Latest / The Nerdy Photographer Podcast / 111 - Concrete Beat: Capturing the Essence of a City through Street Photography

Transcript

111 - Concrete Beat: Capturing the Essence of a City through Street Photography · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:05
  Casey Fatchett: A little left. Nope, too far. Oh, hey there.
• 0:10
  Welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your
• 0:12
  host. Casey Fatchett, if you've never listened to the show
• 0:15
  before, welcome. You should be sure to subscribe. And if you've
• 0:18
  done that, you should leave a review. And if you've already
• 0:20
  done both of those things, you should tell a friend about the
• 0:23
  show. In addition to providing entertaining and informative
• 0:25
  photography related information, I also go on adventures with the
• 0:28
  crew of the starship Fibonacci. At the moment, I'm taking
• 0:31
  portraits of Gothamist prime, a sentient city. On a related
• 0:36
  note, in this episode of the podcast, I'm talking with street
• 0:38
  photographer Phil Penman about how the cities he photographs
• 0:41
  have a unique character all their own. We talk about the
• 0:44
  differences between certain cities around the world and
• 0:46
  techniques that have served him well over the years for
• 0:49
  capturing amazing photos consistently. All of that after
• 0:52
  the break.
• 0:59
  Yeah, don't worry, I am getting your good side. Hey
• 1:05
  photographers, are you ready to say goodbye to the chaos of
• 1:08
  scattered contracts, missed leads? Hey, photographers, are
• 1:17
  you ready to say goodbye to the chaos of scattered contracts,
• 1:20
  missed leads and disorganized schedules, then you should try
• 1:23
  pixify Your all in one client relationship management software
• 1:28
  that will take your business to the next level. Pixify brings
• 1:31
  order to your business chaos by streamlining your workflow,
• 1:34
  manage digital contracts, effortlessly, track leads and
• 1:37
  clients and organize your schedule, all from one intuitive
• 1:41
  platform, impress your clients with personalized and branded
• 1:45
  communications, from email templates to booking pages,
• 1:47
  pixify ensures every interaction reflects your unique brand,
• 1:51
  building trust and loyalty. You can say goodbye to scheduling
• 1:56
  headaches. Pixify scheduling tools make it easy for you to
• 1:59
  book appointments with clients and for you to keep your
• 2:02
  calendar organized, deliver a VIP experience with personalized
• 2:06
  client portals, your clients can access important documents, view
• 2:10
  their project progress and interact with ease, and most
• 2:14
  importantly, no more chasing payments. Pixify automates your
• 2:18
  invoicing and payment processing, ensuring you get
• 2:20
  paid on time every time. I've been using pixify for over a
• 2:25
  decade, and it has saved me countless hours and a lot a lot
• 2:29
  of money. I tried a number of other CRM options before
• 2:32
  settling on pixify because pixify offered the most robust
• 2:36
  set of tools that also allowed me to truly connect and foster
• 2:40
  my relationships with my clients, I highly recommend it,
• 2:44
  and you can save 20% on annual pixify programs when you use our
• 2:47
  link. Nerdy photographer, comm slash recommends slash pixify.
• 2:51
  You can also find that link in the Episode Notes, save big
• 2:54
  money and save yourself time. Time, the one thing which you
• 2:58
  can never get back, pixify saves me hundreds of hours every year
• 3:03
  that I can spend on tasks that make my business money or by
• 3:06
  just relaxing and getting away from work. So what are you
• 3:09
  waiting for visit nerdy photographer comm slash
• 3:12
  recommends slash pixify and save 20% today. Hello and welcome to
• 3:21
  the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your host, Casey Fatchett,
• 3:24
  and I'm here today with street photographer Phil Penman.
• 3:27
  Welcome Phil.
• 3:28
  Phil Penman: Hey, Casey, how you doing? Thanks for having me on,
• 3:28
  man,
• 3:29
  Casey Fatchett: you're very, very welcome. And we're going to
• 3:30
  start off before we get in deep into conversation with the dice
• 3:36
  breaker, which is just I roll a 20 sided die, and we get a topic
• 3:39
  of conversation to kind of get things going. It's a 12, all
• 3:45
  right, what's your dream dinner party? Who are you inviting?
• 3:51
  Anybody, dead or alive?
• 3:53
  Phil Penman: You can invite anyone. Wow, wow. Dream dinner
• 4:00
  party. That's pretty good. My gran for one, I'd like to see
• 4:09
  her again. Musk, I think he'd be pretty fascinating,
• 4:18
  Casey Fatchett: to be honest, to be in a conversation with him,
• 4:22
  Phil Penman: yeah, like, just because I always, I always love,
• 4:24
  believe it or not, I love watching all the CEO podcasts,
• 4:27
  because we're lucky now that we have, like, all these podcasts,
• 4:31
  they go on for like, two, two and a half hours, like, you
• 4:34
  there was a Bezos one with Lex Friedman recently, like, two and
• 4:37
  a half hours. Like, when did you ever get that before to, like,
• 4:41
  you know, start to get inside the mind of these people,
• 4:44
  Casey Fatchett: just to be like, to see what's really going on,
• 4:46
  as opposed to just newspaper articles back in the early 1900s
• 4:51
  when you just get, like, some newspaper thing about the
• 4:55
  Rockefellers or anybody like that, you don't really get the
• 4:59
  access. That you do.
• 5:01
  Phil Penman: It's, it's pretty amazing the access we get. So I
• 5:04
  he would definitely be one. I would love to, like, here's,
• 5:09
  here's some of his sports, like, the stuff will, you know, Bezos,
• 5:12
  obviously, he'd be fascinating. The one that everyone always
• 5:15
  goes for all the time is Adolf. He's done, yeah, yeah. That's
• 5:21
  like number one. That's not, definitely not mine. Yeah, no,
• 5:28
  I'm interested by the business guys. I'm always, I always, you
• 5:31
  know, if you put me, like, in a room with, like, you know, Bezos
• 5:35
  diamond, or the all the current ones, I want to say, Yeah, I
• 5:40
  like, I always find it fascinating whenever you watch
• 5:42
  things with him talking about how he does business, and then
• 5:45
  people that I know work for the company and like, the polar
• 5:48
  opposite of what he wants,
• 5:50
  Casey Fatchett: right? Yeah,
• 5:52
  Phil Penman: doesn't add up. But yeah, I'd like to know right,
• 5:56
  where we're going, not kind of where we've been,
• 5:59
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, I feel like where I understand what
• 6:02
  you're saying, like, kind of have a sense of which way the
• 6:05
  world is turning they what they're seeing, or, I don't
• 6:11
  know, yeah, I think that's what I'm blaming. Like, what their
• 6:15
  thoughts on things are, I don't know. Mine is there are creative
• 6:20
  minded people that I would love to just sit down and have a
• 6:23
  conversation with. I mean, I think Bourdain would be
• 6:28
  Phil Penman: oh good
• 6:29
  Casey Fatchett: or Frank Zappa was really super smart and way
• 6:34
  ahead of his time.
• 6:38
  Phil Penman: Yeah,
• 6:38
  Casey Fatchett: trying to think of who else there's creatively.
• 6:42
  I mean, I almost ran into him once when I was photographing a
• 6:48
  gig. David Lynch. Yeah, he'd be so like, David Lynch. David
• 6:53
  Byrne, John Waters, like those just to, like, sit and, like,
• 6:58
  listen to them talk about something just that sort of the
• 7:04
  the insight into their process, that's that sort of thing
• 7:09
  fascinates me, whereas, like Bourdain, we just talk about
• 7:14
  food and have a beer, and that'd be a lot of fun.
• 7:18
  Phil Penman: I got, I got to meet a lot of them because of my
• 7:21
  old job and working on Celebrity so I actually got to hang with
• 7:26
  quite a lot of them. And my wife's also, she's in the
• 7:29
  entertainment business as well. And hers was, she's she's
• 7:33
  interviewed everyone at this point. Hers was David Bowie.
• 7:37
  She's funny, funniest guy she's ever met in her life. She said
• 7:41
  Casey Fatchett: I had a friend who met him regularly through
• 7:47
  his job, and just said he was a the nicest guy, but also just
• 7:55
  super, super funny that he's definitely on my list as well.
• 8:00
  Yeah, I've had the I've done a lot of like, celebrity events
• 8:05
  and things where, like, you don't necessarily get to hang
• 8:07
  out with people, but like, you're around them, and you kind
• 8:10
  of see how they are. And it's, it's interesting. I always try
• 8:13
  to come up with a really random, deep cut reference if I
• 8:20
  actually, actually have to talk to somebody like, Oh, we're
• 8:22
  gonna pose everybody together for a photo, or something like
• 8:25
  that, I always try to, like, get something that's like, so, I
• 8:30
  don't know, people don't really think about, like, I had Salman
• 8:33
  Rushdie at an event, and like, there are all these VIPs that
• 8:36
  we're gonna get a picture with them. And I was like, Oh, Mr.
• 8:39
  Rushdie, I loved you in Seinfeld, yeah, he started
• 8:43
  cracking up. And everybody else is like, what's going on? He's
• 8:46
  like, Oh, that's my best word.
• 8:48
  Phil Penman: I I always say, pretend like you like each
• 8:51
  other.
• 8:51
  Casey Fatchett: Yes, that's, that's when I use a lot to the
• 8:56
  Phil Penman: that always works, the
• 8:59
  Casey Fatchett: just, I think also it's nice when you just
• 9:01
  like running. Run in New York you run into people on the
• 9:04
  streets. Because people don't, if you've never lived in New
• 9:08
  York City, you don't realize how small of a town it is. Sometimes
• 9:12
  you'll, like, run into people and, like, just funny, all
• 9:18
  right, speaking of running into people on the streets, street
• 9:21
  photography like what, you know, what was your impetus to get
• 9:26
  into street photography?
• 9:31
  Phil Penman: Well, I've been in the business a long, long time,
• 9:34
  30 years now for me, and it's always been working as well. So
• 9:40
  I, mean, I started very early, 15, and then I was freelancing
• 9:46
  for the agencies, probably about 1819, years old. That's a girl.
• 9:50
  So when? Yeah, so, so as a freelancer, and you're it's high
• 9:54
  pressure as well, because if you screw up, they're not going to
• 9:57
  call you again. Yep. So. Around, I started breaking down. I went
• 10:04
  into through the celebrity route as well, like I was doing
• 10:07
  celebrity portraiture and paparazzi work and everything.
• 10:09
  That was what brought me over to the states. And then I started a
• 10:13
  break, probably around 2005 and figured out where I better
• 10:19
  figure out some kind of solution to this, because otherwise, I'm
• 10:22
  really this is not going to be a good path, especially if you
• 10:25
  have a photography background as well. Yeah, so I picked up, you
• 10:30
  know, a camera that I always wanted, which was a liker I got
• 10:33
  managed to actually was making money. That's the nice thing.
• 10:37
  People forget about living over here. You can actually make
• 10:41
  money over here. When I left the you, when I left the UK, I was
• 10:44
  making 13 and a half 1000 pounds a year, and all of a sudden
• 10:49
  you're making like, 10 times that in your first year. So I
• 10:54
  was able to buy a Leica and put it in my bag. And that's that
• 10:57
  was my carry around camera in the day to kind of take me away
• 11:02
  from the celebrity stuff that I was doing, and just started
• 11:06
  building up a body of work. And 2015 was the moment I finally
• 11:12
  broke, like complete mental breakdown. Could not stand being
• 11:16
  out on the street anymore, and decided, right, I'm just going
• 11:19
  to go full hog with the sheet stuff and try to make a name for
• 11:23
  myself doing that. Here we are.
• 11:26
  Casey Fatchett: Here we are. It was a book and everything coming
• 11:28
  out. So to me, your style, in my humble opinion, is very
• 11:36
  recognizable. I'm scrolling through photos on Instagram or
• 11:40
  anything like, I know, even when it's somebody else posting one
• 11:43
  of your photos, which I had seen, like, for some reason,
• 11:46
  somewhere recently, I was like, oh, that's Phil's photo. Like,
• 11:49
  no, just there's something like, super recognizable. How did you
• 11:53
  develop your style for street photography, and were there any
• 11:58
  specific influences that like shaped your thoughts about how
• 12:02
  you were going to characterize.
• 12:06
  Phil Penman: It's the hardest thing, right? I think, to
• 12:08
  develop a style that you have yet. I always say whenever I'm
• 12:12
  working with anyone, like teaching anybody like the first
• 12:15
  thing is like, right? Well, most importantly, I'm not here to
• 12:19
  influence what you take pictures of business, then you just
• 12:23
  become a clone of somebody else. And I think photographers, more
• 12:28
  so than artists, have a horrible I don't know what it is, but
• 12:33
  they just seem to copy a lot. It's you don't see it as much. I
• 12:39
  was just chatting with my wife about it, and we were trying to
• 12:41
  we, we both can't get it like your whole thing is you need to
• 12:45
  stand out from everyone else. So if you all you're doing is
• 12:47
  copying somebody else, like you can be influenced by somebody
• 12:51
  else's work, but you're not going to just straight up copy.
• 12:56
  So for me, because I was doing the celebrity stuff, and I had a
• 12:59
  job, and I was making a living doing that, I was able to just
• 13:05
  create what made me happy and I didn't care, right? Which is, it
• 13:10
  takes a it takes away a lot of the pressure. And I think
• 13:14
  because social media wasn't a big thing when I was coming up
• 13:17
  like it didn't exist, right? It, you know, the the way that we
• 13:22
  all, everyone measured themselves was, or how much
• 13:25
  money did you make this month? That was how photographers
• 13:28
  measured themselves against each other. So, because we didn't
• 13:33
  have the social media, and now people are more interested in
• 13:37
  how many likes, how many followers can I get? I get it if
• 13:41
  you're trying to make a living, because that stuff, that stuff
• 13:45
  matters, like if you want to get brand endorsements, maybe, I
• 13:49
  think the scary thing is, when you ask people what they want to
• 13:52
  be, the majority of people say they want to become an
• 13:54
  influence, or whatever that means, right? But that it's
• 13:58
  whether we like it or not, that is the way people are swayed. So
• 14:01
  if they say, Well, hang on, I want to be, I want to be an
• 14:04
  influencer what is popular, they will just start copying each
• 14:09
  other and copying each other style, because they think that's
• 14:12
  what
• 14:13
  Casey Fatchett: people want, but that's what people react to.
• 14:16
  Phil Penman: But it's so short term, like I can, I can look at
• 14:21
  the way that social media algorithms work, right? You're
• 14:25
  never going to win that, you know, because you're not, you're
• 14:28
  not dealing with a person, you're dealing with a computer.
• 14:31
  It's better if you understand. You can't take any of it
• 14:35
  personally, which is very hard, because you have to realize it
• 14:40
  has nothing to do with your work or your content. Yeah, it's like
• 14:45
  nothing.
• 14:45
  Casey Fatchett: It's, it's like, I see people going, Oh, this is
• 14:50
  how you, like, beat the algorithm or whatever. And I was
• 14:53
  like, it's always some trick. It'll change in a week. And
• 14:57
  there are certain things like, we can see like that are just
• 14:59
  like it. Engagement, you know, like tricks to try to get people
• 15:04
  like, misspelling like words. It's so that people will be
• 15:08
  like, You spelled whatever wrong, and I'm just like, so
• 15:11
  they falsely get engagement.
• 15:13
  Phil Penman: I do. I do that because I'm dyslexic.
• 15:17
  Casey Fatchett: No, there are people who do it just like, on
• 15:19
  purpose. We'll just do it like, like in YouTube titles, like the
• 15:24
  titling their YouTube video with a misspelled word, so that
• 15:26
  they'll get people commenting on it, saying you didn't spell this
• 15:29
  correctly, just to, like, get that engagement, to try to,
• 15:32
  like, get more eyes on their stuff. And I'm like, come on.
• 15:35
  It's just I can see through that. Like, I can see through
• 15:38
  like, anybody with any like, sort of critical thinking. You
• 15:41
  can see through that sort of stuff. But you know, whatever I
• 15:46
  think that you you were talking about, like copying people I
• 15:49
  heard a long time ago, somebody else is like, you can imitate,
• 15:53
  you can emulate, or you can innovate. And I think that right
• 15:56
  now there's just a lot of imitation, because it's a lot of
• 15:59
  people who are untrained anyway, and they're just like, oh, what
• 16:04
  does this person do you see in, like, online photography forums
• 16:07
  where they're like, how do I take a picture like this? How do
• 16:09
  I how do I make this picture like in, be like, in somebody
• 16:13
  like, throw out some camera settings. And you're just like,
• 16:17
  What do you
• 16:18
  Phil Penman: Oh, yeah, that's always my favorite. That's
• 16:20
  always my favorite, it's, I try to figure it out, because it's
• 16:25
  so foreign from where we began. And, you know, we me and my
• 16:31
  buddy, we were doing a liker Academy. Charlie works for like
• 16:34
  UK, and we were, there's a Elliot Irwin exhibition that's
• 16:37
  currently going on in Mayfair, and we had the class of people
• 16:41
  in the room, and we would, you know, you get all these people
• 16:44
  that are obsessed with critical sharpness and edge to edge and
• 16:49
  the lenses and all this. And I said, Well, hey, look around the
• 16:51
  room. 15 of these images are out of focus, and five of them are
• 16:54
  setups. Now, I've just debunked all your theories in one
• 16:59
  exhibition, and they looked around and like, holy shit,
• 17:03
  yeah. I'm like, yeah, it's got nothing to do with critical
• 17:07
  sharpness. Is like, do you look at it? Do you feel something
• 17:10
  from it? Right? If you don't, then it hasn't done the job. It
• 17:14
  hasn't the photographer hasn't been able to convey in the
• 17:17
  picture what they wanted to you.
• 17:19
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I always tell people that emotional
• 17:22
  weight always counters technical perfection. Yeah, if you're not
• 17:30
  getting like, I will deliver images to my clients for certain
• 17:35
  types of jobs that are like, slightly out of focus. And
• 17:38
  that's become a big thing in the last couple years was out of
• 17:41
  focus photos, like, see that people doing it with no
• 17:44
  intention, like, I'm just going to take this, you know, it's
• 17:47
  going to be totally out of focus. Like, you're not getting
• 17:50
  the point of why the picture is out of focus. It's, you know,
• 17:55
  there's a reason for it's out of focus. Or, like, somebody did
• 17:57
  this was intention, or this moment was just happening, and
• 18:00
  there was not time to focus in, like, really sharply on it, like
• 18:05
  there was, like, there's, there's a lot of things going
• 18:07
  on. It's not just, I went out here and made sure that my
• 18:10
  subject didn't actually, wasn't actually in focus. That's not
• 18:15
  the reason, yeah, it's there's, there's a lot of things that go
• 18:18
  into it. And I think that there's a lot in a lot of people
• 18:24
  who are trying to be influential photographers, who don't see the
• 18:30
  intention behind why like these. Some of these great photos
• 18:35
  aren't in sharp focus, whatever like, there's just even when
• 18:38
  they like, admit to like, it doesn't have to be like,
• 18:44
  perfectly sharp. They don't necessarily see why you have to.
• 18:48
  Phil Penman: Well, not everyone can be one, though, right? Like
• 18:52
  we it's, you know, I don't, I don't pretend to understand tax
• 18:58
  law or being a lawyer, a copyright lawyer, or even a
• 19:04
  painter. So why would it be any different with photography?
• 19:09
  Yeah, like, you can't you, like, okay, you can understand a
• 19:13
  camera. You can understand the technical part of a camera, but
• 19:17
  you might not have had a hard upbringing. You might not have a
• 19:21
  certain perspective on life, like all the cameras capturing
• 19:25
  is what you've done, your past experiences, how you view the
• 19:29
  world. You're never going to be able to do what that person
• 19:32
  could do, because maybe you didn't have the same upbringing.
• 19:35
  So I if you are going to show me your pictures, show me who you
• 19:40
  are, right? I want to know. I want to know who you are. Not
• 19:44
  like, okay, a rip off of that guy, right?
• 19:48
  Casey Fatchett: You bring your own, you bring yourself into the
• 19:51
  picture. You can't just, like, go in there. It's the people
• 19:54
  that I see a lot of times, and except in forums, we're like,
• 19:57
  what are the oh, your picture is great. What are the camera
• 19:59
  settings? It's like, that's not gonna like you, like, you're
• 20:02
  gonna go out there and recreate this exact like, you
• 20:05
  Phil Penman: don't always say, if it brings them joy, like, if
• 20:09
  they have fun from it, great. Okay. Like, nothing wrong with
• 20:14
  that. Like, but if you are doing it just to chase likes or
• 20:19
  something like that, then you're probably, you're probably in the
• 20:21
  wrong thing and, and to be honest with you, you really
• 20:24
  should, we shouldn't be worried about them, because they're
• 20:26
  probably going to move on to the next thing within a year.
• 20:28
  Casey Fatchett: Anyway. Yeah, my, what I've noticed becoming
• 20:31
  more, my, like, sort of like, bird's eye view of the industry
• 20:35
  over the last 25 years is that he used to be, like, there were
• 20:40
  certain people who were, you know, like, did it on the
• 20:43
  weekend, who just, like, were like, I'm, this is my other job.
• 20:47
  There were hobbyists. There were pros. Now we've got this wave of
• 20:52
  people who, like, I'm going to do this for five years, make as
• 20:56
  much money as I can. Like, that's their sort of thought
• 21:00
  process. And then I'm going then I'm going to move.
• 21:03
  Phil Penman: Well, that's the, that's the mistake, right there,
• 21:06
  right it's you, you become driven by money. And like, we're
• 21:10
  all guilty of it. At some point in our career, we've probably
• 21:13
  been driven by the money. Like, when I was like, it's, it's
• 21:17
  almost a mute it makes me laugh. Now, when I was doing paparazzi
• 21:21
  work, we would complain if we were getting like 25 grand a
• 21:24
  month, because the money being made in the industry at that
• 21:28
  time was so astronomical. And you look back at me like, What
• 21:32
  an asshole that guy was. Me, like, you're complaining about
• 21:35
  making that kind of money because you knew you were
• 21:38
  getting robbed, but it was to what degree, like I whenever I
• 21:42
  want to check, yeah, to like, you knew you getting take, like
• 21:45
  you were just getting ripped off. But it was like, All right,
• 21:49
  well, how much? And I think that was one thing that would get us
• 21:53
  wound up. But it's like, with this, the work that I was doing,
• 21:57
  it was like, Okay, you you've taken away the money thing
• 22:00
  altogether, and it just became purely about enjoyment, because
• 22:04
  you've gone into it knowing that there's no money in this, right?
• 22:09
  Casey Fatchett: The only money is like, what happened? Like, if
• 22:13
  you turn it into something the I don't know they this is very
• 22:19
  specifically to your work. I and having lived in New York for 20
• 22:24
  years, the the feeling that I get from your photos is this
• 22:29
  very sort of timeless. It has a very to me. It has a 40s, like
• 22:35
  being a student of older like photography, like from
• 22:39
  throughout the years, it has a very 40s, 50s, 60s feel to me.
• 22:45
  But I think overall, it's a very timeless thing. I think it's
• 22:50
  maybe because it's all black and white, it also like there's
• 22:56
  nothing that gives away what era it's in, in in some way, like,
• 23:01
  you know, like colors can tend to give away, like, an era of
• 23:06
  photography. How much do you feel that when you go and you're
• 23:12
  doing like street photography, specifically New York, how much
• 23:17
  do you feel that the city itself is a character in the pictures,
• 23:23
  like something that's something you're interacting with.
• 23:31
  Phil Penman: So all depends on how you view New York, right?
• 23:35
  So, like I I'm hardcore New York. Have been since I was a
• 23:39
  kid. My wife, she's the same parkour New York, and said to
• 23:43
  me, which I totally agree with, is we both feel that New York is
• 23:47
  a person, and you can feel it when you go out on the streets
• 23:52
  in the day. You can feel if it's a bad day, yeah, like if there's
• 23:56
  a bad but if there's a bad energy in the day, in the air.
• 24:00
  You know, there is, you know, when it's a good day and it's
• 24:04
  not, everyone's going to have that same affinity like you
• 24:08
  remember that most people live into in New York for two years
• 24:13
  maximum, because it's either they couldn't hack it or it just
• 24:17
  became too expensive, which, for most is the biggest problem for
• 24:22
  me, because I just love the city that will come across in your
• 24:26
  pictures. Yeah, like you're not, you're not going out there to
• 24:30
  make it look bad. You're trying to capture the pulse of the city
• 24:35
  during a day, and also it's going to be, you know, who's
• 24:39
  interesting to you? Like, you know, the people that are
• 24:43
  interesting to me are the New Yorkers. Like, I think New
• 24:47
  Yorkers are some of the best people out there. Like, you
• 24:51
  know, you have a question, wait, you need to get someone
• 24:55
  somewhere. They'll take they'll take their phone out and show.
• 24:59
  You on Google Maps, yeah,
• 25:01
  Casey Fatchett: they'll just tell you, right, how to get
• 25:03
  there. They'll point it out to you. I think there's, you know,
• 25:06
  we New York. It's a bad rap, and I agree. I completely New York
• 25:10
  is alive. It is live. And you what you said about like,
• 25:13
  knowing whether it's a good or bad day, it's just a feeling
• 25:16
  that you get. And like, the longer you live there, like you,
• 25:20
  the more attuned do you get to it and just kind of like feeling
• 25:24
  how things are going. But yeah. I mean, I wasn't originally from
• 25:27
  New York, but like, there, and maybe that's why people always
• 25:30
  ask me for directions. They always assumed I knew where the
• 25:34
  things were. This was before Google Maps was the thing. They
• 25:37
  just, like, pull up to me, and they'd be driving on the street,
• 25:40
  and they pull up to me, they go, Hey, do you know how to get to
• 25:43
  whatever? And I'm like, Yeah, you just go up here. Take a left
• 25:45
  at the, you know, the CVS, the second CVS, not the first one,
• 25:50
  the second one. And then people ask, whatever, and like, but
• 25:54
  you'll see it on the subway when somebody's like, oh, you know,
• 25:57
  like a tourist will be like, I don't I'm trying to get to you
• 25:59
  can see they're trying to figure out how to get somewhere. And
• 26:02
  someone will say, someone will say, where you have to ask them,
• 26:04
  Where are you trying to go? And then they're like, I'm gonna go
• 26:06
  here. Like, somebody will look around, like, anybody go in
• 26:09
  there? And then, yeah, I'm going there. I'll stay, you know, I'll
• 26:13
  let you know when you need to get off. Yeah, it's,
• 26:16
  Phil Penman: it's, it's crazy. You don't, you wouldn't get that
• 26:18
  in a lot of cities. And so it's like, it's a great place we all
• 26:22
  have, like, you know, New York as you have a love, hate
• 26:25
  relationship with it as well. Like, there are moments where
• 26:28
  you like, it's kicking your ass, you know, yeah. But so I go out
• 26:33
  there, I want to photograph, I want to do it honestly, you
• 26:36
  know, depict New York as I see it, and it's just how I see it.
• 26:42
  So that's, that's the game plan. Whenever I go out there, I know
• 26:46
  it's,
• 26:47
  Casey Fatchett: I feel like New York has a very is very direct.
• 26:51
  She doesn't beat around the bush. It comes at you. It
• 26:54
  doesn't, it's, whereas you might have like, like Paris is more
• 26:59
  aloof in in some ways, it's just sort of like the My Favorite
• 27:04
  Things when my wife and I went to Paris, and one time we were
• 27:08
  like, listening to the Metro in New York, it's always like, this
• 27:13
  is the stop. It's 42nd street. Get off the street. Get off of
• 27:17
  this. You're getting into 42nd street. Whereas, like in Paris,
• 27:22
  it's like, in Paris, it's like, Saint Germain du Pre like, it's
• 27:27
  like, it's like, is this your stop? Is this your stop?
• 27:31
  Phil Penman: Yeah, yeah. Tokyo has an even lighter twist to it
• 27:36
  as well. When it's telling you this away, everything's so calm
• 27:39
  and fell out. You got the birds chirping. They, like, pump in
• 27:43
  these bird noises and stuff, yeah, here is just very
• 27:45
  aggressive. Like, get out the way, Second Street, yeah,
• 27:49
  Casey Fatchett: don't stand in the way, yeah.
• 27:52
  Phil Penman: But it's, um, yeah, it's, you know, it's why I
• 27:55
  wanted to be here. And it's also, like, coming from England
• 27:59
  as well, like, over there, you know, we have, we really have
• 28:02
  that class system, okay? Like, there's this, this thing of,
• 28:06
  like, if you, if you do well, a lot of people don't like that.
• 28:10
  They definitely don't want you to say that you're doing well.
• 28:13
  Like, I learned within the first, first year of going back
• 28:17
  to see my friends, I knew when they asked me, What am I up to?
• 28:21
  I knew not to say, just lie nothing, because if you said,
• 28:24
  hey, yeah, I was doing portraits of Christopher Reeve last week
• 28:28
  in his house. It's just like, Who the hell do you think you
• 28:32
  are like? But here is like people and people like you can
• 28:35
  succeed. Over here you can do really well if you're willing to
• 28:39
  work hard, because people don't realize how hard you have to
• 28:43
  work here. Yeah? Like, it's no joke. It's not just Americans
• 28:46
  coming here as people from all some of the best of the best
• 28:50
  from all over the world coming to New York to compete against
• 28:54
  each other,
• 28:55
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, and they you know, it's whether or not
• 28:57
  you can, can you hack it? Like, can you take it? Any of you
• 29:02
  willing to put in the work to survive? I had a good friend
• 29:07
  from high school who moved here to work for Marvel in the 90s,
• 29:13
  late 90s, this was before it was a yeah, they started making
• 29:17
  money off of movies. But he lived in Brooklyn for about six
• 29:22
  months. It was just like, can't do it. I can't, I can't do it.
• 29:27
  Like we were like, moved here at about about the same time, and
• 29:29
  he was like, yeah, it's too much for me. I can't, I can't do it.
• 29:33
  Nia, when we talk, I'll still be like, oh, you know, I wish, I
• 29:38
  wish. So I have a question. And yeah, looking at your photos,
• 29:46
  especially in New York, there are certain locations that you
• 29:50
  seem to frequent, how do you decide on looking like if you're
• 29:56
  going out for a shoot, just to go out, I don't know what's.
• 30:00
  Your process for, for deciding where you're going to go, or do
• 30:04
  you, do you decide on the location? Or do you decide on,
• 30:06
  like, what kind of moment that you're looking for when you're
• 30:10
  going out, or just is, yeah, What's that process like? Do you
• 30:16
  say, like, I'm a lot of,
• 30:18
  Phil Penman: a lot of it's influenced by the weather. So if
• 30:22
  it's really, you know, I do a lot of research on light and you
• 30:29
  know, if it's like, a bad day, like today, and I want to, like,
• 30:33
  it's pouring down outside, I know that, right? I probably
• 30:37
  want to be close to the rivers, because I want a little bit more
• 30:41
  atmosphere in the background. If I go into Midtown, it might be
• 30:46
  that I'm looking for. You know this? I know that when the when
• 30:49
  it's raining and it's cold, the steam pipes are going to be
• 30:52
  exploding like crazy. So I might say, You know what I know of a
• 30:55
  few steam pipes in Midtown that might be pretty good. Generally,
• 31:00
  I start pretty early in the morning as well when I go out
• 31:04
  for myself. So the weather will dictate, if it's snowing, right?
• 31:10
  It might be that going back to like your, you know, the 40s,
• 31:13
  50s, 60s, look that's because those are areas that I would
• 31:18
  have loved to have been around photographing in. So I figure,
• 31:21
  right? Well, what are areas of the town? If I want it to feel
• 31:25
  like those eras, the snow is going to instantly get rid of
• 31:29
  half the background things that's going to date an image,
• 31:32
  right? So I'll go, all right, maybe I'm going to go and hit
• 31:35
  Park Avenue in the 70s, because a lot of the buildings up there,
• 31:38
  if you shoot in the snow, and it's really thick blizzard.
• 31:42
  People are not going to
• 31:43
  Casey Fatchett: Right. You can't tell the difference, no.
• 31:46
  Phil Penman: So if it's like that, that's one thing, then you
• 31:51
  have like, all right, I know that at probably one week of the
• 31:55
  year, Grand Central is going to get hit with amazing sunlight
• 32:01
  coming through the windows. I have it marked down on my
• 32:04
  calendar when that week is and I'll start researching or at
• 32:08
  least one to two weeks before I know it's going to hit because,
• 32:13
  you know, I don't know if you ever look, but it's a tiny
• 32:16
  window, and it comes through there from that you've got the
• 32:20
  UN blocking the street at the end of the road. So if it's not
• 32:23
  in a specific place, I'll go right. I'm gonna, I know that
• 32:26
  I'm gonna shoot that. Or it could be the Oculus, like I go
• 32:29
  in the Oculus, I know that there's going to be 20 to 30
• 32:32
  minute windows where that light is going to come down through
• 32:36
  the top. And then the best ones are the ones that where it's
• 32:41
  like, you just stumble across something, or you see someone
• 32:46
  really interesting, like an interesting portrait or a quick,
• 32:50
  candid moment. But I can't go out thinking that way, just like
• 32:56
  I'm just going to capture moments. You know, I have no
• 33:00
  people feel that they can just point a picture at people and
• 33:03
  take a shot and that's a shot, and it's like, no, it's not.
• 33:06
  It's like, Okay, what else you know? What else do you have to
• 33:10
  add than just shooting from the hip of a person walking towards
• 33:13
  you, right? Like anyone, anyone can go do that. So what else do
• 33:18
  you have to add to that picture? So you're not setting stuff up,
• 33:23
  other than when you're, you're doing a portrait and you're
• 33:25
  chatting with people, but you're, you know, the I, those
• 33:31
  are the things I strive for, but I'm, I know enough that I'm just
• 33:35
  not going to bump into pictures like the, you know, the one that
• 33:38
  I have where you've got the dog looking in the window of a bunch
• 33:41
  of dogs. Yeah, but it's just not
• 33:44
  Casey Fatchett: You're not gonna go looking for that and find it.
• 33:46
  It's just gonna,
• 33:47
  Phil Penman: it's, it's gonna, you're gonna, you're setting
• 33:50
  yourself up for failure. And I'd rather go out there and shoot a
• 33:54
  bunch of steam pictures and have fun enjoying doing it. And then
• 33:57
  if I stumble across a really cool image, then great. But you
• 34:02
  know, I always tell people you're gonna see, and you can
• 34:07
  see it with like the greats, they might have five to 10 great
• 34:11
  images to their names. So if you go, if you think that you're
• 34:15
  going to go out there and just capture great images all the
• 34:17
  time, again, you're setting yourself up for massive failure.
• 34:20
  So figure out you better really enjoy what you're doing, right?
• 34:26
  Casey Fatchett: You know, what's the point? They're not all good.
• 34:29
  I think that's a big trap that people fall into. They're like,
• 34:33
  Oh, you know, I gotta, I gotta have so many, like, great photos
• 34:37
  from every shoot. No, you might go out there and not take
• 34:41
  anything good, like it might
• 34:43
  Phil Penman: Just get one good one. Yeah, just get one good
• 34:45
  one. When you go out, just think like that, I just need to get
• 34:49
  one good one. Not great, you know, I can honestly say to
• 34:53
  myself, like, I probably have two big ones in my collection,
• 34:56
  and from 30 years and now came down to the fact. The event that
• 35:00
  I was photographing, not their pictures themselves.
• 35:05
  Casey Fatchett: I think that it's really interesting that you
• 35:09
  the way you said about, like, researching the light and
• 35:13
  knowing when the light is going to be in certain places I happen
• 35:16
  to I know exactly, like, what week you're talking about with
• 35:18
  the light in Grand Central, because when I was first moved
• 35:22
  here, like, I just discovered it by accident. And I was like,
• 35:24
  wow, the light in here is great. And like, Oh, I'm back here. And
• 35:28
  then I was like, two weeks later, I'm like, huh, this sucks
• 35:32
  now, yeah, oh, it's because the shadows from the buildings and
• 35:36
  like, that's how I discovered it. But there are also shots in
• 35:39
  your portfolio, I think, very specifically, someone like, look
• 35:42
  like, not like an alley, but like a side street, but where
• 35:45
  there's just, like, this geometric shape of light that
• 35:50
  people sort of like walk into, like, you've got, like, right a
• 35:54
  shadow, and then just like people coming into this, these
• 35:56
  shapes. I'm like, Okay, this is why I asked that question to
• 36:00
  begin with. Was, I'm like, do you know that that light is
• 36:02
  going to be there?
• 36:05
  Phil Penman: And that's just chasing, like, that's something
• 36:08
  I do for myself, to keep my skills, to keep, like, pushing
• 36:13
  myself. So if I know it's gonna be a really sunny day, like,
• 36:17
  we're lucky. We have the canyons that kind of block things out. A
• 36:20
  good, a good way to just train yourself is just to walk around
• 36:24
  and just get used to Chasing Lights. So you see, like a
• 36:27
  pocket of light hitting a wall down the street, go towards it,
• 36:31
  practice shooting in that one spot, and then move on to the
• 36:35
  next spot. And then every time you do it, you keep learning
• 36:37
  something new. And then the thing is, you're trying to, you
• 36:42
  can't just take pictures of people, silhouettes of people in
• 36:45
  light, right? All right. It's gonna, it's gonna get really
• 36:48
  boring after a while. So then you have to start figuring out,
• 36:51
  or, you know, how can I use this pocket of light with an
• 36:54
  interesting background, with interesting looking people, and
• 36:58
  framing it some unique way, right,
• 37:01
  Casey Fatchett: and waiting for the moment where that all sort
• 37:03
  of corresponds and like comes together. It's not just like,
• 37:08
  you're just gonna walk up there and like, Oh, I'm gonna take
• 37:10
  this picture everything, because you have to, like, be patient. I
• 37:16
  think patience is a lost art form. Next photographers too.
• 37:21
  Like, like, okay, you know, I'm gonna have to sit here and I'm
• 37:25
  gonna have to, like, at least for a little while, like, look
• 37:28
  for the things that are interesting and wait for that.
• 37:32
  Phil Penman: Yeah. Well, I think, I think a lot of
• 37:36
  photographers as well, they kind of limit themselves. I It's,
• 37:41
  it's so foreign as well, like coming from a press background,
• 37:45
  you know, we, we were doing a job, different job every 30
• 37:48
  minutes, every hour, and every job was different, and you
• 37:51
  needed to be able to shoot each job differently. You had to
• 37:54
  become a different photographer each every 30 minutes. And so, I
• 38:00
  don't understand a lot of the time you'll get photographers
• 38:02
  who will, you know, they just shoot and move, shoot and move,
• 38:09
  and then you're, you know, the thing is, you need to learn how
• 38:12
  to be like, All right, I need to be patient on this one, like
• 38:15
  they always say, right? You're either a hunter or a fisherman,
• 38:18
  right? Right? Those, those, those are the two expressions.
• 38:22
  So why? Why do you want to listen to that? Why do you want
• 38:25
  to limit yourself to just one? Because you made it so easy for
• 38:29
  the rest of us, right? Because you need to be able to do both.
• 38:33
  Yeah, he's not just and know when and know when to do
• 38:36
  Casey Fatchett: it, right? Like being like, to know, to have the
• 38:39
  presence of mind to know what mode you should be in is a, I
• 38:48
  think determines average from good, yeah, great. I think
• 38:54
  that's a, that's a big thing so, so here's the thought with
• 39:02
  there's so much visual stimulation in New York. You
• 39:06
  were just mentioning Tokyo, how do you maintain that sense of
• 39:12
  observation and not sort of getting lost in all that's going
• 39:16
  on to when you're when you're hunting Yeah. Like, how do you
• 39:24
  maintain the feeling of, like, okay, you know, I'm looking for
• 39:28
  things when there's just so much going on. Is there like rituals
• 39:32
  you go through, or is it just like, sort of like a mindset
• 39:35
  that you get into before you you get into that mode?
• 39:41
  Phil Penman: Well, you're my old man. He told me. Said, whenever
• 39:44
  you travel somewhere, start shooting immediately, because
• 39:49
  your your eye will adjust to your environment. So you what
• 39:53
  you find interesting immediately is not going to be interesting
• 39:57
  to your eye two, three days from now. So. So it's a good practice
• 40:01
  to get in the habit of, as soon as you go anywhere, just get the
• 40:03
  camera out and stop, start shooting. So that's a good trip.
• 40:08
  Good tip, whenever you go anywhere. Another thing that I
• 40:11
  tend to do is I'm always trying to outdo myself, like I'm always
• 40:17
  trying to beat my last picture. You know, the old, famous
• 40:20
  expression is you're only as good as your last picture. Yeah,
• 40:25
  and my last picture wasn't very good, so if by that logic, you
• 40:30
  go, right, well, I'm going to go out and all I'm going to do
• 40:34
  today is practice things and forcing yourself this is like a
• 40:39
  newspaper trick as well. Is whenever you're hired to do
• 40:42
  anything, you have to figure out every single angle. Like if
• 40:46
  someone said to you, I need you to photograph this building, you
• 40:50
  would have to give them 20 different images of that
• 40:52
  building, right? So if you You're literally struggling to
• 40:57
  figure out all right, what else do I have around here that I
• 41:01
  could use to make this different. And I do that on
• 41:03
  everything I shoot. I'm always just trying to figure out, like,
• 41:06
  right, how can I make this better? How can I outdo the last
• 41:10
  picture? And it just forces you to see things,
• 41:12
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, see things differently, yeah, from like,
• 41:16
  assignments in print, whatever they think. We need a picture of
• 41:20
  this installation, I do a lot of stuff with, like, art
• 41:23
  publications, like a photo of this. I'm like, Okay, well,
• 41:25
  you're gonna need like, a dozen different photos of this,
• 41:29
  different angles, orientations, because, depending on how they
• 41:33
  lay out the page, like, and to have that in mind, like, oh,
• 41:37
  they might need a vertical image. They might need a
• 41:39
  horizontal image. They might need a couple
• 41:42
  Phil Penman: different get that. Yeah, people, it's newsflash to
• 41:46
  everyone. You do not get to dictate the paper or the
• 41:49
  newspaper or magazine that you're working for. Most of the
• 41:52
  time the page is already being pre laid out. Yep, and there is
• 41:56
  a box, and if your picture doesn't fit that box, you're in
• 41:59
  trouble.
• 42:00
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you the you are in a lot of trouble
• 42:04
  because they're not, re laying out the page because you got an
• 42:10
  awesome, like, landscape shot, but they need something that can
• 42:15
  fit in a square, or, like, that's, that's all you've got to
• 42:19
  go with. Yeah, interesting. Okay, so the minister using that
• 42:23
  myself to start immediately taking pictures once I get
• 42:26
  somewhere. So, okay, so let's get a little bit technical.
• 42:34
  Would you say that there are any
• 42:36
  Phil Penman: you lost me at aperture! Sorry
• 42:40
  Casey Fatchett: I didn't say it. I didn't say it. I was gonna
• 42:44
  say, Are there any specific techniques in street photography
• 42:48
  that you find when you get somewhere to, like, start with,
• 42:52
  like, get yourself going. I know you're just shooting what you
• 42:56
  said, what you're shooting, what you find interesting. But like,
• 43:01
  technically, are there any things that you do to, kind of,
• 43:05
  like, just to warm yourself up in that space, whatever, like,
• 43:09
  city that you're in? Are you, like, I'm just gonna you have a
• 43:13
  very distinct style, I think, personally. But like, there's,
• 43:18
  you have your long exposure stuff, and there's like, other
• 43:22
  things, like, do you start with things like that, and then bring
• 43:26
  it down to more, I guess, sharp things, like, after you kind of
• 43:31
  get a feel of where you're at.
• 43:34
  Phil Penman: Well, I try to get a feel for the place that I'm
• 43:37
  where I am. Like, when I was in Tokyo, it kind of, what I liked
• 43:42
  was like, there was this, it kind it felt like there was this
• 43:45
  constant flow of motion, but everything was just very
• 43:50
  peaceful. It's not like here, where people are erratic. There
• 43:55
  it was. Everything was very peaceful, but it was constantly
• 43:58
  flowing. So I in my brain, I'm like, you know, maybe that's a
• 44:02
  way that I could show something in pictures where I'm just doing
• 44:05
  a series of images, where it's just constantly moving motion,
• 44:09
  but you'll just have like, little like, so you're doing,
• 44:12
  like, panning on different on different shots. And then it
• 44:16
  might be, you know, I was in London, and it's like, they're
• 44:19
  really smart with the advertising billboards. So like,
• 44:22
  you know, they'll, there'll be a picture of a woman on a taxi
• 44:26
  door, and then you've got the driver, right? And then you, you
• 44:30
  think, you, you start seeing all these different shots
• 44:33
  everywhere, all these built amazing billboards with people.
• 44:36
  And you're like, all right, you know what? For London, for this
• 44:38
  trip, I'm going to home in on that, right?
• 44:42
  Casey Fatchett: I know you're talking about, like, how these
• 44:45
  the advertising sort of lines up with actual people in the space.
• 44:52
  Phil Penman: So I'll adjust based on the city. Like, you
• 44:55
  know, I go to Paris and it's like, I love the way that
• 44:58
  everyone dresses there. Classic looking. It lends very well to
• 45:03
  timeless images. Also the, you know, the lighting, the light
• 45:07
  there, you know, that might influence my trip as well, and
• 45:14
  then the next time I might see something else. So those, those
• 45:17
  are things I like. Again, it's like a feeling that a city gives
• 45:22
  me. I was just in like, two, three weeks ago. I was in Basel,
• 45:27
  Switzerland, doing something out there, and it was like very old
• 45:30
  and timeless feeling again. So I kind of gravitated to that. But
• 45:35
  then I also have like, these rituals of like, you know,
• 45:38
  again, from press where, all right. That's my background.
• 45:42
  That's my that's one layer I'm going to use these kinds of
• 45:46
  people in the shop, like, but are there reflective surfaces I
• 45:51
  can use? Is there something that I can use to frame the image?
• 45:54
  Maybe a car door, maybe it's a rear view mirror or something
• 45:59
  off of a side of a bike, like I'm looking for things actively
• 46:03
  looking at everything, kind of behind me to see what I can I,
• 46:08
  what can I use to capture what I'm seeing, rather than just
• 46:11
  shooting a very flat image,
• 46:13
  Casey Fatchett: looking for layers to put on top. The more
• 46:16
  layers you have on that. You don't need a million of them.
• 46:20
  But like, you know, layering creates more literally depth to
• 46:25
  the image than just sort of this, you know, flat shot. This
• 46:29
  kind of brings me to a question we had from our audience, from
• 46:33
  at JC, dot Kodak on Instagram, what's your favorite city to do
• 46:38
  street photography in?
• 46:43
  Phil Penman: I don't think I really have one.
• 46:45
  Casey Fatchett: He takes the easy way out. I know they're all
• 46:49
  different.
• 46:49
  Phil Penman: They're they're all They're all different one.
• 46:51
  They're all different each one. Yeah, no, it's not a it's, it's
• 46:59
  an adrenaline rush. Okay, so whether you've been fortunate
• 47:05
  enough to experience it, yet, there's a certain rush you get
• 47:08
  from taking certain kind of picture, and it's almost like a
• 47:12
  high. I've had it. I've had it maybe two or three times in my
• 47:16
  life where what you're seeing or what you're capturing, like you
• 47:21
  don't even need the camera, but what you're visually seeing is
• 47:24
  so overwhelming that it's like you almost well up. Yeah, right.
• 47:31
  And you're chasing that high. And it doesn't matter what city
• 47:36
  it's in, I'm chasing that high. So I've had a one or two in New
• 47:41
  York. I know I've had one in Paris. That's what I'm chasing.
• 47:50
  And that, again, that's like the paparazzi mindset. Like you were
• 47:53
  always, you were adrenaline, you're we're adrenaline chasers.
• 47:59
  That was the high. And then the biggest thing was getting the
• 48:02
  picture, and then knowing how much it just sold for.
• 48:05
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, there's, that's, that's, that's a, yeah,
• 48:10
  a high for sure
• 48:12
  Phil Penman: It was, it was a huge high. You could make more,
• 48:16
  you could make more money on one day than some people make in
• 48:20
  their entire lives. And you, you can't take that for granted. So
• 48:24
  I'm not as far as, like, cities, obviously, New York. I love New York.
• 48:31
  Casey Fatchett: It's an impossible idea.
• 48:34
  Phil Penman: Yeah, it's I have, I'm very lucky in I have a very
• 48:39
  amazing lifestyle. Now I've, you know, worked 30 years to create
• 48:44
  doesn't happen overnight, but where I can travel every month
• 48:48
  to a different city around the world and meet great people and
• 48:53
  get to shoot in those cities, and
• 48:55
  Casey Fatchett: take the time to be able to go out and take
• 48:56
  pictures, it is one of those things like, I think that we, if
• 49:00
  we go back earlier in our conversation, people talking
• 49:03
  about wanting to be influencers, they're like, Oh, I'm gonna
• 49:06
  travel all over and I'm gonna take like, well, you there's a
• 49:09
  certain amount of like legwork involved in that you don't just
• 49:13
  like it just
• 49:14
  Phil Penman: they made it easy. They made it so easy for us
• 49:18
  after you have to remember that, like most people, it aren't
• 49:22
  prepared to work, or they don't know what work is, and they're,
• 49:29
  you know, don't get me wrong, there are, there are kids out
• 49:31
  there today who work their asses off. Oh yeah, and I, and I, I
• 49:35
  support that, but the majority, they don't want to work. And so
• 49:40
  if you have any kind of drive, or you you realize how much work
• 49:45
  is involved, your chance of success is a lot higher these
• 49:48
  days, like back when, when I was growing up, it was like there
• 49:52
  were other things that were keeping us back. You had, you
• 49:56
  had the gatekeepers, where you still have the gatekeepers now,
• 49:59
  right? Who decide who's going to make it or not, but a lot of us
• 50:04
  have bigger followings than they ever could have, right? Like you
• 50:08
  could, you can now create your own thing where no gatekeeper
• 50:13
  has any control. It's purely around. Do people like the work?
• 50:17
  Right? Not, not that you're the son of a billionaire, or the you
• 50:23
  have some you know you're within a certain circle. So if you're
• 50:27
  willing to work hard and you produce good work, you have as
• 50:32
  just as good as opportunity to be a success.
• 50:36
  Casey Fatchett: Speaking of not wanting to do the work, I
• 50:40
  recently got one of your one of your Instagram captions was
• 50:45
  said, AI, actual imagery, which I found very poignant. Because
• 50:53
  recently, I found two Instagram accounts that I was following
• 50:56
  because I was really like, found very interesting that we're both
• 51:01
  entirely AI, and I have a very critical eye. And I was like,
• 51:06
  oh, man, this is not good, because it's it only gets better
• 51:13
  from here. And being able to fool people like it's not good,
• 51:15
  the technology is not going to get worse. But there was this
• 51:19
  guy, and I'm not going to name names. Maybe I will at some
• 51:22
  point, but it's he. I'll send it to you afterwards. Okay, and
• 51:29
  see, yeah, but it was all this very avant garde looking fashion
• 51:33
  stuff, and I just kept looking at it, going, like, this guy's
• 51:37
  he's really like, doing stuff like, obviously, some of it
• 51:41
  looked like it was like, taking, like, cutouts of photos and
• 51:44
  like, painting over them, and some of them and other ones were
• 51:47
  just but then there were like, full body shots, and the limbs
• 51:50
  look correct, and the hands are right and everything, and you're
• 51:53
  sitting there going, like, Man, this guy's really, he's pretty
• 51:56
  good. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's, like,
• 51:59
  one that is so obviously AI, and you're just going, and you're
• 52:04
  shocked out of it going, like, what we're all and it's like,
• 52:07
  went back, and the captions are long, and there's a little,
• 52:11
  like, there's one hashtag at the bottom that says AI art, so you
• 52:16
  really have to dig in and like, see that. He's like, and you're
• 52:19
  gone. And then there was another one that was, which your comment
• 52:24
  about saying, like, get up off the couch and actually, like, go
• 52:28
  out and take a picture. Got me, because this was a landscape
• 52:34
  photographer, yeah, and he's, it's actual places. And I was
• 52:41
  like, Oh, these are really good. And then, like, I started, there
• 52:44
  were a lot of carousels, and I would only because I was, I
• 52:47
  don't try not to spend too much time on in the sea. What's that
• 52:52
  in the sea carousel? No, just a carousel of images. And I
• 52:57
  wasn't, like, swiping through all of them, yeah, because I
• 53:01
  just don't like to spend a lot of time on social media, yeah,
• 53:05
  but I look at a couple and be going, Oh, these are pretty
• 53:07
  good. And then one time I, like, started going through and, like,
• 53:10
  the last two were, like, this doesn't look real. What's going
• 53:15
  on here? There's something off about these. So I started going
• 53:18
  through, back through them, and, like, going to the end, and I'm
• 53:20
  like, these, like, the last two are always kind of off, like, as
• 53:24
  somebody, and I was like, what's going on? And then I started
• 53:27
  again. It was somebody who put in, like, these huge captions,
• 53:30
  and then at the very end saying, like, this is all created with,
• 53:35
  you know, AI software. It's a combination of my imaginings of
• 53:39
  what this location looks like, and whatever, but also, like,
• 53:42
  it's totally presented at the top of the caption, like, I went
• 53:46
  out and took this photos of this place, and then within the end,
• 53:50
  you're getting, like, this very like, you know, after like, it's
• 53:53
  like, yeah, 20 paragraphs. And then at the bottom, it's like,
• 53:56
  you know, I
• 53:57
  Phil Penman: Do you know? The scary thing is that caption was
• 54:00
  created with AI.
• 54:01
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I'm sure, and I'm sure it's huge. I'm sure
• 54:04
  it's huge to keep people from knowing, like he's saying, Oh,
• 54:07
  I'm telling you, it's AI, but at the you know,
• 54:12
  Phil Penman: give me a you know what it's like, if that's what
• 54:17
  you want to do, good on you. If that gives you kicks, good on
• 54:21
  you, but you're not a photographer.
• 54:22
  Casey Fatchett: Well, that's the problem I had with it was
• 54:24
  because people, other people who were fooled in in the comment
• 54:28
  section, were saying, like, this is a great photograph, and he'd
• 54:30
  be like, Oh, thank you.
• 54:33
  Phil Penman: Yeah, you're not, you're not a photographer,
• 54:35
  Casey Fatchett: you're not a photographer,
• 54:36
  Phil Penman: you're not a photographer, you you could be a
• 54:38
  you could be an artist. Yeah, you're you're more a creative
• 54:45
  curator that works for a creative gut, you know, an art
• 54:49
  agency. Yeah, that's, I would probably attest more to that,
• 54:53
  like, you know, obviously photography we're going to see.
• 54:56
  Well, not photography, but commercial marketing. That's
• 55:00
  going to go down that route, because they can save on their
• 55:02
  budgets, but it's you kind of missed the point. Man, yeah, you
• 55:08
  know, the whole point of it is being out there and meeting
• 55:11
  people and feeling what it feels like to be there. So, yeah, and
• 55:17
  there's like this, you know, I whatever. There's, there's lots
• 55:21
  of famous photographers that have done that themselves, where
• 55:25
  it's not AI, but it's like Photoshop, where they're
• 55:28
  manipulating, removing people from pictures to make the
• 55:32
  compositions. Like he used to piss me off, because I would be
• 55:35
  measuring myself by other people, growing up on by other
• 55:39
  photographers. And then you find out that none of it was real,
• 55:42
  like it was photoshopped and hacked. And you're like, you
• 55:46
  know, I was, I was measuring myself against something that
• 55:49
  never happened, right? And you just like, well, you know, I
• 55:53
  wouldn't have felt so bad. Like, kick knocking myself. Like,
• 55:57
  well, why? Why can't I do this? Why can I not be this good?
• 56:01
  Casey Fatchett: Why can't I find these moments, yeah,
• 56:05
  Phil Penman: yeah, why they're not either they're not that good
• 56:08
  either. And then problem is, once you know that about
• 56:13
  someone, then you everything they've done has been second
• 56:17
  guessed, like I know, with the World Press Photo like, I think
• 56:20
  every year, 1/3 of the entries get thrown out. But so i What
• 56:25
  are you doing it for? Again, for like, so then you find never,
• 56:30
  you're never going to be happy. You're never, personally, going
• 56:33
  to be happy. Anyway, if that's what you're doing it for, yeah.
• 56:35
  Casey Fatchett: And then you see the people who, like, will win
• 56:37
  these awards. And then somebody's like, is like,
• 56:39
  actually analyze this is horribly photoshopped. Like,
• 56:42
  somebody, like, they, you know, like, they did a lot of work on
• 56:45
  this, and they're like, Oh, well, we gotta rescind their
• 56:48
  win, or whatever, and, like, take it back. Like, well, it
• 56:52
  just encourages other people. It's like, how
• 56:55
  Phil Penman: you're, you're never gonna win it. You're never
• 56:57
  gonna win that battle, though, because you look at like, you
• 57:00
  know, you take it away from photography, right? What are
• 57:02
  people willing to do in the finance world to make money?
• 57:05
  What are people? What are people? What are people?
• 57:10
  Athletes like and I've been caught up in this myself. I use
• 57:13
  I was a professional cyclist, well, semi professional, let's
• 57:16
  say. But when I was racing some, you know, most people that I
• 57:21
  knew were busted doing drugs, yeah, and you're just like,
• 57:26
  well, you've missed the point. Like so in every, every kind of
• 57:32
  field of life, someone is going to be willing to to cheat, to
• 57:37
  try to get ahead, but it doesn't mean they're going to
• 57:39
  Casey Fatchett: Or that, you know, I think that a lot of
• 57:42
  things, something that photographers in general could
• 57:46
  benefit from, like the stop comparing yourself. Just Just
• 57:50
  stop. Like, there's, there's a like the not comparing, but
• 57:55
  judging yourself in comparison to other people. Everybody has a
• 57:59
  different journey. Everybody's trying to do their thing, and
• 58:04
  like, you need to find your thing. And like you're
• 58:07
  competing, like you said earlier, I'm trying to outdo my
• 58:11
  last picture. Like, stop thinking so much about like,
• 58:15
  looking at somebody else's work. You can look at and go, like,
• 58:20
  that's an amazing picture, whatever, like that that like
• 58:24
  inspires me to do something or whatever, but not sitting there
• 58:28
  going like my the value of my photography to me, depends on
• 58:33
  what someone else did, because I think if when you can get out of
• 58:37
  that mindset, there will be a lot less like you said. You're
• 58:42
  never going to stop people from, quote, unquote, cheating in some
• 58:47
  way to try to get a better picture or whatever. But if
• 58:50
  you're only competing against yourself, like there's no
• 58:56
  Phil Penman: it's only cheating if you are trying to portray
• 58:58
  yourself as something that you're not right, like you're
• 59:02
  you're saying you're a photographer, but then you're
• 59:04
  creating it with AI, and you're trying to hide that if you, if
• 59:08
  you are creating AI images, and it's your art piece, and you you
• 59:15
  full disclaimer about it, and it makes you happy, Good on you,
• 59:20
  but you're not a photographer, yeah, yeah.
• 59:23
  Casey Fatchett: The funny thing was, is, like, plain and simple
• 59:25
  with the the guy who was doing the fashion stuff, I was
• 59:31
  interested in, like, how he was doing it, because, like, the
• 59:33
  people look very real, the eyes looked real, like the and I was
• 59:37
  like, Oh, is he using his own images and doing something on
• 59:41
  top of it. Like, is there something going like, is Is this
• 59:44
  some combination? I reached out to him and said, Just curious,
• 59:48
  if you'd like to come out and discuss this, because people
• 59:50
  have a lot of feelings about AI, like, your stuff is really,
• 59:54
  really interesting, and I'm curious. He's like, I refuse to
• 59:57
  discuss my process with anyone. I. And I was just like, okay,
• 1:00:01
  that's your thing, man, go ahead. Like, if you're guarding
• 1:00:05
  that for whatever reason. But, you know, I was just like,
• 1:00:08
  wondering if you used your own photos. It's like, I refuse to
• 1:00:10
  answer that question.
• 1:00:12
  Phil Penman: Some people have some some people are fine with
• 1:00:14
  it. I remember I got asked to comment on it. There was a
• 1:00:18
  debate between two podcasters talking about it. And one of
• 1:00:21
  them was very, you know, it was like, the two sides, one was
• 1:00:25
  pro, one was one was not. And it was like, that it's not going to
• 1:00:28
  affect the industry. And I'm like, and this was going back a
• 1:00:31
  few months, and lots of my friends have lost their jobs
• 1:00:36
  because of this. They've so, you know, my point back then was we,
• 1:00:41
  you know, what do I think about it? And said, I can't really
• 1:00:45
  support anything that's gonna lose my friends their jobs,
• 1:00:48
  yeah. And it was, and the point was made that, oh, you're just,
• 1:00:52
  you know, you're just making it up, and this is not going to
• 1:00:55
  happen. It's like, Well, okay, I was right, yeah.
• 1:00:59
  Casey Fatchett: I mean, unfortunately, in my opinion,
• 1:01:01
  commercial product fashion are probably there's all going to
• 1:01:07
  be, like, huge impacts there, if you're not already feeling it,
• 1:01:11
  just because, like, you said, the expense people don't realize
• 1:01:14
  how expensive it is to put together some of these fashion
• 1:01:16
  shoots. Or, like, you know, like, Oh, I'm going to do
• 1:01:19
  products like Levi's like, I think it was two years ago,
• 1:01:23
  maybe, maybe not quite so long. But like, we're saying something
• 1:01:26
  about like, Oh, we're going to start using AI models and our
• 1:01:31
  advertising to help support diversity. And people were like,
• 1:01:37
  Oh, why don't you just hire diverse models? And like, that's
• 1:01:39
  that they're trying to save money, they're gonna sit there
• 1:01:43
  and like, oh, we need somebody like, we need more diversity of
• 1:01:46
  size. Like, different sizes of people, different shapes of
• 1:01:49
  people, the amount of time it would take them to do casting
• 1:01:53
  calls to get all the different sizes they want, the people they
• 1:01:56
  like, the look whatever like, I'm not saying it's right, but I
• 1:01:59
  get where it's kind of the mindset is coming from. It's
• 1:02:02
  easier for me to have people, a bunch of people of all
• 1:02:05
  ethnicities and sizes, whatever, if I don't have to actually go
• 1:02:09
  out and hire them. Like, well, think, think
• 1:02:11
  Phil Penman: about, think about it like, all of a sudden, you
• 1:02:14
  know, I, I've done shoots where it's like, you know, two, 300
• 1:02:19
  grand on the on the line, yeah, okay, for a pro commercial shoe
• 1:02:23
  where you've shut down city roads, you've got police
• 1:02:27
  involved to create a picture, right? That, you know, people
• 1:02:31
  don't realize the cost you're. Say you have a $300,000 job. The
• 1:02:36
  job might actually cost 200,000 to produce it. Yeah, all right,
• 1:02:40
  you're, you're paying for parking on the street that lost
• 1:02:44
  money, any parking lots that you've had to take over. You are
• 1:02:48
  now paying for that, all of this stuff, and now, all of a sudden,
• 1:02:53
  you could be some small company that doesn't have 200 300
• 1:02:57
  $400,000 budget, and create the same image for a fraction, right?
• 1:03:05
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah. And getting all the logistics
• 1:03:09
  together of getting all those, like, not just the the regular
• 1:03:11
  expenses, but all of the logistics involved, I get it. I
• 1:03:14
  understand why it's really appealing. Do I think it kind of
• 1:03:17
  sucks for people who are losing their jobs? Yeah. I definitely
• 1:03:20
  think it sucks for the photographers who are losing
• 1:03:23
  their jobs. I also think that, you know, other like
• 1:03:27
  photographers, need to understand the seriousness of it
• 1:03:32
  in the sense of how it's going to affect them, but they are
• 1:03:35
  there also, I think, like you said, there are places for it. I
• 1:03:38
  wish there was a
• 1:03:41
  Phil Penman: Look at the film industry. Yeah, right now,
• 1:03:44
  what's going on with the film industry there? Right now we're
• 1:03:49
  witnessing basically the battle going on between these people
• 1:03:53
  trying to save their industry versus studios, who know that
• 1:03:58
  all this technology is there where they don't need these
• 1:04:02
  crews, they don't need to even have sets anymore, and you
• 1:04:06
  you're effectively asking an entire industry to go under, right?
• 1:04:12
  Casey Fatchett: Well, the people don't understand when, when the
• 1:04:13
  actors were striking, and the you're like, well, what's the
• 1:04:16
  big deal? Like they want to scan their bodies and use their
• 1:04:22
  voices in perpetuity.
• 1:04:24
  Phil Penman: Sell them, yeah, in perpetuity the agencies were
• 1:04:28
  selling that like, and I don't know why certain stars were
• 1:04:32
  like, Yeah, I'm gonna sell my voice and my look,
• 1:04:36
  Casey Fatchett: yeah, you're It's over once they have control
• 1:04:40
  over it once you're giving it to somebody. The one that got me
• 1:04:43
  was I used to do voiceovers, and one of the things was for
• 1:04:48
  voiceover people, like people who do cartoons or anything
• 1:04:51
  they're like, once you record an episode or a season or whatever,
• 1:04:56
  we're going to own your voice, and we can make as many seasons
• 1:04:59
  of this. Show as we want to and use your AI, reproduce,
• 1:05:03
  reproduced voice, and never have to pay you another dime. Like,
• 1:05:08
  it's just like you are without any sort of repercussions, like
• 1:05:15
  it's just like they now own you as a performer and can, like, do
• 1:05:20
  whatever they want without compensating you I was like,
• 1:05:22
  that's what that's about. And I think that, you know, there's,
• 1:05:26
  to an extent we need to be concerned in our, you know, in
• 1:05:34
  our industry, about how it's going to affect, you know.
• 1:05:39
  Phil Penman: Well, I think, I think it to me, it's, you know,
• 1:05:43
  none of this is none of this is new, right? They've been using
• 1:05:46
  this in government for the last 1015, years. So, like anyone
• 1:05:49
  that thinks this stuff is new technology, sorry, it's not. You
• 1:05:54
  know, the biggest thing that I see is the copyright issue, and
• 1:06:00
  they all know it like the the lawsuits are coming. You know,
• 1:06:04
  if you ever searched on chat, GPT to create an image in the
• 1:06:10
  style of it means they can be sued, right? And I know for a
• 1:06:14
  fact, like the bigger companies are having to scrape the servers
• 1:06:18
  right now, because everything on there has to be,
• 1:06:23
  Casey Fatchett: they have to have the copyright license to
• 1:06:26
  use
• 1:06:26
  Phil Penman: it, which is like that's going on right now,
• 1:06:30
  Casey Fatchett: which is why all those people who like use AI
• 1:06:33
  filters and their Instagram or Tiktok or whatever you have
• 1:06:38
  given Given your license to use your image in future data sets.
• 1:06:44
  Just Adobe.
• 1:06:45
  Phil Penman: Try that. Recently,
• 1:06:46
  Casey Fatchett: Adobe has licensed images they use their
• 1:06:50
  like Adobe stock that was like what was used to train and also
• 1:06:54
  people were being compensated like the owners of the copyright
• 1:06:58
  for the images are being compensated for the use of their
• 1:07:03
  images. So that's more ethical when you think have things like,
• 1:07:08
  whatever dolly and mid journey, whatever things get do a way
• 1:07:13
  grayer area of like, how they source things, and like they
• 1:07:19
  were putting things in. And like, oh, surprisingly. Like,
• 1:07:21
  after an artist, I can't remember who it was, somebody
• 1:07:24
  passed away. And like, immediately the next day, there
• 1:07:27
  were over 200,000 queries in mid journey to, like, create art in
• 1:07:33
  the style of this artist who had just passed away the day before.
• 1:07:36
  So they're like, that's not everyday users. This is the
• 1:07:42
  developers of the AI, like, force feeding this person's
• 1:07:47
  images into this so that you can create images in their style.
• 1:07:51
  Because they're saying, like, Oh, this is gonna go up in
• 1:07:53
  popularity because they're dead now, they're not creating
• 1:07:56
  anything new. It was that was really disturbing. And that's
• 1:07:59
  part of, like, what the lawsuits that are going on now are about,
• 1:08:03
  about scraping those data sets and getting like on like
• 1:08:06
  retraining, but retraining those AI data sets and the models,
• 1:08:10
  whatever. But in the time being, all these people who are giving
• 1:08:16
  their faces, and I don't think realize it, whenever they use
• 1:08:19
  one of those AI filters. Part of the agreement there is that when
• 1:08:24
  you use those filters, you're allowing them to use your image
• 1:08:29
  for which is why I don't use them, not that people want my
• 1:08:33
  image of me, but like, I don't. I just don't, not giving away my
• 1:08:37
  my image for free, or my voice or anything like that. Like,
• 1:08:39
  that's not right. I'm sure somebody could this podcast is
• 1:08:43
  all over the place, and they can obviously take it if they want.
• 1:08:46
  Phil Penman: They actually did that years ago, the MIT
• 1:08:49
  commencement speech with Obama. Yes, where he did, he did a
• 1:08:53
  five, five minute monolog welcoming everyone to MIT. And
• 1:08:57
  then they said, Hey, that whole thing was fake. Yeah, it never
• 1:09:00
  happened.
• 1:09:01
  Casey Fatchett: I remember that it really scared me, in a way. I
• 1:09:05
  was like, oh, yeah, when they talk about a post truth society,
• 1:09:10
  that's, that's where I'm like, becomes more and more difficult
• 1:09:16
  to discern things. All right, we're kind of got enough topic.
• 1:09:21
  So how to finish up? Like, bring it back around. So for people
• 1:09:26
  who are aspiring street photographers, who are trying to
• 1:09:31
  find their place in that space, what advice do you have for them
• 1:09:37
  for sort of finding their voice, their eye, finding a direction
• 1:09:42
  to go into, not to like, copy someone, but like, I mean, what
• 1:09:47
  advice do you have? Like,
• 1:09:54
  Phil Penman: tough one, right? Because you kind of it. What's
• 1:10:00
  your end goal? First off, like, right? If you, if you think that
• 1:10:04
  you're going to come in and you're going to make a ton of
• 1:10:07
  money, okay? I was saying somewhere earlier, probably no
• 1:10:12
  point. No, no, no, no. 1% actually make it. Like, the
• 1:10:17
  chances, okay? So if we're very realistic and we go, Okay, I'm
• 1:10:22
  going to do this for fun, like I'm going to do this because I
• 1:10:25
  enjoy it. So that's the first thing. Do you enjoy what you're
• 1:10:28
  taking pictures of? And if you like shooting in the rain, go
• 1:10:34
  ahead, just shoot everything in the rain. But one got to be
• 1:10:37
  willing to work very hard, which I touched on earlier. But
• 1:10:44
  really, you, you have to show me you, and you have to figure,
• 1:10:52
  right, if everything is out there on Instagram, what? What
• 1:10:58
  is someone? What's going to make somebody stop on your image,
• 1:11:04
  right? So it's you have to define your not only your style
• 1:11:10
  of what you take pictures of, but also if you start thinking
• 1:11:14
  of yourself as like well, what's the look of my edit as well?
• 1:11:20
  Like? That's important. It might be your brand image. How do you
• 1:11:24
  present the work? Okay? Because to me, it's always like, it's
• 1:11:28
  not finished until it's presented. So there's the
• 1:11:32
  presentation, the shooting of the image, how you edit the
• 1:11:36
  image, the presentation of the image, all these things like you
• 1:11:40
  can you can influence someone the way that they look at your
• 1:11:44
  work. It could be the way that you do the carousel and come up
• 1:11:48
  with something, some something unique and creative. Like I
• 1:11:51
  realized when when Instagram went and turned around and said
• 1:11:56
  that we're not doing we're not promoting picture posts anymore.
• 1:11:59
  We're only going to do video, then it's like, Well, shit, how
• 1:12:01
  am I going to, I still need to be promote my work, right? And
• 1:12:05
  it's like, you know what I'm going to I'm going to take
• 1:12:07
  people on the journey of how I take the picture. I'm going to
• 1:12:09
  film the back of my camera when I'm taking the picture. And then
• 1:12:12
  all of a sudden that blew up, right? And then there was a
• 1:12:16
  million people cloning, copying that. So start thinking about,
• 1:12:21
  like, all right, what am I going to take pictures of? How am I
• 1:12:24
  going to edit it? How? What is a unique, fresh presentation? Way
• 1:12:28
  that I can do this as well, right? There are there? The
• 1:12:32
  thing is, there are people on social media where you can flick
• 1:12:36
  through the feed and you instantly know it's their
• 1:12:38
  picture.
• 1:12:39
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I feel that way about your photos. I
• 1:12:42
  like, instantly know, like, if i is the cover up, the names,
• 1:12:47
  whatever the captions, I feel like I can identify your style
• 1:12:52
  so in that, like you've accomplished that for yourself.
• 1:12:59
  I think that's
• 1:13:00
  Phil Penman: just to just just enjoy it though. Like, I think
• 1:13:02
  everyone puts so much pressure on themselves, you know, like, I
• 1:13:07
  didn't really start really shooting some good stuff until I
• 1:13:13
  really just started, like I didn't give a shit, like I
• 1:13:17
  wasn't trying to, I wasn't trying. I wasn't trying to
• 1:13:19
  please anyone. Like, you know, it took me, if we go by the
• 1:13:23
  follow account thing, right? Took me, like, six years before
• 1:13:26
  I hit 10k and I'm looking at the other workout and going looking
• 1:13:31
  at some of these accounts, they got five, 600,000 followers. And
• 1:13:34
  I'm, like, that works, really, not that good, yes. Like, well,
• 1:13:39
  hang on, I'm not bad, like, why can't I make it so don't get
• 1:13:43
  caught up in that shit either. Yeah.
• 1:13:50
  Casey Fatchett: Hey, there nerdy photo crew, there's one thing
• 1:13:52
  you should never be caught without as a professional
• 1:13:55
  photographer, and that's a good contract, both for dealing with
• 1:13:59
  your clients and dealing with subcontractors that you may work
• 1:14:03
  with along the way. Be sure to head over to nerdy
• 1:14:05
  photographer.com and go to our shop and find our contract
• 1:14:09
  templates for portrait photography, event photography,
• 1:14:13
  wedding photography, as well as dealing with second
• 1:14:16
  photographers, associate photographers and any other
• 1:14:19
  subcontractors that you might have check it out and keep your
• 1:14:22
  business safe.
• 1:14:30
  Do you have your own website? Are you tired of dealing with
• 1:14:33
  slow loading pages and poor support from your current web
• 1:14:35
  hosting company? Consider switching to SiteGround, the top
• 1:14:38
  rated web hosting company that provides 24/7 support and super
• 1:14:42
  fast hosting speeds. Sitegrounds platform is built on the premium
• 1:14:45
  Google Cloud infrastructure, ensuring top reliability,
• 1:14:48
  security and speed for your website. Their fast network and
• 1:14:51
  storage provide optimal site speed and a high level of
• 1:14:54
  redundancy so you can trust that your website will be up and
• 1:14:57
  running smoothly at all times. With SiteGround. Ultra fast
• 1:15:00
  server setup, your pages will load 30% faster, on average,
• 1:15:04
  giving your visitors a better user experience in improving
• 1:15:06
  your website's SEO and with hosting starting from just 199
• 1:15:11
  per month, it's affordable for any budget. Plus, if you're not
• 1:15:14
  completely satisfied, SiteGround offers a 30 day money back
• 1:15:17
  guarantee. Don't suffer with a terrible web hosting company any
• 1:15:21
  longer. Make the switch to SiteGround and experience top
• 1:15:23
  level support, super fast hosting and a reliable, secure
• 1:15:27
  platform for your website. I spent years with a web hosting
• 1:15:30
  company that was absolutely terrible. My site was constantly
• 1:15:33
  getting hacked and support was nearly impossible to get a hold
• 1:15:36
  of since switching to SiteGround, all of those
• 1:15:39
  problems are in the past, just visit nerdy photographer comm
• 1:15:42
  slash recommends slash SiteGround or click the link in
• 1:15:46
  the Episode Notes to get started and begin enjoying faster, more
• 1:15:49
  reliable web hosting today.
• 1:15:57
  Unknown: Hey, now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:16:02
  what's that? Say? Useless information. This is always
• 1:16:07
  death.
• 1:16:09
  Casey Fatchett: Phil, did you know that Napoleon was not
• 1:16:12
  actually short?
• 1:16:15
  Phil Penman: Oh go on. Was it like six or four?
• 1:16:18
  Casey Fatchett: No, it was foreign propagandists, but
• 1:16:21
  basically his enemies in other countries who displayed him as a
• 1:16:24
  comic figure, as being very short. He was actually five
• 1:16:28
  seven, which, at the time, was taller than the average
• 1:16:33
  Frenchman. He was not a very, very short person.
• 1:16:40
  Phil Penman: Did you ever hear the one about him with the the
• 1:16:42
  tomb? No, to his deathbed. They claim he went in when they were
• 1:16:48
  doing archeological digs in the in Egypt, and they were going
• 1:16:52
  into the tombs. And he said that it was, it was, I can't remember
• 1:16:56
  the name of the king or the Pharaoh, but it was, he wanted
• 1:17:00
  to go in there on his own, without any of his troops. He
• 1:17:05
  they said, he came out, and he literally looked white as a
• 1:17:08
  ghost. And they were like, What did you see? And he went to say,
• 1:17:13
  and he basically said, I can't I can't tell you. And then
• 1:17:18
  apparently he was going to say, it on his deathbed, and he
• 1:17:21
  stopped himself again some context.
• 1:17:27
  Casey Fatchett: He feared whatever it was. He was afraid
• 1:17:30
  of it, whatever it was. Phil, thank you very much for being on
• 1:17:33
  the show. You're always welcome to come back. Let me know if
• 1:17:35
  there's anything you want to talk about. Where can people
• 1:17:37
  find you? Where can they find your book?
• 1:17:40
  Phil Penman: So done. Two books now, 2019 book called Street.
• 1:17:44
  The latest one brought out was called New York Street diaries.
• 1:17:48
  Both of them are available on Amazon, or you can get New York
• 1:17:52
  Street diaries signed on my website, Phil penman.com, and
• 1:17:56
  then I'm on every one of the 8 million social media platforms,
• 1:18:01
  but yeah, just I thank you so much for the time today. You
• 1:18:05
  know, great chatting with you
• 1:18:07
  Casey Fatchett: You're very welcome. People can find all of
• 1:18:10
  those links in the Episode Notes. I'll include all of those
• 1:18:13
  so that you can go directly find Go, go get Phil's books. They're
• 1:18:17
  really great again, Phil, thank you very much for coming on.
• 1:18:20
  Phil Penman: Thank you, Casey
• 1:18:27
  Casey Fatchett: you call those buildings teeth?
• 1:18:40
  Maybe show a little less teeth. Oh, hey, welcome back. I hope
• 1:18:43
  you enjoyed my conversation with Phil Penman. Be sure to check
• 1:18:46
  out the links to Phil's website to see when he might be teaching
• 1:18:48
  a workshop near you, as well as his socials, and you can check
• 1:18:51
  out his book. It's fantastic while you're at it. Be sure to
• 1:18:55
  subscribe to the podcast and leave a review and or tell a
• 1:18:58
  friend remember and, or preferably and but possibly or
• 1:19:02
  you can also follow along on our socials, Instagram, Tiktok
• 1:19:05
  threads, Reddit, at the nerdy photo, all one word, no
• 1:19:10
  underscores, dots or dashes, at the nerdy photo. Tell us what
• 1:19:14
  you think about this or any other episode that we've put
• 1:19:17
  out. Leave your photography related questions so we can you
• 1:19:20
  know, answer those in future episodes or on the live Q and
• 1:19:23
  A's I do on Instagram and tech talk, or tell us what topics
• 1:19:27
  you'd like to hear about in the future. No, I haven't forgotten
• 1:19:34
  about you until next time. Friends stay safe and stay
• 1:19:37
  nerdy. You
• 1:19:48
  Unknown: who's your heart been beating about? Get better. Get
• 1:19:54
  better. Get better. Get better. Listen, you.