59:17
  Casey Fatchett: I am team UV filter for a particular reason.
• 59:21
  And go ahead, it's fine. I'll get to my
• 59:24
  Rob Hall: somebody's busted a lens before I am. I'm not team
• 59:31
  UV filter. There was a period where I wasn't even team lens
• 59:36
  cap. I used to leave all of my front lens caps off for that
• 59:40
  super amount of time I saved not having to take lens caps off
• 59:44
  everything seriously, I was just sick of losing them because,
• 59:46
  like, I'm the tie pool. Like, put my lens on really quick,
• 59:49
  walk away and, like, flick my lens cap back towards my bag.
• 59:53
  Like, try to shoot it into the lens compartment, and if it just
• 59:56
  rolls out and rolls away, I'm like, Screw it. That's me. I. I
• 1:00:00
  my the person who helps me most of my photography career, he
• 1:00:06
  always refers to me as like the yeet King, because I throw gear
• 1:00:09
  all the time, like anything that is not really fragile. I throw
• 1:00:14
  all the time. It's just fun for me. But anyways, I ended up
• 1:00:19
  going back to lens caps after having suffered quite a few
• 1:00:22
  scratches and having to get them repaired. But I'm still not team
• 1:00:25
  UV filter, and I don't really have a good reason, other than I
• 1:00:32
  don't want the extra piece of glass. I don't find that it's
• 1:00:37
  really that durable, and if I got one that was good enough
• 1:00:40
  that I wasn't worried about how it would affect my image
• 1:00:43
  quality, then I feel like I'm paying as much as I'd pay to
• 1:00:46
  repair a front element anyway. That's kind of my justification.
• 1:00:50
  All right,
• 1:00:50
  Casey Fatchett: so coming in from the opposite side, my issue
• 1:00:54
  is that I have not broken a lens, but it's because I had a
• 1:01:00
  UV filter on there, and it wasn't me dropping it or doing
• 1:01:02
  anything untoward towards my lens elements. It was somebody
• 1:01:07
  walking by with a pole in his hand, and he just turned and hit
• 1:01:12
  my camera. And I was like, Hey, man, be careful. And I pulled my
• 1:01:16
  camera up and looked, I'm like, it was my 70 to 200 and I looked
• 1:01:20
  at it, it is just, all I saw was busted glass, and I was
• 1:01:24
  freaking. I was on the shoot, and I was just like, oh God. And
• 1:01:28
  then I looked at I was like, Oh, it's just the UV filter. I will
• 1:01:32
  also say when it comes to UV filters, never go cheap engine
• 1:01:38
  filter, whatever it is, whether it's UV filter, you know,
• 1:01:41
  polarizing filter, neutral density filter, it's your
• 1:01:44
  pictures are only going to be as good as the quality of the glass
• 1:01:47
  that you're putting in front of it, no matter what the filter
• 1:01:50
  is.
• 1:01:52
  Rob Hall: Completely agree with you there, and that's why I'm
• 1:01:54
  like so I don't know maybe it's different for different brands,
• 1:01:58
  but I have now had two front elements replaced by Sony
• 1:02:01
  professional services, and it was $100 each time. And we're
• 1:02:08
  talking, we're talking G Master glass too. So it's not like
• 1:02:11
  they're placing the glass on a 51 eight or anything. Yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, that's a, you know, Canon. I'm a Canon
• 1:02:18
  guy, so it was like, Yeah, I think that it was, like, when I
• 1:02:22
  estimated something because I had a scratch on something, I
• 1:02:24
  was like, You know what? I'm just gonna get a new lens. It
• 1:02:28
  was, it was an old lens to begin with. I think I'll upgrade at
• 1:02:31
  this point. But, yeah, I mean, my thing is, with the UV filter
• 1:02:35
  is, you're, don't put a cheap piece of plastic in front of
• 1:02:38
  your lens. Like, if you're just gonna, that's what you're gonna
• 1:02:40
  get garbage like, and I agree with you, there are times when I
• 1:02:43
  will remove filters, but like, weddings and stuff, that's not
• 1:02:46
  what I'm removing a filter just because too many people bump
• 1:02:48
  into me and knock stuff into my camera, my gear, that I'm like,
• 1:02:52
  I don't want this happening at a at a wedding.
• 1:02:56
  Rob Hall: So I don't know, I don't know how I haven't broken
• 1:02:58
  a lens at a wedding. Because I'm, I'm, like, the hold fast
• 1:03:03
  guy. So, like, I have two cameras swinging at my sides all
• 1:03:06
  day, right? And I so, you know, like, the hold fast dance, when
• 1:03:09
  you're, like, trying to navigate between tables, and you know,
• 1:03:11
  you're going to be rotating your shoulders a lot, so you have to
• 1:03:14
  hold both of your cameras. That's, that's the hold fast
• 1:03:16
  dance. But specifically, I'm shocked that I haven't lost one
• 1:03:20
  at a Jewish Orthodox wedding. Have you ever, have you ever
• 1:03:23
  photographed a Jewish Orthodox wedding? Oh, man, those guys go
• 1:03:26
  hard on the dance floor.
• 1:03:28
  Casey Fatchett: It's crazy. I mean, like, I will send you some
• 1:03:31
  pictures from the last one that I shot. It was nuts. But, yeah,
• 1:03:34
  I totally get we. Mean, like, people are just, like, there's
• 1:03:36
  so many people. It's just, it's a and, yeah, the whole fast
• 1:03:41
  dance, like walking through crowds, like, Oh, I gotta
• 1:03:43
  squeeze between these two chairs, or I've got to sit down
• 1:03:47
  at some point. Yeah, totally get what you mean. But yeah, that's
• 1:03:50
  what I mean. Like, I, I'm Team UV filter. I totally understand
• 1:03:55
  not being team UV filter. It's just a it's one of those things.
• 1:03:58
  It's a matter of personal you take your risks. Oh, where
• 1:04:02
  you're going to take them?
• 1:04:04
  Rob Hall: Yeah, yeah, it just depends. Right back to the
• 1:04:06
  central theme that ties all of these together, it depends.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, I'm not, I won't die on that hill. I think either one
• 1:04:13
  can be justified, and it's probably largely dependent on
• 1:04:16
  your previous experiences, which is surprising, because I have
• 1:04:20
  had a lens completely destroyed by a puck. I don't think a UV
• 1:04:24
  filter would have saved that, though, this thing came flying
• 1:04:28
  at me up a hockey puck I was shooting from a bench.
• 1:04:31
  Casey Fatchett: Or I'm just curious, since we're both from
• 1:04:33
  Michigan, who are you shooting?
• 1:04:36
  Rob Hall: Oh, so Michigan like so hockey is huge in Michigan,
• 1:04:41
  because we've got the Detroit Red Wings, but also we've got
• 1:04:43
  Canada right across the border, and they come out of, you know,
• 1:04:46
  the womb with a hockey stick. So there's a huge tournament, and
• 1:04:51
  there's tons of really good talent every year, like you're
• 1:04:55
  talking like The Little Caesars farm system of 16 year olds who
• 1:04:58
  can, like, already, you know, Slack. Shot at crazy speeds.
• 1:05:01
  This is like who I was photographing, but you're in
• 1:05:04
  these pretty shoddy venues, so you're talking like benches with
• 1:05:08
  no glass whatsoever. But I don't want to be shooting through
• 1:05:11
  glass, because the glass is so banged up at these venues. So I
• 1:05:14
  was on a bench once all the way at the end of it, and somebody
• 1:05:17
  just tried to shoot it up to the boards and get it flying around
• 1:05:20
  and just came. Scariest thing I've ever experienced, probably
• 1:05:26
  is seeing the puck at 200 millimeters come flying,
• 1:05:30
  actually 300 millimeters, because I was on a crop lens, or
• 1:05:33
  crop body, yeah, 300 millimeters. Man, that thing
• 1:05:37
  fills the frame quick when it comes flying at you and then
• 1:05:39
  just smash, just absolutely, just destroyed this lens,
• 1:05:44
  completely screwed up the autofocus motor.
• 1:05:46
  Casey Fatchett: Well, you're probably lucky that it hit the
• 1:05:49
  lens and not you. Yeah?
• 1:05:52
  Rob Hall: I'll take, I'll take the lens damage over, like
• 1:05:54
  hitting me in the grill. That would have been horrible.
• 1:05:57
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, that'd been pretty terrible, as having
• 1:06:00
  seen someone get hit at a Red Wings game, like it went up over
• 1:06:03
  the boards, like over the and hit someone in any in the crowd.
• 1:06:08
  Rob Hall: Oh, man, that's yeah, so it had all the velocity,
• 1:06:12
  still, yeah. Oh, gosh, that's scary.
• 1:06:18
  Casey Fatchett: Moving on to our next myth. PPI, points per inch,
• 1:06:24
  dots per inch.
• 1:06:27
  Rob Hall: I don't. I don't even understand how this is like
• 1:06:32
  still brought up frequently. I don't, I don't. I can't even
• 1:06:35
  describe any applications. And this is coming from somebody who
• 1:06:38
  who works with their work going to print all the time. I don't
• 1:06:44
  think the designers have ever mentioned PPI or DPI to me.
• 1:06:48
  Casey Fatchett: No, they don't care. High resolution. Give me a
• 1:06:51
  high resolution.
• 1:06:52
  Rob Hall: Yeah, give me the most you got, right? I'll take that
• 1:06:54
  back. I did, I I did just have a designer who had to reach out
• 1:06:59
  and tell me that that one of my photos didn't have enough, like,
• 1:07:04
  didn't have DPI to meet their project. They're like, it's only
• 1:07:08
  59 we need 72 and I was like, What are you doing with the
• 1:07:11
  photo? Because I have the highest megapixel full frame
• 1:07:15
  camera, and I didn't crop it all. Like, you have a 61
• 1:07:18
  megapixel photo. There's not a DSLR on the market with more
• 1:07:22
  megapixels and that. What are you trying
• 1:07:23
  Casey Fatchett: to do? Basically, medium format. Yeah.
• 1:07:27
  Rob Hall: And she it turns out that they were just trying to
• 1:07:30
  print something 16 feet. So I just had to manage some
• 1:07:35
  expectations, I guess, and say, well, we can reshoot it. I'm
• 1:07:38
  just gonna have to get like the Fuji 100 s and do like, their,
• 1:07:43
  their, what is it pixel shifting? Yeah, that's it. Pixel
• 1:07:47
  shifting. Like, that's all I can do, yeah.
• 1:07:49
  Casey Fatchett: But anything is that point? Like, even I don't
• 1:07:53
  know, like putting something 16 feet, you bring billboards,
• 1:07:56
  like, in front of print billboards, but you printed at a
• 1:07:58
  different dpi, like, or whatever. Like, it's all about
• 1:08:01
  what you're printing. Like. I used to tell people, like, if
• 1:08:03
  they're planning to print like, whatever, you know, any by 10
• 1:08:08
  like, think of it like, you need to 300 DPI to print like, so it
• 1:08:13
  needs to be at least, you know, whatever, 3000 on the end or
• 1:08:17
  whatever to like, be very good quality, whatever. I think
• 1:08:20
  that's even gone down. Maybe it's like, 240 at this point.
• 1:08:23
  Rob Hall: Yeah, but it's like, I think that's lightrooms default,
• 1:08:26
  Casey Fatchett: yes, 240 and it's like, so, you know, 2400,
• 1:08:29
  pixels on the long end for, you know, an eight by 10, whatever,
• 1:08:32
  print is pretty good quality. Like, yes, okay. But I've had
• 1:08:37
  people send me like, four things. Like I said, like, Okay,
• 1:08:41
  I need a higher when I was doing more, like graphic design stuff,
• 1:08:45
  I was working in, you know, publication stuff, and I Okay,
• 1:08:49
  we need the high resolution image. And they would send me
• 1:08:51
  something. There was it 600 DPI, but it's only one inch wide, so
• 1:09:02
  it was 600 pixels, but it was 600 DPI. And I'm like, this is
• 1:09:08
  the size of a postage stamp. And they're like, No, it's 600 DPI.
• 1:09:12
  Man, that's high res. And I'm like, no, no, it's,
• 1:09:16
  Rob Hall: yeah, I don't so I mean, I guess we should probably
• 1:09:20
  clarify for anybody that doesn't understand why this is so
• 1:09:26
  irrelevant, but like ppi, should not be a discussion. Pixels per
• 1:09:32
  inch or dots per inch should not be a concern to you, because,
• 1:09:36
  if, especially if you're only working in Web, zero concern
• 1:09:39
  whatsoever, right? Because 1200 pixels is 1200 pixels. The web
• 1:09:43
  is going to display that regardless of what the DPI is.
• 1:09:46
  And then when you get in, when you get into print, it only
• 1:09:51
  would matter if the design prioritized DPI over pixels,
• 1:09:57
  like if the design was going to throw out. Pixels, which I don't
• 1:10:03
  think any type of software does,
• 1:10:06
  Casey Fatchett: no none, and that's totally on the designer.
• 1:10:09
  If that happened, like it's like, you need to have a
• 1:10:12
  discussion with whoever the designer is, right?
• 1:10:15
  Rob Hall: Yeah, that their processes are bad. So, yeah,
• 1:10:18
  don't worry about if your photos are 72 to 4300, just deliver. If
• 1:10:24
  you're looking for maximum quality, just deliver the
• 1:10:27
  maximum pixel size that you can offer Exactly.
• 1:10:30
  Casey Fatchett: And that's the thing. It's like, even if you're
• 1:10:31
  sending this to a print shop, most of the time they're only
• 1:10:35
  looking at the pixel dimensions. They're not even looking at the
• 1:10:39
  DPI. And they will handle it, like, if you're sending it,
• 1:10:42
  like, it to pretty much anywhere, unless you're printing
• 1:10:44
  it yourself, or unless you, like, looking for some sort of
• 1:10:47
  like output, specifically, like where you are, like you're doing
• 1:10:52
  a design, like, you know, or some sort of like printed
• 1:10:55
  materials. Like, don't worry if you send it to somebody, you
• 1:10:59
  know, they're going to, like, print it out at the appropriate
• 1:11:02
  dpi. Just send them the highest resolution version to print.
• 1:11:07
  Rob Hall: Yep, let them do whatever they need to with that.
• 1:11:10
  That should just be the move. So
• 1:11:20
  Casey Fatchett: hey, what's up?
• 1:11:25
  Doctor: Well, I've got good news and I've got bad news. Give me
• 1:11:29
  the bad news first. Well, your website is incredibly slow and
• 1:11:34
  it's susceptible to being hacked. I had a suspicion that
• 1:11:38
  was the case.
• 1:11:39
  Casey Fatchett: What do you prescribe?
• 1:11:40
  Doctor: Use SiteGround as your website host. They offer fast,
• 1:11:44
  secure hosting for small and medium sized websites, as well
• 1:11:49
  as managed WordPress hosting. Can I pick up SiteGround at my
• 1:11:54
  local pharmacy? No, you'll need to go to nerdy
• 1:11:58
  photographer.com/recommends/siteground to find out more.
• 1:12:02
  Casey Fatchett: Thanks. So what's the good news?
• 1:12:05
  Doctor: You have six months to live. That's good news, better
• 1:12:10
  than a week.
• 1:12:11
  Casey Fatchett: You've got me there. Doc.
• 1:12:26
  Unknown: Come to me, and now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:12:29
  what's that? Say? Useless information. This is always
• 1:12:34
  death.
• 1:12:36
  Casey Fatchett: Useless information. For this episode,
• 1:12:40
  Rob Hall: I'm so excited for this portion.
• 1:12:42
  Casey Fatchett: You're excited for this portion. I'm glad
• 1:12:45
  Someone's excited. This is what I'm most excited for, because I
• 1:12:50
  just I don't know what it's going to be like. The Atacama
• 1:12:55
  Desert in Chile is a 600 mile stretch of desert, and it is so
• 1:12:59
  dry that if you die there, your corpse will barely decay,
• 1:13:06
  Rob Hall: and you just like, instantly, oh. And
• 1:13:09
  Casey Fatchett: in some parts of it, no one has ever in human
• 1:13:11
  history, no one has recorded rainfall. There are some areas
• 1:13:15
  of it where no one, no rainfall has ever been recorded.
• 1:13:22
  Rob Hall: There's no hmm, there's Wow, no moisture. Sounds
• 1:13:24
  like this. Sounds like some of the weddings I've shot in
• 1:13:28
  August.
• 1:13:30
  Casey Fatchett: August. Yeah, humid ones, man.
• 1:13:33
  Rob Hall: Oh, well, yeah, I guess I didn't really think
• 1:13:37
  about humidity. I was just thinking about the fact that
• 1:13:41
  they're like, 120 degrees. Yeah, four. Yeah, driest place ever.
• 1:13:45
  What is the driest place I've ever been? Vegas is pretty dry.
• 1:13:49
  This is pretty dry. Still not that bad, I think. Driven
• 1:13:53
  through Death Valley. It's pretty dry. I went to a desert
• 1:13:57
  in Peru. I went sandboarding there and fell on my face. Okay,
• 1:14:02
  so would your, would your body just be instantly mummified?
• 1:14:06
  Casey Fatchett: I'm pretty sure that that's what they're saying.
• 1:14:07
  It's like, yeah, it's so dry that when you die, like,
• 1:14:09
  probably within like, an hour or so, yeah, there's just, like,
• 1:14:13
  you just become, like, desiccated. And like, yeah,
• 1:14:16
  there's nothing. You just become a mummy.
• 1:14:19
  Rob Hall: Yeah, you can't, like, mold or, Oh, my God, that's kind
• 1:14:22
  of gross. There's like, I want to instantly know where the
• 1:14:27
  nearest community this place is.
• 1:14:28
  Casey Fatchett: There are actually, like, on the
• 1:14:31
  outskirts, though, there are millions of people living in
• 1:14:33
  this, like, area. It's not, it's not, like, completely devoid of
• 1:14:37
  people. Like, there are people who live, you know, on the
• 1:14:40
  outskirts of this desert, like, you know, in the area, it's not,
• 1:14:43
  you know, uninhabited,
• 1:14:48
  Rob Hall: they're nuts. How do you not move? Is it just like,
• 1:14:52
  not an option? I'm assuming,
• 1:14:55
  Casey Fatchett: an option. I had with my nephew at one point, and
• 1:14:58
  he was like, he didn't, he really. Didn't understand, like,
• 1:15:01
  we were discussing, like, there are people who, you know in
• 1:15:04
  areas of the world like you, they couldn't grow food and
• 1:15:07
  whatever. And he was like, why don't they just move and I'm
• 1:15:10
  like, because they can't,
• 1:15:12
  Rob Hall: why don't they just hop in their Tesla or, like, hop
• 1:15:15
  on Virgin Airlines and just go to the next place over where all
• 1:15:18
  the burgers are? Yeah, it's a very, it's a very, like, first
• 1:15:22
  world perspective. And like, even I get, I get in there
• 1:15:25
  sometimes, like not remembering or not realizing the quality of
• 1:15:30
  life that some people are still forced to live in. It's, it's
• 1:15:35
  Casey Fatchett: kind of scary. Don't have options.
• 1:15:39
  Rob Hall: And then meanwhile, we're over here bitching about
• 1:15:41
  whether or not we should put a $200 UV filter in front of our
• 1:15:45
  lens,
• 1:15:46
  Casey Fatchett: like definitely first world problems,
• 1:15:49
  Rob Hall: yep, I'm gonna go look this place up now.
• 1:16:08
  Casey Fatchett: welcome back. I would like to thank my guest Rob
• 1:16:10
  Hall for being on the podcast. You can find Rob on Instagram at
• 1:16:14
  Rob Hall photo and as the co host of the high ISO, or as he
• 1:16:17
  likes to call it, high ISO podcast, Rob will return in the
• 1:16:21
  second part of our photography myths and tropes discussion. Be
• 1:16:24
  sure to subscribe and catch that episode when it comes out in a
• 1:16:27
  couple of weeks. And you can find us on Facebook at nerdy
• 1:16:30
  photographer, and on Instagram and Twitter at the nerdy photo.
• 1:16:34
  Also got a subreddit the nerdy photo and our own club on
• 1:16:37
  clubhouse. So you can go find us there.
• 1:16:40
  Fibonacci: I'm having some processing issues. Did you say
• 1:16:47
  the words properly? Yeah, I said the words. What words did you
• 1:16:55
  say?
• 1:16:57
  Casey Fatchett: Okay, maybe I didn't say every single last
• 1:16:59
  syllable, but I said the words, basically
• 1:17:01
  Fibonacci: say them again.
• 1:17:05
  Casey Fatchett: Fine, I'll say the words until next time,
• 1:17:08
  everybody stay safe and stay nerdy.
• 1:17:13
  Klaatu, varata, niiiiicccccc
• 1:17:29
  Unknown: Who's that coming back to town? Who's your heart been
• 1:17:35
  beating about you better. Get better. Get better. Get better.
• 1:17:38
  Listen, you.