Latest / Reframe / 02 - Mel Sinclair , Creative pursuits through Art & Photography.

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02 - Mel Sinclair , Creative pursuits through Art & Photography. · Reframe

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_04: Have you ever wondered what truly fuels a creative mind?
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_04: What ignites their passions and drives their creativity?
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_04: G'day, I'm Dean McGuire, an Australian fine art photographer.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_04: From the moment I stepped into the world of photography, I have been captivated by the community and the stories behind the lens.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_04: Join me as we delve into humble beginnings, explore artistic visions, and discover how we as a collective reframe our minds through the power of creativity.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_04: Before we dive into this episode, I'd like to give a quick shout out to the incredible team at Niti Filters Australia.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_04: Niti offers world-class products like high-quality filters with minimal colour casts, an impressive range of cinematic lenses, and various other accessories to fuel your creative endeavours.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_04: Nisty Australia actively supports the greater photography community through workshops, educational events, and live streaming webinars on YouTube and other social media channels.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_04: As a special treat, Misty Australia are offering all reframe listeners a store-wide discount of 5% off.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_04: You can even combine this with style items and other promotions for further discounts by using the code ReFramePodCast at checkout.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_04: Visit Mistyfilters.com.au today.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you and welcome to Reframe.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_03: Mel Sinclair has a rich history in the arts when moved into photography later in her life.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_03: She has achieved uh many high-level and prestigious achievements from stories I've heard in the past.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_03: And um we're really looking forward to hearing more about your backstory and then your history in art and and how progressed into photography.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: So good morning and welcome to the podcast, Mel.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: Lovely to have you today.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much for having me.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: This is a great honor.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_04: No, you're very much welcome.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_04: Um can we just jump into a little bit about yourself?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um, our listeners um may or may not have heard of you so far.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_04: So um if you could take us through um where you started and and where you're heading so far.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um I uh I hail from Southeast Queensland.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh at the moment I live in a place called Ipswich, which you may or may not have heard about.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of equivalent to Western Sydney, um, for those of you familiar with Sydney's geography and stuff like that.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I grew up in the arts.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: I was a creative kid.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I painted and drawed, drawed, I was into drawing at all forms of artistic expression because I was probably what you would uh classify as the weird kid.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I very much took to anything creative, but definitely not anything mathematical or thinky or anything like that.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_02: So my life path was kind of set out for me in the fact that I very much gravitated towards doing things with my hands, creating, um, drawing, exploring.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, it just kind of literally was that kind of a person.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: In my um teenage years, again, art competitions and and competitive art for painting and drawing, sculpting, printmaking.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: That took me into TAFE and I did a um a Bachelor of Fine Arts and Creative Industries, um, leading into uh again a Bachelor of Creative Industries with secondary education.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea there was I was going to be a high school art and English teacher and just follow creativity and help inspire and teach others.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: I really wanted to be a TAFE uh teacher, so teaching young adults, um, but life steered me in another direction at that point, and um I fell accidentally into IT.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: So um after falling into IT, um I figured out that government IT is where I currently still am, gave me enough flexibility to do my art on the side and have enough money to do um, I guess, photography, because at the time I was renting and no one's really going to give a rental um to a creative who's got paint everywhere and ink all over the floor and anything like that.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically a landlord's nightmare.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I picked up a camera as another medium of expression um to explore uh the world around me um and create without making mess.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: So do you think um when you transitioned from the art to photography, uh what was the driving force ultimately?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: Was it because of the renting or was it because um more you wanted to travel?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, arts, um, like creative arts, printmaking is what I was heavily into.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: So like lino cutting, um carving things out with tools and all of that.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I really loved the tactility of that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of like a sculpture that you did.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then you inked it up and you printed it out.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there was a two-step process to that.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: The first was like the, I guess, the meditation of cutting it, and the second was is printing it and seeing how it turned out.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that stuff is is a lot of um stuff, I guess, to take from you know, place to place.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it literally was the mess.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: But what drew me to photography um was I guess I was just starting to explore a bit more.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: I was starting to travel to places and I had a little little silly little point and shoot Fujifilm camera, and um I wanted more out of it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to do more with it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And photography, I guess, started wholly experimentally.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I pretty much um hung out with like local Flickr groups uh and meetups and stuff to start meeting people in my local area who also went to photography, and I guess through that kind of away, I it it became a bit more of a focus for me, no pun intended.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_04: Flickr was um a great um avenue back in the day, wasn't it?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: Um I'm just massive.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's where I first saw your work as well, and it was a black and white image.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, do you have a preference over um black and white or colour?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_04: Or is it just a combination of whatever you're feeling on that day, or do you do you gravitate to the colour?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: It really depends what the image says to me.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes an image will demand to be in black and white, and sometimes it'll demand to be in colour.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um it really like it's really one of those things, like if you're if I sorry, couldn't cut up my thoughts again.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's all right.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, too much.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only way.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes you've got a a really foggy scene and it's it's cut with light and it's it's very contrasty.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if you actually look at the photograph, you go, that colours are really horrible, it's really sharp, it's really, you know, haloed.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you go, look, I don't think colour is important to the expression of this image.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't think it's really needed in this sense.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think Dean, you might agree with some of that, that sometimes that by removing a sense, you heighten the others.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yep, that's right.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_04: You remove a distraction almost, and you can look at the image as for what it is.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So again, the scene will dictate what it wants from for the processing.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll try in a variety of crops and colours and all of that and and sit with it for a while.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll either print it out and stick it on the wall in two different forms, or I'll set them as alternate desktop backgrounds on my computer and sit with them for a while.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_03: Sit with them for a while until you decide which one is sort of the mood to be looking for.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_03: Which does it the most justice, which scene is working the best in which format.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm a bit more restrained now in terms of when I when I create and when I um immediately push.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: I used to push images out as soon as I took them, but now I kind of sit with them for a while before I release them.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and in that I can be sure that I'm absolutely 100% on the ones that I am releasing.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_03: I can I've known everyone who doesn't know, I I think I met Mel probably about nine years ago.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um probably one of the one of the biggest community events that I've I see for photography, and it's like the Fagus Week, where I think a lot of people I've met in photography come from Fagus Week.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I remember seeing Mel, I knew Mel's work from Red Bubble, and and a lot of people spoke about Mel back then when every in those circles.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I was like, I was kind of really excited.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: I remember seeing Mel.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, that's Mel Sinclair.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_03: She had this like she had this super cool um uh laptop cover, which was like one of her photos from Iceland.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um I remember seeing your style from then to now, like the way you've you've grown in and matured in your your artistic approach to your photography is something that's amazing.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_03: So I remember we used to be quite vibrant, although you still did your your minimal and and monochrome work.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um so what sort of influenced you and your change in your artistic approach over the years as you matured to where you are now?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: That question kind of comes, I guess, alongside of a desire to simplify my life as well.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um not so much in the Marie Kondo way that we've we've become kind of accustomed to in mainstream culture, I guess, but more in the sense of I don't seek out images that are you know the destination so much anymore.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm more about finding things along the way.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: So sort of enjoying the journey.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I believe in this lovely little word called happenstance, which is about chancing upon or discovering upon something that you didn't expect to find or see, um and shooting those kinds of moments because they're not traditionally what people will I guess go for.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but if there is beauty in the destination, like how many, how many hikes have you been on?
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you might not necessarily remember what you were hiking to, but how many times do you remember exactly what you were looking at?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: You're watching every single foot as it goes along the path.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're making sure you don't trip over something.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so most of my memories of these big hikes end up being me looking at my feet.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I and it's it's what we do all the time because we really don't want to, you know, fall off the edge of you know Hansen's Peak and tumble down the down the hill with our camera gear on our back.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: We want to make, you know, so it's about enjoying the journey as well as the destination.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: And and my images are slowly reflecting the fact that I like to stop and you know, enjoy what's around me.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: And of course I'm looking forward to um the final destination, which might be that giant, big, colorful, wide-angled vista that I used to shoot.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: But now I really am putting a lot of energy and love into just um yeah, what I find along the way and finding the best way to champion that image or that scene.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whether it be through, I guess, photography or what I'm starting to get back into again is printmaking.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I guess trying to cross the two over and um yeah, it's it's a very exciting time being able to pull different mediums of expression um to create images, not just photographs.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_04: I like how you used the word create there instead of um capturing, and and I kind of use that as well um in my kind of work.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: Um could you take us through your process of um your your creativity and and moving to more towards that art style of photography?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_04: Are you using your camera as just a medium to create your art or are you creating art and then capturing it in a camera to recreate it?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um, or is there a a combination of the both there?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um it can be a combo of both.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: At the moment, um I have a excuse me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: I have an area of um Southeast Queensland uh called the Scenic Rim at my doorstep.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh a couple years ago, I think it was named one of Lonely Planet's best places to be, uh travel destination or some such.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it's basically a region that births all of Southeast Queensland's storms, and in winter it's an immense source of fog uh and mist and mood.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And it's your typical kind of farming kind of area.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a few mountains and lakes uh throughout it, but I'm inspired by the area itself, and I guess just it's it's the fog for me that's a massive um simplification of the landscape.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: In summer, I don't find it necessarily appealing or interesting, but as soon as you add fog to the mix, it just for me, it's that inner peace.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's about going out and shooting and enjoying the quiet and the calm and just yeah, kind of being an observance of the whole thing.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then that very much I will just pull out a long lens.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not even really using a tripod anymore, just telephoto straight into um shooting trees and fog and birds and and all that sort of stuff.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I guess just creating as an inspired by what's in front of me, not necessarily going in with a plan to create this, this, and this, because I find that's almost too much pressure.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm very much um at at a whim or at the whim, I guess, of um what's in front of me.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_03: So you're kind of living in the moment.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: So um as opposed to having a set picture in your mind and trying to capture like a preconceived idea.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: It's sort of uh if the scene presents something beautiful, you're there and ready to take advantage of the moment.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've done a few scripted shoots before and I find them really pressuring, like high pressure, because I don't I don't have control over the landscape.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have control over what it does to me or you know what colors are in the sky.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I almost find that's quite soothing because I I can't control it in a way.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I just have to go with it um and enjoy it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: So I know you've mentioned fog there, and I I know it it it takes place in a lot of your photographs.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um how do you go about planning to capture the fog?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's obviously there's some kind of planning involved to hit the right weather connection and hit the hit the right weather event.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: So how do you go about putting that together?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: And what what do you take out of I guess weather reports and things to make sure you uh are gonna sort of get a shot?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so massive weather nerd, hey, I um love and this is gonna reveal some of my secrets.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So don't tell us something you can do.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: If you go on to Oh, that's okay.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I I'm all for um I've been quite secretive about it for a few years, but it's time to reveal the secret because um it's it's not, it shouldn't be a secret.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really want every photographer to make the most of it and and go out and about and and find it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, so um windy.tv is a great little website.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we know it is the one that shows all the swirling um weather bands and patterns and stuff like that.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: But if you go into their more layers option and you scroll down to fog, there's a fog option you can flick on as a layer map and you can see where the fog's gonna be at any point in time.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: Cross-reference that with weatherzone.com.au and go to their 48-hour forecast tables, try and match the dew point to the temperature with low wind and a high percentage of humidity.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then cross-reference that with BOMs met eye.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And that has a storm's fog frost option as well.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and between those three models, you have a pretty good chance of figuring out where the fog's gonna be.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it sort of has to be in the cooler months between uh March and October for Southeast Queensland at least.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: So there is a bit of local knowledge that you'll need to use to find it in your local area, but cross-reference those three, and it's a pretty good yeah.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_03: Dean Dean, so I'm just like I'm taking these tips to my guests.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Researching Mel's um exact methods right now on his phone at the same time.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, Look, I've got Windy.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, look at this.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_04: I've already got Wendy and I've never seen that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: I just add it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: So that's a that's a good tip to make it look more natural, that's for sure.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_03: I definitely I definitely enjoy how much you learn from other artists and photographers about their protests and the extra apps that they use.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: That ultimately there's so many that do similar things, but um, a combination of them is is becomes your strength in your creation, is what I can see.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: It does.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to get really nerdy about it, you can take screenshots and overlay them to figure out where the fog's absolutely going to be.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: A bomb is obviously the pretty good forecast um for entire fog.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's more likely when you're gonna get like proper like blackout kind of fog where it, or ironically, blackout, kind of fog where it just covers everything.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: The other maps might just be like surface fog or atmosphere fog.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it usually burns off after sunrise.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: But if you've got a day or so that's after rain at night and the right humidity, um the fog can be a long last, like up to 10 or 11 in the morning.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it just depends, hey.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: But um, those three models combined are my go-to's.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, well, you'd have a bit fair bit of uh humidity up there in Ipswich and um in Queensland, that's for sure.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: So there might be a bit fair bit of fog on my shortage of it at the moment.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_04: Ma maybe I need to move up to Queensland.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_04: So if they go visit Mel for a shoot in winter on there for sure.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's it.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_04: So um with your we'll circle back onto your um into your artistic um side before um you found photography.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: What was your your style?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: Was it more abstract, um, more abstract, or did you do landscape pieces, or like what was what was it that you were creating um before photography?
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, before photography, I was absolute, absolutely obsessed with Brisbane's infestation of Ibis, also known as our Australian bin chicken.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Throughout my TAFE years, I was obsessed with going around and and taking a few snaps and a few drawings of the Ibis at our South Bank Parklands, uh, which if you've ever been to Queensland's a bit of a little ritzy, little beachy kind of place, uh, with a fake beach that overlooks the city, um, lots of cafes and lots of sort of green spaces to relax.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: So the uh it's the prime habitat of bin chicken.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I was absolutely obsessed with I call them door handle birds, the way their beaks kind of look like this giant door handle.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: Oh yes.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um I can see that waiting to be picked up.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: And so I was very into sort of like heavy outline, like black and white um bold pieces of them just kind of inhabiting the earth and taking over the town and kind of just like tumbling over it.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I did a lot of that.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in terms of printmaking as well, a lot of architecture, uh, a lot of like straight lines and um building spaces from all around the world, um, based on stuff that was mostly in textbooks at that stage, because I was a poor starving artist.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't afford to fly overseas.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but since since then, obviously um my my day job keeps me more gamefully employed and the uh ability to go more places.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so back in the day it was all about um, I guess, creating and for humor.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um I very much loved um what did I love?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um macros and plants and stuff like that.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I was I was basically still figuring out then what I wanted to create and and what really um inspired me.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: All I know is that I had paints and and a medium and a blank canvas, and you know, that was that was my space.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was very much a yeah, I didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_04: So it's just the art of creating it.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: At the time, you're like, no, I'm a I'm a professional artist working in the mediums of painting, drawing, and printmaking, and um, I'm inspired by the world around me.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you you write these things about yourself and just kind of go, yeah, no.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, fake it till you make it, right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's the joys of being an artist as well, or a photographer, that you can just go, okay, this no longer inspires me.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_04: I can just move on to the next thing and give that a crack.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_04: And and if something else decides it wants to jump up and um take my attention away, you you can just move on to that.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that's the joy of being an artist, is that you can just continue to create, doesn't matter what it is or or when the when the fire strikes.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's it.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like even if you're not creating um pieces that you end up saying, hey, well, this is something I made, you're going through the process of you know, concept to design to perfectioning, um, to finding it.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And those steps are still really important, whether you produce a piece of work that you end up putting out in the public realm or not.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And as adults, I find that we don't spend enough time playing creatively as we probably should.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and I say we as a collective, um even those who aren't creative, for example, you know, the the people with straight up and down careers who just, you know, focus on um, you know, going to their day job and then coming home and just doing all the things they need to do to survive.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_02: But there's there's no creative play in there.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: So they're not really um exercising or stretching their brains in ways that could probably, you know, benefit them.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I think we need to put more emphasis on playing without necessarily producing something to just do it and enjoy it and give our brains a break.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I think everybody is creative.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's just one of those things.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's like you don't become good at a sport without training.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: And I think without creating if you're not practicing creativity, then you're not going to be creative.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's a it's a lesson learned.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: You don't just some people are natural with it, but you can teach yourself.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_04: So I think I think those for those who are listening that aren't creative, um, but they do like listening to podcasts about creativity, I think the best thing you can Do is just get out there and have a crack.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like get a pencil, draw on a piece of paper, or go and grab your phone and and try different little compositions.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_04: We live in a world now where the possibilities are so um broad.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_04: So I think we just need to teach ourselves to be a bit bit more creative.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what it sounds like you've done over time as well, is that you've just gone, I'm gonna give that a crack and see where it takes me.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's there's so many ways to create.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you're not drawing, you know, pencil to paper, go out and take some photos of your phone, everyone does it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Dri drag them into some processing apps, play with them, you know.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be even drawing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like if you're a gardener, you can create a create a garden scape of your own design.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_02: You can, you know, if you've got a kid with a sandpit, you can go and you know, create patterns in the sand.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, like look at like Andy Goldsworthy, another artist you might not have looked at.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: He goes into public places and organizes the leaves by colour.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, he's got he's got images where he's gone to somewhere with autumn leaves and he's he's put all the reds in a ring, all the oranges in a ring, and all the yellows in a ring, and then taken a photo of that and and go and walks away.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, knowing that the next moment that that'll be destroyed by nature or by someone coming along.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: But it's that it's that impermanence of it that he that draws him to that kind of an idea.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um massively fascinating.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: He doesn't even need art materials for that.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: It just goes somewhere public, makes something and then leaves it to the chance of nature.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, people can create in any way possible.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you just gotta you know use what you've got around you.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have to be expensive.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that really resonates.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_03: Mentioning I've been going through a little bit of artist block myself recently.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think that not not out of practice from the regular life getting in the way of of creating, I think.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: So um but sort of I'd really love to know who has inspired you over the years and um or and what style of work has inspired you, um, even if it's not related to your own work.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, I've got a lot of um I've got a lot of influences that really aren't connected to my work.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's an artist called um Natalie Divis, D-Y-B-I-S-Z, I think.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_02: And she's a British portrait photographer, and she did a lot of um self-portraits um of herself in different scenes, not unlike that of what Cindy Sherman, another really famous artist, would have done and tries out different outfits and whatnot.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think she's like a used to be a Nikon ambassador in Britain or something like that.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and just the way that she so selflessly and fearlessly created her scenes, I guess, is something that I drew inspir or strength and inspiration from.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Not so much something that I sought to recreate in my work, but I drew on her strength of going out and doing what she wanted to do in a in a way that she didn't apologize to anyone or felt the need to um explain it to anyone.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: She just went and did it.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: And nor should she.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there's a lot of people who will say to you, you know, as an artist, don't you feel um the burning need to abstract because you're an artist, you know.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: And that that thought is that because general public, um, and I say that as a general, broad, non, non-art, non, non-art education kind of a person, but they often think that art has to be abstract in order to be worthy of a high price or worthy of of their recognition and time.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that's that's just the perception, I guess, that you know, in school we're brought up with the surrealists and all of that, uh, and and all of the other art movements, and we're taught that an abstraction is a reason to be expensive and and worthy.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, that's a that's a side that's a side tour for myself.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's my inspiration.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a little bit what my brain is like.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: I apologize.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: I um a little bit of a scrambled brain at times, but um, I'm definitely drawn on uh just the work of uh minimalist photographers.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um yourself, Dean, I love your work.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think um and I draw a lot of inspiration, I guess, from people around and not necessarily people that I I name drop um per se that I can think of, but yeah, just artists in general.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I tend not to look at a lot of art.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know, I I I've been exposed to so much of it, it almost has become like white noise in my head.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um that you don't, you know, kind of pick and choose and um what you end up what I end up sort of just just going with, I guess, is the feeling, um, the feeling of of the work and of the scene, I guess.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a really hard way to quantify it, I guess.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't have too many name drops for you, I'm sorry.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, that's all right.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's just it doesn't even have to be a name drop, I don't think.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's just um it's part of your story.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: And sometimes it's hard to pick one person or one group of people that inspires you, I think.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_03: So uh it's to me, it looks like you draw inspiration from such a wide berth of of experience and um artwork and art forms that it's hard to pinpoint where.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: It really is.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's um my creativity for me is like a sidekick.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's literally like the devil on the shoulders that just sits here permanently going, Oh, hey, look at that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, look at that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't that cool?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh that.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: You should make something about that.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: You should do something about that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it it just it's there all the time.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Even when I'm at work trying to do something really serious, um, oh, it'll be like, oh, hey, look, the lines of the spreadsheet look like the tops of buildings.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, isn't that cool?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's I love that.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's my brain is just doing it all the time.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so I often have to have a notebook next to my desk so I can draw out something really quickly, and then close it, then I go, right, it's recorded, it's here in the book, I can come back to it now.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Now I've got to get on with those other stuff that I'm actually being paid to do.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, that's the only way I've been able to sort of I guess survive.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um but yeah, in terms of creativity, like there's there's multiple joggers, I guess, and it just depends what works for you, hey.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um, you just just something you just mentioned then um just um pricked my ears is um you're saying you put your work your your creativity aside to to go back to your day job effectively.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um is creating and photography and art something you'd like to do full-time, or are you happy to keep it as a side, like you can call it a side hustle, but something on the side to take you away from the everyday life?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, look, 100%, it is my side hustle.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I need I need my day job not only to live and to survive and to be a photographer that travels, um, but I need it, I need my analytical brain, which is my work brain, to balance out the creative.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: I find if I am too too much in one camp, I'm almost a little going a little bit sort of, I wouldn't say off the rails, but things are out of balance for me.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: So in my day job, I work in IT, I work for government, I'm very up and down analytical.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the creative on the side is the balance of of thinking and the different brains.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: So if I'm a little too creative, for example, I'm finding that my day job, my work is suffering a bit.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: And if I'm too worky, then my creative is suffering.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I need, I need it, I need to be creating something to keep that balance um straight up and down up and down the line.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: But I'll never make creativity um or creative photography or arts or anything like that uh a full-time career for me because I definitely don't want to put that pressure on it.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well said.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: And saying and putting the pressure on it, when you say, all right, this is my job now.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: I need to make an artwork, it needs to sell a lot, it needs to do really well in competitions, I need to, and then you just sit there going like this, you go, oh my God, how am I actually going to do this?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: What am I gonna create?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you do that, you feel all this pressure coming on to you like this.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like you feel like it blocks the productivity once you're gonna do it.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: We must create something, we must create something, and becomes it becomes so much pressure, and that ironically, I can't create in that kind of a world.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: I need to be able to be free um and playful and expressionistic.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: I need to allow myself time and space to make failures before I get to my endpoint of creating something properly.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_03: I love that methodology.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you need to give yourself time to get bored as well to think up the ideas.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because when your brain is truly silenced, or when my brain is truly silenced and truly bored, that's when it starts getting creative.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: It starts being like, oh, hey, look at that, look at that, what about this, what about that?
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it starts all just flowing for me.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I need to give myself enough time to be bored.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: I love that so that I can create.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: So um I guess on the flip side of that too.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Sorry.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_03: Keep going with your story.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_03: Keep going.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's fantastic.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_03: Sorry.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: I guess in my methodology too, I have to allow myself time to create.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: So in a in an average day, so work five days a week, um, you know, seven, eight hours a day.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that's quite low, but I purposely chose um the industry that I am in for the low lowish amount of hours for the you know, goodish amount of pay, so that I can have that creative time.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now I have a rule that I don't spend any more than uh an hour a night um watching or consuming somebody else's art.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So in that.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_02: So for example, Netflix, great example of the amazing TV shows and movies, and there's so much to watch and consume.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: But that is someone else's creative art.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: The directors, the actors, everyone that goes into making a show is making a piece of art.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Film and TV, movie is art, as you would understand, Dean.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that is somebody else's art.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I have this rule that if I spend too much more time consuming someone else's art, I'm not giving myself that time to create my own art.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone says to me, Oh, hey, you should watch this TV show, you should watch that TV show, I'm like, thanks for the recommendation.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just letting you know, I probably won't get a chance to do it, but I'll I'll watch a trailer or something like that.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'll come back to it because if I don't give myself that time, I never long term get anything done.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um I can see you probably giggling because you're not gonna be.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: Like I think we're giggling because we're we're sort of we we live in a similar, I guess, realm as you are right now.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_04: We both all I'm at a point in our realm.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm at a point now where um I go to work, I come home and I'm I have all these grand ideas to to to create and sit on the computer, and then next thing you know, it's like, oh, Netflix is on.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's and then you sit there and you and by the time you're done, it's like two, three hours done watching a movie or a couple episodes, and then it's just such a time waster.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_04: And then you feel like I could have used that time to I could have pumped out a photo there um or finished a website or painted a picture, I could have done something, and and I've I fall for that trap every single day.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_04: At the moment, it's just one of those things.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_04: And that's it.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's it's hard.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that's it, it's just about being conscious of the time that you have.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um you know, each night it might not make a difference, but long term it might mean that you don't start or finish a project or something that you've wanted to do goes on to the back burner for another year.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it's it's it's about making that time.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I really found it funny over the like the course of the pandemic, and I I hate to draw this in, but a lot of people weren't or a lot of creatives at the time were really struggling for income.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of creators were hit very, very hard by um not being able to work essentially.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, um, not being able to work, and they very much it showed how much we rely on creatives to create our entertainment.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: That people didn't value the work of artists, but artists are literally the people that make our streets beautiful.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're the ones that put the shows on TV.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And they're the ones that design the public art and the interactive spaces in our cities.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: They have there is so much that artists bring to the world, and there is so much that they don't get valued for, um, for contributing to or creating.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I guess I just wanted to make a big point about that.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: But art is everywhere, even in places you don't expect it.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Art is good design.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: Art is yeah, it's it's on our roads, our cities, our streets, our schools.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's the wallpaper and bunnings, you know, it's it's everywhere.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's a exactly everything.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_02: People don't people don't give it enough credo, I think, or you know, don't give it, I guess, the time and energy that they should.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_02: When they think about, you know, whether a photographer or whether creative can do something cheaper, they're not thinking about, you know, actually giving the um time and space to that person to say, hey, look, you made this amazing thing, and I absolutely love it in and out.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you deserve it.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: Your career is just as valid as the accountant or um, you know, the builder or the construction guy.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you're preaching to the choir.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: I wish I wish the rest of the the common society who aren't artistic or artists would um would buy into the similar viewpoint that you have to do.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: But I think it also starts in schools as well.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: I think they need a um and like my my son, he's my oldest son, he's just started school and and they are actually doing a lot of creating and and drawing and and and talk about that.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_04: And and I do feel it is refreshing to to see them come home from school and go, can we paint today, dad?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_04: Or can we draw or something like that?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I think I think it is moving back towards creating, but um I think it needs to happen on uh on a regular basis, I think, as well.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm I'm with you.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think um a lot of people take creativity for granted.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um like our houses that we live in has been created by an architect um drawing up um a facade or how the rooms are layout or how anything like where you put even your lights in your house is all about design.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm I'm with you.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_04: I think um creativity needs to be pushed.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: Well, not I don't want to say push because it seems like we're forced to go on you, but we it should be a conversation piece in regular society.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mel has just become the artist advocate in my eyes.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_03: Speaking for the people.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you, Mel.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: You're a legend.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: She's talking about it.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna say if you wanted to if you wanted to um explore it a bit more in literature, I can highly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: I know Carl, in a previous episode, you said you have trouble finishing books.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is one I would highly recommend you finish.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because it's all about how creativity finds you at different stages in your life, yeah.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and how to to draw inspiration.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, how how to create, I guess.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's a bit more of a book about that.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you're more into watching videos, Dr.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_02: Ken Robinson has a lot of books, but on TED Talks, he has a video about how schools kill creativity.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we only really create until like the first, you know, five grades, maybe.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then after that, it's all about becoming a working, contributing member of the industrial society.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: And the artistic and the creative has kind of fallen away, at least in our generation, I guess.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um creating worker bees a couple of starting points.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_03: Creating worker bees instead of creating uh creatives.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_03: If you could you send us a couple of those salary, man.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_04: If you could send us a couple of those links, because I think um our listeners would would love to be able to find that.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_04: And we'll chuck that in the show notes for sure.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_04: I think um that's something I'd probably look into.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_03: You you're speaking about inspiration just again.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'd really love to hear about uh anyone who mentored you.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_03: Particularly I know when you went through the AIPP process, it was a really big thing.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_03: I remember having conversations with you about your print package and things like that you had to submit.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_03: And then I know you moved up through the AIPP, so I'd really love to hear that story.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, the AOPP or the former AIPP um was a great driver in terms of allowing me to create the strange, the weird and wonderful images that I've probably only kept in my back catalogue for several years.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was all about looking beyond a photograph or an image, and I guess reading its story and examining an image more than just what you might say is a chocolate box, for example.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_02: So a chocolate box idea was that it looked pretty.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: You can imagine those chocolate-covered uh macadamia boxes in tourist shops, and it's got an iconic photo of Australia on it, and inside is some chocolate-covered macadamia that are way overpriced.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that kind of an idea that there's a pretty photo of a box of chocolates that signifies an area or a region or something like that.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's about doing more than just creating an image of an iconic place.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: I guess it was about capturing the soul of a place and not just in landscape photography, but the soul of something.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in a portrait, it might be, you know, technically excellent portraits.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it was a whole range of things, but we had a grading scale that was all about reading an image.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_02: So whether it was a, you know, a standard, um, you know, oh, this is a standard sort of, I want to say standard image, bad word.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, what does the image tell you?
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Is it, is it um, you're asking me to dig up knowledge I haven't had to use in a little while.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, it's it's it's about talking about images in their stories and and how they communicate that and how quickly they communicate that um to the viewer.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um we often, when we did our judgings, you had 20, 20 seconds maybe to read an image, to analyze its technical qualities, paper choice, the printing quality, what the image um was showing you, how it was cropped, and you you had to read it in uh in a very short space of time and have a comment ready to go.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: So, like impact judging.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_02: And we're often taught that you know, you you read an image if you can find like two or three or more faults, you know, where does it fall?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: How original is it?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, it was just about picking out, I guess, you know, the great photographs or the great images from the ones that you would expect to be technically proficient in as a professional photographer.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_02: So, what would your clients expect of you?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um what's your sale base?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: But then going beyond that, um, definitely going into um struggling to get my thoughts together here, but um find finding stuff that is extraordinary and unusual and seldom seen.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but that definitely gave me uh a different way of looking at the world.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I've definitely created some images that were multi-layered, um, used a mix of Photoshop techniques.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not a massive Photoshopper and I've I've created one entirely fake image in my life.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I probably wouldn't do it again because I enjoy I enjoy just actually showcasing moments around me.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's I think something that I lost sight of when I did participate in professional competition and when I did actually start shooting for competition, was that I lost sight of what actually excited me.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was trying to create too hard for the competition eventually.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: So um I I haven't really entered any major competitions, at least in the last year or so, um, because I'm enjoying doing it myself too much.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I I completely agree with that.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um, not yeah, shooting for yourself.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_04: So you kind of answered the question there.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_04: Can you take us a little bit more into how you prepared for a um a competition?
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like, was it is it different?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, do you shoot for the competition itself?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_04: Or have you got like a you could call it a preset.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_04: Have you got like a range that you have for all competitions versus what you have for your personal use?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I used to really um divide the two.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: I used to have some very moody and dark, really darkly themed kind of images.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um and I put more of those into professional competition because they weren't ones that I would necessarily go, here it is, here's my art.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's really dark and moody.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I really don't want to have to explain this to anyone, but in sort of a judging sense for professional competition, it's you know, the names of the photographers aren't revealed, the image title isn't revealed, and you can be entirely anonymous in that whole um that whole thing.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: So if it doesn't do well, you don't have to admit to it that we it that it was ever yours.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um and if it does well, you're like, hey, yay, thank you so much for the amazing honor for this strange piece of art that I really don't want to have to explain to anyone now.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, um, I made this, you know, in homage to such and such.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um so in terms of shooting, yeah, I definitely used to go out to, I guess, some bigger ticket places and try and shoot more abstract landscapes.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was always after stuff that that made a comment or I wanted to showcase uh shadows and highlights more than actual images themselves.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and those are in a very set format.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: So at least in terms Of the former AIPP, everything had to be in a 40 by 50 mount board.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: It had to be matted, it had to be window framed.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_02: Paper choice was important.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you had to detail all of the camera settings that came to creating that picture.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: You had to print on a high grade art quality paper.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Each image usually cost you around about$100 from creation to matting and then to submitting.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it became a very sort of strict format that you created in.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: People rarely did whole pages.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: We normally just did the top half of the of the frame with a picture in it.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it had to be, you know, X centimeters long or X centimeters tall.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_02: And some people, you know, absolutely thrive in that kind of environment for creating.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: Some people have such amazing, imaginative creative brains, like my friend Chris Anderson.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's just done exceedingly well in the British competition, which he's over there for now.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: But he just has theatre brain, he has narrative brain.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it just he goes from capture to print in just the most amazing kind of way.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: And he has such an inspired way of talking about his work.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: But you just sort of sit back and just go, oh my God, I would love to be, I would love to be that together with my creative practices.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: You are drawing inspiration from, I guess, the people around you, like people like Matt Palmer.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've shot a lot with Matt before he moved from Queensland down to Tasmania, then to Victoria.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, Mika Boynton, again, a really good friend of mine.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um absolutely love her work, soul, just she's just so beautiful, so amazing in person as well.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and yeah, just just people all around me in the AOPP, you know, G Greenslade, if you've ever had a look at her work.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um who else?
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just there's so many people that you end up drawing little pieces from here and there.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um yeah, it's there's so many different flavors of art in Australia that's really quite exciting, especially in photography.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: Or like the art of photography or the art in photography.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: It just depends, you know, how you want to look at it.
• 46:15
  unknown: Yeah.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry, I'm pretty terrible with my digressing.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's fun.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's fantastic because there's a couple of names in there that I haven't heard of, which um I'm now gonna go.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, please go and look them up.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna go and look them up for sure.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_04: But then there's the others that we have definitely know their work and they're just as stunning.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_04: They're they're like Matt Palmer and Amika Boynton and like they're their stuff is awesome.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_04: Um and they're so different too, which makes it even better.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_04: You're right.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: And like you said earlier, Carl Fagus Week is such a wonderful melting pot of photographers coming together to talk about art.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_02: I know the organizers don't want it to get too much bigger, um, but it's it's it's very much a quiet little club now.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't want to spend too much time talking about it, but the people that run it are just amazing, and I'm so looking forward to going back again this year.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've I've um I have contacted Tinny and tried I want to get him on and to talk about Fayus Week and about how he built that community.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, because I think it's not gonna it's not gonna be around for very much longer, I don't think.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's a there's a actually a time limit of how long that's gonna go for.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: So that'll be a that's sort of an end of an era.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: Um hopeful hear from Tinny about those stories.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, he's amazing.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the both of the Mark and Claire are such amazing people and um they're so amazing for the drawing in what they've managed to create.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: And Vegas Week is easily like 10 years old or more now.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um but what it what it brings and what it means is is worth saving.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: So um yeah, I'm really looking forward to going down and in about four weeks' time and my first dose of real winter.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_04: How many sickers do you have left, Carl?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I know Mel, you you've always had this um draw you you're drawn to colder climates, right?
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that's a part of your story.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, I I guess where am I going with this?
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: Um what what is it because of where you like you're located and that that's what draws you to the colder locations?
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, being in Queensland, I live two feet from the sun in every season.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's always really hot here.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: So cold weather and snow and all that stuff to me is still really special.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Like I've seen snow so many times, but every time I see it, it's so exciting.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you only need to look at like the people in California at the moment that are absolutely buried in snow.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like, go have a look at that stuff.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's incredible.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: I'd still be like a giddy like a kid in snow, but I love traveling to cold, colder places because I find that it's not only just um enlightening and invigorating, but it usually brings with it more exciting um images for me.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: Cold, snow, ice, just everything.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_02: It I feel the air is cooler, it's easier to breathe, it's comfortable.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um pictures have this lovely blue tone to them as opposed to my photos in in Queensland have this really horrible orange-brown tone to them.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that's literally like what I feel like is the humidity and uh the heat and the air reflects itself in a photograph.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't help it doesn't help that your football team of winter up there either.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe that's why.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's why.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_03: But um my roan blood everywhere.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of, yeah.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_03: For all the listeners, um, where can everyone find your work, Mel?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I've got my website, which is my most of the time.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've stopped updating Instagram at the moment purely because of the way it was heading for a while.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, wasn't getting traction and stuff like that.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: I still have my Instagram, so at Mel Sinclair underscore AU.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, my website, melcinclair.com.au.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I've started trying to update to Vero as well, uh, although I'm finding too much media, not enough time.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: So at the moment, I haven't released anything since I had um had a little exhibition last year.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't really done anything since then.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but those two places are the majority of my my yeah, release.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and again, we'll have those in the show notes for you as well.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_04: And so the listeners can jump on board and and follow Mel wherever they can.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you definitely have to delve into Mel's work, especially like go through it and see the progression.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um because there's a there's such a variety of work from pretty much around the globe.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um she's she's visited many countries and created lots of different works of art with many moods.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, be sure to check it out.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um Mel's a fantastic artist and photographer, and she's definitely an inspiration to me.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_04: And oh yeah, I was I was just scrolling through whilst we were chatting and um on an Instagram account, and I'm like, I'll have to put this down because I'm getting jealous because my stuff is the same, and you've just got everything, it's just fantastic.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_04: So um before we wrap it up, Mel, um what's next for you?
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's next for me.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um trip coming up in four weeks' time.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_02: The folk has just started out here in Southeast Queensland, so it's time to start putting myself into a bit more of a sleep-deprived state and go out and chase that a bit.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm trying to plan a trip overseas for the end of the year.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: What happens when, I don't know.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, just started a new job, so I've got to I've got to serve my social probation first.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, definitely more fog hay, um more Tasmania is coming up soon.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm actually doing a bit more lecturing and photography at the moment, talking about creativity and and how to write artist statements and all that kind of stuff.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm doing a little bit more mentoring than I than I used to, but I'm looking forward to that so much.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_03: I think I might have to take some writing mentoring off here, because I know that you're you're a fantastic writer as well, on top of the rest of your amazing skills.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: There's a whole whole talk in how to write about yourself that I'm formulating at the moment.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: So how to write an artist statement.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the people that you mentor will be in for a treat, that's for sure.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_04: Um the way you speak about art and how passionate you are, they're gonna gain a lot.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_04: I can tell you that right now.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: I definitely hope so.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: The chance to inspire is a rare opportunity.
• 52:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we're gonna have to finish it up there.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_04: We're running a little bit short on time for today.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we really thank you for joining us.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_04: And I can tell you now, this is the first time I've actually spoken to you.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we can say face to face because I can see you.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's been over the internet, but it's been fantastic.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_04: And we look forward to actually coming up to Queensland um and having a shoot um when we can as well.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_04: So we really thank you for your time.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_04: And um and thank you again.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_04: I uh it's been a privilege.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, Mel.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_03: Really great seeing you again and and having a chat too and hearing everything you had to say.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: You too, and thanks so much.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I think this probably counts me as the first woman on your podcast.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it does.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, that's fantastic.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_03: It wasn't it wasn't an intentional way.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we're trying to be as inclusive as possible.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, I'm just saying waving that little flag.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's fine.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_04: That's good to get to take those little wins when you can.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um thanks so much.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: Looking forward to it, guys.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you for listening, everybody.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_04: And um, we look forward to hearing your feedback on this episode with Mel.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_04: We hope to catch you on our next episode.