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Transcript

162 - Built to Last: Photography Business Moves That Build Longevity · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

• 0:07
  Casey Fatchett: Sure, sure, sure. Lozag, that's what they
• 0:10
  all say. Oh, hey there. Welcome to the nerdy photographer
• 0:14
  podcast. I'm your host. Casey Fatchett, in addition to
• 0:17
  providing informative and entertaining photography related
• 0:21
  stuff, content, whatever you want to call it. I also got on
• 0:22
  adventures with the crew of the starship Fibonacci. If this is
• 0:25
  your first time listening, congratulations. Welcome to the
• 0:28
  show. If this is your 18th time listening, you know what you
• 0:32
  did? I'm currently hanging out at the pouncing lion, a local
• 0:36
  beverage establishment, talking with lozag here about rumors of
• 0:40
  a quote, unquote, fountain of youth in the area. He assures
• 0:48
  me, they are not rumors. Speaking of longevity, in this
• 0:52
  episode, I'm a talk with photographer Ryan brennizer
• 0:55
  about how to have a long, successful photography career,
• 0:58
  from setting yourself up for business success to taking care
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• 4:10
  Hello and welcome to the nerdy photographer podcast. I'm your
• 4:12
  host, Casey Fatchett And with me today. Ryan brennizer, Ryan,
• 4:17
  thank you for showing up and being on the show. I've wanted
• 4:20
  to have you on for a long time, and finally made it happen.
• 4:24
  Ryan Brenizer: Well, thank you for having me. I am nothing.
• 4:26
  Even before I was a photographer, I was a nerd. So
• 4:30
  very happy to be here.
• 4:31
  Casey Fatchett: You're in good company. Before we get started,
• 4:35
  we're going to roll the dice breaker. Get us an eight. What
• 4:40
  is the worst investment you've made in or purchase you've made
• 4:46
  photography related? Could be gadgets of some kind. Could be
• 4:53
  anything, whatever the word, like what it was.
• 4:55
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, I tend to be, I tend to be really careful.
• 5:00
  All these days. So I gotta go worse. I gotta, I gotta really
• 5:06
  think back. You know, I've always, you know, even, like,
• 5:14
  before I had a kid and I just had, like, money to like,
• 5:18
  really, more money to waste, I was pretty good about, about not
• 5:23
  like, I was like, Oh, I really want the 200 f2 you know, to use
• 5:27
  for like, four photos at a wedding, and just burden myself
• 5:32
  all the time. And I'm a heavy renter, so I got worse,
• 5:45
  Casey Fatchett: or I would say, least rewarding, even,
• 5:51
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, yeah, I've had so it's like saying, like,
• 5:56
  what's your favorite restaurant in New York City? Because I've
• 6:00
  had so many over the past 25 years, and I far more regretted
• 6:07
  things that are not at all photography related. So so that
• 6:14
  is, we're starting with a look like a terrible gas discharge.
• 6:18
  We're starting with a starting with a really bad one. So do so
• 6:23
  at the time,
• 6:24
  Casey Fatchett: or at the time in your business, like things,
• 6:26
  if I want to, if
• 6:28
  Ryan Brenizer: I'm thinking about this, because it's been
• 6:29
  exactly 20 years, I mean, yeah, I've had a lot more, you know,
• 6:32
  bad investments in business, but, but especially things I
• 6:34
  didn't do, and we can talk about that, but at the time, 20 years
• 6:40
  ago, I was so jealous. I had the I was on Nikon when, like
• 6:46
  virtually no one in weddings was on Nikon because it was, it was
• 6:51
  so comparatively noisy. So 20 years ago, the this week, the d2
• 6:54
  100 came out, and there was so much that I loved about it. If
• 6:58
  you're if you were out in the middle of the daytime. It was
• 7:02
  great. But it, you know, got super noisy at ISO 800 and that
• 7:05
  was also the time the 5d came out, which I know could barely
• 7:09
  focus, only with the center focus point, but between having,
• 7:12
  like, an F 1.4 35 1.4 which Nikon didn't really have at the
• 7:16
  time, and and then the noise difference, like you could shoot
• 7:21
  in like 16 to 20 times less light, effectively, with a 5d
• 7:27
  than poor me over here trying to shoot in low light with a d2
• 7:30
  100. So I at the time, I regretted it. You know, then, of
• 7:36
  course, like it kept me on Nikon until the d3 came out and
• 7:40
  everything changed. So I don't regret it in hindsight, but I
• 7:45
  look back at those files and it was a little rough. It was
• 7:48
  definitely a rough time.
• 7:49
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I look back at photos from like, 20
• 7:51
  years ago and think to myself, like, oh, well, the technology
• 7:55
  really is better resolution and quality and noise, and I'm like,
• 8:01
  Oh, I can push a photo now, like a couple of stops or more. And I
• 8:06
  look at those photos back then I'm like, once I hit like, I go
• 8:09
  up one stop. And I'm like, oh,
• 8:12
  Ryan Brenizer: boy, oh yeah. And, and I rented the 5d and I
• 8:16
  was like, oh my god, I can shoot like, 1600 3200, but you
• 8:20
  couldn't. I found you. You could not push the files at all. I was
• 8:24
  like, Oh, I'm shooting 1600 and like, let me push it to stop.
• 8:27
  Casey Fatchett: And like, oh, oh, yeah, as a Canon shooter,
• 8:31
  no. Like, not back then, you couldn't. You couldn't. You were
• 8:35
  getting a lot, a lot of noise in the shadows.
• 8:39
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, we did our best. I mean, there used it used
• 8:41
  to be a lot easier. Same thing with like weddings, like you
• 8:44
  needed, used to be able to have to have a really experienced
• 8:49
  photographer, there was a good chance that, like, you wouldn't
• 8:50
  get photos, basically like they would, they would not turn out.
• 8:53
  And so it used to be a lot easier. I mean, I the last time,
• 8:56
  actually, that I'm truly at a card fail, like, fail, fail, was
• 9:02
  like 20 years ago, again, when most people here do not remember
• 9:05
  micro drives, which was putting a spinning hard drive, a tiny,
• 9:10
  spinning hard drive in your camera. And with that sounds
• 9:13
  like a terrible idea, it really was, and they would just
• 9:17
  outright fail.
• 9:18
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I had a Sony mavico that the CD in it
• 9:22
  for a while for portraits, I would never take it to a
• 9:24
  wedding, but like it was burning onto a CD, like a miniature CD
• 9:29
  in the back of the people like, what? What do you mean burning a
• 9:33
  CD? What does that? What even is that? No, this is actually
• 9:36
  burning a CD in the back of your camera to store the images like
• 9:41
  it was, the buffering was not great on that one. It was fine
• 9:45
  for portraits, but it was not so great for events. For those of
• 9:51
  our listeners who are unfamiliar with Ryan's work, as you said,
• 9:53
  You've been a wedding photographer for 20 years, some
• 9:57
  people might know you as the popularizing. The bread, nicer
• 10:00
  technique. It's very funny story A I was doing like, Boca
• 10:07
  panoramas a while back. I would normally you do them for
• 10:11
  portraits. I was doing them at like ceremonies where I'd have
• 10:16
  this great view, and I'm like, I can't get this view in a nice
• 10:20
  like, I want to shallow depth of field, but I want to get to the
• 10:23
  whole view of, like, the church or the temple or whatever it
• 10:26
  was. And I was doing it one time, and my second shooter
• 10:30
  said, like, What are you What were you doing? And I was like,
• 10:41
  Oh, I was doing a panorama. I was getting everything like, oh,
• 10:44
  like, brennezer method. And I went, what? And I was like, I
• 10:44
  hadn't heard of it. And I looked it up, like, oh, and I know
• 10:44
  you've been very specific about saying I didn't create this
• 10:45
  technique, but I would say you, you definitely popularized it
• 10:49
  Ryan Brenizer: among Yeah. I mean, there's, well, there's a
• 10:51
  lot of things, you know, if you go back in, you know, in
• 10:56
  history, there's, there's a lot of things that were invented by
• 10:59
  by multiple people just at the same time. I mean, I think even,
• 11:02
  like calculus and things like that, Newton and Leibniz and
• 11:05
  television radio, like, either pieces or just was, like, sort
• 11:08
  of the right conditions and so, like, if you, if you like, if
• 11:13
  you really do a deep dive, like, I was not the first person to
• 11:16
  ever do this. I think there's like, one guy that, like, shot a
• 11:19
  car and GP review forms and things like that. But, I mean, I
• 11:22
  did, you know, like, same thing. I just, I came to it personally.
• 11:27
  The only, the only difference is a little earlier than almost
• 11:30
  anyone and and B, like, I was so dedicated to sharing that. Like,
• 11:34
  the very day, I was like, Oh, my God, I figured this thing out.
• 11:38
  I, like, I ran on the internet and it's like, I want to share
• 11:41
  this. I want. I want other people to do it. I want. Because
• 11:45
  it's like, probably almost the worst thing to to do this
• 11:50
  technique with is a portrait, because people move right.
• 11:52
  You're doing a panorama of something that moves. My first
• 11:55
  shot ever was just a was just a gravestone. It was the same
• 11:59
  thing. It was just just kind of did the math in my head, and was
• 12:02
  like, Wait a second, this, this should work. And yeah, and I
• 12:06
  took it home. It was actually on my honeymoon. I figured home was
• 12:10
  like, I know it's my honeymoon, but I'm gonna run a lot of
• 12:12
  panoramas, like every night, and because I was so, so excited
• 12:17
  about this. But yeah, I mean, that's how it works. I mean, I I
• 12:20
  independently found, like, stumbled into bounce, Flash. I
• 12:25
  did not invent it like, in the sense that I was in a way, I
• 12:28
  invented it because, like, I didn't, I'd never seen it. I was
• 12:32
  back in the day you, like, couldn't just find out things
• 12:37
  like you either had to, like, go to a workshop, have a mentor.
• 12:42
  Otherwise, was just like, you pick up a camera and you say,
• 12:45
  like, what, what else can this do? You had to, like, everyone
• 12:47
  had to be like, Jimi Hendrix with a guitar and, like, what,
• 12:50
  how does a guitar sound if I take the back off? And so I was
• 12:53
  like, like, this flash, like, bends up and wow, if I bounce it
• 12:57
  into the ceiling, it's a totally different light. And I like this
• 13:00
  so much better. So, like, in a way, you know, same thing, the
• 13:04
  way that you did invent it. And I totally forget his last name
• 13:08
  is Barry famous. His name is Joel. He also, like,
• 13:11
  independently invented it. But just like I got there, yeah, I
• 13:15
  got there just a little bit first. Now I did not, I always
• 13:19
  want to say this, I didn't name it after myself. Some people in
• 13:22
  Flickr forms named it after me. I kind of embraced it, because I
• 13:27
  spent my whole early life with no one ever being able to
• 13:30
  pronounce my last name. So I was like, now people have to, it's
• 13:35
  kind of funny. Yeah, familiar with that.
• 13:38
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, the and I think it's, it is that sort of
• 13:43
  like that nerd thing where we're like, oh yes, it has existed
• 13:47
  before. Like, is where people think like, oh, Henry Ford
• 13:51
  invented the car. No, there were, like, dozens of cars. Yes,
• 13:55
  I
• 13:55
  Ryan Brenizer: actually, I invented low Patel's theorem
• 13:59
  when I was in high school. And I was like, Oh my gosh, look what
• 14:02
  happens when things like approach zero and infinity. And
• 14:05
  I had my own, I had my own calculus. What ended up being
• 14:08
  calculus notation. There's technically three notations. And
• 14:11
  then I was like, Oh, I'm like, 200 plus years too late.
• 14:16
  Casey Fatchett: Well, it tastes like the same, like when an idea
• 14:19
  is like the when the ideas time has come, like multiple people
• 14:26
  will have, yeah,
• 14:27
  Ryan Brenizer: when, when, the when the conditions are right,
• 14:30
  like, all of a sudden, it was so easy. It's actually easier than
• 14:33
  any of the cameras I've used since I switched any of the
• 14:37
  Sony's, anything like that. It was, I had it just so easy to do
• 14:40
  panoramas, you know, on the on the Nikons, like I had a button
• 14:45
  that locked the focus, locked the exposure, you know, all
• 14:48
  very, very easy. And so you just, like, anytime you just
• 14:52
  take another frame. So take a whole bunch and be like, Oh, I
• 14:54
  can't quite fit everybody in this frame. And a shot, boom,
• 14:57
  boom, boom, two shots, three shots. And, yeah, what happened?
• 15:00
  Is I was just doing panoramas the traditional way all the
• 15:02
  time, because I was in Ireland, and I was panorama, Panorama,
• 15:06
  panorama. And I was like, Wait a second, what does a panorama?
• 15:10
  What is a panorama like? The lens is the same. The you know,
• 15:15
  exposure, everything. It's all the same. What's getting larger
• 15:18
  is the sensor. And as as the, you know, image playing gets
• 15:23
  larger. I mean, if you've like the difference between an iPhone
• 15:27
  and, you know, M for three camera, you know, four thirds,
• 15:32
  and, you know, full frame and a like, in the days of large
• 15:37
  format, it was, it was, it took the most tremendous amount of
• 15:41
  skill to have any depth of field at all, if you're shooting four
• 15:44
  by five or an eight by 10. And so that's, that's all that is.
• 15:48
  You're just making the sensor larger and and so, yeah, it's
• 15:54
  been fun. I did I I never do them, just to do them like it's
• 15:59
  always to serve a purpose. And so it's a little bit less now,
• 16:04
  but I did a really nice one to make clients happy the other
• 16:08
  day. And it was, it was fun. It makes me want to, like, go out
• 16:12
  and find really good reasons to really make it work.
• 16:17
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, when I, like, I was mentioning I used to
• 16:20
  do it at, well, I still do it. Sometimes it drink ceremonies,
• 16:25
  because people aren't moving quite as much. Here the middle
• 16:27
  ceremony, you can get people standing pretty stationary, but
• 16:30
  like, there's a view of some kind that I was seeing, and I'd
• 16:33
  be like, Okay, this is why I want to do it. This is why I'm
• 16:36
  interested in doing this. And I don't do it at every thing, but
• 16:39
  it's a, yeah, now you're talking nerdy to me about the, you know,
• 16:43
  get the field sensor size, those sorts of things that you sit
• 16:47
  there and think like, oh, well, what if I did XYZ? And also, we
• 16:51
  are the benefit. We have the benefit. Now it's funny, like
• 16:54
  the stitching is so much easier than it, than it used to be, in
• 16:59
  a lot of ways.
• 17:00
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, I had to use there's software that's on
• 17:04
  my computer, though it doesn't work anymore and cannot be
• 17:08
  activated. I know which one you're talking about, the auto
• 17:10
  panel Pro, like, it's out of business. I'd have to go, like,
• 17:13
  deep into forums and find an original serial number. It got
• 17:20
  bought up and then, and it's, it's still on my computer, just
• 17:25
  out of, like, nostalgia and care, because it did, because
• 17:28
  now you can, now Lightroom works. It used to, you used to
• 17:31
  not be able to do very many photos at all without it just
• 17:34
  crashing.
• 17:35
  Casey Fatchett: Well, this brings up kind of the subject
• 17:37
  that we were getting into, like, in being around for a long time,
• 17:40
  and seeing all these changes is like we're talking about
• 17:43
  longevity your business, and we've both been around for a
• 17:48
  while, 20 plus years. See a lot of people who sort of burn out
• 17:55
  on the wedding industry, especially, or just on
• 17:58
  photography in a handful of years, and you have to kind of
• 18:06
  look at it is being like, if I want to do this for a long time,
• 18:10
  how am I going to set myself up for success? Yeah. So that being
• 18:17
  said, what would you say are, like, some of the keys to long
• 18:25
  term, like keeping a career going this, and I think that's
• 18:29
  this is the difference between like you can be, I mean, a
• 18:34
  hobbyist photographer for decades, and like What you
• 18:39
  consider success or successful, but like having a career, which
• 18:43
  is something where you are making money and doing this for
• 18:48
  decades, or if you want to, like, do this for, you know, 20,
• 18:53
  3040, years, like there, how are you setting yourself up for
• 18:57
  success in that in that way.
• 19:03
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, for the most important thing, and this
• 19:06
  is my, this is really my, I only have, like, a couple real
• 19:11
  advantages, and this is, this is one of them, is you have to find
• 19:18
  some the love you have to it has to be something that when you do
• 19:24
  it, it makes your you, your day better, you know. And for me,
• 19:29
  the love still always and I it's not just a thing, it's it's both
• 19:34
  a thing that I started with, but it takes real work to keep it
• 19:38
  going. Is that like I can have a bad day. I can be just in the
• 19:43
  worst mood, and maybe sometimes I'm like, oh, okay, I don't want
• 19:48
  to do anything and I have a shoot, but at least, like, the
• 19:51
  second the shoot starts, it's making my day better. You know,
• 19:56
  I have been in like, situations that you would say I can't
• 19:59
  believe. I can't believe you could go to work at all that
• 20:03
  day. And yeah, it makes it really is, like, it's a huge
• 20:09
  advantage that, like, the things I say in client meetings, I
• 20:13
  believe when I say, like, I love weddings or somebody like, these
• 20:18
  are things that a lot of people say. But after, you know, I've
• 20:21
  personally shot close to 1000 weddings, and I really do, I
• 20:27
  still get so much energy and joy and come home with my cheeks
• 20:33
  aching from smiling behind the camera. Now, there are things
• 20:38
  that, you know, I wish I loved, every aspect I do, I've been
• 20:44
  very good about finding the things that I love about every
• 20:48
  aspect of shooting, so even things that few people love,
• 20:55
  like doing large sets of family photos, it's not art. I'm not
• 21:02
  looking at it for creative expression, but if you are good
• 21:09
  at something, and you can take joy just from being good at
• 21:12
  something, and what I'm good at in that is running the
• 21:15
  logistics, everything from like, here's a family list. I'm going
• 21:19
  to make it as as efficient as possible, and say, Okay, where
• 21:24
  are the kids? Are they in a good mood? Let's do all the kids
• 21:26
  first, who has mobility issues, which includes anyone with
• 21:32
  anyone in a wedding dress, and people like, let's make sure we
• 21:35
  do them, you know, all in the same time. And, and it really is
• 21:38
  like, like, nerdy fun, just to then say, also, okay, family
• 21:43
  shoots usually start late. Can I take these people who are really
• 21:47
  stressed out, usually the worst part of their day, and put
• 21:51
  things back on time? Make, you know, make people happy. Those
• 21:54
  are things that I like, even if it's not there's nothing awesome
• 21:59
  about the photos, because they're really important now i
• 22:03
  There are aspects I have not been as great in, you know, I
• 22:07
  think I'm learning now, basically, to try and fall in
• 22:12
  love with social media again. I mean, even I remember, even
• 22:16
  1213, years ago, I was like, you know, the best part of my day is
• 22:20
  when I don't post to social media. Like not to post a photo
• 22:25
  publicly excited, like on to social media. I, in fact, I
• 22:30
  think I am one of the first people to have gotten over
• 22:34
  social media because I was I was over it in 2005 because you
• 22:41
  know, I was on, I was on Flickr, and there's, I mean, there's so
• 22:44
  much I loved about the groups and the things like that, but I
• 22:46
  learned early on the idea of audience capture and that you
• 22:50
  have to avoid that because, like, 2005 I was barely a
• 22:53
  photographer, and, you know, but I was on Flickr, which means you
• 22:57
  all of a sudden, this was totally new, to post a photo and
• 23:00
  get instant feedback, but get data to say people like this
• 23:05
  photo more than this one. And I immediately saw I was like this
• 23:08
  photo, that people like the most. This photo is terrible. I
• 23:11
  don't like this photo. What is going on? There's a real
• 23:14
  disconnect and and to say, like, Okay, I could either be the
• 23:19
  person that says I'm going to, I'm going to lean into this and
• 23:23
  keep taking the kinds of photos that people are responding to,
• 23:26
  even if it's not my favorite kind. But I didn't want to do
• 23:31
  that so, so, in a way, you know, ever since 2005 I've been trying
• 23:36
  to, like, kind of, kind of work against that. And, yeah, so
• 23:41
  that's, that's a little bit of my claim to fame, but it's, it's
• 23:44
  super it's more important every day, because you can't fight the
• 23:47
  trillion dollar companies that are that are behind it,
• 23:51
  Casey Fatchett: shaping, you know, like our experience, in
• 23:56
  many ways. And I find that that interesting, because the like, I
• 24:02
  go about it in a similar way. Like, there are photos that I
• 24:06
  don't necessarily love to take, but, like, there's a must haves,
• 24:09
  like you saying, like, the the the family porch, or whatever,
• 24:12
  we can make this a fun experience and not painful.
• 24:16
  Like, I get a lot of people who come to me like, I there's the
• 24:19
  feedback thing. One of the things I always try to tell
• 24:23
  other photographers is, who's giving you the feedback? Is it
• 24:29
  people who are going to hire you, people who are going to pay
• 24:31
  like if you want to have like, a career at this and you want to
• 24:34
  get paid? Are you listening to the people who are going to
• 24:38
  like, pay you and want your services, or are you listening
• 24:42
  to other photographers who are, we're never going to hire you.
• 24:48
  They could. Are you letting that shape or influence what you're
• 24:51
  doing? And I've seen a lot of people who are just like, I'm
• 24:54
  trying to get more clout with other photographers, rather than
• 24:58
  take a picture that really reflects. Reflects who I'm as an
• 25:00
  artist or reflects what my clients want, because that's a
• 25:04
  big thing for me, is like talking with my clients and like
• 25:07
  collaborating with them, and like saying, like, Okay, who are
• 25:10
  you guys, and let's get some photos that really bring out
• 25:14
  your personalities and your relationship, as opposed to
• 25:17
  saying, like, we're doing a jumping shot, like that, sort of
• 25:20
  like, that sort of thing that, like, you know, like, that's
• 25:22
  what you you don't fall for trends so much when you're like,
• 25:29
  thinking about, like, Okay, I really want to serve my clients
• 25:33
  and, like, give them what speaks to them. Because I found out I
• 25:39
  spent, you know, the first five years of my photography career,
• 25:45
  like looking around at other people and going like, Oh, this
• 25:47
  is what wedding photographers do. These are the things that,
• 25:51
  whatever. And then I started to realize that people were coming
• 25:56
  to me for like, they didn't like to pose, they didn't feel
• 26:02
  comfortable on camera, so I had to adjust accordingly. And I was
• 26:06
  like, Okay, I'm getting that feedback more and more and more.
• 26:09
  There's something about what I how I handle people, and what I
• 26:12
  love about it is that sort of like making people feel
• 26:14
  comfortable and bringing up the love and the beauty in their
• 26:19
  relationship, as opposed to like, Okay, we get x photo that
• 26:23
  I take at every wedding. It's that's what I find exciting. And
• 26:28
  I was finding that of the my clients, the people who
• 26:31
  gravitated to me, were people who felt the same way. So then I
• 26:35
  started accentuating that. And like, one of the best pieces of
• 26:39
  advice I got was like, you don't like taking these pictures, stop
• 26:42
  posting them on your website in your portfolio. Like, don't make
• 26:45
  them the focus of what you show people. You still have to do the
• 26:51
  photos like, the must have family portraits, but like,
• 26:54
  don't make that the centerpiece of your portfolio. Show them the
• 26:58
  photos that speak to you, and you find speak to your clients,
• 27:02
  and that's how you attract that people who are think of a word
• 27:11
  fervent or fervent at admiration of your work and are willing to
• 27:17
  spend the money on it.
• 27:19
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, yeah, you show what you want to sell. And
• 27:24
  in a way, in very real ways, probably mostly real ways, at
• 27:29
  least artistically, I was at a disadvantage in that again, back
• 27:35
  in, in that, in that day, and even just What wedding
• 27:39
  photography was, I had been shooting weddings for about two
• 27:44
  years before I even knew there was such a thing as well known
• 27:47
  wedding photographers. And so one of the things is, like, my,
• 27:53
  certainly, my first wedding was terrible, just like, because I
• 27:58
  never, I, at least the portraits, because I was a
• 28:02
  photojournalist, and I didn't know portraits and wedding
• 28:06
  portraits, I'd never, like, barely seen one and and so much
• 28:12
  like I showed up, I remember I showed up, you know, to getting
• 28:16
  ready with the the hairdresser, and that's what they do for a
• 28:20
  living. And she just looks at me, she's like, Why? Why are you
• 28:22
  here? I don't understand. Why? Why are you? Why are you
• 28:25
  photographing people, like, getting their hair done because
• 28:27
  she'd never seen it, but so, so you really like, on the other
• 28:34
  side, the advantage was, like, a lot of these things, I didn't do
• 28:39
  things just because I'd seen other people do them. So I had
• 28:42
  to, I made things up as I went along, and I photographed the
• 28:46
  things that I loved about weddings. Yeah, so I had a,
• 28:51
  probably a slower start artistically. A lot of people
• 28:54
  now can come out pretty strong in their first wedding, because
• 28:57
  they've seen so many things that they can copy and I did not have
• 29:03
  that.
• 29:05
  Those photos are still online. And, you know, the couple love
• 29:08
  them from, from back in the day, but, you know, the portraits
• 29:11
  were objectively not good, but it allowed me again, like, like
• 29:17
  I said, there, there's freedom. And saying, like, oh, this, this
• 29:21
  is what a flash does if I aim it upward. This is, you know, this
• 29:26
  is how I can take photojournalism and turn it into
• 29:31
  weddings. Because when I started out, I like wedding photography
• 29:36
  was still like the redheaded staff child, you know, people,
• 29:39
  including me, was like, You know what I'll never do is I'll never
• 29:42
  photograph a wedding, because it felt like writing cookbooks,
• 29:46
  which also writing cookbooks has also changed a lot, but it's as
• 29:50
  a writer I was, I was a writer. I was like, well, that's like,
• 29:52
  that's like, just writing, just recipes and not the stories that
• 29:55
  are around them now. And it was all. When I saw I just stumbled
• 30:02
  across the wedding photojournalist Association, and
• 30:04
  I was like, Wait a second, I'm a photojournalist, and what I love
• 30:10
  weddings always. But I didn't love the wedding industrial
• 30:13
  complex stuff. I loved being around my crazy family and like,
• 30:19
  and dancing and celebrating, and to say, like, oh, wait a second.
• 30:23
  Oh, my God. You can capture that. You can like, and people
• 30:28
  want that and buy that, and that can be wedding photography. And
• 30:32
  so that was when I started to get the idea of like, okay, this
• 30:36
  is actually, this is actually something I'd like to do.
• 30:40
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I think that's the thing that doesn't
• 30:42
  matter what you're doing. We're both in the wedding business,
• 30:47
  and I completely agree. Like those, the things that I
• 30:50
  gravitated towards in weddings, the things that I really loved
• 30:53
  were the relationships that people had, whether it was with
• 30:57
  their family, friends, their partner, all those things,
• 31:01
  those, like showing photos that, like, really, in a genuine way,
• 31:05
  captured those. Because when I started, I was shooting film,
• 31:09
  and it was, like, it was so nerve wracking. And, you know,
• 31:16
  you're like, Okay, I've kind of got to stage some of this stuff,
• 31:18
  because I need to know that I am getting the shot, because I
• 31:22
  don't get to look at the back of my camera and see that I got the
• 31:25
  shot and the I was still doing, like, the candid photos when I
• 31:33
  was shooting film, but I was like, I really had to give
• 31:36
  myself a lot of leeway as far as, like, how much film I was
• 31:39
  using to, like, do I am I getting this? I don't know. I
• 31:41
  have no idea if I'm getting this. Then on digital, I was
• 31:44
  like, Okay, I have a lot more flexibility creatively to know
• 31:49
  whether or not I'm getting the photo. And I can, I can really
• 31:54
  reach for those things, but it's about finding those things that
• 31:57
  you no matter what type of photography you do, finding,
• 32:00
  like you said, the things that you enjoy about it, otherwise
• 32:04
  you're going to burn out. Otherwise, like it's going to be
• 32:08
  I hate doing this, because all I'm doing is the things that I
• 32:11
  dislike and like. I try to listen. I am the worst person
• 32:17
  about delegating anything I don't because I don't trust that
• 32:20
  it's going to be done to my level of, like, what I want it
• 32:24
  to be. And that is a personal, like, obsessive, compulsive sort
• 32:27
  of thing, that it's just like, okay, it has to be done in a
• 32:30
  certain way. Or I'm afraid of, like, I'm afraid of sending it
• 32:34
  out to somebody else, like, call my images, because I was there.
• 32:37
  I took the photos. I know what that the emotional I will the
• 32:40
  emotional value of a photo is more like, Trump's the technical
• 32:45
  perfection of it. And I feel like a lot of people are like,
• 32:48
  Oh, this photo's in focus. Like, it's better. That's the better
• 32:50
  one. Like, No, I'm okay with a little bit of soft focus if I'm
• 32:54
  getting the emotion out of it, because I know the relationship
• 32:56
  between these two people and why that's important to the couple
• 32:59
  those sorts of things. So I'm like, I'm hesitant to send out
• 33:02
  that stuff, but I will delegate, like, somehow to other things as
• 33:07
  much as I can now as I'm older, because I'm like, I don't want
• 33:11
  to spend so much time on the things that I don't enjoy doing,
• 33:18
  like, the so that, if I can, like, find ways to outsource
• 33:23
  what I can or to streamline that process with technology to make
• 33:28
  it smoother and easier. Like, like I'm trying to do for my
• 33:32
  like, wedding couples, like, I'm trying to make the timeline as
• 33:35
  smooth and painless as possible. Like, I need to show that same
• 33:38
  sort of care to myself in the process of the work. And like,
• 33:43
  how do I make this, like, smoother for me and more
• 33:48
  enjoyable, less painful? But I think that everybody has to, if
• 33:53
  you want to have a career, a lengthy career, like more than a
• 33:56
  few years, you have to find those things that that you
• 34:00
  really enjoy in it. Otherwise, you're going to grow to resent
• 34:06
  the job and wonder, like, why am I not just I see social media
• 34:12
  kind of like poisons the well in a lot of ways, because you see
• 34:15
  the best of people's like careers or whatever. And the
• 34:21
  sort of, like, staged, like, Hey, this is for social media.
• 34:25
  Everything's wonderful. It's great. Like, you don't see them,
• 34:27
  like, two o'clock in the morning trying to edit something to get
• 34:30
  it out by, like, a deadline or whatever. Like, you don't, you
• 34:33
  don't see that part of it, but that's you know. You have to
• 34:38
  find a way to come to grips with those things. And, like you
• 34:40
  said, find what you really love about it, because otherwise
• 34:48
  you're just gonna, like, you're gonna be miserable,
• 34:52
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, and fewer people. And the way the
• 34:57
  education industry, I mean, I haven't even paid attention.
• 35:00
  Into the education industry in 10 years since I stopped doing
• 35:03
  my own workshops to raise a child. But again, people will
• 35:08
  will tend to gravitate to like who has the most attention
• 35:12
  grabbing images. But you know what workshop I want to attend,
• 35:17
  what speech I want to go to is, you know, who's been taking
• 35:20
  deeply mediocre images for 20 years and is just wildly
• 35:25
  successful. Because, like, I used to ask this, when I would
• 35:29
  give talks, I'd be in front of a room with 300 people, and I
• 35:33
  would say, Okay, who got into photography? Wedding
• 35:39
  Photographer? Because you love photography, and you and you
• 35:41
  said, like, I love it so much. Why don't I make some money
• 35:44
  doing it? Versus, like, who said, you know, I really love
• 35:50
  running a business. And what, what kind of business should I
• 35:53
  run? Why not wedding photography? I feel like, you
• 35:56
  know, out of 1000 people, I would get maybe one or two. And
• 36:01
  I said to them, like, you two, you're going to be successful.
• 36:04
  Because, you know, the dive is almost the easy part, because
• 36:09
  it's easy to love. And so again, you're going to, you're going to
• 36:13
  keep, like, just like, oh, this is neat, and this is cool and
• 36:16
  and much easier to not burn out on. But then the business, like,
• 36:21
  you don't even have to be the best in the world at business.
• 36:24
  You just have to be better at business than a bunch of artists
• 36:27
  who don't like business, right? You don't have to be faster than
• 36:31
  the bear. You just have to be faster than the other guy,
• 36:33
  right? And as I So, you guys are automatically going to be be
• 36:38
  successful. So that's that's the thing that people need to learn.
• 36:44
  You know, unless you're going specifically to, here's
• 36:46
  something that I want to expand about myself. You know, in
• 36:50
  photography, maybe you're going to people who like the
• 36:52
  foundation workshops, or people are really experienced, go to
• 36:55
  journalists came from there. But otherwise, it's going to do less
• 37:00
  for you, if you're if you want to expand your response, which
• 37:04
  is what you know courses should be, and as opposed to like, Hey,
• 37:10
  I'm, I'm out there killing it, even though, like, I know my
• 37:13
  images aren't great or or I also would love to go to to lectures
• 37:18
  that I've never seen of people who who crashed out. I want to,
• 37:23
  I want to go to a panel lecture of people who failed and had to
• 37:27
  quit the industry. And that's the point of the lecture,
• 37:30
  because I want to know how did that happen, what happened to
• 37:34
  you? What? What do I avoid? Like, what? What was because,
• 37:38
  because there's more of those people than you know, than
• 37:40
  anybody else, and that's an important lesson as well. But
• 37:45
  instead, you just have, all you have is like, you know, people
• 37:49
  get up, especially if they haven't done 100 lectures. They
• 37:52
  want to show, of course, they want to show, here's my favorite
• 37:54
  images here, I'm really cool. I'm really awesome. I want to
• 37:59
  feel good about myself when I go to the party after and you just
• 38:03
  get a bunch of those the best, one of the best photography
• 38:08
  lectures I ever went to was somebody who knew nothing about
• 38:10
  wedding photography. Was not a wedding photographer. Did not
• 38:13
  know anything about the industry. It was at the way up
• 38:16
  north in Rome. Yeah, Rome where I was, where I was speaking, and
• 38:23
  she she was but she was in advertising, she was in sales
• 38:27
  and and so she came in with, like, it was almost like a
• 38:31
  YouTube reaction video, you know, where, what they even have
• 38:34
  at the time? Where, like, it's very important that you haven't
• 38:36
  seen this stuff before. And she comes in and says, So, guys,
• 38:40
  I've been looking at all your work, and it's amazing that
• 38:43
  everyone who gets married is young and white and thin and and
• 38:49
  just yeah, like coming in and saying, I am a very seasoned
• 38:53
  professional at doing this thing that everyone has to do, but I
• 38:57
  specialize in it. I am just a marketer. I'm just an
• 39:01
  advertiser. And here's where all you people who specialize in
• 39:04
  photography, you are failing, right?
• 39:07
  Casey Fatchett: Well, it's the sort of like the thing that one
• 39:09
  of the things that sort of turned around my mindset on how
• 39:12
  I approached the business side of it is a book. It's called to
• 39:15
  sell as human. It was kind of taking out the sort of like used
• 39:19
  car salesman feeling of this, and it's like, you really have
• 39:23
  to, like, learn to engage with the people on the other side and
• 39:28
  think about your work and how they see it, how they see what
• 39:33
  you're putting out there and, like, what it makes them feel
• 39:36
  like you're saying, like, if there's no variety to what you
• 39:39
  put out there, Like, then people like, Okay, well, if they are
• 39:42
  not strictly, like, fitting into whatever narrow band of, you
• 39:48
  know, images you put out there, then, like, you're like, I don't
• 39:51
  belong here.
• 39:53
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, and it's, it's important on the
• 39:56
  photography level, and then you expand that, it's important on
• 39:59
  the business level. Like, what I think is a great advantage to
• 40:04
  get married. Like, if you're a white photographer, you should
• 40:07
  get married to find someone, go get married, you know, and then
• 40:11
  just practice marriage, you know, get a divorce, like a
• 40:13
  green card marriage, because, like, going through that process
• 40:17
  and seeing, like, the surprises. So on a photography level,
• 40:22
  again, one of my advantages when I started, you know, I attended,
• 40:26
  you know, I had my professional work, and I had social media
• 40:30
  work, back in the proto social media, when it was so rare. But
• 40:34
  I also went to, you know, photo school. I went to the
• 40:38
  International Center for photography. And so I had these,
• 40:40
  these three things, and it's very, very different, because
• 40:44
  the people, first of all, I started in photojournalism,
• 40:47
  those people would tear you a new asshole in ways that people
• 40:51
  online Don't you know you, you would come in present your
• 40:54
  photos of like, this event that happened that day, and that the
• 40:57
  old school editor with like a whiskey bottle in his desk would
• 41:00
  be like, Were you drunk when you took these and then at the photo
• 41:03
  school people, people would like, storm out of the room
• 41:05
  crying because it was, it was so intense and but they all liked
• 41:10
  different things. Now, I took a very early on, maybe as I was
• 41:15
  shooting my first wedding. Actually, it's the reason I shot
• 41:19
  my first wedding. I was taking a documentary class with a guy,
• 41:25
  basically he lived the wire. He was Baltimore Sun photographer
• 41:29
  for 30 years, amazing documentary photographer. And so
• 41:35
  in hardcore International Center photography is hardcore first
• 41:39
  assignment. Go find a stranger on the street and let them take
• 41:45
  your portrait. Cool, I can do that. Let them take your
• 41:49
  portrait inside their house. Oh, oh. And had to do that. Like,
• 41:57
  have to find someone on the street and be like, hey, I need
• 42:01
  to figure out how to get your trust so that you'll let me into
• 42:05
  your house and take a portrait. Second assignment, okay, we're
• 42:10
  going to pair people up, man and woman, male and female. Great.
• 42:14
  You guys are going to take portraits of each other, and we
• 42:17
  are going to discuss them in front of the class. Okay, good.
• 42:21
  You're gonna do it in the nude. You're gonna go to that person
• 42:25
  sitting next to you. You know, this is a documentary class, and
• 42:28
  so we're doing portraits. You're gonna take nude photos. Those
• 42:31
  photos are gonna be displayed on the wall while everyone's
• 42:33
  talking about them. A third of the class dropped out at that
• 42:36
  assignment. But the important thing there is then to
• 42:40
  understand what it's like to be the subject, under the under
• 42:43
  like the the most vulnerable circumstances, because otherwise
• 42:47
  you're like, why are we doing any why are we doing portraits
• 42:50
  in a documentary class? It's you know, how do you how do you get
• 42:55
  trust? What is it like you need to trust somebody? What is it
• 42:59
  like to be in that position and be so vulnerable. And it was, it
• 43:05
  was intense. And this is not, it's not the kind of education
• 43:08
  you tend to get if on social media,
• 43:10
  Casey Fatchett: no, no. It's like, and as someone who came
• 43:13
  out of journalism originally as well, like that, when I,
• 43:18
  whenever I see somebody like, get like, genuine, constructive
• 43:20
  criticism, and they're like, oh, they kind of like, yeah, they
• 43:27
  they draw back at that. They're like, Oh, why are you being so
• 43:30
  critical? And I'm like, Oh, come on. This is this is nothing
• 43:35
  getting like, yelled at by an editor who's like, what is what
• 43:38
  is this? What did you bring me? Is like, the people who would
• 43:41
  just, like, peel your skin off, feeling like you're like,
• 43:45
  sitting there, like as your work is just being dissected for how
• 43:50
  bad it is. There's it's the there's a part of you that needs
• 43:58
  to let go. Is something that I took a long time to learn, let
• 44:03
  go of the ego to an extent when you and hear what people are
• 44:09
  saying about it and why they're saying it like, I can someone
• 44:14
  online can say something about my work, and I can just go like,
• 44:17
  like, you don't even know what I was trying to go for here. I can
• 44:20
  just I can brush that off now in a way that I couldn't earlier in
• 44:24
  my life. But when I when it's a client, and I say, How do you
• 44:30
  feel about these images? And if there's an image in there that
• 44:33
  says, This doesn't make me this photo makes me feel
• 44:38
  uncomfortable, I'm listening to that, because it's like, there's
• 44:41
  somewhere that I didn't do my job correctly in that there's,
• 44:47
  there's a feeling of, like, for me, that is a different sort of
• 44:49
  feedback than some random on Instagram who's just like, oh,
• 44:53
  this is terrible. As opposed to a client who says, like these,
• 44:59
  this selection. Photos I didn't I'd look at them and I don't
• 45:03
  feel comfortable, like I can tell that I wasn't comfortable
• 45:05
  in that moment, and that that sort of feedback is completely
• 45:09
  different. Being able to sort of compartmentalize those those
• 45:12
  things is is a big deal. Yeah.
• 45:16
  Ryan Brenizer: I mean, the The old saying is the customer is
• 45:19
  always right, which is not true in any objective sense,
• 45:22
  sometimes, but if you find that all your clients, if you if you
• 45:25
  feel they're all very wrong, you might have a misalignment with
• 45:28
  your clients. But what's unambiguously true is your
• 45:30
  clients are the best focus group you could possibly have, and
• 45:34
  even your like I used to before covid, you know, we would meet
• 45:38
  with all our clients in person, and I would show them a
• 45:40
  slideshow, and I would watch their reactions, what they
• 45:46
  focused on, what they didn't, and I missed that, because it
• 45:50
  was absolutely the best possible focus group, and because I would
• 45:53
  be like, oh, oh, that's the one everyone they're reacting, yeah,
• 45:57
  but that's that's more important than what I like. You know, when
• 46:00
  you know, when you have a good alignment with your clients,
• 46:02
  because, again, that's, that's your perfect focus group. These
• 46:07
  are the people who chose to come into your office and, you know,
• 46:11
  lights you enough to say they might hire you for their
• 46:14
  wedding. And, yeah, that's the thing I one of the things that
• 46:19
  really miss about having more in person client meetings.
• 46:22
  Casey Fatchett: One of the things that I found that you can
• 46:23
  that I still do that. I mean, it seems like a really basic
• 46:27
  question, but like asking people, no matter what the
• 46:30
  scenario was, you're meeting with them, and if it's zoom or
• 46:33
  email or in person, it's always asking, like, what was it about
• 46:37
  my work that drew you in because it tells me so much about what
• 46:43
  they're a their thought process of what they want out of these
• 46:47
  photos, and be like what they were. They might see something
• 46:51
  in my work that I wasn't intentionally putting out there.
• 46:55
  Luckily, at this point, I feel like we're pretty aligned, like
• 46:58
  the people who when I asked them that question, they tend to
• 47:00
  like, say the things that I've been like, I always say like,
• 47:03
  I'm glad that the that message is coming across, because that's
• 47:07
  what I'm trying to put out there. But then there's
• 47:09
  sometimes where I'm like, I hear somebody and I'm like, That's
• 47:12
  not exactly what I was going for. But interesting. Tell me
• 47:15
  more about that so I can learn more. The other thing is always
• 47:19
  asking people a after they don't hire me, why they went in a
• 47:23
  different direction. And most of the time you're not going to get
• 47:25
  a you're not going to get answered. But when you do get
• 47:28
  feedback, it can be another it's another great focus group for
• 47:31
  you, because it tells you so much about your process of from
• 47:36
  like your website or however they initially found you through
• 47:39
  the sales process. If they say, like, one of the things I was
• 47:43
  for a little while I was dealing with a lot, was people would
• 47:46
  say, like, well, you know, we're getting married in a very dark
• 47:49
  venue. And, you know, we didn't see a lot of like, and I'm like,
• 47:55
  But I sit there, like, I am actually pretty good at
• 47:57
  lighting. And like, I feel like there's, like, their photos in
• 48:01
  the portfolio. I went through my portfolio and it was like the
• 48:05
  way the photos that I had chosen that were in a dark venue were
• 48:09
  so were lit in such a way where it didn't look like a dark
• 48:12
  venue,
• 48:14
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, and that's to them, that's how they that's
• 48:19
  how they wanted it to be lit. They wanted it to show what the
• 48:23
  venue actually looks like, which is really important for a lot of
• 48:26
  photographers. I was just having this debate on Reddit yesterday,
• 48:29
  and I'm just not in a debate, but just, you know, telling
• 48:31
  people that like promote they chose their venue because they
• 48:36
  like the look of it. So you don't want to change the look of
• 48:39
  it too much. You want to, you know, have the because that's
• 48:43
  that's really important to them. I mean, Tatiana, you know, when
• 48:49
  in my, my latest wedding, she our reception space was super
• 48:56
  dark. Our photographers are like, thanks. And that's she
• 49:00
  wanted that so much. We almost put a photo booth in there that
• 49:03
  was, like, lit up, and she flipped out. She's like, I need
• 49:06
  it dark. I need this is so like, when video, this was the debate
• 49:11
  it was having yesterday, when videographers come in and just,
• 49:13
  like, set up lights and keep them there you are. You're
• 49:17
  killing it. You know, you're killing the vibe, man, and the
• 49:21
  vibe, it's not just like ruining a party. You're ruining
• 49:24
  something that they've been planning for, you know, 18
• 49:27
  months and spending 10s of 1000s of dollars on. So, yeah, it's
• 49:32
  not. You have to. You have to figure out, like, all the
• 49:35
  perspectives. You have to figure out the perspectives of people,
• 49:39
  most people, most of their complaints. I almost love very,
• 49:45
  very type a people that will tell you any complaint big or
• 49:48
  small or the smallest complaints that they had. Because boy Oh,
• 49:51
  boy do I learn from those. Like, for the first few years, I would
• 49:56
  always say, you know, somebody would say, like, Oh, we love
• 49:59
  everything. But. Like, my aunt wasn't in any photos. And my
• 50:03
  thought was like, oh, that's the complaint people have when they
• 50:05
  don't have any real complaints. But like, that's a big thing.
• 50:08
  It's a really big thing. That was a, that was a big complaint
• 50:12
  we had with our wedding photos. And it's, it's incredibly,
• 50:16
  incredibly important. So now, you know, I'll do things from
• 50:19
  like, I enter a reception, I will say, like, Okay, who are
• 50:23
  the people they're going to be on the dance floor all night? I
• 50:26
  won't focus on them yet. Who are the people they're going to
• 50:28
  leave early? Who are the people that are not getting up? How can
• 50:32
  I find them? How can I get something greater than because
• 50:34
  that person who the way they enjoy wedding receptions just
• 50:38
  kind of sit there quietly, and you know, that could be one of
• 50:42
  the most important people in the life of the bridegroom, right,
• 50:45
  right?
• 50:46
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, that's why I try to, like, do a like, yeah.
• 50:49
  I have my own ways of doing it. Like, I'm gonna find my period
• 50:52
  of time where I'm gonna find the people who have, like, sat down
• 50:55
  and are not getting up and doing anything. I'm like, Okay, I'm
• 50:57
  gonna get some great can't adjust them having conversations
• 51:00
  and being engaged with somebody else, because, like you said,
• 51:03
  there are people who were on the dance floor. We're going to be
• 51:06
  there. I got plenty of time to get them. It's the to kind of
• 51:14
  build off of what you were saying, like the people who will
• 51:16
  complain and tell you anything or whatever, or one of the
• 51:19
  things that I have gotten to say, because you've gotten to
• 51:22
  ask, as part of, like, my standard sort of follow up after
• 51:27
  anything, is, what could I have done better? Is there something
• 51:32
  like, what do you think could have been handled better? Where
• 51:35
  can I improve? And then you'll get people who will say, like,
• 51:37
  oh, everything was fantastic. It was the most wonderful thing.
• 51:42
  You know what? Here's a, you know, this is something like,
• 51:44
  you know, and it's like, they're they feel more comfortable
• 51:47
  saying it. Because I'm definitely saying like, I'm
• 51:51
  always looking to get better at this. I want to, I want to do
• 51:55
  better so that they feel more comfortable and like, because
• 51:57
  some people feel like, I don't want to critique you, like I
• 52:01
  don't feel because I did have a great experience. With you, but
• 52:03
  if you're saying it in a way, like, I always want to do this
• 52:06
  in a better way, and that's how I there's numerous things that
• 52:09
  I've now become strengths. I feel of my business, because I
• 52:15
  asked those questions and then listen to them, took it to
• 52:19
  heart, like what you were saying
• 52:21
  Ryan Brenizer: and so, and there's a couple of things about
• 52:23
  that. I mean, first, again, it really takes putting your pride
• 52:26
  aside. And second, it's often it's really good to ask the
• 52:31
  people who have expressed a lot of happiness and who won't say
• 52:35
  anything. Also, partially because you might have to put
• 52:37
  your pride aside less, but otherwise, because you're only
• 52:41
  going to hear from the people who are unhappy about something.
• 52:43
  And the other danger is to try and hold everything that
• 52:50
  everyone's ever said in your head every time you shoot a
• 52:53
  wedding and say, like, Okay, I've got to shoot the back of
• 52:57
  the dress, because there's one bride one time got to, you know,
• 53:00
  I really got to focus on the card box, because this one bribe
• 53:03
  is one time there's not even a card box. I got to find the card
• 53:06
  box. You know, you're just, you're reacting to trauma all
• 53:09
  the time, and you want to talk about something that will burn
• 53:13
  people out from weddings. If you are, every time you shoot a
• 53:15
  wedding, it's just a collection of reacting to past trauma from
• 53:18
  upset clients, right? So you don't want to take things as
• 53:24
  gospel, but you do, you know, the more that you ask, the more
• 53:27
  you say, Oh, this is the thing I hear a lot. And even I would
• 53:32
  also talk to everyone who's ever been married, and it's even
• 53:35
  better, and say, like, hey, what? What did you not like? And
• 53:38
  I heard from a lot of people to say that said things like, you
• 53:42
  know what? There was a couple who, man, oh, man, they, they
• 53:45
  are such good dancers. They killed it on the dance floor.
• 53:48
  Half my photos are of them. I haven't talked to them since the
• 53:51
  wedding, and I was like, oh, okay, yeah. So if there's, if
• 53:54
  there's somebody killing it, I'm gonna like, I am going to, I'm
• 53:58
  gonna get good job to them. It's gonna happen. But because it's
• 54:03
  hard not to. But I'm going to focus on them less and think
• 54:07
  about them less because, because there's going to be good shots
• 54:12
  in them no matter what they do. But like, who are the people
• 54:14
  that are hard to and I learned that really early on, not by
• 54:19
  talking to clients, but just by people who've been married,
• 54:23
  yeah, it's, it's a thing of, like, I, I became aware of that
• 54:28
  and, like, is this sort of thing, like, Okay, I can't let
• 54:30
  somebody else become the stars of this shoot. And one of my
• 54:37
  favorite instances of that was, like, there was a couple, again,
• 54:41
  they're killing it on dance where they're all, like, dancing
• 54:43
  all night, whatever. And I had, I got my photos of them, but I
• 54:47
  had said something to the groom. I was like, oh, like, these two
• 54:51
  are really living it up out there. And he goes, Yeah, they
• 54:52
  just met tonight. Yeah, yeah. They, like, they didn't even
• 54:57
  know each other. It was like, a. They just happened to be like,
• 55:01
  they're really hitting it off. And it's like, okay, good thing.
• 55:04
  I sort of took the step back because I didn't know what the
• 55:08
  situation was there. They weren't even they weren't a
• 55:10
  couple. They were just like two people who love to dance, who
• 55:13
  happened to be on the dance floor together, like they're
• 55:16
  again, same thing. Don't let them become the star.
• 55:21
  And again, why you want to spread out? And one of the
• 55:25
  things that I learned and surprised me about my own
• 55:27
  wedding is I didn't even get to talk to some of the most
• 55:31
  important people in my life, my, you know, my aunts, my, you
• 55:34
  know, family members, but I got into a 15 minute conversation
• 55:37
  with somebody plus one. And so if you just said, like, who's
• 55:41
  who's around them, like, even that. I mean, I've, I one of the
• 55:47
  things, if you, if you take nothing else away from this, so
• 55:52
  many weddings, weddings have almost, like very little focus
• 55:57
  on the mother of the bride. There's, there's generally no
• 56:01
  mother daughter dance, and you know, if they're not, like
• 56:05
  they're getting ready, you know, I've had weddings where, like
• 56:07
  they don't interact, but like the mom planned that wedding and
• 56:11
  thought about it for the last 1015, years, and like it's even
• 56:16
  if they don't express anything, I've learned that, Boy, oh boy.
• 56:20
  Are they thinking about it and not, you know, not saying
• 56:22
  anything. So I learned to really focus on them. And I remember I
• 56:27
  had, 10 years ago, I had a wedding where the bride said,
• 56:31
  You know what, my biological mom, she's not, she's not like,
• 56:36
  I don't know her that well. You know, I've been raised by my
• 56:38
  step family and my stepmom. She's like, you don't, you don't
• 56:40
  have to take all that many photos of her. And I was like,
• 56:43
  Okay, fine, thanks. So I told her, and internally, I'm like,
• 56:46
  You better believe I'm going to take good photos of her. And we
• 56:49
  did. We took really great photos, and she died in a car
• 56:52
  accident the next week, and the photos that we took were her
• 56:56
  memorial photos, and she's she the bride was, unbelievably
• 57:02
  grateful, and is still just like and that's, you know, that's
• 57:07
  what we do. I mean, another thing that really affected me in
• 57:12
  photography in general, and why I love documenting families, you
• 57:16
  know, is my father passed away when I was eight, and he was a
• 57:21
  huge photo geek and multimedia geek, so he passed away in 1987
• 57:26
  and unlike most people, you know, not only do I have photos
• 57:30
  of him, but I have VHS video he would want be out of that big
• 57:33
  old camera walk around carrying the VCR and people thought he
• 57:37
  was on the news. And, you know, I have this that's all I have. I
• 57:41
  have this stuff. And so I like this is real, of course, of
• 57:46
  course, it's easy for me not to get burned out, because I am
• 57:49
  always presented with why this is real, why this is important
• 57:57
  and and that stuff is hard to figure out. But still, another
• 58:02
  thing to mention about burnout is, if there is anything that
• 58:06
  you start to feel 10% burned out, act on that right away.
• 58:11
  Because once you're 90 100% burned out, it is so hard to
• 58:16
  come back from that. So if you start saying, Oh, this is the
• 58:19
  thing that I hate it, you know, figure it out. Can you not hate
• 58:22
  it or but if you can't, that's, that's the thing that you
• 58:25
  delegate.
• 58:27
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I think that when you're Yeah, because
• 58:30
  you have to start early, especially talking about, like,
• 58:34
  having a, this be a long term career in photography, there are
• 58:38
  a lot of different things that you have to think about. Like,
• 58:42
  I'm getting older. My body is not in the shape it used to be
• 58:46
  when I started doing this 25 years ago. You know, like, I,
• 58:50
  what do I need to do? I need to do more yoga. Do I need to
• 58:54
  stretch? Do I need to, like, lose weight? Do, like, those
• 58:58
  sorts of things. Like, I used to carry around all of my equipment
• 59:02
  in a shoulder bag for everybody. And I would carry her around
• 59:06
  almost all day until we got to the reception. And my second
• 59:10
  photographers would be like, man, like you just like a
• 59:14
  Sherpa, just like carrying around like, 5060, pounds of
• 59:18
  equipment, like, throughout the day. Because I was like, Oh, I
• 59:22
  gotta switch lenses. And I'm just, like, dip into this bag
• 59:26
  and, like, pull out, you know, whatever. And and I had to had
• 59:30
  everything on me almost all times. And that was a mental
• 59:34
  thing. But I like realized that my body could not maintain that
• 59:38
  over the long term. But I need to figure out something else.
• 59:42
  Or, you know, there, there's so many other aspects. If you said
• 59:46
  we need, you're doing this for a long time, you're not just
• 59:50
  dealing with taking pictures. You're not just dealing with the
• 59:54
  like, oh, how do I, you know? How do I put together my website
• 59:59
  and best present? To clients. There's a lot of other factors
• 1:00:03
  you have to take into account.
• 1:00:06
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, and I so overall, so I'm in, I'm almost
• 1:00:10
  47 I'm in some of the best shape of my life because of a lot of
• 1:00:15
  very conscious choices. And I'll like, I'll work out specifically
• 1:00:21
  for, you know, wedding photography and, you know, like,
• 1:00:23
  if I, if I'm swatting, I'm not, I'm not, like, cheating and
• 1:00:27
  doing as much weight as I can, like I'm getting, I'm putting on
• 1:00:32
  really lightweight and getting really, really low. It's called
• 1:00:35
  ass to grass, like they're so low, because that's such an
• 1:00:38
  important thing to do. Asian squats, deep squats I did video
• 1:00:41
  on this recently. Is an incredibly important thing to be
• 1:00:45
  able to do in weddings. It really, really opens up
• 1:00:49
  different options for you. And you know, so I won't. I won't. I
• 1:00:55
  will. I will often do things at the gym that are they're not
• 1:00:59
  good for the ego, because I'm like, Okay, how, how hard can I
• 1:01:03
  make this movement? How? How little weight can I put on?
• 1:01:08
  Because I am doing I am making it as difficult as possible, the
• 1:01:12
  most stretched position the and, you know, in whatever you do,
• 1:01:17
  and that that's just because I'm trying to be very, very, very
• 1:01:22
  functional with it, and yet, still, even with that, like I
• 1:01:28
  right now, you got same thing with burnout. You have to pay
• 1:01:31
  attention to anything in your body when it starts. So I'm
• 1:01:35
  starting to get golf elbow in my left elbow. I've never played
• 1:01:39
  golf, but I've held a camera the same way for 20 years, 25 and so
• 1:01:46
  like, when I'm in that, like, supinated position, even with,
• 1:01:49
  all of a sudden, with curls, I can't do that because I feel it
• 1:01:52
  in my wrist. I feel it in my elbow, and I'm listening to it.
• 1:01:55
  I'm rehabilitating it. You know, I bought a the 50 to 150, f2
• 1:02:01
  this year. Amazing lens like, and light for its specs. I mean,
• 1:02:07
  just incredible. And it started to flare up my golf elbow. So I
• 1:02:12
  said, Not, nope. And I, you know, returned it because, like,
• 1:02:19
  once that happens, once it's chronic once, like once your
• 1:02:22
  knees go, once you're you're in so much trouble. I mean, you
• 1:02:26
  want to talk about something that's going to burn you out
• 1:02:28
  being in tremendous physical pain every time you should be
• 1:02:30
  wedding. And so another again, there are, there are advantages,
• 1:02:37
  either that I had and capitalize on, or made for myself. And I
• 1:02:43
  once, I had, well, I had an ex girlfriend who, she came along.
• 1:02:48
  She was a great physical trainer. She came along and
• 1:02:51
  assisted me at a wedding once, and she said, the way you get
• 1:02:56
  down, when you get down to take a shot, you're going to blow out
• 1:03:00
  everything if you keep doing that. And she was like, same way
• 1:03:05
  you would deadlift, same way you squat, same like, you have to
• 1:03:08
  pay attention, because you got no weight, but you're doing it,
• 1:03:11
  doing it a million times. And like, I mean, thank God, because
• 1:03:16
  again, my my back is great, my knees are great. So I'm right
• 1:03:19
  now, I'm really paying attention to that elbow. And I'm like,
• 1:03:23
  Okay, it's October. I'm doing a ton of shoots, but I'm using my
• 1:03:27
  cameras are so much lighter than they used to be. Used to have
• 1:03:30
  the I used to the worst thing ergonomically, which makes it
• 1:03:34
  seem so much heavier. I mean, I used to have like, 2d threes
• 1:03:37
  hanging off my shoulders on straps all day, but they had
• 1:03:40
  flashes on them all day. I use it a flash just hanging off, and
• 1:03:44
  it makes it so ergonomically weird. And, you know, now,
• 1:03:48
  again, I've got these, like, you know, these tiny Sony cameras,
• 1:03:52
  really, like small, not the tiniest, but, you know, really,
• 1:03:56
  really small lenses, like the 24 millimeter F, 1.4 Sony is just
• 1:04:00
  like the, like the best lens in the universe, and so small for
• 1:04:05
  all the things you can do. And like, again, not using, I'm not
• 1:04:11
  using an f2 zoom, even, even though, again, the Sony ones are
• 1:04:16
  lighter than they should be, but not not light enough, like the
• 1:04:21
  the 28th to 70 f2 if you're using one camera all day. I
• 1:04:25
  think it can like if you're doing family photos, like
• 1:04:28
  another amazing lens. But, you know, it's especially the canon.
• 1:04:34
  If you ever seen the canon, I have it, holy cow. I mean, I
• 1:04:37
  call that the carpal tunnel. I see, whenever I see a
• 1:04:41
  videographer with that, I'm like,
• 1:04:43
  Casey Fatchett: I can't imagine shooting video with it. But this
• 1:04:46
  is like, is for a I like to refer to it as like, there's,
• 1:04:51
  there are times when I'm like, Okay, I'm going to have a lot of
• 1:04:53
  different situations that I'm going to be in today, and I
• 1:04:56
  can't be switching back and forth between different primes
• 1:04:59
  or whatever. I. Try to shoot with primes whenever I can. But
• 1:05:01
  that thing is like, okay, like, if I'm shooting on a boat,
• 1:05:05
  Ryan Brenizer: but do you do you do it when you have two cameras?
• 1:05:08
  Do you have that thing hanging off your shoulder? Yeah, I mean,
• 1:05:11
  I would watch out for that.
• 1:05:14
  Casey Fatchett: Well, I know there's, there's a lot of things
• 1:05:16
  going on with my back that we're working on, but I had the elbow
• 1:05:20
  too. I had the elbow for a while and my left arm, and I
• 1:05:24
  rehabilitated that, and have, like, I work on it every day,
• 1:05:28
  like there's something, there's stretches and exercises that I
• 1:05:31
  do every day to keep, like, both in both arms, to keep my wrists
• 1:05:36
  and elbows and all those, like, ligaments and everything
• 1:05:39
  stretched strong. Yeah, because there's these, are the things
• 1:05:43
  like you that you don't think about. If you don't take care of
• 1:05:47
  them, you're gonna end up in a lot of trouble.
• 1:05:52
  Ryan Brenizer: And any, anything that, anything that makes you
• 1:05:55
  say, oh, god, oh god, I gotta, I have a wedding today, you gotta
• 1:05:59
  really paying attention to and that even if you're so
• 1:06:02
  emotionally keyed in, if it causes you tremendous physical
• 1:06:06
  pain, you're going to be you're not going to you're not going to
• 1:06:10
  like it. And this is not, it's not as far as businesses go.
• 1:06:14
  It's not a great business. Nobody says to their children,
• 1:06:18
  listen, if you want to make really, really easy and reliable
• 1:06:22
  money, be an artist, unless they're terrible parents. And
• 1:06:26
  you know, it's better than most. I mean, there are professional
• 1:06:30
  poets out there, but it's there's so many easier things to
• 1:06:34
  do that if you if you don't love it, if you don't love it, if it
• 1:06:38
  doesn't give you energy, then you should probably do something
• 1:06:42
  else. So you have to find, you have to find the things where
• 1:06:46
  not just like, Oh, I like photography, but like, I like
• 1:06:49
  this. I like wedding photography. I like being there.
• 1:06:53
  It makes my day better. You know, I've, I've had weddings
• 1:06:57
  where, like, because you have to be a little bit psychopathic,
• 1:07:01
  there's no sick days, no matter what I've done. You know, 900
• 1:07:05
  plus weddings. So I've had some really bad days. And, you know,
• 1:07:09
  I've had weddings where I have to go. I'm like, okay, oh, okay.
• 1:07:13
  Like, a couple minutes and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go over here
• 1:07:17
  and vomit, or, yeah, or I'm gonna go into a closet and to
• 1:07:20
  find a time to, like, cry, to sob for three minutes because of
• 1:07:25
  something that's going on. Okay, now I'm back. Now 100% on. You
• 1:07:29
  have to be able to do things like that to be a wedding
• 1:07:32
  photographer, and it's not that is not something everyone can
• 1:07:36
  do, but if it's something that you say, Okay, I'm going through
• 1:07:40
  this, but my day is better because I'm at a wedding and
• 1:07:44
  whatever it is, I mean, for me, like, especially if it's
• 1:07:48
  something That's always true, no matter what, right, even if it's
• 1:07:52
  a difficult client, even if it's a difficult day, even if you're
• 1:07:56
  not going to get your portfolio shots, but if there's something
• 1:08:00
  about a wedding that you love no matter what. So there's a number
• 1:08:04
  of things. For me, it can even just be the fact that when I'm
• 1:08:08
  at a wedding, I know I'm at the right place today, I'm doing the
• 1:08:13
  right thing. Because when you're in an office and when you're a
• 1:08:17
  parent, like, especially with a small child, there was always
• 1:08:21
  times, if I was with my child, like, I should be working, if I
• 1:08:25
  was working, and like, I should be with my child, like, if I, if
• 1:08:29
  I'm working on the studio, and so, like, especially like,
• 1:08:33
  having your studio right there, I'm like, I'm playing with my
• 1:08:37
  child six hours. I can see that computer, and I got photos to
• 1:08:41
  do. Okay? I gotta move my photo now, the kids on the iPad. Like,
• 1:08:45
  there's always those thoughts, but like, when I'm at a wedding,
• 1:08:49
  I know I am supposed to be there. I'm doing one thing
• 1:08:52
  today, and even just that is like an amazing feeling for me.
• 1:08:57
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, I think that one of the best things is
• 1:08:59
  my wife will put me in the right mindset. Because there have been
• 1:09:03
  times when dealing with, like, horrible loss in my personal
• 1:09:07
  life, or, like, whatever else is going on, and she'll just say to
• 1:09:13
  me, like, go, be amazing. It's somebody's big day. Like, you're
• 1:09:19
  that you're going to be there, to be there. Like, and that's
• 1:09:21
  the thing that gets because, like, one of my favorite things
• 1:09:24
  about weddings is helping people and and, you know, not just
• 1:09:29
  taking pictures, but like, I'm sure you've done as well. Like,
• 1:09:33
  sometimes you're people's therapists, or the comedian to
• 1:09:36
  like, cheer them up, or, you know, get them away from some
• 1:09:41
  bothersome family members who's bugging them about something
• 1:09:44
  they don't want to talk about. They're not getting time to
• 1:09:47
  spend with their spouse, their new spouse, and they want to
• 1:09:50
  get, like, five minutes together so you're there to like, I'm
• 1:09:52
  gonna go, Hey, we let's take some pictures, and I'm just
• 1:09:54
  ushering them out of the room for a minute so they can have a
• 1:09:57
  moment to themselves. And. That's the thing that she
• 1:10:01
  reminds me of, is like, you know, this is why, even if you
• 1:10:05
  are feeling like the weight of the world is upon you in some
• 1:10:10
  other way or whatever, like you go there and help those people.
• 1:10:16
  And it really, for me, that's that's a big part of the joy, as
• 1:10:22
  we've been discussing, like, throughout,
• 1:10:25
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, and that energy is real and it's deep.
• 1:10:29
  You know, when you're genuine, you're looking back and saying,
• 1:10:32
  I'm I did something good and and that can, that can keep you
• 1:10:38
  going so much more than like, oh, oh my gosh. Instead of 100
• 1:10:44
  likes on this, I got 120 likes. Yeah, you know that there can be
• 1:10:51
  times that, like, you can really feel that, and there can be
• 1:10:53
  times that that pushes you forward, great, but it doesn't
• 1:10:58
  last nearly as much as saying like, I did something real. I
• 1:11:01
  mean, the thing that I miss most about doing workshops, and I
• 1:11:04
  would love to get back eventually, is not, is not like
• 1:11:09
  surface praise, but I have a bunch of people who come to me
• 1:11:14
  and say, like, you changed my life. You made me like be a
• 1:11:17
  photographer. You made me pursue this and like my and now, so not
• 1:11:24
  only have I changed them, but like, they've gone into
• 1:11:27
  weddings, and they've taken lessons that I helped shape
• 1:11:30
  them, you know, the values in which I pursue weddings, and you
• 1:11:34
  know, they're helping those people and that stuff that feels
• 1:11:38
  real. And that's the thing that yeah, really, really, really.
• 1:11:41
  You know, as my son gets older, I'd love to, I'm sort of dipping
• 1:11:47
  my toes back into education, and it's, it's for that,
• 1:11:52
  Casey Fatchett: and I think that that's like you said, you got to
• 1:11:55
  find, like, these things that I don't know, I think about
• 1:12:01
  legacy. Sometimes it's like, I think that's a kind of an
• 1:12:05
  overused word, but it's the like, what am I? What have I
• 1:12:10
  done that is positively impact other people, positively
• 1:12:15
  impacted other people. And whether it's I, you know, we've
• 1:12:21
  kind of gone through this different things, like, I've
• 1:12:24
  many times have gotten the call like, can we use the photo you
• 1:12:27
  took for somebody's Memorial? Yeah. And they're like, we'll
• 1:12:31
  pay you for the I'm like, nope, you'd have to pay me for the
• 1:12:33
  print. I'm going to send that to you. Just let me know where I
• 1:12:36
  need to ship it to what size it needs to be, or, decades later,
• 1:12:44
  seeing you know your photo you took at their wedding is still
• 1:12:49
  their profile picture.
• 1:12:53
  Ryan Brenizer: You're like for your profile photo to be
• 1:12:57
  anything from 2000 Yeah? Like that. That is amazing. I was
• 1:13:02
  just seeing that yesterday. One of my yardsticks that I want for
• 1:13:10
  for longevity is that I want to do the wedding of a flower girl
• 1:13:14
  who was at a previous wedding. I've gotten close. I last year,
• 1:13:19
  I did the wedding of somebody who was a 14 year old junior
• 1:13:22
  bridesmaid once upon a time. I'm like, Yes, but of course, in New
• 1:13:27
  York, people then you get married a lot later. I still do
• 1:13:29
  a lot of like, 50 year old clients who is their first
• 1:13:32
  wedding. But yeah, I'm like, I gotta do that. I gotta do that.
• 1:13:37
  This, this, this, like, four year old I gotta do their
• 1:13:39
  wedding.
• 1:13:39
  Casey Fatchett: Someday. You can do the kids wedding of somebody
• 1:13:43
  who's like, you photograph their wedding. Like, would be like,
• 1:13:46
  That sets up there. I've had the pleasure of like, last week I
• 1:13:54
  did family portraits for a family that I've known for 1617,
• 1:13:59
  years. I met them by doing a, like, I was photographing a
• 1:14:03
  Halloween parade at the school that their kids went to, and I
• 1:14:07
  ended up doing Bar and Bat Mitzvah photos for them. But now
• 1:14:11
  they're in like, wedding age, so it's like, they just did the
• 1:14:16
  family portraits. Met the boyfriend of one of the
• 1:14:18
  daughters. It was pretty serious with him. So I was like, oh,
• 1:14:21
  that's, you know, maybe. But then there's also, like, the
• 1:14:24
  sort of like, one of the real marks for me, and like, it makes
• 1:14:29
  me feel good, is having people come back over and over again. I
• 1:14:31
  did the weddings of three sisters, and this next year, I'm
• 1:14:39
  going to be doing the third and fourth weddings of siblings from
• 1:14:43
  another family. Like, where it's just like, okay, like, where
• 1:14:47
  they keep coming back to you. It's like that sort of like, you
• 1:14:50
  show up at those sorts of things and like, you know everybody,
• 1:14:53
  it's like, you're part of the family. And it just that's,
• 1:14:59
  that's a real.
• 1:15:01
  Ryan Brenizer: I've done the I've done the three sisters and
• 1:15:03
  that, like, when you run, you're on the last sister. You're like,
• 1:15:06
  I wish you had more sense. I have another family I dearly
• 1:15:10
  love. And I've done two of the sisters and one of the cousins.
• 1:15:15
  And then there's the last, the kid sister. I'm like, I see you
• 1:15:21
  have a boyfriend, but I'm like, but she's actually famous. And
• 1:15:24
  I'm like, God. Like, I know there's so many people are gonna
• 1:15:27
  do your wedding for free, but like, come on, I just want it,
• 1:15:32
  not because you're famous, but because, like, I love your
• 1:15:35
  family. I just you want to complete the collection.
• 1:15:38
  Casey Fatchett: Yeah, you become so emotionally invested, yeah,
• 1:15:42
  Ryan Brenizer: I mean, I when I see them, you know? And even, I
• 1:15:46
  mean, so many my social media, like, it's algorithmic, right?
• 1:15:50
  It shows you what you want. And mine is not like, a bunch of,
• 1:15:55
  like, awesome wedding photos. It's usually when I log in, it's
• 1:15:59
  the families of the people that I photographed, because that
• 1:16:03
  when I see, like, I see that, like, I'm gonna click on that. I
• 1:16:08
  want to see your baby. I want to see like, it makes me really
• 1:16:12
  happy. I want to see how these families that I saw get formed,
• 1:16:17
  you know, how they're growing, how, you know, how people are
• 1:16:21
  doing, you know, it's we just, we just did a our, actually, our
• 1:16:26
  first birth photography for, you know, for a former client, and
• 1:16:30
  just to like, to be part of all these things, is incredible. And
• 1:16:35
  now, again, I've been doing it for 20 years. I have started
• 1:16:39
  this fall. I've had two former clients who have died, and you
• 1:16:44
  know, it's their memorial, and you want to, that's so this
• 1:16:48
  happens, and it's, it's unbelievably intense, but you
• 1:16:52
  know to know that, like the spouse has these things that you
• 1:16:56
  did, it's just intense on another level. I actually just
• 1:17:00
  this morning delivered photos for somebody whose husband had
• 1:17:04
  died, I did portrait photos. And it's, it's, it's that next stage.
• 1:17:11
  And, yeah, but these are all real. These are, I mean, I have
• 1:17:16
  one more thing that really it's about, that, the fact that like
• 1:17:21
  this is important if you want another thing that makes it
• 1:17:24
  impossible for you to be burned out ever again. Try to get in a
• 1:17:33
  get in a situation where you think it's going to be taken
• 1:17:36
  from you, or everything's going to be taken from you, and find
• 1:17:40
  out what devastates you, and then when you get it back, when
• 1:17:46
  you So, what happened? You know, 10 years ago, I was diagnosed
• 1:17:50
  with MS, and I didn't know, I think the only person I knew had
• 1:17:54
  MS was somebody who was severely disabled. And I thought, like,
• 1:17:58
  Oh, this is gonna be me. I'm not gonna be able to walk in my
• 1:18:01
  wedding. I have to, you know, I'm not gonna be able to do
• 1:18:03
  another wedding like, like I'm done for and I was, of course,
• 1:18:09
  devastated in so many ways. Now I have my ends up like my doctor
• 1:18:15
  has told me, I have a 0.5 out of 10. You know, I do all the right
• 1:18:20
  things. It's literally the least of my problems. I've been
• 1:18:24
  asymptomatic for the last 10 years, but I had that moment
• 1:18:30
  like it was taken away, and then I got it back, burned out for a
• 1:18:38
  second sense on being there you know, sometimes again, like two
• 1:18:41
  in the morning you're working on photos or something like, that's
• 1:18:44
  not great, but I can always remember, like, I think I could
• 1:18:47
  do this. I think I could would be at a wedding. And so it
• 1:18:51
  doesn't matter what's going on. Doesn't matter what kind of
• 1:18:53
  wedding it is. I am so excited to be there every time, the
• 1:19:00
  happiest person I ever met. And this is not obviously universal.
• 1:19:05
  The person radiated joy everywhere he went. He was a
• 1:19:09
  Holocaust survivor, and I can only imagine that he whatever
• 1:19:15
  was going on. He woke up every day, and he was not in a
• 1:19:18
  concentration camp. And so he's happy. That not universal, but
• 1:19:26
  that was how he that was his reaction. And just the happiest
• 1:19:30
  person I've ever met was a Holocaust survivor.
• 1:19:34
  Casey Fatchett: It's a it's like you said, it's a matter of,
• 1:19:36
  like, perspective, I think, and like, when you are given that
• 1:19:44
  perspective of like, this could be gone, or this is how life
• 1:19:48
  could be, or understanding like I lost my parents in 2020, it
• 1:19:56
  was very it was very traumatic for me, because there's two
• 1:19:59
  weeks of each other. Or they both passed away. I was like,
• 1:20:03
  it's something that I don't like. Go to wedding clients be
• 1:20:07
  like, Hey, your parents are gonna die. Yeah, because that's
• 1:20:11
  just like, but I'm saying like I talked to them about, like, how
• 1:20:15
  much in the future, I kind of put it in the framework of like,
• 1:20:21
  Hey, your life's going to change in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years,
• 1:20:26
  whatever. These photos are going to capture a particular time
• 1:20:31
  with the most important people near you,
• 1:20:36
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, and then they will understand, you know,
• 1:20:38
  one way or the other. Yeah. We don't. We don't discuss why we
• 1:20:41
  take a few more photos of the oldest people at weddings. But,
• 1:20:45
  you know, we've, we've been through it. I mean, there's so
• 1:20:49
  many. I mean, there's so many people. It's been 20 years.
• 1:20:51
  There's so many. I mean, most 20 years. And New York City has
• 1:20:56
  older clients. I mean, you know, like every, every grandparent
• 1:21:00
  you know, who's Whose wedding I did 1520, years ago. They're,
• 1:21:03
  you know, I would imagine almost all of them are gone, you know,
• 1:21:07
  and even a lot of parents, because, again, you know, we
• 1:21:10
  have older clients, and it's been a long time, and it's part
• 1:21:16
  of it, it's part of it. It's not and for me, it's a huge part of
• 1:21:20
  it, because I it was a formative event for me to have my father
• 1:21:24
  die. So you just the bigger lesson, even if it's not that,
• 1:21:29
  is you find the thing that feels real, that makes you say, even
• 1:21:36
  if I'm having the worst day of my own life, I it's going to be
• 1:21:41
  a little bit better, because I'm doing a shoot. There's even,
• 1:21:45
  even just the idea, like even engagement shoots, because
• 1:21:49
  there's a, there's a, you know, physiological psychological
• 1:21:54
  effect that you know, when you're happy, you smile, but
• 1:21:57
  also smiling makes you happier. So sometimes I've been in a
• 1:22:01
  terrible mood, and I've either had a client meeting or an
• 1:22:03
  engagement shoot, and you have to smile and you have to be
• 1:22:07
  positive, and then by the end, I'm like, You know what? I kind
• 1:22:10
  of feel better because, because I've just been like, really, if
• 1:22:13
  you know, if it wasn't, you know, at least you feel better
• 1:22:16
  than you did if it wasn't, like, you know, something completely
• 1:22:19
  devastating. But you say, like I feel a little bit better, and
• 1:22:24
  often, often I feel a lot better. And so, yeah, it's,
• 1:22:29
  there's, there's so many ways that this has been a blessing to
• 1:22:32
  me. Even though it's a job, it's not and it's certainly not
• 1:22:34
  always easy. I mean, we've been through periods where it was
• 1:22:38
  illegal. We've been through a pandemic while our job was being
• 1:22:43
  surrounded by people all the time and and traveling and doing
• 1:22:47
  a bunch of things that all of a sudden were illegal, that
• 1:22:50
  weren't happening and, like, why? All I could say to myself
• 1:22:53
  in 2020 was like, at least I don't own a bar, at least I
• 1:22:57
  don't have rent to, like, corporate rent. But it was, it
• 1:23:01
  was incredibly rough. But you know, you you find if it itself
• 1:23:07
  helps you keep going in life, that's and you find that then,
• 1:23:14
  then you will find ways to hold on one way or the other.
• 1:23:22
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  Unknown: Hey. Now for my favorite part of the show,
• 1:25:47
  what's that? Say? Useless information. This is always death.
• 1:25:55
  Casey Fatchett: Ryan on average, 100 people per year, choke on
• 1:26:02
  ballpoint pens.
• 1:26:06
  Ryan Brenizer: Wow, is that United States or worldwide? I
• 1:26:08
  Casey Fatchett: think that's just the United States, but it's
• 1:26:11
  people chewing on,
• 1:26:14
  Ryan Brenizer: chewing on their choke to choke to death. Yes,
• 1:26:18
  that's, that's, that's impressive. That's, yeah, yeah,
• 1:26:23
  pens are their killing machines. I've always said it, this is a,
• 1:26:28
  it's probably more now, because this is a 20 year old statistic.
• 1:26:34
  But do you know what one of the most dangerous foods in terms of
• 1:26:39
  preparation is? It's a breakfast food,
• 1:26:43
  Casey Fatchett: eggs,
• 1:26:45
  Ryan Brenizer: bagels,
• 1:26:46
  Casey Fatchett: bagels. People take too much of it,
• 1:26:49
  Ryan Brenizer: so it's a little hard on the outside, softer on
• 1:26:51
  the inside, if you if you're cutting, cutting, cutting, and
• 1:26:53
  you're cutting towards your hands. 2020, years ago, it was
• 1:26:56
  800 people a year went to the hospital with bagel injuries.
• 1:26:59
  Well, you
• 1:27:00
  Casey Fatchett: got to get it. You gotta get a bread knife.
• 1:27:02
  Ryan Brenizer: Yeah, a bread knife. I've never, never cut
• 1:27:05
  towards your hand.
• 1:27:06
  Casey Fatchett: You gotta go, like, there's a technique for
• 1:27:08
  cutting the bagel you get there's, like, you usually have,
• 1:27:10
  like, the spot where it was connected to another, like, you
• 1:27:13
  put the bread knife in there, and you work your way around.
• 1:27:16
  You don't go, Yeah, you don't cut towards your hand. Hey.
• 1:27:18
  Also, with the bread knife that's serrated, you don't want
• 1:27:20
  to deal with that,
• 1:27:22
  Ryan Brenizer: yeah, if you ever even are, if so, if it's
• 1:27:24
  pointing towards your hand, this is key bagel information. I
• 1:27:29
  moved bread. I don't move the knife. Yeah, right, you know,
• 1:27:32
  like, because then, oh my god, bread went into my hand. But,
• 1:27:35
  yeah, you always find a surface, so there that's that's not
• 1:27:39
  useless,
• 1:27:39
  Casey Fatchett: important, that's important, vital. Bagel
• 1:27:42
  knowledge. Yeah, we've
• 1:27:43
  Ryan Brenizer: saved some thumb webs right now,
• 1:27:46
  Casey Fatchett: at least again, that's going to live down
• 1:27:48
  through the ages. That advice is going to spread from one person
• 1:27:52
  to another.
• 1:27:53
  Ryan Brenizer: That is the next, the next. Brenizer method, Bagel,
• 1:27:57
  Casey Fatchett: bagel brenizer method, Bagel method. BBA,
• 1:28:00
  awesome. Ryan, thank you for being on the show. I really
• 1:28:03
  appreciate you coming on. Where can people find you?
• 1:28:09
  Ryan Brenizer: It's all, it's basically all you know, either
• 1:28:12
  you can you can find me at the gym in Montvale, because I
• 1:28:16
  actually use it as an office a lot, just to get not be in my
• 1:28:20
  studio all the time, but online, everything is the brandizers.
• 1:28:25
  I'm going to relaunch Ryan brandizer as a corporate but
• 1:28:30
  right now it's the brandizers.com, brandizers on
• 1:28:32
  Instagram, facebook.com/the, brandizers. You just, you just
• 1:28:36
  name a platform and put in the brandizers. And there I am,
• 1:28:39
  Casey Fatchett: and you can find the I'll put some of those links
• 1:28:42
  into the Episode notes so people can find them there again.
• 1:28:45
  Brian, you're welcome to come back anytime. It was really fun
• 1:28:48
  talking to
• 1:28:49
  Ryan Brenizer: Great. We'll see you tomorrow.No, this was, this
• 1:28:53
  was awesome. Thank you so much.
• 1:28:59
  Unknown: And welcome back. Many thanks to Ryan brandizer for
• 1:29:02
  being on the show. Did you enjoy my talk with Ryan? If you did,
• 1:29:05
  be sure to let us know you can do that on the socials at the
• 1:29:09
  nerdy photo. That's at the nerdy photo, no dots, underscores or
• 1:29:12
  dashes on Instagram, threads, blue sky, Tiktok and Reddit. Or
• 1:29:17
  you can leave a review and tell us how much you love the show.
• 1:29:20
  You should also head into the Episode notes and be sure to
• 1:29:22
  follow along with Ryan on the socials as well. We've arrived
• 1:29:26
  where lozag said we could find the fountain of youth, and it
• 1:29:29
  appears to be a bunch of children dancing in a pond. Not
• 1:29:33
  what I was talking about lozag.
• 1:29:39
  Casey Fatchett: Well, they're definitely miners.
• 1:29:47
  Miners, not miners. Do you see any digging equipment around
• 1:29:51
  here until next time? Stay safe and stay nerdy. You.